Trump Truths vs. Trump Tweets, Chappell Roan's Non-Endorsement, and Behind the Scenes at Elon's Twitter

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode Summary
Title: Trump Truths vs. Trump Tweets, Chappell Roan's Non-Endorsement, and Behind the Scenes at Elon's Twitter
Release Date: September 29, 2024
Host/Author: Crooked Media

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau converses with Kate Conger, a technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the book Character Limitations. The discussion delves deep into the evolving dynamics of social media, the political landscape, and the profound impact of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Throughout the episode, the hosts navigate through complex topics with insightful commentary, enriched by notable quotes and real-time analyses.

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1. Trump’s Transition from Twitter to Truth Social

The episode kicks off with a critical examination of former President Donald Trump's migration from Twitter to his own platform, Truth Social.

• Charlie Warzell's Perspective: Jon introduces Charlie Warzell’s The Atlantic piece, arguing that Trump's posts on Truth Social have become "darker and more deranged" compared to his tenure on Twitter. Warzell suggests that the diminished visibility of Trump’s messages due to Truth Social's limited user base obscures the extent of Trump's political deterioration.

  Jon Favreau [03:08]: "Imagine that instead of Donald Trump's, you were looking at the feed of a relative. What would you say or do? Whom would you call?"

• Kate’s Analysis: Kate concurs, noting that while Truth Social attempts to emulate Twitter's reach, the content often lacks the same impact.

  Kate Conger [04:31]: "He was always deranged. I understand why people would say, like, wow, this is so much crazier. I don't think it is. It’s just not."

• Impact on Public Perception: The conversation highlights concerns that excluding Trump from major platforms may lead to a collective amnesia about his influence, potentially softening public perceptions of his threat.

  Jon Favreau [05:25]: "I think the danger of Donald Trump has become more abstract."

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2. Chapel Roan’s Non-Endorsement of Kamala Harris and Political Discourse

Shifting focus, the hosts discuss Chapel Roan’s controversial stance on endorsing Kamala Harris, sparking widespread online backlash.

• Roan's Statement: Chapel Roan expressed reservations about endorsing a single candidate, emphasizing her frustration with policies on both political sides.

  Chapel Roan [16:41]: "I have so many issues with our government in every way. There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don't feel pressured to endorse someone."

• Public Reaction and Misinterpretation: The initial reaction criticized Roan for perceived political ambivalence, leading her to clarify her position.

  Jon Favreau [15:50]: "She just doesn't want to endorse."

• Broader Implications: Kate Broader evaluates how Roan’s stance reflects a generational disillusionment with polarized politics, exacerbated by social media's tendency to promote nihilistic views over constructive dialogue.

  Kate Conger [23:01]: "This is leading to the backlash. But I think instead of beating up on her, we should examine the media environment."

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3. John Mulaney’s Satirical Roast of Salesforce

The episode also covers John Mulaney’s recent performance where he humorously critiqued Salesforce at their own conference.

• Performance Highlights: Mulaney's set included sharp jokes about AI buzzwords and Silicon Valley's corporate culture, earning mixed reactions from the audience.

  Jon Favreau [28:21]: "He got... he really went, he good for John Wayne."

• Cultural Commentary: Kate interprets Mulaney’s roast as a reflection of Big Tech's declining cultural standing, noting the comedian's boldness in addressing the failings of a tech giant.

  Kate Conger [29:14]: "It's symbolic of how much big tech has fallen in the culture."

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4. Elon Musk’s Acquisition of Twitter: A Deep Dive with Kate Conger

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, based on insights from Kate Conger's book, Character Limitations.

a. Pre-Musk Era and Foundational Issues

• Internal Struggles: Kate outlines the dysfunctional state of Twitter before Musk's acquisition, highlighting CEO Jack Dorsey's disengagement and the platform's financial woes.

  Kate Conger [36:02]: "Jack Dorsey had been the CEO for a long time and got really disillusioned with the platform."

b. Musk’s Vision vs. Reality

• Blue Sky Initiative: Originally a project aimed at decentralizing social media, Blue Sky sought to create interoperability between platforms, akin to email communications. However, Musk sidelined this vision, indicating a preference for a more centralized, ideologically aligned platform.

  Jon Favreau [39:00]: "Blue sky would have theoretically fit with Elon's initial vision of what Twitter should be."

• Project Saturn: An initiative aimed at tiered content moderation, categorizing content into rings based on offensiveness. Kate explains that despite Parag Agrawal's efforts, Musk dismissed the project, reflecting his lack of commitment to the outlined ideals.

  Kate Conger [44:09]: "Project Saturn was an attempt at creating a content moderation system... but was eventually dismissed by Elon."

c. Financial Implications and User Metrics

• Declining Valuation: Musk's acquisition significantly devalued Twitter from $44 billion to approximately $12-19 billion, with external metrics suggesting a 20-30% user decline.

  Max Fisher [35:31]: "User numbers decreased between 20 and 30% according to external metrics."

• Sustainability Concerns: The financial strain, including over a billion dollars in annual loan interest, raises questions about Twitter's long-term viability under Musk’s leadership.

  Kate Conger [61:22]: "Eventually, he may work himself into a position where he's not willing to keep it afloat financially."

d. Musk’s Personal Influences and Political Shift

• Personal Struggles: Musk’s opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and personal issues, such as his child's gender transition, are cited as factors pushing him towards more radical political views.

  Max Fisher [54:05]: "He was very opposed to those [lockdowns] because they affected manufacturing in his Tesla facilities."

• Feud with Mark Zuckerberg: An ongoing rivalry dating back to differing views on AI, culminating in public jabs and strained relations.

  Max Fisher [54:50]: "Musk has a really interesting feud with Zuckerberg... he feels like AI was going to destroy humanity."

e. Content Moderation and Platform Direction

• Shift to the Right: Under Musk, Twitter has tilted towards a more right-leaning user base, aligning with his own political inclinations.

  Max Fisher [59:28]: "He has shifted the platform to a more right tenor."

• User Engagement and Algorithmic Changes: The abandonment of initiatives like Project Saturn reflects Musk’s prioritization of ideological alignment over nuanced content moderation.

  Max Fisher [40:27]: "He's making a platform that endorses the kind of speech that he likes to see."

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5. Broader Impacts on Social Media and Political Discourse

Jon and Kate explore how these shifts influence the broader information ecosystem, emphasizing the challenges posed by algorithm-driven content that often promotes extremism over balanced discourse.

• Echo Chambers and Information Bubbles: The conversation underscores the difficulty of escaping algorithmically curated feeds that reinforce existing beliefs, contributing to political polarization.

  Jon Favreau [23:18]: "We are all victims to our information environment."

• Role of Celebrities in Politics: The episode examines how public figures like Chapel Roan are navigating political endorsements amidst a fragmented media landscape, highlighting the tension between personal beliefs and audience expectations.

  Kate Conger [20:48]: "Someone who is very online... is repeating back the politics she has absorbed from her TikTok feed."

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Conclusion

The episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a comprehensive analysis of the intricate relationship between social media platforms, political discourse, and individual influencers. Through the lens of Kate Conger's investigative reporting, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the transformative (and often tumultuous) changes orchestrated by figures like Elon Musk. The discussion serves as a timely reminder of the profound impact digital platforms wield over public perception and democratic processes, urging a collective introspection on navigating the digital age responsibly.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [03:08]: "Imagine that instead of Donald Trump's, you were looking at the feed of a relative. What would you say or do?"

