The Realignment: 339 | The Realignment x Moment of Zen: Silicon Valley & DC, Trump vs DeSantis, and the future of media & politics

Marshall here. Welcome back to The Realignment.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show.

Since Sagar and I are coming off of two weeks of live events,

today's episode is going to be a crossover with the Moment of Zen podcast,

a new show that discusses everything happening in technology, business politics, and beyond.

Moment of Zen is hosted by two previous Realignment guests, Eric Torenberg and Antonio Garcia Martinez.

Of course, there's also the third host who we cannot have the pleasure of speaking with yet on the show, Dan Romero.

This conversation was a real blast. It's always fun to have a kind of intersection between tech, media, and politics.

If you enjoy this conversation, you should check out the video on their YouTube page and the other interviews they've recorded lately.

Hope you all enjoy this episode and we'll be back with a Q&A tomorrow and the regular interview schedule after that.

Welcome to another episode of Moment of Zen.

We're lucky to have Sagar and Marshall of The Realignment as our special guests.

Sagar and Marshall, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having us, guys.

Yeah, this is great.

Sagar and Marshall, you guys have the best show as it relates to the intersection of politics, media, tech.

You guys are very influential.

In fact, I heard that you were on the planning committee for the most recent Martin Luther King statue.

Yes.

Yeah, we were both personally consulted.

What was the inspiration behind that kind of aesthetic decision?

I mean, you know the...

Putting your lips, apparently.

Sorry.

Yeah, if you wanted to singlehandedly actually hurt MLK's legacy, that probably was the best moment.

Or to remind people it was marriage.

There's a lot of questions.

Interesting stuff that's come out.

Your show is called The Realignment.

Today, we're going to be talking about the future of the right and the future of the left.

Let's first talk about where we are now and a little bit of where we've been.

To the extent that there's been a realignment of the parties that the right is now the party of the working class and the left is now the party of the elites.

Talk about, to the extent that's true, how was that true and how did that come to be?

It's interesting.

I really, I hate that framing.

This is someone who's been doing this for three or four years just because I don't like frames that confuse more than reveal.

So for example, Rick Scott, when he was chairing the Senate Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee last year, his big whole thing was that he wanted to cut social security and entitlements.

That was the big policy.

Obama gave one of his good old-time vintage 2008 speeches saying, like, that's crazy.

We shouldn't do this.

This is against what Democrats want, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So given that context, saying that Democrats are the parties of the elites, kind of like, I think this interprets the way that the actual economic policy looks.

But like that said, Democrats are increasing the saga that you pick up here, like the party of the professional managerial class and the upper middle class very specifically.

And the way it's kind of interesting because, guess what, in the 80s Ronald Reagan won college graduates.

So that's just a total real line for how politics used to work 40 years ago.

Yeah, the real flipping.

And this is why elites and working class is really difficult, right?

Because if you're a plumber and you make $155,000 a year, are you working class?

While if you were a professional managerial, like let's say HR executive and you make $55,000, are you an elite?

Well, actually kind of.

The thing is, is that the way that it codes isn't always the best.

So I think that the best, and look, there's a lot of data to back this up from 2016 and actually got worse during 2020.

It was education polarization.

Do you have a four year college degree or not?

If you did vast majority of the time that you voted for the Democratic Party, also very likely that you share different cultural sensibilities.

You're going to live in a more urban environment.

You're not going to have as much, you know, social family, religiosity, all these other things.

So that's why I actually think four year college degree is the way that I talk about it.

And I look at it much more of a question of education polarization and all the attendant, you know, downstream effects of that.

Politics just being one of them, right?

Because I think that politics is downstream of that in how it affects our city planning in terms of, you know, what type of movies you watch.

This is all very like almost retrodden Charles Murray type ground.

But like, do you watch CSIS or are you going to watch White Loads?

Like, these are all the, these are like the real, the real divides.

And that actually affects how you vote.

And to interrupt, Sucker, I have to illustrate how much you are on that segment by you referring to Navy and CIS as CSIS.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

And policy thinking.

And CIS.

You've revealed to the crew.

You're right.

Your loyalty is live.

I don't watch NCIS.

I know it's the most watch show in the, the guy is a fucking star, actually.

He's like one of the highest rated people on TV.

I couldn't, I couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

I don't know yet.

The Wall Street Journal actually has a great overview of this.

And Eric, we should put it in the show notes where they just talked about the polarized presidential election compared to 1980 versus 2020.

And they actually show the 2000.

So the kind of 40 years and how it shifted.

And they have these like nice infographics.

But I think they talked about college degrees.

It was, it was like Republican majority in 1980.

And obviously now it's way more Democrat household income.

Republicans used to be the high income counties have voted for presidential election.

Now it's their middle income.

But realistically, they're much lower income.

Religiosity is another thing.

I think it's like, it's like 70% of Democrats don't go to any type of religious service.

Whereas like 50% of Republicans at least done something.

And then gunnerships and other one.

And I went through this before because I knew we were going to talk about this, but it's kind of mind blowing to think of like the, the stereotype of a Republican is a rich person.

And the reality is like, yeah, maybe at the extreme end or the entrepreneur class of like people who are small business owners.

You know, used to go back to that plumber or maybe you're a plumber in your own plumbing business that has five plumbers working for you.

You're probably voting Republican.

100%.

But, but if you're either kind of a laborer, like down, down the spectrum, or to your point, you're a very over qualified, you know, HR professional who went to some, you lead liberal arts school.

And, and kind of is, is there to kind of be a hall monitor at a company like that, you're voting Democrat, right?

Because you are all about the virtue signaling and whatever policies.

But you think of yourself as from a class standpoint, as both high class relative to the, the MAGA Republican voter, but at the same time, the, the kind of like economic milieu that you're in is like actually most of the people in your income level are voting

public and outside of, you know, people in cities.

And I think I'm, I'm restating my title at spindle as over qualified HR professional, because that's frankly what I feel like.

I'm actually the most poorly paid person at this company without.

And that's, that's great.

I'm going to do a P mark and put that on my profile and the seriously at the subtweet.

I like that.

I mean, I think this is important to pick up on though, because it also gets to like the intra class tensions.

You know, what you're talking about, Dan, is what motivates a lot of the student loan debt conversation.

And look, you know, I'm, I'm sympathetic, you know, certainly to that discussion.

And I almost like to think, I mean, obviously that's kind of what Marshall I like to do is look at how that translates across everyone, because there's like intra class, like just general malaise feeling, both working upper middle and whether you have the four year college degree or not of look the

degree.

I mean, it used to pan out for those people and now it's not.

And then also you could say for the people who are at the downwardly mobile part of the spectrum, if you were to look at wage, wage growth and for in terms of like what they could expect, they kind of feel the same thing.

It's just in the policy priority that gets articulated as to what's the most important to those constituencies.

That's what comes out, I think in the parties, hence why student loan debt was one of the one things that was forced through from the quote unquote, professional, but like the Elizabeth Warren type left on to Joe Biden.

It didn't end up coding with Trump and that's kind of what something I think it's important to and it gets to what Marshall said, even if the Republican Party is going to have a vast majority of people who are not small business owners.

They as a constituency are the most powerful.

I think for a couple of reasons like number one is I believe small business owners behind the military and there's like one or two other institutions are third or fourth most respected institutions in the entire country in terms of small business.

