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Offline with Jon Favreau
Jon’s Twitter Fight with JD Vance and Elon’s Scheme to Buy Votes
01:04:54
How does J.D. Vance have so much time to fight with Jon on X? Why are the courts letting Elon Musk buy votes in Wisconsin? And are we, as a society, ready for xAI to be trained on tweets from Catturd and Libs of TikTok? With Max out on vacation, Jon is joined by The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel to process this week's online maelstrom—from horrendous deportations to Studio Ghibliesque edge lords—and to share what it was like for his boss to be mistakenly added to the Houthi PC Small Group chat.
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- [00:00]
Jon Favreau
Offline is brought to you by Quints. Vacation season is nearly upon us. This year I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades I deserve. I deserve them, John, with Quince's high quality travel essentials at fair prices like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30 pants for any occasion, comfortable lounge sets with premium luggage options and durable duffel bags to carry it all. The best part, all Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quints only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Love that. I'm going on spring break.
- [00:40]
Charlie Warzel
Spring break.
- [00:40]
Jon Favreau
Woo. With my family. Oh, because it's Charlie spring break. I'm going to get some Quints, some T shirts because I, you know, it's spring, it's a new season, I need some, some new clothes. Got to get some vacation gear. And their T shirts are great, their shorts are great. So I'm going to pick up some of those. For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from quints. Go to quince.com offline for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com offline to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com offline how on earth did we go from this?
- [01:15]
David Papadopoulos
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age to this?
- [01:20]
Charlie Warzel
We don't have a fourth branch of.
- [01:22]
Jon Favreau
Government called Elon Musk.
- [01:25]
Charlie Warzel
I'm David Papadopoulos. Each week on Elon Inc. I'm joined by my Bloomberg colleagues to chat about the biggest stories on Musk and what they mean for us all.
- [01:33]
Jon Favreau
He tends to welcome a legal fight.
- [01:36]
David Papadopoulos
There's a reason most CEOs like don't do this. Who's actually in charge no matter who's in power. Elon wins Elon Inc. Every week.
- [01:44]
Charlie Warzel
Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:48]
David Papadopoulos
We're just like making fun of the millennial posting tendencies of JD Vance when meanwhile, like the administration is detaining these people and in horrible mega prisons abroad. And they're like, well, we can't do anything about it.
- [02:00]
Jon Favreau
And it's like, I know I, I, I think about this all the time because I, a month ago I got in a fight with Elon Musk on Twitter and it was about your clout.
- [02:09]
David Papadopoulos
Score. Must be amazing.
- [02:19]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau and I'm Charlie Warzel. Charlie, welcome back to the show.
- [02:23]
David Papadopoulos
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
- [02:26]
Jon Favreau
So for everyone, Max is on vacation this week. Charlie has graciously agreed to fill in his co host and we've got plenty to talk about. But before we get to the news, you and I haven't really chatted since Trump and Elon have accelerated America's descent into techno authoritarianism. As someone else whose job it is to consume the fire hose of news on the Internet, how are you handling our new reality?
- [02:52]
David Papadopoulos
Oh, it's so bad. Just a waking nightmare. There's an old tweet by Darren Revelle that's like, this is terrible for our country. But it's tremendous content. And that's just the way that I feel about everything. It's all tremendous content if it were happening in some simulation, but it's reality. And I have this grand sort of framework for everything, which is like the stupidest possible thing that you see is going to be the thing that you are like faced and have to relive all the time. Like never bet against the dumbest outcome. And here we are.
- [03:33]
Jon Favreau
It does feel very like time is a flat circle kind of thing too, because we've now been talking about Donald Trump since 2015. That's so long ago. And it just keeps getting worse somehow. Like, I don't. I noticed that you've, you've left X for Blue Sky. How are, how are you enjoying all that skating?
- [03:57]
David Papadopoulos
Oh, it's wonderful. It's just one trading one very normal space for another, truly. So the reason why I stopped tweeting, so to speak, I still monitor it. I still, like, my account still exists if you yell at me, might see it. But I just don't feel like giving content, like free, like literal free words to somebody's service when their like explicit political project is to like destroy like the media, you know, for example. I just, I just feel like there is like, there's like a little bit of a stand that, that I wanted to take there. Blue sky is a, like a fine alternative. I think like any of these spaces, they like, the rules get set kind of early and being on Blue sky too long makes you feel like the world is actually moments away from just like the credits are about to roll on Earth, the experiment. So I actually find it sometimes just as psychically painful to scroll through. But at the end of the day, it's a site that doesn't deprioritize link links to news articles. And like, I appreciate that part of it because it, like, allows me to reach people as a journalist and, you know, is it's not like being run by gripers.
- [05:29]
Jon Favreau
So, yeah, my. I've gone back and forth on this so many times, and I'm on Blue Sky. I only check it a couple times a week, mainly because I can only pick one platform to be one micro blogging site to be posting on all the time. I can't, like, split my attention between two different sites like that. And the reason I'm so. I do hate that I'm on Twitter and helping an Elon company, but I feel like because so many journalists are there and because the reach is still the biggest of all these microblogging sites, thinking as, like, an organizer or strategist, I feel like I'm going to reach more people there. And then once in a while, I can go on Blue sky and check out what's there. But I have that same feeling when I'm on Blue sky for too long, which is the. The intensity and the outrage is so hyped up. Sometimes I go there when I think people aren't freaking out enough on Twitter, and then I'm like, what's everyone on Blue sky saying? I'm like, all right, everyone's worked up here. That may. Okay, I'm not crazy.
- [06:30]
David Papadopoulos
The thing is, though, like, it gets a lot of shit for that exact reason. And some of. Some of that is valid, but it's also an accurate reflection of, like, how bad things are. Like, things are legitimately, really freaking bad, you know? And so it's like, it's not one of those situations, I feel like, where it's like, oh, look at this hysteria. It does not match reality. It's more just like taking in too much of it at once is psychically so painful that it makes me want to literally detach and just go in the woods. And that's not helping my journalism or anything like that. So, yeah, I don't know, man. No place is good because it's the Internet.
