Matt Taibbi’s Interview on The Tucker Carlson Show (Transcript)

I’m gonna take the fifth on that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Fascinating.

MATT TAIBBI: Right? So the whole thing is really illogical. I mean, I think it was more meant to be a symbolic gesture. And this is really, I think, speaks to the thinking of the Biden administration about so many things. Right? They were so driven by optics with Trump that they did so they did a lot of things that were incredibly stupid. So they wanna portray him as vengeful and out to get people. And the pardons are a good way to do that, I mean, if you’re aiming for that audience. But it had the negative effect of opening all these investigations up, it seems to me.

Motivations Behind the Pardons

TUCKER CARLSON: So you really think this was aimed at MSNBC viewers just to paint Trump as a vindictive person?

MATT TAIBBI: So I asked a lot of people, why did they do this? Like, what’s the point? I mean and one of the theories was that this is messaging. That they were trying to create a headline. And there were lots of headlines instantaneously if you saw them. They all basically said the same thing, like, you know, to ward off future vindictive retaliatory acts by the Trump administration, you know, Biden issues pardons. It’s always after the comma. Right? Yeah. That’s one theory.

The other theory is that, in the last days of a presidential administration, it gets pretty chaotic in the White House and people who want things and, you know, they will come in and there’ll be a hurried frenzy to put stuff on paper. And that’s why there are unprecedented things in these pardons. For instance, the J6 pardons, this has never happened before where you give a pardon to a category of unnamed people. Right? It says to the members of the committee, to the Capitol Police officers who testified, to the staff, but it doesn’t delineate the names of the people who are pardoned.

So now if you wanna invoke your pardon, you actually have to go over, a test to prove that you’re actually part of that category. That I testified before the committee, does that mean that the committee called you, that you talked to a staffer once? Or does that mean that you actually sat in front of the hall and testified? It’s very weird. And the only explanation that I could come up with from people is that they were in a hurry. They didn’t have all the names.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s amazing. Right? So but why how why would you preemptively pardon the J6 committee? I mean, that’s, like, the single most legitimate, morally empowered, great group of people ever impaneled in this country. Like, truly.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, I mean, there are obviously some theories about why they would do that. Right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Mother Teresa, she was such a great person, we’re gonna preemptively pardon her. Like, what? This is, like, crazy.

MATT TAIBBI: No. It is absolutely crazy. And, if I were some of those people, I’d be offended. Yes. Especially the people who testified and who didn’t lie under oath, for instance. Right? Because they’re all named. Yeah. All the police officers who testified, to the committee. Now what if they’re only really trying to protect a couple of them, and there are some very conspicuous names I think we know who they are. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: The ones they’re trying to protect.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. But what if they’re one of the other ones who just gave some testimony? They — I

TUCKER CARLSON: mean, they interviewed hundreds and probably thousands of people. Right?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. It’s some number like that. Yeah. Massive number.

TUCKER CARLSON: I assume most of them told the truth.

MATT TAIBBI: I mean Right. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Most people do tell the truth, actually, I think.

MATT TAIBBI: I think that’s probably the case. Yeah. I mean, if especially if you’re under oath and you’re — Yes. Law enforcement officer. I mean, it’s a very serious thing to lie in those situations. And, you know, there are a couple of places in the testimony where it doesn’t look good for some of the people who testified. But for the vast majority of them, I would take it as a grievous insult to be given that pardon and especially to not be named. That that’s what’s so weird about it. But it suggests what I have thought from the first week, which is they’re, like, serious crimes here. I mean,

Capitol Police and Unanswered Questions

TUCKER CARLSON: you talked to Steve Sund, you know, ran Capitol Police, who’s, like, a nonpolitical person, just career law enforcement, former MP, you know, former Washington DC cop. I don’t think he has any weird agenda. He I mean, his story is so unbelievable. They just didn’t give him any intel at all and didn’t give him any resources, and everybody else knew this was happening except him. I mean, the whole thing is so nuts that you’re like, wait. There’s something going on here. I don’t really know.

Mysterious Events Surrounding January 6th

MATT TAIBBI: And the pipe bombs, if the The pipe bombs, the gallows that was erected by some weird unknown group the night before.

TUCKER CARLSON: Will we ever get this closure? I guess that’s what I want. I just wanna know. I again, I’m not I am not fetishful. I don’t really wanna punish people so much as I just wanna know that feels like punishment enough. Will we? I think we will.

The Future of Investigative Journalism

MATT TAIBBI: I think we’re heading into a golden age for investigative journalism. I think this is after eight years of crazy misleading news stories and dead ends and unanswered questions and fake news, you know, ranging from Russiagate to Nord Stream to, you know, the COVID origins where we’re actively kept away from one side of that story for years. I think we’re gonna find out a lot of this stuff. There are investigations already underway, document hunts going on all over the place. There are reports that have been commissioned, to look into a lot of these questions, and they’re gonna be staffed up with a lot of money and a lot of personnel. And it it’s just an unprecedented situation where, for instance, the DHS or the FBI or the DOJ would be in sync with congressional investigators to the point where they’re they’re not gonna have to issue subpoenas for a lot of this stuff. They’re just gonna sit down and say, here’s a list of the documents we wanna find. And I think that they’re gonna have that collaborative arrangement.

Panic in Washington

TUCKER CARLSON: Incredible. There’s panic. I sense panic. And I sense it, in some of these confirmation battles, particularly the sort of offline stuff that you don’t see in the media, but just when you find out the lengths to which permanent Washington is going to say sabotage Tulsi Gabbard. There’s an army officer who’s had a clearance for more than a decade, carries an automatic weapon. I mean, clearly, we trust her with America’s, you know, defense. Why can’t we trust her with America’s secrets? Of course, we can. So what is this? And it really is people are panicked that what they’ve been doing is gonna come to light, I think.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, they should be panicked because if you read the executive order on the weaponization of government, it specifically empowers the director of national intelligence, to conduct a wide ranging report into the possible misdeeds of the entire intelligence community and orders her to come up with, you know, anything negative that they can find. Holy shit. So can you imagine? No. Right? I mean, that that’s like trying to make a list of everything. You you she’ll be doing it from now till the end of time. But no. I mean, the to in perfect seriousness, this is it’s setting the stage for, you know, kind of a second church committee hearings, era. And that was a great moment in American history. Every fifty years. Right. We find out what they’re doing with their black budgets. Yeah. You know, and and really, in in the mid seventies, who would have known, right, that we were doing such an incredibly wide ranging, you know, list of horrible, stupid things from, you know, trying to Yes. Murder Castro with exploding seashells to spying on Martin Luther King Junior to trying to, you know, leak news about mistresses of civil rights leaders. I mean, it goes the list went on and on and on. And we only found out about it because they went too far. Right? And now suddenly, people in the senate had a hammer, to start looking, you know, into this direction, and it all came out. Well, not all of it, but a lot of it came out. A lot of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Frank Church sadly got incredibly fast developing cancer, I noticed.

MATT TAIBBI: Did he?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. He did. He did kind of like Jack Ruby style cancer. Hugo Chavez style cancer is interesting. Uh-huh. I did not. Couldn’t yeah. Couldn’t treat if he

MATT TAIBBI: died. Sad.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry.

MATT TAIBBI: No. It’s alright. I mean, look, it’s hard not to think. I I never thought this way until, like, a a year ago? I mean,

TUCKER CARLSON: a year and

MATT TAIBBI: a half ago?

Changing Perspectives with Age

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m like, oh, now I did not think this way. I I attacked anyone who did. Right. Yeah. But I can I say one thing that I’ve noticed now that I’m in middle age, is that all my life, the older guys I’ve known, like, you go on duck hunting trips or whatever in in Washington where I live, like, with my dad and his friends or whatever? And the guys who are in their fifties and sixties all thought this way. They all thought this way. You know, after, like, a lifetime of government service as an operations officer or whatever you’re doing. Right?

MATT TAIBBI: Right. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: They all have this mindset. I remember sitting, like, in a duck blind thinking, you guys are fucking crazy. They’re all nuts. What I didn’t realize was there’s a reason that people become more open to these sorts of explanations the more they see.

