Where We Go From Here

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode: "Where We Go From Here" Release Date: November 10, 2024 Host: Jon Favreau Guest: Max Fisher

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Where We Go From Here," hosts Jon Favreau and Max Fisher delve deep into the aftermath of the 2024 U.S. election, exploring the intricate interplay between the internet, social media, and the evolving media ecosystem. They examine the psychological toll of political turmoil, the strategies employed by political campaigns, and the broader implications for democracy and media integrity.

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Emotional Impact and Mental Health

Max Fisher opened the discussion by reflecting on the emotional strain caused by the previous Trump term:

"That's four years of my life that you're never going to get to live again and show up, do the work. There's a lot that we can do that's going to make a big difference. But don't let this be four years of your life that you lost."
[01:15]

Jon Favreau shared his personal journey with anxiety, emphasizing the importance of addressing mental health amidst political upheaval:

"Worrying about the future, which is the essence of anxiety and like, dooming about the future, it's just not useful for me. It's not good for me."
[05:24]

Key Takeaway: Both hosts highlight the necessity of maintaining mental well-being by staying engaged yet setting boundaries to prevent overwhelm.

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Processing Election Results and Psychological Resilience

After witnessing the election results, Max Fisher discussed coping mechanisms:

"Giving yourself something to do, even if it's something small, that I think is really helpful..."
[03:36]

Jon Favreau echoed the sentiment, underscoring the value of community and personal interactions:

"There’s a lot of value in community."
[04:08]

Key Takeaway: Engaging in routine activities and fostering community connections can mitigate feelings of powerlessness and fear during turbulent times.

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Information Environment and Media Consumption

Jon Favreau posed a critical question about the fragmentation of information in a large democracy:

"Where is the space for that debate in a multiracial, multiethnic democracy of over 300 million people who no longer share the same information environment?"
[15:31]

Max Fisher responded by dissecting the role of personalized information streams and political identities:

"Your information environment constructs a narrative for you out of the things that you experience."
[24:15]

Notable Discussion Points:

• Echo Chambers and Information Bubbles: The hosts discussed how individualized news sources exacerbate division, making meaningful debate challenging.
• Impact of Economic Perceptions: Misaligned perceptions of economic indicators like inflation influence voting behaviors and trust in institutions.

Key Takeaway: The fragmented and personalized nature of modern information consumption hampers unified public discourse, crucial for democratic governance.

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Campaign Strategies and Media Approaches

Jon Favreau analyzed the contrasting campaign strategies of the Biden and Trump campaigns:

"The personal one is like, I've been an anxious person since I was a child..."
[05:03]

Key Points:

• Trump’s Media Strategy: Focused on right-wing media outlets, podcasts with predominantly male audiences, and leveraged figures like Elon Musk.
• Biden’s Ground Game: Emphasized traditional campaign methods such as door-knocking and phone banking, which proved effective in voter turnout.
• Effectiveness of Traditional vs. Digital Campaigning: Despite Trump's limited ground operations, his reliance on digital platforms did not yield the desired electoral success.

Key Takeaway: Traditional grassroots campaigning remains a potent tool for voter mobilization, often outperforming heavy reliance on digital strategies.

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Misinformation and Its Role in Elections

The hosts debated the impact of misinformation on the 2024 election:

"I don't think that misinformation played a demonstrable role in this election at all."
[49:31] – Max Fisher

Jon Favreau added:

"Misinformation, it's like the lies put out by Trump, they travel."
[50:08]

Key Points:

• Actual Impact vs. Perceived Influence: While factual inaccuracies exist, their direct influence on the election outcome is debatable.
• Foreign Interference: Although present, foreign interference did not significantly sway the election results.
• Internal Divisions as a Primary Driver: Societal divisions and distrust in institutions played a more substantial role in shaping voter behavior.

Key Takeaway: Societal fragmentation and institutional distrust overshadow the direct effects of misinformation in influencing electoral outcomes.

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Elon Musk’s Influence and Political Dynamics

A substantial portion of the discussion focused on **Elon Musk’s involvement in politics:

"Elon Musk's net worth has already increased by $15 billion."
[57:07]

Max Fisher highlighted:

"The bad news is that Musk has ostensibly negotiated to be Trump's regulations czar..."
[58:41]

Jon Favreau expressed concerns about Musk’s growing political influence:

"But it is, yeah, it's wild and it is."
[51:54]

Key Points:

• Musk’s Financial Leverage: His substantial financial contributions to Trump's campaign and ownership of influential media platforms amplify his political sway.
• Regulatory Implications: Potential roles in government could lead to reduced regulations, benefiting his business interests.
• Risk of Cronyism: The alliance between Musk and Trump raises alarms about favoritism and the undermining of regulatory institutions.

Key Takeaway: Elon Musk's intertwining of business interests with political power poses risks to regulatory integrity and democratic accountability.

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Future of Traditional Media and Journalism

Jon Favreau questioned the sustainability of traditional media’s resurgence:

"I don't think people are primed for that this time around."
[61:58] – Max Fisher

Key Points:

• Declining Trust and Engagement: Post-2016, media enjoyed increased support as a check against authoritarianism, but the re-election of Trump has dampened this momentum.
• Financial Pressures on Media Outlets: Ownership changes, such as Jeff Bezos’s acquisition of The Washington Post, have led to shifts in editorial stances and financial strategies.
• Erosion of Journalistic Values: There is a growing skepticism about the media’s role in upholding accountability and shared reality, potentially leading to diminished support for traditional journalism.

Key Takeaway: The oscillating support for traditional media, coupled with internal and external pressures, challenges the sustainability of journalism as a cornerstone of democratic society.

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Reaching the Unengaged Voters

Max Fisher shared insights from campaigning in deeply Trump-supportive areas:

"We have a lot of people who are feeling scared and hopeless right now and helping... help all of us, because I'm one of those people to get through the next four years."
[65:13]

Jon Favreau recounted interactions with voters, emphasizing the disconnect between political elites and everyday citizens:

"They are living busy lives and they're disconnected from all the bullshit that we talk about and care about."
[70:48]

Key Points:

• Fear and Isolation: Many voters feel isolated and fearful of expressing their political preferences due to neighborhood tensions.
• Importance of Direct Engagement: Building trust through door-to-door interactions fosters a sense of community and support, even if it doesn’t immediately change voting behavior.
• Role of Media and Political Parties: Media outlets like Crooked Media can bridge the gap by providing a platform for nuanced conversations and fostering mutual understanding.

Key Takeaway: Direct, empathetic engagement with unengaged voters is crucial for rebuilding trust and fostering a more inclusive political environment.

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Concluding Thoughts

The episode concluded with a call to action for fostering respectful and nuanced political discussions:

"We just have to be open to the fact that multiple things could be true and it could be multiple factors that caused it."
[33:56] – Jon Favreau

Max Fisher emphasized the collective responsibility:

"And I think that there is a really big value for crooked media. Of course, part of it is going to be figuring out how we as a party reach those other 7%."
[65:50]

Key Takeaway: Addressing the complexities of the current political landscape requires openness, nuanced dialogue, and collective efforts to bridge societal divides.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Max Fisher: "Every day is all there is."
  [01:13]

• Jon Favreau: "There’s a lot of value in community."
  [04:08]

• Jon Favreau: "Where is the space for that debate in a multiracial, multiethnic democracy..."
  [15:31]

• Max Fisher: "Your information environment constructs a narrative for you out of the things that you experience."
  [24:15]

• Max Fisher: "I don't think that misinformation played a demonstrable role in this election at all."
  [49:31]

• Jon Favreau: "Misinformation, it's like the lies put out by Trump, they travel."
  [50:08]

• Max Fisher: "The bad news is that Musk has ostensibly negotiated to be Trump's regulations czar..."
  [58:41]

• Jon Favreau: "We just have to be open to the fact that multiple things could be true and it could be multiple factors that caused it."
  [33:56]

---

Conclusion

"Where We Go From Here" offers a comprehensive exploration of the post-election landscape, dissecting the psychological impacts, the fragmented information environment, and the strategic maneuvers of political campaigns. Hosts Jon Favreau and Max Fisher provide insightful analysis on the challenges facing democracy and media, emphasizing the need for community engagement and nuanced discourse to navigate the complexities of modern politics.

