Elon Musk v. Dollar Store Jon Favreau and How the UFC Conquered America

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: Episode Summary

Title: Elon Musk v. Dollar Store Jon Favreau and How the UFC Conquered America
Release Date: March 6, 2025
Host/Author: Crooked Media
Description: This episode delves into the intersection of technology, politics, and culture, examining how figures like Elon Musk and organizations like the UFC shape contemporary American society.

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1. Trump’s State of the Union and Social Media Dynamics

Key Discussions:

• Trump’s First Public Appearance Post-Election: Jon Favreau and Max Fisher discuss Donald Trump's entrance at Madison Square Garden, highlighting the spectacle and its political implications.

  Notable Quote:
  Jack Crosby (01:14): “...the entire trappings of this MAGA movement. And the arena's going wild.”

• "Take It Down" Act Misinterpretation: The hosts analyze Trump's misinterpretation of bipartisan legislation aimed at combating deepfake pornography, suggesting Trump views it as a tool to remove unfavorable online content about himself.

  Notable Quote:
  Max Fisher (05:08): “I don't even think I think in the moment because he clearly has no idea what the bill does.”

2. Elon Musk’s Influence and Twitter Conflicts

Key Discussions:

• Elon Musk’s Interaction with Jon Favreau: Favreau recounts his Twitter exchanges with Elon Musk, highlighting Musk’s tendency to label him as "Dollar Store Jon Favreau" and the complexities of engaging with such a high-profile antagonist.

  Notable Quote:
  Jon Favreau (24:30): “...maybe it's just going to be better to be more constructive and make a little joke about it and see what happens.”

• Musk’s Role in Government Spending: Max Fisher voices concerns over Musk's influence in government operations, suggesting a shift towards executive overreach and undermining Congressional authority.

  Notable Quote:
  Max Fisher (13:56): “...it's like, if he's not trying to even energize his base, it's going to be much easier to organize in opposition to it.”

3. The UFC’s Cultural Ascendancy and Political Alignment

Key Discussions:

• UFC’s Rise as a Cultural Force: Reporter Jack Crosby explains how Dana White’s leadership transformed the UFC into a mainstream phenomenon, particularly appealing to younger men through its portrayal of masculinity and individualism.

  Notable Quote:
  Jack Crosby (58:25): “...MMA distills that impulse and puts it on screen in a way that is more pure, really, than any other sport out there.”

• Intersection with MAGA Movement: The conversation explores the synergy between the UFC, Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement, highlighting how the UFC serves as a cultural touchstone for asserting traditional masculinity amidst perceived societal threats.

  Notable Quote:
  Jack Crosby (75:35): “...the UFC has realized that young men specifically are responding to those themes....”

4. Economic Blackout and Online Activism

Key Discussions:

• February 28th Economic Boycott: The hosts discuss a coordinated boycott against major corporations like Amazon and Walmart, drawing parallels to past online activism such as the Kony 2012 campaign. They critique the effectiveness of such movements, emphasizing the limitations of slacktivism.

  Notable Quote:
  Max Fisher (34:25): “...it established this model of online slacktivism that we are all very familiar with now...”

• Challenges of Mobilizing Mass Resistance: Favreau and Fisher debate the complexities of opposing authoritarian tendencies within the government, questioning the efficacy of grassroots movements versus institutional activism.

  Notable Quote:
  Max Fisher (39:14): “...the primary goal of political action... is to make a difference. And this did not make a difference.”

5. Offline Challenge: Reducing Phone Dependency

Key Discussions:

• Phone-Free Bedroom Experiment: Max Fisher shares his success with keeping his phone out of the bedroom, citing improvements in sleep quality and mental focus. Jon Favreau recounts his struggles, attributing lapses to late-night obligations tied to political events.

  Notable Quote:
  Max Fisher (46:03): “...I never feel foggy the way that I used to all the time. And I have an easier time regulating what I am thinking about.”

6. Promoting Mental Health Through Physical Activity

Key Discussions:

• Benefits of Martial Arts: Jack Crosby advocates for martial arts as a means of maintaining mental health and personal discipline, despite the sport’s perceived alignment with right-wing values. He emphasizes the inclusivity and respect inherent in well-run MMA gyms.

  Notable Quote:
  Jack Crosby (84:35): “...there is room within the culture of the sport and within... to still get what the sport offers... without it, you know, always explicitly feeling like that.”

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Conclusions and Insights

• Institutional Trust and Political Mobilization: The episode underscores the declining trust in traditional institutions, prompting individuals to seek alternative avenues for political engagement, often through social media and informal networks.

• Cultural Reflections Through Sports: The UFC serves as a microcosm of broader societal trends, reflecting and influencing perceptions of masculinity, power, and individualism, which align closely with contemporary political movements.

• Challenges of Modern Activism: While online activism can generate widespread awareness, its tangible impact remains limited without concerted efforts through established political structures and institutions.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a nuanced exploration of how technology, politics, and culture intertwine in shaping modern American society. Through engaging discussions and insightful reporting, hosts Favreau and Fisher shed light on the complex dynamics driving current sociopolitical landscapes.

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Note: Timestamps provided correspond to key moments within the transcript to highlight significant quotes and discussions.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

I didn't need my fleece for my morning dog walk.

[Jack Crosby]

Nope.

[Jon Favreau]

So I needed some new T shirts. I looked at Quint. They got some great T shirts there. They got some great. Henley's been known to wear Henley once in a while.

[Max Fisher]

Guy loves a Henley.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jack Crosby]

Events from his fans when he entered a Madison Square Garden. This was Donald Trump's first public appearance after the election and he, you know, entered the arena to this absurd, enormous fanfare. And the jumbotrons going wild and the announcers on the page, pay per view screaming at his name. Joe Rogan practically squealing in delight as he comes in flanked by Elon Musk and Kid Rock and Tulsi Gabbard and the entire RFK Junior. The entire trappings of this MAGA movement. And the arena's going wild. And at some point in this, in the 15 minute standing ovation, I was talking to a couple of kids and one of them said, I like that he enters like a fighter. It gives me hope to see this political figure come out here, do a fight or walkout.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher and you just heard from today's guest reporter at the Rolling Stone, Jack Crosby. So, Max, I hear you may now be getting into mma.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna do a just iron neck training routine. Me and Zuckerberg. Only iron neck.

[Jon Favreau]

What is iron neck?

[Max Fisher]

You did? So when Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan, they talked a lot about how, boy, your neck is looking bigger. Do you do an iron nec?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, I hate that. I hate that. Do you have a gold chain?

[Max Fisher]

I'm gonna get a gold chain. Like, really full desperation, you know, crisis of masculinity. I. No, I will never understand the appeal of getting punched in the face for fun. It does not make a lot of sense to me. But UFC is very important for understanding our politics today.

[Jon Favreau]

And the reason we're talking about this is because Jack Crosby, who you're talking to today, has a piece in Rolling Stone that's titled Empire of Blood, How Dana White's UFC Conquered America. In the pieces about the parallel rise of MAGA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, better known as ufc. And the three men, Trump, Rogan, Dana White, who saw UFC as a way to at least, whether intentionally or not, reshape culture and politics around their version of masculinity. I know you talked to Jack earlier this week. How'd it go? Can you give us a little preview?

[Max Fisher]

So I wanted to talk to Jack because the UFC is kind of one of the only institutions in America that has figured out how to speak to younger men right now, and they're office offering with violence. I mean, honestly, that is part of the appeal, because they're offering more than just entertainment. Right. They're offering a political identity that is both pretty core to Trump's second term coalition, and that very directly addresses this crisis of masculinity or perceived crisis of masculinity that we've talked about many times, that a lot of younger men are feeling today, this kind of alienation, grievance, isolation, loss of place. So we, if we want to understand how to engage young men in America today, especially young men who are not traditionally involved in politics, what they're looking for, I think we need to understand the ufc.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I'm excited to listen to this one.

[Max Fisher]

It was fun. It was fun. And I learned a lot about punching people in the face and getting punched.

[Jon Favreau]

In the face, which is important.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. So the second half of this show is gonna be you and me in.

[Jon Favreau]

A cage match, and we are running a dog fighting ring here in the studio.

[Max Fisher]

For people who are not watching, there are two dogs just fully running circles around us.

[Jon Favreau]

We've got Austin's dog, Jun. We've got my parents dog Cooper who I'm dog sitting this week.

[Max Fisher]

It's a place of business.

[Jon Favreau]

It's wonderful.

[Max Fisher]

This is a workplace that we are in. Nobody's taken a shit in the studio so far, so it's top half of recordings.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, let me tell you, it's not over yet. All right, before we get to your interview on Pod Save America, we covered Trump's State of the Union, which used to technically be called an address to a joint session of Congress. Since it's the first speech of a president's term, I'm renaming it like the Gulf of Mexico.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

If we're doing that, we're renaming Denali. I'm just calling it all State of the Union for now.

[Max Fisher]

It's the Gulf of State of the Union.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm so sick of hearing every time it's the first speech. It's technically not the State of the Union.

[Max Fisher]

I'm done with it.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm done with it. Anyway, there are a couple of offline moments from the speech that we should talk about, starting with a very strange moment where Trump seemingly compared himself to victims of deep fake pornography. Let's play the clip. With Elliston's help, the Senate just passed.

[Max Fisher]

The Take It down act and this is so important.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you very much, John Thune. Thank you.

[Jack Crosby]

Stand up, John.

[Jon Favreau]

And I'm going to use that bill for myself too, if you don't mind.

[Max Fisher]

Because nobody gets treated worse than I do online.

[Jon Favreau]

Nobody. I mean, wow.

[Max Fisher]

I Trump's powers of self delusion that everybody out there is watching porn of him. I truly unmatch generational self delusion.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't even think I think in the moment because he clearly has no idea what the bill does.

[Max Fisher]

No.

[Jon Favreau]

And we should say bipartisan legislation. Basically it will take down intimate pictures that are either intimate content that is either AI generated or real, that is shared but non consensual shared on social media sites, Internet, up to two years in prison if it's an adult, I guess three years if it's a minor overdue. Yes. But I think Trump hears Take it down act and he's like, is this something that when there's bad stuff about you on the Internet, you can just take it down?