Americans like 75% love small business so they have a lot of cultural cache and two, I think they're also like very politically active and also, I don't know exactly what it is, Marshall.

I'm curious what you think, why they have such a hold on Republican policy priority, almost in a similar way to I would say the cultural left is with the Democrats.

Yeah, and the way you should think about this is what were the big Republican like attempts or accomplishments in 2017 when Trump comes around. It's a big tax cut and an attempt to overturn Obamacare.

So just like once again, we kind of see this I'm curious what you guys think about this because now that it's getting a little cooler to be a little more like right wing in certain aspects of like tech Twitter.

There's this very sort of like very like, there's a lot of class warriors coming out of like right wing tech Twitter now it's sort of like yeah like that annoying HR professional who like once again is definitely annoying I'm not going to like fact check that part.

It turns out that they're the ones that are out of touch and like we're the ones who are like in with it.

I think that easy dunk kind of misses like the big debates we're about to have so for example Trump just like put out. Hey Republicans with this debt ceiling stuff. Don't use austerity to cut social security and entitlement programs that was a huge debate Trump had for Republicans

during the 2015 primary. So the real test that we're going to basically seal for the next two years and it's unclear around the sentences on this debate is is the Republican Party going to have a quote unquote like working class base which I think Rick Scott could claim that I think Trump could both claim that

but the question is where is the agenda going to go because what you could do is say guys like CRT. It's crazy the social issues are crazy crimes out of control. You could get a lot of working class votes that way.

But if you don't have to deliver economically I think that's going to be a huge problem and will basically restart the Trump cycle all over again.

But isn't this also the reveal preference of you know when Trump gets into office you have a Republican majority and they how many times they vote to repeal Obamacare when they were out of power.

And then it's like turns out it's like actually the percentage of people who are on disability that is like funded by all these kind of like entitlement programs in Republican counties like they can't get rid of these benefits.

So it's like a lot of verges signaling on that side where it's like ultimately those those programs it's easy to rail on because they're they're liberal programs but the reality is the constituents just as red voting as as you know anything if not more.

Well that's the eternal conundrum for the GOP and like what exactly I would pause it and actually there's a lot of data to back this up.

This is stolen from Madagalaceas not my original point but I do like it.

The lowest approval rating for Donald Trump's presidency was not Charlottesville.

It was not January 6.

It was the day that the tax cuts and jobs act actually passed.

And to the extent that Trump is able to win back or keep on working class votes is largely because of cultural effects of the Democratic Party.

And look I just think that's the eternal war going on.

A lot of the debt ceiling fight I mean look at Trump.

Trump is literally not on the side of the debt ceiling Tea Party Warriors at all.

There's also no indication that they give a shit or that they care.

There is in fact I mean he's the one who told them to vote for Kevin McCarthy over and over again and they're like no we're not doing it until we get our austerity triggers that are put into any sort of speakership.

Ross Douthat also wrote that column the return of the pre Trump GOP I think it was absolutely spot on.

And in a lot of ways we're basically right back where we started in 2014 except that Trump Trump is if anything he's the glue that holds it all together.

He's the guy who could both pass the TCJA but also talk about he could talk you know cultural issues and hammer that home he can win an election but he's also not he has a good sense I think of not going too far up on the line and not abandoning it too much.

Whereas a lot of the economic libertarians within the party they were pretty upset with Trump but were willing to fight with him on a lot of cultural ground.

Also because they were able to get a lot of their policy priorities through when he wasn't looking thinking about people like Jim Jordan and others who blocked actually a lot of Trump initiatives while he was in Congress.

So it's just weird like you know it's it's a mess that's the only way I would put it.

Well just one thing I'll just build on their saga is basically that the real test over the next two years is that it's easy to say from 2015 to 20 20 20 the year like the party of the working class when like interest rates are good.

Yes.

The feds everything's going well at the economy is growing like there's just like no austere.

You can wage the culture war on the right and you could be very like profligate if you're spending you could sign the two thousand dollar checks like on and on and on and on.

For the next two years you're gonna have a lot of folks Ted Cruz only this is gonna be a Josh Holly issues but they're just gonna be a lot of folks who like really embraced the like we're working class party now thing.

It's gonna be hard to keep it up as much as they're actually is going to have to be a choice you're gonna have to make.

I want to address more Marshall's question earlier about why in tech Twitter and just tech in general.

Are you seeing more of the kind of embrace of other sort of sort of the right wing is working class.

Politics I think it's because in the last decade a lot of entrepreneurs and people in tech have been lectured about how how they're the problem how where the problem in all sorts of ways that have not just been annoying but also destructive to our companies.

And all of a sudden this is a way to seize the moral high ground or at least you know remove it you know at least instead of where the enemy actually maybe maybe you're the enemy maybe you're doing the wrong thing.

And so part of it is is perhaps just practical you know what way to fight back so that the hall monitors can can stop destroying this company or.

And my quick thing I remember there was a debate on Twitter what you guys were named this podcast seeing Eric say were the problem and looking your three faces I wish that was the name of the.

I would have been a good that actually were the problem if Antonio Dan Eric like let's just get to the core of it that's my that's my instant reaction what white Hispanics.

If you're if you're next that don't don't follow what I'm not supposed to do.

What do you guys think is going to happen. Let's say if there's like so the tech seems very comfortable with Ron DeSantis.

But what is going to happen let's say if Trump wins the primary do you think like this new vein of like tech right is um probably no I don't know tech anti cultural left let's put it that way.

I think that's a pretty skewed version of Twitter I think tech is still very very.

Okay so let's say you know the in the in the slice that I think that we all inhabit let's not overstate it but it is something you know more overstated certainly than 2017 like how do they grapple like with the possible return.

To try especially like a full Trump you know like stop the steal there's no I can just full queue.

I mean I know how the voters will will go but like how do they the tech elites who are skeptical I would say of the Gavin Newsom and the Kamala Harris and even of Joe Biden like certainly like how do you think they'll hand.

We should get Antonio in on this but I would say I think it's a zero interest rate phenomenon so that you know Google just laid off six percent of their workforce today and you kind of saw the whaling of entitled employees who didn't get their smoothie before they got fired.

I think that that is going to have a big difference regardless of whatever candidate people are actually looking at the economy and saying okay I want to make sure I keep my job.

Yeah I don't know I wouldn't ponder soccer you've been standing Trump here which is I it's a shocking thing I was just looked at the predicted banks he's still running number three actually behind Biden and the Sanctus.

I don't think Trump holds it together actually I think the new rate you say the new right is past prom.

You need to go to NAC on more I think it was.

We just maybe I see my opinion that's this National Conservative Conference where the Sanctus basically gave his like campaigns Stumps Beach in October in Palm Beach.

I think it's very different I think the new right is different I think a lot of it is religious slurping to be clear and I've I've I've made that point before but I think the Sanctus represent something else.

It's not I mean Trump was a Jacksonian revolt against some sort of elite thing the Sanctus is different and I think this new right is different.

We're not we're not going back to a Reaganite libertarian anything right like holding that is like the foil to Trump is just wrong because it's not happening right.

I think that the difference if you look at somebody like the Sanctus and why it makes less just skin crawl and why in some sense many traditional Republicans are offended by him is that he's perfectly

happening using using the instruments of the state for political ends right like some again just to reiterate.