For listeners seeking to understand the multifaceted dynamics shaping our society and looking for actionable insights to foster positive change, this episode serves as a valuable resource.

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Note: This summary selectively includes content-rich segments from the transcript, excluding advertisements, music breaks, and non-content segments to focus on delivering a coherent and informative overview of the episode.

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.

[Max Fisher]

Ruined it.

[Julia]

Next time, get Dixie Ultra plates three.

[Jon Favreau]

Times stronger than the leading store brand. 10 inch paper plate.

[Julia]

Dixie, make it right.

[Max Fisher]

There's one big regret I have from the first Trump term. I feel like I did. It was in a different lane. It was in journalism. It is the amount of time that I spent in the aggregate over four years, spiraling, angry, despairing. That's four years of my life. If that's an hour a day that I spent spinning myself up, that adds up to a lot of time. There's this quote by Joan Didion, the writer, where an interviewer was asking her once, they were like, you know, Didion, you have a lot of like, weird habits. Like you use the fancy silver every single day. Why is that? And she had this great line where she said, every day is all there is. The next four years, those are four years of your life that you're never going to get to live again and show up, do the work. There's a lot that we can do that's going to make a big difference. But don't let this be four years of your life that you lost.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Max Fisher]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

Max, how you feeling?

[Max Fisher]

It's been a rough week.

[Jon Favreau]

It's been a rough week. Same here. We obviously talked about the election on Pod Save America this week. Thought you and I could do an offline version of the recap, namely the role of the Internet and social media and the outcome in politics going forward in sort of the general state of our information and media ecosystem. We should also talk about our new tech oligarch, Elon Musk. But first, we've also spent a lot of time in the show talking about the relationship between screens and our mental health and well being. And this week, maybe even this year, has made it especially difficult to tear ourselves away from our screens. So let's start with the vibes. You and I both watched the results trickle in on Tuesday night here in the office with most of the rest of the staff. We are recording this on Friday. We've now had a couple days to process the results. How are you feeling today compared to how you were feeling Tuesday night, Wednesday morning?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, in my head there is so much to process that is so bad and so scary about what's to come. But I will be honest, that kind of in my body, I am feeling not as bad as I was when the results came in. There's something about watching the results came in that made me feel really powerless and scared. And, you know, I woke up on Wednesday morning and I got to work. And there's something about giving yourself something to do, even if it's something small, that I think is really helpful, that I feel like we have learned a lot in the last eight years about what we can actually do and can't do. That is making me feel more equipped to know kind of what my role is. And I'm just being a lot more ruthless myself about demarcating the amount of space in my own head that I want to give over to this. In 2016, we all. We took all of it on at once. We woke up, and then we experienced the entire Trump presidency that morning, and we thought through every bad thing that he was going to do and just spent four years traumatizing ourselves, imagining the things he was going to do and living through them. In this time, I. You know, being thoughtful about what we're gonna do, what our role is, what the work that we have to do is, but also being really aggressive with myself, honestly, about carving out time. You know, on Tuesday night, I took half an hour to just listen to music, and it felt stupid to do that.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow.

[Max Fisher]

Because what's happening around us. But it really helped. It really made a difference. The first thing I did when I woke up Wednesday morning is I texted a friend to make plans to have drinks. And I am really, really glad that I did that. I'm really glad that I'm taking space out to just continue to live my life through this.

[Jon Favreau]

I know. I'm really looking forward to just hanging out with people.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. It's really. It's really important to do.

[Jon Favreau]

And I know that even the hangouts will be discussions about what happened.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But that's okay.

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

It's still. It's still better to do it with people.

[Max Fisher]

There's a lot of value in community. Julia, like a lot of women, has been in a pretty dark place in the last few days. And she was at the drugstore a couple days ago, and she ran into a friend of ours, Jamie Loftus, who's been on the show, and they ended up spending a couple hours hanging out. And I cannot tell you how much better she felt. Not because she. Her conception of where the country was going and what this means had changed, but it is so easy to shut yourself inside all of the dread and the despair and the panic, and we really need each other in this moment, and we really need a sense of community and pulling each other through it. And that doesn't mean we're giving up, doesn't mean we're turning it off. But making that decision to make time for community and friends is really important.

[Jon Favreau]

So I feel okay, Good. I'll talk about two reasons. One is personal. The other is just sort of what happened with the results.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

The personal one is like, I've been an anxious person since I was a child, dealt with anxiety most of my life, and it peaked during the pandemic, which I think I've talked about here. And then after that, I finally, like, started going to therapy for the first time and.

[Max Fisher]

You mean the podcast, right?

[Jon Favreau]

The podcast, right. Yeah. And so I've been, like, thinking about anxiety and worry and, like, spinning out now for the last several years and doing a lot of work, thinking about it. And I have come to the conclusion, which is very unlike me, at least how I've traditionally been, that, like, worrying about the future, which is the essence of anxiety and like, dooming about the future, it's just not useful for me. It's not good for me. I don't find it productive. And it's not to say that there isn't reason to doom. Not trying to say that, of course. I'm just saying that for me, thinking about bad things that might happen and all, and then letting myself go from one bad thing to another to another and getting into this deep, dark place is just, I realize, like, it's not doing anything right.

[Max Fisher]

All you're doing is you are forcing yourself to live through the bad things twice.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Max Fisher]

The first time when you imagine it, and then the second time when it actually happened, you're not productive.

[Jon Favreau]

And it is, like, about sort of living in the present more. And by that I mean, okay, what do I do now? What can we respond to? How do we fix this? Like, it's like you can be more solutions oriented. And it doesn't mean, like, living without the discomfort, of course, of what happened.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

It just means, like, not letting it control you and. And trying to get through it with more productive means. So, like, even going into this, I just. I felt different than I did in 2016 and even 2020.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Now on the results themselves, I, deep in my heart thought that it was basically a 50, 50 election.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

By the end, I let myself believe. I think she might have a little edge. But I still was so prepared for him to win.

[Max Fisher]

We did a whole show about it.

[Jon Favreau]

More so than I was in 20 and obviously more so than in 20. 16. Right. So it wasn't like it was shocking. I also think if it had been closer, if we were sitting here today and Donald Trump won because of like 2000 votes in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or something like that, I would be really second guessing everything. Yeah. Or just like, what the fuck? We did not. This is not what people wanted. And we just get, you know, like the fact that the shift towards Trump was uniform, that it happened across all, almost all demographic groups. Shout out to college educated women, shout out to millennials. Millennials. What do we say? What do we say? The best generation.

[Max Fisher]

The best generation.

[Jon Favreau]

But anyway, even the people that Kamala Harris won the shift. Right. Was everywhere, among every demographic group, every region of the country, every state, rural, urban, suburban, everywhere. And I think that allows us to look at the results and say, okay, a lot of people who did not vote for Donald Trump before, right. Voted for him.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And people who voted for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Barack Obama, they voted for Donald Trump. These are not the people showing up at the Trump rallies. These are not the hardcore MAGA people. A lot of people in this country of all races, of every age, gender, geography, they decided to vote for Trump. And we have to now decide why that is, what's going on there, and how to win them back.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And like, easier said than done.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But to me, like, that is the. Of all the things we don't know yet, which is quite a bit.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That I know, that I feel confident about, is that that's what we need to do. And so it's helpful to have that.