[Max Fisher]

Because that seems pretty cool, I'm sure. Yes. Deepfake is going to be redefined as criticizing Donald Trump on social media. No, I will say if porn deepfakes of Trump is a thing that exists, obviously we are going to want to cover it on the show. That's going to be relevant for us. So please let us know, send us an email tommy.vitor crooked.com and of course.

[Jon Favreau]

Subscribe to our YouTube channel because wherever you're going to want to listen to that one, you're going to want to watch.

[Max Fisher]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Frame by frame.

[Jon Favreau]

There was that, that story last week that there was a deep fake video of Trump kissing Elon's feet that was on like, was on the screen like in the cafeteria at hud, at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

[Max Fisher]

And it was a big scandal of the week on Blue sky because someone posted and it got taken down because Blue sky has a rule against non consensual AI porn. And enforcing that rule for Donald Trump and Elon Musk was very upsetting to some people.

[Jon Favreau]

So some people wanted, wanted the toe.

[Max Fisher]

Kissing because what could be a bigger act of resistance than posting on Blue Sky?

[Jon Favreau]

We're gonna, we'll get there. We'll get there. It is also just, everything is about. He's just, he identifies with any kind of victim.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. It's really, he's the ultimate.

[Jon Favreau]

He doesn't want to identify with some victims, marginalized people, but someone he brought to the State of the Union who, oh, you happen to be a victim to just like me. I get treated horribly online.

[Max Fisher]

I will say the HUD video was funny. It's good to pass this law to enforce it all cases. The HUD video was kind of funny.

[Jon Favreau]

What did, what did you make of the speech overall?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, this is the speech that you give if your agenda is catastrophically unpopular. Like, we all know that Trump lies constantly. It's like breathing for him. There's nothing new about this, but in his first term, his lies were typically about making up some problem that didn't exist or exaggerating a problem that was real or mischaracterizing it to rail against it and to rile up his base on his behalf. You know, lying about immigration or about religious minorities, protesters, whatever. And that can be tenable when you're really just tapping into people's dissatisfaction with the status quo and trying to channel that in a way that is useful for you. But it's a lot less tenable when people's dissatisfaction, status quo, is you and when you are the status quo and when the thing people are upset about is that you are dismantling both the constitutional order and the booming economy that you inherited and replacing it with corrupt handouts to your oligarch buddies.

[Jon Favreau]

I also thought that it's a speech you give when you give zero fucks about Anything. And you're trying to just like dismantle democracy and because, you know, we, we started talking about this on, On Positive America afterwards, but like, because Dan mentioned something like, well, he wasn't really trying to get his legislative agenda passed through Congress, which is traditionally what a president might do before Congress. So I'm like, he doesn't, he, he wants it passed through Congress, but like, he's not trying to move public opinion in any traditional way. And I do think, you know, one of the, I sort of laughed, sort of wanted to pull my hair out was just like the most common reaction to the speech right afterwards was like, we gotta fact check in. There were so many lies, so many lies. It's like, yeah, no, he spread so, so many of the conspiracies that we have talked about here that are spread online now just come out of the President's mouth that have already been fact checked, already been debunked and he's just doing it and they're going. And that did make me wonder. It's like, I don't, it's tedious, I think, to continue to fact check Trump, but people who tune into the State of the Union, I don't know who watched all 99 minutes of it, but some of those conspiracies you'd hear for the first time.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, that's true.

[Jon Favreau]

And you'd be like, I don't know. Sounds. Sure, it sounds like it could be real.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's what's tough about that.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. I do think that your point that he does not. He no longer seems to care about even organizing his allies in Congress or maybe even his own political base, I think is really important and is like, in some ways is a good sign or is like promising because it means that if he's not trying to even energize his base, it's going to be much easier to organize in opposition to it. But in other ways it's really concerning because clearly he doesn't believe that he has to care about public opinion anymore, even among his own supporters, which is a little worrying about what he thinks. The way that he thinks Democratic governance works right now under him.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like he said to Zelensky in that Oval meeting, which is, you don't have any cards. I have all the cards. I think that's what he thinks domestically as well.

[Max Fisher]

That is absolutely what he believes. And eventually, hopefully he will like hit that wall. But up until we get to that point or figure out what that wall is, maybe it's the midterms maybe it's hopefully something sooner. The Supreme Court. It's scary because we're kind of, you know, we're really mixing my metaphors. We're kind of Wiley Coyote, like, running off the cliff, seeing how far we can run before we fall.

[Jon Favreau]

Yikes.

[Max Fisher]

Are you yikesing at my metaphor? Because I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

No, no, no. Just a cliff. No, I thought it was a perfectly good metaphor. Yeah. So of course, my social media bestie and our least favorite special government employee, Elon Musk, he made an appearance last night. He was in the balcony as a guest of the President who lavished praise on Doge before repeating Elon's false claims about Social Security that we debunked right here on this pod a couple weeks ago. But all the dead people I know that are supposedly getting money, they're not. Not real. Nothing's real. Let's play a clip.

[Max Fisher]

I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency.

[Jon Favreau]

Go.

[Jack Crosby]

Perhaps you've heard of it.

[Max Fisher]

Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.

[Jon Favreau]

Just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does.

[Max Fisher]

And it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to.

[Jon Favreau]

159 and over 130,000 people, according to.

[Jack Crosby]

The Social Security databases are age over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought.

[Max Fisher]

Bobby. None of that's true.

[Jon Favreau]

None of that's true.

[Max Fisher]

It's widely debunked, easily debunked, I know. Very transparently not true.

[Jon Favreau]

What'd you make of that moment?

[Max Fisher]

So I think it is important to remember that of the many things that Musk and Doge have done over these last few weeks, and I cannot believe it's only been a few weeks, is to essentially terminate Congress's congressional authority over spending. Like one of the most important powers that Congress has is to direct spending, which means that they are determining what the government does, doesn't do. And Musk has been basically deleting congressionally mandated spending programs, government functions, entire agencies. It's basically a coup. Like, those powers of Congress now just reside in the executive to the point that congressional Republicans, who are supposed to be a co. Equal branch with Donald Trump, have been reduced to, like, court supplicants, begging him to reintroduce at least some of the programs that they are legally required to maintain. And who was fucking cheering Musk on Tuesday night? Who did you hear screaming in that clip? The same Congressional Republicans who have been couped out of their constitutional authority yeah, it's really like, it's. First of all, it's totally spineless. Like, it's really sad. I think on some, like, these are grown up adults who are cheering the end of their own constitutional authority. And it, like, it concerns me.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I think the reason they're cheering it is because the aims of DOGE are aligned with their own right. Like, it's Republicans, they don't like government.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

They don't like government for a while, especially this crew of Republicans.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And so, you know, you cut a bunch of agencies, you cut a bunch of spending, you cancel a bunch of contracts, they're probably fine with it. There's some of them who are like, you know. Yeah. The fact that it's. That it's their job, I mean, that it should be their job. I feel like they've given up on that back in 2017, 2018.

[Max Fisher]

That's true. But it's agencies that they voted for, it's programs that they vote. It's not like these are all like Democratic imposed agencies who Republicans lost the vote on. These are things that they wanted to do that have been removed. So I take your point that, like, in a broader way, that, like, yes, right wing authoritarianism and like cutting government spending to the point that federal government no longer works. Absolutely. But a lot of the way that they are doing it is upending things that they put a lot of energy into creating. And they've got to know that in.

[Jon Favreau]

Their own heads, more important to keep Trump happy.

[Max Fisher]

That's what it is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it is. A couple of the Democrats had musk steel signs up there. Do you think that worked?

[Max Fisher]

I don't know. I think honestly, you have a better sense than I do for what acts of resistance work and don't work. As we've discussed, like, they don't have a lot of power right now. What do you think?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think we can talk in a bit about, like, overall opposition resistance to Trump because I think there's some interesting threads to pull there.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

On the, on just the Must have. I do still like them targeting their criticism towards Elon Musk.

[Max Fisher]

I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

I think he is still a worthy target.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Because as we've seen from polling, he is much less popular than Donald Trump and getting less popular by the day. And now, I mean, it was very funny that we heard Trump say, you know, Elon's in charge of Doge. When in court, the government has argued that Elon is not in charge of Doge.

[Max Fisher]

Donald Trump loves to say things that directly undermine his own administration's legal strategy. He loves to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jack Crosby]

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[Max Fisher]

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[Jack Crosby]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jack Crosby]

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[Max Fisher]

All right, well, we have to get into the real Elon news now. John, I know you know what I'm talking about. Emma, can we please hit it?

[Jon Favreau]

Favreau's smart, but he's not too bright.

[Max Fisher]

John got into a Twitter fight. So this Twitter fight for people who.

[Jon Favreau]

Have not love that sting more every time I Hear.

[Max Fisher]

It's incredible. The bada badda boom. It's great. Is also one of the few remaining constitutional checks on our government, so I don't want to give you too much shit for it. Like, okay, I know you talked about this in psa. We cannot not discuss the fact that while Trump may have purged the inspectors general from all of our federal agencies, we do have one IG left. It's at doge, and it's our own progressive podcast host, Jon Favreau. So, first of all, on behalf of USAID recipients, thank you for your service and getting those grants probably reinstated, even if you were definitely failing the offline challenge this week. But second of all, how exactly did you end up with the job of Elon Musk, chief online antagonist and volunteer grant checker?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I don't know, because, look, everyone's tweeting at Elon all the time, and he is posting most hours and minutes of the day, so there's a good chance he's responding to a lot of people. I think he. I've gone back and forth on this. First of all, he called me Dollar Store Jon Favreau, which. Legalized comedy.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, that's fine. Fine.

[Jon Favreau]

I think that's because he. The other Jon Favreau. Actor, director, sure. Iron man director.

[Max Fisher]

That's true. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I believe that Elon thinks that Tony Stark is based on him, he said. And there may be some. There may be some truth to it. I actually don't know. So I think he very much likes the other Jon Favreau, probably because of. Of Tony Stark, which is a much better version of Elon Musk.

[Max Fisher]

Hard to have a worse version than Elon Musk.

[Jon Favreau]

I also, like. I. I've met Elon Musk before. Like, way back when. Yeah, way back when. Right when I left the White House.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Tom and I started at a speechwriting firm, small, little speechwriting firm. And our. Our other business partner, like, introduced us to Elon because he had said he needed some communications help.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Didn't. Didn't really go anywhere. Yeah, he wanted to hire someone.