• Kate Conger [04:31]: "He was always deranged. I understand why people would say, like, wow, this is so much crazier. I don't think it is."

• Max Fisher [35:31]: "User numbers decreased between 20 and 30% according to external metrics."

• Jon Favreau [23:18]: "We are all victims to our information environment."

• Kate Conger [20:48]: "Someone who is very online... is repeating back the politics she has absorbed from her TikTok feed."

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This summary encapsulates the pivotal discussions from the episode, offering listeners a clear and detailed overview of the topics covered, complete with insightful quotes and timestamps for reference.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

This lasagna was so cheesy, my plate was filled with saucy slices. Then a flimsy store brand plate. No, no, no, no. Ruined it. Next time, get Dixie Ultra plates three times stronger than the leading store brand.

[Max Fisher]

10 inch paper plate.

[Kate Conger]

Dixie.

[Jon Favreau]

Make it right.

[Max Fisher]

In all of my time reporting on Elon, I've learned to not report things until he does them because he often says something and then changes his mind or, you know, it never comes to fruition. That being said, I mean, hearing him and Trump talk on X Spaces about this government efficiency commission, it just reminds me of this scene in the book where Elon calls a big staff meeting on a Saturday and has everyone come in and he starts going through Twitter's budget line by line and making anyone who's spending money account for what they're spending and why. And if people can't answer him about why they need to spend the money, he's firing them on the spot. And I think that that's something that Elon would love to do with the federal government. And, you know, I think he might at least go once to OMB and ask them to see a spreadsheet and then maybe he'll get bored.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Kate Conger]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

And you just heard from today's guest, technology reporter at the New York Times and author of the new book Character Limitations, Kate Conger.

[Kate Conger]

Big Kate fan.

[Jon Favreau]

She's awesome and I love the book. So we've done quite a few Twitter death watch segments here on this show. Kate and her Times colleague Ryan Mack have written the book about Elon's takeover and subsequent deterioration of the platform that I remain addicted to. There's a ton of great behind the scenes reporting about all of Twitter's problems before Musk took over, how and why he bought the company and the decisions he's made since. We talk about all that, and Kate answers some burning questions that addicts like me have about the future of the platform once known as twitter.com I'm still calling it Twitter.

[Kate Conger]

It's still Twitter. I know whenever I see it referenced just as X now, I'm like, come on, hold strong.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, exactly. Like, why have you surrendered media person who's using X?

[Kate Conger]

Well, I can't wait for this book. I have been holding out on buying a Twitter book because I'm waiting for this one. I'm really excited to read it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's worth a read. Before we get to that, we have news to cover, including the discourse around Chapel Roan's decision to Support, but not endorse Kamala Harris.

[Kate Conger]

We're going to get into it.

[Jon Favreau]

And John Mulaney's hilarious takedown of Salesforce at the company's own conference.

[Kate Conger]

Did you rate this one, too? Jon Favreau, ghostwriting job? I wish.

[Jon Favreau]

It's hilarious. But first, longtime offline friend Charlie Warzell wrote an Atlantic piece this week titled the Trump posts you probably aren't seeing, in which he argues that Trump's Truth Social posts have become darker and more deranged than any of his old stuff on Twitter. And because Truth Social is a piece of shit platform that no one really uses, not good. Trump's truths don't get quite the same attention his tweets once did. And Charlie argues this is causing us to miss just how much the man who's got a 5050 chance to become the next president has deteriorated.

[Kate Conger]

5545. Nate Silver's oh, you're.

[Jon Favreau]

You're a Silver Bulletin guy on that.

[Kate Conger]

Well, I wasn't, but now I am.

[Jon Favreau]

Now is the numbers better?

[Kate Conger]

That's how I read the polls.

[Jon Favreau]

Uh, here's a quote from Charlie's piece. It's not just that Trump seems unpresidential. It's that he seems like an unwell, elderly man posting a slop for an audience of bots on Facebook. Imagine that instead of Donald Trump's, you were looking at the feed of a relative. What would you say or do? Whom would you call? Honestly, probably nothing. I'd be like, I'd like, tell my parents, like crazy uncle whoever.

[Kate Conger]

I would ask Kamala Harris to fix that, too, actually.

[Jon Favreau]

Have you ever taken the chance to look through Trump's Truth Social rants?

[Kate Conger]

So I read through some of them, and I have to tell you, I kind of came away feeling the same way I do about his rallies, where it's like, it's kind of the same, but just less juice. And they're like, a lot of them are still clearly written by Dan Scavino, who was the White House social media person who would obviously write all of Trump's tweets, but was between like 7am and 10pm but then you could tell it switched over, went back to Trump because it got crazier again. Let me read you one of them from August. This is all caps. Very important to know we're beating her quote like a drum, end quote. Like, we will beat her on November 5th. It's all fake. It's all misinformation and disinformation. We are destroying the Democrats on social media. I don't I gotta tell you, it doesn't have the same magic.

[Jon Favreau]

Doesn't hit the same way as it's really.

[Kate Conger]

I don't. I understand why. I mean, he was always deranged. I understand why people would say, like, wow, this is so much crazier. I don't think it is. I think that it's just not. He doesn't have the same edge and width that he used to bring to this. So now you're just seeing the derangement that has always been there.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's a good point. Like, it's hard to untangle what is him being on Truth Social and not Twitter, and what is just the fact that we are all dulled to the crazy. Right. I, you know, I mean, Charlie concludes his piece saying that he's always believed the best way to understand Donald Trump was via plain text saying, quote, unlike on television, his fragmented attention, peculiar thinking and dangerous words cannot hide or be explained away. What do you think? Like, do you think the. Did the danger of Donald Trump become more abstract? I don't know if it has.

[Kate Conger]

Yeah. So this argument has circulated ever since 2020, when all the major platforms removed Trump. And people have this concern that it's like, hey, are we losing touch with how scary Donald Trump is? Because we're not seeing his tweets as much anymore. And I think it's rising again. Now is a way to try to answer the question of, like, why do. When you ask so many voters, how do you feel about Donald Trump? They used to be really scared of him, and now they're kind of not anymore. And people seem to have forgotten how scary he was. And I think we're looking for an explanation for that. I think the reason that the threat became more abstract is he's not president anymore and it's four years ago and people have short memories. I will make the argument until the day I die. De. Platforming Trump was a good thing to do, was the right thing to do. I think we really forget what it was like to live your entire life with Trump in total control of the world's attention every day through these social media posts that would get tens of millions of views on the major platforms, sometimes hundreds of millions. And of course, the rallies that would also get play on all the networks.

[Jon Favreau]

But do you think it was because he was president, like you were saying, or because he was on Twitter?