[Max Fisher]

Clarity of both of what happened and what the mission is for the next four years.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I agree. You had a great point in our production meeting on Tuesday, talking about sort of taking this new reality one day at a time and learning to live through what you called a multi year emergency. It's almost now like a decade emergency.

[Max Fisher]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Can you talk a bit about how you think people can learn to live in this new reality?

[Max Fisher]

So I had a conversation with a friend of mine who, she's our age, she's a journalist, she's from Argentina. And Argentina, like ours, is a wealthy democracy that lived through a horrible right wing dictatorship in the late 70s and the 80s. And she was talking about advice that she got from her mom who lived through that. And her mom told her, antonia, you have to stay fabulous. And let me explain what I mean by like kind of back into it. So it is going to feel for the next four years like your house is on fire. And in Many ways that's true. And what does it feel like when your house is on fire? You feel flushed with adrenaline. It's fight or flight. You have to run out of the house. But the thing is, that feeling is only sustainable physiologically for a few minutes. Or psychologically, it's not sustainable. You cannot stay at that level for four years. There's always going to be something happening over the next four years. There are things happening fucking today. He's not even president yet. That make it feel like your house is on fire. And like you're saying. I'm not saying to shut it out. I'm not saying to retreat into yourself or to give up, which I know some people are already doing. There's meaningful work to be done, no matter how bad it looks like it's going to get. But what I take, you have to stay fabulous, is meaning, as you have to continue living your life, not just in a sense of, like, eking it out day to day or spiraling and trying to get through it. You have to turn off the horrors inside your own head, not just on your screen, inside your own head, and to find joy in life. There's one big regret I have from the first Trump turn. I feel like I did. It was in a different lane. It was in journalism. It is the amount of time that I spent in the aggregate over four years, spiraling, angry, despairing. That's four years of my life. If that's an hour, a day that I spent spinning myself up, that adds up to a lot of time. There's this quote by Joan Didion, the writer, where an interviewer is asking her once they were like, you know, Didion, you have a lot of, like, weird habits. Like, you use the fancy silver every single day. Why is that? And she had this great line where she said, every day is all there is. The next four years, those are four years of your life that you're never going to get to live again and show up, do the work. There's a lot that we can do that's going to make a big difference. But don't let this be four years of your life that you lost.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And I think that's such good advice. And I think one way to help get through that is, and we've talked about before, be intentional about your phone.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And how you're using your phone and your screens and in terms of news consumption, too.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, you know, there's some people right now who say, I got to check out. I got to check out. No more news for A while. It's understandable. For a while.

[Max Fisher]

Totally.

[Jon Favreau]

I think. Should you want to dip your toe back into the news. Dip your toes back into the news. Which I hope you all do, because I think that's necessary.

[Max Fisher]

It's important.

[Jon Favreau]

I do think that this time around, like, be intentional about your news sources and read below the headlines and the tweets. I think we cannot take everything to an 11 all the time. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of screaming headlines about something bad that Trump has done. And there will be bad things that Trump do does. Right. And there'll be some really bad things, maybe. But not everything in the first term that we were told is like the end of everything.

[Max Fisher]

Right, right.

[Jon Favreau]

Was right. And I think my regret is like, I probably could have figured that out by like reading down to the 15th paragraph in the story or like really thinking about what they're, you know, and it's like separating the really bad from, you know, just the headline. That is. Seems scary, I think is going to be important.

[Max Fisher]

I think that's true. I think that it's important to. And I know I've said this a few times, but we learned last time that we are not powerless. There's a lot that we did with organizing and protesting that slowed him down. I think we're gonna talk about like what happened in this election and I think there's a lot of reason to believe that it is going to be very possible to organize a big swing back in the midterms and God willing that we'll put a check on him. And even if the worst case comes to pass, and I'm not saying that it will because I think you're right, I think there's a lot of reason to think that, you know, he's much more incompetent than he was eight years ago. Even if the worst comes to pass, like I, I have reported from and in the countries that are the worst case, you know, if Trump delivered on all of his promises, if he actually executed competently the anti democratic agenda that he intends to or that he has promised to, even in those places, life goes on. And there is a way to continue living for most people, most of the time, a perfectly happy life. Even if the truly terrible things do happen, you know, you still get married.

[Jon Favreau]

And then there's places that have come out of it too.

[Max Fisher]

Poland came out of it.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. You don't just go in, you can.

[Max Fisher]

Come out, you can come out. The hope is never truly fully lost.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's a sliding scale everywhere. Right. It's not like a light switch.

[Max Fisher]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. Which is another reason to stay vigilant and stay involved.

[Max Fisher]

Right. It's not over.

[Jon Favreau]

There's a lot of different ways to talk about the role that the Internet played in this campaign, but I want to. I want to start with a bigger picture question I've been wrestling with since we started the show. Fairly clear that people all over the world are rejecting incumbent governments.

[Max Fisher]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

And responding to authoritarian appeals in numbers we haven't seen in our lifetimes. Plenty of factors. Economic inequality, mass migration, ethnic and religious conflict, cultural and social alienation. The promise of democracy is that we can solve these challenges by giving people a voice in how they are governed through reasoned, honest debate that leads to compromise and eventually progress. My question is, where is the space for that debate in a multiracial, multiethnic democracy of over 300 million people who no longer share the same information environment? Like if we all. Last election or in 2016, we talked about our bubbles. Right. And our silos. But if now we all have our own personalized, individualized sources of information on our screen, some of which we are choosing, some of which is being chosen for us. Like, how do we even begin to engage in the kind of debate that successful democratic governance requires?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, I think that. And I know we agree on this. I think in a lot of ways this will be the big animating puzzle of this show for the next few years. Maybe even more so than it was up to this point. I had to laugh when you put this question on the show outline. It's noon and 9am this morning. You threw this on the dock. And I was like, well, three hours. That's enough time to figure out the answer to this.

[Jon Favreau]

I thought that, too, but I was like, I'm like, I really. We got to sort of get part of it now.

[Max Fisher]

We have to talk about it.

[Jon Favreau]

Especially because it's like, sort of why. It's like why I started offline and, like, why you join. Right. Like, this is. This is the heart of it.

[Max Fisher]

This is the. So in those three hours, I did not come up with an answer to this question.

[Jon Favreau]

Me neither.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

But throw it out there for the listeners.

[Max Fisher]

We've got the weekend. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Send us your ideas.

[Max Fisher]

I would say write into offline at Crooked Media if you know how to solve for information environments. No, I will. Let me. I think a useful first step is to break down what the kind of problem is and how it is playing out as manifest in this election. Inflation, of course, is what seems to have been the biggest single issue driving that secular national shift that you talked about. I'm sure you have seen many of us have now seen this poll that got conducted right before the election that posed a number of factual questions to people, one of which was, is it true that inflation is back down to normal range and is mostly recovered? And there are a few other questions like this about crime, about the stock market, about immigration. And the answer, of course, or the responses, of course, were that Democratic leaning voters overwhelmingly gave the correct answer, which is that in the case of inflation, it is in fact down. And Trump leaning voters overwhelmingly said that inflation is not back down, which is not. And people took that to mean that right wing voters are being lied to, live in an unreality. And I think that you and I agree that that is actually not quite what is happening.

[Jon Favreau]

No. And it's funny you mentioned that. I was literally. This is. We can talk about this. Just tweeting about it before I walked into the studio because Michael Tomaski wrote.

[Max Fisher]

A piece, oh, I saw this.