[Max Fisher]

Talk about the road not taken. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I was gonna say this is when. I was gonna say this is when he was, like, normal and, like, Democrats liked him.

[Max Fisher]

No, There was a time, but I.

[Jon Favreau]

Would say our meeting with him was.

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Really weird guy.

[Jon Favreau]

Weird guy.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm not totally surprised he ended up like this. Let's just say that for the meeting. Wow.

[Max Fisher]

I didn't see it coming.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, at the time, it was very. And I think a lot of people who knew Elon in the before times would say this too. It's very like, well, he's a little awkward, he's a little off.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

He's maybe a little dickish.

[Max Fisher]

I would say he's still a little awkward and off.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. But it was always like, well, but he's a genius and he's doing this with SpaceX, he's building rockets, he's doing cars. And it was kind of that vibe, but very, like, not really looking at you, sort of looking the other way and. And just not a.

[Max Fisher]

So something strange going.

[Jon Favreau]

He may remember me. Like, we have mutual. Some mutual friends. So I think he just, like, in. In that world might. So he might actually know who I am.

[Max Fisher]

So that for some. For whatever reason, kind of, you're in his brain. Although I. Something that I think is telling here is that he has, like, blocked and unblocked you a couple of times.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that was. So that was the. The most recent time before his Trump turn that there was some kind of direct interaction was when he was One of the CEOs going to the White House in the first Trump term. And it was right when Trump pulled out a Paris Climate Accord. And remember, a bunch of the CEOs said they weren't coming and Elon was still going to go. And I tweeted something like, what the. Because at that point, I know it sounds weird, it sounds quaint now, but Elon Musk, the Tesla guy, who cares about global war and going to the Trump White House? You know, I was like, this is fucking. And he got so mad that he blocked me.

[Max Fisher]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And so then I reached out to the mutual friend that we both have, someone who had worked for him for a while, doesn't anymore. And he was like, he's like, you know what? Now he's pulling out. He's not going to the White House. And then he unblocked me, like, another day. Cause he's like, this is the last straw for him with Trump. He's done. He's done. The Paris climate Accord thing is done.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, that feels telling because, like, who else does he block and unblock constantly? His ex wives. And I'm not saying that I think you're one of his ex wives in his brain. I don't think he's got you that confused. But, like, what do we know about Elon Musk? Incredibly insecure, like, incredibly sensitive about his relationships with people. So the fact that he is, like, angry at you, but also wants your attention, like, clearly you're somehow in his brain.

[Jon Favreau]

I think he also has some leftover affection for the Obama era and people who were involved with the Obama era because he was like an Obama supporter Democrat, and now thinks that it was. He basically thinks that the break between Obama and afterwards was where, like, the Democratic Party went wrong.

[Max Fisher]

Oh.

[Jon Favreau]

So I think now he. Now he says all kinds of horrible things about Obama. Right. Like, But I think there's still somewhere.

[Max Fisher]

In the swirl of his brain. So I, I.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, I.

[Max Fisher]

One thing that I'm kind of curious about, because you are, like, beyond your. Whatever your personal relationship is with him, which sounds incredibly complicated, you are also, you are one of the very, very few people who is not a Silicon Valley or MAGA insider who he responds to in any given way that, like, it does seem like he at least is trying to make a show of reinstating this program because you tweeted at him. I'm. I'm kind of curious, like, how you were thinking about navigating this new, very high stakes relationship in your life.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it was very interesting because when I, when I tweeted the CNN story about the plant in Georgia that makes the peanut paste, right? The contracts were canceled just in case people were not following this. And, you know, we already spent $10 million in the contracts. The government did, made the peanut paste, told the contract was canceled, couldn't send it out because it was. Had USAID on it. And so I saw the scene and. Sorry, it made me mad. And I was on my way to dinner Saturday night, and I tweeted like, elon could end up killing kids. And we didn't even, like, save any money here. I very purposely didn't even tag Elon in my tweet because I was like, I don't want to get into a whole thing.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I didn't.

[Max Fisher]

I was like, he will respond. As we've learned, I get home late.

[Jon Favreau]

Saturday night, and then there's the response.

[Max Fisher]

And nobody texts you when that happens. No, nobody's like, the unelected Supreme Leader of America is in your mentions again.

[Jon Favreau]

This is Twitter these days, though, right? It's like Saturday from what, 7pm when we went out till midnight, when we came home beforehand. I'm stretching it. Let's be honest. We were home by 10:30.

[Max Fisher]

Hey, good for you.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. No, no one's on Twitter that time of night. So I see it. I was like, I'm not gonna respond tonight, Go to bed, wake up the next day. But what went through my head was like, okay, okay. I could respond to him calling Me, an imbecilic propagandist, dollar store Jon Favreau, by just being like. Like, you're a dick who lies and it's blah, blah, blah. I was like, actually, like, I think I want people to understand that this contract is not. This is not like, typical government spending. That even if you don't like usaid, like, you should realize that this is just wasteful and we're just, like, taking food from starving children, like, that we've already paid for. So I was like, maybe it's just going to be better to be more constructive and make a little joke about it and see what happens. And then, you know, then it sort of went from there. But it's weird because then he writes back and he was like, actually, you're Kmart Jon Favreau, and I'm not promoting you yet. And he was like, so. And, you know, he was still nasty to me, but not as nasty as the first one. But it's interesting because then you start thinking, like, well, I don't want to get into something with him where now we're talking and we're cool, you know, because. Yeah, so it's like, it's a weird figuring out, like, how to respond in a way that is, like, tough and firm, but not, like, so dickish that he just says, like, fuck you and ignores you.

[Max Fisher]

Well, this is kind of what I have been thinking about where, like, like, on the one hand, obviously, it's amazing that you found one of, like, three avenues that exist to get these programs potentially turned back on. Like, as we said, even Republican members of Congress haven't figured out how to do that. And, like, a lot of kids who are at risk of starvation might not starve now. And, like, that's pretty good. But on the other hand, what Elon is doing, like, intervening to save select programs if people lobby him personally, is just like the most standard tin pot dictator trick that exists, where you can.

[Jon Favreau]

Trump does it too.

[Max Fisher]

Trump does it too. It's like, it's literally. There's even an expression about it in Russia that goes back to, like, czarist days because you force everyone to court you personally and treat you as the ultimate authority in a way that legitimizes your authority. And then you get to pose as the good guy because you saved one program instead of the 99 that you killed. And it's like, like, how do you balance that?

[Jon Favreau]

I noticed this recently with Elon, with someone who has much more power than I do. Susan Collins, Senator for Maine. Like, so I read a Story that she's been texting with Elon now because she had been criticizing him. And then when the reporters asked, well, what are you texting about? How's it going? And she just sort of was like, well, I'm not. Because this is. They like, well, we'll work behind the scenes and figure out something. And like, who knows what kind of bone he's gonna throw to her. Right. But this is how. This is how this happens. And so much of it is just. It's hard to know what he's telling the truth about, what he's lying about, because he lies all the time. And you know, he finally, he was like, you're not the one who turned on the contracts. I turned on the contracts before and they were already gonna go through and it wasn't. You were the legacy media or all that. Like, who knows? Is that right? Is that wrong? I don't think it's right, but who knows?

[Jack Crosby]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You know?

[Max Fisher]

Well, I would say we are early enough in this experiment of unconstitutional Elon Musk supreme leadership that I would say like, pull whatever lever you can.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

If we get past the like, you know, eight year mark of the Elon Musk administration, it might be time to reconsider.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Yeah. And again, don't want Cash Patel showing up at my door. He also went on Rogan. Joe Rogan. Have you heard of Joe Rogan?

[Max Fisher]

I've heard of Joe Rogan, yeah. Rather unelected Supreme Leader and you know.

[Jon Favreau]

On forever, as most of those conversations do. But there's one clip I thought we worth talking about. Let's listen. It's kind of weird if you talk to somebody who gets older information from like what I call legacy media. They're living in a different world. Yeah. Than if they say, are listening to, you know, your podcast or are getting news. News from. From X or you know, just if it's. It's like, it's.

[Max Fisher]

It's kind of wild.

[Jon Favreau]

Wild. Like it is very wild. Like you told. It's. It's like they're living in an alternate reality. So I think what's fascinating about that is it is like a, A just mirror image. It is of what we're all talking about.

[Max Fisher]

Right. It's the same thing.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And it really gets you. Like, oh, they think we're the ones in an alternate reality. And we think they're the ones in an alternate reality. And like I think maybe they genuinely believe that.

[Max Fisher]

I, you know, I started to think that and I started to think like, oh, I guess we're both just on, like, opposite sides of this mirro. But then I thought about, like, okay, well, a lot of their discussion. I don't know what's going to be in the clip we play was about. Was. Was Joe Rogan saying, like, I can't believe they're accusing you of being a Nazi. And that's so crazy. And it's like, okay, we know why they're doing that. It's because he gave a Nazi salute. It's because he talks all the time to Nazis on Twitter and amplifies them. And then he spoke to the German far right party and dropped Nazi dog whistles. Like, this is not a mystery. And you have to work to admit that information.

[Jon Favreau]

What he'd probably say is like, everyone keeps saying this German far right party is a Nazi party, but that's just part of the legacy media. And I think they're just saying that because they're tough on mass migration and immigration, and that's what we need right now. Like, I, I think there's a justification for fucking everything, of course. But it's funny, like, in that same interview, Rogan starts going on about how CNN was the only network that aired the Butler rally, that where Trump was where the attempt assassination. Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird? Why would that be? Did they, like, maybe they had.

[Max Fisher]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like, first of all, no, everyone aired the Butler rally, right? And is it true? Really?

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And he's like. And the. And it's, it's very weird that there was no other Trump rallies that they aired. I'm like, no, it was the middle of the campaign. Rallies were being aired all over the place.