MATT TAIBBI: Of course. And maybe Right. Right? Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know why I didn’t get that.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Well, it’s probably just our generation that thought the Schoolhouse Rock thing was true. I mean, right? It’s so true. Because, you know, we we we grew up with all the president’s men and after the church commute. So we thought it all had come out. The good guys won. There’s transparency. We have the Freedom of Information Act. We can find everything up. No. Right? It turns out

TUCKER CARLSON: I know. No. Right? No. You’re I never thought of Schoolhouse Rock and all the presidents meant as sophisticated propaganda put there by the intel agencies, but I think you’re right. Whether they’re whoever did it, it was effective.

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Unanswered Questions in Recent History

TUCKER CARLSON: So can we just go through since I Sure. Yeah. You’re as I’ve said many times, and I mean it, I think you’re one of the great reporters still working. Not that there are many. Not that there’s a ton of competition.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. There there aren’t many. But,

TUCKER CARLSON: and and and you are, by your nature, a curious person, which is like requirement one for journalism. And, like, the one thing no one else seems curious about, I think, but you are. So can you just just go through in no particular order the stories whose endings you’d like to know? Like, what are you curious about as we enter an age of disclosure, and god willing we do? What do you wanna know? So first of

MATT TAIBBI: all, just to back up, I tried to make a list a couple of days ago. Oh, did you really? Yeah. Of all the things that I would wanna investigate if I were, you know, in in that kind of a position to order these countries. Gonna take notes as you do. Because I

TUCKER CARLSON: because I I wanna follow along at home as this happens. Okay.

MATT TAIBBI: But I I couldn’t finish. There were so many different things that I never got to the end. But I I would say that the big ones, you know, there are huge glaring questions, which is unusual. For instance, who who was president the last four years, especially the last year? I mean, I think that’s an enormous question. It’s not blinking.

TUCKER CARLSON: You think it was blinking? You know, I I think blinking’s so evil, so demonstrably evil and also stupid that I just see his fingerprints everywhere. Right. Right. But I that’s pure guess. That’s that’s the problem. We don’t really know. That in the last two months, Blinken did everything he could to accelerate the war between the United States and Russia, which is, like, I should be illegal. I don’t know how he got away with that. Nobody said anything about it, but that’s a fact. So anyway, sorry to hear that.

MATT TAIBBI: But he and and he, you know, the his state department was also involved in the censorship stuff too. So,

TUCKER CARLSON: who was president?

MATT TAIBBI: Who or what? Who was president?

TUCKER CARLSON: It was like That was a big question. Yeah.

The White House Operations and Decision-Making

MATT TAIBBI: No. I mean, I think of all the crimes that are on the table and the potential corruption issues, people signing documents or somehow getting documents signed by an incompetent president or an unfit president has to rank up there with the most serious things that have ever happened in, in in American history. Right? So you have to look at what were the what was the process of the White House operation? Right? Who was actually running things? We know from a surface point who was who held the posts. Right? So Ron Klain was the the chief of staff. We know roughly who else was in Joe Biden’s orbit. What what were the what was the schedule? You know, did he did he sign things by auto pen? Because they have this this machine that does, and and who and who was who basically had the power of attorney to turn that on. Right?

Like, these are all questions that we have to get answers to. What was the day to day operation of the Biden White House? And again, especially in the last year because I think, you know, that gets to bigger questions of who was really making these big foreign policy decisions and who was making decisions about things like, you know, cutting off the democratic primaries, the challengers. Yes. You know? I think if you these are big party decisions, not necessarily White House decisions. Who decided to to kick Biden off the ticket? Biden on July thirteenth, was giving a speech in Detroit, and he’s like, I’m running. I mean, he couldn’t have been more, affirmative about the idea that he was not gonna drop out of the race. Within seven days, he was out of the race. With, within three days after that Detroit thing, there were stories leaked out in Politico that were basically saying that Nancy Pelosi was gonna ask him to or gonna try to pressure him to drop out.

But I don’t believe that. I think we need to find out exactly what those communications were. I mean, who had the authority to push the president of the United States off his own ticket? Unless he had a sudden change of heart. Do you believe that?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think it’s really obvious that his statement dropping out on Twitter was issued before he knew. I mean, I’ve heard that. Again, I don’t know is the truth, but, I’ve heard that.

MATT TAIBBI: It’s very conspicuous that when he when he wanted to say things, he said it on camera, but there were all kinds of things where the wording was much more careful, and that was done on Twitter or in a letter or in a in a press release. I mean, even even the the note explaining the pardons, who wrote that? Right? It was on the the, you know, Biden’s Twitter account. I doubt he’s sitting there tweeting.

The Controversy Surrounding Biden’s Departure

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s just a coup. I mean, that’s a coup. If you take a sitting president of the United States and force him to drop out, I mean, right?

MATT TAIBBI: It’s on the table. It has to be, because, you know, Jill Biden has been very circumspect in in talking about it. She’s said these really curious things about how she wants to reevaluate her relationships. I think she she was referring to Nancy Pelosi. But what exactly happened, in in that one week period between, you know, the middle of July and the twenty first or so? And then what happened in, between the twenty first and the twenty second or whenever it was when Biden suddenly came out and made Kamala the nominee. Like, how did that happen? Who made that decision?

TUCKER CARLSON: So that was after the Republican convention?

MATT TAIBBI: Yes. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you had this incredible week or two where Trump gets shot, survives. You have the convention and Biden drops out. I mean, that’s and as far as I know, I don’t think anyone’s ever done, like, a real TikTok on that.

MATT TAIBBI: No. There were — there were stories, but they were incredibly incomplete. And this is one of the things where, you know, I was looking at it even from just a professionalism point of view in terms of the New York Times, the Washington Post, all of these papers. How does nobody ask who made the decision to nominate, Kamala Harris? How did that happen? How was he kicked off, or how did he come come to that decision?

Normally, there would be a big show of that. Right? There would be somebody would come out and give an interview, to, I don’t know, sixty minutes and say, well, here’s how that happened. Right? And whether it was true or not, there would be a grand explanation, whenever there’s something big that happens with the president. Here, they just they just kinda did a little tweet or a press release, and there were things that were leaked out in in newspapers. None of it made any sense. So, you know, they have to get all those communications. And I think that’s what was important. There, you know, there were preservation letters that were sent out by some senate committees. I hope it captured a lot of this stuff, but we’ll see.

Who Was Really in Charge?

TUCKER CARLSON: You know? Do you, have any sense of what the answer is to either one of these questions? Who was functionally operating the Biden administration, and who kicked Biden out? Who made these decisions?

MATT TAIBBI: I’ve only heard theories about this. Right? And and that’s the problem. It – it’s kinda irresponsible for reporters to speculate because I agree. We don’t know. All we know, we we we saw little bits and pieces of things. Like, there was the there was a really weird moment, you might remember, when, Biden said something to the effect of, we can’t allow Putin to stay in office or whatever it was. Right? And and people immediately interpreted that as a regime change of course. Comment. Right? Forty seven minutes later, the White House comes out with a walk back clarifying statement saying, you know, our our policy towards Russia is unchanged or something — something ambiguous like that.

But there were leaks in the press about what happened there, and there was a remarkable line in one of the stories saying that Biden was allowed to participate in the workshopping of that second statement. How is he not in charge of it, first of all? Right? Like, and, you know, there’s, like, talking about Jake Sullivan is is, involved in the process. But that just gives you a little glimpse into this idea of a collective presidency where, at best, Biden was a participant. So I think we need to know, a lot of things about who was actually making those decisions. It might be different in terms of, you know, for each realm of the government. Right? Maybe the national security questions were dealt with by one person, then, you know, the foreign policy things by another. I don’t know. I mean, we’ll see.

TUCKER CARLSON: And then domestic policy, which doesn’t even really exist in this country. It’s all national security, like, runs everything. Right. Right. Who’s doing that?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Oh, that was only the first thing in the list. Right?