[Kate Conger]

I mean, it was both. Clearly, you can't separate the two, but I think it was. I mean, his reach on Facebook was vastly more than his reach ever was on Twitter. And it was like you could look at the numbers and see how much his reach would be exaggerated by the algorithm. Then it gets bled into all the other parts of the Facebook ecosystem. So it would play out in all these other Facebook groups and all sorts of other corners of Facebook where people would like follow onto his message or try to repeat what he was saying to go viral as well. Think back to what it was like in 2020 when Trump basically ran the Internet thanks to the social media platforms. His posts accusing the state governments of being authoritarians for enforcing Covid rules led our mobs to show up at state capitols and public events, which led to a lot of real world violence. All this Covid misinformation, all the Ivermectin bullshit, got a lot of people killed. There was a long time when you would hear stories every week about like, oh my husb on his deathbed said that he saw viral Facebook Trump posts saying to take Ivermectin. So he died from COVID exposure. Like his voting misinformation because it would go so viral and would then bleed out into so many other parts of Facebook, led in part to January 6th. Like, remember when the looting starts, the shooting starts. A real fear that was going to provoke nationwide violence. So this idea that like, oh, it was actually good that he had that reach because it reminded people that he was crazy. I don't think that's how social platforms work. They are designed to be persuasive and I think they were.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'll take the other side. Yeah. And it's mostly because of my position as a political hack trying to figure out how to win elections. Few things. I think if Trump became president tomorrow and there was some other crisis pandemic or whatever else, and he was not tweeting it, tweeting through it, he would still be in that White House press briefing room every day.

[Kate Conger]

That's true.

[Jon Favreau]

Saying crazy shit, spreading misinformation, disinformation. All of his people would be all over the Internet and all their different now. Everything's more decentralized now. So there'd be the tweets, the Facebook posts, the Newsmax segments.

[Kate Conger]

That's where people would get it.

[Jon Favreau]

The rumble stuff, the podcast. Right. It's everywhere. And I do, I think that there are. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like because there's a lot of voters like this who the last time they really checked in on politics and Donald Trump was when he was in the White House. And since he left, they Were like, eh, I'm not paying much attention.

[Kate Conger]

Sure. Which speaks to why people have lost a sense of the stakes.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And I do think you've seen that in the polls. That. And this was the, this was the Biden campaign's theory of the case. It is. It is. It's still the theory of the case in a way, for the Kamala Harris campaign, though, because she's a new candidate, they have to do more to define her. So they're working so they want more attention for her, but they also still want attention for Donald Trump. Now, you can talk to. A lot of the pollsters will say this, the super PAC folks will say this. Everyone says that. They're like, look, the stuff about Trump, it doesn't move votes at this point because it's all baked in. And everyone has made up their mind about Donald Trump. I think that may be true. But again, if you're one of these people who's tuned out then four years ago was a long time. And like, yeah, you remember, you think about January 6th, that seemed bad. Trump was bad for that a couple years ago. And he used to say crazy shit. But then they have this vague notion of the economy was good.

[Kate Conger]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And then you see Trump on a debate stage, which they did next to Kamala Harris, and you're reminded tens of millions of people watch that, and he says, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. And you remember and you're like, oh, yeah. Like, I think that the Trump amnesia stuff is being solved not by reminding people what he did back then, but by him being in the spotlight again. And so the more Trump that people are seeing, I think the better. And I realize it's not going to move more people at this point because of views of Donald Trump are pretty hardened, but he also has the highest favorability he's had in any run for president right now.

[Kate Conger]

Is that true?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Kate Conger]

I didn't realize that. Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Kate Conger]

That's upsetting.

[Jon Favreau]

Is higher favorable rate, higher favorability ratings ever before. And my view on that is that it is.

[Kate Conger]

People have lost. They're not connected with what he actually now thinking. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Is the reason for that, that he's not tweeting? I don't, I don't necessarily agree with that.

[Kate Conger]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's just people are tired of the Trump show.

[Kate Conger]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And they've. They think that they've made up their minds and we're sort of dulled to it now. I think a lot of different stuff's at play. But, you know, that's why I wasn't. Look, I wanted him off Twitter.

[Kate Conger]

Ye.

[Jon Favreau]

I was. I was like, celebrating when it happened, but then that was when I thought he would go away forever and not run for fucking president again. And now that he's almost president again, my theory is like, yes, that stuff could be persuasive, but I also think when people are trying to make a choice between two candidates, he still has. He's still a very unpopular political figure, or at least has been historically and has just eked out his win in 2016 and has not been popular since then. And so as we're heading towards another close election where his favorability ratings are up, yes, I think that the majority of the work to defeat him is going to be persuading people that Kamala Harris is the right alternative.

[Kate Conger]

But then. So how do you reconnect people with reminding them this is who Trump is and what he looks like and sound like? Because to me, putting him. I know this is not what you're advocating, but just imagining him being back on Facebook or Twitter is the worst possible, to me would be the worst possible way to do that. Because we know that those platforms are designed in a way where they don't expose you to those posts to show you how ridiculous they are, but rather to be persuasive.

[Jon Favreau]

Depends on the post. Right. Like, some of those truth, social stuff is. Are lies that I think if they were out in the world and a lot of people saw them, I would worry that a lot of people would believe them.

[Kate Conger]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Some of it's just like, I don't know, like, if everyone in the world saw I hate Taylor Swift in all caps, I don't know how that's helping. I don't know if it's hurting him, but I don't know it's helping him or like, and there's just a lot of shit like that on the truths. The craziest truths are the retruths.

[Kate Conger]

Like, it's true.

[Jon Favreau]

He's posted like, his feed, like dozens and dozens. He's reposted Laura Loomer, like, really dark, gross, racist, vile shit. I think some of that would not help him, though. It also. It's always a balance because it would not help him politically. But would it drive and incite potential violence? Yeah, maybe. So it's, it's.

[Kate Conger]

Well, so the irony to this whole discussion is that the platforms have allowed him back on Twitter, reinstated his account two years ago. Facebook and Instagram reinstated him last year. Or I'm sorry, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube reinstated him last year, and he's just choosing not to use them, which is so funny because they were so important to him getting elected.

[Jon Favreau]

I was going to ask you why you think he's not. Because he is back on Twitter and he is tweeting. I would bet anything that it's the campaign tweeting for him.

[Kate Conger]

Oh, absolutely, because the tweets clearly not him.

[Jon Favreau]

The tweets are still crazy, but they're like a few clicks.

[Kate Conger]

They're Dan Scavino.

[Jon Favreau]

That's crazy. Yeah, they're a few clicks and they're like, in the ballpark of what the campaign wants is their message.

[Kate Conger]

You can always tell by the syntax and you can tell by the caps if it's Trump or if it's Dan Scavino.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's true.

[Kate Conger]

It's clearly Scavino.

[Jon Favreau]

Why do you think he's not tweeting?

[Kate Conger]

So the prevailing answer to this is because of his equity and Truth Social, which has lost like 300% of its market value since going public. And he's got a bunch of money potentially in there that he could get out if the stock were to come back up. I think the real answer, though, is that he just a curmudgeonly old guy who prefers to be on a platform that is literally designed to cater to his exact preferences and to be a cozy little place for him. And I think he wants that more than he wants to do the work of trying to reach people on Facebook and Twitter. And he's probably still mad at both of those platforms, too, for removing him in the first place.

[Jon Favreau]

I also got to say, to Charlie's point about text versus in person, before Pod Save America yesterday, I sat and watched the entire press conference that Trump delivered in at Trump Tower in New York, and I hadn't watched one for a while. Yeah, it wasn't much of a press conference. He took like five questions at the end, but he. Before he took the questions, he went on for almost an hour. Did he really? And it was just like unintelligible, meandering, rage, bait, crazy. Like, I didn't need to read any of that in text. Yeah, just watching it was. That was more than enough. Look, this is all why, by the way, the Harris campaign wants another debate.