[Max Fisher]

This is what I mean. There's clearly some cynical level of construction going on. And like, look, I'm not a big Joe Rogan fan. I know that's going to be surprising to people. But I could only ever get so mad at him, even with the anti vax stuff, because, like, his whole thing is that he's the, like, goofy meathead podcaster. And so it's like, yeah, if you listen to a clip from the goofy meathead podcast, like, that's what they're going to be doing and talking about. And it's like you're setting yourself up for failure if you expect anything else other than just like, goofy meathead stuff. But this, this really, this moment feels really different to me. This interview feels different because we are in the middle of, again, like, an arguably unprecedented constitutional crisis in this country that Elon Musk is directly driving the constitutional order has been kind of usurped by this guy who is infiltrating Americans, IRS and medical data.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

In huge numbers. Who's shutting down major parts of, for example, the faa, which keeps the skies safe. Like, whatever you think of usaid, like, maybe you're even curious about that. And is totally opaque and unsupervised because all the IGs got fired. And he will not talk to anybody except for Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has him in the chair.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Only person who get him in the chair. He's there for 17 hours. He can ask for whatever he wants. This is a really important opportunity. Even if you agree with Trump about 99% of things, as I think Joe Rogan does. Like, you don't want to try to get some information from him. You don't want to challenge him a little bit. But, like, what does Rogan do with his big moment? He sympathizes with him. Because isn't it so tragic that people call you a Nazi on Twitter?

[Jon Favreau]

And I think that is because he has so, like, Joe Rogan has been so radicalized, he is so genuinely bought into this worldview that the questions you or I or any mainstream journalist, even any right leaning mainstream journalist would ask, I don't think Joe Rogan even thinks to ask.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, because he was like, he's already decided that Doge is the greatest thing ever and that of course, the government is wasteful and Social Security is probably a Ponzi scheme and. And there probably something up to Trump's assassination attempt and the Epstein files are somewhere.

[Max Fisher]

Right. Yeah. Right. I agree with that. I think there's also just a real element of spinelessness here. I really think the defining feature of the party right now, from Rogan to Susan Collins, is just spinelessness.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, Spinelessness that I think continues through justifications, some of which you believe and some of which you maybe don't believe, but you need a justification.

[Max Fisher]

Right. I think a lot of them don't because a lot of them will then say off the record or, you know, indirectly and informally to people, administration, this is crazy. We're going too far. You know, don't have any meetings with constituents because everybody is so angry with us.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I think they know they surrender.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Certainly the Republican politicians. Yes. So we've mentioned this briefly. The Democratic reaction to Trump's speech was varied. Congressman Al Green of Texas was forcibly removed for interrupting Trump. Some Democrats walked out of the speech at various points. There were a few signs here and there that said false, false, accused Elon Musk of stealing a couple other ones I missed. And Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan gave a very normal Democratic response speech. We talked about this a bit on psa. I think overall the response and how varied it was is like emblematic of the larger challenge that Democrats are wrestling with, which is how to mount an effective opposition to Trump when we have very, very little power and Trump is breaking the law and acting like a dictator. And and to that end, you shared a story in Slack this week about the economic blackout that was organized for last Friday, February 28th. Those of you listening, if you didn't hear about it, this is part of the, part of the issue here.

[Max Fisher]

If you didn't hear about it, you were in the minority, right? It was everywhere. It was A bunch of celebrities shared it.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh really?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, it was very big.

[Jon Favreau]

I, I didn't see it that much. That's so funny. I, I, I heard about it, but I did not.

[Max Fisher]

It was not every I same I didn't know how big it was until I was reading articles about all the big like Stephen King and okay, so.

[Jon Favreau]

The boycott, which spread mostly on social media with a graphic of a rabbit rabbit and the caption don't buy stuff I don't understand, the rabbit called for consumers to abstain from shopping at Amazon Walmart, target fast food restaurants and gas stations, and encourage consumers to use cash and shop at small businesses. According to npr, calls for a blackout originated on Instagram with John Schwartz, a Chicago based meditation teacher and founder of the fledgling organization People's Union usa. When you shared the story, you noted that it reminded you a lot of Cony 2012.

[Max Fisher]

Cony 2012?

[Jon Favreau]

Care to explain?

[Max Fisher]

Okay, okay, Internet OGs will remember this. So in 2012, a not very successful NGO based in Uganda that was mostly staffed by these kind of like dreamy white 20something Americans put out this video called Kony 2012. And ostensibly the purpose of this video was to help people in Uganda by raising awareness about this very bad warlord, a guy named Joseph Kony, who was terrorizing parts of the country. But really the video was 30 minutes of these like feel good montages about how white college kids should put up Kony 2012 banners on their campuses and share especially Kony 2012 branded social media content and that posting online in America would somehow defeat Joseph Kony in Uganda by raising awareness.

[Jon Favreau]

And it did not.

[Max Fisher]

It did not. But it was money. Well, it depends on what you think the goal of the video was. It was one of the most successful viral videos of all time over A hundred million views just on YouTube. And, like, according to Facebook, two or three times that. But Facebook lies about their video views. But it established this model of online slacktivism that I think we are all very familiar with now, that tells you that posting online both makes you very brave and heroic and makes you kind of the center and protagonist of the story, and that it will solve huge societal problems when, of course, it never does.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So here's my thing about this one. Having looked into it, it. I think this is different than the typical slacktivism. Like, this is, you know, the black squares around blm.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

There's like. I think it's different because this was organizing something in real life online. Right.

[Max Fisher]

Or at least trying to.

[Jon Favreau]

At least trying to. Much like the real organization around George Floyd was the people on the streets. Right. Which was probably organized online as well. But, like, like.

[Max Fisher]

Or at least was also involved with a grassroots organization that was doing real outreach.

[Jon Favreau]

And this, I think the challenge here is, as I see it, a. I'm. I'm not clear and have not been clear how the economic boycott of those stores, like, what the purpose is or what effect that will have on the broader polity.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. How you get for. Save your shopping for Saturday to Trump leaves office in disgrace.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So I'm not quite sure how that works. Right. And. But I do sympathize with, like, and because. And this is why I brought up all the Democrats. Like, everyone is trying to figure out what to do. What to do.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think some people are thinking about where we are, as this is normal politics. And most voters are still like, you know, Trump still has a 47, 48, 49, 50% approval rating. So half the country is like, this is fine.

[Jack Crosby]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And we all are, you know, kind of singed from going through an election where everyone was like, dictator on day one, end of democracy. And then most of the country's like, yeah, you know, cost inflation.

[Max Fisher]

Right, Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Or at least half the country. A little less than half the country. I know that a bunch of people didn't vote. We're not counting them, but half the electorate.

[Max Fisher]

Sure. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And so, like, I sympathize with trying to figure out what to do. It's just the hard truth is, like, we don't have much power right now.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And in terms of getting these people out of office and ending their reign, we have to look at elections. There is no other. Right. There's no other avenue right now. There's never going to be an impeachment after everything we just talked about with the Republican Party. The courts are not going to save us. The Supreme Court just finally issued a ruling in favor of. Of the plaintiffs who said they're still not paying the USAID contracts. It was five, four.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

So it was pretty narrow.

[Max Fisher]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

Thanks to John Robertson, Amy Coney Barrett.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Even Brett Kavanaugh sided with the crazies. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

And it's one of the lower stakes.

[Jon Favreau]

Cases, and that's one of the lowest. Yeah. That's not anything about the who. Who does the administration get to fire? That's just about, like, power of the purse.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So. So when you're thinking all that, you're like, okay, there's normal politics, which is, we have elections. We got to get them out of office. But clearly we're not operating in a normal political environment because he's acting like a dictator and he's breaking the law. So then how do you oppose that? And what does that look like? And does that look like mass mobilization in the streets?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, but then what? Then again, to what end? I think it's really hard. And so I have. I have a lot more empathy for everyone trying to figure it out. And that goes from, like, people organizing an economic boycott to more moderate Democrats being like, this is normal politics. Like, I don't. I don't know that either is right.

[Max Fisher]

No one has the magic. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But I think everyone's, like, grasping towards something. I don't know what do you.

[Max Fisher]

So to start with the boycott and then to bring it around to this bigger question, because I think this is the big one that is leading people to engage with this boycott. Like, obviously, we are not looking to disparage people who participated in this because it comes from a good impulse, which is trying to find a way, fight back. That's good. That's noble. I do worry about this tendency when activism happens via social media, and we'll talk about why that's happening, as opposed to working through institutions, is that it makes it very easy for hucksters or grifters. The guy who organized the boycott is, like, not a good guy to capture that sentiment for their own purposes, whether that's like selling merch T shirts or just doing engagement farming, which is often what a lot of this is, or to get captured by people who do mean well and do want to move that in a good direction, but they might just not have the background or experience to know what is or is not going to be effective. Because, yes, if you participated in this boycott because you want to do something, then like sincerely good on you. But I think we'd all agree the primary goal of political action, especially when the stakes are this high, is not to feel good about whether your motivations were correct. It's to make a difference. And this did not make a difference. And I think it is important to understand why that is. I think your point that you were making, I think is a really good one, that there's a big disconnect. There's a lot of people who want to fight back against this. There's moderate Democrats, there's left wing Democrats, people in the streets, there's institutions. It's not working together. I think this, what we are seeing is symptomatic of the fact that yes, a lot of people are hungry for resistance, but they're not in a place where they feel like they have institutions or trust institutions, even want institutions to rally behind to do that for them, which leads them to more informal outlets like I saw viral Instagram, because there's not a level of trust in things like say the opposition party. And part of that is that Democrats are unpopular right now, just suffered a very significant loss. That's not surprising. Part of it is our era, people do not like institutions. They don't trust institutions, they don't want to rely on them. I was just joking with a friend who works on poverty outreach programs, actually some of the USAD funded programs about how we're in this funny place where you're not supposed to call it development work anymore or God forbid, philanthropy or charity. You're supposed to call it mutual aid and it's kind of like, look, it's fine, call it whatever you want. It's just, it's funny because it's not mutual. It's not supposed to be mutual. That's not the idea.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think that's gonna do it. No, I don't think the name change is gonna do it.