- [07:14]
Jon Favreau
So on last week's show, we obviously talked about the world's most famous group chat. But here we are a week after the most read story of the year so far, the Trump administration scandal that the vast majority of Americans have heard the most about and disapprove of. And no one has been fired. No one has apologized. No one involved has even acknowledged that it was a mistake to discuss imminent attack, not war plans, on an unsecure channel. That included your boss, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. In fact, the main reason Trump was Thinking about firing Mike Waltz is because he had Goldberg's number in the phone. Because, of course, journalists are the enemy. And the White House said this week that the internal investigation is officially over. Really thorough, which is accomplished. Mission accomplished. They did it. Which also means that the FBI and DOJ won't be investigating either, because all federal law enforcement are now under direct control of the President. And then I just noticed today, right before we recorded the Washington Post reports, that Mike Waltz was also doing business, official business, including talking about very sensitive information about foreign policy and battle plans and all the rest on his Gmail, which is even. Even worse than signal. Even worse than signal. How much do you think our collective device induced ADD is helping these guys get away with what they couldn't figure out, what to get away, how to get away with.
- [08:51]
David Papadopoulos
Last time, I. I feel a bit like somewhere along the line, and I don't know, I think it was genuinely like, Trump, Trump won. But it may very well have been post January 6th, this idea that like. Like, Trump had crossed the biggest red line. Like, he was sort of like, expelled momentarily from public life. Like, the platforms banned him. And then he was like, well, I don't need any of that. I don't care. I'll make my own. And I'll just sort of, you know, actually start to marinate in the most toxic of all of the stews. Right? Like, I just. I just. I don't give a shit. And I think that, like, that, broadly speaking, some of it is, you know, the world is the way it is. The device induced, you know, frenetic. Like, nothing can hold anyone's attention for more than a few minutes. And look. Oh, the next episode of Severance is on. Like, what? You know, there's, like, there's too much vying for your time. It's all so bad that you just want to tune it out. But I also think that there's just this fundamental and unfortunately sad and true understanding from this administration, which is just like, we don't give a shit. And if we look into the camera and say that to you, what are the hall monitors gonna do about it? What are you gonna do? It's the classic kind of bully thing, right? It's just like, I don't care that you think that's the way it is. And weirdly enough, Elon Musk has done this running his companies for so long, it's like the sec. You can't tweet that. You can't do that. Here's. You have to pay these fines. And he's just sort of like two middle fingers up. I don't care. I don't play by these rules. And I think that that's sort of. That seems to me to be the guiding light of this administration, the way they're handling absolutely everything. It's like, treat everyone around you, even your own, you know, supporters, with the utmost contempt if there is any, you know, chance that they're going to question you and just kind of steamroll that. I don't know if that has, like, an expiration date on it, if that tactic, you know, ceases to work after a while, but it's proven really, sadly effective right now.
- [11:17]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And I think that there's some important context that helps make it effective. One being that once you have incited an insurrection to try to stay in office and then get away with it in terms of escaping legal accountability, escaping, you know, the accountability of impeachment, and then ultimately just winning in a free and fair election and then having the Supreme Court say that, oh, yeah, by the way, the president can't be charged criminally for anything he does that are. Could be construed as official acts of the president. Once you've. Got. Once you've passed that, you know, crossed that Rubicon. Why wouldn't you be nihilistic about everything?
- [12:04]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah, I agree. It's like, after a certain while, like, you know, shame. Like, shame on us. Right? Like, shame on. Just like, there's no enforcement in any way. Right. I have this feeling that banning Trump from all the social media platforms. A fellow journalist, Brian Broderick, who runs a newsletter called Garbage Day, brought this up, and I thought it was really astute point, was kind of one of the last straws here that really just Trump had tried for a long time always to operate within the frameworks of institutions that he still wanted to curry favor with. And then this, like, I really feel like that January 6th moment, especially the being banned from these platforms, like, he really wanted to get back onto Twitter. And then after a certain amount of time, being exiled from it, it's like, you know what? No, I don't need this. Like, the real sickos are actually over here. Like, the real people who, like, I literally can't do any wrong with the people who actually embrace me. Right. Not all these other people who laugh at me behind closed doors. And I think that's truly when, like, the revenge thing kicked in completely and it was like, no, this is actually scorched earth. Like, I don't care. I don't care about, you know what I'M going to do to the economy. I don't care about what Wall street thinks of me. Like, I, I'm in it for the sickos. Right. And that's scary.
- [13:36]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And, you know, he's a, he's a lame duck, or at the very least, he's not going to be running for office again. Whether he, Whether he serv. Is a question hopefully we don't have to entertain.
- [13:50]
David Papadopoulos
Never bet against this. The dumbest outcome.
- [13:52]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, Right. But so he know, like, so there's a, There's. I've been trying to think about this just from a, like a, again, like a strategist perspective and trying to, like, get power back at some point from people who don't hate democracy. And like, I'm, I just don't know what the political pressure points are anymore because he does. You're right. Like, you'd think, oh, does he care about his legacy? But he, his legacy is whatever he says it is in his head. Right. And he's got a, a whole media apparatus and a bunch of people around him who will tell him till the day he dies that he was the greatest president of all time and wonderful. And then everyone who says otherwise is just fake or paid protesters or whatever else. Right. And so I kind of think that the pressure point is Republicans in Congress. Right. Who may lose their jobs over this, over what the president does in the next couple of years. Maybe if whatever happens with 2028, you know, if other people want to run, that could be in the Republican Party. That could be a real clown show, you know, and so maybe that's a pressure point. But I do think, you know, and I've been criticizing Democrats, too, for not, like, fighting enough or doing enough. But some of it is constrained, some of our ability to fight this is constrained by this nihilism that you're talking about that, that they just don't give a shit, you know?
