Trump Does Theo Von's Podcast in New Strategy to Win Over More Younger Men

Intro if the trump in your mind is the like scary fire breathing guy from rallies and you're just like a 18 17 22-year-old whatever guy's like not that into politics listen to these podcasts cuz you like UFC and it's like I'm not sure if I'm in with all the like wild Trump stuff and then you hear like oh he's just a guy who talks about UFC and golf he's not that scary the Democrats say that he's terrifying but like I don't know he seems chill and he talks about his brother I think that that really like makes him little fuzzier and softer and creates maybe a little bit of a permission structure I'm John Fabro welcome to offline I'm John Fabro I'm Max fer and believe it or not this podcast is not part of a Russian influence operation to infiltrate the manosphere with anti-American propaganda but that we know of but here's my uh checking account number in case anybody wants to make a deposit all right we'll get into all of this soon plus lots more news to cover um so we're again skip the guest to get straight to the headlines this week a new Federal indictment alleges that the Russian government has been funding right-wing internet personalities the Brazilian Supreme Court blocks access to the Social Network formerly known as Twitter and Haley Welsh Welch Welch Welch doesn't matter because that's not what anybody calls her and Haley Welch better known as the HW Tu girl follows the path of every red-blooded American looking to monetize and extend their 15 minutes of oh boy does she she's starting a podcast oh yeah good for her we need more podcast I'm always saying the podcast economy is too spars Welcome to the Family Haley Welch uh but first Donald Trump has Trump in the manosphere embarked on a tour of the manosphere uh over the last couple of weeks the Republican nominee for president has skipped interviews with traditional outlets in favor of conversations with right-wing aligned YouTubers streamers and podcasters among them an interview with YouTuber turn Jake Paul a kick stream with Aiden Ross in which the streamer gifted Trump a Tesla cyber truck hard to find something more OB which you actually give me after every podcast which is really nice they're cber trucks in the parking garage um he also had an appearance on this past weekend with theovon in which Trump had a surprising number of questions about cocaine uh and most recently an interview with AI researcher turned pseudo intellectual Lex Friedman uh lots of different podcasts Lots different conversations but notably all of these creators share one thing in common Their audience is overwhelmingly young and male revealing a concerted effort by the Trump campaign to Target gen Z men uh just as a just as a flavor of what this was like uh here's Trump with theovon is cocaine a stronger uh oh yeah up yeah yeah yeah cocaine so you way up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of cocaine will turn you into a damn owl homie you know what I'm saying it'll you'll be you'll be out on your own porch you know you'll you'll be your own Street Lamp you're freaking and is that a good feeling while it's a miserable feeling but you do it anyway just like the guy you're saying with the scotch this really really stepped on our topics for this week does cocaine make you an owl John what do you say this so max and I were texting about this last night like he he seems in this clip Donald Trump like he is a man from the distant past an old man from the distant past who just showed up in 2024 like so cocaine that is that makes you feel that's an up like you are a 7 you are a 78-year-old asking about jazz cigarettes you're just learning about cocaine and the B Boppers it is so weird I was talking to Emma about this it is so strange to hear him having just a normal conversation where there's like an exchange and back and forth and he's asking questions and he's saying oh uhhuh that's interesting like the probably hundred cumulative hours of Donald Trump I have consumed in my lifetime every second of which I regret I've never heard him have a normal conversation and it's weird it's like watching the dog walk on a t [Music] legs it is it's a very it's a different Trump which I think is part of the strategy we'll get into it but so for our audience who may not be familiar with the worlds of theovon and Jake Paul um how would you describe these personalities why they're all connected and why they have such a big audience what do you think is the percentage overlap between offline and theovon listeners I mean more than 1% yeah well let us know let us know if you right in yeah right in let us know if you've been listening uh so I would say that this circle of podcasters which is is huge is like news media for young men who don't want to consume news media yes um it's like anti-woke but like not in a Ben Shapiro super political sense or in a red pill sense it's more just kind of like a man cave for the guys who want a safe space with the boys and like want to chat about UFC and listen to stand up iians who have the same joke which is you're not allowed to make jokes anymore um it's probably all people who are like have lurker Twitter account like they're online they're kind of online like they're spend a lot of time on YouTube and on Reddit and the shows are like relaxed and funny and there's trolling but it's not outrage bait and they're like openly kind of dumb like kind of proudly dumb they all go on each other's shows like a bunch of them live in Austin um and there's like this the kind of the like Joe Rogan extended universe and I think that it just like it's about providing a sense of social connection for it's a community exactly politics isn't their focus usually Comedy Sports right MMA UFC gaming um and when they do talk politics it's usually not an explicitly partisan way though you can tell that they are Mega curious or at least um you know conservative coded right on many issues they think the wokes have gone too far the feminists have gone too far but it's it's to understand it it's not you're right it's like it's not like that's their Soap Box all the time I mean it depends on who it is uh it's not that's not their Soap Box all the time their focus is like we're going to talk about other and then if something happens in the news that seems like an opportunity to yell about the wokes we can do that and they love Elon Musk and they love you know the tech companies and Teslas and it's I think it's more just like a Lifestyle brand that is like vaguely conservative coded more than it is explicitly politically conservative but if you asked I bet if you asked a lot of the the viewers uh of these programs heterodox and they don't take sides and that's what's interesting about they're actually not registered they're independent and they listen all yeah they listen to all sides and they don't really