[Max Fisher]

Right. But it's like, I think it is symptomatic of the prevailing mood right now is that anything that comes from a big institution, even a poverty NGO, is bad. And people only want things that feel like they are decentralized and bottom up. And I get that. But if you wanna fight something as big as the federal government and this united right wing movement that has seized control of so much of it, the only thing that is going to be big enough to meet that challenge and to take it on is gon national political party. It's the only thing that has the power to field lawyers, to fight things in courts, to coordinate across state and local governments, which is really important to. And yes, organize tens of millions of people. And I'm not saying that means you need to like Democrats and like everything that the party leadership is doing. I'm saying that if you want to actually fight this, the road to do it goes through something involving the Democratic Party. Now, if you don't like what the institution is doing, get involved in, change it.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And I. Yes. And I think it goes on for both sides, too. Right. It goes for the, the people in the Democratic Party institution. Like, this is. I have not been preaching a big tent, the need for a big tent party for the last several years because I want everyone to, like, hold hands, kumbaya, get along, or like, you know, the people who have one view, they need to moderate their views or the other people need to be more progressive. Like, it's not because of that. It's because just from a math perspective and a perspective of, like, what our political institution and structure is not what we wish it would be like, this is the only way is to, like, build an alliance that is very broad, that goes from the far left to the center right. Because that is the only thing that is going to give us a chance to actually oppose this movement. And which is also why I give. Like, I give. I'm trying to give everyone a little more leeway to do things that are maybe a little silly, maybe a little ineffective, maybe not quite on it because. Because it's like we're all still groping around for stuff. But I do think, you know, when I talked to Stephen Levitsky on this podcast a couple weeks ago, and you know, the one sign of who's looking for some hope, which is tough when you're talking to the democracies.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. The political scientists are not always the guys for that.

[Jon Favreau]

He was like, look, in countries where the autocrat or dictator is very popular, not like fake polls, but legitimately popular, very hard to dislike.

[Jack Crosby]

Lodge.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

In country, the countries that have dislodged autocrats and dictators, they weren't that popular.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And Trump is sitting, you know, hovering around 50% right now. And the Republican Party's still not super popular, though more popular than the Democratic Party right now. And so all I can think of, and this is not by any means a. An ultimate solution. And there's going to be other things. But right now, what I can think about is like, we. Our job is to make sure that people who, who either are okay with Trump or like Trump, not the fans. The fans. We're never gonna get. But people who are like willing to give him a chance, which by the way, those are the people that won him the election, not the people who love him, but the people who are willing to give him a chance to like convince them that actually this is bad and to make them aware of what's going on in the government and what's going on with their tax dollars and the programs they wanna cut and everything like that. And I think making sure that in your own life you are telling people who don't necessarily pay attention to politics about everything that's going on using your own platform stories, you know, and not like you said, not maybe not memes, but actual stories of what's going on. That is the, that's the best I got for right now. And I do think that's the beginning of something.

[Max Fisher]

And to your point about the big tent, it is really essential that they not hate the Democrats more than they hate yes, Trump. It doesn't mean that the Democratic Party has to represent, you know, center right Republicans. Now I think that's not what we're saying. But for better or for worse, it's a two party system that we have. And that's just because of the way our elections are designed. It's not even a product of the Democrats, Democratic and Republican parties is just a fact of nature. And it does mean that that is the institution that has to work through it. And I understand why everyone is feeling this like anti institution, anti incumbent mood. And I get the discomfort with, you know, the party is too far left, it's too far right. I don't like that it's speaking to these people who I don't like and don't agree with their real disagreements within it. But, you know, this is a crisis.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep. All right, it's time to check back in on the one segment keeping us sane, the offline challenge. This last week we tried a simple change that you, Max, claimed worked like near witchcraft.

[Max Fisher]

It changed my life.

[Jon Favreau]

Keeping the phone out of the bedroom. You've been doing this for a while. Can you remind everyone why you swear by this?

[Max Fisher]

So I won't repeat my whole spiel except to say I started doing this in December out of total desperation to save the last working bits of my brain and also because Julia finally successfully bullied me into it. Took her a few months of lobbying and that she bullies me, I bully you. That's the beautiful circle of life. And I just, I cannot overstate how beneficial this has been for me. I sleep significantly better. I fall asleep more Easily. I don't wake up as much in the night. I don't find myself reading from my phone. I feel better when I wake up in the morning. I feel focused, much more focused the whole next day. I never feel foggy the way that I used to all the time. And I have an easier time kind of, you know, regulating what I am thinking about and what I am emotionally engaged and not engaged in throughout the day. It's great. I swear by it.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'll give you my experience with it.

[Max Fisher]

Please.

[Jon Favreau]

Is that it? It didn't work well.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, no. I'm so sorry to hear that.

[Jon Favreau]

It was one of those things where I. I like got up more and got more. And here's why.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just because of the kids.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

And because of like the, you know, like the. The alarms on the phone for the house and it's just like a lot of. So. But what I think would work because, like last night, because I got home late and I saw that Charlie was like maybe stirring and Emily was asleep, so I didn't want her to awake. So I'm like, you know what? And I didn't go. I went to bed. I didn't pick up my phone and like scroll through the phone, which is great. I just left it there. I was like, I think this would work for me if I didn't put it downstairs or another room, but just like across the bedroom. That's great because I want the sounds for the kids or for a call or for anything else that I can. Or if I need it in the middle of the night, I could just like run across the bedroom just because. Whatever. And that would make me feel more secure. And then I wouldn't also scroll because what. I think it definitely works for your doom scrolling, your texting. You're doing whatever. I think that's bad. But just the phone. There's too much on the phone now for me to have it somewhere else.

[Max Fisher]

I get that. And I agree that having it on the other side of the room is huge because I think it's just that having it within arm's reach. I don't know if you do this, but I, when I had it there, as I did for years, would find myself constantly and automatically if I started to get stressed. Reach for the phone.

[Jack Crosby]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. It's almost like a security blanket.

[Max Fisher]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

All right. So this is the final week of the offline challenge. Yes. Phone pickups this week.

[Max Fisher]

So I am. I started at about 90, went down to the 60s, and now I've been hovering for another week.

[Jon Favreau]

At 70, I was at. I started at 276, went down to 201. 200. Last week was 257. Not a great week.

[Max Fisher]

It's a tough week.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm back at 206.

[Max Fisher]

That's great. So you cut like almost a third.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

That's amazing.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'm in the two. That's fine.

[Max Fisher]

How are you feeling?

[Jon Favreau]

I feel good.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

I feel good. I mean, look, I think, think that the. Again, the, the best thing we did, I think, is the reading. The reading. The reading and the walking. Yeah, those are two things that I am going to. And. And the phone across the room, which is a hybrid. But the, the reading and the walking I am keeping.

[Max Fisher]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

And like, just the other night I read again, even though that wasn't the challenge. I put my phone in the other room where it was going to be for the whole night and just had the book, like, hard copy book, and it was lovely. And I. And the other. Like every day almost, I've been taking a walk to. To Starbucks. You really still from the office? Yeah. And just not listening to anything and just like enjoying my walk.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, I'm really glad to hear that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

So would you encourage listeners to adopt the, the reading and the walking 100%? I think that if I were to give. If you were to only do one thing, I would say it's definitely phone in the other room. Or if you can't do that, phone on the other side of the room. Like if, if you do nothing else. But I would say that the, like, super upgraded platinum AMEX black card version of this is for me, is exactly what you arrived at at the end of my workday. And I've been trying to do this since we started this end of the workday, whenever that is, when you get to the end of having to be, you know, on your phone and email in the news, like, go for a walk, no headphones, put your phone in your back pocket so you're not looking at it. Come back, phone goes away, or at least as away as you're able to, or just try to. I try to give myself an embargo on email and embargo on social, anything with news on it, and then read for 20, 30 minutes before bed. And I think what that does for me, kind of bookending my evening with those two things really just downshifts my brain and creates this block of the day where I kind of know and I can feel my body almost anticipating it. I'm going to, like, really downscale. I'm really not going to be as stressed. I'm going to feel like I'm kind of almost living in a different world than I do in the rest of the day, when I can just feel much more, like, comfortable and happier and more relaxed in a way that I really find echoes out across my entire day. Like, I don't. It's not just they have a few hours that are a lot nicer now. I feel much better every other time. It's honestly, it's kind of like a nice version of severance for yourself. Like, you're kind of doing severance in the evening, but for, like, feeling better.

[Jon Favreau]

And I. And I can tell you why, like you, I feel the difference because last night, we're recording this Wednesday. Last night was State of the Union. We were all at the office late.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I didn't get home till 10:30, which for me is. I've been. I've been like sleep an hour by then. And so I was late. And that was on the phone recording the pod. Lots of Twitter. Everything you have to do for State of the Union night. And I just. I feel worse today.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I felt like I had no break between my day in bed.

[Max Fisher]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

There was no severance. And I woke up today and I just felt sort of, like, tired and unfocused. And it's just. It is. It's a.

[Max Fisher]

That is whenever we've done these or I've done a version of this for myself. It's the day when I lapse, when I really realize how effective it has been.

[Jon Favreau]

It says here that there's a winner for this and that Emma. Emma has an envelope.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, okay. I feel like I know who's going to win. Oh, congratulations on.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

[Max Fisher]

We're very proud of you.

[Jon Favreau]

And the winner is. Max.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, sorry. For people who were listening, Emma handed the old iPhone clown case to John, which I assumed was the trophy, but it actually contained an envelope. This is a real moonlight situation here.

[Jon Favreau]

We asked. It is. We asked the friends of the pod, Discord, who did better. Over the course of the challenge, Max won 74% of the votes. John won 26%.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, well, thank you to the Max and East.

[Jon Favreau]

As, as always, Discord community, always talking you up to people here on the pod, but now I know.

[Max Fisher]

I wonder if it's because you politely sparred with them a bit about blue sky.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? You. You win. And, and, and you gave us all the. A lot of these challenges, so you know what? You, you, you get the prize. All right, in a minute we're going to jump to the interview with Jack Crosby. But before we do some quick housekeeping, exciting news from our book imprint, Crooked Media Reads. Woodworking is the brand new novel by yellow jackets writer and culture commentator Emily St. James and my pal and your and you know. Oh, that's right. And it's out now wherever you get your books. Woodworking is an unforgettable, heartwarming debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows, one of her students. The five star Goodreads reviews are already pouring in and Woodworking is featured on them and AV Club's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 lists. Publishers Weekly says St. James enthralls with her description of what it's like to be trans in a conservative and insular community. Community and the courage it takes for people to openly be themselves. It is a quick, delightful read, more relevant than ever. You're gonna love it. Everyone at Crooked loves it. Get your copy of Woodworking right [e-mail] books after the break. Max's interview with Jack Crosby about the UFC and Donald Trump offline is brought to you by Lumen did you know that when your metabolism is working properly, properly you will feel the benefits in literally every aspect of your life? Lumen is a valuable tool that gives you insights to create a healthy metabolism for your body. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep and even stress management. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs. Then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Lumen is all the rage here at Crooked. A couple of the staff's using it. You're blowing into it. Suddenly you get your, you get all your. Your numbers.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, you get your numbies.