- [15:05]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah. Although I do think it meets. It. It meets, it does at some point meet reality. Right. Like something that I, that I have felt like. I've seen examples, either on social media or elsewhere, like anyone has, of these people who, like with the Doge firings, et cetera. Right. Where people who are in the universe of the true believers sort of seeing this thing that's like, all right, so I'm all for all this government efficiency stuff. Trump can do no wrong. Also, he fired my nephew who's been working for the park service diligently for 15 years with an email that said, Dear first name slash last name, right. And it was like this like sort of lack of dignity, lack of like respect, lack of, you know, all this. Like there is a point and maybe this is just like me being optimistic to a fault. But like, I do think there's a point with all of this stuff, with this nihilism, with the, you know, treating lying to your supporters faces again and again and again, sort of treating them like they, you know, like you don't respect their intelligence. There are moments when all of this stuff that plays really well online that is like, it's really great propaganda, like does meet, I think certain parts of reality if it gets extreme enough. And I think that like, you know, the firings is one of those examples where it's like, wait, what, what is going on here? Right? I'm not sure if, you know, people being kidnapped off the streets in black vans, if that works for that group of supporters, but I definitely think the firings thing has triggered some people's spidey senses tingling. Being like, this doesn't seem right. I don't know. I do think that when I think about that nihilism, I've seen some cracks in that facade as it relates to, well, wait a minute, the guy from Twitter is like actually doing something that affects like, you know, me in meat space right now.
- [17:10]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [17:11]
David Papadopoulos
And that's. I don't like that, you know.
- [17:18]
Jon Favreau
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- [18:41]
Charlie Warzel
Don't miss Good American Family.
- [18:43]
David Papadopoulos
We have a little girl here for adoption.
- [18:46]
Jon Favreau
She has dwarfism.
- [18:47]
Charlie Warzel
Starring Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass.
- [18:50]
Jon Favreau
Something is off. She's just a little girl.
- [18:52]
David Papadopoulos
You think she's faking?
- [18:53]
Jon Favreau
She has adult teeth. There are signs of puberty.
- [18:55]
Charlie Warzel
Inspired by the shocking stories that tore a family apart.
- [18:59]
David Papadopoulos
I have no what's going on?
- [19:00]
Jon Favreau
How old are you?
- [19:01]
David Papadopoulos
You should get a lawyer.
- [19:02]
Jon Favreau
You have no idea how those people hurt this girl.
- [19:06]
Charlie Warzel
The Hulu Original Series Good American Family New episodes Wednesdays streaming on Hulu.
- [19:16]
Jon Favreau
For people who don't pay attention or don't pay close attention to the news, which is, as we found out, you know, in the last election, over the last several years, probably most voters, they, you know, it could be something as simple as the tariffs causing, you know, either tipping us into recession or just, you know, making inflation persistently higher or, you know, God forbid, some combination and we're in stagflation territory. And then they don't even have to pay attention to the what's coming out of the Trump administration. They just feel it in their everyday lives, which is a big reason Joe Biden lost. So if you have that and you combine that with people are like, okay, well, why am I paying more for? And also Elon Musk is like rampaging through the federal government and they're kidnapping people off the streets. And like, what's the good part about this? Like you, I don't think it could.
- [20:12]
David Papadopoulos
Be, it can't be overstated how unpopular Elon Musk is. Like, how much of a, of a vulnerability like he as a human is. And I think that, like having covered him for a very long time, he also has, he is a kind of a perishable good. He has a real shelf life in terms of, oh, this guy's interesting. He's got some ideas. And then cut to two months later and you're like, I think we can see that there is a possible real Vulnerability with musk turning people off. Because, again, like, it just the optics real bad. Like, unelected, you know, richest man in the world wasn't, you know, isn't from here, you know, and has a lot of opinions about, like, who should be employed and who shouldn't be, I think. Or like, getting rid of your Social Security. Like, those things are just very. I think that that could be a real crack in the nihilism facade as well.
- [21:16]
Jon Favreau
I do, too. And we're going to talk a little bit more about Elon before we move on from this topic. Since you work at the Atlantic, what was it like there last week?
- [21:27]
David Papadopoulos
What were the slack channels like, really and truly? I mean, I can't speak to the inner workings of the place in that sense, but I think that for every single person, it's not that different from. From being on the outside. It's an unbelievable story. Right? It's just like. It's fundamentally unbelievable. You know, I. Jeff wasn't asking for, like, you know, consensus editing or anything on that. Like, I wasn't involved. But I do think there's this. There's a strange thing. I'm sure it's happened to you in your life where either your organization or you or something are at the center of a massive, massive story, and yet you still feel like an outsider to it. I think that's very much the vibe. Right? It's like, you know, I personally, like, I thought it was really, like, admirable how the whole thing was reported and handled. You know, not to be like a homer for the publication, but, like, I just think it was. It's a really, you know, tricky reporting situation to be thrust into without, you know, trying to go after that story. And I think it was handled pretty well. But it was also, you know, just as a person who like comments on the news a lot myself, like, there was a need to sort of be at a remove there because there, you know, there's just so many moving parts. It's a tricky story. So I personally felt like as kind of agog by the whole thing as anyone else and kind of watched it play out.
- [23:10]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I thought you guys and Jeff handled it incredibly well. I mean, especially at a time where, like, so many of these media outlets are capitulating or settling or whatever you want to call it with Trump and. And it was a delicate situation. Right. Like, at first, everyone's like, release all the. Release all the signals. And you're like, well, you got to be careful there. And let's. Let's talk to Some lawyers let this play out. And, and. And I also think that Goldberg felt like real responsibility about national security and operations and making sure that, you know, troops are protected and potential undercover agents and all that kind of stuff. So I thought it was. It was a delicate dance, but it seemed like you guys handled it really.