I guess what has only right who organizes the NAC on conference would call fusionism right this business that like yeah we're going to be socially conservative and not really enforce it and basically it's just low taxes and small government right like that's that's gone right that is not the future right

and then the you know the focus isn't on low taxes.

It's on the state imposing a certain moral framework that we all agree on and not letting everything be like an open playing field because in that sense it just gets owned by what is considered to be the preponderance of the woke institutional left

and I think if there's anything that characterizes like what is the new right I think that you know it's the new right is actually the class based.

It's a revolt of the center against what it perceives to be an elite it's a class orientation and the left is actually kind of more more racially obsessed.

It's almost a flippening from what typically characterizes the European left and right.

But how do we square that with what's happening in Congress right so like to say look I agree with you know the Sanctus obviously very comfortable.

Look I actually paid a lot of attention to Sanctus before even Kobe Ryhan wrote a great column Ryhan Salam wrote a great column about Ron DeSantis about how he was much more moderate on the environment for example he took some Everglade protection.

One of the most popular things he did before Kobe was actually raised teacher pay he had an initiative where he wanted to raise teacher paid to second in the entire nation.

Combine that obviously with CRT so you could both be against the teachers unions but actually pay the teachers really well which is an interesting political valence but then you know I'm looking at Kevin McCarthy.

I'm looking at the very first bill that passes right through the Congress to fund the IRS.

What the actual fights for everybody that I speak to here in Washington of what's going to be brewing in the next two years.

It's like there's two parallel universes like with the National Republican and then obviously Ron DeSantis and I'm just I don't know yet which one dominates.

I tend to go national just because even to the extent that DeSantis makes the traditional Republican skin crawl that might be a Twitter phenomenon.

But also Ken Griffin wants to bankroll his campaign for thirty five million thirty five million dollars right.

So I mean there are a lot of Republican billionaires who are very economically libertarian from what I can tell we're very very comfortable with DeSantis.

So what how would you square that the state and the national.

Because national and state politics are totally a couple they're different. Yeah how many Americans know who Kevin McCarthy is.

It could actually you know summarize the past three weeks of congressional politics. What fraction of them.

What fraction of them know. However name recognized DeSantis or can think of a video clip in which he's invoked either by the left or the right for having committed some great coup or some great evil.

Like national politics just plays at a different level than state in my opinion.

I think it's not necessarily a good thing. I think people tend to be a little more irrational and symbolic at the national level.

I mean one of the things if like you know in the Antonio Caliphate where we have a constitutional convention and rewrite the American Constitution.

One thing we should have is separate the head of government from the head of state. Right. People elected Trump. I agree.

He wanted this symbolic King thing which is kind of like the president of Israel is a nice guy he kisses babies he shakes hands.

He meets foreign dignitaries and he does nothing basically maybe tie break something in the parliament or something.

It's kind of like in the constitutional democracy like in Spain where a family basically does nothing.

But like if there were another coup they would kind of embody the state.

And then the person who actually makes the trains run on time so to speak is like somebody else altogether.

Like there isn't that the coupling unfortunately in the American system so they get conflated.

And so the people and I mean maybe it's not crazy right like frankly looking out at California.

Most of the people we have to thank or blame frankly for the state of San Francisco behind me.

I probably right here in the state of California. They're probably not in DC.

And so DC to me is a symbolic choice. I'm basically voting for a monarch and frankly a tribal political identity.

I can think that I'm enlightened more than those knuckle dragging Nevadans east of me.

And I voted for the correct the morally right candidate who was whoever is a Democrat is.

And so I think they're just different and and I don't know.

I mean the counter argument that they're right this is his whole spiel at the NAC on convention which was very much a very.

You know he's not a deep ideologue. He didn't mention religion.

He's just like oh I did this. I did this. I did this. I did this.

You can send a kid to a pretty good state college for six thousand dollars a year.

And we have no state income tax and we built housing and I kept law and order and I kept things open in covid.

That's it. That's my spiel. I'm not the same as thank you very much.

And he walks off the stage. Right. Yeah.

That's a very practical pitch. It's not a it's definitely not a Trumpian pitch.

Maybe it loses against the Trumpian pitch. I don't know.

But it's not great. Not great social interaction in general is the real is the real.

There's a pretty straightforward story. But I mean the thing that's interesting though here that too is like.

So yeah definitely DeSantis is winning the new right right now.

But the real take is that it doesn't really matter what the new right thinks.

What matters is what the first few like Republican primary states indicate because we're in this weird position where like not only does the GOP base

not care what DC think tank world thinks.

It also doesn't care what like you know no offense Newsweek editors who probably know I'm talking about.

They don't care the Newsweek editors think I could joke this off soccer and my friends make is that you have always like new right people

would go to run DeSantis and you're like this run DeSantis like no these people are.

Do what is this like this run DeSantis like actively follow that kind of like the answer is probably not.

So I just like my you know my my my in laws are in South Carolina.

They're right. They're right. Trumpy like you know we're the boat people soccer. Yeah.

Just like put the flags out on their boats like that's the type of people they are.

They're picking Trump every single time. So like the debate is like where are those people.

Those are the intense voters. Those are the Trump flags. I don't think DeSantis has that yet.

Yeah I don't know. I mean and that's that's why I also push on the predicted thing.

I mean look at the end of the day. I mean I just saw a morning console poll just two days ago where likely Republican voters is 46 Trump like 35 DeSantis.

Here's another issue. What are the constituencies up for grab outside of the Trump coalition.

Trump you know for everybody who hates him actually won the more moderate leaning Republican voters.

The reason they lost Iowa is because he lost evangelical and Catholics to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Right now Mike Pence is meeting with a lot of these evangelical voters.

He's actually going after Ron DeSantis along with Kiersey Noem for DeSantis not signing a 50 or only signing a 15 week abortion ban into law.

Evangelicals might be theoretically right one of the only GOP hard constituencies that might break from Trump for an alternative candidate.

I think it probably break from Mike Pence and this actually gets probably also to the ego question which is you know it's fun to do hypothetical matchups

but these people have massive egos like Nikki Haley is not going to stand by and let Rod DeSantis just run.

Mike Pence you know he thinks he's the inheritor of the Trump Prince legacy calling for the national abortion ban.

He's guaranteed at least 9% or so especially a strong advantage in Iowa not necessarily to win but in order to draw away from somebody else.

And so then you have a muddled field just like 2016 and you're going into Super Tuesday with the greatest idea of the former president

and also as a credible case to a lot of these constituencies of like I'm the one who got it done like I overturned Roe versus Wade.

So I still just see it look anything is possible.

He could get indicted although actually the likelihood that goes down now because of the whole Joe Biden classified documents case.

He could shoot himself in the foot but I've seen the man come back from a lot and I just I'm not ready to count him out not yet.

But Sager Marshall thought experiment. Let's say you're advising both parties not just on this upcoming election but really just like the next three elections.

Like you're thinking about what's the future of the GOP in the future of the DNC.

How are you evaluating the various forks in the road that both parties have and what advice would you would you be dispensing.

If you're a Democrat you really have to lean into what worked for Biden in 2020 and what worked for Biden during the midterms which you know like Sager we're live on YouTube as this happened

we got totally wrong.