[Jon Favreau]

That's like not the economy, it's the right wing media information. And Mehdi Hassan jumped in too and was like, come on, you know that on January 20, most people are going to switch and say the economy is great, right? I think that is true among Trump partisans.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. That is true. And I think Democratic partisans who pay close attention to the news will say, yeah, of course inflation is down.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But the exit polls, right, which you know, are still grain of salt with exit polls, but they are good for attitudes more than they are splitting up demographic groups. For now, 75% of people, 75, said that they or their family has experienced moderate or severe hardship because of inflation in the last year.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's not your assessment of the overall economy. That's assessment of you and your life.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And where I would blame the information environment there is, okay, so you've experienced inflation. You experience hardship from inflation. Now what is Kamala Harris going to do about it versus what's Donald Trump going to do about it? And the information that people were getting there was clearly faulty. Right. So I'm totally willing to talk about the information environment there, but the experience of inflation, I just, we cannot wish that away on. We cannot like hand wave that and blame it on media.

[Max Fisher]

So I agree with you. And I think part of how, part of the nuance of how I think we should think about the role that the information environment played in this is where a kind of prevailing, like kind of Bernie Sanders argument here is that, you know, the Biden administration trotted out these top line economic indicators and these do not reflect the live experience of a lot of working class families. And I actually want to push back on that because I don't think that that is true. Because what you do see, in fact is that demographically, the people who broke the most from Trump, for Trump are the people who benefited from the Biden economy. They saw their wages go up by the most, they saw their household savings go up by the most, their employment rate increased by the largest amount. Clearly they are not crediting the Biden administration with that. And I think on some level that is understandable, actually. And I see how people get there not through being lied to by Fox News because part of the conceit of the Biden economy, the trade off of the Biden economy coming out of the pandemic was doing a bunch of fiscal stimulus so that people's incomes, employment, savings will all improve more than inflation. And that did happen, especially for working class families. But here is the thing. If you got a job that you would not have otherwise gotten in the Biden economy, you're not crediting Joe Biden with that. I got a new job during the Biden administration and there's no part of me that says, well, thank you Joe Biden, for getting me this job here at Crooked Media, even though I think.

[Jon Favreau]

You got this job because of the Chips and Science act.

[Max Fisher]

This is an ira. This is a great job. This is a great job. So I understand why the people who are, you know, in your mind you got yourself that job. If you got a raise, in your mind you got yourself that raise. But at the same time, if you go to the grocery store and the price of a basket of groceries is up, I think 36% according to a Wall Street Journal estimate, of course, you're going to put that on the White House. And I think where the information environment.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I will also say though that wages have not outpaced inflation in all but five states over the last couple years. So there is still not consistently enough. Right. Like we are getting to the point now where wages are finally starting to outpace inflation. But even like real life experience, when people think, well, I'm not making more, but the prices are higher, that is true for a big number of people.

[Max Fisher]

Still, of course, of course. And it's not quite the people who are coming up for Trump, but there is a lot of overlap for that. But I think where the information environment comes into play is that if you are already inclined to believe that the Democrats or even just Washington generally, or just politicians generally are indifferent to you or they're inept or they don't connect with your experience is going to be much easier for you to form a narrative in your mind that Washington is responsible for the parts of the economy that are hurting you, which is includes inflation and is predominantly inflation, and to not credit them with the parts of the economy that are helping you. Now, if you're a partisan Democrat, it's much easier for you to tell a story that says, thank you Joe Biden for all of these, you know, green jobs that showed up in my neighborhood. And I think that it's not about, I watched there the podcast, I listened to lied to me and I live in an alternate reality. It is about how your information environment constructs a narrative for you out of the things that you experience. And a lot of that is driven by who you identify with. It's driven by political identity and cultural identity and of Washington and Democrats. The people in power feel distant and Trump feels closer to you and something about him resonates with you. Much easier for you to tell yourself a story that he is or is not responsible for the economic benefits you're feeling based on that.

[Jon Favreau]

I think that's right. I also think it's useful to divide the electorate into people who consume a lot of news and information.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Democrats and Republicans, Trump voters and Harris voters. Put those people aside for now.

[Max Fisher]

Right. I mean, those are not the people deciding the election.

[Jon Favreau]

Those are not the people deciding the election. And those are not the majority of voters. Majority of voters are not super partisan. Sometimes they swing back and forth between parties, Sometimes they swing back and forth between being in the electorate and voting and not. And they are disproportionately less likely to consume not just political news, but any news.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

And so for those folks, you have to say, okay, what is the information environment? Just to the extent that they're, that they're getting some of it, what is it telling them? And I think in addition to inflation, the anti incumbent mood also tracks with a loss of trust in major institutions that has been happening since the financial Crisis, probably since 9 11, actually since the Iraq war.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And we have been on a steady decline in trust in institutions. And I think you are less likely to trust big institutions like government and business and media if you are economically struggling, if you feel like your community has been overlooked. Right. So you were less likely to trust. So that lack of trust Right. Now when you throw in social media and the Internet. Right. Which is primed to tell us that, to show us all the bad news that the big institutions are at fault for, right? This government's bad because of this. Democrats are bad because of this, but also Republicans are bad because of this. And the media is bad because of this. And everything that bad happens is something far away from you that you're not connected to. And so in that it makes you feel angrier, because we know that's what social media does and it makes you feel more afraid. We know that's what social media does. And so therefore, when a Donald Trump comes along or people like that and are like, fuck the system, yeah, I'm going to burn it all down. It's not that people are like, oh, you're awesome. Certainly many of his voters are. Some people are like, you know what, you're an asshole, but at least you're not part of this shit, right?

[Max Fisher]

That brought these bad. I think the my community feels overlooked point is a really, really important part of this. I've been thinking a lot about evolution of the narratives that we had in 2016 and the first weeks after that election. The kind of prevailing narrative was this kind of George Packer argument that a lot of communities were left behind by the Obama recovery and people were struggling and that is why they voted for Trump. And there was truth to that. But we later learned that a lot of the people who voted for Trump were actually economically doing well in their communities, but they were still feeling that their community was being overlooked in the sense that they felt alienated by social change. They felt that the social mores around me are evolving in ways that I feel leave me out or that I find scary somehow. And then I think that as we talk about inflation and the role of the economy, which clearly is on the top of everybody's mind, I think it's important that we think about the degree to which that is an expression of people feeling, to your point, that institutions aren't listening to me, that the culture and society around me is changing, and that the people in power, I feel like they are allied to someone else, they're allied to someone who's not in my community, which I think is a lot of where these anti immigrant conspiracies come from.

[Jon Favreau]

And the everyone keeps talking about the anti trans ad. That's the commilus for they themselves that the Trump campaign spent more money on than any other ad. Not just in the battlegrounds, but nationally.

[Max Fisher]

That's really good.

[Jon Favreau]

And it was running everywhere, all the time. And I think it is too simplistic to just call it an anti trans ad. Because I don't know that that's, I don't think that's why it worked.

[Max Fisher]

Right? Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

I think the reason. Because if you look at that ad, it is. She's spending your tax dollars to give undocumented immigrants who are in prison gender reassignment surgery.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Forget about the truth or the why. But. And then it says Kamala's for they them. Right. Which is like a silly. They're going to use the pronouns. But even if, if you took, if you took trans issues out of that ad completely and it was just Kamala wants to give your tax dollars undocumented immigrants tax. Kamala Harris wants to give your tax dollars he, they want, she wants criminals who are in jail to have health care. Just still would have been effective. I think it's because it is, it's what Republicans have done about Democrats forever.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

They are not for you. They are for their interest groups. And you hardworking and you're not making enough money and you can't afford stuff and you're struggling, then they are not for you because they are too focused on their people.