- [23:49]
David Papadopoulos
Well in speaking to, like, the. The Internet part of all of it. Right? Like what you were saying with, like, people sort of demanding, you know, the whole story at once exactly in the way that they want it. Like, there's always that engine of the, you know, it's like assuming really like, bad intentions, et cetera. And it's like, I think if there is one thing, and this is not even particular to, to this story, if there's like, one thing as just as a reporter that I would love to communicate to just like the news consuming audiences of the world is just like, there's so much that is going on to try to make sure to get everything right, like, with any story, right. And, like, sometimes that just means it's not like you're gonna get all the information. You're just gonna get it, like, is perfectly, you know, buttoned up and you've gone through all the appropriate stuff. But, like, I don't think people realize news gathering is just like, it's a painstaking process. Like, it just. It is. It's like you have to do a lot of work to make sure that you are giving everyone, you know, information in the best and most responsible way so that they can use it and.
- [24:58]
Jon Favreau
You might get it, you know, in a couple days, as opposed to the timeline everyone operates on now, which is immediately. Which is what people want. So I have to admit, last night, I did get in a Twitter fight with the whiniest and most online member of the group, chat, J.D. vance. This happened.
- [25:17]
David Papadopoulos
Congrats.
- [25:18]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, yeah, this happened because once again, you guys over at the Atlantic broke some big news. The Trump administration, for the first time, has admitted in court that they sent a father from Maryland to rot in the El Salvador megaprison based on, quote, an error and, quote, an oversight. Even worse, they're also arguing in court that they have no ability to bring him back. The man's name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He was accused of being a gang member based only on his Chicago Bulls hoodie and an informant who said he's part of an MS.13 chapter based in a state where he's never lived. He actually came here in 2011 because actual gangs were threatening to kill him. He married an American citizen, had two kids, was working full time, and in 2019, a judge gave him special legal protection from being deported to El Salvador, worried that he would be killed there. A few weeks ago, ICE agents grabbed him anyway and sent him to the mega prison in El Salvador where he was supposed to be protected from being deported to. I got very angry. I tweeted the story, I tagged in Marco Rubio and Elon, my boy Elon, and JD Vance and asked if they wanted to comment because I knew they were all pretty online. And at 1am Eastern, JD wrote back and said that Garcia is a convicted Ms. 13 gang member, which is a lie with no legal right to be here. Another lie said that clearly I hadn't read the court documents, which clearly he hadn't read the court documents, which is why he made those false statements. And then he told me it was, quote, gross to get fired up about this. And then a bunch of other people, including reporters and Grok, called him out for lying. And then he got even pissier. So my question to you is like, why do you think the Vice President of the United States is spending so much of his time tweeting at random podcasters? Because I am, I am not the first Twitter fight he's been in lately. And there's been some like, you know, right wing influencers, random accounts, some red state guy that he's been fighting with. He's fought with other people. He's like, he is very online, Very online.
- [27:30]
David Papadopoulos
It's interesting, right? I mean even like there's obviously a lot of like parallels to, to Trump in the, you know, in the first administration doing the, the, the midnight tweeting. Okay. So I have, I have this theory, I think that, that this administration's sort of communication strategy is to be creating content always like influencers, right? Like there was, I think it was the day before the disastrous Zelensky Oval Office thing. Like they brought a bunch like Mike Cernovich and a bunch of other like Jack Posobic and these guys like brought him in and gave him the Epstein binders and then like walked them out into the back area and they're like, oh, there just happened to be like, oh, the Prime Minister was here. Like, oh, so there's just you know, happen to be cameras like getting all these clicks and they're like holding the binders up like, yeah, we got it. You know, I feel. And then cut to the next day. I believe it was like the, the whole Zelensky thing was a setup, right? It was a content thing. Like it was it was a spectacle. Trump said it afterwards, like, well, this is going to make good tv. Regardless of what you think of it. I think that this administration really feels like the way to get. Get its message out. The way to sort of keep the base energized, to keep, like, some support for all of this, like, genuinely pretty unpopular stuff that they are doing, is to just be feeding as much red meat as possible at all times to their audience in the way that an influencer does, in the way that it's just like you are just. You are constantly on board. Joe Rogan is podcasting 15 hours a week, right. For a reason. Like, it's keeping the content moving. And I think that that's a little bit of what's going on here. I think there's probably other motivations, right? Like, I think that this is probably a way for Vance to try to flex whatever muscles and power he has. Right. Like, you know, one of the lessons, I think, from the group chat was that he was sort of like, I disagree. And everyone was like, we're going to keep going on. You know, it's like it didn't seem like he had a ton of power in that. In that interaction. Doesn't seem like he has just a ton of power in general in the administration, even compared to someone who's not really in the administration, like Musk. So this is, I think getting in Twitter fights is a very visible, highly visible way to LARP Vice President. But at the same time, I think it is part of a broader administration goal of this. This idea of this, like, this shamelessness of that, like, the guardrails are off type thing is being constantly messaged, right? Like, we are going to bring in Zelensky into the Oval Office and we are going to try to humiliate him because, like, we will do whatever we want to do. And then that is going to be like, the content that is projected out wide. I think that that's sort of broadly the strategy, whether or not, like, it fits perfectly. Him feuding with you at one in the morning on Twitter. I. I don't know, but unfortunately for you, that I. That's what he's doing.
- [30:44]
Jon Favreau
I feel. I feel like J.D. vance in particular has like, a very specific millennial poster vibe to him where he, like, debate society kind of thing, right? Where he's just like, if he wasn't vice president right now, he'd be doing one of those jubilee videos, you know, like getting a bunch of people to debate him just because he seems. He seems. And part of it Though, I think it. I think you're right. And it also goes to. To their grievance strategy, right? Like, everything. It's a specific type kind of content that they want to put out, right? Which is, in one way, they want to show dominance. In the other way, they want to, you know, be aggrieved all the time, even though they have all the power. Right? I mean, J.D. vance, eventually, after, he got sort of embarrassed because everyone called him out for lying. And then at one point, he was like, you know, the. The guy was detained under Biden and released under Biden in 2019. And then everyone was like, 2019, Trump was president. He was like. And then he had to edit his tweet. So then he just puts up another tweet to, like, end the whole thing just on its own. And he was like, you know, the media wants us to believe that the. The real victims are the gang members who terrorize citizens and not the people who've been killed from these. In this invasion and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, no. No one fudgeing said that, man. No, no. Everyone thinks that you're a victim if you're. If you've been murdered and so is your family, but you're also a victim if you're in a prison with no due process and you're innocent. Everyone. Both people are victims. You know, this is.