The Overwhelming Amount of Unanswered Questions

TUCKER CARLSON: The No. You just got you know, it’s so funny as you say this, and I won’t interrupt you anymore, but I just can’t. I mean, it’s like crazy you’re going through this stuff. This just happened this summer. Yeah. And I was there. I mean, I know a lot of the people. I feel like I’m not that informed, but maybe more informed than average because it’s my job. I kinda forgot about all this. Like, so much stuff has happened. It’s like it’s amazing Yeah. What we have allowed to sort of pass by us without demanding answers.

MATT TAIBBI: I mean, I remember being in Russia in the late nineties. There were multiple, episodes that you might classify as quasi coups. Yes. Right? There were there was an, an episode where people tried to arrest Yeltsin’s bodyguard, Alexander Karashakov, and it kinda turned out the other way in the end. And but there was, intense reporting about this by the supposedly unfree Russian press at the time. And then there was also the whole question of, you know, why was Putin brought in? What, you know, what did he do when he he was immediately kind of used to, clamp down on the an investigation of Yeltsin that was done by the general prosecutor at the time. I mean, that’s all in the woods.

What I’m trying to say is even in a third world country, we got more information, about stuff that was going on than we got last year in the United States of America where we had a gigantic press corps sitting in Washington supposedly covering all this stuff. It blows my mind. You know

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, you’ve done this your whole life. So you know, and you grew up in it. So you you must still know people in that gigantic press corps.

MATT TAIBBI: A few, but, you know, the ones that I that I I’m still in touch with mostly have been kind of squeezed out. You know, there are people who who did try to get to the bottom of what happened. I mean, Sy Hersh did a a story about the mechanics of how it got to be went from Biden to Kamala. And, you know, that story came out on Substack, but it wasn’t picked up anywhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT TAIBBI: And that’s kind of the way the media works.

The Nord Stream Pipeline Controversy

TUCKER CARLSON: Sy Hersh also broke the story that the United States, NATO, the Biden administration was behind the sabotage of Nord Stream Right. Gas pipeline to Western Europe, to Germany.

MATT TAIBBI: That I mean, that’s on the list too, obviously.

TUCKER CARLSON: But that’s I mean, I think we can say that’s true. And, I mean, why isn’t Sy Hersh getting the Pulitzer for that? Why you know, he was immediately this guy’s been a hero on the left for my entire life. Before before I was born, he was a hero on the, left. And all of a sudden, everyone’s like, shut up, Putin apologist. Oh, I know. I know. I mean I’m sorry.

MATT TAIBBI: I’m you know, all this is just oh, it drives me insane.

TUCKER CARLSON: It drives me insane. Not only are there almost no good reporters left, the few good reporters left are, like, attacked all the time.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. They — they’ve all been kicked to the curb. You know, it’s I think it’s very notable that a lot of the high profile investigative reporters just can’t even publish in the United States.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

MATT TAIBBI: You know? And, you know, look at somebody like Jeff Gerth, who who writes who who made a point of kinda keeping ties to traditional media and not burning bridges and doing all that stuff and worked his his butt off to get this twenty four thousand word piece about Russiagate into the Columbia Journalism Review. And it should have landed hard. It should have landed like a Mike Tyson uppercut, you know? And it it it people just ignored it. So even when they don’t kick you out of the club, they just they ignore the hard work for you.

TUCKER CARLSON: For people who are, you know, under forty was definitely one of the most famous investigative reporters in the world and feared.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. The New York Times front page Worst. Gerth.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Big deal guy for many, many years.

MATT TAIBBI: He was the bulldog going after the Clinton administration on everything. Right? So, I mean, when he did the story, it mattered. It was on the desk of every senator in the country. Of course. You know? And that that’s what’s so interesting about this period is that there there is none of that. The the stuff that lands on the desks of people in the relevant committees in Washington is PR. There’s no reporting there for the most part. Maybe that will change now. I don’t know. But, you know, I doubt it. People read your stuff. I happen to know. So Hope. That’s good. That would be great to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: They they do. Yeah.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah.

The Nord Stream Incident and Its Implications

TUCKER CARLSON: So, okay. But Nord Stream, don’t freak. That’s that’s on Nord Stream. Let’s go to Nord Stream. Now I’m gonna stop interrupting. Nord Stream. What do we know? I mean —

MATT TAIBBI: I mean, we know that there’s five or six shifting official explanations of what happened. They eventually settled on this kind of labyrinthine story about a rogue Ukrainian operation that apparently, without our input, went went and did this. Yeah, I don’t believe it. I mean, it’s it’s it’s laughable to think that that’s true. And so, you know, that but that’s the kind of Nord Stream is just one it’s like looking up at the stars in the sky. That’s just one of them. And that’s a huge story. I mean, think about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: That could have started the German economy. It will destroy the EU. Ultimately, when people wake up from their dream state, it will destroy NATO because it was an attack by one NATO power on a NATO ally. Another NATO member was attacked by the United States on Germany.

MATT TAIBBI: So and it wrecked the German economy. Absolutely. It strained and strained the incoming relations and and, it’s it’s just it could have resulted in, you know, an immediate nuclear escalation. I mean, there’s so many different things, and it was a massive ecological disaster.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a Deepwater Horizon level environmental event. The greatest man made emission of carbon dioxide in history.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. And and it’s a it’s a tiny footnote to the insane lunacies that happened during this period. It I’m sorry, but it is. Like, Nord Stream is if you’re making a list of the the ten weirdest things that happened, in the last eight years, it it’s probably at the bottom, I would think. I mean Wow. I mean, don’t you think?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, right I think that’s right. I just you know, I like Western Europe. I think it’s important to have a thriving Western Europe. I don’t think they’re a rival. I think they’re a complimentary region to the United States. And to see it destroyed intentionally by the Biden administration, well, it just wrecked Western Europe. Like, why would you do that? And I so I’m I’m fixated on it, but, but you’re right. So what are the others? So COVID?

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Investigation

MATT TAIBBI: Okay. I mean, there there are there are so many different areas where they’re gonna have to investigate, reinvestigate that. We just went through a period where, you know, there was sort of mass stonewalling of of congress when it was trying to investigate what happened with COVID. You know, people there were key people like Peter Daszak from the EcoHealth Alliance who just didn’t answer subpoenas. Right?

And so we’re gonna there there are documents that were that we know exist that we’re gonna get now, you know, with FBI communications between the bureau and a lot of these scientists, you know, dating back ten years. And it’s gonna tell a very a crazy story. I mean, a really interesting story. There’s a reason why Fauci’s pardon is backdated to two thousand and fourteen, because that’s the the time period that they’re gonna be have to start looking, which is, you know, when did we start defying the ban on gain of function research? We clearly did. I think that’s I think that’s pretty established at this point. Why were we doing it? What connection did that have to the Wuhan thing? What kind of advance notice did we get? What kind of lies were told about it? Who were responsible for those lies?

What information did we get about the inefficacy of the vaccine? And how did that connect to statements by the CDC and the White House? This also connects to the censorship issue in a major way because there was also, a sort of massive effort to control the public conversation about this, that went through the health agencies. So we know they’re looking at that. And that’s another executive order, by the way. The free speech order, you know, directs them, the the Department of Justice, to come up with a comprehensive review of all the censorship stuff, so we’re gonna find out about that. But I just think COVID is a gigantic rat’s nest of stuff. And, you know, it’s gonna be like a turkey shoot where every direction they look, they’re going to find something, you know, revelatory.

The Role of Media in Disseminating Information

TUCKER CARLSON: The question is, will that information reach the public? Because there is the intermediary is the media. So, like, congressional investigators, executive branch agencies like DOJ, you know, they’re constantly inspectors general. They’re always releasing reports, and I’m like, no one reads them because nobody picks them up in the media. Do we have enough interested reporters to, like, disseminate what they find?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I think we do because I think that what we think of as the media is dead. It — they no longer really matter. The media that matters now, are people like you and and Joe Rogan and other, you know, there’s podcasters out there. There’s this independent, gigantic, thriving, independent media culture

TUCKER CARLSON: In front …

MATT TAIBBI: That, you know, turned the last election, clearly. It was also abundantly clear that the that the old media no longer had any ability to control the narrative about anything. They’re totally discredited. So I think this stuff is going to come out. And because it’s going to be so explosive, it’s going to sort of solidify and heighten the prestige of all this new media. I think we’re probably going to see whole institutions that are going to be built around I agree. These disclosures. We’re going to have new newspapers, new new TV stations.

