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- [00:14]
A
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome. A longtime journalism hand. He was previously the editorial page editor at the New York Times, editor in chief at the Atlantic. That's why I've calling you old. Also a former White House correspondent and bureau chief in Jerusalem. Now he's the Lexington columnist for the Economist, where he has to spell maneuver. M A N O E U V R E Like a limey freak. It's James Bennett. How are you doing, man?
- [00:43]
B
I'm good, Tim. Yeah, they got a different word for everything, the Brits.
- [00:46]
A
It turns out I had to triple check maneuver this morning when I was reading one of your recent columns. I was like, what is that atrocity?
- [00:54]
B
Yeah, it's not just the spelling. It's like learning a whole new language.
- [00:58]
A
Yeah, the way they shape their mouth, it's gotta be related to the teeth somehow. You know, the pronunciation is different. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about. I want to do some media gossip stuff with you at the end of Candy for people who care about that. But we have actual real news on several fronts. And so we start with Jeffrey Epstein, as is our obligation until we figure out who killed him. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published portions of the birthday tributes that the Wall Street Journal had written about the 50th birthday for Epstein. We get to see the Trump, whatever you want to call it. Poem scene of a very nubile looking young woman that he drew for Epstein where he talked about how they have so much in common and he's wishing for him a lot of wonderful secrets. We found another page in the book has a photo of Epstein holding an oversized check supposedly representing Epstein selling a depreciated woman to Trump. We don't know if Trump was involved in that, but we know that that check was there. What do you make of all this, James Bennett?
- [02:00]
B
The White House has gone from saying a letter was non existent to now saying it's simply is a fake.
- [02:06]
A
Forgery.
- [02:06]
B
A forgery.
- [02:07]
A
And really playing the long game. Whoever that forger was really playing the long game. It's been 20, a couple decades later, you know.
- [02:16]
B
Yeah, but doesn't it feel like this is just headed down now a pre clear kind of partisan path? The Republicans in Congress, we're already seeing them fall in line and accept the claim that it is a fake. There's presumably a reality here that may or may not be provable in the end. It's a good fact for the Wall Street Journal that this is out it would seem to strengthen their hand substantially in the libel case or defamation case, I can't remember which it is that Donald Trump's brought against them. But in terms of the politics of this, I don't know. But I feel like I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the Epstein story because it has already had much more legs than I thought it would at first. I don't know. Where are you on this?
- [03:02]
A
Well, I think it has had more legs because of the way that they've behaved. Right. I mean, when Pam Bondi first. And really this kind of was reignited when Pam Bondi gave those binders to the far right conservative mag. I wouldn't call him conservative, really MAGA influencer world types. And it was all this old information and she was trying to, whatever, check this box, that there was this demand from the maga, right, to demonstrate that there was a cover up of a pedophile ring of elite Democrats and liberals and people they hate. And so they put that binder out, which was obviously insufficient at the time even to the biggest Trump fluffers. And so at that point I was like, I don't know, this could be an issue for them. I didn't know how big of one. It became a big issue when it became more of a traditional cover up. When you talk about this moving in a traditional partisan way, that's true, but it's also more of a traditional type of scandal in a weird way than Trump has dealt with in the past. It's pretty similar to a lot of other presidential cover ups. There's embarrassing information about Trump or Trump's friends in there. We don't know exactly what, but it's embarrassing enough that they don't wanna put it out. And so now they've decided to try to block people from seeing it. Pretty. It's a pretty straightforward story in that sense.
- [04:22]
B
What has been unusual to me about this so far is that there was like bipartisan demand, you know, and the Democratic backbenchers got this subpoena and they actually have gotten the doc and they got Republican support for that and they actually got the documents released. And there seemed to be some genuine bipartisan desire to get to the bottom of this question of like, you know, just how far this monstrous Epstein story really goes and who all is implicated in it. And what seems to be happening now is the, you know, Republicans are beginning to solidify around the kind of partisan positioning here that the White House has sketched out, which is that this is fake, nothing to see Here, Nothing to see here. Let's move on.
- [05:08]
A
Here's the other way. I think it might be a little different from that partisan fight is that Trump brought in a new part of the coalition that isn't quite as sycophantic as the old part of his coalition. When you talk about kind of the manosphere crowd, even some of the horseshoe type lefties, the rfk, Tulsi, I mean, Tulsi's gotten pretty sycophantic herself. But some of the people that sort of fit that mold, I think this makes him extremely mockable to them to the extent that some of them care deeply about the story because they've been covering it and following it for years now. And then others of them maybe just more in like a comedic, like in a South Park, Shane Gillis sense. It's kind of like, really, this isn't you and it's his fucking signature. It looks exactly like its signature. It sounds like him, right? Like he's done drawings before. And it's a preposterous thing, Right? And it's like you can get Charlie Kirk and the primetime Fox to go along with your most preposterous spin, but some of these guys have at least a little bit of dignity left, you know, and so I think that that makes him vulnerable on this in a way. Some of the other stuff wasn't.
- [06:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think, was it? Your colleague Eggers wrote this morning, though, that in many ways, this is the world that Donald Trump's been preparing us for for many years, which is a world in which we don't know what the truth is. And you turn to your leader to tell you what's true and what's not true, and you don't rely on independent sources for verification. But you're right. There are these interesting corners of MAGA world now, and in the MAGA media world, the world of influencers, where there are signs of people who are still thinking for themselves and insisting on trying to get to the bottom of this.
- [06:50]
A
Particular scandal, at least test driving the possibility. What will the audience think if I make fun of Donald Trump on this? See how it goes. That's encouraging that test driving is good as we deal with his whatever Orwellian desire to only believe him and not your lying eyes. This kind of leads us to your recent. What's the appropriate word for the Economist you contributed to the COVID story. You're a contributor. I don't want to go outside of Economist style. It's about America's missing opposition in some sense. I just Want to note that Democrats have a new chair of this Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia. You know, who pushed for this, you know, who knows? Gerry Connolly, RIP had initially been the Oversight chair. Remember, there was this fight between AOC and him. I think obviously Democrats should have made AOC head of that committee. But it's noteworthy, right, that, like, they're starting to do some of this stuff. I want to get into your article more broadly, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Unlike the Democrats posture on Epstein in particular.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, as I said, I mean, they have been effective in getting this stuff released and actually working with Republicans to make that happen. So, I mean, we're seeing pockets of opposition, I think, in various ways that Democrats very kind of decentralized way, obviously, the governors too, in their own ways, finding ways to try to push back. But basically, I mean, it's been pretty ineffective up to date.
- [08:18]
A
So this is how you begin your piece, which is this is a puzzle. Most Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump, yet everywhere he seems to be getting his way. Why? And that's kind of the premise, right? Which is. So in some sense you could say, well, I talked to this Bill Kristol yesterday. His numbers are down, they're soft. We're not a Bush Katrina type numbers or anything, but it's not good. But at the same time, his authoritarian project is continuing apace. What was your answer to your own rhetorical question there?
