Transcript
Batya Ungar-Sargon (0:02)
Polling shows that between 80 and 90% of Republicans back the President's war. That podcast sphere is just so totally divorced from where average people are at. And you see this come up on Israel, you see it come up on Epstein, you see it come up on Iran, you see it come up on foreign policy again and again and again. Even the people who get their news from Tucker Carlson totally disagree with him on this issue. No matter how many times he says it's Israel's war. That's not a divide. That's a divide between the podcasters and the content creators and then the mainstream voters.
Francis Foster (0:37)
The fact that the vice president, and frankly, let's be honest, the heir apparently. Oh, here we go. This is going to be interesting as well.
Batya Ungar-Sargon (0:44)
He will not be the nominee if he cannot distance himself from someone like Tucker Carlson. He feels very kind, confident about their chances of, you know, striking a deal with a new moderate leadership in the near future. I could be very wrong about that.
Francis Foster (1:00)
Where do you get new moderate leadership when you're bombing a country? Batya, welcome back to Chicken Omtree.
Batya Ungar-Sargon (1:09)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here.
Francis Foster (1:11)
Oh, it's great to have you back. Last time we had you on episode was really informative. Absolutely crushed as well. Thank you. And the reason we wanted to have you back is you and I keep having a private debate in our DMs about some things that I actually think is really relevant to a lot of the stuff that we see, particularly online at the moment. And I guess the main thing that you keep saying to me is all of these podcast wars and, you know, Tucker Carlson versus Ben Shapiro and all of this stuff is not really remotely reflective of what's actually happening in America, which I find an interesting perspective because on the one hand, I think it's kind of hard to believe. On the other hand, when we see Americans talking about British politics, which increasingly happens, I'm like, yeah, okay, I can see how people from afar might be directionally somewhat accurate, but kind of also not fully present to the realities on the ground and get a skewed perspective. So give us your perspective on where you think a lot of this kind of online chatter is not reflective of reality.
Batya Ungar-Sargon (2:11)
I think what we've observed over the last year is that in issue after issue after issue, the podcastariat has been radically out of touch with where the vast majority of MAGA voters, Trump voters, Republicans are at. So what you have in America, particularly when it comes to an issue like anti Semitism, is this has always been relegated to the elites since the founding of this country. There was something in the soil that just rejected the idea of hating Jews. There are Jews here since 1654. And in one of the massive betrayals, American Jews see themselves as an immigrant community, when actually we were inextricably part of the founding of this country. That elite discourse has trickled down in a very big way on the left. So the mainstream Democratic voter is very deeply influenced by their mainstream media. The same cannot be said about the right, where the content creator class, which was a very welcome breakaway from the mainstream media, which is so liberal and so anti Trump and so anti maga and so anti religious, anti American. That podcast sphere is just so totally divorced from where average people are at. And you see this come up on Israel, you see it come up on Epstein, you see it come up on Iran, you see it come up on foreign policy again and again and again, where the people who claim to be the influencers of the right simply have no influence, neither on the president nor on his voters. And the polling just keeps bearing this out.