get into polit that's what they would say yes have you had a chance to sit down and watch any of these uh Trump interviews so I did listen to half of the theovon podcast I listened to the Lex Freedman one well tell me about The Lex Freedman because we just heard theovon I mean so it's a weird show it's a weird show we're going to talk about like why whether this is a good strategy from Trump but I can see why he fits with these programs in some ways it is a good format as all podcasts are for people who can't shut up like Donald Trump right so he just goes on and on and on it's like the Lex Freeman was like an hour and a half I have been on 1.75 sure to get through it I just I'm laughing because I think we did we went a half hour over talking about Fight Club a few days ago so it's like I don't have so much ground to criticize as a like podcaster who loves to talk about the stuff I like to talk about but it's different for me because I'm right you're right yeah right uh softball questions yes very they're all softball it's not a journalistic interview and you could tell a couple times Lex Freeman's like yeah you know some people who like you they don't like the whole Insurrection stealing the election thing like they don't like that as much and Trump's like you know Trump will not he's not going to follow well he's trying to lead Trump to these more helpful places Trump will not go Trump like oh that's because the Democrats cheated you know you're like okay um so there's a lot of Fox News thing they would try to like implic you could watch them coaching him through the interview y but Trump tends not to rant and Rave like he does at rallies or during TV interviews especially somewhat hostile TV interviews um he he is still an incoherent crazy person but more subdued more subdued yeah and um and then on the other side I noticed in a couple of these he just he doesn't totally fit with the vibe the theovon cocaine comment is a good example it's like he's a little too old he's better in like he's done some uh things with like golf uh very popular Golf influencers and those he seems like a natural fit cuz he is a good golfer um and the UFC stuff because he's been going to fight it he's been going to fights for a long time with his boy Kid Rock with his boy Kid Rock and he likes white right so that is a little bit better with it but some of these some of the younger comedians like theovon he doesn't doesn't seem like it's as much of a cultural fit as you might assume he's very Abe Simpson sitting down and talking with them uh so did you enjoy it was it fun no no I didn't enjoy it at all I that was terrible I mean honestly like the only first of all the only thing left to enjoy about Trump is when he says something truly UNH crazy and unhinged that we haven't heard before but nine years in it's getting kind of old and so like when he is challenged that's fun to watch when he's just like rambling on I I don't know I couldn't pick up anything interesting so when I started listening to the theovon thing my first take was this is so it's just boring like I'm really bored with it like the rallies are terrifying but at least there's like interesting stuff popping off there's some like a fireworks show and I was like boy he really doesn't have it like this I don't think this is a big deal and the more I started listen to it the more I actually started to think back to the first conversation you and I ever had about podcasting and about how part of the power of it is that it really makes you feel like you have a connection with the person that you're listening to and the like the way that's it's like especially the long conversation between two people you know you get that sense of it's like the back and forth feels very natural and conversational and there even like the way you talk on podcast like the Terry Gross like softer voice leaning to the microphone and like Trump was talking with the very soft voice like you get to the end of it and you feel like you've had an intimate hour with this person person that makes you feel like you have more of a connection with them and it's humanizing and I like I to be clear I did not feel like I had a personal connection with Donald J Trump that's not what I'm saying but if the if the trump in your mind is the like scary fire breathing guy from rallies and you're just like a 18 17 22y old whatever guy who's like not that into politics listen to these podcasts CU you like UFC and it's like I'm not sure if I'm in with all the like wild Trump stuff and then you hear like oh he's just a guy who talks about UFC and golf he's not that scary the Democrats say that he's terrifying but like I don't know he seems chill and he talks about his brother I think that that really like makes them a little fuzzier and softer and creates maybe a little bit of a permission structure well and what's I think what's notable there is that a lot of those folks have not watched the rallies right and they have not followed Trump in the news like we have followed Trump in the news years because a lot of them were too young and so if you're especially if your first interaction with is listening to these podcasts and then your only other exposure is hearing liberals and people in the media being like he's a threat to democracy he's going to and then you listen to him you're like w that doesn't maybe they're just hysterical and I and there's also a lot about you know I know we're going to talk about like will the podcasters endorse them are they you know what are they like how will they weigh in politically but just like hearing someone have a friendly conversation with an hour with someone is like socially it's an endorsement like not in the sense that like they came out and say I endorse his entire political profile whatever but it just the way that our brains work we say that as like someone I trust trusts and likes this person therefore I trust and like that person I think it brings him into the circle right I mean we've we've talked about this a million times but like a Taylor Swift endorsement or even not a Taylor Swift endorsement but a Taylor Swift just like talking about kamla Harris you got a bunch of Taylor Swift fans who aren't politically engaged who are like well maybe if it's not an endorsement like she she seems to like her so that's cool honestly are these podcasts are they the Taylor swifties of the right I kind of think they might be just like a pop culture phenomenon it's vaguely political but kind of not so Dan uh feifer actually beat us to the punch on this conversation this week he did he's hacking into our slack again know all the it sounds when kirked media puts out content that's similar it sounds like we planned it we didn't plan it you mean collusion our brains are all just broken by the internet in the same way unfortunately that's true and so uh yeah Dan and I frequently tweet things the same