- [08:48]
B
Well, the piece you're talking about is editorial. They call them leaders at the Economist. Again, they got a different word for everything here. And so it's kind of the collective wisdom of the whole hive mind. And the piece itself was written by our US Editor, John Prideaux. Actually, an argument is that it begins from the premise, as he said, that Donald Trump is not very popular right now. In fact, his net approval rating is about where Joe Biden's was after his dismal debate performance against Donald Trump last year. He's net negative about 14 points. And there's also a tradition in the US of concern about, you know, too much authority concentrated in one person. Yet, you know, Donald Trump is overcoming both of those things right now. And it's partly a function of a lot of the institutions he's going after and challenging. Universities, law firms, media organizations aren't able to work collectively. There's kind of a first mover or collective action problem there where they're all acting as independent agents. And in some ways, from a law firm's perspective, to the extent that a potential Competitor is weakened, that's an advantage for them. So there's no collective action there. And on the Democratic front, I just don't think they've figured out who they are yet. And that's natural. We see this, this is the cycles of American history. It's typical for the opposition. Not, we don't have, it's not a parliamentary system. We don't have a shadow government in the US and when a party gets a drubbing, like the Democrats did in the last election, it takes a while, and really it takes until they have a new nominee, presidential nominee, to be able to say this is who they are and this is what they stand for. So it's normal that we'd be in that interregnum. But the fact is, I think part of the problem is Donald Trump's better at politics than they are. He's pretty good at politics, this guy. He's kind of hacked our system and he's constantly on offense. And going on MSNBC to shout back has now turned out to be a very effective strategy for the Democrats.
- [10:59]
A
I want to talk about the ways in which she's hacked her system, kind of the media element of it in a second, but let's just go to the elite institutions part of this first. I've been chewing over this tech titan meeting that Trump had last week for a couple days now. And I was thinking about this counterfactual this morning, which is like, imagine what the reaction would be right now. There's a new pull out this morning showing Zoran up by like 20 points in the New York mayor's race. I think it seems pretty clear that he's going to be the next mayor of New York City. We'll see things happen in politics. But let's say that Zoran right now is gathering big leaders of finance together to come talk to him and that what was requested was that they bring him gifts and suck up to him and talk about how great he is. And if they don't do that, then what Zorin is going to do is, I don't know, install some massive, you know, wealth tax or some massive, you know, carried interest tax or something. And that that was the stick that he was holding over their head. And that counterfactual Zorin's doing what Trump, you say Trump is doing. He's an offense, he's aggressive, he's hacking the system. I think the corporate America's hair would be on fire. People would be going insane. It would be in the front page story. People be talking about Socialism coming to America, threats. Donald Trump did exactly that with the Silicon Valley leaders to almost no pushback. How do you explain that asymmetry?
- [12:19]
B
I struggle with this one. You can kind of play this game all day long. If Barack Obama had done X, if Joe Biden had done Y, if even George W. Bush had done Z, can't you imagine how everybody would be going berserk about that? And I don't know how to answer that question because. Is it because Donald Trump is this uniquely kind of skilled political actor? He is an unusually charismatic guy in my experience. Always drives Democrats crazy when I say that, but he is. He has established this very unusual hold over his base and he believes in these displays of dominance, which he does over and over again. So is he a unique character or is the uniqueness that he has just had more political imagination than the rest of these guys and it turned out that all the structures, these institutional structures that are corporate leaders, all of these actors in American life were just weaker than we thought they were, and all it took was one guy willing to push harder to get them to cave.
- [13:34]
A
Yeah, it's just. I hear you. I understand we can play this game all day. But, like, that's why I think the Zoran example is instructive, because it's more modern, it's happening right now, as opposed to, like comparing to a past world. But, like, I don't know, like, I don't. I don't think everybody would fold for that, for some kind of left wing authoritarian. I don't think that corporate America would fold. I think they would fight it. And so I think there's another answer. And it can't just be Donald Trump's charm. Like, he obviously charming and Zoran's charming. So, like, what is it? And is it that they kind of want it? Is it that, that he's more unapologetic? It's more scared of him. The threat is more. They feel the threat more acutely. I don't know.
- [14:09]
B
I don't know. Tim, what does it mean to be a left or right wing authoritarian? Donald Trump has nationalized U.S. steel. Right.
- [14:16]
A
Is that a right wing position? No.
- [14:17]
B
You know what I mean.
- [14:18]
A
I do know what you mean. More friendly to corporate America, more, you know, more traditional values. You know what I mean?
- [14:25]
B
I do know what you mean. I just don't know. If Zoran Mandami were the President, United States, with the military at his beck and call, with asserting powers to levy taxes the way Donald Trump is doing with tariffs right now, would he be able to get temporary acquiescence from corporate America because the overlords of capital would be concerned that they might be next in line if they crossed him. I think it's possible that he would. I'm not sure he's that kind of guy. I'm not being argumentative. I take your point that America might.
- [14:59]
A
No one must be argumentative. It's a podcast. We can disagree and hash it through. I'm trying to understand, literally he was talking about the missing opposition, but it's like, why, Again, the Democrats can talk about their strategy in a second, but for the non political actors, non directly political actors, the degree to which they have acquiesced to him compared to the first time is truly astounding. Trump's not any different. He's not more charismatic now than he was then. So what is it? To me it's like, well, they think the threat is real. They really think that he might bring down a fascist hammer on their head, I guess. I don't know what other conclusion to come to.
- [15:34]
B
Yeah, I mean, we all know this, right? He's got different people around him than he did in his first term and he is much more confident in the exercise of his own power and his people are much more imaginative about how they can apply it. You know, they spent a lot of time thinking about how they can do things like remake the bureaucracy and impose these tariffs and, you know, take the other actions that we're seeing him take. Stretch the definition of terrorists to encompass drug gangs and then assert, based on a quarter century old act, the ability to kill suspected drug dealers without any kind of trial. They've been thinking about this for a while. It's different than the first term.
- [16:22]
A
That's true, that's true. The other side of that coin, though, is, I don't know, what did you make of Barack Obama? Doesn't talk a lot these days. It was maybe a month ago now. Time's kind of a flat circle in the Trump era, but he kind of lambasted like the elite institutions and the big corporate CEOs and the in the colleges saying, like what his point was kind of, I don't have in front of me. It was essentially like, what are you so scared of? Like, you have huge endowment at Harvard. Like, he comes for you. Okay, like whether, like state of your principles, weather the storm, like, fight it right? Push back. We've seen pushback work against him. I mean, I kind of wish Obama would be making those points a little bit different for him, but I thought that the point was Compelling? No, it feels like Donald Trump hasn't demonstrated yet that he can cripple one of the 10s and P10 tech companies with his tariffs. They all have a pretty good P and L still out there. So it's pretty interesting how much they've been unwilling to even do a modicum of pushback.