Matt Taibbi’s Work and the Future of Media

TUCKER CARLSON: So I normally save this for the end, but I’m feeling so enthusiastic. I’m going to do it now in case we won’t get to the end. Where do people find you? How do they support you if you’ve made it this far in this conversation? You’re like, this guy’s unbelievable. How did I’m sorry. Shamelessly promote for this…

MATT TAIBBI: Oh, thanks. No. I’m at racket dot news, on Substack where, a lot of these news sites are.

TUCKER CARLSON: For those who didn’t grow up playing squash, how are you spelling racket?

MATT TAIBBI: R a c k e t dot news.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So Racket. So not not squash racket.

MATT TAIBBI: Not squash racket like racket like that’s a racket, you know, which this is. Yes. It turned out to be aptly named. So nice. But yeah, no, I I’m feeling very optimistic now. I think, there are still some holes in this new media landscape. We don’t have the huge institutions that have reporters who have beats, which I think is crucial. Right? Because you need to have people who develop sources in one small area.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree. Well, you saw that with Julie Kelly on January sixth. Julie Kelly, I don’t even know what she did before. She’s purely kind of a creation of the Internet. Well, she’s a self creation, but she her medium was the Internet and x specifically. And she’s got mad about January sixth and just relentlessly focused on that. I’m sure she’s other opinions, but she only did that. And, I mean, man, this one woman in I think she’s my age ish, like, unearthed all this information that was like, no no one else got it except her because she was just so focused on this thing.

The Role of Citizen Journalism

MATT TAIBBI: You know, it’s great. It’s incredible. And it’s a — that’s exactly how the press is supposed to function. They’re not supposed to be credentialed. Like, it’s not supposed to be a thing where, you know, somebody confers a title. You are the the official media. No. The citizen, they’re like, that’s part of our job is is to be

TUCKER CARLSON: the press.

MATT TAIBBI: Right? Like, that’s why the the the first amendment was designed for exactly for that to happen. And there were there was lots of incredible reporting that was done, by either individuals or small indicate you know, organizations like the US right to know. They filed, you know, hundreds of FOIA requests on Fauci and gain of function and everything. And they really started the ball rolling on that whole side of that investigation. It’s you know, it was a relatively small site. And they had good good young reporters there who were hungry, and that’s how this thing works. You know? Amazing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right? Amazing. It’s exciting. It’s so exciting. And it’s also true that there are increasingly people making, like, a legit living. I’m not I’m not getting rich, but, like, paying the bills, doing this job Right.

MATT TAIBBI: And is important. And that’s also how it’s supposed to work. Yes. I mean, I I I remember hearing a story about IF Stone. When I was starting on sub Substack, I was calling around to some of the old timers and saying, like, is this a good idea for me to tap out of mainstream media? And they told me a story that and they said, you know, I. F. Stone cranked out a a newsletter. For those people who don’t know, he was a Izzy Stone. Izzy Stone. He was, you know, one of the original, independent investigative journalists. He worked out of his house. He put out this little newsletter, the I I. F. Stone Weekly. It was great, reporting, independent, didn’t have to answer to editors who told him to shape things one way or the other. And he made a nice living, got himself a nice little house, and that was enough. Right? And he had an impact. And you can do that now. The Internet makes it easier, actually.

The Impact of Revelations on Social Trust

TUCKER CARLSON: You wonder again, I’m I’m delaying you in your narrative once more, so with apologies. But you wonder, even just the four topics you’ve mentioned so far are so big that if we got the truth or some, you know, higher percentage of the truth about those things, you wonder about the social effect. So one of the things the sensors always say is they’re doing this or preventing you from knowing certain things to preserve societal stability.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. And trust in institutions.

TUCKER CARLSON: Trust in institutions. Exactly. Trust in institutions. So, I mean, that’s already gone away, but it will evaporate completely the more we know. Don’t you think?

MATT TAIBBI: Yes. Yes. But it’ll be like I mean, I hopefully, it’ll be like the church committee hearings where, look, we just have to accept people are going to have their minds blown by discoveries, revelations. For instance, it’s already starting in the news media. We’re we’re we’re starting to get stories from journalists who are told they had to suppress I saw it. Certain angles. Right? You know, there there was a, you know, political story about some people who were told to stay away from the the Hunter Biden laptop story. Two political reporters having left political admitted that political, which is supposed to

TUCKER CARLSON: be covering Washington, told them, no. We’re not we’re not doing that.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. Exactly. And, you you know, my first question is why didn’t you say that when it happened? But I guess people have jobs. Right? So that’s, that’s a thing. But there are going to be a lot more of those. I mean, there are already kinda whispers going around. But people are going to learn that institutions they believed in their whole lives were fraudulent, that they lied to them about important things. And they’re it’s going to be difficult at first, especially since there are not solid new institutions in place to replace them. Yes. You you know, it’s one thing if you’re taking down the CIA in the seventies, and there’s a supposedly reformed CIA there. Right? This is different. The media is going to have to re rebuild itself from the ground up. I think it’s already doing great, but it it it doesn’t have that look for a lot of people. Right?

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. And…

TUCKER CARLSON: It looks very different for sure.

MATT TAIBBI: And so, you know, it’s going to be as you yeah. I think that’s a good point. It’s a transitional period for people.

The Potential for Backlash Against Revelations

TUCKER CARLSON: I guess look. If you want trust in institutions, and I definitely do. I do. I grew up trusting institutions. I don’t now. That’s their fault, not mine. I think your country doesn’t work if nobody trusts any of the institutions. Right? It just doesn’t. So we want that. The only way to that is through transparency, honesty. So I get all that, and I’m for it vehemently. I guess what I’m saying is the people who’ve been administering the system and benefiting from it are completely freaked out. Right? It’s rather trying to stop Tulsi.

But I wonder if they get threatened enough if they don’t become, like, just flat out dangerous to everybody else. Like, the only way to stop disclosure at this point would would be with, like, a a catastrophe that’s so all encompassing nine eleven COVID that it just everything shuts down. All trends in progress stop. And I just feel like there’s a lot at stake for these people. If you’re, you know, John Brennan or Jim Clapper and you’re like a criminal or Mike Pompeo, you’re a criminal. That’s my opinion, but I think they’re obviously criminals. Like, you know, you’ve got a lot to lose.

MATT TAIBBI: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And and people in the intelligence agencies, whose names are not known to the public, they’re about to be. Exactly. And, you know, that we don’t know what that’s going to result in, what impact that’s going to have.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, so this was my thinking about, you know, the the period between the election and the inauguration this week. I think that’s one of the reasons that Tony Blinken was pushing so hard for a real war trying to kill Putin, for example, which the Biden administration did. They tried to kill Putin.

MATT TAIBBI: Really? Yes. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: They did. Wow. Which is insane. If you’re like, okay. So if it takes over Russia Right. And what happens to the nuclear arsenal in a country that’s, like, so complex, outsiders can’t even understand? I mean, you live there, you know. Like, that’s demented that you would even think of something like that. Absolutely. So why were they? Because chaos is a screen that protects them. I mean, I don’t know this. That’s just like watching what they’re doing. I’m like, why would they be doing that? Part of it is because, like, it’s it’s like when you’re taking off to the roof of the embassy in Saigon, you burn all the papers. Right? Absolutely. But they can’t because they’re digital. So maybe you need, like, a war to hide your tracks. Or to keep the public’s attention.