[Max Fisher]

Right. And by the way, I think that we are seeing all of this in the debate within the left and within the Democratic Party over what happened in this election. I mean, I cannot tell you the number of viral takes I have seen that said that. I'm glad you're familiar with them. It's, you know, she would have won if only she had done X, Y or Z or if the Biden White House had done X rays. And every time it's something that they did and it's something that they poured $100 million of ads into. And it's not that people are stupid or lying. It's this sense that, well, the Democrats lost because they were catering to Liz Cheney. They were catering to somebody El and if they had only spoken to my side and my people, then we would have won. And I understand why people reach for that narrative and I think that it speaks to again the way that our information environment tilts us towards seeing things that confirm a narrative that says that we are being neglected us and that it's someone else is being served in our place.

[Jon Favreau]

I totally agree. And this is why answering the question is so difficult. Because as we debate what happened once again, it's like I'm trying very hard to not just leap onto things that confirm my priors, of course, explanations, you know, it's hard though, which is what we all do. Let's be Honest. It's all hard, you know, Like, I feel like I have medium confidence, medium to high confidence, that inflation played a huge role, an anti incumbent sentiment played a huge role.

[Max Fisher]

Totally.

[Jon Favreau]

And Joe Biden's decision not to step aside earlier played a role.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. I have pretty good confidence on those things. The rest of it I am just waiting for data, for good information to listen to people. Like, I'm just leaving it all open.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'm just waiting for more information. But we don't have a space to have those conversations in a way that will reach most people in the country.

[Max Fisher]

Because our media environment, especially if you are highly politically engaged, is just absolutely geared towards finding some group to be angry at. It's about pitting us versus them. It's, you know, the bad Democrats, I represent the good Democrats and the bad Democrats took over her campaign and that's why we lost.

[Jon Favreau]

And I'm, I'm seeing this just in like the texts I'm getting from friends which are like, this is why. This is definitely why she lost and this is why she lost. And this is the problem with the Democratic Party and why you got to criticize the Democratic Party more. It's lost, blah, blah. And I was like, look, I'm happy, happy to criticize the Democratic Party.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

What I'm just trying to avoid is jumping on definitive takes which pundits like to do and journalists who have to write stories anyway like to do and people who are just angry want to do. Right. You want an explanation. And I do think that we should resist jumping onto a take, especially if.

[Max Fisher]

It feels very emotionally satisfying.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And I've been telling some of my friends like that your take could be true.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

But you should know that your take is, is a product of your information environment and your social network.

[Max Fisher]

Right. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Which sounds, you know, sort of antiseptic. But like, this is what I know. It's like you, we all watch our own stuff, talk to our own people. And so, you know, there's, it's funny because a lot of the more college educated, wealthy, like people like our social network, our people. Right. The, the people who are angry or who are like, she shouldn't have lost in the Democratic Party sucks in our, in our network. They are very much on the like too much woke. Too much woke. Too much woke stuff. Right.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I actually think that's very possible as an explanation for those kinds of voters.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

In, in blue states and voting against. Possible. I don't know for sure, but it's possible.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But what I was trying to say is like, but. But there are, you know, working class voters who probably have no fucking idea about any of these, right.

[Max Fisher]

Who didn't have heard of these debates.

[Jon Favreau]

About the woke shit, probably don't have any idea. And they're just like really pissed that over the last four years, maybe they thought they were voting for someone who's going to, you know, make their paycheck bigger and it didn't happen because of inflation and they didn't bother to figure out why inflation happened or agreed to explanation. So then they went to Trump. Right?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

So we just have to be open to the fact that multiple things could be true and it could be multiple factors that caused it.

[Max Fisher]

Ye.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Or else Joe Biden might start talking.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

I mean, I was, I was fully persuaded by the case that you all made on PSA that going on Rogan would have been detrimental on the like, where is our Joe Rogan? I think that the mistake that people are making here is they are getting the causality backwards. I think people are looking at this and they're saying Joe Rogan pulled people to the right. And Joe Rogan is not a political podcast. It's not Ben Shapiro. He did not found that podcast to say, let's get the under 30s to, you know, be anti woke. He just started a male.

[Jon Favreau]

He's an Obama, Bernie Sanders supporter.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Who just moved over.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And like wanted like universal health care and.

[Max Fisher]

Right, Right. I mean, the degree to which he is symptom and driver is complicated, but I think that it is more helpful to look at him as a symptom. Every whiteward pole of his audience that he is reflecting rather than him being the thing that is turning that audience right wing.

[Jon Favreau]

I totally agree with that. Also, like, she, someone pointed out, you know who the, the, the Rogan of the left is. Howard Stern.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And she did Howard Stern. Right. And different audiences probably. Howard Stern's older, I'm sure, but still more male. Call her daddy. She did. Right. So it's like. And I think, and again, the reason I thought in the end that Kamala Harris wouldn't have done well on Rogan is more about Kamala Harris and how like her interviews, like, I just don't know that it would have gone as well for her as it did for Trump. Yeah. So. But I do think going on those podcasts in those spaces is important for people to do who may not necessarily agree with what those hosts say.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, but we do. To your point, we have a Joe Rogan at the left. We have A bunch. There's Howard Stern, there's Oprah, I have Jimmy Kimmel, Colbert. We just don't see them that way because they share our politics. So we say, well, of course they arrived at that naturally. And people who hold political views different than ours, we say, well, this is part of a political project that is designed to pull people in this direction rather than grappling with the much harder thing, which is that this reflects a huge shift. Oranga's audience of under 30 men.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, right. And I also think that even. Yeah. And, and probably Kimmel and Colbert, they have bigger audiences than most of the people you were just talking about. But like the cable news audience, very small.

[Max Fisher]

It's not, it's not determined.

[Jon Favreau]

You are definitely preaching to the, preaching to the choir there. And, and it's older.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, you know, crooked media. We're probably preaching at the choir here, but our audience is younger. Yeah, but by the way, was like, should we know Joe Rogan to the left? It's like, you know what? We are the only left Pods of America is the only left leaning podcast in the Apple top 10.

[Max Fisher]

Is that true? Really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Max Fisher]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

And then in the top 20, you get Ezra in there too. Yeah. And then I guess the bulwark. Right.

[Max Fisher]

But does Conan Ryan count? I guess he's not really.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think they do put it. Yeah, I don't think they do. But you know, we couldn't get out. We couldn't get. We can get the ticket on pod Save America. Not that would have done anything that would have win the race. But I'm just saying that I talked to Brian Tyler Cohen, our pal, about this on his POD yesterday. I do think that like Democratic politicians have to start seeing sort of the alternate media ecosystem.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Whether it is friendly podcasts like ours that are more left leaning or podcasts that don't necessarily always have to do something with politics, but reach a big audience. Right. Like, you know, call her daddy. She did. Right before the election. But like, you know, you could go on there.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

If you're going to run in 2028, maybe you sit down with Alex Cooper before then. And maybe you don't necessarily just talk about politics.

[Max Fisher]

That is a good point. You don't wait until two weeks or two months before the election, start thinking about those audiences. But at the same time, I think that we are looking too far down the end of the ecosystem if you're only going on the podcast that already are sympathetic to your viewpoint. And I think you, you know, like you have to look much further up the information stream. And you have to start speaking to these people before they have arrived at a podcast, twitch, stream, whatever it is that speaks to their politics and get to them before those politics are formed, which is what a lot of shows like Joe Rogan do.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And I also think some of the, to the extent there is a sort of left leaning media ecosystem, I think Democratic politicians sometimes are like, okay, we're only going to put the politicians on the most, most friendly. Right, right. Like we, I mean, I interviewed Kamala Harris when she was running in 2020. And like, it was a friendly interview, but I asked some tough questions and I think that like, I think if you're, if you're working for a Democratic politician, you are a Democratic politician. You do have to be comfortable going on a podcast, which is a longer form conversation. It's not like you're. Because we have some politicians on Ponzi America who treat it like a cablehead, you know, really. And then we, well then we sort of get into it too, and you're like, suddenly I'm asking five questions that are like, you know, I'm watching someone on TV and I'm like, and so what's your plan? And blah, blah, blah, and that's it. And then there's the politicians who come into the studio and we sit down for like 45 minutes. And that just gives you more time to really have an interesting conversation. But you have to be willing, if you're the politician to like get off your talking points, to speak in the.