[Jon Favreau]

And they can, they can give you a nutrition plan. They can tell you how much fat or carbs you're burning. It's great. It's great because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does. Optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Take the next step to improving your health. Go to Lumen Me offline to get 20% off your lumen. That's L U M E N Me offline for 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. Wasn't that delicious?

[Max Fisher]

So good.

[Jon Favreau]

Your bill, ladies. I got it. No, I got it. Seriously, I insist. I insisted first.

[Jack Crosby]

Don't be silly.

[Jon Favreau]

You're not silly. People with the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited 2% cash back on purchases. Okay. Rock, paper, scissors. For it.

[Jack Crosby]

Rock, paper, scissors, Shoot. No.

[Jon Favreau]

The Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.com ActiveCash terms apply.

[Max Fisher]

We've talked a lot on the show about why young men in America are turning toward Trump, but we've never talked about one of the biggest parts of that story, a mixed martial arts company called ultimate fighting championship, or UFC. For a lot of men under age 45, and especially men who are maybe not otherwise engaged in politics, Trump is synonymous with two things, manosphere podcasters like Joe Rogan and the ufc. Because it's not just a sport. The UFC is a culture and a way of seeing the world. And it's proven it can speak to young male audiences in a way that no one else is really able to right now. Joining me today is the reporter Jack Crosby, who has a new story for Rolling Stone on how the UFC became one of the most important cultural forces on the American right. And I wanted to have Jack on to talk about why the UFC is striking such a chord with young men and what that tells us about the needs or desires leading those men to the sport and therefore to Trump. Jack, welcome to Offline.

[Jack Crosby]

Hey, thanks so much for having me, Max.

[Max Fisher]

So for people who have maybe never seen a mixed martial arts fight, like, paint a picture for us, how does it look or sound different from, say, a regular boxing match?

[Jack Crosby]

Mixed martial arts basically combines a whole bunch of different distinct styles of combat sports and distinct styles of. Of, I guess, fighting, I would say, martial arts, and has codified them under a rule set into an actual sport. So an MMA fight will incorporate boxing, similar to Western boxing techniques, striking with the fists from the waist up, but it will also incorporate American kickboxing, and in particular, Thai boxing, which is Muay Thai, which incorporates strikes with the shins with the knees, with the feet, and crucially, with the elbows as well. And a mixed martial arts fight, you're allowed to hit the other person with basically any part of your body besides a headbutt. And what differentiates MMA from, say, Muay Thai or kickboxing, where a lot of this is also allowed, is that when a fighter, in a boxing fight or in a purely striking fight, when a fighter falls to the ground, the fight is paused. That fighter is either stood up if they can, and the fight is resumed, or if they stay on the ground, they're considered to be knocked out. In mixed martial arts, someone falling over does not stop the fight. And in fact, in a lot of matches, that is where the real battle really begins. Something will break. And often in these fights, things do break, or people are choked unconscious in relatively rare cases. But this is very much a possibility of what can happen to you in an MMA fight.

[Max Fisher]

It sounds really brutal. Which the reason I want to kind of dwell on that is I think that's a really important part of MMA's appeal, right? Like, it's not just a different set of techniques and rules, but my sense is that it's kind of the vibe is a really big part of UFC and mma. And I think of boxing as, like, kind of a gentlemanly sport. And ufc, mixed martial arts, it's like a little more blood sport, right?

[Jack Crosby]

So this is. You have been conditioned by the boxing lobby to think this over many, many, many, many years.

[Max Fisher]

It works.

[Jack Crosby]

These were the original arguments against mixed martial arts in the early 2000s, John McCain called it human cock fighting because of the permissiveness of the rule set and the perceived brutality of the sport. And to be fair, MMA does lean into this. But proponents of the sport, including myself, I think, would. Would say that there's really getting hit in the face is getting hit in the face. There's really nothing that much more brutal about an MMA fight than there is a boxing fight. There's even some research to suggest, which, you know, I can kind of personally attest to that. Being hit with a. With a boxing glove that weighs a pound on. On either fist is. It's. It's. Someone is sweating, swinging a large club that weighs a pound into your head. And there have been studies that have shown that boxers often will incur more head trauma over the course of their fights than a typical MMA athlete would be. And that's also because in boxing, remember, you can only hit from the waist up. In mma, there are leg kicks, there are body kicks and blows, and punches, and then there's all the grappling on the ground. So it kind of depends on what you see as brutality, I think.

[Max Fisher]

So I feel like UFC's rise has been pretty recent. Like, a few years ago, I had barely heard of it, and now it's kind of everywhere. Can you talk about how that happened?

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah. So the ufc, I mean, has had a really, really good past four years. The sport was kind of this nascent cultural phenomenon, I guess, for many, many years. The UFC itself started as a company in the early 19, but it didn't really get off the ground and attain any kind of sort of mainstream recognition until the kind of mid 2000s, and in fact, really early 2010s, mid 2010s. The current CEO of the company, CEO and President Dana White, took over the company in 2001 with some financial backing from a couple of friends of his, and he has essentially run the ship since then. And I think he can be credited mostly with popularizing this sport and making it go mainstream to a much wider audience, both in the United States and around the world. And he's done that through a couple of different ways. I think when you probably first heard of UFC, and when many people first heard of UFC, it was probably around the early 2010s when Dana White kind of realized the star power and sort of figured, figured out the marketing concoction that he needed to really create stars out of his fighters. He was aided by perhaps the most famous MMA athlete in the world, Conor McGregor, an Irishman who was just, you know, as brash as could be on the mic. He was, you know, had similar rhetorical techniques that, you know, popular, made Donald Trump famous, made everyone. He never backs down, is always up for a fight, is always ready to say the most outlandish and headline grabbing thing possible. And McGregor backed that up by the fact that in the ring, his fights were just as electrifying and just as exciting. And he was really, I see it as really the UFC's breakout moment into the mainstream of global culture where people knew who Conor McGregor was.

[Max Fisher]

You hinted at something, I think, important, which is that there's something kind of Trump culture coded about this sport, or there is a way in which it has naturally aligned with Trump. Can you talk about the kind of UFC Trump alliance? Because I have to say, I did not realize until I read your story how important they have been to one another.

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah. So there's a couple of things there. The. The UFC is directly connected to Donald Trump through a whole bunch of different avenues, which Which I'll get into. But I think what's interesting about what you said is. Is saying that, like, some of these things, the UFC being Trump coded. So I think the cultural impetus that both Donald Trump and the UFC are tapping into is. Is older than Donald Trump itself. It's not. It's not necessarily Donald Trump coded. It's. It's reality TV coded, to be honest. And people make a big deal about the UFC and its differences with what we now know as professional wrestling, the wwe, and these big shows that got really popular in the 90s. And the sort of. The wrestling term is kayfabe, the manufactured drama and putting on a personality for the fans and to tell a storyline of the fights. The UFC does a lot of this as well, and it found, especially in the Conor McGregor years, it found a huge amount of success in treating its fighters like they were characters. And, in fact, one of the UFC's other major breakout moments was in the season finale of a reality TV show that Dana White had created called the Ultimate Fighter, in which he took a dozen UFC prospects and he forced them all to live in a house with one another for several months and fight each other on the weekends. And there were some really breakout moments in this where the sport was allowed to shine through the characters that had been developed through this, you know, this sort of storylining and giving those people space to breathe. And when you think about how Donald Trump really introduced himself to the country, he was a known quantity for years and years, not really because of his real estate deals, not really because of anything like that, but because he went on TV all the time, and he hosted a show called the Apprentice. And this theme of the people involved in this sport, being able to capture popular audiences, being able to meet them where they were at, being able to just inherently know what is going to entertain people, is a really consistent theme. In the piece that I wrote for Rolling Stone, I kind of explored the UFC through the axis of a trifecta of people who have all been involved with it very closely from the beginning. Two of those, of course, are Dana White and Donald Trump, who we've discussed. But the third is Joe Rogan, who, at the time, in the early ufc, when Dana White took over the ufc, Joe Rogan was the host of a reality TV TV show of Fear Factor, and that's how he became popular around the country. And these three men all kind of understood that the catharsis and drama that comes from a sport like the ufc, like mma, which is as close as you can get to just Pure fighting to two people in combat under a rule set that, you know, doesn't utilize weapons or result and death. The draw and the appeal that that would have to people, especially if surrounded by some of these elements of dramatic tension and, you know, sort of bringing these stories of these individuals and athletes into it, was. Was something that was going to really be irresistible for a lot of the country.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. I want to ask you more about this idea that I found so interesting, that the UFC has figured out how to speak to certain people in a way that has proven really powerful, and that kind of parallels the way that Trump has figured out how to speak same people, because I think it tells us a lot about Trump's appeal, understanding how the UFC has kind of approached this. So you write in your piece that the UFC rose in part befelling a latent demand for violence and catharsis in America. And I'm really curious whether people within kind of UFC world, if it's people who work for the company itself or kind of in the media environment around it, do they see their sport this way as filling a cultural need or demand that goes beyond just. Just sports entertainment?