The Potential for Chaos as a Distraction

MATT TAIBBI: That’s what it means. Elsewhere. Right. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. I I had the same fears, and that was part of my my thinking when they started, you know, approving the firing of American missiles into Russian territory and British missiles and French missiles. I’m like, why would you do like, what possible reason…

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MATT TAIBBI: Would there be, to do this? You’re not really going to make any military gains No. By doing this. So it’s you’re doing it either to provoke the other side or to create a headline. The headline, I don’t think it gets you anything. No. So what were they doing? And, you know, if you’re as you’re saying, there there were fiddling with regime change in the in the interim. Yes. Yeah. I I think that was a fear that a lot of people had. I I didn’t think that, frankly, that that that Trump would become president. I I thought I, you know, for a variety of different reasons, I I don’t I don’t know exactly what could have happened to stop that. But I I it was hard for me to accept that it did happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was sitting about six feet away, and I just thought, wow. I can’t believe this is actually happening. Right. Yeah. Up until the second he said the oath, I was like, man. You know? I mean, I you just get super stupid or paranoid or whatever it is having seen all the stuff.

MATT TAIBBI: And I was embarrassed to have those thoughts. I agree.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree. I was like, wow. I’m becoming crazy. Yeah. But it’s not totally crazy when you see the pattern. So but I guess my the point I would make is it’s like we’re not the process has not unfolded fully yet. So, like, there’s still a lot that we don’t know disclosure is, as you’ve said, like, imminent, and that sets up an incentive for the people being exposed to do something really crazy.

The Missed Opportunity for Information Control

MATT TAIBBI: It does, but but I I think the moment is past Good. For for the real like, there was a moment where they could have installed, you know, a European style regime to to stop misinformation. This is this is the new trend. Right? Remember the the hurricanes happened, and immediately FEMA’s talking about setting up an anti misinformation center. Right? It just happened in California. Crazy. Right? I mean, you know, the the fact that Gavin Newsom had time to try to come up with a state bureau for protecting my reputation. But but they could really have done that. They they could have basically put a net over everything, with I mean, that that’s the thing that’s scary about the the European situation is is they already have that massive infrastructure in place to completely control the flow of information, what people see, what people don’t see. They they can punish people who step step out of line.

And we were, you know, this far away from being part of something like that. And if they were going to do that, if they had done that and I think there there was probably some thinking that that would have been accomplished by twenty twenty four. If you go back and look at some of the European Union’s papers on the subject, they were anticipating that we were going to be signatories to certain agreements, like, you know, code of practice on disinformation that we would have our own version by now. If they had done that, then none of this would be possible. You know, all these independent outlets, they could scream to high heavens, but no one would see it. It would be like, you know No. It’s totally right. Right? I mean, you you know this because you when you were doing shows about COVID, well, now we can look behind the scenes and see that the White House was demanding that Facebook dial it down. They turned it down to fifty percent. I mean Yeah. That’s in print. I I I mean, what did you think when you saw that, by the way, when

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally ignored it. I ignore all coverage that in any way pertains to me. I don’t want to become self conscious. So I didn’t spend, you know, one second thinking about I’ve had a couple other things and one other thing, particularly in the last year that was, like, so shocking. I never thought about it again. Because you just don’t I mean, I’m sure you’ve been through this. I mean, you were speaking of mistreated. I’m not even going to bring it up, but you were identified as disobedient and, I mean, they tried to end you. I watched it. Yeah. So you shrug it off or whatever, but you shrug it off. But from my perspective, it’s always you see things clearly when you look at someone else’s life. Sure. Absolutely. I didn’t even know you at the time. I was like, why why but you can’t brood on it.

The Effectiveness of Information Control During COVID

MATT TAIBBI: No. But, but the the fact that the mechanics they they were trying to install the mechanisms by which Oh, yeah. The all this stuff would have been locked down. And and we saw in during the COVID period how how effective it was. Yes. I mean, look. We’ve the the new head of the NIH, you know, Jay Bhattacharya, mostly didn’t hear about his research. Right? I mean, this this is the guy who can you believe Jay Bhattacharya?

TUCKER CARLSON: Who I love. A thoroughly decent man, by the way, in addition to being right on the science, but he’s a decent guy.

MATT TAIBBI: He’s like the sweetest guy in the world. Yeah. I know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Absolutely. Head of NIH? Yeah.

MATT TAIBBI: I know. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. He went he goes from being censored to being the head of NIH. It’s an it’s an amazing transition, but the but the thing that that’s so extraordinary about it is America would have had a completely different idea about lockdowns if they had understood how infectious the disease was, how fruitless it was to try to physically prevent people from, you know, getting infected, and and and how unlikely that was to succeed and how you know, compared to all the other negatives that could have happened from keeping people at home and everything like that. Like, they wouldn’t have made that decision going forward. But they were able to effectively suppress that point of view, which is really scary. Right? I mean, there was real research out there, and most people didn’t see it. I didn’t see it until a year and a half later. No. I know. Right? No. So, and that’s that’s what could happen. That that’s what could have happened with all this stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: So but but I I know that you without getting too specific, but you’re, you know, you’re in touch with doctors, like, on a personal level. Like, you know doctors. Just practicing, you know, clinical physicians. Right? Mom. They know the doctor. Okay. I didn’t know if you wanted to say that.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. You’re married to a doctor. Mhmm.

TUCKER CARLSON: So did they know like, they it was kept from them too. Like, they didn’t Yeah. I mean your average, like, emergency room physician was, like, aware that while COVID propaganda was fake.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, yeah, I mean, I know some ER doctors as well, and it they had to go looking for for information. That’s insane. And it was very hard to find. And, you know, to this day, if you go on Google and you go looking for things, you’re not likely to find the sort of counternarrative thing easily. And I think for a lot of doctors during that period, it was frustrating because, even peer reviewed research was not always easy to find, for them. So, yeah, during that period, it it it affected the whole question of, like, experts who talked to the press. Like, they weren’t always informed about what was going on or or or about different studies that have been done. And, yeah, we had a completely different idea about the about the pandemic than maybe we should have. But the point being is not so much that that was destructive in itself, though I think it was, but that it was a proof of concept of something that that was to come. You know? Do you think that as we unearth more about COVID that the biggest question of all, which was what was the point of that?

The Underlying Purpose of COVID Measures

TUCKER CARLSON: Clearly, it was the point. I mean, if every part of the society was coordinated and aimed toward the same goal, which is increasing the fear, preserving the lies about its origin, hiding a lot of stuff, and, like, telling you and and pushing it toward the vaccine. So, like and it was utterly coordinated. If anything was coordinated, that was from the churches to the schools, to the media, everything. Everyone’s mostly like, why?

MATT TAIBBI: I don’t know. I mean, that’s that’s what we have to that’s why these documents will be so fascinating to get. We’ll ever get

TUCKER CARLSON: to them. We’ll ever be able to say with some certainty or confidence, like, this is why they did that?

MATT TAIBBI: We we may not know some of the higher level thinking about things. I mean, you’re probably not going to get a document that that says, look, it’s really important that we do this because, if we really stress masking, then we’ll have established the precedent of that visible symbols of conformity are are, you know, a positive goal for an authoritarian regime. I mean, they’re not going to have that on paper anywhere. Right? Yes. But there, you know, there might be emails back and forth about how we get people to, to follow instructions about how we manage, the problem of academic freedom. Right?

There are probably going to be emails back and forth saying we have to change America’s thinking about this and get them to start thinking more in the direction of trusting authority. Right? There’s probably going to be some stuff about that because we’ve already seen that in, you know, FOIA disclosures with some, you know, some of these anti disinformation groups and that that sort of thing. So I imagine there’s there’s going to be some stuff with the White House, the CDC, the NIH. There there there there might be some things like that in there. But the higher level, sort of broader conspiratorial questions, I don’t I don’t know what we’re going to get, but I’m fascinated to find out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too.

Russiagate and Related Phenomena

TUCKER CARLSON: So okay. So oh, COVID. Next. Okay. Russiagate? Russiagate.