- [32:21]
David Papadopoulos
I mean, it's a. It's a total strategy in all of this immigration or, you know, mass deportation without due process stuff. Like, it is this idea of trying to pin it on the. You know, basically trying to turn everyone into. Oh, like, you love. You know, you love criminals, or you care more about, you know, random Hispanic person than you do about the safety of your country. Like, that whole false binary that an argument no one's making, I would also say, too. So, you know, there is. Whether this is intentional or not, this is what ends up happening is like, you started this with talking about the Atlantic article that came out and this story that is just, like, positively heinous and like, you were. It made you enraged for good reason. Like, this thing that, like, anyone who's not so down the rabbit hole reads and goes, this is. This is fucked up, right? And then it becomes through Vance getting in this Twitter fight and this type of thing, it just sort of becomes about, like, posting wars, right? And this type of thing, like, there's a way in which all of this in some way. And again, I don't know if it's. I don't know if it's just the way of the Internet and the way of social media or if it's, you know, part of a deliberate strategy. But there's this way in which it dilutes the, like, these. The seriousness of what's happening. I'm not saying you're doing that. I'm just saying this is what happens, right? We're just like, like, making fun of the millennial posting tendencies of JD Vance when meanwhile, like, the administration is detaining these people in horrible mega prisons abroad. And they're like, well, we can't do anything about it.
- [34:00]
Jon Favreau
And it's like, I know I think about this all the time because I. I got in a couple. A month ago, I got in a fight with Elon Musk on Twitter, and it was about your clout score.
- [34:11]
David Papadopoulos
Must be amazing.
- [34:15]
Jon Favreau
But it was like, when they. It's funny, the moment that. That Elon responded and then J.D. vance responded, I went into this different mode where I was like, I'm not going to attempt to, like, just dunk back on them. Like, I want to now provide facts here. And I want to. In the case of Elon, I was like, you know, the USAID had canceled a bunch of. Of food that was going to, like, starving children. And I was like, I want. Want to do whatever we can to get the food to the kids. And I was thinking. And when J.D. vance responded, I'm like, okay, what do I care about now, right now? I care about somehow getting these people out of this fucking prison, you know? So I sort of, like, pulled back from the usual, like, dunking that I might do if I didn't think they were ever gonna reply to me, which are probably, like, most of my other tweets, you know? But you. You're right, because you. I think they want to suck you into an argument that is a very online, like, let's go back and forth and dunk on each other and decide who won the, you know, who won the posting contest, as opposed to, like, oh, this is about, like, real people who have real problems and who are being wronged in very serious ways and what are we going to do about it?
- [35:24]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah, it is so. It's so hard to, like. It's so hard to overcome that. Right. Just in general, and I think that there is a part of me, you know, again, and I don't really know. You never know, like, how intentional any of these guys are or if they're always just, like, shooting directly from the hip, like, whatever. There's a possibility that this is actually, like, the end goal for a lot of things. Right. That there are like, there are people who are trying to put forward really, you know, unpopular policies or gut the federal government or do whatever exact their, their, you know, political revenge on their enemies. And, and then I think there's plenty of people who are just like in it to dunk on people and win those fights and, you know, again, increase their clout scores. Yeah, I just, it's, it's a. Yeah. I don't know.
- [36:15]
Jon Favreau
Owning lives becomes an end in itself, right? Yeah. Not even a means. All right, quick note. If you're enjoying offline and looking for ways to keep supporting our work at Crooked Media, the best way to do so is by subscribing to friends of the podcast. With your subscription, you can now enjoy offline ad free. Plus, if you're not sure yet whether friends at the POD is right for you, you can take it for a test drive with a 30 day free trial. When you subscribe, you'll also unlock ad free POD Save America and POD Save the World. Gain access to our amazing Discord community and exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan. Your subscription helps power everything we do here at Crooked. Sign up today@crooked.com friends or through this feed on Apple Podcasts to start your 30 day free trial.
- [36:54]
David Papadopoulos
Foreign.
- [37:01]
Jon Favreau
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- [38:08]
Charlie Warzel
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- [38:27]
Jon Favreau
All right, let's, let's talk more about your friend and mine. Another extremely online shitposter. Elon Musk, he was in Wisconsin. He was trying to buy a Supreme Court race there and it became much more literal by the end. He was handing out a pair of million dollar checks in Wisconsin on Sunday night. We're recording this Tuesday afternoon. So by the time you're all listening to this will know who won the Supreme Court race. But I think you summed up my reaction to the, the payments in a, in a succinct post on Blue sky, you said you, quote, genuinely feel insane. And I guess my question is, which part feels like there's a lot of, lot of things to feel insane about in relation to Elon Musk trying to buy a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin by going there and handing out million dollar checks?
- [39:19]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah, it's like an onion of insanity, right? With the layers. Okay. First thing that made me feel insane was he, he's up on stage during that America PAC rally and he's talking about how like, people are mad at him and Tesla and all the, the hate towards him. And he's like, it's George Soros, man. It's an evil billionaire who's involved in politics behind the scene who's just trying to buy influence. And he's on stage as the richest man in the world about to present a Publisher's Clearinghouse sized check to a person for, or to get them to vote the way he wants them to vote. Because he's, he's doing like, it's just.
- [40:12]
Jon Favreau
Like, well, well, calling out paid protesters. Right. There's no, there's not even like a, there's no irony there. Like, he doesn't sense. Like, I, I think he genuinely doesn't see the, the issue there. Like, I don't, I think he really doesn't see it. And this has been very consistent with Elon. Right? Which is he is, there's no one who could ever disagree with him in a, in a good faith way. Right? Like, you have to either be evil or you're a paid protester. You're some kind of show. Like, there are no good faith disagreements with this man.