[Kate Conger]

Because they want him in front of people.

[Jon Favreau]

October 23rd, a couple weeks before the election. One more reminder to people that this is who Donald Trump is. That would help.

[Kate Conger]

It is very ironic that back in 2018, all the major TV networks made the decision, guys, we have to stop airing the Trump rallies all the time because it's poison that we're putting into the bloodstream of the American public. And he's just lying, and it's hate speech and misinformation. And now I think there's a case that it would actually be healthier for American Democr if people saw him more.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, also, you can't. In this media environment, you can't hide this shit anymore. And if you are. If you look like you're hiding the shit, then people are going to be like, oh, there's something I got to go check out. It's forbidden, these Trump rallies. You know, like, it's. I don't think it helps in any.

[Kate Conger]

Way, but even the people who go to the rallies are bored by the rallies. They all leave early.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, they do. Well, that's like two hours long. In other news this week, rising pop superstar Chapel Rowan became a discourse main character thanks to a Guardian interview where she answered a question about her political views. Quote, I have so many issues with our government in every way. There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don't feel pressured to endorse someone. There's problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote, vote small, vote for what's going on in your city. She went on to say her most important issue was trans rights. The Internet quickly latched on to Roan's there's problems on both sides remark and quickly attacked the singer for not recognizing the difference between the two candidates, especially on trans rights. Chapel later released a TikTok clarifying her original quote. Can we play the clip?

[Max Fisher]

I don't agree with a lot of what is going on with, like, policies. Like, obviously, fuck the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left. That's why I can't endorse. That's why I can't, like, put my entire name in my entire project behind one.

[Jon Favreau]

So, in fairness to Chapel, here's what she said to Rolling Stone back in August. And she sort of references this in her TikTok. Right now, it's more important than ever to use your vote, and I will do whatever it takes to protect people's civil rights, especially the LGBTQ community. My ethics and values will always align with that, and that hasn't changed with a different nominee. I feel lucky to be alive during an incredibly historical time period when a woman of color is a presidential nominee. So she has a point that she earlier did make it seem like she was not going to not vote for or support Kamala Harris at all, that she just doesn't want to endorse. But stepping back, what do you make of this whole fiasco?

[Kate Conger]

So I have a whole take about. Not her specifically, but kind of what this speaks to. About our politics to unspool. So before we kind of get into that, I'm curious what your reaction was to it.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'm a chapel fan.

[Kate Conger]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm a newer fan on the bandwagon because I'm old now, so I don't know what the kids are listening, but I'd say like a couple months ago. And I've been like, obsessed with her album. It's like the top album I'm listening to on Spotify all the time. But I have a very. And I've gone through this with, you know, liking Taylor Swift too. I don't think that artists, musicians, celebrities like that, you. That their politics have to align with yours in order to enjoy them.

[Kate Conger]

Totally. I like Ted Nugent music and that guy. Bad politics.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, Bad, very bad politics. And so like this whole discourse around artists not doing the exact political thing we want them to do drives me a little fucking baddie.

[Kate Conger]

That's fair. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Just in general, the standard that we.

[Kate Conger]

Hold them to, that they all have to be perfect politics, politicians and avatars have.

[Jon Favreau]

And my take on her is she. And look, she is. She's said this in other interviews. She is struggling with this newfound fame. Right. She is an artist who she's been around for a while. Her record label dropped her at one point after she released Pink Pony Club, I think in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Then she got dropped from her label and then she just kept working at it, working and came back. And now suddenly she's like just blown up. Right, Right. And I think she struggled with that level of fame. People who go through that, like, they don't realize that once you are a, like a public figure in like a mega pop star way, suddenly there's all this pressure on you to do and say everything perfectly. And like, she clearly has not done her research into politics. And that's not meant as a. Like, so have most voters not done their research? Right, Right. Like, she is representing a generation. A lot of people in Gen Z. A lot of people in all the generations at this point. Yeah, a lot of people who just have not tuned into politics. And it sounds like her political views have come from, you know, bits and pieces of social media. Like it sounds like your typical, like leftist adjacent person on social media with her views. And we've seen. I've seen plenty of Twitter accounts like this, and it's like they. Both sides are terrible, left and the right. And like, what does this choice make a difference? And does it drive me nuts? Yeah, it drives me nuts. But I also think to myself, like, well, it's our job to persuade these people that, you know, that actually Kamala Harris is worth supporting. And maybe they think the views that the left holds that they don't like, that's fine. But the way the system is, you have two choices. You know what I'm saying? Like, I just think it's on us to, like, talk to those people. So, yeah, can it be annoying when you hear something like that? Of course. But, you know, I don't.

[Kate Conger]

So I think that is what is interesting about this and why I'm glad we're talking about it. I, like, you, don't love her message and I have no desire to beat up on her for it because I think that she seems to be, like a good person who really holds progressive values strongly and really wants to stand up for and lift those values. She's, like, holding fundraisers. Like, she's trying to make the world a better place. At the same time, she is also extremely online, and trying to be a good, progressive person and being extremely online are two things that can work against each other in ways that I think we're seeing play out with her. Like, we have talked a lot about how social media algorithms consistently pull you towards doomerism and nihilism. And that is very. Sits very uncomfortably with this election right now. That is very, like a very high stakes, very close race between a progressive Democrat and a far right authoritarian. And what's gonna go viral in this moment is not content that lays out those stakes clearly, but rather content that negates those stakes by saying that, like, both sides are bad. Fuck both sides. Like this kind of doomerist. It doesn't matter. And so someone who is very online, like Chapel Rhone, what she's going to see on her TikTok feed is content that says, sure, Trump might be bad, but the Democrats are also evil and beyond the pale. Which leads to a politics that you're hearing her expressing. You hear a lot of people of her generation express that it would both be fundamentally, like, dangerous for Trump to be elected, but also immoral to support Kamala Harris in any way beyond grudgingly pulling the lever for her. And even if you do tell people to pull the lever for Kamala Harris, it's important to undercut that by saying the Democrats are evil incarnate and that it's wrong to support them. And when you try to avoid like you're right to laugh at that because when you say it out loud it sounds self contradictory. It sounds like out of touch with reality. And Chapel Roan, because she is very online and because she's feeling this pressure to be the avatar for her generation and for young progressives, is repeating back the politics she has absorbed from her TikTok feed, which she does spend a lot of time on. And that is what is leading to the backlash. But I think instead of beating up on her for that, we should be examining the media environment that has led so many people like her, who really want to do the right thing to believe that both sides are the same on for example, trans rights, which they are definitely not.

[Jon Favreau]

And everyone should realize that. You may think that your political views are just really well thought out and researched, but we can all be victims to this. We are all victims to our information environment.

[Kate Conger]

Absolutely right.

[Jon Favreau]

We are products of our information environment. And in order to have a more holistic, nuanced view of politics, you've really got to try hard to go outside of your information bubble. This is not an appeal to fucking centrism. This is just like you've gotta, you know, but like you've gotta look at, look for well researched, thoughtful, true. And look, it's hard to find this shit on the Internet, right? That's the problem, you know, and it's not on the Internet, but on social media certainly, right? Like you know, your TikToks, your tweets, your posts, wherever they may be. Like, it's just, you're not, you're gonna see the most extreme versions. And it doesn't always have to be, we've talked about this before, but it doesn't always have to be misinformation or disinformation. It can just be the most sort of emotionally resonant content that is pushing you one way or the other. And it can be like actually true, but maybe just not the whole story with the whole context.