time that are similar sure enough he did this message box quote unquote Dan Dan yeah right uh it's called how and why Trump is targeting genz men in which he highlights the absolutely massive gender gap between genz men and women I'll just put some uh statistics behind this so the latest time Sienna polls in the six swing States um that have Kamala slightly ahead show a giant gender gap especially among young voters more so among young voters than older generation she's up by 38 points with women between 18 to 29 but Trump is up by 1 points among young men among young men the Democratic advantage in partisan identification which is uh more stable than what happens from election to election right uh it fell from nine points in 2012 when Obama ran for re-election to just five points in 2023 for under 30s for under 30s Democratic Advantage yeah and what's interesting to know about this group of Voters this group of young men a majority in this group still supports abortion rights same-sex marriage they are not necessarily socially conservative but almost half of them say that there is some or a lot of discrimination against men in American society more than older age groups really say that and up from a third who said that just in 2019 really and now there's a half yeah huh I know and and these are a lot of I mean that's you know at least a bunch of democratic men in that group again support samesex marriage support abortion rights so it's not the social conservative stuff that's getting them right it is it is more of this like cultural Vibes kind of thing um so what do you make of what do you make of this gender gap so I a note on the like time Sienna poll and the gender gap there what it found is that jenzy men support Trump at actually comparable rates to Millennial men and to Boomer men the reason for the Gap is that genen Z women are so much more supportive of Kamala than women in other Generations so there is an unusually wide gender gap among genz but it's mostly from women being like much more proa than men being praga but the lead that Kamala has among under 30s is just plus 16 which is down from plus 24 that Biden had in 2022 so it's definitely a problem I I think my read and you kind of hinted at this is I think that it is a gender polarization problem first and an intern problem second like the just a gender polarization thing that's getting routed through the internet there's this Theory by a guy named Michael Kimmel called grieved entitlement have you heard this Theory no I me so it says that the the backlash among young men is this sense that the world is less and less favorable to young men and that but where that comes from is just there is inching you know inching steps towards progress in society for women and for people of color and so the way that a lot of young men experienced that is that they thought they were going to be as entitled as the generation before them as young men and they feel that they're they have less of a special place than they used to and that feels like something is being taken away and that's like something that you hear in like gamergate 10 years ago it's something you hear 20 years ago it's kind of a like persistent thing but it becomes more and more pronounced as gender and Racial equality like you know makes its its baby steps towards um a better Direction and this is especially pronounced among non- col people people without College diplomas which shows up a lot in the gender polarization data and then I think a lot of it is social isolation which may play a role in why it's so much higher among young men where the rate of men who do not have close friends is way way up who have zero close friends is up from um 2 to 10% among college graduates and among non-oled graduates is up from 3% to 24% people who say they have no close friends and I think that that sends people into you know bad podcast pass the internet when you don't have a kind of community to Anchor yourself and then what you do is you go look for answers to say why do I have this feeling of Eng reeved entitlement why do I feel like my special status is being taken away by Society someone will have answers for you right someone will have answers we know that the algorithm will provide a set of answers that is going to be the most polarizing the most outrage inducing um the most kind of radicalizing and then communities form on the Internet or among podcasts around those answers that say it's the feminists it's you know video game comp whatever it is and that now your entire sense of self is built around the answer that your community on the internet gave you for why you feel like something's being taken away and I think that a big part of the increase in that under 30s is just the pandemic I think a lot of people spent two or three years indoors finding community on the internet when is mediated through algorithms that were pushing them towards the worst possible answers for the problems they felt they were facing I also think that there is a difference between [Music] um hearing that there is a uh a pay gap between men and women and that women should get paid just like men do that um you know that women should have the right to choose that there has been historic discrimination against women in the workforce that there has been sexual harassment and assault that women have had to deal with right like there's a difference between that and then young men being told that like they are to blame for things sure right and so it's like the you know what is wrong with men yeah you know kind of kind of discourse that was you know probably peaked in like 2017 2018 2019 sure um but I do think and and I think young women now are doing better in school tending to achieve more and economically you hear a lot of these young men say that like they you know you used to be able to uh raise a family with a college degree and now you can't right and so they feel like their place in the world not just culturally but economically and like you know they're still raised with the traditional notion of of family and masculinity so they're like okay I'm supposed to support the family but I can't and what does that tell me about who I am and stuff like that and um and that leads them I think into these spaces and there's like it sounds very silly to Peg a lot of it to like anti-woke comedians but these podcasts have hu I mean truly stagger ing audiences and a lot of what they have on are comedians that are anti-woke and the thing that those people always complain about and always talk about is like you used to be able to make this joke or that joke or you used to be able to make like race jokes or make jokes about women and now you're not allowed to do that anymore and we are not quote unquote we are not allowed to talk the way that we want to talk or that we Talk Amongst each other because society's become hostile to us right and I think