Like Democrats are at their strongest when they're just normal.

Lauren Boebert would still craze what Lauren Boebert like almost like overturning Kevin McCarthy speaker right as she barely won her seat by less than 1000 votes like Biden's most intense opposition is not popular.

It's not normal.

It's weird.

There's this whole crew and cohort of people who are behaving in their politics like it's 2015 and Brexit is happening and Trump is coming out of nowhere.

The vibe of the country to use like the biggest like Internet era cliche has changed and Democrats need to if they're smart about this return to that.

And I think at its best when Biden is at his most checked in he always gets this.

He's not on Twitter because Twitter in the most important way enforces all of the worst aspects of the Democratic Party to your point Eric Dan and EGM.

It's the most like PMC.

It's the most like woke but not even like woke in the sense that there are plenty of like popular things that are woke but it's like undemocratically woke.

It's like there is no consensus on this.

If you actually ask most Democrats I'd say there's probably a huge gap between like peak Twitter Democratic Party taking how actual voters feel.

So for Democrats it's be normal.

And if you're if you're if you're a Republican I think the argument basically comes down to also just like as much as you could move on.

I think I think as much as you could focus towards the future and move away from just rehashing 2020 and the crazy stuff as much as you could remember that the country is looking for normalcy not upending things.

That will help you a lot because it's just crazy watching Kerry Lake you know barely giving up actually technically conceded soccer.

I don't know.

Is she giving up yet.

I don't pay attention to her anymore.

That's the kind of take it's you know she started running for Senate.

It's just like be normal.

I think for both parties.

Same advice.

Yeah I was going to say I think it's the exact same.

Both have the same advantage.

I mean with the Republicans let's not forget they did win 6% of the national popular vote for the midterm.

So where did they lose.

They lost in the MAGA stop the steel key races.

So that's one of the things you want to expunge from the party.

Part of the reason why it's so difficult is because Donald Trump is like unique in his ability to make sure and force that to the Ford also bring a lot of voters who care about that into the primary and make them vote accordingly.

So that's something that I would try and move on from.

And I think also the Democrats have the same issue.

I mean you know Biden barely won the presidency by 40,000 votes in 2020 and specifically because of unchecked cultural left of which he did his best to push back again.

So I think both have a minority of people who have something which has a big hold over a constituency within the base itself.

And they have to specifically try and either excise move past or strike some sort of deal while trying to appeal to the center.

It's actually very very basic.

I think political advice here you know in terms of coalition management and then trying to win over the center.

There's nothing special.

It's just that the task and the execution at hand for both is difficult.

I'd probably rather be a Democrat right now than a Republican given that Trump is there but in a post Trump world.

I would be worried as hell if I were them.

So let me ask you a random question just to throw you a total curveball because your your composure is driving me crazy.

We have to we have to get you to lose it somehow.

Why don't you why?

Why don't political pundits ever jump to the fray?

Right like why?

Like have you ever considered joining campaign and actually taking a side and trying to win it?

Like no, because like from the tech perspective, right?

Yeah, like it's one thing to pontificate about technology, which we do all the time by the way to be clear.

But then like at some point you have to like go and create it.

So I'm curious you're never tempted to like dip your toe in not necessarily running yourself,

but just like running somebody's actual political machine or messaging your comms.

Has this expectation ever hit you?

It's interesting.

First of all, no, I have no interest.

First of all, I don't work well for others.

So, you know, and that's the other thing.

I know what it takes to work for some of these candidates,

because I'm friends with a lot of people who do and who work for some of the biggest principles in the United States.

And I don't want to be a slave.

So I actually have no interest in doing that.

You refuse to eat a salad with a comb.

You're just not going to do that.

That's the easy part compared to getting screamed at and waking up at 3 a.m.

because so and so forgot their suit pants and you have to go deliver to the hotel.

I can give everybody a whole lot.

First of all, I have no interest.

Second of all, look, I mean, then here's the thing.

I'm pretty sure.

Okay.

Honestly, I don't think that I'm cynical enough to do that,

at least in the political party or a conservative right of what I would want to do.

I have no interest in kissing Trump's ass or, you know, vaguely saying that the election was won,

but not really going into detail or courting like some bullshit NRA organization by buying guns,

even I'm not even into guns.

Like, look, if it's authentic, I think it's fine.

And I think the best candidates out there who are authentically with this and are selected by the Vorgers accordingly,

I'm saying like for me, like, no, I don't have any interest in doing that.

And yeah, I'm doing well.

Like, I like what I'm doing, but I do think it isn't important.

I think it's an important point that you make.

Like, you're right.

Like, look, at the end of the day, the stakes are not that high for me.

I've gotten shit wrong all the time and you do and often have to do monologues where I was like,

I was totally wrong about this.

So, I mean, to the extent I have a constituency, I guess it's my audience for being like,

here's what I think, here's what we're trying to make sense or whatever of the world.

But for actual running in politics, you know, I asked Crystal this too.

Actually, I was like, Crystal, why was she ran for Congress? That's how she became famous.

That's literally why we even have a show.

And she was like, honestly, like, A, she describes all the coalitional problems that I'm describing here

in terms of what it means to be an actual candidate.

And she's like, B, if anything, sometimes when they're in media and especially a successful show,

you actually can have more power over the quote unquote discourse just because of the way that the internet works

and the actual unique incentives that politicians have to court quote unquote influencers,

then you would as a back benching member of Congress. Does that make sense?

I don't know. I would just feel incredibly frustrated to not be able to like test my insights in the heat of battle.

And I assume like, as you know, I guess the three of us were someone involved with a DC swamp organization called the Lincoln Network,

which I'm not absolutely not paid to plug anymore.

But nonetheless, it's kind of interesting to give me a taste of that.

And it's definitely not my thing, but I can tell the people in it kind of love it, right?

Like they're literally creatures of that environment.

And as much as people in tech, like here in service discourse, much of tech and like really couldn't do anything else.

It just strikes me. Yeah, I don't know. And those people always seem to be in the fray and some form or another.

There's like the think tanks are good. There's a staffer thing. There's this and that.

But I don't know. Yeah.

Okay.

Well, you know, here's the other thing, which is that what you're describing is actually part of the reason why I don't want to do it.

Like there's an entire machine, which is built around politics, which actually has nothing to do with ideology.

And it's more has to do with like having a job and making the quote machine or working like, look, I find that boring as shit.

Like much rather to do this and meet people like you and and talk to like that.

I think that's the other dirty truth, which is that the vast majority of quote unquote campaign work is boring, is not innovative.

A lot of it is covering your own ass to the extent that it's fun.

It's really only fun in, let's say, like five states, which are genuinely competitive.

And then in terms of like the big decisions and all that stuff that are made, I mean, that's really usually in the hands of a few people.

And yeah, I mean, Marshall, what do you think?

Well, I mean, this is as I'm hearing your ticket, this is really isn't a huge difference between just like big dick VC mindset and just the way DC works.

So if you're VC and like a really six foot, for example, Mark Andreessen, Mark Andreessen.

He does this because he enjoys it.

He's also expected to be a great investor.

He's expected to be an operator.

Yeah.

He's expected to do CNBC hits.

He needs to be a podcaster.

He needs to be a great writer.

He has to do all these different things at once.

