Olivia Nuzzi Describes Backlash For Telling TRUTH About Biden's Condition

I was shocked by the things that I was learning from them, just the things that for them were just totally normal parts of covering the president. But to me, it just seemed like a scandal. Right? Where the radio pooler, from a from a network whose job is to get audio and give it out to the rest of the radio stations, told me that often there's just not usable audio because the president doesn't speak very clearly. It's rough out there for journalists, especially when small mobs of people can easily get you fired or demoted over their grievances in how stories are reported, or whether an inconvenient truth is shared with the public. And that's certainly something that happened to journalist Olivia Nuzzi. Now, back in July, Nuzi was announced to lead a six episode interview series titled Working Capital on Bloomberg TV's network, and according to variety, it focuses on candid exchanges with political and business leaders. There was supposed to be this big PR campaign around it in order to promote it, to ensure that it does well. But after a group of Democrats complained to Bloomberg about Nazis reporting on Biden, it appears that they might have scrapped that PR campaign altogether. Now, what are they upset about? A piece that she wrote for Intelligencer, New York magazine, The Conspiracy of Silence, to protect Joe Biden. The president's mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters, and this same group of people also dug into her tweets from many, many years ago, where she's obviously joking to paint her as some sort of racist, which she is not. Now, joining us to speak about this whole incident is the journalist herself, Olivia Nuzzi. Olivia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So give us the details about what ended up happening with this PR campaign. - Did they really scrap it? - Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, I published this story on July 4th. I always love to celebrate July 4th by publishing a tough piece about whoever the sitting president is. And some Democrats, very predictably, you know, I write feature stories, I cover the presidency, I cover presidential campaigns. Anytime I write a story. That's, you know, tough on a Democrat. I'm accused of being a conservative activist. Anytime I write a story that's tough on a conservative, I'm accused of being a liberal activist. This is something that I kind of just expect at this point, and it doesn't surprise me now. It didn't surprise me, either, that a big media corporation like Bloomberg would be very frightened about even just the faintest murmurs of a of a potential optics crisis. These are companies that, you know, pay PR professionals probably on a retainer. That's much more than most journalists get, get paid to avoid any sort of PR calamity. And they're very worried about having to, to deal with any pain related to any of the content that they're producing, so it wasn't surprised exactly about their reaction to it. But, you know, it was disappointed, obviously. And, and I think companies like that, especially companies that are so flush with cash, they're sort of in a position to fight back against cancel culture. I know people don't like that phrase, and it's been sort of politicized beyond recognition, but that's what this is. And I think that they should use that power that they have and kind of make some more courageous decisions, and I hope that they do so in the future. I appreciate, sister, I totally agree with you. Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. You power our honest reporting. You do it at t.com/team and we love you for it. I guess my follow up question to you is why is this group of Democrats so unhinged? Because I mean, they're upset at your piece in just simply stating the truth about Biden's mental decline and what people around Biden were saying, not publicly, but internally and all of that. So because of reporting like that and because of the realization that Biden isn't fit to run or serve in another term, we have a better candidate running against Donald Trump, thus making the election a lot more competitive. Have these individuals come to terms with that, or are they still in denial? I think there's always a tendency to shoot the messenger, and that's on both sides. I certainly experienced us covering Donald Trump's political rise and covering his white House. Most of his supporters were not happy with me most of the time and let me know it. But I have noticed, you know, covering Joe Biden, covering him even in the 2020 primary. There is this sense that he's sort of made of glass and that the tiniest breeze of criticism could, could make him shatter and that there's this, this urge to protect him from, from any sort of scrutiny, which I am opposed to, obviously, as a member of the press, I know you are all opposed to that as well. And my my view is I'm not concerned with outcomes. I don't view that as my role. As, as a journalist, I'm just concerned with writing the most fair and accurate stories possible. And I understand why people are kind of. They're angry about the way that our politics are, and they're looking for people to blame. And I understand why they arrive at the decision, whether it's conscious or not, that members of the press who are delivering information that they don't like or