that that really gets internalized and look and again it's it's a it's a big diverse bunch here so there are there are some more much more like oh these wers and you know all they can do is make trans jokes you know and it's like really just lame and then there's people who we used to be able to make these kind of jokes instead of complaining about that just make those kind of jokes that are much more like borderline still that are that are more reflective of how people might talk in private right and I think that is attractive to a lot of these young men who are like oh these conversations have with my friends right if I had them publicly anymore I'd get in trouble right it's not for nothing that a lot of these audiences are 14 15 year old boys like 14 15y boys have terrible impulses I used to be one like we should not be allowed to say things publicly or on the internet but 14 50y old boys go on to Reddit and they're making jokes that are you know I think we could say bad and offensive Y and then that's like there's a backlash to that and then the backlash like reacting against the backlash becomes your identity and it like it again it feels silly to say that like vast political moments in the country are happening because of people not feeling like they're allowed to make jokes that they used to be able to make but it is it does get internalized as a sense that like Society is threatening to me and Society is trying to control me as a white man and the things that I just want to say to my Bros and we're like hanging out and you know they the that's why it feels to these people like the feminists or whatever are coming for us and that we have to push back against them so we can be real Americans which is you know not good but well and again what everyone wants is community and to be included and to feel like they belong yes right and so um that doesn't mean that we accept like hateful misogynistic views right but it does mean that as we are trying to like build either a political Coalition or a larger American Community you want to sort of invite people in and not make people feel like they should not be part of EX Community because of their regardless of what their identity is well Bernie Sanders went on the theovon podcast and he was just Bernie Sanders and it was great and they just had a nice conversation and you know was lovely well and this is why I think it's it's also useful for Democrats to go on these and to talk to them because I watched a clip of Bernie talking to theovon and theon's like complaining about drug companies and how they you know charge too much money for prescription but he's like well why don't why do why don't we know about which politicians are are part of this and that are helping out the drug companies and you can see and and Bernie instead of like laughing or being angry which we might have done or he does from time to time yeah he does from time to time was very calmly explaining like well here's the deal you know there was this the inflation reduction act and there you know the the Republicans voted against it and it's just so you there is some education to be done there too right and you know there is this tendency to be like oh if you go on that person's program you're platforming that person asso but just from a strategic standpoint from the Democratic political strategic standpoint like there is an audience of people there who could be our voters and who we need because they are views on a lot of issues align with us right that if we could go on and reach those people not by like telling inappropriate jokes or laughing at them when they happen but just by explaining our position in like a cal rational way you know you pick up some votes there well and you know 15-year-old boys do not have the most acutely defined political views it's like they don't vote so they don't but they grow up and vote right well some of them do yes sir and if I think if what I think a lot of what is happening is it's a 15-year boy has like a fuzzy sense that like the system is rigged or it seems the status quo seems unfair and the only people who are speaking to that are The Joe Rogan and doing the like the Peter teals come on and like the vaguely right coded stuff but Democrats have answers to that Democrats have answers to why the system might feel like it's unfair Bernie Sanders has a lot of answers to that and and extending those when people are still young enough to be in a place of like well I have this fuzzy sense of the world is not fair but I don't have a specific hardened answer for why that is it's a good time to get in there yeah um so I I think it's a pretty it's a smart strategy for Donald Trump to do this um it was funny Max Reed and his substack he was talking about why Trump seemed to fit with these podcasters and he says he is self manifestly the same kind of dramatic gossipy maldeveloped attention seeking nuisance is the creators who populate the greater media economy dip media economy is good yeah is a very good and the thing is I think a lot of them would Embrace that I think it's it's kind of the like we're just the Bros we are we're I've got my moments of dipshittery I'll be honest it's happened not me never been a that's true um all right in other right-wing internet personality news this week the justice department unsealed an Tenet Media funded by Russia indictment that alleges tenant media the so-called super group that includes Maga favorites Dave Rubin Tim p and Benny Johnson was being funded by Russian operatives as part of a Kremlin orchestrated campaign to influence the outcome of the 2024 election the indictment accuses two employees of RT the kremlin's media arm of funneling nearly $10 million to tenant and states that the goal of the operation was to fuel pro-russian narratives and push content favorable to Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump surely this must be a resistance Liv fever dream right it's hard to imagine how it could be more blue Maga yeah well here's an example of what we're talking about from Tim pool Ukraine is the enemy of this country Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats I will stress this again one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine they are expanding this war Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation to the world we should rescind all funding and financing pull out all military support and we should apologize to Russia I wouldn't say that's very subtle you think something that is so so the YouTube clip of this has this very funny thing where the image of just him zooming in and out on a Google map of Ukraine the whole time because I'm sure he was an expert before that Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine um just as a reminder everyone uh Vladimir Putin did invade Ukraine he did hear about that yeah I don't think we all over the place don't I don't think