- [17:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, Harvard is fighting, right? They're still fighting in court. They haven't reached a settlement there. And it sounds like the Trump administration is still asking for things that they're not willing to acquiesce to. But your broader point. Totally, yeah, I agree with it, but I, you know, you called me old earlier. It's sort of making all sorts of discoveries late in life. But. But like, one of them is like, yeah, a lot of people aren't willing to stand up for their principles. It turns out, you know, a lot of people who know better aren't willing to have the argument. And that's the problem, like, even to have the argument, like, who's arguing with Donald Trump anymore? Who's telling him, no, we shouldn't do this, we should think differently about that. I don't care whether you believe in Donald Trump or whether you don't. Like, we all benefit from pushback. And you're right about the elite institutions. And we've seen it in the law firms, we've seen in the universities, we have seen it in the media. The biggest problem, of course, has been within the Republican Party is, you know, better than I do and still is with these members of Congress who I think do have different points of view on a lot of this stuff, but they're just letting themselves get rolled over and over and over again.
- [18:32]
A
All right, y', all, I was never, you know, what was it? The boy Scouts that gotta be prepared? I was never really a boy Scout, you know, I was more of a procrastinator. It was kind of a last second crash. I bet you guys could have predicted that about me. I don't know if I've ever said that before. I feel like that's my entire aura. But for some things in life, it's important to be prepared. And trust and will can help ensure that your loved ones are covered when it comes to things like medical decisions and powers of attorney. You can go to trustandwill.com bulwark to get 20% off their simple, secure and expert back estate planning services. Trust and will is super easy. You know, this kind of thing, it seems like it's a challenge, but you get onto the site, it is simple to navigate. You can get peace of mind at the end. Couldn't recommend it more highly. You never know what happens. You get in that airplane, you're thinking, I wish I would have gone to Trust and Will. That was something that I had thought about when I was flying to Europe the other week. So there you go. I recommend doing it. Each Trust and Will is state specific, legally valid and customized to your needs. So get on it. We can't control everything, but Trust and Will can help you take control of protecting your family's Future. Go to trustandwill.com bulwark for 20% off. That's 20% off at Trust and Will Bulwark. Do it onto the Democrats really quick and their pushback, or lack thereof. What do you think they should do about it? What would you do?
- [19:51]
B
What would I do?
- [19:52]
A
Hakeem Jeffries calls you and says, I need the advice of the editor of the Economist to tell me what we should do.
- [19:59]
B
I'd refer him to the editor of the Economist.
- [20:01]
A
Sorry, you know what I fucking mean. The Lexington columnist for the Economist.
- [20:08]
B
What would I do? I mean, there's a series of battles that they're facing. And the next big one, I think is the shutdown fight. Right. That's upon them. And this stuff's hard. I don't really know how to advise them in that. My own view is nobody should go into a shutdown fight without knowing what the end game is. My big concern for the Democrats going into shutdown here is that they would do it to resist, to try to draw a line in the sand and say, we're not going to be morally implicated in this budget and then they're going to wind up caving. And we've seen this movie many times before. Newt Gingrich shutting the Congress down back in the day was really the beginning of Bill Clinton's turnaround going into the 96 election, although also sowed the seeds of his own destruction. And some not destruction, but some of his subsequent campaign, as you may recall, because Monica Lewinsky delivered a pizza to him in the Oval Office during the shutdown. So it was eventually figured in the Star Report. So anyway, long way of saying I'm ducking your question. I don't give tactical devices.
- [21:18]
A
Okay.
- [21:20]
B
It's going to be a big party again. They need to find a way to have an umbrella. And Donald Trump has done this for the Republicans, by the way. An umbrella that's broad enough to encompass. Yeah. Mamdani in New York not to be terrified of him all the time. And also Abigail Spamberger in Virginia and explain why these people are both Democrats and why it makes sense that they are. And I'm not hearing that from the party, I'm just hearing a lot of panic.
- [21:47]
A
Yeah, I think they gotta be even broader than that. I don't know. I think Abigail Spamberger and Zoran probably agree on a lot of cultural issues. I think they gotta expand out on the cultural issues side of things.
- [21:55]
B
Yeah, agree.
- [21:56]
A
Your brother is running for governor of my home state. Colorad has left the Senate. I know that you have conflicts there. As a journalist, I want to talk about that race in particular. But he's not the only one that has like left, has decided, fuck it, I don't want to be in Congress. Right. Like a lot of prominent Democrats and establishment, almost all of the establishment, like my style, old school Republican types have self deported from D.C. and a lot of people very early in their term. I mean, you know, Michael's been there for a while, but he's not exactly an old man. You know, rules are different for politicians than podcasters. But you know, Anthony Gonzalez, you go down the line. Mike Gallagher, I'm no fan of congressman from Wisconsin particularly, but he was 38 or something when he decided, I wanna leave Congress, I can't do it anymore. What do you make of that? The types of people, both from within the Republican Party and from the Democratic Party that maybe could be the tip of the spear fighting him in DC have decided DC's so broken that I'm either gonna become a lobbyist or run for state office or do something else.
- [23:02]
B
Last thing my brother would want for me to function as any kind of spokesman for him and I stay away from his politics and the whole story of what he's up to. So this is not a commentary on what he may be thinking, but I mean, in general, you look at it and the people who are departing, like there are two classes of people. They're the ones who are leaving and then the ones who stay way too long. Right. And I think some of the ones who are leaving don't want to be among the group that's there into their late 80s, you know, being propped up by their aides. I mean, we all know that problem which exists in both parties and it's a terrible commentary on how broken Congress is, you know, that I think a lot of people affect people who want to be effective and you know, want to try to grope our way back to a more constructive politics, are just kind of saying Congress isn't the place where that happens or can happen. Yeah, we're seeing a number go run for for governor right now. And we've seen people struggle to recruit some serious former governors to run for Senate in the same thing, like to.
- [24:09]
A
Get them to Maine. You're saying this in Maine.
- [24:11]
B
You're seeing it. We saw it in Kentucky, too.
- [24:13]
A
Right.
- [24:14]
B
Like, they just, they look at the Senate and say, that's not, that's not for me. It's a dismal reality, I think, of what life in Congress looks like right now.
- [24:25]
A
Hey, everybody, we are going on the road this fall and I want to see you. Sadly, our Toronto tickets have already sold out, so I'm plotting a return to Canada. You guys just wait on that. But there's still tickets left for our events in Washington, D.C. and New York City in October. Come join me, Sarah jvl, for two nights of camaraderie and joy and resistance and podcasting and maybe some special guests at the D.C. event. We might give a big middle finger to the masked agents of Donald Trump that are roaming the city's free streets. And we'll be back in New York a couple times later. First time we've been in New York in ages. The last time we had a live New York event, it was, I can remember because it was during the Nuggets title run. And me and a handful of the folks who came out went and watched Jamal Murray, like, put up 40, I think, on the Lakers after. The podcast was quite enjoyable. Maybe we'll have a similar night. We'll see. And if you really want more time with us and you don't want to just place a bet that you'll end up at the same bar with me after, because you never know. You could pay for VIP tickets. They're included in the sale. It'll give you earlier entry into the show. And you can hang with us for an intimate Q and A. You can check out all the details and get tickets@thebullwerk.com events. For more, that's thebullwork.com events. See you all on the East Coast. Let me go to the Middle east with your kind of background. Having covered that from Jerusalem, we have news. This morning, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Khalil Al Hayy in Doha, in Qatar, inside of Qatar today, Israel has reportedly attacked Gaza, Hezbollah and Lebanon, Syria and the Hamas leader inside of Qatar. So has attacks in four countries. Probably a remarkable kind of offensive that this is still going on. And there's so many different layers to this. But I kind of just want to Let you kind of cook.