that they wish was not true, why we are often the ones to blame. And I don't feel any, you know, I don't feel aggrieved by it at all. I sort of get it. Yeah. So look, we deal with that all the time. And so if you criticize any Democrat, they'll say, oh, you want Trump to win. It's not my job to want or not want Trump to win. It's my job to deliver the news which is reality based and truth based. Yeah. And so and implicit in that is why don't you do propaganda for us. Like, that's as if that's what media should do. And I can get into a long conversation about why they have that assumption. But what I'm curious about is the mechanics here. Olivia who? So these people who come after you, to say, Bloomberg, don't air this or don't promote this, etc.. Who are they? Do we think that they're democratic, like consultants, lobbyists, trolls? Or are they real people who are just like, angry that you've offended their dear leader? It's probably a combination. I'm sure, that those groups feed off of one another. I'm sure there's some sort of psyop element to it a little bit, but I think that people genuinely get very upset and it's it's terrible irony. I guess a lot of the same people who, when I report critically on Donald Trump, if I utilize anonymous sources, let's say in in service to reporting on Donald Trump, reporting on his campaigns or his white House in the most accurate way that I can. Those people will praise you to the high heavens for doing that. If you utilize any of those same methods to report critically on establishment Democrats and on on President Joe Biden, you are just raked over the coals for it. So there's this total, you know, these two universes that these people operate in when it comes to how they judge the veracity of reporting and whether or not reporting is okay at all when it comes to a Republican or whether, when it comes to a Democrat. And again, it's not something that surprised me. I've seen it a lot. I've been covering, you know, what exists of the Democratic primary over the course of the last year, year and a half. I've been working on a project about Marianne Williamson, so I've seen that from kind of that vantage point a lot during that process, unrelated to my work for New York magazine. And so I wasn't surprised by any of this. I was a little surprised by how tiny the outrage was and how, how Bloomberg reacted to it. Anyway, I did think that that was, you know, sad and, like, deeply amusing. But these companies are risk averse. They're trying to avoid risk. And there's some irony. I think they want characters. They want personalities, like you guys who have big followings or who are perceived as being influential. And then when they get that, they're terrified about the actual implications of that. Yeah. So that part I'm totally familiar with, like Bloomberg as an example, but it could be anybody, really. It's almost all the major media companies. They're like, oh, we want exactly like you said, we want your following, but we don't want how you got there. When you come here, we want you to be boring, insipid. Don't say any of the things that you said before. Say the opposite. Well, then you don't want me. So let's just move on and you do your boring crap and I'll do my real reporting here. But anyways. But I want to come back to the blue MAGA because I'm curious, do they do you think that they thought you were just lying and making up sources and you just had a personal grudge against Biden, so you just pretended he was old when he's actually young? Or did they know in your estimation that of course you're telling the truth, but they don't want you to tell the truth because then Biden might lose. So sh I don't know. I think it's probably a combination of those things. I don't read, you know, everything that someone who's angry tweets at me. I shut my mentions off in 2016 and I haven't turned them back on. Sometimes I'll look at a curiosity or I'll read the comments out of curiosity. New York magazine happens to have a pretty robust and relatively intelligent comment section that I find pretty valuable. To take a look at what they're all saying. So I do see some of it, but I don't, you know, obsess over refreshing my mentions or anything like that. I don't understand people who can live that way. But I think it was a combination. I also think, you know, context gets lost. And, in the context of the internet of like 2009 or the early 20 tens, when I was a genuinely a Democratic activist, right? My job, I was an intern for a group where my job was to write ghostwrite op eds in support of the passage of the Affordable Care Act when I was in high school. And in my free time, I thought it was really funny to troll people who were Tea Party activists on the internet. And I would kind of tweet dumb things using their hashtag. And because of the way that I look, I think they thought that I was one of them. And that was just something I liked to do in my spare time as a sort of a internet troll as a teenager, and divorced from the context of that internet, though of the Obama era, I guess I could see how, you know, if some semi-respectable people you follow online in the year of our Lord 2024, say that I was earnestly a birther or something. Taking those people seriously and not thinking too hard about, oh, what was the internet like at that time? And does it really seem believable, that, you know, a decade's worth of of my journalism is refuted by some silly tweets from that period of time, but I don't know, I kind of I try and always talk to the smartest person in the room, and I have to hope that most people whose opinion I would value on any other subject would not be so, so naive and so gullible as to to buy into that narrative. Yeah. I want to talk about that briefly, because either the era of Donald Trump broke people's brains or we have like a serious competency problem in America, because I want to show the the tweets that they weaponized against you. They're obvious jokes. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell they're obvious jokes. By the way, the third option, which could be very likely, is intentionally misinterpreting your jokes, pretending like they're real and you meant it in order to paint you as some sort of racist to get you fired. But here's one example. Kenyan anti-colonial shows teeth to small child retweet white House happy pi day. Today. I mean, that's so obviously a joke. Here's another one. Do you think Obama ever gets tired of being a secret Kenyan Muslim Muslim lizard person who plots terror attacks from the white House? And by the way, they went back like over a decade in order to find these tweets, potentially intentionally misinterpret them, to paint you as some sort of racist, to try to get you fired. And luckily, they didn't scrap your series. But Bloomberg decided to scrap the PR campaign around your series, which is insane to me. But look, final question for me, Olivia, is there's this question of access, right? And we talk about it here at TYT often. If you are too critical of a politician or a party, they're less likely to sit down and talk with you. A lot of journalists are concerned about losing access, and I think that leads some to treat these politicians with with kid gloves. You say that you're willing to put out these tough pieces. What has your experience been in terms of access after you put these pieces out? You know, the Biden White House or I guess it's just sort of the Biden inner circle never really got over my coverage of him during the 2020 campaign cycle or the primary cycle, rather. You know, I wrote at the time that there were concerns, implicit or explicit, about his ability to stay agile and alive for four more years. You all remember, I'm sure, better than a lot of other people remember that that was a big part of the conversation about whether or not he ought to be the nominee in 2020. They never really forgot that or fully forgave it. And they always treated me with skepticism. I found them to be way more locked down than other campaigns or other members of other political parties. Certainly. Whereas I found, I think leadership is determined by whoever is at the top. And I find that dealing with Trump, for instance, I just have I have a big piece out today with interviews with Donald Trump. He got very mad at me about a year and a half, two years ago, after an interview with me. He called me dumb as rocks, unattractive. He did the whole, like, you know, Trumpian name thing in response to the piece. And I figured it would take a while for him to come back and do another interview with me, but I knew that he would, because that's just sort of how he is. He. He lets out his temper and then he gets over it eventually if you keep trying. And so there is a huge difference, and I really think it just depends on who the executive is in question and the kind of culture that they foster. And when it came to Joe Biden, I think he never really had a good relationship with the press. He blamed the press for his first presidential campaign not going well for the plagiarism accusations. He blamed the press for coverage of him going into the 2016 race, and whether or not he should run to be the Democratic nominee. And he blamed the press for negative coverage of him during the 2020 primary. And they have a very bitter sort of attitude towards the media, and I think it's hurt them. I think it's very similar to Hillary Clinton, where this sort of impulse to protect yourself and protect your campaign and keep people who maybe are not totally with you away actually makes you look paranoid, and it prevents you from having a better relationship with the public because you're not talking to them directly as much. And I think we're seeing this already with Kamala Harris not being very accessible to the media. And I think long term it will negatively affect her campaign. Yeah. Look, there's so many things that are so nuts. This is going to lead into the question. So number one, I think you guys, both you and Ana are too generous to these folks. They're definitely lying. They're definitely misinterpreting your joke on purpose. They're definitely trying to smear you. I've been through it many, many times. And and then there are complicit people, tons of them in mainstream media who love to take democratic lies and then print them and go, oh, golly gee, I didn't know it was a joke. Really? You're that dumb. Please. Okay, but having said that, that gets to my question, which is the establishment, in my opinion, is also in their own bubble. Not my opinion. It's a fact. Everybody's in their own bubble. So we always look at our own bubble and go, wait, are we sure we're right? What's objective reality? ET cetera. Right. I never see Maggie doing that. Donald Trump