And that's kind of like what the gold standard for being like a tech VC person on this like Twitter space thing to like, you're just like a perfect generalist.

And in DC, you're very much taught.

I think that everyone, I don't even want to say like a cast, you know, cast system in the sense of like one is better than the other.

But it's very much just like structure.

It's like, look, there are some people, these people, and I'm just gonna be very frank, let's talk about the Republican Party.

When you come to DC, you're going to meet these guys who are mostly from like Southern state schools.

They're not particularly intellectual.

And they just like run campaigns.

And the Republican Party is like their friend.

Yeah, that is their thing.

They wear like croquis and have boat shoes and like have vineyard vines like GOP, you know, belts, which like coming from Oregon was like insane to see.

I saw where you and I lived with a couple of these guys.

That's their thing.

Then there are people like soccer soccer, you are a like a pundit.

And in your case, like when I'm telling you, you're saying like, soccer, how are you not like jumping in like, this is your version of jumping into it.

You're actually jumping into it about as aggressive as you can in the sense that you've got a business.

You're not basically like relying on like speaker's fees or like random foundations that support you.

There are people like me who are in this weird space where I'm like a think tank fellow.

So like, I get into it by like talking to smart people and doing interviews.

Then there are like candidates, which kind of take an aspect.

Candidates can be pulled from the every single category, but they're going to kind of lean more towards like the more outgoing parts.

So yeah, there's just the DC just isn't set up to reward arch generalists.

What will end up happening is everyone will be skeptical of you.

No one would take it particularly seriously.

Like soccer could crush it on YouTube, but he's never going to get a think tank offer regardless of ideology.

Just because that doesn't really make sense given people's perspective.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Things are really siloed.

And also, look, here's another thing that's a good part for tech and just for free enterprise.

This is not a free enterprise system.

A lot of it is bullshit.

You actually can fail and you can fail upwards.

In fact, you can literally run a campaign literally into the ground and as long as you were right, nice to the right people at the RNC,

you will get the same consulting gig for some random ass candidate that's running in like Oklahoma.

So it's a much more like closed, frankly, corrupt and stupid system that I just don't find that rewards any like real entrepreneurship ideas or any of this.

And look, I mean, look at the data like the vast majority of campaigns are not contestable.

They're very simple.

Again, like all of us, if anything is a bias towards focusing on the ones which are actually contested, most incumbents win.

And then once you have incumbency, of course, the thing that's going to come at you is a primary thing.

The best advice for most members of Congress is shut up in both the party line.

I just don't have a lot of interest in that.

But wouldn't Trump be an example of the actual opposite of that?

He's a fucking billionaire.

He had nothing to do with his money.

It's just like he basically rejected all the core parts of the DC.

You know, this is how you run a campaign.

He didn't have real professional staff.

I mean, Steve Bannon was running his campaign at some point.

He basically just kind of, he DDoS the mainstream media to get a bunch of unearned media attention in a very crowded field.

And then then he used Twitter as essentially just he didn't need to go to the press.

He could create the new cycle every single day with a tweet from, you know, his phone.

Okay, let's go ahead, Mark.

Yeah, we're just correcting on that.

And Danny, that's the right.

I think that's the right, like, counter example to what we just said.

But a, let's, let's remember several things.

So a, like, we will never see Trump's likeness like ever again.

Trump a Trump tried to run for president a bunch of times.

It only worked in 2015 for a very specific reason.

Like Trump required Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Party's nominee.

Obama would have smashed him.

This is just universally uncontested. Obama would have smashed him.

There's a very specific circus that mattered.

And also Trump had 40 years of mainstream media, NBC, public, like, you know, a home alone to let level hits.

And that's like the result of the media culture, which is no longer exists.

So any billionaire who tried to do what Trump did left, right or center, it just actually wouldn't work because they wouldn't have grown up in the same like media ecosystem.

Yeah, that's what I was when I was like, he's Donald Trump.

Like he was one of the most famous people in the United States.

Do you guys know what Q score is?

Yeah, honestly, with the world, Q score is kind of like a thing.

It's an old school television term and has to do with likeability and with a general, I guess, like awareness in the mind of the American consumer, arguably more important, the American voter.

And Trump had a sky high Q score.

But in 2014, he was one of the most liked or actually, no, 2010, I mean, right before birtherism was one of the most liked individuals was one of the most well known.

He was like a rap icon.

I mean, that level of pop culture awareness, like as Marshall said, that is all part of media monoculture to which I don't see any of that coming back.

So and also like what you guys what you're suggesting, Dan is that a new individual member of Congress could do that.

And look, I haven't yet seen.

And I've seen a lot of them try.

I think Crenshaw is cringe.

I think MTG is cringe.

I think low and borrower is cringe.

All three are individually coded different ideologically, but are all trying to accomplish exactly what you just said.

I would say personally, I think all three have failed, at least in that regard.

Madison Cawthorn, probably the most famous example, the 26 year old ran for Congress only served one term.

He literally said, I don't care about legislation. I only care about earn media.

He got his ass kicked out of office.

So yeah, go ahead.

AOC, masterclass of using all of these new tools like, you know, live streaming like a YouTube live streamer or a Twitch live streamer like her eating ice cream talking about our day through Congress and actually building this direct audience on social media.

And I would say that like, to your point about being a YouTuber, I think a YouTuber, like taking the DC establishment and saying you can't get a think tank job because you're a YouTuber.

Like you're where the puck is headed.

Like having the direct distribution.

How much more impactful is Joe Rogan on the political process than Meet the Press, right?

Meet the Press is a bunch of people at DC watching.

Joe Rogan has zero impact on the political process. Back beyond that saga.

Well, that's what I was going to get to. And then that's the dichotomy and the future bookings.

That's the problem of Washington.

I think, well, look, I mean, I would say Joe Rogan has an immense impact on American popular culture.

But the political process doesn't care about American popular culture because it's largely insular.

I actually think Meet the Press is tremendously influential.

By the way, I don't want it to be this way. That's why I spend most of my time shit talking.

What I'm saying is like, but what I recognize is that a column in the New York Times is going to get picked up by the White House Chief of Staff

or the Senate Majority Leader or the House Speaker, and that that column will then influence the thinking.

If anything, it's about media bias in terms of what is, when I say media bias, what I'm saying is the diet, the specific diet of the people in power.

Let's say, you know, I think Murray used the term like narrow elite, like the amount of people that like actually run the country.

Within the narrow elite, they don't give a shit about Joe Rogan.

I wish that, listen, I actually interviewed Joe and I asked him this question.

I said, hey, Joe, why do you think more people in political process don't care, don't care what you think?

And he was like, yeah, I don't really know. He's like, it's kind of weird.

But I think it gets to the point of when we're living in this media environment where things are cracking up and breaking apart,

then you have this strange system where Chuck Todd, who's a massive failure,

literally got canceled and taken off of his own network and runs a shitty streaming platform,

of which he occasionally gets a Sunday program, which 100,000 people watch.

Well, unfortunately, those 100,000 people are quite influential in our politics.

Same with CNN. You know, CNN Dayside is an abject failure.

By the way, I beat them every single show that I do.

Does that matter in terms of influencing the political process?

No. If I did a CNN hit in the middle of the day where it was me and it was them and we were like arguing about something,

I guarantee you people who are inside the system would be like, holy shit, you did such a great job.