- [26:18]
B
Yeah, I, I mean, the Doha thing is, is astonishing. I just saw the news of that breaking when we started talking. So I don't know, I don't know the details of that strike.
- [26:30]
A
We do know that US Got the heads up.
- [26:31]
B
I think we do know that now because that was one of my big questions. So we knew it, I guess.
- [26:36]
A
Let me just say a reporter in Israel was reporting that the US Has a heads up. I've not heard it from the US Government or Israel government.
- [26:43]
B
I mean, you know, Tim, we're living in, it's an age of impunity, right, where the powerful do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. After Donald Trump took the action he took against the suspected drug smugglers the other day, this is the way it's a powerful act. And Bibi Netanyahu has shown he's kind of run the table over the course of the last year in the region and he's shown he will not be constrained to act in what he believes to be Israel's national interest. And the Israelis have in the past attempted or carried out attacks across borders in Jordan and elsewhere. Usually they try to hide their fingerprints. And what again is to my mind, very different. It's like this is all happening out in the open and to not just accomplish the immediate end, but to send a message. And it's a profound change and we'll see what the reaction is going to be in the Arab world. I mean, are they, or again, is there going to be an uproar about this or not? I would not be surprised if there isn't. Again, as we haven't seen in response to Israeli action in Lebanon and Syria and so forth.
- [27:58]
A
What do you think about the medium term politics for this, for Israel? I guess my view on this, just cards on the table, is I think that initially following October 7, they had such grave security threats from both Hamas and from Hezbollah on both borders and from Iran and their proxies. And there's a lot that they needed to do to protect themselves and to protect people of Israel, which is something that I, that I'm extremely sympathetic to as it is trudged on now or coming up on two years. It does feel like, particularly the campaign in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there is leading to global backlash. I guess your point about the region maybe less than we might have expected. But globally isolating Israel to a degree, obviously you're reporting there all that stuff, stuff that they care that matters. Right. And it matters from a human rights standpoint, but also matters from them for Israel's stability. Right. They need security from their neighbors, but they also need global friends and allies. Right. Since they're some level kind of on an island. And that seems to be a deep risk right now. Like, how do you think that they're considering all that? Because based on actions today, I don't know that they seem to care.
- [29:14]
B
Yeah, I don't think that they do. I think the view is they'll work that out over the long haul in the short to medium term, again, pursue their interests as they see it and security as Bibi Netanyahu sees it. I think you're right, though, Tim. Like, it's been a catastrophe for Israel's standing, I think, in the world, and it's standing within America. This is again another area of rare bipartisan kind of emerging consensus where you're seeing the Democratic Party, to a degree it hasn't been in my lifetime anyway, increasingly turning against this Israeli government and in pockets of the party against Israel itself. Obviously, you know, it's, it goes beyond saying the problem is Bibi Daniyahu's government increasingly to, to attacking the fundamental, you know, goals of Zionism. You know, Zoran Mamdani himself is identifying himself as an anti Zionist. And in the Republican Party, we're seeing the same thing now. Right. Like the National Conservative Convention last week. It's really remarkable. I think that, you know, BBC's, that he feels like he'll have the evangelicals, he'll have Donald Trump in his corner. And I think that that's true over the longer haul. The direction of travel, though, for the state of Israel, I think, you know, you should be concerning to any supporter.
- [30:37]
A
Of Israel in some quarters still, and even more not that long ago, people would say, well, the emerging bipartisan consensus, whatever against Israel is simply anti Semitism. And it's just horseshoe politics. And it's far right and far left. They've always been anti Semitic and now they are just looking for an excuse to act on that bias, that bigotry. I think that of course, there'd be a lot of folks in the Democratic Party in particular that would say that's not true. This is like a reaction to the policy choices that Israel's making. How do you, what do you think about all that?
- [31:11]
B
Well, I think some of it is anti Semitism. You know, I mean, I think that's a enduring and real, real problem. But not all of it is anti Semitism by any stretch. And a lot of it now is revulsion against the civilian death toll in Gaza. And that makes a lot of Americans deeply uncomfortable or outraged. I mean, again, these things are really hard to disentangle. I don't think the anti Semitism has been bound up for a long time in my view. A lot of the anti Israel politics in the US has been true on the right for a long time and it's also been true on the left. I don't gainsay that like that's a real problem. But I think Bibi Netanyahu makes a mistake if he does. And I think he does tell himself that that's the whole problem.
- [32:08]
A
It's not, it seems to me, it's like it's more likely than not that assuming we get past our authoritarian project, and that's not like Baron Trump ascending to the throne, that the next, I mean, if the next president of the United States is a Mainstream Democrat Or. J.D. vance, I feel like the idea that Israel is going to get military assistance from the United States is in deep doubt. I would think that I'm following administration if nothing changes. Do you agree with that?
- [32:34]
B
If we continue on this path? Yeah, I think that that's right. I think. Look, J.D. vance, as on so many subjects is going to be very interesting to watch. Yeah, who the hell knows?
- [32:43]
A
This is true. He might change his name. He might become Jewish.
- [32:47]
B
He may. Well, I think it would be the fourth faith if you count as atheist, period. So I mean we're all free to grow and evolve and change. I suppose we are.
- [33:00]
A
I've made some changes as well. Just the one name for me so far. This takes us into the media stuff, but kind of related to the media stuff there. What do you make of the criticism of the media that there has, I guess you get criticism on both sides. Like there's some media criticism coming from, you know, kind of, of neo, old pro Israel, neocon circles that the media has been fully anti Israel up to a point of being anti Semitic. There's a big story in the free press about how the pictures of the kids suffering from famine actually had other issues, including one of them was bombed, I think, and also had famine and also was hungry. So there's that critique, critique then from I think the pro Palestine left that the corporate media has been kind of too kind to Israel. Right. And too credulous to Israel. What do you make of those various complaints?
- [33:54]
B
You know, my experience there is that people are working really hard to get the story out. We are seeing those images, we are hearing those stories. So it's not like reporters aren't trying to tell the Truth about what's happening at all in the conflict. As we saw the images and we are hearing about the plight of the hostages, we are hearing. I actually happen to be a believer in both sidesism or all sidesism. I think we need to hear all this stuff. And we are. And we are hearing it because there are journalists who are taking real risks. Some of them are Palestinians, some of them are Israeli. A lot of them are foreign journalists too, to get those stories out. Part of me is a little impatient with the armchair kind of bashing of people, journalists who are taking risks on the ground to do really hard work in real time. Like, it's hard. People make mistakes and they need to own those mistakes very quickly when they do again. And this is where I just sound so frigging wishy washy and I'm sorry, but I kind of am. The truth is that also the criticism's fair. Like a lot of the criticism is fair. There is biased journalism that's done. There is some bad reporting.