[Jack Crosby]

Absolutely. I think they might not explicitly discuss it all of the time, sure. But in my conversations with Dana White and in many other interviews he's given, he said quotes to the effect of, human beings will always be fascinated with fighting. There's nothing like fighting. There is nothing like this sport. There's nothing more primal, more connected to the spirit of human competition in general than professionalized violence, essentially. I mean, if you look at something I thought about while reporting this piece as well, basically all of the sports that we play now, at least almost all of the team sports. You know, you can make an argument for things like tennis that have devolved significantly from their roots or whatever, but a lot of the sports are modeled on forms of warfare. The entire family of sports that has resulted in both soccer and American football now started from a version of sort of football, as it was called, which was two villages chasing a pig bladder from one end to the other, trying to beat the absolute crap out of each other the entire time. It was a battle between two towns with a sort of secondary objective of a ball going from one place to another just to simulate combat. You know, people watch American football both for, you know, the plays and for the athleticism of the sport, but they've always. They want to see the big hits. People watch NASCAR for the crashes. People watch hockey for the fights. Right, that man on man or woman on woman, person on Person conflict is really at the heart of all competition. And I think what Dana White has realized is, is that MMA distills that impulse and puts it on screen in a way that is more pure, really, than any other sport out there. It cuts to the core of what we're watching all of this for. And I think that that can be disconcerting to a lot of people who don't necessarily like the impulses that they maybe get from other sports to be put on such stark display. But to me, at least, you know, I played sports most of my life. I enjoy watching basically all of them. I. I love the ufc and I love MMA because it is. There is a real athleticism and beauty to the sport at the heart of it, to what practitioners of it have to sacrifice to become good at it, and also to just what being truly talented at it can represent.

[Max Fisher]

So what do you think is the kind of. Because it's a very good point about the universal, or at least potentially universal appeal of ufc. Is there, like a top spin that the UFC organization is putting on it that is giving it such a kind of like, Trumpy, or at least naturally Trump aligned appeal for so many people?

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah, and so I talk about this in the piece as well, because that was really what I was trying to get into because it's been difficult for me and for many other people I spoke to who are more liberal politically, but are still genuine, real fans of this sport and recognize the beauty in the sport and love it as an athletic expression and the sort of frustration that a lot of them have felt over the years watching the politics of this sport and everything surrounding it, the politics and aesthetics of this sport just drifting further and further. Right. Part of the answer that I found, there's a lot of sort of different reason for this. One of the, if you want, sort of the pop. Psychological reason behind it that I wrote in the piece is that fighting itself is a. It's a fiercely individualistic sport. It's basically the most, the. The least team sport that one can ever possibly do. Right. Because the aim of the sport is just to simply to beat up another person. Right. You know, there is a collaborative aspect in fighting. You need to be a successful fighter. You need to have really good teammates, really good coaches, sparring partners, people who will train with you and do this work. But at the end of the day, when the actual computer competition comes out, it's you and one other guy in a cage, and, you know, one of you is leaving a winner and the other is leaving a loser and that kind of outlook, especially orienting your entire life and your entire sort of career on your ability to inflict violence on another person, lends itself, I think, very easily to people having a worldview that does see things in a very sort of shape, stark black and white, that sees things in a very sort of. Immediately, you know, it's either you're either attacking or you're defending, you know, and most of the time, most fighters you always want to be attacking. These are things that all have very much played into the dominant sort of right wing culture of the moment, which is a culture of we are constantly under attack, and the way to get through that is to fight back.

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jack Crosby]

And I think it's very easy for a fighter to, when you're. You're in the gym and when that is your entire life, to see the world in that way. There are a lot of other factors, but all of that is to say is that the general practitioner of mma, the general fan of mma, I think, in general, is going to more often than not lean slightly to the right. I. I guess maybe because of the individualistic nature of the sport. But that doesn't mean that is, as a whole, that describes every person that, it describes every fighter. There's a ton of room in this for people, but that was sort of the answer that I came to. And the second part of it which you were asking about is how has this been so successfully captured by the right wing and by specifically Donald Trump and the MAGA movement? And that goes into several things. It goes into Donald Trump and Dana White's personal relationship. But I think it also goes into the fact that the right wing has successfully been able to present a definition of masculinity in this country that involves sort of the constant threat of inability to inflict violence. Violence. They have created a world in which everyone is coming to take from you, and things that scare you or frighten you are out there, and they're real. And Donald Trump got elected twice by saying, I know what's scaring you, and I'm gonna fight back against it. And I heard at these UFC events from his fans when he entered a Madison Square Garden UFC 309, which was on November 16, I think, 2024. This was Donald Trump's first public appearance after the election, and he entered the arena to this absurd, enormous fanfare, and the Jumbotrons going wild, and the announcers on the pay per view screaming out his name. Joe Rogan practically squealing in delight as he comes in flanked by Elon Musk and Kid Rock and Tulsi G and all, you know, the entire RFK Jr, the entire trappings of this MAGA movement and the arena's going wild. And at some point in this, in the like, 15 minute standing ovation, I was talking to a couple of kids and one of them said, you know, I like that he enters like a fighter. Like, it gives me hope to see this political figure come out here, do a fighter walkout. And to get to the heart of what I think that represents sense and why it fits in so well in fighting, is that the conservative movement in this country has really tapped into the fact that they've turned every political discussion into a fight, into a cage match essentially between one person who's fighting for you and one person who's fighting against you. And I think that when you're conditioned to see the world that way, and everyone inherently a little bit bit is, you know, who among us has not ever wanted to punch our boss or, you know, someone who has aggrieved us on the street? You don't have to answer that, Max. Don't worry.

[Max Fisher]

I was going to say that first half of this show is me co hosting with my boss. So obviously I've never felt that, but I've heard other people describe it.

[Jack Crosby]

Wonderful man. Never felt that towards him either. But, you know, I think when you're watching a fight, something I kind of tried to get into in the piece, but maybe didn't say as explicitly, when you're watching one of these fights, all sports essentially are a form kind of of wish fulfillment and fantasy. Like when you're watching an NFL game or something and you see someone get really laid out or someone throw an incredible touchdown pass or something like that, you know, a rational person is not thinking, like, oh man, that's me. I could do that. But they maybe what they are thinking, if they played a little football in high school or they played or something like that, and they see Josh Allen, you know, absolutely gun one sidearm to an open receiver or something, and they're thinking about that moment of triumph from their own life, they're thinking, they're. They're projecting this on to the athletes that they're seeing. When you get that in such a distilled fashion in terms of fighting, it's like you go in there, you're rooting for your guy and your guy wins. He, like, you know, slips outside of that jab, comes back with a right cross and it lands flush, and the other guy just goes out like a light you see him just crumple, you're projecting, projecting everything that's wrong in your life onto that moment, right? And there's a feeling of when you see the right guy go down, in your mind, the right guy get hit and get punished, get knocked out, there's a sense of like that catharsis and justice where it's just like, you know, oh, for that little second, right, the guy who was fighting for me, he won and all is right in the world. And so I don't know if people think about that explicitly when they're watching these fights, but I'm saying that's definitely part of the feeling when you're watching this just absolutely stark athletic spectacle that is often sold through a storyline of two fighters having something on the line in this fight that you begin to think your fandom, your like for a certain fighter is also on the line. If they lose, you're gonna look silly to your friends if they, you know, who, who were saying, no, there's no chance they would win or something like that. It's all, it brings you into this and it really, it does the same thing that any other sport does, but it combines it with the fact that the only thing that the sport is, is the violence, is the turbocharged sort of catharsis of those moments that you may watch an entire three hour football game, you know, for that one, for that one big hit, for that one dagger touchdown pass that really sticks it to the Chiefs and seals it that they're not going to win three Super Bowls in a row or something like that.

[Max Fisher]

That's a really smart point about the UFC offering a kind of cathartic projection of feelings of strength and empowerment for people who are maybe feeling that they're not as strong or empowered in their personal lives as they want it to be. And the point you made earlier, especially about the UFC offering a kind of story about masculinity and about what masculinity is and should be. And I think that is something that really, in my mind connects it with Trump's appeal, is speaking to a kind of longing for that. There was just a poll in the New York Times reporting that 80% of Republican men say society has grown too feminine. And the number of Republican men who say society should return to traditional gender norms has doubled in just the last three years from 22% to 48%. Do you think that this is something that people in UFC world, and again, thinking of like both the people in the organization itself and also the media world around it, do they see themselves as speaking to this crisis, do you think?

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm not sure if it's thought about in that sort of philosophical terms in the ufc. I think it's definitely thought of in that kind of. In those kind of marketing terms where they see these trends and they think, oh, man, you know, the 18 to 25 demo, which, which I wrote about in the piece, the 18 to 25 demo is pissed off. They've got worse earning potential than even, you know, the much decried millennials like us. You know, there's. They've got nothing going for them. They're mad, and they're looking for an outlet for that. And they're responding to these versions of masculinity presented by influencers who very much are on the right side of the spectrum and who are advocating for those traditional gender roles. I think the UFC has realized that young men specifically are responding to those themes both because to a certain extent, those themes are kind of the only ones out there around masculinity right now. Yeah, and the UFC has realized that they're responding to them in big ways because they're. They are similar to Donald Trump is it offers that demographic, that view of the world, offers them sort of an easy fix to all of their problems. I know you on offline talk a lot about politics and the, you know, the rest of the crooked ecosystem focuses directly on politics. But you know, what's been at the core of both of Donald Trump's or all three of Donald Trump's candidacies for President. President is he has said, there are problems in America and I will fix them. And the ufc, I think, buys into a version of masculinity that says, like, there are problems in your life. Clean your room and go to the gym. It's. It's the standard. You know, this, this stuff started getting introduced with, with Jordan Peterson and with all these other influencers who are, who are telling young men, like, you can fix your life by going out and doing these things. And some of it is good advice. Like, it is good advice to go to the gym. I would recommend that anyone listening to this show go try martial arts. Like, they rock. It's amazing. Like, it is literally the only thing that keeps my sanity intact on a week to week basis is being able to go to a place where, like, I am just using my body freely and expressing myself as such. And I'm not thinking about literally anything else other than the fact that, like, you know, is Eric going to be able to land his right cross on me. And I don't want that to to happen.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Zebiotics Pre Alcohol. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I certainly don't bounce back the next day like I used to.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, no, no.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Oh no.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

And it worked.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Hoops.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jack Crosby]

Power.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

You talked about the story that the UFC tells implicitly about what masculinity is and what it should be. What do you think that that story implies about. About what's wrong with masculinity or what's missing or what the problem is? Because I feel like the way that it contextualizes both the solution and the problem for its audience is an important way to understand both its appeal and also where it's leading people.