MATT TAIBBI: And, you know, the the sort of related phenomenon of fake news, intelligence leaks designed to destroy careers, which bleeds into kind of lawfare. Right? But Russiagate specifically, that’s a big story. That that’s a place where I think that’s going to be the easiest hit for investigators because the doc we know where the documents are. In some cases, we even have them already. We just they’re redacted. So we get to look under the redactions now. Why did they start the original investigation? What was the what was the impetus for the July thirty first opening, in in two thousand sixteen of Crossfire Hurricane? You know, there’s some conflicting stories in the past. Did it really come from Britain?

Did John Brennan really advise the CIA to look into it, or was it something else? Why did the FBI open an investigation into Trump specifically after he had taken office in May of two thousand seventeen? It’s just an extraordinary thing. Thinking, you know, back to that time, we don’t remember it. But the FBI opened a probe into the sitting president of the United States, to ask the question of whether he was working for a foreign power at that time. And what evidence could they have possibly had for that, apart from the fact that he fired Jim Comey? If there’s getting I mean, they don’t have enough. If there’s nothing under those redactions more than that, then that itself is an it’s an extraordinary scandal just by itself. Right? So the predicate for all of this…

The Origins of Russiagate

TUCKER CARLSON: And maybe even earlier, but to my knowledge, late in the summer of sixteen with the hacking of the DNC and the e the emails from the DNC. And the FBI never investigated it never investigated the actual you know, the physical removal of this data from their servers. Instead, a company called CrowdStrike, which worked for the Democratic party, did. And then exactly at that moment, or right around that moment, a DNC staffer was killed in Washington DC in an apparent robbery in which nothing was taken from him that I happen to know for a fact the MPD, the Metropolitan Police Department thought was, like, bizarre, and did they kind of didn’t believe it. A Fox News host went on air and asked questions about this killing. Why wouldn’t you? And the parents of the man who was killed either sued or I think they sued. They certainly threatened to sue and basically scared the crap out of everyone, so no one’s ever asked a question about it since.

MATT TAIBBI: They hired a private investigator, who looked around, in that case, I remember. And there were there were some odd details there. The FBI ended up in possession of, of his laptop and ended

TUCKER CARLSON: up the FBI wind up in I mean, this is a local crime. Right?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. The the the the this is one of the first reasons I started to look at that case because I got a call from somebody about that. And, you know, I don’t know why that was the case, but it is the case. But And there were people

TUCKER CARLSON: at the DNC, one of whom I know, who thought that he was murdered for political reasons at the DNC. A very high ranking person at the DNC told me that. And I probably should just say, but I everyone can guess who it is who’s informed on this, but I don’t want to betray confidence. But I’m I’m not making this up.

MATT TAIBBI: Mhmm. And I don’t know what happened.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, like, as far as I know, not one person has looked into that in the media.

The DNC Hack and Russiagate Investigation

MATT TAIBBI: No. And, you know, even if it is just an unsolved murder of a type that they normally solve, The whole situation that that whole timeline was very strange. It doesn’t really make sense. The, you know, the hacking of, of the DNC, the bringing in of CrowdStrike, the when the information was released, online. They never really proved that case, but they immediately made inferences about it. And there was a incredibly sophisticated kind of public campaign to create this narrative that, you know, upon closer examination, turns out not to be true. So we got to go back and find out what did exactly happen there. Why did they why did they order this crossfire hurricane probe? Why were they sending informants in after Trump, or people in his orbit? And we know they did. Like, who

TUCKER CARLSON: were all those informants? It’d be interesting. I have some suspicions.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Well, we know we know who some of them were. Right? But we don’t know who all of them all of them were. I mean, I I did a story to the effect that the the people in the house intelligence committee who were looking at this, you know, Kash Patel’s initial, probe that that they came up with a number that it was twenty six different, people who were, being investigated in in Trump’s orbit. No matter what happened, it’s a it’s a huge story because it’s a it’s a political espionage story. It’s not unlike Watergate, really. And they and we’ve we’ve laughed it off, or the, you know, the mainstream press has has shrugged and snorted that the idea that this is a scandal that needs to be, taken seriously, but it does. It absolutely does.

Just because it’s Donald Trump doesn’t mean you can ignore the FBI conducting political investigations, willy nilly and inventing predicates to to look into people’s campaigns and using FISA and all all kinds of other crazy stuff? I mean, that stuff was all nuts. And we we need to find out exactly what happened with that. And that is one of the reasons I think that people are nervous about this weaponization of government probe because it’s absolutely going to look in that direction. Yes. And, you know, that’s one of the first things they’re they’re going to to look at is who was behind that, you know, who cooked up the Steele dossier, how was that released, you know and and then there’s the whole question of, you know, leading up to impeachment and the, ill the leaks that were done. A lot of them were kind of illegal on their face. Right? Like, you can’t leak signals intelligence to, newspapers, and it was done repeatedly during that time. They did it to me. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Exactly. The NSA Yeah. Read my text and leaked them to the New York Times twice. Right. Right. Yeah. And they, you know, admitted it one time. But it was under FISA, so

Changes in Media Reporting

MATT TAIBBI: it was like yeah. Which which is, by the way, hilarious because the the initially, they were denying that it even happened. Right? And then, of course, later it turns out, it was more advantageous to to leak the contents. So but people had developed they developed very short memories during this time period. Yes. They were not able to retain information. Among other things, because journalists got out of the habit of repeating the story. That used that was one of the things that we were taught. You know, when I I was taught growing up, when you’re doing a story about anything, you have to recount all of the facts as if the the reader has never encountered the story before.

TUCKER CARLSON: The story should stand alone.

MATT TAIBBI: Yes. Exactly. You have to you have to tell the whole thing so that they don’t have to go looking for another story That’s exactly right. To to find out what this means. Exactly. And one of the subtle little changes that happened to the media business in the last eight years is they stopped doing that. They would tell you That’s fascinating. Right? They would tell you the thing that happened that day, and they wouldn’t tell you all this backstory that you needed to know to to really understand, what you were reading. And so, yeah, I I think we’re going to have the opportunity now to see these things laid out in full and, you know, in hindsight. And that’s hopefully going to be able to persuade people who who didn’t see it the first

TUCKER CARLSON: time. That’s such a fascinating observation which I’ve never heard before or thought.

MATT TAIBBI: But isn’t it — isn’t it true?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s so true. It’s so true. And so everything’s out of context. Right. Yeah. There’s there’s a a certain element of dot connecting required in journalism. Like, why am I telling you this? Why does it matter? How does it connect to things that happened other things that happened or may happen? Like

MATT TAIBBI: Even simple things like when, you know, the if Anthony Fauci comes out and says, well, masks are important because of x, well, you have to put in the the timeline of what he originally said about that. Yes. Or, you know, Joe Joe Biden saying, you know, we have to correct misinformation because they’re killing people. And you got to point out that they were wrong about things themselves, that the that the or that the Biden administration itself was, de amplified, by by some of these, platforms accidentally, but they were. Right? But, yeah, they they they just left out a lot of backstory, and we have to get back into the the the business of telling people the whole story from the beginning.

TUCKER CARLSON: Impressive. Yeah. Okay. So

Russiagate and Political Maneuvering

MATT TAIBBI: Russiagate. Russiagate. We I mean and that’s one of the reasons why the the pardon of Adam Schiff is kind of interesting, because he’s a central figure of, of both the J6 committee, but but also the Russiagate story. And, you know, he he was somebody who was giving interviews saying that preemptive pardons should never be given, but whatever. Yes. Russiagate, is a thing. Then there’s the whole question of, lawfare, right, and the effort to make sure that Biden faced no opposition at all, in his reelection campaign. And this is here, I’m not just talking about, you know, Donald Trump and the lawsuit to to prevent him from being on the ballot because of the fourteenth amendment and all that.

This extends to even to groups like No Labels or the Green Party or Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson or Cornel West. There was an extraordinary calculated effort to prevent competition. Now Yes. That’s not necessarily illegal. Parties can do whatever they want, internally. But it’s still fascinating that there there had to have been some kind of coordinated campaign. If if there’s any communication between the White House, say, and the groups that were suing, you know, no labels or RFK or, you know, issuing challenges, no labels went through this extraordinary incident where somebody created a dummy no labels site, and it it had a big picture of Donald Trump on it so that we try to associate no labels with Trump. And there’s a lawsuit, going on about it right now. What was the real origin in that? Like, you know, who who who financed that whole thing? I mean, I think there are a lot of stories about little tiny dirty tricks that are that are going to be coming out.