- [35:04]
A
But you don't think there's across the mainstream media some sort of anti Israel conspiracy, some conspiracy to make the war look worse than it is?
- [35:11]
B
No, no, no, I don't. I mean, my experience of journalists generally is we're not smart enough or organized enough to conspire in the first place. I don't think that that's the case now. I'm not on the ground there, so I'm talking out of my hat a little bit. And in the media, you know, we're having our own existential struggle and the resources people can devote to those stories are not what they once were. So that film too, I do think there are people that are doing their damnedest to tell the story. And I also know that they'll make mistakes. I think the test is whether they own up to those, you know, when they do. Do you think there's a conspiracy, Tim? Do you suspect that when you watch this stuff, do you look at it and think, you know, this is an ideological struggle and journalism has simply become another ideological player in it?
- [36:02]
A
I mean, look, people have biases. Like, I don't know, you said you kind of ascribe to all sidesism. I never really prescribed to objectivity. There just is no real such thing. Right. Like, I guess there's wire reporting, which is needed and important of a just this happened. And sometimes that can be biased. Right. We've seen certainly biases in wire. But I think you can achieve a wire reporting kind of, you know, neutral, that's like this happened. But like when you come to decisions about what's on the front page, decisions on what pictures to use, decisions on how to frame it, like, all of that, like, people come with their own experience. And I think that there are certainly some particularly younger reporters who have been extremely radicalized against Israel and maybe some good read for some good reasons, by the way, you know, who have been maybe too credulous at times in taking Hamas at its, whatever it's called, the Palestinian Health Authority at its word when, when they're putting out death reports. And so, like, at times maybe have been too credulous. I also think that, like, it's very obvious that there are some corporate media companies that are trying to not touch it, that like, don't want to criticize Israel because they're worried about backlash among whatever their board or their. Again, I don't think it's a big conspiracy, like, from there's some Jewish CEO telling them they can't talk about it, but they just don't want to deal with it. Right, because they have, you know, Jewish friends, Zionist friends, friends in Israel, like. And so I think that you see both of those things happening. I think the idea though, that, like, there's not a famine happening in Gaza is kind of crazy. And a lot of times I think some of the media criticism is overblown to a degree of eye rolling.
- [37:44]
B
For me, I don't disagree with any of that on the objectivity point. Look, I agree that, like, it's impossible for us as humans. You know, the whole point of objectivity is not to achieve some sort of nirvana where you're a perfectly neutral player. The whole point is the struggle, you know, I think for this particular type of journalism, for the journalism that aspires to give people the best representation of reality possible. And you know, for me as a reporter in the Middle east, like, often when I got dumped into an assignment, you know, objectivity matters. Humility really matters. You know, it's a lesson in humility. You don't know, you know, and it's trying to get to the scene, trying to tell the story as vividly as possible, trying to get to the bottom of, of who actually pulled the trigger, who detonated the bomb. But ultimately it's, you can't answer some of those questions and all you can do is lay out what happened. And one of the problems we're having now in Gaza, and this is understandable, but part of the trap is we don't have. It's hard to get people onto the ground there and conditions where they're really able to observe what's going on. I was lucky when I was, I mean, lucky in the second Intifada when I was based there. You were still able to move back and forth. It was hard and sometimes a bit risky, but you're still able to get places. And now it's much harder to do that, obviously. And when journalists are going into Gaza and I'm talking about foreign journalists, they're embedded and it's just a tougher story to tell for that reason. So.
- [39:20]
A
All right, we have some other media water cooler stuff I want to get your take on. What have you thought about the ABC and CBS settlements you talked earlier about? The Wall Street Journal had this. I guess Trump is suing them over the reporting of the birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. It's pretty clear that he did the birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. But I don't know. It was also, I didn't really think that George Stephanopoulos or 60 Minutes did anything wrong either. And they settled anyway. So what did you make of those choices?
- [39:44]
B
Choices like, I'm not having been on the receiving end of this kind of suit myself. I'm not like, I think it's a terrible, miserable, miserable process. You know, it's concerning to any journalist, I think, to see a media organization settle rather than fight. You know, I think the test for all these organizations going forward is, you know, is it going to compromise their journalists? And, you know, that's what really matters to me in the end is what does it mean going forward? And again, like another, you know, time will tell too.
- [40:21]
A
Time will tell.
- [40:22]
B
The possible outcome of this is that they recommit themselves to, like, getting the story right.
- [40:28]
A
What does that word mean, though, recommit? Did they not get the story right the first time? And 60 Minutes lawsuit was so preposterous. It's a show's called 60 Minutes.
- [40:37]
B
That's fair.
- [40:37]
A
Like, they edit it down to 60 so that it can fit within 60 Minutes with four commercial breaks. Like, that's the show. So, like, if you interview somebody for longer than an hour, then they're going to cut the interview up. The thing is ridiculous. And then since then, CBS has now said that on the Sunday show, they're only going to do live or live to tape because the administration complained about the way it was cutting.
- [40:57]
B
Yeah.
- [40:58]
A
What are we talking about here? Like, this is folding. This is not like a legitimate attack on the criticism of cbs, was it?
- [41:07]
B
That's. Yeah, I didn't recommit. I didn't want to suggest remotely that that meant they Weren't committed to it before. I just mean like, yeah, every morning you get up and recommit yourself if you're in one of these jobs. Is the live to tape thing that bad? Like, you know, given the, the world that we're living in today where there is so much suspicion all the time?
- [41:27]
A
Sure. No, it's not that bad. If you decide you want to do it because you're a news organization, you think that's best. It's pretty bad if the of government tells you they're not going to give you interviews anymore unless you do it a certain way and you say okay.
- [41:40]
B
Yeah, I guess the question of why they did it really does matter in that sense. The outcome, I guess I don't think is necessarily a disaster. It's nice to see the full interview. It's nice to hear everything.
- [41:51]
A
Sure, I hear you. I just think we have some data points about the full date that I'm worried about. We had as part of the Skydance's commitments to the Trump administration when they got approval with their merger to Paramount, they said they'd do an ombudsman into anti conservative bias or whatever. They've hired Ken Weinstein. He was a donor to the Trump Victory Fund. He was previously nominated to be ambassador to Japan for Trump. He's at the Hudson Institute, has never worked at a journalism outlet before. What do you think about having him as the Ombudsman?
- [42:22]
B
I don't know the whole story there. I mean he was also an Obama. I was just reading a bio of.
- [42:27]
A
Him yesterday and he's a donor to the Trump Victory Fund. So he donated for and he wasn't a journalist. It's a pretty strange choice for ombudsman, don't you think?