Ukraine's our enemy uh he is a brutal dictator in his own country and now has uh you know decided to he wants to bulldoze Ukraine so there you go are you are saying all this to prove that Putin is not funding us Oh no you're trying to you're well I'm yeah no I'm not saying anything about the CCP uh are we living in 2016 again what's going on so it is a real marker of how things have changed since 2016 that instead of hiring out an elaborate hacking an influence campaign they just shoveled money to America's dumbest YouTubers like they really learned some lessons about our media environment and how easy it is to exploit it's just like write a check to Tim Po you don't have to hire all the hackers you don't have to do the fake news and the hacking just prop them up just prop them up although then in in defense of Russia's shitty plan here um the guy who led the 2016 yevi pren was blown up in an airplane after leading a failed de Insurrection so they're they're working with some some blunter tools here sometimes you take a hit on the team so so far Tim p and Dave Rubin have both strongly denied any knowledge of the Kremlin back funds oh well if they strongly Den stating that they were deceived by the Russian government uh I also saw this morning that Timo is like cooperating with the doj I bet he is do you by that that they knew do you think the Kremlin was relaying talking points to them or did they just want to prop up voices who were already aligned with them so the indictment says that the two founders of the company who are big social media personalities themselves did know that it was Russia and that they the indictment also conspicuously does not name them which is strongly suggestive that they are cooperating um and it's there there were like a number of conversations where Tim p and Dave ruin were asking like hey where is all this money coming from because it sure is a lot of money and this is the best did you so the answer was that from the two Founders who knew that it was Russian money from the Kremlin they said that it came from a fictitious Belgian investor named Eduardo Gregorian that's two ends at the end he's just a free speech Enthusiast you know and that was it they were like okay Case Closed gregorian's name was misspelled on many of the documents and Tim p and Dave Rubin did look for evidence that he was a real person and did not find any and they said well that's good enough for us that's good enough for us quick Google search turns up nothing which usually happens my $400,000 check please I mean look $400,000 a month for 16 videos in some cases $100,000 video $100,000 a video and these some of these videos were getting like a thousand views per episode on YouTube these these videos with the way that YouTube monetization works like a hundred bucks couple hundred bucks generously with what they would make so there were there were at least a couple of instances where the Russian agents directly relayed talking points to them there was a they ordered them to produce a video blaming Ukrainian United States for a mass shooting at a Moscow music venue and the response from the company's founder was we are happy to do that which is great good stuff uh they were the two Russian agents were also in the team Discord although under fake names um that's funny there was one of my favorite details from the indictment is that the um one of the Russian agents was getting really frustrated that the people they were paying weren't doing enough to promote the I was just take it take it do it no it's it's so it's so funny this is in the Washington Post story it says even after recruiting their talent though the Russians purportedly running tenant were frustrated with tenet's lack of success Best Line in the story like many media Executives they worried that their employees were doing more to promote their personal social media Brands than their new outlet in February of 2024 Elena azva one of the indicted RT employees allegedly complained under an Elias in a tenant chat room that the influencers she had hired weren't boosting tenant enough I know this is not an obligation but we are falling behind with numbers but wait the best part the best part is when they wouldn't listen to her they just took her money so she started a second Alias to pretend to be another manager and it was like well I'm hearing it from two managers which frankly brilliant management strategy that's when we start to hear from John favro but spelled f a r o o who just happened to vote with you on everything uh there's been some great tweets about this uh someone said uh how do you live how do you live down finding out you are an actual real life useful idiot you have to go the rest of your life knowing another country sat down and had meetings about how stupid you are they all got around the table and voted and said yeah he's dumb let's use him and they were right they were right honestly someone could call me dumb if they were going to give me that amount of money I wouldn't take it from Russia but if if the if the tradeoff was they are going to call me stupid but they're going to pay me to say something I was already going to say I would consider that all right can we assess the effectiveness of this particular one of the funniest parts of it influence operation complete utter failure they got there was what at one point the indictment really plays up the fact that they got 16 million views across 2,000 YouTube videos that's 8,000 views in a video that's nothing yeah it's zero I do I was trying to you know then um Jeremiah Johnson and infinite scroll uh great substack uh makes the case that you know it does have an effect sort of subtly right which is like this very large network of right-wing influencers the same sort of you know false talking point disinformation misinformation about the war in Ukraine about Russia sort of just like make their way through this ecosystem sure and you know if the uh Russians are spending money to amplify it you know on the margins when then you get members of Congress who you know delayed for a long long time yeah uh the funding for Ukraine even when like some Republicans had initially been like sure we'll fund Ukraine cuz that's important there's more to and then they suddenly turn around one day and like half the Republican is is no longer in favor of Ukraine because they believe a bunch of false narratives that were spun up on some of these very podcasts and YouTube shows you know it's very chicken or egg like where did it start but it can have an effect on the margin it actually made me think a lot about reporting that I did a few years ago on the influence of Saudi and emirati funding and DC think tanks which is of course one difference is that that's not secret it's out in the open but otherwise it's pretty similar right and a point that a lot of people made to me is they were like look no one who's getting