[Kate Conger]

Well, the issue I always think of when I think about the way that TikTok specifically but social media generally, doomerism is I think leading a lot of young progressives astray is climate. Because if you think about something like Gaza, like I do not agree with her read that the entire Democratic Party supports genocide. I don't think that's what's happening here. But obviously there is like a well founded criticism be had but climate is an issue that ostensibly young progressives on TikTok care a lot about. And I believe that they do. But the message that you get on young progressive TikTok is that both parties are the same. Both parties don't want to do anything for climate. They don't want to do anything for the environment, and nothing has happened. And meanwhile, well, back here in reality, truly amazing things are happening on climate legislation. Like we just did an episode of how we got here on the climate policies and just specifically the energy policies under the Biden administration. It's incredible. 97% of new energy this year in the United States, renewable. They have quadrupled solar panel production just this year. Really, if you care about climate, there are so many reasons to get excited about pulling the lever for Kamala. And the fact that you get zero of that on TikTok I think is a good way to underscore for people. This is not a good place to figure out how to advocate for the issues that you care about.

[Jon Favreau]

The Sunrise movement was Here we Go. Posting this week, 40 days before an election, some of their members protesting outside of Kamala Harris home.

[Kate Conger]

Come on. Yeah, what are we doing?

[Jon Favreau]

You know? And look, so they are mad about oil leases, natural gas fracking, which again, you can be opposed to new oil and gas leases. You could be opposed to fracking. Fine. I don't want those energy sources. Right. Fossil fuel subsidies, don't want that. Right. But like you said, how much more energy we're producing that's clean energy now than we ever did before. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris passed the largest, biggest climate bill in history, the most federal investment in climate, not just in this country, but of any country.

[Kate Conger]

On earth by a huge margin.

[Jon Favreau]

Does that mean you should shut up and pat them on the back and never. No, of course not. But like, it's 40 days from an election and we're trying to get. Trying to get people out there because guess what? Donald Trump wins.

[Kate Conger]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what's going to happen to the climate then?

[Kate Conger]

It's not going to be good. It turns out there is a big difference between the parties. It's so funny you mentioned sunrise. There were after the debate, because Kamala talked a lot about fracking during the debate and there were a bunch of news stories that were like, here is why. Even though Kamala talked a bunch about fracking in the debate, every major climate organization is like, pulling every lever they possibly can for her and is like, all in behind Kamala. But every story had a big asterisk it was like, well, except for the sunrise movement. Because, you know, I know it's sad.

[Jon Favreau]

It's sad because there's a lot of good people in that organization, too.

[Kate Conger]

A lot of good people on both sides.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, one last fun one. Last week at Dreamforce, the annual conference put on by Silicon Valley giant Salesforce, comic John Mulaney, paid by Salesforce to headline the conference, roasted the conference's more than 40,000 attendees in a set that, according to the San Francisco standard, made the audience groan. Mulaney took aim at AI corporate buzzwords and the incompetence of Silicon Valley types in general. Unfortunately, we don't have video, but some of the best jokes include, if AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that humans should die, then I think we should die. So many of you feel imminently replaceable. Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar? He then. He then thanked Salesforce employees, quote, for the world you're creating for my son, where he will never talk to an actual human again. He also compared their work to him playing baseball with his three year old, saying, we're just two guys hitting wiffle balls badly and yelling good job at each other. It's sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce.

[Kate Conger]

He got. He really went, he good for John Wayne. Good for him. I say this as praise that he crossed the line between, like, fun roasting. Because I was reading some jokes from prior versions of these and it's like, it's kind of tradition for, like, the comet comes on and gently roast them. But it's in a, like, we're all in on the joke way. This is one of his favorite jokes. You look like a group who looked at the self checkout counter at CVS and thought, this is the future. Wow. That's not one that everybody. That is one where John Mulaney can laugh at that one. So it's both very funny and good for him for taking their money and then roasting them. I do feel like this is symbolic of how much big tech has fallen in the culture that it is now considered, like, kind of laudable for just a, like, mainstream comedian. He's not even like a super edgy, whatever, like a mainstream comedian to go on and to be like, fuck you guys.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, does everyone not see Silicon Valley, the HBO show? Like, we've been doing this. Kat's been out of the bag for a while on roasting Silicon Valley.

[Kate Conger]

I think people in Silicon Valley view that show as making fun of them in like a loving way. I do. I think that's what. I think that is happening.

[Jon Favreau]

That was pretty harsh at times.

[Kate Conger]

It was.

[Jon Favreau]

I gotta go back and watch that again.

[Kate Conger]

It's a fun show. It really. It really.

[Jon Favreau]

They deserve it. They deserve it. I'm also just off reading Kate's book, Kate Ryan's book, character limit. And it's like, oh my God.

[Kate Conger]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

Elon. I don't want to get into a whole Elon Musk thing, but like that fucking guy and the fanboys and the whole. They just.

[Kate Conger]

It is kind of ironic that he delivered it at Salesforce, which is like.

[Jon Favreau]

I know.

[Kate Conger]

I was going to say far from the worst.

[Jon Favreau]

Like you could have gone to OpenAI.

[Kate Conger]

Yes, right. I. I wish that Metta had hosted him. But Meta knows not to host people like this for exactly that reason. So. Salesforce, we thank you for your service and being the vanguard to take the jokes on behalf of all of Silicon.

[Jon Favreau]

Valley and All right, before we jump to the break, some quick housekeeping. Join Pod Save America next Sunday, October 6th, at our last show of the year and our biggest venue yet, the Met Philadelphia. It's your last chance to come to a show before the election, so don't miss the opportunity to see us at our most anxious will. Thanks for reminding me. We'll be joined by our guest host, friend of the show, Simone Sanders Townsend of msnbc and our incredible guest, the delightful Senator Bob Casey. Get your tickets [e-mail] events and for a limited time we're given 15% off all non VIP tickets with code PODSAVE15. Also, can everyone just make sure you're registered to vote?

[Kate Conger]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Please vote whether you've moved, turned 18 or just need to update your info. Making sure you're registered to vote is the first step step to winning in November. Your voice matters and the election will be decided by people just like you and your friends and family turning out. Head to Votes Save America's website to register, check your status or request a mail in ballot. Quick, easy, makes all the difference. Visit votesave america.com/vote to get started today. This message is paid for by Votes of America and has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, my conversation with Kate Conger about Elon Musk's quest to destroy Twitter. The credit card companies are ripping you off and you don't even know it. Every time you use your credit card, they charge a hidden swipe fee. It costs the average family more than eleven hundred dollars per year. Eleven hundred dollars. That's because the credit card companies organize banks into pricing cartels. It's like OPEC for credit cards with no competition. We have the highest credit card swipe fees in the world. That's just wrong. Thankfully, the House and Senate have a bipartisan bill to fix this problem. It's called the Credit Card Competition Act. It would finally make credit card companies compete like every business across the country is supposed to do. So call your senators and representatives and tell them to pass the Credit Card Competition Act. Offline is brought to you by three Day Blinds. There's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters and drapery. And it's called three Day Blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of custom window treatments in the US and right now they're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. Three Day Blinds has a local professionally trained design consultants who have an average of 10 plus years of experience that provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment and you'll get a free no obligation quote the same day. Three Day Blinds handles all the heavy lifting so you can sit back, relax and leave it to the pros. I've used three day blinds since I've been here in la. They come, there's like a great consultant that talks to you, then they come back, they install them. They look great. It's super professional, very easy and pretty affordable. And on the fourth day you rest and that's it. And then you, and then you have those blackout shades and you just sleep and sleep and sleep. Right now you can get three day blinds. Buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blind shade shutters and drapery for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to threedayblinds.com offline that's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to three day blinds.com offline one last time. That's the number 3D a Y blinds.com offline.