[Max Fisher]

Language of that audience, speak in the.

[Jon Favreau]

Language of their audience and just like shoot the shit like you're a normal person. Like the microphones were not right. And that I think, and I'm not saying Republican politicians on the whole are very good at this at all. They're, they're the same, a lot of them, most of them are the same way. But I do think in this environment, if you're trying to reach young men or who, whichever demographic group in those spaces where they are not used to hearing politics all the time, you have to match that, that tone.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, J.D. vance is not someone who is popular, so I don't want to point to him as a success, but as someone who was speaking to those audiences in their language for quite a long time and it produced a lot of very, very bad sound bites for him that really dogged him. And in a world where we did not have inflation, we would point to that as evident as a huge liability. And I think that it was on net. But it does to your point speak to the importance of going to the audiences where they are before they have formed their political views.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, another thing about strategy. Harris campaign ran a traditional campaign complete with door knocking, phone banking, all the tools and volunteer efforts that help people get to the polls. You and I were part of that in the last weekend. We were in Arizona. Saw you in Arizona, we were in Nevada. On the other side, the Trump campaign's canvassing operation was almost non existent. They relied on Elon Musk's America PACs, cobbled together voter contact operation that was by all accounts not that sophisticated and actually contacting and turning out voters. And yet Trump won. One side focused on in person organizing. The other side was criticized by us and most people as two online. So is the lesson that the Internet is real life. What do you think?

[Max Fisher]

A really big soapbox that I have been on the last few days and I'm really going to be on the next couple weeks as people process lessons from this. You already seeing takes from people saying that like Trump understood the electorate. Hamlet did not understand the electorate. The Trump campaign was a liability for them. If you look at the numbers like you mentioned, there was a nationwide a seven point move towards Republicans across states, across demographics. But in the states where they both campaign that was cut down to at best a three point swing towards Republican or a one point swing. Which is another way of saying that when people heard from these campaigns, when they were targeted by the Trump campaign, they became significantly less likely to vote for him by a change against the secular trend of between four and six points, which is huge. Harris campaign made a massive difference and there is no indication that the Trump campaign persuaded anybody of anything. Appears to have turned people off. And that is a really, it's a, it's hard to hold in your head he had won in a huge blowout and his campaign hurt him. I understand it's very hard to hold those two things together, but that is what the numbers show us. And I think it is really important that we keep that in mind both when we think about what works in campaigning and also we think about what resonated with people in this election.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it's funny because my analysis of the campaign and maybe the last two weeks when she was closing strong and he wasn't, was not like oh, she's going to win now. It's like he may still win.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But I don't think anything he's doing.

[Max Fisher]

Is helping, is helping.

[Jon Favreau]

And I still believe that.

[Max Fisher]

Absolutely. I think, I think that really Bears that out.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I don't think anything. He, he, he. Yes, that and I'm not saying that campaign did not do a lot of smart things.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Like I think the media strategy around podcasts was probably pretty smart. I think their ad strategy clearly effective. Yes. But I. There's no evidence the ground game was effective and there is evidence that her ground game was effective.

[Max Fisher]

And when you look at the global context, it's even starker. There was every incumbent government, I think this is right. I think it's every incumbent government that faced reelection this year suffered a massive swing against them. It was, I think in Latin America there have been 20 elections in a row where the incumbent lost power across Latin America, which is crazy. And in context with that, the Democrats significantly outperformed the global trend in terms of the anti incumbent swaying that they experienced now. It is a distinction without a difference. In the end they still lost power, as you may have heard. I understand this is cold comfort, but when we think about what does the electorate want, what appealed to them and what worked in campaigning, I just, I think we've got to be really tough with ourselves in keeping that in mind. As much as we want to point to it and say that, well, if she had only done this.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep, I agree with that. I agree with that. Speaking of excuses, after Trump's first victory in 2016, a lot of time spent blaming his victory on misinformation, foreign interference. Right. We've talked a lot about how we've never really dealt with that problem. I'm curious what role you think misinformation played in this election. My sense is much, it was much less determinative.

[Max Fisher]

I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

Even as we talked about how fucked up the information environment overall is, I think that is different than misinformation.

[Max Fisher]

I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

But what do you think? Was there any like campaign or specific piece of misinformation that you think was a big, big deal here?

[Max Fisher]

Well, Peanut, the squirrel, I think we can agree really, really swung this one.

[Jon Favreau]

And if you listening, don't know. In the final days, the Trump folks were doing it for the squirrel. There was a squirrel that was killed by New York State.

[Max Fisher]

There was an only fans model involved.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it was an OnlyFans model who had a pet squirrel that he used in his OnlyFans videos, I guess. And then the authorities find out that he shouldn't have had it and they killed it. Which doesn't seem like the right thing to do at all. But somehow this was the fault of some of this was like the Democrats fault.

[Max Fisher]

I Guess I don't.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know.

[Max Fisher]

I certainly don't understand, but Elon Musk was all over it. The squirrel bit people.

[Jon Favreau]

Rabies protocol.

[Max Fisher]

Put it down for rabies protocol.

[Jon Favreau]

There we go.

[Max Fisher]

You guys should really have microphones. I really believe that these. It's moments like this that we need to hear from you.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay? The squirrel was put down because the squirrel bit. Someone was biting people. It bit. The squirrel bit an animal. Patrol officer Emma and Austin are filling us in on what actually happened. They are. And so you know what? The squirrel fucking deserved it.

[Max Fisher]

I'm a law and order voter, but just for squirrels in blue states. No, I think that. I don't think that misinformation played a demonstrable role in this election at all. I mean, we kind of talked about, like, people's understanding of, is inflation down, is undocumented immigration up? Views on that were factually incorrect if they voted for Trump, which, as most people did. But I don't think that that's misinformation. I just think it's about how you experience those changes.

[Jon Favreau]

A lack of good information, maybe not getting enough information. There's a lot of different ways here. But I think when we think misinformation, it's like the lies put out by Trump, they travel.

[Max Fisher]

Right. The foreign interference, I think mostly failed.

[Jon Favreau]

Even though it was unbelievably fucked up that Russia was like calling in bomb.

[Max Fisher]

Threats across every swing state. So on the one. On the other patented take on this, the good news is that our safeguards on this are better. Are the safeguards from the intelligence community and federal agencies know how to look out for this better. I think that, in my opinion, the media did a better job of not running with stuff irresponsibly. We're not doing another John Podesta leaks. Again, none of it was that effective. But I think what is scary to me about the Russian interference, which did not play any demonstrable role in this election. Poland places were only closed very briefly. There's no indication that it swung the vote. Any meaningful degree is the degree to which we have just accepted that this is how our politics work now, is that when a Republican is running for president, hostile foreign powers are going to directly and overtly and kind of violently interfere in the conduct of our election to get that Republican elected to office. And we're all just going to say, well, that's just how it goes. Unless.

[Jon Favreau]

Unless you're Iran and then you're working on the other side.

[Max Fisher]

That that is true. That is, that is absolutely correct.

[Jon Favreau]

But it is, yeah, it's, it's wild and it is.

[Max Fisher]

I really worry about where Trump will take that because it's every, every time it happens, it goes a little bit further. We get a little bit more inured to it, we get a little bit more used to it and he gets more open and more brazen and more shameless about it. And that's scary.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say, you know, it took some time, but after 2016, I think we all, a lot of us came to the realization that yes, Russia was interfering, but they're pushing on an open door.