Like you made a great point, Bob.

I'm like, yeah, you know, I can actually say that every single day and everything, every one of these platforms.

I know this to be true because it's happened. You know, it's the same with Fox, the same as with MSNBC.

I don't think I can overstate how important mainstream media is actually to the functioning of our political process,

part of the reason why I spend so much time trying to cleave against it.

Okay, so let me define slightly different.

So I hear you on the White House Chief of Staff is reading the op-eds in the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times every day

and what on CNN or, you know, Fox is actually going to be in the DC kind of like zeitgeist for that point period.

But if you tell me how many, Eric, you probably know this, how many listeners is Rogan have?

50 million?

It's 11 million.

11 million people, right?

Yeah.

11 million people who are listening to the guy for 100 plus hours a year.

And if you then take the whole aggregate number of, an increasing number of creators who are independent media

where people have a direct relationship with those, you know, people and their guests and kind of like the idea exposure that they're getting,

rather than watching, you know, the ABC Night News or 60 Minutes or anything, all that should be declining in terms of the average American.

Over a 10 to 15 year period is going to have an impact on culture.

Because my demographic or even younger are just never going to watch 60 Minutes.

Like it's not like, oh, you turn 40, okay, now you watch 60 Minutes anymore, you just, those things are dying.

And it's the independent new media that's being created that's actually direct to their audience that I think is going to have a substantial shift in American culture.

And so Joe Rogan is a great example.

He, you know, conservative, not really like he had Bernie Sanders on there.

He's got kind of quirky views and different topics.

So I think that that stuff is upstream.

It just takes longer.

And I do agree with you.

It's like, Joe, what happens on a weekly Joe Rogan podcast is not going to affect the White House Chief of Staff.

Yeah.

I think that that, that is a disruptive power that is going to replace the mind share of the mainstream media over the next 10 minutes.

So this is, this is, I love the way you're saying this.

This is like the perfect way to illustrate it.

So, so several things like one, Sagar, you and I talked about this with a very aggressively online VC about this topic.

When Kabul was falling, when the Taliban are taking over and the suicide bombers happening, CNN was there.

Because at a core level, CNN's business model is fundamentally structured around at its core.

So we're not talking Don Lemon being annoying in the morning.

We're not talking, you know, like, you know, the New Year's Eve thing.

We're talking like people need to know like what is happening.

Independent creators at a just deeply structural level are not established and nor frankly, nor were they ever economically established to actually deliver that sort of report.

So my take is, yes, it's true that like the mainstream media is going to like decline in mind share.

They're never going to hit that like 60 million people watching the CBS evening news.

But the end of the day, like the cable, the streaming that model provides such a subsidy that it just is essential to the reality here.

And independent creators are going to, this is what you do.

Like you don't send a reporter to Kabul.

You take the public access feed of CNN and you play a clip on it.

These systems are actually way more integrated than people like to normally actually discuss.

And I think the take is it's not that the independent creators and the people that you're talking about down don't exist.

It's just the mainstream media is moving closer and closer and closer to them.

And we look much more like them than it looked like it's heyday in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

But like these are really one of how the other just fundamentally doesn't work.

And that's the big problem.

I think eventually someone can maybe solve that problem.

But look, and this is why it's a decade long type thing and also what business models, you know, we don't have the luxury of being literally subsidized by the cable bundle.

And that's where all the profit of these companies come from, not actually from the viewers.

It is for, you know, I look, I like to dunk on them for the viewers, but I wish I had a business where my viewership actually didn't matter and I could still pull a billion in profit because somebody literally pays me.

Sounds nice.

What you're talking about, Dan, is pop culture and actually that's part of why we push back so hard is because you said political process and then you change to pop culture and then how to culture and has an impact on politics.

And look, maybe I'm too cynical, but I think you're also thinking a little bit too small d democratic.

Like I honestly just don't think that the way a lot of people think or even have opinions about politics except for one, maybe one or two things in a real crisis where somebody actually think and really just has all that much of an impact.

On the political process.

I think that the political process is fundamentally driven by elite concerns by constituencies that are well represented that are well money.

And until you see those institutions take form to take, let's say a Joe Rogan type.

Let's let's take vax skepticism to be with him to push back on the federal vaccine mandate, right?

I mean, there's a reason that the only person that really had a real stand up against that was, I think the daily wire sued and like, let's be honest, like nobody gave a shit, right?

Like there was no actual lobbying infrastructure campaign mailers, something that had real impact here in DC to actually push against that in the court, like a federalist society.

And if we're talking about abortion, that's a perfect example of what I'm thinking.

So how exactly that political movement takes shape, goes forward, gets funded, gets created.

I mean, these things take a long, long time.

And that's just where a lot of my cynicism comes from.

One other thing to add to it, Sagar, and this is a key thing because look, let's let's let's let's not just be like skeptical like DC people and let's offer some like suggestions for me.

So a like Dan, I think the thing that the real test case to be interesting here is Joe could be more influential if he wanted to.

Oh, yeah. So he repeated, we said no to Trump.

He said no to multiple Democratic Party campaigns.

Charlie and the God, I think he did really good work during like Breakfast Club did really good work in the Democratic primary.

Kamala Harris, Mayor Pete, a bunch of people went on.

So I think that's like a really interesting model of how you could sort of merge like wanting to be independent with doing it.

So what I my suggestion for creators who want to do that more is you have to you have to accept that.

Well, I mean, sorry, actually, here's what I want you to pick up on.

The other problem too is the incentives you experience as a creator are actively against what you need to do to be successful in DC.

So if you're a creator in the creator space, your instinct is to do things to get you more views to get you more subs that isn't always like perfectly aligned with the way DC works, the way power works.

I mean, we had Peter Zion on the realignment.

It was a great episode. Really enjoyed it.

But halfway through the episode, Peter goes, China's going to collapse in 10 years.

And I'm like, oh, like, he said that on Rogan as well.

You mean like, you mean like the CCP is going to collapse?

You're not referring to like 5,000 or something.

He's like, no, it's done.

Yeah.

It's like, sorry, dude, like, hey, that's like a ridiculous claim to make.

You made that claim in 2009 as a Forbes article.

People could look it up that process of him taking his DC establishment like credentials and knowledge, applying it.

The bigger he gets as a creator, the less he used to he gets the policy process.

And I'm sorry, you're not able to walk into DC and drop stuff like that.

Yeah.

Speaking of that, I follow him on YouTube.

His YouTube videos have gone from kind of like just, you know, pretty low budget at him recording to he's now doing the YouTube face that goes for the algorithm.

And the most recent exactly that that like soy kind of like, yeah.

The like the one on China, he was like, China's about to collapse.

And you know,

Listen, man, I've been a big sign on Stanford a while.

But like, to your point, the creator thing I think is actually starting to like, he realizes what plays is to say the most outrageous thing.

Dan, I was thinking about that.

I got to go in a couple of minutes, but Dan, something I was thinking for just what you said was AOC is actually a good example when she was at her most powerful for creators.

Probably when she was least powerful as a legislator and when she got diminisher creator Instagram and all that, she became more powerful as a legislator.

In terms of her seats on the committees, they actually rewarded her for shutting up because they're like, hey, you caused more trouble, you're not going to get shit done.