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Critics rave. Searchlight Pictures A Real Pain is one of the best films of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin make for an all time comedic odd couple as two cousins who reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain is now playing in theaters. Get tickets today.

[Jon Favreau]

Kate Conger, welcome to Offline.

[Max Fisher]

Thank you so much.

[Jon Favreau]

Just to get this out of the way, of all the books that have been written on Twitter. And Elon Musk, you guys have the best title by far.

[Max Fisher]

Thank you. I love it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's great. It's also just a fantastic read. I actually want to start with the subtitle, which is How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. I'm a Twitter addict who thinks the platform is much worse than it was before Elon bought it. But we've done like a half dozen Twitter death watch segments on this pod. Somehow it's still here. When you guys say Elon destroyed Twitter, what are some of the big metrics and changes you're thinking about?

[Max Fisher]

Sure. So the subtitle obviously is meant to be provocative. You know, when we're saying it's destroyed, we're not saying that it's dead. But I think, you know, from a financial perspective, I think that's the most obvious destruction that's happened. Right. This was a $44 billion deal internally. Musk has valued the company now around 19 billion, and its investors are valuing it even lower, around 12 billion. So it's just an enormous destruction of value. You know, the name itself is also gone. All of the birds that we knew and loved have gone. And the platform has shifted quite a bit. You know, it's no longer a place for really open discussion across the board. It's shifted increasingly to the right and become sort of a mirror from Musk in his own views and politics.

[Jon Favreau]

What do we know about the users now? The user numbers.

[Max Fisher]

So usership according to the company is increasing. According to external metrics, it's decreased, I think between 20 and 30%. So it depends on whose numbers you want to go with there.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know if I'll believe the company. So you start the book with Elon's takeover, but then go back to the pre Elon days. One thing you made clear is that Elon didn't just waltz into a well functioning company and then ruin it. Can you talk a little bit about what that narrative gets wrong and what was happening before?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, it was something that I think really bothered me as a beat reporter who had covered the company for a long time. As soon as the deal started, the narrative kind of flattened into good Twitter versus evil Elon. And there were a lot of things going on at the company prior to Elon ever showing up that were making it really dysfunctional. Jack Dorsey had been the CEO for a long time and gotten really disillusioned with the platform, with its business with advertisers. He'd had an activist investor come in previously and try to force him out. And he felt like people didn't stick up for him as much as they should have. And so he really stepped back and kind of threw up his hands about leading the company. And it got into a lot of problems from there.

[Jon Favreau]

And he seemed quite detached. But that was my main takeaway. Like, he spent most of the pandemic, like, in like a French Polynesian resort.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. So he was in French Polynesia during the Trump ban on the Brando, which is a private island resort known for hosting Kim Kardashian's birthday. He also spent time in Costa Rica and in Hawaii. And a lot of Twitter employees would know where he was because they would hear roosters crowing in the background of his zoom calls, or they would see a paparazzi photo pop up of him on the beach, and that's how they would locate him during that time. Time.

[Jon Favreau]

It does seem like they're the company's fundamental problem from the beginning has been how to monetize and financial. And it's interesting because it seems like Jack didn't love the ad based model at some point, says that he's always wanted it to be more of a public platform and not a company at all. And so, you know, even with all that Elon's done and all the advertisers fleeing, it seems like it was always a huge problem for Twitter to figure out how to make money.

[Max Fisher]

Right, Right. Well, and I think it hearkens back to that famous Mark Zuckerberg quote where he says that Twitter is a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Right. It's something that, you know, despite the ownership being kind of chaotic and messy, it's managed to hold an outsize importance. But I think Jack is being a little revisionist when he says that if you look at the early, early history of the company, you know, he was very interested in lining up investors, lining up allies on the board, becoming a businessman, you know, going into these meetings and seeing how much the company would be valued at. And now I think he does regret that. But to say that from the get go, he didn't want it to make money is just kind of silly.

[Jon Favreau]

You talk about two big projects at Twitter in the pre Elon era that made me wonder about the path not taken for the company. The first is Blue sky, which was a brainchild of Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal. What were the problems they wanted to solve with Blue sky and what was the grand vision there?

[Max Fisher]

So Blue sky originally was a really interesting concept, and it comes back To, I think, the era of the Internet that Jack and Parag grew up in, you know, a sort of Web 1.0. Everything is a protocol, and information is interchanged freely across websites. And with social media, we saw the rise of walled gardens online, where you post to Instagram, it stays on Instagram. You post to Twitter, it stays on Twitter. And what they wanted to do with bluesky was open that up and create more interchangeability between platforms. So you could post, and it would be almost like sending an email. It could go to a Gmail account or a Yahoo account or an Instagram, Facebook, whatever. And you could also be able to sort of migrate your presence online. And if you wanted to leave a site like Twitter, you could take your friends and your following with you, and you wouldn't have to rebuild from scratch somewhere else. So that was kind of the original intent with Blue Sky.

[Jon Favreau]

It feels like a lot of the companies like that wouldn't have been financially advantageous for a lot of these companies to agree to that.

[Max Fisher]

Right? Yeah. It's a big change in the way that the advertising model works. I think Parag, in particular, was trying to figure out ways to allow advertisers to work in that environment and to make sure that their presences were being shown across different platforms. But it is a really deep and fundamental rethink of the way that social media works today.

[Jon Favreau]

It seems like Blue sky would have theoretically fit with Elon's initial vision of what Twitter should be. What he initially talked about with Jack, which was like, more decentralized, less sort of algorithmically driven in where it sends you for content or the tweets it gives you, and it was supposed to solve this whole, like, you know, freedom of speech, not freedom of reach issue. Why do you think Elon didn't pursue that when he took over?

[Max Fisher]

It's so funny because there are several moments in the book where Elon. When Elon first comes into the company, Twitter employees are pitching him on these projects that they've been working on that would theoretically support his goal goals, Things like Blue sky, for example, things that would allow content to flow more freely on the platform and to get Twitter away from its only metric of enforcement being to ban someone, take their account down or to leave them up. And he kind of just breezed past all of that. And I think it really shows just some of the lack of commitment that I think he holds to those ideals that he professes to have. You know, it's not really about making an open platform for free speech. It's about Making a platform that endorses the kind of speech that he likes to see.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that has become quite clear. Blue sky, of course, became its own independent project organization. It is now like a Twitter alternative. We've wondered this, we've talked about this here a few times. Like, why do you think none of the Twitter alternatives have taken off or sort of supplanted Twitter as sort of the place to be?