hired by these like Saudi funded think tanks is saying things that they would not otherwise say or don't otherwise believe but part of what happens is that when you spend years getting paid by the whoever is that baying you and you know they want to hear certain things and they know they're going to reward certain things you just lean into those maybe you already believed it but maybe you just like say it a lot more you lean into it a lot more and when you're well funded you tend to have bigger and bigger platforms exactly or you have the opportunity to is that those people are getting resources that are not going to other people and that it's just like those the Saudi funded people are the ones who have all the Platforms in DC foreign policy circles those are the ones who like get invited to all the panels because they have that money a lot of that money goes towards funding other programs and so it just perpetuates their views much more widely and like Tim P was going to say the crazy he was going to say anyway but the fact that he now has a ton more money to plow into his media company is bad also you can imagine if the CIA or defense department like was looking at Russia and saw some uh media properties and media outlets and media personalities who were like Vladimir Putin actually sucks now uh it'd be a little tough in that country because he'd shut them down but you could see us being like yeah we we'll fund those those pro pro Western Pro USA voices sure I mean that happened that happened for a long time I mean the open Society used to fund it they used to fund nval they funded all these other people who were genuine dissidents who really believed what they were were're fighting for but yeah the foreign money helps yeah um all right in other news Twitter is officially dead in Brazil uh on Monday Brazil's Supreme Court upheld a decision to ban Twitter Nationwide after Elon Musk and his social network refused to comply with orders from the nation's top judge to suspend specific accounts over misinformation concerns musk has of course taken the ban well taken to Twitter to call the judge a dictator and claim he's quote destroying free speech for political purposes and and threatened to basically get him sent to prison yeah yeah not which is a cool thing to do to a Supreme Court Justice uh can you give a little bit of history on how this band came to be how we got here okay so last year Brazil had basically their version of January 6 it was actually on January 8th so they got pretty close yeah uh where Jared bolaro who was the far-right president lost election a bunch of his supporters tried to storm a bunch of government offices to overturn the election didn't work as part of the investigation after the fact the Supreme Court which is like involved in the investigation has been looking into Twitter accounts that were spreading election disinformation to spin up the violence on January 8th and as part of that they asked Twitter to suspend some number of accounts that were under investigation for posting things that were illegal basically illegal incitement and they did that last year it was fine Twitter suspended the accounts it was no big deal again they asked this year some more accounts these are pro bolsonaro accounts bolsonaro is Trump's guy so he's Elon musk's guy uh Twitter refused to comply and then the escalation that led to this is Twitter then withdrew all of its staff from Brazil and the reason that they did that is that way the Brazilian government has no way to enforce regulations against Twitter and they're saying that they thought the Brazilian government and this judge would arrest potentially some of the Twitter employees brail I don't think there's evidence for that this the thing that Twitter said that's in other countries that has happened but the reason that Brazilian Law requires that Twitter maintains an office in Brazil is so that they have a to regulate the company because there's an office to receive fines to receive regulatory rulings they just need to have a legal representative there otherwise they are completely Above the Law so Elon Musk withdrew their staff so that they could basically say we're going to post whatever we want we're going to allow whatever accounts we want and you're going to have no way to enforce against us and that was where the Brazilian Supreme Court after several months of this said if you're really not going to reinstate your office we're going to block the platform to compel you to reinstate it so um we're usually quick Elon Musk Vs. Brazil to assume that Elon Musk is in the wrong on most of these issues because most often he is um but the Washington Post published an opet about this titled in this free speech fight musk's X has marked the right position what a headline uh okay that's so clever yeah so clever uh in which they argue as the title states that despite musk's typical inflammatory and often inconsistent approach to free speech this time he actually has a point what do you think cuz I I've thought a lot about this yeah I mean the key the key graph in the uh in the Washington Post editorial is if this sounds authoritarian it is whatever the threat to democracy that the accounts Mr Marias wanted gone might have posed the threat from one government official limiting the speech of 220 million people is greater and the entire episode is turning into a cautionary tale for democracies that believe the answer to Troublesome online expression is to suppress it I will say that the upad made me think of like how much I mean this is a different country's political system but like how much power do you want to vest in one judge to decide what should be taken down and what should not what is like legitimately potentially inciting violence like the kind we saw in January 6th here and January 8th there or undermining democracy and what is just speech and like where I mean we've talked about content moderation a million times but like where does this this is sort of like we just talked last week about the uh case here where all these right-wing goons suggested that um the government leaned on Twitter and other social media companies to take down covid disinformation but also to like suppress the hunter Biden laptop story which is all um but this would be an example of the government actually ordering a social media company to take down content that they did not like yeah so I think there's kind of two issues here I think one is what you're raising about do we think that it's good for the Brazilian Supreme Court to have the ability to order Twitter to suspend certain accounts be to be clear it wasn't just like a judge like going through and being like I don't like this tweet I don't like this tweet it was because those accounts are under investigation for breaking the law for inciting an Insurrection but I do take your point and I think this is a hard one because