- [42:37]
B
Yeah, I also, it's not clear to me what the ombudsman's role is going to be there and what their authority is. Do you know, like, is he going to make public reports? Is he going to have authority over the journalism to change it if he doesn't like it? There's a lot I just don't know about it said I think he's reporting directly to the corporate leadership. So I think there's a lot we need to know about what this. Obviously having an ombudsman is not a bad thing. Lots of journalism organizations have had them traditionally they've had various degrees of effectiveness. I just don't know how this is supposed to play out.
- [43:14]
A
I guess we could get into the minutiae of all these things, but this doesn't worry you it seems like these media institutions are doing things to appease the leader who knows what, how it will affect their journalism. We will watch that. But like media companies saying, okay, in order for us to be able to get a merger, in order us for not to get hassled or sued, we're going to hire certain people that you like or you approve of. That's a pretty dangerous place to be.
- [43:42]
B
It is concerning that it's being done for those reasons, how it actually works in practice. It's like the changes at Columbia University, you know, are those going to be in the end, like detrimental the education of the students or not? I don't think we know the answer to that question yet. I don't like particularly when it comes to media organizations. It makes me really concerned when they're, you know, changing their practices under government pressure. But I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I don't know how they're going to. I think the minutiae matters here, Tim. Like, what is this job actually going to be? What's the impact on effect on the journalism actually going to be like, should we be on guard about it and worried? Sure, yeah. It's hard to answer this question without. Again, I'm not. 60 Minutes is awesome. I'm not like this is quite apart from anything that's about that particular case. Yeah, they can't tell us what to do. They shouldn't be able to tell us what to do. You can't let the government boss journalism organizations around. I totally agree with all that. I totally would resolve that. The notion that we should just keep carrying on as we're carrying on on because we're so awesome, I think deserves continual scrutiny. And that's where I'm being a little. Maybe I'm just being contrarian for contrarian's sake, but I'm not.
- [45:01]
A
No, I want the scrutiny. This is what I want to actually talk about. I don't think it's perfect either. I think that it's a lot harder than people realize about where to go with this. And I think there are different views. I'm interested in your view just for the backstory for people who don't know you had gotten embroiled in that controversy where you were editor of the New York Times opinion page when that, that Tom Cotton op ed was approved and all the WOKE staffers got mad. And so you're kind of a little bit of, I don't know, canary in the coal mine or something around these sort of questions right at the Time. So there were like.
- [45:33]
B
Or roadkill.
- [45:34]
A
Roadkill. Is that what you call yourself? Roadkill? Okay. You're roadkill over this. These sort of left. Whatever word you want to use, lefty, woke. Progressive. Like outrage. You know, the revolt of the young woke staffers. Whatever we want to call. And you wrote an Atlantic piece about it a couple years ago. And like, there. There was, I think, a real legitimate complaint that I agree with, which was there is this kind of progressive intolerance at times inside media organizations where, you know, if somebody gave a. Gave a wrong think, then there would be a mob that would come for them, and sometimes they'd be pushed out. Sometimes they just have to go quiet for the while. And occasionally those mobs had legitimate complaints. Sometimes they were borderline, sometimes they were illegitimate. And that. That was like no way to run a news organization. And I agree with that. The thing is, though, I worry that. That we're over shooting the other direction like that. There is this idea that now, okay, the reaction to that needs to be. We got to make sure we have token pro Trump voices around, and we got to make sure that we have MAGA opinions here to ensure that we're fair. And I think that's very hard in this administration because Trump puts his advocates in a position constantly where they have to lie to advance his point of view. I'm curious what your thought is on how you kind of achieve a balance as a news organization where you're not being owned by whatever the most extreme ideological views of the staff, but also you're not just becoming like, okay, we'll provide a token point of view for something we know is false because we feel like we need to be fair. Does that question make sense?
- [47:13]
B
Yeah. Look, I don't think you should ever publish anything you know is false. Like, I don't know why you would ever do that.
- [47:20]
A
Or let. Well. Or someone else making an argument that, you know they don't believe. How about that somebody's making an argument they know they don't really believe. Or an argument that's BS or an argument that's.
- [47:30]
B
Well, as an editor, I would never want to publish something like that. You know, I mean, the Tom Cotton piece, it wasn't a false piece. It wasn't something he didn't believe. And to my mind, it was a totally legitimate point of view that deserved to be represented in the debate. At that time, we were also publishing pieces advocating the abolition of the police. He was advocating that at that time that troops should be used in places where police were overwhelmed by looting and rioting. And I thought it would be bad journalism not to have that, that argument in front of the readers.
- [48:05]
A
I agree with that for what it's worth.
- [48:07]
B
And I think, by the way, it was also bad politics. It wasn't my job to make the determination based on the politics, but it was dumb politics too. I mean, you try to cut people out of the debate like that and you wind up where we are today. I think illiberalism on the left and illiberalism on the right results in this pendulum swinging back and forth and forth the way you describe. So what do you do about that? These are, again, Tim, it's a so unsatisfying answer. It's a question of the minutiae again, because it's hard to draw lines and say people occupy different lanes. Right. You've got your journalists who are supposed to be places like the Wall Street Journal or the Times or ABC who are supposed to be struggling towards objectivity and telling you what the facts are. They need to check their bias the extent they can and all the rest of it. And the opinion editors, I think at those sorts of places need to be, yeah, curating a really wide ranging debate. But that doesn't mean publishing stuff, you know, is bullshit. Like, you don't do that. You don't publish stuff that's a lie.
- [49:15]
A
Yeah, I was going to give you a stark example. Let me try to put it a different way. I'll give my view after. But do you think that, like, broadly speaking, the mainstream media during the last 10 years has been unfair in Trump's favor or unfair in his disfavor? Do you think that they've been biased towards him or against him?
- [49:33]
B
I don't think we have a mainstream media anymore. So first, like, who are you talking about?
- [49:38]
A
The big outlets, cbs, abc, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, whatever, the main media outlets. Do you think that they've been unfair to Trump in ways that have benefited him or unfair to him in ways that have armed Trump?
- [49:52]
B
I think by and large they've covered him in ways that have benefited him in the end. And some of those ways have been a function of bias against him. I think the deeper problem has been that they just like, and you heard this from the editor, the chief of the New York Times said in 2020 the Times still didn't understand why Trump won in 2016. It was a failure to get out in the country and understand what the hell was going on. To do journalism was the problem, I think is that a function of bias Partly. Yeah, it is. It's partly a function of coastal elitism and Ivy Leagueism and all those other issues that, God knows, I'm myself an exemplar of those qualities. So, again, I'm falling into the trap of sounding righteous, too. And you're reminding yourself of that. It is like cultivating an attitude of humility about this stuff and recognizing that the Trump phenomenon was real. It took a long time for that to seep in, I think, even up through the last presidential election. Maybe I'm not answering the question, you're.