[Max Fisher]

I think that there are a couple of things. I think one is that Twitter really had that critical mass of people on the platform, so that the conversation always feels really lively and current. A lot of these other companies are still starting up, and they haven't really reached that critical mass where they have enough users to keep that conversation flowing all the time. Another thing that I think Twitter always did right and a lot of other companies have avoided doing is sticking to a pure chronological feed and always maintaining that as an option, which is so critical when you're talking about a platform that is used for breaking news and current discussion. You know, if you log into Twitter and you go to your chronological timeline during a sports event, you know, I live in the Bay Area, so every time the warriors play, if I log on during warriors hours, I'm seeing every single post about that game and people's reactions just saying, whoa. And I know that they're talking about the game. There's no context needed. But, you know, threads in particular really is an algorithmically curated space, and so you don't see those posts until two, three days later when they've gotten enough engagement to bubble up to the top of your timeline. And so I think it really doesn't serve current conversation in the way that that medium needs to.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, this is why I decided to stop using Threads too, because I was just like, what? I. I'm looking for a platform that's going to tell me the news as the news happens. That's all I want.

[Max Fisher]

Not three days later.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. I don't want all the, like, the bullshit from Elon's Twitter. I don't want the, like, threads just, like, showing me random posts. I just want a place to go see the news as it unfolds. You know, it seems like no one has been able to do that just yet. The other big initiative that Parag started was called Project Saturn you write about, which was an attempt at creating a content moderation system that begins with this sort of grand vision, gets whittled down into something much smaller, and then is eventually just dismissed by Elon. Can you talk a little bit about Project Saturn?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, so this was a really fascinating initiative that Parag started to push as soon as he came in and took over as CEO. I think he and Jack were both really frustrated, like I mentioned earlier, with Twitter's only method of enforcing being the ban hammer. Right. Like, either you're on the platform or you're off, and that's it. And so what Parag wanted to do was sort of create a system like Saturn's rings, basically, where prime good Twitter content would be at the center of the platform. It would be algorithmically promoted, and you would see that first, and then content that was a little bit more offensive maybe would be in that second or third ring out, and it wouldn't get the full advantage of promotion. And then really kind of nastier stuff that people didn't want to see would be out in those furthest rings. It would have no promotion, and you would never see it unless you sought it out. So, you know, if you wanted to engage perhaps with like an Alex Jones type figure, you would have to go and look at his account and see what he was posting there, and it wouldn't be able to spread as widely and, you know, rage bait to get to the top of the timeline.

[Jon Favreau]

Even that, though it was the problem with all this content moderation is it's. It's hard not to. It's hard to take it out of the hands of humans making judgments that are ultimately subjective, even if you follow a certain set of principles or whatever else. I wonder, has there any. Was there ever any discussion about just not algorithmically promoting content? And if you really want to solve the reach problem, and you don't want to be accused of bias, you would just not promote any tweets. Right. You're just. Whoever you follow, you follow, and if you don't, you don't.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. And I think that that was sort of what Twitter was doing in the very early days before they introduced algorithmic promotion. And there's a couple of things that led them to do that. One was a pressure to grow. Right. Their investors wanted see more growth. And in order to do that, you have to get users hooked. You have to be showing them stuff that they like, and you don't want them scrolling for 20 minutes through their feed until they're finding that content that they're looking for. And so that was one of the things that really drove Twitter to pursue that. I think the other problem that we've seen with that kind of stuff, especially on Twitter, is people do, like I said, rage bait. They post things that are outrageous. False, else, emotionally charged to try to juice their engagement and get a lot of reach for their account. And, you know, I think companies have kind of tried to use content moderation as a way to push back on some of our negative urges when we're online and say, you know, even though this is getting a lot of retweets, it's not good content. It's not going to make people feel like they, it was a good use of their time by the time they've logged off.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Let's talk about Elon. So my crude and exact, not exactly groundbreaking theory on him has always been that he was a smart guy whose brain was broken by the platform he ultimately bought, where he got red pilled based on what was in his feed, especially during the pandemic. You guys have some smart reporting in the book on what initially got Elon interested in using Twitter. You write his craving for narrative control led him to Twitter. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. So in writing the book, my writing partner and I, Ryan, went back to the beginning of Elon's Twitter feed and read all of his tweets. And it was shocking how normal his early tweets were. Like, they're very sweet and endearing and like, I'm taking my kids to the ice rink today. You know, it was very nice stuff. And then you see that in contrast to where he's come today and it's just bizarre. But yeah, so Elon is really interesting. He has always been someone who wants to read everything about himself, read every email he gets, read every at reply. And he really wanted to push back early in his career on people who were critical of Tesla. And, you know, he would, he would find some random blog in the Netherlands that had said something bad about Tesla and forward it to his comms team in the middle of the night. Like, we need to get this guy and we need to push back on this, this. And you know, and they'd be kind of flabbergasted because they would think, you know, no one's even reading this, why do you care? But he really wanted to push back and control his own narrative. And I think he found that Twitter was a really effective way to do that and to take his message directly to his fans.

[Jon Favreau]

It's so funny reading that part about Tesla because like, 10 years ago when I was briefly a consultant, after I left the White House, I got set up on a meeting with Elon, my business partner and I, and we sat down and he needed comms help, he needed outside Comms help. So we sit and talk with him and first thing he, first of all, he didn't turn around from his computer to look at us for like 10 minutes, which is, it was just very bizarre. We like met him at SpaceX and finally he's like, I need com help, Comm's help. You know what I need? I need someone that's going to stop the press from writing about these cars catching on fire. And like, I feel like we need better stories about the car. And my business partner's like, well, I don't think we can do that. I think the best way to have them stop writing about the cars catching on fire is to have the cars stop catching on fire.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And we were not hired.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Jon Favreau]

But he was, he's like obsessed with that. And it's interesting because a lot of CEOs are like this, right? They think that, like. And it's fascinating to me that he saw early on, I mean, now it's like a mouthpiece for his like radical right wing views. But early on he saw it as a way to like, I don't, I can go around the press and I can just like fight my battles. I don't need my comms team or my PR team or to like, you know, talk to reporters or deal with the press. I can just do it myself because I have a bigger reach.

[Max Fisher]

Exactly. Yeah.

[E]

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[Max Fisher]

So I think that that's always been a little bit of Musk's political inclination. He's painted himself as someone who's gone through a radical political transformation and has gone from being sort of a centrist Democrat to a Trump supporter. But I think there were a couple of moments that we saw in reporting on him that were pretty radicalizing and I think drove him to sh to the right. One was the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns that we had here in California. He was very opposed to those because they affected manufacturing in his Tesla facilities here. And he pushed back a lot against the state government about that. Another thing that he was going through around that time was one of his children was going through a gender transition and that really upset him. It really bothered him. And, and his statements about this has been that he felt she was brainwashed to kind of go in that direction. And he's said that he feels like she's dead at this point, which is, I think, a really tragic thing to say about your child. Yeah, so those both were things that drove him to the right. And you know, the other thing is you have to always keep in mind with him that he is quite thin skinned and he had a little snub from Biden. In 2021 he was invited to a White House summit on electric vehicles and he was really upset by that. And he had never posted anything online about Biden before. And then from there on out you see him start to criticize Biden on the platform and call him union puppet and all these things. And you know, I think he just got really angry about that. And that drove him to make some of those political decisions as well.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I remember that. And he wasn't invited because Tesla, you know, was unionized or he didn't want, you know, union workers. And so, yeah, that made him really pissed off. Also you write about the late Night tweeting on Ambien. Yeah, I had heard a lot about the various drug use. Ambien tweeting is probably. That seems like a bad idea.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, Ambien tweeting is not ideal. And I think he knows that now, although I don't know if it stopped him from doing it. But yeah, I mean, I mean, he. It's so funny. So he has a shoulder injury because one of his birthday parties, his partner at the time hired sumo wrestlers as entertainment and he tried to wrestle one of the sumo wrestlers and he hurt his shoulder. And so now he has a really hard time sleeping because he's in pain a lot. And so, yeah, he'll take Ambien at night to try to sleep and then sometimes end up posting instead.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, boy. Why do you think that his first words after the deal was officially closed were fuck Zuck. What's the Zuckerberg thing?