- [40:46]
David Papadopoulos
This is, this is also how his like negative polarization against the media, which then I believe led him into the arms of, you know, a lot of These people ultimately leading him to, you know, become sort of like the, you know, the, the Soros level MAGA person, you know, like what, whatever we're going to call it. But it all stems from that, that notion, right? Like, this is a man who was hailed for so long as a Tony Stark, Thomas Edison, once in a lifetime visionary, genius human being who could, you know, literally lasso the future and bring it into the present. And the tech press for a very long time, there's obviously people who, you know, who wrote negatively about Tesla or whatever, his companies, things like that. But for a long time it was very, very credulous of everything that he was saying. Taking him and his like, predictions that we're gonna be on Mars by whatever, 2025, and we're not like at face value, but just this fawning kind of nature, because that's the tech press kind of, until a certain point, operated largely that way. It was kind of like a press release style culture, wasn't very hard hitting. And then when the tech lash came and when people started really like, looking into this and covering in more of an antagonistic way, it became this, like, I really, it's not that deep, you know, like he saw it and he said, well, like, if they're saying this about me and it's clearly lies because I'm great, then they must be doing this for everything, right? They must. Like, you hear this a lot in Silicon Valley, X publication took something of mine out of context. Can you imagine what other lies are there? Right? And sometimes it's an earnest mistake, sometimes it's not, but it's based off of this idea of like, no, no, no, Certainly, certainly I'm not wrong here. Like, certainly it's not me, so therefore it must be you. And now you need to be destroyed or whatnot. It's the genesis of, I think, so much of this just driving him into the arms of, you know, the only people he hasn't alienated yet, which is this, like this MAGA coalition, right?
- [43:09]
Jon Favreau
And it is, it's, it's just so simple that it almost doesn't seem like that is the explanation. But it's just, it's an unbelievable ego and narcissism and that. I think you see this, I mean, you've covered this, you see this with just a lot of these tech founders. And Elon is, you know, maybe one of the worst, if not the worst. But, you know, there's Zuckerberg's right up there and they just, they think that they're right, they're not used to being challenged by their employees. And they also used to be used to being like fawned over by all kinds of people telling them they're geniuses and they're solving all the world's problems. And like you said, the press for a while was just kind of going along with it. And then they've always had, they've always sort of looked at government and politics as, you know, a bunch of idiots who were inefficient and couldn't quite figure it out. And if only they let the tech folks have try a hand at politics and government, they could fix all the world's problems because we could just, you know, innovate our way out of it.
- [44:14]
David Papadopoulos
And, and you know, and to be just a little bit like, having covered this for a depressing number of years now, like, there, there is like a little bit of, like, I can understand where some of these tech people are coming from, right? Like they have built successful companies, right? Like the all the sort of fawning praise over Silicon Valley in the mid aughts in the early 2000 and tens was predicated on this notion of there's not a lot of inspiring engines of American ingenuity and building stuff, making stuff people use the technology. Export was this real, I think, signifier of American progress and of progressive ideals and all this stuff. And they were internalizing all that and basically saying, like, you know, yeah, like, we, Detroit is not the hub of innovation anymore. It's. It's Silicon Valley. Like, we're the ones doing. And then when the tech lash came, I think there was this understanding of like, like, who, who the hell are you guys to say this about? Like, we have been told that we are the ones who build. Who do you know, like, we are the ones who you should be listening to and that, like, indignation. And the last thing I'll say is, I think like, the final straw for all of them was Covid, because there was this moment where like, you know, the George Floyd style protests, there was this just the remote work of it all was like, you know, taking their sort of physical power away in the terms of like, you know, their dominion over their offices and like, the flexibility that their employees can have. And then this notion of like, bringing your politics to work right, was just like a ghastly betrayal for them because it's like, no, no, no, no. We are the central figures in this story. You're all peripheral players. And I think a lot of this has been this revenge similar to Trump, has been this feeling of like, we're taking the reins back and it's going to feel bad because that's the nature, like, get, you know, get in the right order in the hierarchy.
- [46:22]
Jon Favreau
You wrote a piece recently about the book Careless People. SARAWIN Williams Former Meta Employee Senior Meta Employee We've talked about the book on this show. We tried to have Sarah on, and then the gag order came from Meta. So we still haven't had that interview. But you came to sort of a conclusion about the book that I shared, which is, you know, a lot of it has been at least some of the broad strokes had been reported in the past. She obviously adds a lot of texture, especially about Mark and Cheryl and some of the personalities at the top of Facebook and Meta, like, more so than I had read anywhere else. But there's something about reading Careless People at this moment that felt almost eerie. And you, you wrote in the piece, the chaos of the past two months, the looming constitutional crises, the firings and rehirings, is what it feels like when a government is run, at least in spirit, like a technology company. Wynne Williams's book isn't present. Much of it, as Meta notes, is older news. What's most disorienting about Careless People is that it is packaged as a history of sorts, but its real utility to the reader is as a window into our current moment. A field guide to tech autocracy it did feel like it, that I, I was thinking the same thing when I, when I read it, which is this what it made me think of Zuckerberg is Zuckerberg didn't go through some transformation necessarily. Like, this was always this, this was his personality all along. And he, I, I think what, what Sarah chronicles at least, is that he went from not giving a shit about government and politics and not wanting to meet world leaders because he kind of thought like, I don't really need them and who cares? And I'm doing something more important anyway to then thinking, who the fuck do these people think they are trying to regulate me or trying to, you know, get me to behave in a certain way in their countries or with their governments or change my platform in any way that might, you know, help the broader good? Because I know what the broad I know what the public good is, right? And I'm Mark Zuckerberg and who's going to challenge me? And it's like that is the, that seems to be the running theory of how Elon Musk is participating in government, how the JD Vances of the world are. And, you know, it fits with Trump's whole style as well.