So the process also has its way of dealing with upstarts and always has like, I mean, you can go all the way back to like Huey Long and you know, Populous or whatever from before that they know the system has a way of it's doing.

I guess I'll start Trump.

Yeah.

Yeah, but okay, even with Trump, I mean, he said he wanted to do a lot of things with the only he only passed one thing through Congress called the tax cuts and jobs.

Miles of Wall Sager.

Yeah, exactly.

How many miles of that happened?

Did our trade deals really get rewritten?

I mean, yes, he did change the China consensus that was through the preexisting USCR.

It was because he had a decent ambassador.

If you look at all a lot of his other policies where he wanted to do anything, I mean, most of it was replaced level mid-ROM.

You were good enough to.

Yeah, I mean, okay.

And that was through.

I'm not trying to stand stand Trump.

That was through Robert Lighthizer.

There was somebody who probably would have worked and actually did work in the Reagan administration.

Maybe it would have happened without Trump.

But I guess the point is, it's like, to the extent that he got a lot of his stuff done.

I mean, most of it was either with preexisting Reagan and Bush era professionals and then to the extent that he didn't get the things that he wanted done.

It was also because those Reagan Bush professionals didn't agree with what he wanted to do and so just didn't do it.

I mean, look, I have had the unique opportunity of I interviewed Trump.

I've interviewed him for over two hours in the Oval Office.

He doesn't give a shit about policy at all.

He actually really doesn't care.

He was more interested in showing me around the Oval Office and showing me his World WWE belt above his 70 inch TV.

And that's what gets the man going.

And you know, I think people should know that.

I think that's fine.

People can have that what you want.

He showed me a room.

He called it the moniker room.

He's like, you know, it's like, it's pretty wild.

And I was like, holy shit, dude, you're the president.

Maybe let's maybe let's wrap on that.

Yeah.

Now you got to go.

You guys come back.

We'll do a part two.

I feel like we didn't properly represent the big dick VC energy in the room is a lot of politics.

And we'll do that in a part two sometime.

I would love Margaret Marshall. Thanks so much for coming.

Thanks, Gents.

Appreciate it.

Also, thanks guys.

Marshall, the only thing I would add on your cable news thing and Antonio, you have strong opinions on this in terms of the reporting.

So you should show that.

But I think like one thing that's come out of, you know, first Osama bin Laden rate, where did it happen?

It happened on Twitter.

There were no CNN reporters there, right?

And then the second thing, I think Ukraine and all that Antonio, who's actually been to the war zone behind here as well.

But I think a lot of what we're seeing from Ukraine is open source intelligence, right?

It's like people with smartphones uploading and then media and curators, whether it's kind of like the Twitter account dedicated to like war in Ukraine information.

And then pundits are like both tweeting in and adding, adding things there.

But that's not CNN on the ground.

Like the amount of information coming out of this war relative to, you know, peak CNN is probably like the Gulf.

And like, I think the amount of information coming out and then drones, another thing.

It's like the devastation and what I forget which, which say, I think it's mariable.

Am I saying correctly?

Like just showing the ruins of the city.

And it was from some DJ DJI, DJI, you know, Chinese drone that you can buy on Amazon.

Like, so I do think it is shifting.

And you're always going to have a place for the kind of like embedded reporter in the foreign bureau, like, especially in terms of like sourcing and stuff like that.

But the raw amount of information, I think that is just going to be put online by the fact that you have four or five billion people with smartphones.

Is, is again, like, I'm approaching this like a technologist, right?

Like, I hear all the DC stuff that you guys are saying, but, but ultimately I'm, I'm looking at the lens of like, this stuff is changing.

And television news is irrelevant.

Like no one watches live TV other than basically the NFL.

And I think over time, people's attention is going to go somewhere.

It's probably going to be an Instagram and Tik Tok, which is just going to be chopped up interviews that exist on YouTube.

And I think that that's going to grow in influence and will shape the political.

Well, quick thing, Dan, because I want to, because we didn't, we didn't hit the, what you tech people bring to the table enough here.

Hey, sub-sax huge, right?

Like there are always sub-sax, they get always subscribers, but guess what?

They're not free anymore.

Like there are a bunch of people who used to tweet a lot and now they like only have paid sub-sax.

They're very constrained.

So like, I think the issue here, when you say it's irrelevant, you basically was talking about scale.

And I guess my take is that basically it just doesn't, I just don't think it matters too much that CNN is no longer pulling in 20 million viewers.

So I guess what I'm trying to basically get it is how from a tech perspective or a company perspective, like you guys are doing media here.

Do you solve the issue of how do you solve the soccer CNN?

I saw the soccer New York Times World Street Journal example.

Does like Duke independent creators have to get more professional?

People have to start wearing suits and ties.

That's why soccer wears a suit and tie.

Like how do you guys think about like the problem that he raised?

I mean, the techiest take on it.

I mean, and this comes into a little bit like whether you're an institutionalist or an anti-institutionalist.

Alana Newhouse, the tablet did this thing about brokenness and this sort of distinction, which I also see myself.

You talk to people, you've been a lot of them on the heterodox, whatever.

And they're still basically institutionalists, right?

I think one of the necessary delusions that makes Silicon Valley work is being an anti-institutionalist and thinking about building new things.

I mean, to be blunt, now they're not recording.

This whole political spiel sounds like a bunch of fucking horseshit to a tech guy.

They're like, 90% of the people that he name dropped, nobody here even knows who the fuck they are or even gives a fuck what happened with whatever little drama happened this week in DC.

Like you're talking like fucking space alien.

Nobody fucking gives a shit.

And so it's like, oh, how do I fix the fact that, I don't know, some dipshit that I've never even heard of that I literally had to Google, you're talking about it.

Listen to some stupid fucking show that all I know is playing in the United Lounge when I walk by.

Like it's not even a problem.

Anybody thinks about it because no one gives a flying fuck about it.

I mean, to be blunt.

Well, you guys should give a flying fuck about it.

I think that's, that's, this is good.

You're right.

But that's, I think, I think that's, that's the flaw.

You should give a flying fuck that Chuck Todd, that during the first few weeks of the Ukraine war, Chuck Todd's cow.

was where DC came to its consensus on what we were going to do.

And then tech started posting a lot about Ukraine.

The Ukraine example is a good one because another theme in that these people, like we've talked about a lot is like this notion of current things, right?

And like virtual elective reality is like an in a Brutamus Ice sort of way.

And does reality matter anymore?

And the Ukraine case is one that I would cite is one where the current thing paradigm breaks down because a like it wasn't actually so politically polarized.

You could say, Hey, we don't, we shouldn't support Ukraine and you wouldn't get fired at your tech job, by the way.

And then secondly, like it actually is a real thing out there.

It's not just some like Twitter reality, like people are actually dying.

There's ruined cities.

It's like a real thing.

And so in the Ukraine case, I think you're right.

But part of the reason why Silicon Valley can get away with this along is guess what?

Like who's fucking downstream of who here?

Who's getting the sloppy seconds on who does what?

Like the number of times like in tech, the number of times you're actually stopped by DC and have to give a fuck about Chuck Todd's couch is basically never unless you're a senior VP,

unless you're a Coinbase in which you're actually like flooding your head against fucking, you know, the SEC or something.

Or, you know, senior privacy council like Facebook or something.

But that, that doesn't even animate the spirit of Silicon Valley anymore.