Who Runs the Country?

TUCKER CARLSON: Like the the main question was who makes these decisions? Right. If the Democratic Party is running the United States, which they have for four years, I think we can say that, what does that mean? Who’s running the Democratic Party? Right. I mean, I would imagine it’s a coalition of, you know, elected official, you know, Chuck Schumer, big fundraisers. Right? Mhmm. You know, Jeffrey Katzenberg and, I don’t know, Obama, I guess. But but who who really is running this? Who’s on the central committee?

MATT TAIBBI: Right. And and how is that done? How how how was the coordination managed with these sort of legal action committees that were mass filing suits about everything from, you know, the the ballot access issue to there there were Klan act suits that were filed against people. And, did that have any connections to people who are actually in office? If it if it did, you know, then we have another corruption situation involved. But, yeah, the the the larger question of who who was managing all this stuff, because it clearly wasn’t Joe Biden. That’s that’s Who runs

TUCKER CARLSON: the country? Who who who runs the country? That Don’t in a democracy, we have right to know. Right.

MATT TAIBBI: That is, you know, our our mutual friend, Walter Kern, talked about this saying that this is the first time that we had a president where that had a sign on his desk basically that said the buck does not stop here. Yeah. Right? We we don’t know where the buck stops during this period. And so that that’s a fascinating question. But the whole, you know, war gaming of of the last election season there are a lot of stories. People don’t even remember this. Like, New Hampshire held a primary. Right? People went and they voted in the New Hampshire primary. And then the results were canceled, and they held a second nominating event on a Saturday night months later where a bunch of officials got together, and they just decided to allocate the the the delegates, themselves. Like, I’d never heard of that before, just canceling an election and sort of redoing it in a in a closed meeting. Like, how does

TUCKER CARLSON: that happen? And just turning the spoils over to somebody else?

MATT TAIBBI: Mhmm. Well, I I mean, I think it ended up mostly having the same result. But for some reason, they they they they held the second contest. It’s just very strange, you know, why that happened. So that we got to get into. You know, then there’s the whole question of the investigation of the Trump assassination incidents. We heard nothing about that. It was the most extraordinary news story that I’ve ever, I mean, apart from the disappearing president and the mysterious nomination and COVID. You know, presidential candidate and ex president gets shot, and the story’s dead within, like, forty eight hours. And all you read in the news from the FBI, there are these comments saying that they don’t have any motive evidence. We’ve done a hundred interviews, but we don’t know anything about why this happened or, you know, what was going on there. Do you believe that? I I I have a very hard time believing that there’s nothing interesting in the It’s kind…

Suspicious Circumstances Around Assassination Attempts

TUCKER CARLSON: of your classic twenty year old American kid with no social media presence whatsoever ever. You know? Right. It is a very typical American story where one day you just wake up and decide to die assassinating a presidential candidate for no reason.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. It’s like Who is, like, your first joint? Yeah. Your first joint. Yeah. And and then the the the second one? I mean, you know, the the Ryan Ralphs thing, that that’s not weird at all. Like, I just flew into Florida last night. I don’t think I could’ve gotten gotten my hands on, you know, a Chinese made SKS semiautomatic rifle without help. I mean, I I don’t know. That’s being a little conspiratorial, but, look, they’re alive.

TUCKER CARLSON: Met with the members of congress. He was lived in Ukraine. What? And we know that our intelligence is working through the Ukrainian intelligence. He’s have murdered all these people and tried to murder all these people, including some I know personally. And so that’s it. Like, that’s the fact, and he he was there with them. But this had nothing to do. And by the way, are those the only two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, do you think, during this campaign season? I don’t think so. So I don’t know why we don’t

MATT TAIBBI: know more about that. I don’t know why we don’t know more about that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So and I I mean, I’ve, you know, talked to the Trump people and Trump himself, and I I’m I’m being sincere. I really don’t have a sense of what they think of all of that. I know that in public, they haven’t been anxious to talk about it at all.

MATT TAIBBI: So I’ve talked to some of them, and, you know, I’ve heard, a lot of anger about this that, you know and I think this is this is the impetus for these investigations. I think the probably the second attempt, was the last draw for some of the people on his staff. And, and, you know, it’s part of the reason why I think they’re going to be very public about this.

TUCKER CARLSON: It can’t come it can’t come too soon. I I really think and and I will say, you know, whatever people watching think of Trump, I know for a dead certain fact that a lot of people who work for him really like him personally. So I think they are mad about it.

Investigations into Censorship and Government Involvement

MATT TAIBBI: They’re they’re very mad about it. And and and then sorry. Just to finish off the the the censorship thing, that is going to be a major investigation. There’s there’s at least two that I know of, that are already underway. You know, the government affair the, you know, Rand Paul’s committee, government oversight committee in, in the senate. They were they really want to do a big thing, like a government files type of thing, where it would be like the Twitter files, but for the whole federal government, basically. And I I think there are so many different wings of the government that were involved, in what we got to see in the Twitter files, which, you know, to follow the, the example of what I just said, I have to repeat what this is. You know, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he opened up Twitter, Twitter’s internal correspondence, and we got to see that there was this big, bureaucracy with government pressuring platforms like Twitter and Facebook to censor content. But we only got to see a little bit of it. And I think what’s going to come out is, you know, how extensive it really was, what agencies were really involved in it, you know, how many people, were were committed to that effort. What also were we negotiating with, the European Union to be part of the Digital Services Act? Was the state department doing that? You know, I think so there’s going to be a

TUCKER CARLSON: followed it. Can you just describe the Digital Services Act?

The Digital Services Act and Its Implications

MATT TAIBBI: The Digital Services Act is like the it’s like the wet dream of every censor in in the world. Right? Basically, it mandates that every, Internet platform abide by the recommendations of these people called trusted flaggers, who are basically licensed content reviewers who look on things on social media. And if they see a narrative that they don’t like, they will elevate it to the platform. And if the platform does not abide by the recommendations, they get crippling enormous fines. And this is one of the reasons why there was a dispute between, Elon Musk and Europe, about whether or not he was following these rules closely closely enough.

This just came into effect last year, but it’s it’s an extremely effective way to to, regulate speech because it doesn’t require the government to actually do it. It’s the private platform that actually commits, of course, the censorship. And this third party methodology, which is specifically, by the way, what, what Donald Trump referenced in his free speech executive order, we we don’t want that to happen. We’re going to not allow that. They already have the full blown Death Star version in Europe of that. Right? And so Mhmm. The investigation here in the United States is going to basically uncover how far along were we into developing the same kind of thing. The Twitter file suggested that we’re we’re already doing it informally, and illegally, probably, but we want to find out exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: With with Snopes and all the other fact checkers?

MATT TAIBBI: Yes. All the fact checking organizations. Right? You know, sometimes that was done informally, by inference, or is done through NGOs that made recommendations. But I think the really dangerous stuff is when you had state department agencies like, you know, Global Engagement Center or the FBI’s foreign influence task force making direct recommendations to these platforms or the White House in your case. You know, we’re going to find out all of these communications, not just little pieces of them.

Government Control of Information Sources

TUCKER CARLSON: What about, the US government, the intel agencies control of Wikipedia, which basically is our collective memory at this point. It’s elevated by Google, top of every search. It is the only history most people will ever read, and it’s controlled by the US government to disappear inconvenient facts.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, Wikipedia has a very, advanced system for regulating what gets into Wikipedia pages. If you if it’s not a certain kind of source, it doesn’t get on there. There was a bizarre incident last year where the RealClearPolitics, you know, polling average, which is a tool that reporters have been using for almost two decades. They kind of left it off their their page, of polling average sites, because they didn’t like the the page, I guess. I don’t know. But, yeah, I I think we have to get some clarity about what happened there. Obviously, the former head of Wikipedia, is now in a or a senior position in NPR. The deputy or the COO

TUCKER CARLSON: One government media job to another.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Exactly. And the the COO of NPR is the former head of this thing called the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder, which is one of the groups that we investigated in the Twitter files. It was heavily into this whole content moderation question. So the the merging of state media with platforms and regulation of sourcing and all that stuff, that’s probably going to come out too. Kind of weird that

TUCKER CARLSON: the head of the Aspens too wrote the biography of Elon Musk, isn’t it?