[Max Fisher]

Exactly. That's exactly right.

[Jon Favreau]

It is the divisions in our own society that make that possible, that make it possible to exploit for foreign actors to exploit. And I think that is the same to the extent that foreign actors exploited those divisions this time around. It's the divisions that are the heart of the problem.

[Max Fisher]

That, that is right, that that is the real problem that is the symptom. I think that's absolutely true of 2016. I.

[Jon Favreau]

The bomb threat's less how the bomb.

[Max Fisher]

So I am trying to be really vigilant with myself and not spinning myself up over things that have not happened yet, both for my own mental well being. And to your point, last time around we got really panicked about a lot of things that did not happen. So I will say to try to be measured about it, I'm trying to keep a watchful eye on the degree to which Trump invites or solicits more overt foreign intervention in our politics going forward, knowing that he now is going to be able to prevent any sort of a organized government response to it. The other thing I worry about is I don't think conspiracies, election conspiracies, immigration conspiracies, deep state stuff, did anything to swing our politics this time around. I think it's why people came out to vote for Trump. But I do worry about Trump using those, much more so than he did last time around, to buy acquiescence among his people, especially within the government, to do some really fucked up stuff in terms of like mass purging, some civil servants doing some really terrible things with regulations, election interference. So I think that is kind of the role of misinformation that I going to have my eye on going forward.

[Jon Favreau]

I too will have my eye on that. I'll have my other eye on our new tech oligarch, Elon Musk. 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 cost the average family more than $1,100 per year. $1,100. 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 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% percent off deal on custom blind shade shutters and drapery for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to 3dayblinds.com offline. That's buy one get one 50% off when you head to 3day blinds.com offline one last time. That's the number 3D a Y blinds.com offline.

[Julia]

The first ever Kia K4 seamlessly combines bold style and advanced tech. With striking star map, LED headlights and an available panoramic display, the Kia K4 delivers design and function. The available surround view and blind spot view monitors can help provide added confidence. Plus SiriusXM comes standard, bringing you closer to what you love. The Kia K4 balances aesthetics and innovation. Learn more at kia.com K4 surround view and blind spot view monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle.

[Jon Favreau]

So, big winner, big winner. Elon Musk. He, you know, his investment in the Trump campaign is like, reportedly north of $100 million. Plus the social media platform he owns that just, you know, pumped out tons of pro Trump content. And of course, he was a valuable surrogate on the trail. This will pay off Musk.

[Max Fisher]

He didn't like the jumps.

[Jon Favreau]

Musk and his. Musk and his companies are expected to benefit now in government contracts, regulatory changes, possibly an appointment for Musk himself in a second Trump administration.

[Max Fisher]

Elon Musk's net worth has already increased by $15 billion.

[Jon Favreau]

Good for Elon. No one better, no one deserves it more. He apparently joined Trump's call with Zelensky today.

[Max Fisher]

That was disturbing.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you think? Has Elon outsmarted us all?

[Max Fisher]

So, before we get to the bad stuff, the silver lining here is that a lot of this was a handshake deal that Trump made with Musk where Musk gives him the largest in kind political contribution in the history of politics in terms of the campaign that he ran for him, and that in exchange, he is going to get this role in the Trump White House, which we'll talk about now. If there's one thing that we know about Trump and his deals that he makes, it's that he loves to renege on them. It's been a hallmark of his businesses from the beginning. He stiffs contractors, he makes a deal, and he doesn't follow through. So. So you can look forward to the satisfaction of him stiffing Musk very publicly. And if there's another thing we know, it's that he loves to feud with and ultimately expel people from his inner circle, especially if they have too much power or if they're getting too much attention. So I do feel confident we can look forward to Trump publicly and nationally humiliating Elon Musk. And I am excited for that. It's going to be fun. The bad news is that the thing that Musk has ostensibly negotiated for is to be Trump's like, regulations czar or regulation cutter in chief. And we know an audit of the federal government, quote, unquote, audited the federal government. We know that what that actually means because Musk has said as much as it means a mass purge of civil servants and agencies like the epa. And here's a fun one, the Federal Aviation Administration.

[Jon Favreau]

Because I know you've talked about this before, and it's really scaring me. Like I said, I tried not to do about the future, the FAA thing, since the first time you said it, it's sort of been lodged in my head.

[Max Fisher]

I will say it's not air traffic controllers, at least it's not. But it's. It's about agencies that regulate his businesses specifically. And this is, I mean, to, to go like a little Ben Rhodes on you. This is just absolutely like page number three in the strongman, authoritarian, elected authoritarian playbook, which is that you bring in your cronies and you just strip the government for parts in terms of massive contracts, which Musk already has before a bunch of different federal agencies, payouts in the form of tax cut, which means that we are just going to be. The federal government is going to be giving our money to Elon Musk. That's what it's going to be doing. It's just transferring our tax dollars to him. They're going to share their 20 ongoing federal regulatory investigations into Musk's businesses. I'm sure those will be swept up in his regulatory audit. And the side effect of that, even though it's not the intention, is going to be less regulation and therefore a less safe environment for the rest of us.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, I do think I'll give a silver lining on all of that. I think it provides us a roadmap for an argument against Elon Musk that fits with some of the trends that we've been talking about, which is, okay, these people are in power, they control Washington. And this is how much Elon Musk made today. How much did you make?

[Max Fisher]

Right, the hand, the handouts to billionaires, interviews.

[Jon Favreau]

Jared Kushner just got another deal in fucking Saudi Arabia.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Did, did the price of eggs go down for you?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And don't you, don't you want people in government who are going to do that for you, who are going to, like, actually fight for you and not just say it and then go in there and get themselves richer?

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, I think that, that, that is probably a pretty effective message for a lot of folks. Right. You know, I'm willing to, again, I'm willing to be. No, I proven wrong about this, but I think it is, it is fertile territory.

[Max Fisher]

I agree. And this Trump's mandate, popular mandate this time, was very different from his mandate in 2016. His mandate in 2016 was, I am angry about social change, immigration, diversity. And Trump is going to put a, put a stop to that in the form of just being really horrible to minorities and marginal groups. And he was very, he was in a good position to deliver on that promise. But if he was elected on an economic mandate, especially for working class voters, there he is going to do the opposite of delivering that on day one.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And the question is, can we make people understand that, help people understand that. Want to quickly finish with just a note on what a second Trump term may mean for the media ecosystem and journalism at large. We saw a resurgence in traditional news media after 2016. People subscribed, supported newspapers as a check on Trump, Trump fourth estate, yada yada. Eight years later, you know, we've a lot of anger towards your old friends at the New York Times, sane washing Donald Trump and massive subscriber loss that we just talked about the other week at the Washington Post because of Bezos. Do you think we will again see a resurgence in support of the news media? Like what? How do you see the future of the traditional legacy media?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I think that we are unlikely to get what we got in 2016 and 2017, which is that people were, I don't know, we talked about this last week. People were kind of grasping for someone who is going to fight for them against this very scary authoritarian coming in. And the media implicitly kind of promised to be that and promised to be the resistance. And Trump helped that along by identifying the media as the resistance. I don't think people are primed for that this time around. I think a lot of that is exhaustion. I think a lot of it is a sense that the media promised to implicitly to protect us from Trump. And now he's back. So how can I go give another, make another bunch of newspaper subscriptions to stop Trump? There are also a lot of other cross pressures on the media right now that have only been growing. Bezos, preemptive surrender to Trump, maybe, maybe that's what he meant to do by pulling the newspaper's endorsement. Maybe he didn't mean to, but Trump just took it that way. He certainly gave a very lavish congratulation to Trump coming into office, which is pretty scary to see from the owner of the third largest newspaper paper in the country. It's a leading indicator, we know that Trump is going to once again use the power of the White House, as he did last time around, to punish the owners of media companies for allowing free reporting on him. Which means that, you know, for a long time owning a news, a major news operation meant losses of a few million dollars a year if you owned a big cable news operation, if you owned a newspaper. And now maybe it means losses of billions of dollars a year in the form of punishing regulations. I think the reader revolt is probably going to continue. The New York Times did see A big boost in subscriptions, but it's not a good thing if there's only one viable newspaper out there in the world. But I think the thing that most of all worries me is the Trump. Trump's victory reflects and I think will signal to a lot of people a real decline in demand for the kind of core journalistic value propositions of accountability and shared reality and accurate information. And there's still a market for that people. There's still people out there who want that. But this is going to feel to a lot of people like a big signal from the country that it's like we don't really care about those things and we're not really interested in them.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, I worry about that too, because people, you can see people saying like, well, we, you know, he didn't do any interviews with traditional media. And they look, I mean, you can quibble with the Times and the Post, whatever else, plenty of pieces we can point to where they were very clear about what Donald Trump, Trump's intentions are for second term. Yes, the Times did a long series on it and maybe not all of their headlines were written to everyone's satisfaction, but the reporting was there and it was there in the Post as well, despite being owned by Jeff Bezos there in the Wall Street Journal, which editorial board is right leaning. It was a lot of places. And obviously that reporting is incredibly important just to give us all a accurate record of what's happening in the country. But yeah, I have that same concern. What do you think we should be doing here at Crooked?