- [48:47]
David Papadopoulos
It's. It's a little of that, I think, for certain, like, or not a little. It's a lot of that. And that notion of, like, would you just leave me alone while I, like, save the world? Okay? Like, just, like, you don't, like, please, like, I. None of this, right? There's. There's an element of that, but I also think that there is this element of software engineering style. The cliche is move fast and break things, but to sort of build on that a little. It's more like, move fast and we can delete it later, right? We're going to push out some code. It's not great, but let's. Like, we'll get it in the, in the, in the update. Like the app update, right? Like, this idea that, like, stuff. It doesn't matter that we can, you know, that we're a little bit reckless with this or that we're. We're completely shooting from the hip and making it up, building the plane as we fly, et cetera. Like, that's okay because, like, we'll get it on the next iteration of this. And you see in the book, I think chillingly, with, you know, what the. What happened with the genocide in Myanmar being like, probably like the canonical example of this is like, you can't delete that. You know, like, people died. Like, a regime crumbled, right? Like, these things when they interact with the physical world or, you know, more clearly politics, like, these things. There's no undo button, right? There's no control Z or whatever. Like, it's so real. And I think it's the thing that they can't grasp. Like, it's, to me, the fundamental thing that I see with Elon and like, Doge, which is just like, yep, we're going to get rid of all that code in this Social Security system because it's old and it's not good or anything. And it's like, yeah, but also, like, there are people whose livelihoods depend on those checks. And, like, if they don't get them for three weeks, like, you can't necessarily undo some of that damage. Or, like, what if you break the whole thing? You know, like, it's. There's. There's this feeling there that everything is treated a little bit like code. And in that world, the, the optimism of it, sort of like the techno utopian part of that is that there's infinite permutations, infinite abilities to go back, to make things better, to rewrite your history, to update and revise. But in reality, it's like, no, the reason the government is so slow, sometimes awfully slow, sometimes incorrectly slow, is like the stakes are so fucking high and real people are involved and you can't delete. So, yeah, it's frustrating.
- [51:29]
Jon Favreau
It reminded me of when Elon was in the Oval and. Or I think maybe he was at the cabinet meeting and he was like, yeah, you know, like, I'm, I'm willing to admit when we make mistakes, like we, we briefly turned off Ebola protection and then. But then we realized it and then we turned it back on as if it was like a machine or it was.
- [51:48]
David Papadopoulos
It also turns out that the Washington Post later reported that they didn't turn.
- [51:51]
Jon Favreau
It on and they didn't.
- [51:52]
David Papadopoulos
They were just lying about that.
- [51:53]
Jon Favreau
They were. Yeah, they were just like. But the idea that, like, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna break a few things, we're gonna, few programs we're gonna turn off and we'll come back to it later. It's like, well, then people will be dead or people who are counting on checks won't get them or, you know, whatever else it may be, it is, it's, it's quite bad. It's quite bad. Offline is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise, filled with two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, and other gummy additives growing kids should never eat. That's why Haya created a superpowered, chewable vitamin. Haya fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide the full body nourishment our kids need with a yummy taste they love. Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts, Haya is pressed with a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals. It's non GMO, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free, and everything else you can imagine. Every single batch is third party tested for heavy metals and, and microbials in a qualified GMP compliant lab using scientifically validated testing methods. So, you know, the product is safe and nutritious. Hya is designed for kids two and up and sent straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. Basically, we've been. Charlie's been taking high vitamins since he was 2 and he loves them and it's great because he needs the nutrients since all he eats is spaghetti and, and desserts and so. And he likes Haya too, so that's important. And if you're tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens like I am, Haya now has Kids Daily Greens and Superfoods, a chocolate flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids. Packed with 55 plus whole food ingredients to support brain power, development and digestion. Just scoop, shake and sip with milk or any non dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order to claim this deal you must go to hiahealth.com off this deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H I Y A H E a l t h.com off and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.
- [54:01]
Charlie Warzel
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- [54:33]
Jon Favreau
In other news this week, thanks to an updated version of ChatGPT, social media is awash in Studio Ghibli inspired AI generated memes and portraits. If you're confused by that sentence, just know that I am too. So I have no idea how to make these memes nor why they're all over my feed. But Charlie, you wrote a great piece about this trend this week for the Atlantic, which was really a piece about the evolution of the White House Twitter account, which is wild. Before we get to that, what the White House tweeted, can you explain to me someone who has the most basic understanding of how ChatGPT works? I use it once in a while for some research things here and there. Nothing else. Why I'm seeing all these memes on my feed.
- [55:14]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah, well, you know, former speechwriter like yourself, you know, you can't, you gotta, you can't use ChatGPT. You gotta, you know, keep the walls up. No, I. Okay, so essentially ChatGPT OpenAI is the company behind it, obviously very famous product. They had a product update that did a number of things, but one of the things that it, that it, you know, included was an update to its image generating capabilities and its abilities to mimic different styles. Right. Like the image generators were able to do this before and even quite well in some cases. But this update, for whatever reason, I mean, more props to him. Like, it's really good. Like, you can say, like, you know, give me that viral hippo mu Dang. Like, make him a Renaissance painting. And it does. And it looks like. Like. Like Vermeer or whatever. You know, it's like. Or whatever. It's beautiful. Beautiful as much as a, you know, a chatgpt image can be. And so somewhere, you know how trends start. You never really know. Somebody started posting them in the style of this Studio Ghibli with this, you know, this famous Japanese art art studio that's made a bunch of, you know, very critically acclaimed anime. The creator of that studio happens to believe that that artificial intelligence is an insult to life itself. That's its own little side category. So it's like a real, just, like, punch in the face of this brilliant auteur and artist. That aside, these images started going viral. Cause they were really good. They were just like, really? And so it started with the first ones that I saw were really totally understandable and normal. It was like I took a family photo and ran it through, and now it looks like this famous cartoon style. And then of course, it hits the fever swamps of X and it just immediately becomes. The first one I saw was the JFK assassination, like Zapruder film still of Secret Service agents slumped over the president's dead body in this style. And you're like, whoa. Okay, so then immediately we have 9, 11, we have Abu Ghraib photos. Just crazy stuff. I mean, the worst one I saw was a. A reenactment or whatever of a still of a security camera from Columbine of the two shooters. Yeah, just like, real. Like, I am not thinking about, you know, anyone's humanity in this process. Anyway, it went sufficiently viral that like any influencer or content creator, the White House decided to get involved in it in its own way, which it. It took a photo of a woman being arrested and crying in handcuffs by ICE agents and, you know, put it, ran it through the Studio Ghibli AI thing and just tweeted it out just like that, with no real context.