there's no perfect actor to regulate social media it's like it's either governments or it's the companies I sure don't trust the companies to do it lot of governments I don't trust to do it Donald Trump comes back into office I don't trust him to do it right that was my first thought you know like imagine if if imagine if like uh Donald Trump and uh and Clarence Thomas right just the two of them were deciding what speech online should be uh censored or taken down what what should be allowed we wouldn't want that in this case the Brazilian Supreme Court did ultimately vote unanimously to back up the decision but I do at some point someone has to decide and it's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable to have anyone deciding but I think we we all agree that we're at a point where social media is so impactful and can be so potentially dangerous that someone has to do it and it seems like in most cases in Democratic countries the government is the least bad answer but I think the bigger issue here is that what Elon Musk is trying to do by taking his offices out of the country and the reason that Brazil blocked Twitter is because this was a move explicitly designed to put Twitter Above the Law in Brazil the explicit reason he did this is so the government would have no power over it whatsoever regardless of whether you like the decision what the decision is and I just I don't think that we can have social media companies operating Above the Law by using this cheat of completely offshoring from countries and like I I reported a few years ago in Sri Lanka where there was like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube were spinning up all of this racial violence and this religious violence and the government kept trying to contact the social media companies and saying we want to do something anything just work with you to get incitement hate speech off of the platform before it gets more people killed and of course Facebook ignored all the phone calls until they shut down access to the platform the other thing that really like I just am not sympathetic to Twitter or Silicon Valley generally on this question of like you can't let governments ban us because it's free speech you know who loves the ban button Facebook they blocked access for news and we've talked about this many times because it makes me so mad blocked access for news in Australia and then in Canada because they didn't like regulations passed by the government so the real fight here I think is whether Silicon Valley is going to let governments get away with regulating them in any context whatsoever and Elon Musk put the government in this position to say your only lever left is going to be to ban the platform to try to force me to bring offices back in the country so you can have what they actually want to do which is not to ban the entire platform but just to regulate like hey maybe don't incite insurrections on it well and also a government has the ability to look at a foreign company that is operating media in their in within their borders and to try to regulate or expel them all together which is what we just did here with Tik Tok yeah right I mean it is a similar or Russia today or Russia Today right and so you know you have to weigh those concerns the other important thing to point out here is that um under Elon Musk Twitter had given into 83% according to one analysis of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content so when authoritarian governments ask to do to take down certain content he complies but what it is a left leaning government in Brazil not so much yes I think that it's the political Affinity with this Trump Ally and I think it's also the fact that authoritarian governments have been much looser with the block button in the past like especially countries like turkey and India and democracies have not been and I think that honestly I think it's important for Brazil to show that democracies will do it too so that we don't have to get to this point Brazil is one of Twitter's largest markets uh 40 million users do you think it's going to have a a big effect on Twitter struggling business or do you think they're going to resolve this that business is doing great they're doing fine they're doing so well $24 billion he lost investors I just saw could you imagine being an investor in Twitter I mean I hate to say that you had it coming but what come on what kind of decision was that $24 billion this is the guy we're putting in charge of the uh the Trump administration's government audit Trump wins he's going to do great he's a he's a brilliant business B no it's I mean it's it's not it's not a total disaster Brazil is a huge Market but Twitter has been declining there for a long time like people just they use video platforms they use they use WhatsApp a lot there's like a Chinese platform qu that I'd never even heard of that is bigger than Twitter now the real thing that is really going to have you heard about this European Union the DSA Digital Services act thing oh yes yeah like the European Union is now threat is now telling Twitter you're in violation of our social media regulations just a couple weeks ago on this letter and a senior MEP which is a member of the European Parliament said that the EU of Europe could block access to Twitter if he doesn't resolve it that's the really big one that's that's death spiral yeah that's that's badh and I don't think Elon Musk is going to take it well it's I improve the experience on the platform um all right finally on Wednesday morning Haley Welch the The Hawk Tuah girl internet personality better known as the HW Tua girl dropped a video announcing her exciting new project Austin can we play the video I'm Hy will a little while ago my life took a complete left turn and it changed forever and along the way I've realized that everybody's entitled to their own opinion well now it's my time to talk and Pooky who is Pooky who is Pooky he may stop by too check out my podcast every week talk to them where I'm sitting down with the coolest guest and have an actual conversation with them episodes every week subscribe to that thing you heard that right folks HW Tua is joining the Glamorous world of podcasting the show brilliantly titled talk to talk to is funny is set to debut this week and will be part of Jake Paul's better content Network come full circle folks Max for the folks who may not be familiar with HW Tua can you please explain Welch's meteoric rise and tell us why she's referred to as HW Tua you are unfortunately not allowed to leave out any details so I could not possibly do as great a job summarizing this as the Google autogenerated info box that you get when Google did you see this it says this is like actually a thing that pops up on Google if you search on your phone and it says quote known for automonopia catchphrase during interview I'm never going to top