could. I mean, today they came out with Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs, and they instantly everybody instantly believed it. Right. Insanity. Right. But then in the Democratic bubble and the blue MAGA. Oh, Biden is young and dynamic behind the scenes. They instantly believe it. And they'll attack you if you don't. ET cetera. But my question is for the establishment that's in DC. Do like including mainstream media reporters who, you know, a lot of them write and including the mainstream politicians, Republican and Democrat, do they understand how much they are hated in this country? Do they understand that they represent the status quo and that they that most people think that they're giant liars because they keep saying that politicians are honest and they don't point out that they're all taking giant donor money and obviously doing what the donors want them to do, and that it's driving the country crazy that they won't admit the most obvious thing in the world. Overwhelming corruption. Right? Do they have. My sense is that they don't realize that at all. They think that they're angels and they represent objective reality and and that there is no there's not there's nothing much wrong with the system or the status quo. So but I but you're in it a lot more than I am. So it's a legitimate real question. Like do they have any idea that they're the establishment and that they're hated, or do they not realize that at all? They realize that. I mean, I think it's it is a monolith to some extent. But I think, you know, there are there are different people who are different levels of self-aware within that. Right? David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address once, and he had this story about these two fish were sort of swimming along, and one of the fish said something about water to the other fish. And the second fish says, what's water? It's sort of like that, right? Where I think people are so deeply in their little universe where they're seeing the same types of people all the time. Everyone is also in that universe. I think it's very easy to not really question what you're doing and just, just kind of keep swimming along, not realizing what you're a part of. And I think a lot of group think really explains it more than malice and more than, you know, individuals choosing to, to do something bad or to be, cowardly. And I think I realized this when I was reporting that Biden piece. I hadn't been a part of the press pool. It's just not something that I do in my capacity as Washington correspondent. But I joined the press pool, which is like this traveling group of reporters who are always with the sitting president. And they keep tabs on his movement, and I asked to join to go to some fundraisers so that I could see the president up close for the story. And while I was there, I was talking to the other reporters who were people that I know who are kind of common presence in this press pool, who are always in rotation. And I was shocked by the things that I was learning from them, just the things that for them were just totally normal parts of covering the president. But to me just seemed like a scandal. Right? Where the radio pooler, from a from a network whose job is to get audio and give it out to the rest of the radio stations, told me that often there's just not usable audio because the president doesn't speak very clearly. I was part of the, you know, reporters standing there listening to the president speak. I was straining my neck and trying to find a way to hear him, just like everyone else was, even though none of the other speakers at this event were difficult to hear. And when I talked later to the rest of the members of the press pool. They said, oh yeah, this is a common thing where, you know, we're all sitting around afterwards saying, did you hear that? Did he phrase it that way? Are you sure that's what he said? Where in the audio exactly was that? And everyone's sitting around listening to their audio, trying to decipher it to figure out what on earth the president just said? I thought that this was remarkable and shocking. And absolutely worth telling the world about in my story. But when you're in that every day, when you're part of a beat, you're a beat reporter. And this is true in general across the board, no matter what your beat is, a lot of things start to feel normal and start to feel like just a part of the job. And you don't have enough perspective to say, this shouldn't be this way, or it's remarkable that it is this way. And that's why, you know, I think there's a lot of value in, coming in as a bit of an outsider and taking a look at this stuff for yourself and then reporting back. Yeah. Olivia. Great conversation. It's just it's nice to have a conversation where we have shared language on objective reality. So can can you let our audience know when your interview shows when and where it is? It is on Bloomberg. You can see it for, on Bloomberg Originals, on streaming. I, you know, I hope you watch it, but it's, it's, I guess they would prefer that you didn't. It's really the the answer. Well, then defy them. And do exactly what they don't want us to do. - Okay. - All right. Thank you for having me, guys. Thank you. Olivia. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching The Young Turks. Really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.