[Max Fisher]

So, yes, that one is really funny. There's so many moments in reporting this book where we would be hearing from sources and they would tell us something like that and we would just look at each other and think, we have to fact check this. There's no way this could be true.

[Jon Favreau]

And sure enough, you know.

[Max Fisher]

And sure enough. So Musk has a really interesting feud with Zuckerberg, and it dates back to some of Musk's early work on AI. He had taken meetings with Zuckerberg around that time and felt like AI was going to destroy humanity. Zuckerberg is more on the pro AI end of the spectrum and felt like it had a lot of very critical benefits for humanity. And so they sort of feuded over that. That. And then there was a point where there was a Facebook satellite that was supposed to be taken into space by a SpaceX rocket. The rocket exploded on the launch pad. And Zuckerberg was really upset about that and criticized Musk publicly. And that is something with him you just can't do. So he was really upset with Zuckerberg at that point and at one point was investigating whether a competing launch company would have been able to shoot at the SpaceX rocket and sabotage it. So that was a theory that he looked into. But so you sort of see him develop some animosity for Zuckerberg over the years. And then, yeah, I mean, just have this random outburst at Zuck upon signing the deal and then, you know, goes on once Zuckerberg launches threads to challenge him to a cage match.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it. It's just one thought I kept. I kept having reading the book is that there are so Many similarities between Elon and Donald Trump, even putting their politics aside, right, like the narcissism, impulsive behavior, they're always aggrieved, vindictive, chaos agents. The other similarity though, is that despite all this, they are still surrounded by these, like this legion of fans and, and yes, men, some, yes women, but mostly men. And like, I know, smart, usually level headed people who still defend Elon that have worked with him. I just, I don't get it. Like, you've undoubtedly talked to a lot of these people. What is their deal? What drives them?

[Max Fisher]

So a lot of the people who stay and survive in his inner circle really believe in his sense of mission, whether that's electrifying vehicles, sending rockets into space and reusing them, which is something no one thought was possible before he came along and did it, or creating an environment of freer speech online. A lot of these people are really committed to the causes that Elon espouses and think that it's worth supporting him even when he's in these moments of erratic behavior in furtherance of those causes. And I think, I mean, also you mentioned meeting him and how he can be very keyed back in person, very quiet, kind of not confrontational. And so I think some people who are close to him manage to convince themselves that there's an online Elon and an offline Elon and that offline they're getting the real version.

[Jon Favreau]

What about Linda Yaccarino? Is she a true believer or is she just a masochist? Why did she take this job?

[Max Fisher]

I actually, I think Linda is a true believer and I've seen so much stuff online about her that I think is just way off base where people, you know, say that she's a hostage basically and Elon has trapped her in the building or something. And I don't think that's true. I reported on her previously. She had been at NBC Universal and, you know, always supported Republican politics, supported Trump and Fellowship. Very worried there about her politics being known and it being something that wouldn't sit well with her colleagues. And so I think with coming to Twitter, working with Elon, she feels more free to be herself and really supports him. Like, you know, we're talking about in this sort of mission driven thinking of he's, you know, freeing speech online. I think she really believes in that and, yeah, wants to go all the way.

[Jon Favreau]

A Trump campaign adviser told Bloomberg this week that Musk's lenient approach to content moderation has helped return the social media environment to where it was in 2016 when Trump dominated the online discourse. Do you believe that?

[Max Fisher]

That's a good question. I don't know if we're fully back to the 2016 environment. I think most notably, Trump isn't really on the platform. He's gotten his account back and he sometimes is posting campaign videos, but he's not. Not using it to drive daily news cycles in the way that he did in 2016. That being said, though, I think that Elon has really shifted the platform to a more right tenor. Those are the people who he is promoting on the platform. He's now the biggest account on the platform. And, yeah, it's interesting to see the shift because I think previously the only social media platforms that have had that very explicit political slant have been more fringe platforms like Truth Social.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Having reported on him so much, do you think he would leave or go join this government efficiency force that Trump wants him to run? If Trump wins, like, what is.

[Max Fisher]

You know, I think in all of my time reporting on Elon, I've. I've learned to not report things until he does them because he often says something and then changes his mind or, you know, it never comes to fruition. That being said, I mean, hearing him and Trump talk on X Spaces about this government efficiency commission, it just reminds me of this scene in the book where Elon calls a big staff meeting on a Saturday and has everyone come in and he starts going through Twitter's budget line by line and making anyone who's spending money account for what they're spending and why. And if people can't answer him about why they need to spend the money, he's firing them on the spot. And I think that that's something that Elon would love to do with the federal government. And, you know, I. I think he might at least go once to OMB and ask them to see a spreadsheet, and then maybe he'll get bored. I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

Unbelievable. Do you. So what do you think happens to Twitter? Like, does it financially? Is it, you know, if it continues to lose money users, does it not matter? Because Elon's just, you know, he's fine with losing money, but he has all those loans that are, you know, that he took out with his Tesla stock as collateral. Like, what happens financially? Can this thing just continue on forever like this?

[Max Fisher]

Right. So the loans that you mentioned, he has to pay a billion, a little bit over a billion in interest every year just to keep those going, which is a lot of money for most of us, but not necessarily when you're the richest man in the world. So yeah, I think he can continue to prop this up for some time and I think he's happy with not the financial performance, certainly, but with the ideological direction that he's been able to take the site. If he does need to keep propping this up with his own money, he's not that liquid. And so eventually he will have to sell Tesla stock in order to keep it going and that will be a big upset for Tesla investors and also loosen his control on Tesla, which is something that he doesn't want to do. So eventually he may work himself into a position where he's not willing to keep it afloat financially, but he's certainly capable of doing it if he wants.

[Jon Favreau]

To for some time. Yeah. Yeah. Kate Conger, thank you so much for joining Offline. The book is Character How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. Fantastic book, everyone. Check it out. And thanks again for joining.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, thank you so much. Much.

[Jon Favreau]

Take care. Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Il Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Cat and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Churlin and Adrian Hill for production support, and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Delon Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos from the team behind the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast comes the how to Do Everything podcast. It's half advice show, half survival guide, half advice show. Hosts Mike and Ian answer all your burning questions like how do I survive a public bathroom? How do I How do I How.

[Kate Conger]

Do you calm the fuck down? That's how.

[Jon Favreau]

How do I keep my fries warm just the way I love them? And. And how do I escape that rhino that's quickly charging towards me? Learn everything on the how to Do Everything podcast from npr.

[E]

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