Like nobody gives a shit about it.

Put it this way, Chuck Todd thinks way more about Twitter than anybody at Twitter thinks about Chuck Todd other than all the policy people.

I would say real quick, Dan, this is the most someone has ever said.

We're not recording that.

This is the most Chuck Todd has ever been mentioned in any context ever.

Yeah, sorry, Dan.

Pull, pull.

Two guys from my, from my startup just showed up.

Let's do, to either of you know who Chuck is.

They both stripped their heads.

Then I'll give a fuck.

Right.

It's like that scene in that movie where like Chuck Todd's couch is running policy.

Do you give a fuck?

Nobody gives a fuck.

Nobody knows who he is.

Marshall here.

Here's what I would say on Substack.

You know, Mike Solana has the Substack Pirate Wires, right?

He has an audience within Silicon Valley.

You know, some people are public that they read him.

Other people read him privately, but he's upstream of Elon, right?

And Elon controls Twitter and he's running Twitter like a newspaper was run in the early 20th century.

Like Hertz and Herster Pulse, right?

And so the media landscape is going to change in the sense that I think that there's an interesting thing.

There was some congressman with this omnibus spending bill right before Christmas.

And he had a tweet storm.

And I kind of watched how the Saucers was made.

I saw this get shared in a chat group.

Someone said, hey, I can send this to Elon.

Got sent to Elon.

Elon then re, you know, re-quote tweeted it.

And that basically said, hey, John Tester in cinema, what's the deal here?

He like summoned these representatives and they had to respond, right?

So to your point about like the average congressperson or the White House chief of staff doesn't care about Twitter.

Well, when Elon with this 120 million followers all of a sudden goes like, hey, this is pretty egregious pork barrel spending.

Like you need to now make a comment.

Those people probably would have had an aid give the New York Times their quote, but they had to respond.

And maybe the aides writing the response on Twitter, but I do think things are changing.

And that's all I'm trying to say is that like as a technologist, I just view these things through.

We're having a disruptive change in terms of how consumers, you know, engage with media and not both people.

And boomers are like the biggest demographic.

We're going to use this I hand thing.

Like they're going to continue to watch television.

They're going to watch Fox News and CNN and just watch TV.

But a Gen Z or millennial ain't watching cable news.

They're watching YouTube.

They're watching TikTok.

They're watching Instagram.

And so the media that gets chopped up for that stuff, I think is going to end up having a major shift on how the political process works.

Yeah.

We've got to demo.

Yeah.

I got to go for it.

Go for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, you know, that's a, I think you're getting at what I actually do believe here because like you get this urge when you're in these environments to like push back against like extremes.

You kind of see on Twitter and the actual take is like, I just think there's going to be healthy in between like both of these processes.

You are, you're going to have a media that looks much more like tech looks to tech much more.

And you're also going to see tech that in very specific cases cares much more about what DC is up to.

I mean, the thing that I'm most interested in bias, I was telling this with Joe Wieseth also a lot of guests.

You guys know how like you always people like Kyla Scanlon, like I really like Kyla Kyla is really great.

She's on TikTok doing content deals, all that stuff 20 years ago Kyla wouldn't be on TikTok.

She'd be working at Bloomberg as a cub reporter for like 1215 years.

And then she would get to get her success.

I know people in tech don't like Kara Swisher, but Kara Swisher is interesting when Kara was like my age when she was 30.

She was writing random books about AOL, but no one had ever heard of them working at the Washington Post.

It was a system where people were like forced into these institutions and these processes and that created the like kind of like power levels they kind of have.

So what I'm really interested in seeing, I think Kyla is doing a good job of this is like, how do independent creators realize like, Hey, if I want to have influence, I don't need to be Mr. Beast.

I don't need to be Joe Rogan.

There's a healthy in between, like shooting for the CNN hits, but then also, you know, being distracted of having relevance.

If you're like investing in creators, people should be paying attention to because we're like a really healthy medium that people haven't really figured out yet.

Yeah, Ben Thompson writes a ton about this, about like the internet is like, find your thousand fans with a newsletter going back to the subsect thing, and you can actually now make a living.

And you're not beholden to the 15 year tenure process of a traditional media organ.

And so I think that will change the political process.

And so to go all the way back is like, yeah, Rogan, Rogan relative to the day to day, and even maybe the electoral process that we have right now.

Sure.

And to your point, he probably could do more if he wanted to be more explicit, but that's probably not what his goal is.

But I do think you're going to see Rogan level creators having significant influence over the effectively the media for these candidates in the next few election cycles because the traditional mainstream broadcast media,

maybe a little less the op-ed of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

To me, that's just a fancy sub-sec.

I think that will actually have a pretty big impact because I don't think the 60 minutes interview relative to pick your biggest YouTube creator who does interviews.

I mean, hell, within the next eight years, if he keeps doing it, Lex Friedman could be, you know, as big as Charlie Rose ever was or even bigger, right?

And so, like, what as a presidential candidate, do you want to be on Lex or do you want to be on whatever the traditional broadcast media interview that you would go after?

Do you have the sexy, the unsexy, the deeply unsexy take, is it able to do both?

But okay, this is really good because you're actually getting at it.

Because you know, there's the whole like cliche like, when JFK got on TV, it changed the nature of politics.

The existence of Lex means that like a successful politician, if they're Republican, they'll ignore Charlie Rose, right?

Because they don't need Charlie Rose to begin.

So they will ignore Charlie Rose 2.0.

Unless Hansy Charlie Rose will rise from the ashes, they will, the Republican will ignore him.

There's a big article, Rhonda Santos is ignoring the press.

He will go on Lex, but on the Democratic side, a successful Democrat will go on Lex and do Charlie Rose.

And that's what the standard will be. Like, it's just how performance changes like with Apple.

Sure. And I actually think to your point about that article on DeSantis, our friend, Boloji, has been on this, you know, go direct,

don't go through traditional media outlets.

And it would be interesting to see if the shift, especially if DeSantis is kind of in the prime time, and if he ends up winning the election,

so you have him for four, eight years, if the shift on the Republican side is Republicans don't go to mainstream media.

They go to the kind of long tail of creators, sub-sex, whatever, podcasts, which traditionally, look, Republicans also love talk radio, right?

It's like, you're rushing by, like, all that stuff.

But, and then the mainstream prestige press is basically just an outlet, which you could make an argument that it is today,

but he just is more formalized, the sense that, you know, Mayor Pete is not going on whatever podcast,

but he's going to have his, you know, primary interview with the editorial board of the New York Times that actually know most voters don't give, you know, two shits about.

I think that's the most accurate, like, picture with the next 10 years look like I've heard on the podcast today.

I think that's, I endorse that.

Cool. Well, I really enjoyed the conversation.

Yeah, I think it's a great place to wrap.

I do love how Antonio's flipping out. He thought it wasn't recorded. It was recorded.

It's going to make the final cut. It's the best part of his performance.

And also, I just want to say that, you know, Moment of Zed is not only going to move markets, we're going to move candidates,

and Chuck Todd better, better recognize, better put some respect in our name.

We need 50 more viewers and you're already eclipsing, so you're really making that.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks so much, Marshall.

All right, take care.

I need this.

I hope you enjoyed this episode.

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Great. See you all next time.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.