- [51:00]
A
Answering it in another way, but that's good, because I agree with that. They certainly were in a bubble and out of touch with what a lot of Trump voters said and thought. I also just think, though, that going back to our original topic about how Trump's. What did you say? How he has. Other candidates haven't had the imagination that he has. The way in which he breaks the system, the way in which he does things that no other politician does, makes him very challenging to cover. And the example I always just fall back on because I just think it's an easy. I love my counterfactuals. I think it's an easy game. If you put the Mitt Romney 47% tape into the middle of a Donald Trump speech today, it doesn't even make the paper. It doesn't even make the paper. Yeah, it doesn't. And he says so much crazy shit all the time. And yesterday he did an aside about how crime rates are wrong because we count all these domestic violence things as crimes, and they're not really crime. It's just kind of like. It's like a husband and a wife get in a fight, and that's not really a crime. If any other politician had said that, that is a front page news, this catastrophic gaffe that his career ending, I doubt it was on the evening news last night. And so you have this cadre of people out there, mostly on the right, who are professional media critics, who are like, they're so unfair to Mr. Trump. And you got this one thing not quite right, and you're always so negative about him. But on the other hand, it's like he gets graded on such a curve that my view is a fair rendering of him all day, every day would just be news coverage of all the illegal and inappropriate shit that he did. But you can't do that as a media outlet. You got to edit. And so he benefits from just these media constructs of, oh, you only have so much space in the paper and that's old news. And, well, do people care about this? Right. And so I don't know how you deal with that. Right. Like, I don't know how. I think that, like, putting in some, like, pro Trump flunkies in your media outlet to, like, look over the shoulder of the editors. I don't see how that does anything that deals with our actual problem. And so I don't know what you think, like, if you were back in charge of a media outlet, like, how would you navigate? How do you deal with that?
- [53:16]
B
Yeah, I'm going to give you an answer that's going to make you very impatient with me.
- [53:20]
A
Great.
- [53:20]
B
But I feel like you're talking about two slightly different problems. There's a journalistic problem and there's the political problem. And if I were the editor of a news organization, the political problem would not be my problem. Now it is for a publication like the Bulwark, it is that those two things are not separable. I don't think maybe you disagree with me on this and that's fine.
- [53:44]
A
No, I disagree with it. It's separable on the other outlet. Because if you were in the news outlet, if somebody, if tomorrow Jeff Bezos called you, you and said, james, I'm putting you in charge of the paper. You get to decide what's on the front page every day. You're the executive editor. And then you decided then, using your own news judgment over the next 30 days to write a story about the latest insane thing Donald Trump did and made it a banner headline on the front page of the newspaper every day for 30 straight days. Jeff Bezos would call you in and say, you're creating a political problem for me. And I don't know that you would have necessarily been not doing your news duty. He's the president and he does crazy things all the time. And so I think that the. And I don't think it's separable in this environment with Donald Trump. I don't think it's separable now at a news outlet.
- [54:26]
B
Yeah, Tim. But I refer you to our earlier conversation about principles. At that point, I would quit. And the problem we have is not enough people are willing to quit. And yeah, maybe they'll all wind up quitting. And at that point, we'll have news organizations left. We won't have politicians in office left. But what we need is people who are willing to say, fuck it, like, no, this matters to me, and I'm reporting the story accurately and fairly, and it's your right. And again, we're in Hypothetical land. Like it's your right. My corporate overlord, Jeff Bezos, whoever it is, it's your paper. You can fire me or you. I've been fired, for Christ's sake. For exactly this. Like, that's what I mean. And again, there's nothing glorious about that. I'm not bragging about being publicly humiliated and chased out of the New York Times. Times. But I just think that's how.
- [55:16]
A
I don't think you were humiliated. I don't think it was.
- [55:18]
B
Anyway, whatever.
- [55:22]
A
Your therapist. But on this, from my perspective, it was not anything to be humiliated over.
- [55:28]
B
But, Jeeks, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Then you quit. But what I'm saying about making distinction between the journalism and the politics, there's still a deep journalistic problem there that you're talking about, which is this guy, this is where I say he's hacked our system. He understands the media environment much better, certainly, than I ever have. And in that leader we were talking about earlier in the Economist, my colleague John made a great comparison between Donald Trump and the TikTok algorithm. He gets your attention. He does something outrageous, and before you've even processed it, he's doing the next thing. And you can't look away. You can't look away. And our politics can't process it. Our journalism can barely process it. All we can do is keep reporting this stuff. It's the politics part of it that has to figure this out and grapple with it. And that's why we need a meaningful opposition in this country. I don't think we can look to journalism, the type of journalistic operations you're describing. Just. They aren't the leadership of the resistance. It's not their role, in my view.
- [56:34]
A
Yeah. I guess my question, though, is, to me, I think that you said there are two things. I think maybe I'm talking about two things as well. Sure. Most journalists did not vote for Donald Trump. Most people with college educations didn't vote for Donald Trump. It's kind of hard. We're in an education polarized time, so it would be kind of challenging to find and you could do it. But to get a New Yorker magazine that is balanced 5050 in a country where 90% of the people that graduated with the journalism creeds voting against Trump, that's a broader cultural problem I don't know how to fix. Right. So, sure, of course there is bias in institutions against Donald Trump. I would argue mostly deserved. But there are also journalistic conventions that are biased in its favor. Right. And to me, those end up having more of an impact on the public narrative and the public debate than like, the individual reporters biases. If you asked, I don't know, you know, whatever, like somebody at the Free Press or the Fox Media of Hollywood Kurtz, like, they would say the opposite, right? They would say that that's a crazy assertion that, like, Donald Trump, like everybody in these institutions is, has deep Trump derangement syndrome. And like, that's. And that's the main problem. You've been in institutions. Like, do you think that the journalists are, like, clinically biased against Donald Trump and that that is like, the issue that we need to deal with? Or like, do you think that the issue is more that, like, Donald Trump has broken the way the journalism works?
- [58:03]
B
I think the problem's more the latter than the former. And it's not just that Donald Trump has broken it, it's just the digital economy has broken it. We've been living in a period of existential crisis for American media and journalism now for 25 years, really intensifying over the course of the last 10 or 15. So I do think, think that those institutions were vulnerable again to somebody who had a little more imagination about how you could tip them over than we realize. Probably. Yeah. There are some journalistic conventions that are hackable. Like both sides of them is hackable.
- [58:40]
A
Right.
- [58:41]
B
If you're going to do that now, I think good journalists give both sides, they give people a fair hearing and they're still able to render kind of, you know, the truth or the closest we can get to that, you know.
- [58:54]
A
But it's like a sports team, sports teams can hack refs. Right. It's like if I foul every play, eventually they're going to not call it because they're not wired to call foul every play on me. You know, like, it's always similar to that.
- [59:05]
B
Yeah. And you can work the ref, too. You can call them and scream at them. And there's a lot of stuff that Donald Trump does that other politicians have done forever. He's more aggressive at it. Some ways he's better at it. I do think a lot of it is just the way the attention economy, economy has changed. And in this sense, in our politics, I don't think there's any going back from the idea that the president. This is one of the great failures I think of Joe Biden was obviously the failure to be able to communicate at all. And Donald Trump is at the other extreme of that now. Communication at all. They call it the most transparent administration history. Communication is not the same as transparency, much less accountability, I think, is what we're discovering. But, man, his ability to just dominate people's attention is something that we, as journalists. It's really hard to filter out the signal from the noise.