- [58:21]
Jon Favreau
And you wrote a piece about this, and it's part of this. This trend from the White House and especially their Twitter account, which, by the way, it is wild what the White House Twitter account has become. I mean, we. We saw it when Obama was in the White House. It's just like the official account where you like. And it was. It was by design relatively boring. Right? Like, you're putting out Press releases and the president's speeches and whatever else, and now it's just like. It's just trolling people all the time. And, like, the. There's the ASMR deportation video, which was just gross, and it really is. And you. You wrote this in the piece, but it feels like the goal here, whether it's intentional or not, is. Or at least the result is really dehumanizing people. And I don't love to just, like, jump to that explanation or fall into that trap, but like, that. This is when you look at the deportations, when you look at the. We're gonna kidnap people. And so this is what they're trying to do, which is like, oh, this is no big deal. We think it's funny. You can laugh at it, too. We can all laugh at it. It's fine. It's not real. It's the Internet. Don't pay too much attention to this. That's how it feels to me.
- [59:35]
David Papadopoulos
I think it even goes beyond that, truly. It's like these people are. It's almost like these people aren't real, right? Not just like, this thing is not real. It's like, these aren't actual. Like, the reason why I decided to write this piece was I've been thinking about it for a while, but when I saw that ASMR deportation video thing, there is a scene in it. It's 41 seconds long, but there's a scene in it where literally they are laying out shackles, and it's just the sound of chains hitting the ground. And the way that it is shot and put together is in this way of. It's like, first of all, ASMR videos are sensual, right? Truly, there's almost borderline erotic thing with ASMRs that. That. That's why influencers capitalize on it, all this stuff. And to use, like, that framework to talk about, like, the rattling of chains, the sound of, like, men being held in literal bondage, like, walking up, you know, to be deported. Like, there's this feeling of like. Of. Of true, like, release and joy that is, like, strangely psychosexual that I think really, like, it made my stomach drop because of that realization of, like, oh, they are not. Like, this is not a portrayal of these people who are being deported as not only worthy of human dignity, but, like. Like, people themselves. And that is just, like, really genuinely disturbing. And the fact that it's coming from something that bears the White House, like, I'm. I'm trying not to get, like, all, you know, on the high horse about institutions, but it really is, it's the White House, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's like, it couldn't be more alarming to me. That's sort of why I wrote about it. It's just like, it just signifies something. The word I, I use was like, sinister. Like there's something sinister about the way that they're excited about it. And that's kind of. Yeah.
- [61:35]
Jon Favreau
And I also, it made me think that if we, you know, a problem we've talked about a lot with social media and the Internet, but especially social media, is that it sort of flattens everything. It does. You know, you can get in fights on social media more easily because you don't see the face of the person. You don't see their expressions that you sometimes you don't even know, you know, what they look like if they don't have their picture up. Right. And so there's this anonymity which makes kind of, you know, dehumanizing behavior easier to do. And I think that now with the way that the politics are of, of Maga and Trump and Elon, when you combine that with how we all get our information, it, you know, I, I, part of me feels like if we're going to survive this, like, we're gonna have to maintain our sense of humanity, which requires us to not be swimming in all of this filth all the time. Because you can very easily see how people can just, even if they don't start there, sort of go to a place where they're like, oh, yeah, it's another joke and whatever. I'm not shocked anymore. And I've seen it all and I'm gonna laugh too, and whatever else. Right. Like, I do think there's a, there's a danger there.
- [62:49]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah. I mean, I, again, there's a way in which like, some, some of this can read as like, you know, you're clutching pearls while people are having fun online with some of like the AI art stuff. But like, I do think that there's something troubling instinctually about this. Like, OpenAI comes out with this tool and like very quickly, like the meme on a place like X was like, how do we take, you know, the most like fucked up moments of like, news and politics from the last century and like run them through this thing like that. That is sort of the, the instinct there. And like, you know, the, the person who did the Columbine shooter image in the studio Ghibli style was an employee of X. He was one of Elon Musk's employees.
- [63:38]
Charlie Warzel
At X, of course.
- [63:39]
David Papadopoulos
And the thing was captioned with oh my God. OpenAI. Let me do this. Lmfao. Right? And it's just that detached irony again. I get it. This person is not him. They're not school shooters themselves. It's. I understand. They're like edgelords having fun online or being provoking or this detached sense of irony. But it's just like that instinct feels really corrosive that that is what we reach for. Whenever there's a new piece of technology or a new thing to talk about, we bring it into this prism. And it is. At the end of the day, it is like if it's not dehumanizing, it's like it's flattening, like you said, or putting another layer between you and the humanity of something else.
- [64:25]
Jon Favreau
Yes. Yeah. And it is something for people to be aware of when they are scrolling through their feeds and seeing that. Charlie, this was fun. Even though. Even though the state of the world is fucking awful. Next time you come back, we'll have to have better news, hopefully to talk about on the Internet, but this was great. Thanks for doing it.
- [64:45]
David Papadopoulos
Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it, as always.
- [64:47]
Jon Favreau
If you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email us@offlinercricket.com and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod, Save America, exclusive content and more. Join our Friends of the Pod subscription community@qriket.com friends and if you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more.
- [65:17]
David Papadopoulos
Foreign.
- [65:24]
Jon Favreau
Is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich Frank. Jordan Kanter is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglin. Delon Villanueva produces our 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 East.
- [66:09]
Charlie Warzel
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