[Max Fisher]

So I was talking to Tommy before the recording about this, like, how do you reach that 7% that swung for Trump? And I also do not have an answer for this. The thing that my mind keeps going back to is actually a very different group. I keep. You mentioned like this last weekend we all went to Arizona, do a lot of door knocking. My mind keeps going back to conversations that I had with, with Democrats, with registered Democrats and with independents or Republicans who are voting Democratic in this neighborhood outside of Phoenix called Queen Creek. Do you know this place? It's a very. I did not know about it beforehand. Even though I grew up in Phoenix. It's. I mean, it's a brand new.

[Jon Favreau]

Grew up in Phoenix, in Scottsdale.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, Very Trumpy, you know, overwhelmingly went for Trump, but like 60%. So there's a lot of Democrats there and it's very deep maga. You see a lot of Trump flags a lot giant pickup trucks with Punisher flags on them. You see a lot of off duty cop cars parked next to the pickup truck with the Trump logo on them. And you know, you have your little voter list and you're going to all of the houses that are registered Democrat are willing to vote Democratic. And they don't have any yard signs out front. There's no Kamala signs in those neighborhoods. And you knock on the door and the relief on people's faces when they heard, you know, I'm a volunteer with the Kamala Harris campaign, because they didn't know that people knew that they were there. Do you know what I mean? They think. And they would say this, they would say, we really feel isolated out here and we're afraid of our neighbors. We are really afraid to put a sign out because we're afraid of what our neighbors are going to do to us. We heard stories about people getting attacked in front of their houses after 2020 by their own neighbors because their neighbors had heard that they had voted for Joe Biden. And there's one woman who talked to Julia who said, I want to vote for Kamala Harris because I'm really worried about an abortion ban, but I don't care what you say to me, I am terrified my neighbors are going to find out that I voted for her somehow because Trump will tell them or something and that they're going to come to get me. And being able to talk to these people did not swing the election. It did not change the outcome of it. But hearing how relieved they were and how much better they felt to know that we were there, that there was something larger than them, who saw them, who recognized them, and that to hear that there were other Democrats in their neighborhood, neighborhood, in their community said, you know, I really feel like no matter what happens, I feel better about getting through it because I know that we are not in alone. And I think that there is a really big value for crooked media. Of course, part of it is going to be figuring out how we as a party reach those other 7%. I think there is a lot of value in reaching the people who are feeling scared and hopeless right now and helping, I'm going to say them helping all of us, because I'm one of those people to get through the next four years. Years.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I also think, like, there is just a role to play in and we've been trying to do this, but like having conversations that are nuanced, yes. That don't necessarily fit with all of your views, but maybe with some where you hear from someone you disagree with, you Disagree, you debate, but it's respectful. You have an interesting conversation. And like, I just think that's how, that's how we're going to change things. I keep thinking about, we knocked on a lot of doors in this very working class neighborhood in East Las Vegas and a lot of Latino residents, Asian American residents, just very diverse. And you know, some of the streets that we went on were like really run down. Some were just, you know, traditional working class neighborhoods.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

But, but it just made as we're like at the height of the campaign where all the information's coming in and we're all like, do you see the seltzer pole and this and Madison Square Garden rally and that? We're doing this. And then you knocking on doors. And people are, first of all, they open their doors, they are friendly, they are smiling and they're like, so what's going on? Like, so disconnected from everything that we talk about. And there's this one, so 73 year old Asian American woman, she comes to the door and she, you know, speaks broken English, she has a big dog who's barking the whole time and she's trying to talk to us. It's like hard to sort of understand her. But we're like, we're, we're here, we're here from. Are you gonna vote on Tuesday? And she's like, vote, vote. We're like, vote on Tuesday in the election. She goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She goes, trump, President. President Trump. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no. We held up our door knockers and we're like, we showed the picture of K. He's like, oh, K. She's like, is, isn't she the one who let the migrants in who are killing the police? And we're like, we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I'm like, look, she, she wants to like close the border if she wins and make sure that the people who are here and undocumented, they can get a path to citizenship. And if they work and they want to. And they put. And she's, oh, well, I want people to get a path to, you know, she's like, I just worry about the border. I want people here. And then, and then I was like, and also she will lower the cost of your prescriptions. And Nina Harris, who's in Vote Save America. Nina was like, and your healthcare. And then Tommy's behind us and he's like, and cut your taxes. She will lower your taxes, which Trump wants to raise. Right. And this Woman sort of, like, looked at us and she goes, okay. She goes, I'll vote for Kamala. And we're like, really? And she's like. And Nina's like, do you need a ride? Do you need anything scheduled Tuesday? She's like, no, I promise. I promise.

[Max Fisher]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

I'll vote for her. And I was like, you know what?

[Max Fisher]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

There are the people we can, like, be. We can rage here about, like, oh, they're ignorant or misinformation that people are out there and they are willing to be persuaded.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And they are living busy lives and they're disconnected from all the bullshit that we talk about and care about. And instead of judging them for it, I think we should go out there and try to convince them.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's like, that is the promise of politics.

[Max Fisher]

I think we can do it.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, there you go. We're going to leave it on that high note. After a tough week, we will be back here next week and every week after that, trying to make sense of it all. We'll see you all back here soon. 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 Ilak Frank Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Sherland and Adrian Hill for production support, and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Delon Valley Nueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Hey, Offline listeners, if you were fans of S Town, then Brian Reed is back with Questionnaire Everything, a new podcast that is questioning everything we think we know about journalism. Brian got sued over S Town because allegedly, it was not journalism. So he's now on a quest to figure out what journalism is, who gets to be a journalist, how it helps us understand the world or not. You'll hear from the likes of Ira Glass and instead Herndon, to local news publishers who got sued, and from regular people whose views of the news strained their marriage. You're not alone in questioning the state of journalism, media, media, and how the heck it affects our lives and democracy. So join in. Listen to question everything on your favorite podcast app.

[Julia]

The first ever Kia K4 seamlessly combines bold style and advanced tech. With striking star map, LED headlights and an available panoramic display, the Kia K4 delivers design and function. The available surround view and blind spot view monitors can help provide added confidence. Plus, SiriusXM comes standard, bringing you closer to what you love. The Kia K4 balances aesthetics and innovation. Learn more at kia.com K4 4 surround view and blind Spot View Monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle.

[Jon Favreau]

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