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah, I think there's a very specific way that the UFC presents masculinity, and part of it is that they don't really have to do a huge amount. Amount of message shaping to get this. They have the stars of their organization, and most of the people who are visibly involved with it are fighters, and the vast majority of those fighters are men. The UFC has a lot of very successful women's divisions. It has very successful and extremely talented women's fighters. But fighting still is, for the most part, a man's game. And like the distribution of most sports, the male divisions are often watched more, they're cared about more, and the male fighters are often the bigger stars. I think true fans of the sport don't see it that way. I think they think that they're some of the most electrifying fighters in the ufc. Zhang Weili, for example, and a whole bunch of other fighters are women. But I think it's easy for the UFC to show this version of masculinity, which is you endure pain to go out and to win, and that you are going to overcome challenges in your life by basically fighting through them, by pushing through the pain. It's the classic football coach with a T shirt. Pain is weakness leaving the body. And the fighters themselves embody this. They talk a lot of the times when they do express vulnerability, and some of them definitely do. It's always present in a way that it's just like, I had to identify this about myself and then come up with my tactical plan to overcome it. And here's how I did, and I won my next fight because of that. And it's always in the ufc, it's always leading them towards a direct conflict where you win or you lose, and the attitude behind it, even if you lose, it's like, well, I learned from that, and I will come back as a stronger man. I will come back as a. You know, this isn't going to change me. I'm going to double down on who I am. And I think that that's been incredibly powerful to a generation of young men, especially those who have been through Covid and who have been through a lot of experiences in their generation's lifetime where things have not gone well, where things have been, you know, difficult like any generation, like millennials did as well. But the. The answer to that always has been not necessarily, you know, and I'm not saying that there's an implicit good in any of this, but like, introspection and, you know, openness and things like that. But there has been, like, you need to reassert control over your life. You need to. It's a very conservative outlook on the world.

[Jon Favreau]

It's.

[Jack Crosby]

You need to assert control over everything you need to do. You need to be disciplined, you need to be, you know, aggressive. When you need to be aggressive, you need to be, you know, focused and sharp and on the ball. You need to lock in, as the kids say, you need to, you know. And that, I think, is a version of masculinity that is truly embodied by a lot of the UFC's fighters, because to a certain extent, you do have to see the world that way to be good at fighting. And that's something that the UFC has realized they can market until the end of days.

[Max Fisher]

Well, that makes me very curious about your experience with mixed martial arts because you're, you know, obviously much more left wing guy, but are involved in this sport that kind of naturally aligns with right wing ways of thinking. It makes me curious what those gyms are like. Like, are they all kind of MAGA right wing spaces, even in Brooklyn?

[Jack Crosby]

So what's interesting about this is I've spent so long describing why mixed martial arts lends itself so easily to a right wing point of view. And I think what attracted me to martial arts and general and to MMA as well, is that I don't really think it has to. And a lot of aspects of this don't embody those things. So gyms in general around the country, simply because of the politics of the moment and the general sort of male heavy demographics of people that go to MMA gyms, I think you would probably find on average around the country, they may be trended slightly more conservative than the general population as a whole. Right. The environment in some of these gyms can be overtly masculine. It can be, in some areas, be a little toxic. You don't see very much of that in New York, in Brooklyn especially. But you also don't see a ton of it elsewhere around the country, because the other aspect of martial arts and of fighting in general and of learning how to use your body in this way is that there has to be an enormous amount of respect involved because you're not doing something like baseball or tennis even. I compare fighting to tennis all the time because I played relatively competitive tennis when I was a kid and when I described to people what the actual sport of fighting is like, I'm like, the only thing it really compares to is extremely high level singles tennis. Tennis. But instead of like losing a point, you might break your nose. But when you're in a fighting gym, the way that people are judged is how they comport themselves on the mats, how they respond to training, how they respond to their training partners. And there's not a lot of room in, in a successful and a well run MMA gym for someone who is going to be disrespectful and who is going to treat other people poorly. And so they, you get these kind of strange spaces where I have heard wildly not politically correct stuff in a gym, but I've also trained with people who are all over the sexuality and the gender spectrum. And for the most part in, in, in, in any good gym, I think that you will generally find that, yeah, maybe, I'm sure. You know, I'm obviously a cisgendered person. I find it much easier to, to come into these spaces. But I know a lot of people who are not that, who have very positive experiences with martial arts. And that's because at a certain point, what race a person is, what culture they come from, what background, what religion, what gender they are, what sexuality they are, that kind of stops mattering when the only thing that matters to them is can you learn from them? Or if you're sparring or something like that, can they hit you in the, the face? Like, you know, getting hit in the face by the 120 pound stunt woman in my gym feels just as bad as getting hit in the face by the, you know, 125 pound janitor that's, that's next to her like, you know, and he's a man and she's a woman and like it, it, you know, it doesn't matter. Like Hannah kicked me in the face two months ago and my jaw didn't like close, right, for about a week. You know, it doesn't, and that doesn't matter, like the fact that she's a woman, like my face still hurt, you know, like it's, it's not. So where that leaves me with the culture of martial arts, I think, is that there are these aspects of it of the communal respect and of the sort of humility that participating in a sport like that teaches you that they get mentioned in this sort of conception of masculinity. You know, the UFC always plays up, like, great moment of respect in between their fighters, like, et cetera, et cetera, because they know that people want to tap into that as well. It's a shame to me, I think that often with fighting, people focus on. And focus in the UFC has you know, really focused on empowering the. The worst sides of this athletic endeavor rather than the best ones. They've focused on the divisiveness and the, you know, the, the bad blood and the beefs and things like that. And there's always going to be some of that in sports. It's part of what makes sports fun. You know, like, if, you know, if there's Philly sports fans out here and they hear me saying, like, bad blood isn't a fun part of sports, like, don't come for me, I love it too. You guys are crazy. Like, you know, everyone loves a good rivalry, right? But there is a way of conceptualizing mixed martial arts in this sport that doesn't necessarily rely solely on this sort of regressive, aggressive version of masculinity.

[Max Fisher]

Well, it really makes me wonder if there's a version of, I guess, MMA or something like it that speaks to those needs that we've been talking about that, like, have brought so many people to the sport or the, the thing that people feel it is addressing for them or that it's exciting for them about it that is maybe not so extremely right wing coded, because obviously there are aspects of the sport, like you said, that lend itself to it. But there are also aspects of the sport, like you're talking about that are more aligned around community, which to me feels like a much more kind of left wing coded idea.

[Jack Crosby]

I think that unfortunately, or fortunately, MMA itself, I don't think is going to be the primary driver of it. I think that the culture inside mixed martial arts is always going to be more of a reflection of where our society is at in general, rather than the other way around, if that makes sense. And, you know, you've seen this even among the sort of cynical business decisions that the UFC has made in between the Biden presidency and the Trump presidency. You know, Dana White, White has not always been full maga. His relationship with Donald Trump, which we haven't fully discussed, but it's all in the piece. They've known each other for decades. They've been involved in one another's businesses for decades. Trump played a very close hand in the rise of Dana White's ufc. But White for a long time has really kind of tried to split the cultural gap. He for a while was operating much more on sort of like a Roger Goodell level, where the NFL is always sure, during the Bush year, they couldn't stop doing military flyovers and having soldier reunited with son and golden retriever dog on halftime at the 50 yard line, you know, and stuff like that, but then tempering themselves to be like, you know, now we've got stop racism on the back of helmets and like, there's a pride flag over some stadiums and things like that. Like, White to a certain extent has tried to kind of play those waters. But I think the big change was when he saw the strength and power of this Maga movement and especially the referendum that it saw in 2024, when it was basically ushered in as like, this is where the country is at. This is the dominant sort of cultural force in the country right now. I think that if that changes and if that changes through politics, if that changes through outside culture, I think that we'll see more of a reflection of that in mixed martial arts. Like I said, these athletes in the sport, they can trend towards right wing views, but there's so much in it, and there are so much, much like in the athletes that I see a lot of them as well. That shows that there is room for those broader conceptions of masculinity. There is room for a, I would say, sort of more holistic and less, I guess, kind of jingoistic and fear driven conception of this sport and culture at large. There's room for that in the this sport, but I think it's going to take kind of a broader cultural reimagining of American society to get there. And I think as well it might take something other than the ufc, which is a difficult proposition because right now, if you're an MMA fan, the UFC is pretty much all that you've got.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I feel like one thing I'm taking away from this is that the UFC as an organization, we are not going to be welcoming to the resistance anytime soon. Soon. But that if people felt that they wanted a version of something like MMA or MMA itself, that was speaking to those needs, but did it in a way that was more aligned with left wing values. That the sport does have room for that.

[Jack Crosby]

Yeah, I think that it does. But I want to be clear that you're not ever going to. There's not going to be like a Rule set change where you can make like leftist MMA or something like that. The sport, I think is the sport, right?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jack Crosby]

But I do think that there is room within the culture of the sport and within. And to still get what the sport offers, even in terms of that, you know, kind of violent catharsis and that like, which right now I think that that catharsis has been sort of grafted onto. Yeah. Like we've been talking about some sort of ugly cultural trends. Right. But I think that there is a way that that can be a much more universal thing that people can still gain that enjoyment out of this sport without it, you know, always explicitly feeling like that. I mean, I, I get that catharsis from the sport right now. You know, I'm not thinking I'm probably think about very different people when I project those fantasies onto the fighter that I don't like getting knocked out than, than you know, some of the Donald Trump, for instance, is when he watches that. But you know, I think the sport is good. Like the sport shouldn't go anywhere. I think that how it's organized, who runs it and who is profiting off of it. I wish that some of those things were different and I'm not sure how we get them that way. But I do think that there is room inside the cultural phenomenon of mixed martial arts for that change to happen.

[Max Fisher]

Jack Crosby, this. Thank you for joining me.

[Jack Crosby]

Thanks so much for having me. Max.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is a Crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Ilick Frank. Jordan Kanter is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglin. Delon Villanueva produces a videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrienne Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America eas. Switch to Verizon Business and get more from your Internet without paying more for your Internet. Get LTE business Internet starting at 39amonth when paired with a business unlimited smartphone plan. That's unlimited data and with it unlimited possibilities. Start saving today with Verizon business ranked number one in small business Internet customer satisfaction by J.D.

[Jack Crosby]

Power.

[Jon Favreau]

Starting price for 25 Mbps Internet plan with savings plus taxes, fees and economic adjustment Charge terms apply for J.D. power 2024 award information. Visit JDPower.com awards.