that okay so two months ago which feels like a thousand years ago um there was a man on the street interview with these YouTube's account where they go out and talk to people when they're like go I got to nightclubs or whatever just ask them provocative questions and someone asked her what's one move in bed that makes a man grow crazy every time which is not a question we ask a lot on this show and her her answer was you got to give him that Hawk Tua and spit on that thing as in lubricate that thing and I'm not going to explain what that thing is if you don't know at this point now if you haven't figured out already HW Tu it is the sound that you make when you're when and she really she really nailed the sound it's she was funny she's animated you can see why she went viral but then it became this thing that happens on Tik Tok it's getting remixed and people are commenting on it and kind of like eats its own tail she did interviews everywhere I think there's rumor she was going to like sign with UT it's big talent agency and now she was in comma vep Stakes running for a while yeah it's kind of a Darkhorse candidate and I got to tell you her numbers in Pennsylvania they're good there were there were rumors when they thought that Beyonce was going to show that's it was H to a girl was h a girl that's right um okay so why are we talking about this it's a great question Ryan brck had a great piece in his newsletter garbage day this week about how the internet has made it harder to gauge what's actually popular and that Welch is probably the most egregious example of this phenomenon um what did you think of that piece is there actually an audience for this show or is this just some weird viral thing that sort of like went out of control and now people are trying to make it popular offline so initially that I was like it's one of those two and I was kind of thinking and I was trying I was thinking a lot about how like you know well there's this thing now where people are keep trying to create a pipeline of like viral moment to like real world merch like books like there was the drill book do you remember the my dad says book no yeah well that's good this is a a viral Twitter account from like the early 2010s where someone quoted like her dad would say funny stuff and they turned it into a book that sold eight copies people have been trying forever to turn like how do you make more money off of these viral moments and I think you like you look at the fact that there's all this merch and she's getting on podcast and everything and it's like is that happening now and I think actually just what's happening now is I think that this is just very specifically the like online gambling Industrial real complex Because the actual places where she's making her money are not anything that is suggestive of her having a real audience it's Hawking crypto and going to crypto conferences which will pay literally anybody to show up and Hawk some sort of coin because it's just a form of gambling Hawk that's that's right yes which is part of why they love her I'm sure and the the quote unquote podcast that she's getting is on better which is a sports gambling Network which is just gambling it's just straight up chance gambling and I think this is just like people trying to generate advertising for gambling websites basically by saying boy they got the hawk to a girl maybe that's the sports gambling website that I should go to that's my take it's also a bit of a like a talent Pipeline and it's like an opportunity to prove yourself right it's true cuz it's like oh why did she go viral there's an attractive young woman who uh was talking about sex every everybody knows about her right now she talking about talking about sex and she yeah right and so they're like why not uh this person become famous other people have become famous for Less that's true I guess it's always possible that she could like catch a second time and actually generate an audience and if she does God bless although please don't do it on a sports gambling Network because Sports gambling is immoral and it's wrong and I don't think that you should support it with your newfound celebrity hwu a girl wow okay I we have to have a debate about sports gambling on this podcast this is not very helping not going to help with the manosphere very much yeah that's true they're all they're all funded by you know what probably part of it is that we legalize Sports gambling you know what I blame I blame the state legislatures for the manosphere podast I do I'm serious that's who's funding these guys this sounds like a special uh wad six it has been and will continue to be yes um bradrick says though in the piece the conclusion I've come to this summer one I'm not totally sure I fully believe yet is that what's really happening here is that verality is decoupling from popularity uh and I think you could even argue that the very idea that Mass Appeal had to be accurately reflected back to Us online and vice versa was an entirely Millennial idea which goes into a um I that's interesting just because of all the silos now that something that we assume is something went viral that will have this sort of mass popular appeal which that is interesting it's actually as I'm thinking about it a like contrast with 10 years ago is that when we would have online monoculture moments it would just be because we all saw video that was fun so the person or whatever was happening in that video could become actually popular on its own and I think more often what happens now is that a moment like this becomes popular in the online monoculture not because the video itself which is like you watch it for eight seconds and then you're done there's nothing else to do is because of the remix culture introduced by Tik Tok everyone's iterating on the everyone's iterating on it right and it's like we have some harsh words for Tik Tok but I think it is generally it is genuinely cool what can happen on platforms like this when people create like new versions of it they do new things with it they like remix it in crazy ways that then you can turn an 8sec clip into like probably too many hours of content but like new and interesting things but that is to say that the thing that is actually drawing people in isn't the moment itself it's the creativity around the moment which is much harder to monetize unless you're Tik Tok yeah and I think that she will like the first episode of that podcast you know people are going to people are going to tune in what she gonna say what she gonna say and then if it's not much then that's it yeah but that's but that she hasn't lost anything I'm saying that's so it is the opportunity that it gives you the reality gives you yeah all right that is our show for today uh we will be back again here next week I'm going on vacation so I'll be in yeah that's right I'll send you postcard that's fun [Music]