- [60:00]
A
I think I totally agree on the communication side and something that Democrats need to be awake to next time, because it's not going back. It's not going back. You have to be able to communicate in different ways. In the old days, unfortunately, it's part of the job. It's kind of like why I got frustrated when people said, well, Biden was doing the job. What they always meant was, like, behind the scenes. And, like. And I was like, I'm sorry, but actually talking is part of the job of president now. Like, and maybe not. Maybe it wasn't in 1882, but it, like, sure as hell is in 2025. Right. And that is just, I do think, a reality that Democrats need to deal with.
- [60:34]
B
Yeah. And it has been for a long time.
- [60:36]
A
It's especially true now. But it has been for a long time.
- [60:39]
B
Yeah, it's especially true now. And not to be able to do that. Oh, I was reading something about the Afghanistan withdrawal. There was a news story the other day and the disaster of the withdrawal, and there was just a line in there after several days when Joe Biden broke his silence about the withdrawal at Sebex. And I'm just like, that's just the notion that you thought you could live in a world where you weren't constantly communicating with people. I think we still underrate kind of that dimension of the Biden. Biden kind of White House and the hole that it put the Democrats in.
- [61:16]
A
You're doing your best to be meticulous, which I appreciate. You told me I'd get impatient with you. I'm not. Impatient's not the right word. I enjoy chatting with you just one last time. Circle back to the point. I think you kind of have become an avatar for people who say that the media is deeply biased to the left, whether you want it to be or not, because of what happened to you. It was just the other day that I was trying to downplay something on social media, and I was like, this is not as bad as people say. And I had people replying to me asking, ask James Bennett if it's as bad as you say. I'm like, oh, I have him on the podcast next week, so I will. I think people would be surprised to hear you say that. Like, you don't share the view of, like, the right Wing media critics that like the big problem with the institutional media outlets is that there's a bias against Trump and against conservatives. You don't think that.
- [62:02]
B
I think it is a big problem. And that big piece I wrote was actually for the Economist, not for the Atlantic, where I went through this. I think there is a real problem in some of these mainstream so called media organizations of illiberalism, which is fundamentally anti journalistic. It's not necessarily biased against. It manifests partly as bias against Donald Trump. Absolutely. And bias against the right. I do think that is a problem. I don't think that fight's lost is I guess what I'm saying. And what I think has gone wrong is the same problem again as editors who know better, who don't have the guts to push back. Now, I don't think that's totally shaped coverage. I think it is one of the problems. I just think also the bubble problem, which is related to that but slightly different, is a big part of the problem. Tim, what should I. I'm not giving you the answer you're after here. I do think it's a huge problem. I just, I guess I don't. The whole problem and I think it speaks as much to cultural blinders as it does to political bias.
- [63:14]
A
I'm asking in the context of I'm not trying to be shadow. CBS is really trying to reshape all this. They're saying they might buy the free press. We don't know they're hiring this ombudsman who is a Trump donor. They're like, we think that there's been this problem and CBS seems to identify that the problem was that there was bias against conservatives in the coverage. I don't really, I mean, I think that sure, at times there's been some bias against conservatives, but I like, I don't think that's the biggest problem at all of the news media. I think the bigger problem is that they have been unable to deal with the ways in which Trump has hacked the system and worked the refs. Right. And so to the extent that you might want to get back out there, like if you were starting a newsroom, like, do you like, do you see those both? Like, I guess that's what I'm just trying to kind of tease out. Like, do you think that it's true that like bringing in some more right wing people into these organizations is the answer or do you think there's a different answer?
- [64:08]
B
I think that bringing in more right wing people, I think more diverse newsrooms is part of the answer and diversity in all senses of the term, like people from different walks of life and all the rest of it. I do think that's part of the answer because it is one way you get your unconscious biases challenged and all the rest of it. So I do think that has. That has value in a certain kind of newsroom. Sure. My concern is partly that this is part of the mess that we're in. This illiberalism in the press did contribute to the collapse of trust. I think it really did, and helped us dig the hole that a lot of these institutions find themselves in. Do I think that tilting to the right is the answer? No, of course not. Ideological bias in a different direction isn't going to solve the problem. And I also don't think a sort of stupid push me pull you dialectic is the answer. I think we have all sorts of new ways of doing journalism today, including, like, the conversation you are having right now. Although in some ways this is an old way of. It's like back to the old days, too. But I think the old values matter. Like, I think you have to find ways to instill kind of these basic principles which are about like. Like journalists generally. They're not experts at anything, right? Like, their job is to, like, go out and learn and find stuff out. And if you start from the proposition, and this was a problem I had with some of my colleagues then at the times, like, they knew what the truth was, like, they knew the reality, as opposed to like, Jesus, what the hell's going on in this country? I want to get out and understand it. Like, it's the ethos that worries me more than the ideology and it presents as ideology. But I'm doing a really poor job of explaining myself.
- [65:59]
A
No, no, you aren't. Actually, they're taking us to a nice place to end because that's the ethos. Like, this is the thing that I think is totally wrong that I'm seeing CBS do and CNN do, and they're like, we can solve this problem by having somebody come in who, like, will be our avatar of Maga and they can reflect that point of view no matter what. And I'm like, that's not journalism. That's. You're helping him. Like, that's just. That's a gift to the power. Powerful is what it is, the gift of the powerful. And to the extent that there is bias in journalism, of course you should have diverse viewpoints of people that work there, of course. But the goal is to investigate and challenge the people in Power. And if your answer as a journalist institution is actually, we want to bring in a few representatives of the people in power to make sure their view is represented, that is leading us to a bad place, especially if you're doing it under threat from the leader. And like, that is the thing that worries me that I'm seeing from CBS in particular and a little bit from. From Zaslav, too.
- [66:56]
B
Yeah, Well, I think, you know, it's. The journalists should be out talking to those people and understanding that point of view. Like, that's how. Of course, that's how you get there. Like, and that's where I think that these insular journalistic cultures to serve the readers and damage the organizations over the long haul because they get out of step with where the. They don't. They're failing at the basic task of journalism, which is try to represent what the hell's going on. And that's the problem. And that's what I was trying to warn against in the, in that piece I wrote. And, and so, yeah, bias is part of the. I don't want to. I'm not, I'm not here saying there is no problem with bias. There has been.
- [67:38]
A
So anyway, that's James Bennett.
- [67:39]
B
Yeah. Sorry, Tim.
- [67:40]
A
No, you don't have to apologize. We're going along. This is a podcast. We have unlimited time. The show isn't over. It's not 60 Minutes. I don't have to edit it down. I don't have to. You know, Donald Trump doesn't have to get mad at me because I clipped you out of context. You know, I guess that you will. There will be probably something on social media from this which you can sue me if you don't like the two and a half minutes. So we choose and we'll see how it goes. I appreciate the time. Good luck over there at the Economist with your spelling and hope to talk to you again soon.
- [68:08]
B
Great suit and thank you.
- [68:10]
A
You. Thanks, man. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See you all then. Peace on your. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.