MATT TAIBBI: Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The wall Walter Pincus. Right? Isaacson. Isaacson. Sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: Walter Pincus was the CIA reporter at the Washington Post.

MATT TAIBBI: Can you cut that? I’m sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. No. No. It’s just funny. Do you remember Walter Pincus? Yeah. Walter Addison. Yeah.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Yeah. No. The the it is weird. The Aspen Institute, I mean, they played a very strange role in the whole censorship story. But, but yeah. So what happens to

The Future of Traditional Media

TUCKER CARLSON: the you you said the media as constituted is dead, but, I mean, like the Episcopal church, like, they have enormous, like, shells left. You know what I mean? Like, the church has died, but the they’ve got great churches, great buildings. What do you what happens to, like, the Washington Post and NBC News? It’s all bureaus and CNN and, like, what what happens to these things?

MATT TAIBBI: They’re going to struggle, I think, to get audience back. You already see that the strategy of some of them is to try to pander to the audiences that they betrayed previously. Yeah. There there was a funny episode over last weekend where NBC and Saturday Night Live, you know, they finally did a a a joke picking on Rachel Maddow. It wasn’t particularly funny, but it was a signal that, okay. We’re we’re going to suck up to this group now, right, as opposed to the other one, which is so loathsome. Right?

TUCKER CARLSON: And that but Rachel Maddow was not the core whatever you think of Rachel Maddow, she just, like, advertises herself as Rachel Maddow. You know, one person’s opinions.

MATT TAIBBI: It’s funny. You sounded like her for a second. Yeah. Well, I I know her, and I I’ve never been mad at her.

TUCKER CARLSON: I couldn’t disagree more. I know I’m sure she’s attacking me a lot. I wouldn’t know, but I’m not mad at Rachel Maddow. I’m I’m mad at Ken Delaney and then, like No. Of course. You know what I mean? People who pose as reporters who are actually just mouthpieces for the intel world.

MATT TAIBBI: Of course. And and I’m my only point is that just by, you know, changing their the direction of their BS Right. They’re not going to win back audience. Right? People you know, and this is something that I that I’ve noticed since I’ve been in the business. People in media continually underestimate audiences. They they think that they’re much stupider than they really are. I remember when I covered, Wall Street, I was constantly told that you you can’t do these big stories on credit default swaps and all these other things because audiences don’t want to hear about it. They’ll they’ll turn the page. But it’s not true. People have a great hunger to find out things, and they have a much stronger ability to understand things than most media people imagine. And so when they do these sort of transparent, exercises in lying and PR and political propaganda, and they think that people won’t notice, it makes it worse. The the the numbers are going to go down rather than up when

TUCKER CARLSON: they start. Totally true. Think? I

MATT TAIBBI: mean Well,

TUCKER CARLSON: it’s just interesting. I actually think it’s more sinister even than you described. So the two topics after, you know, thirty years in the television, the two topics that they, like, never wanted to do, they always want to do stuff about trannies or race or, you know, whatever, all that stuff. But they never want to do economics or foreign policy ever. Right. And their view was, or their their stated view was the audience doesn’t care. And then I get fired and start doing foreign policy stuff, and it gets crazy numbers. And I only do it purely because I’m interested. That’s it. I was always interested, and I’m also interested in economics. Not an expert, but I think it matters. That’s that’s why I’m interested. Right? You do a story like that, you you blow out of the water all the path that they do. So it turns out there is a deep reservoir of interest among viewers and readers for these stories. And I’m starting to think that maybe the people who run the networks where I worked, they just didn’t want to address that stuff because there was a consensus on it that they agreed with and that they didn’t want to challenge. Absolutely.

Media Coverage and Public Interest

MATT TAIBBI: You think so? Oh, I a hundred percent, I think that. I think that the, especially when you’re talking about, you know, interventionist military policies Yeah. Whether or not they’ve been effective. Yeah. Try try pitching stories to, you you know, one of the big newspapers about, you know, maybe some kind of downside to, an invasion or an occupation or the expansion of, you know, with a thousand military bases in the Middle East or whatever it is, drone warfare. Like, you know, you’re going to have a hard time selling that one. Right? But

TUCKER CARLSON: they did it in the slightest way. I mean, it went right over my head for decades. They did it not by saying, you know, we just don’t agree. You know, we we have one perspective on that, and we’re going to stick with it. That’s a straightforward way to to explain it, which I can digest. They instead said, no. The audience just doesn’t care, and you’re basically putting the business at risk by covering things that people don’t understand, so get back to Natalie Holloway or whatever the

MATT TAIBBI: Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Drama of the moment was. Yep. And I believed that. I believed it. I mean, I just assumed people just aren’t interested. I guess I internalized the our audience’s dumb position, which they had for the whole time I worked there.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. And it’s it’s worse in TV than it is in print, but, but but it shouldn’t be. Right? And, but I and I got the same thing. I mean, not not so much at Rolling Stone, but I remember we did one story where our plan was to do one story on what caused the financial crisis. And we got such an overwhelming response because it wasn’t anywhere. People could not read anywhere, what happened to the economy in two thousand and eight. There there was not a rational explanation that people could read. And so

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you did big, I guess, numbers is not applicable to a magazine, but that got I mean, your stories on that were widely read because you were one of the only people doing it.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. But it wasn’t so much what what I was doing. It was just it was just the fact of, you know, how does this work? Who was really profiting by it? What happened to the people who bought these homes, etcetera, etcetera. Just basic questions, and people wanted to know. And and and as you discover, they want to know other things. Where are they spending the money that that I send every year that goes to the Pentagon? That’s right. Right? How is how is it disappear into a black hole and it’s not auditable and that’s okay? And

Media Focus and Missed Stories

TUCKER CARLSON: I, you know, it’s funny. I remember getting back in the summer late August of two thousand one from Maine. I’ve been in Maine and, you know, on just on vacation going back to work. And our I was at CNN then, and we were wall to wall literally wall to wall on a story about a congressman from Bakersfield, California, Kern County called Oh, yeah. Gary Condit. Mhmm. And the question was, did he murder his intern, Chandra Levy? And then later, whatever, in case anyone cares, turns out she was killed by an illegal alien from El Salvador called Ingemar Guindeke. He killed a couple other people, I think. Anyway, whatever. That was the story. But at the time, we were fully immersed in this question of, is this moderate Democrat from Bakersfield a murderer?

And I mean, we did specials on it. It’s all we did. And then that September, that was interrupted by nine eleven. Mhmm. And I remember thinking at the time, like, nine eleven came out of nowhere. There was no kind of backstory. It just happened. It was, like, truly, like, the least expected thing that ever happened. Right. Right. In retrospect, I think, were there things going on in the world? Long bigger trends that maybe we should, you know, as a news company, we should have been paying attention to? Sure. Prepare people for the at least the idea that, like, wow, something bad could happen because there’s a lot going on abroad.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, I think if you had visited parts of the Middle East back then, you would

TUCKER CARLSON: have had the Cole bombing and then, like, the Saudis where we had bases in places that were clearly very provocative for no real reason.

MATT TAIBBI: The the Kenyan bombing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. Right? Yeah. Exactly. There was a lot going on, and we just kind of ignored all of it. But we didn’t just ignore it. We ignored it like this manic way, like must cover Gary Condit. And I’m not a conspiracy nut, Matt, but you do sort of wonder, like, what was that?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Those were the good old days when when the the manias were things like the summer of the shark. Right? Remember that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Do I remember? I think I I

MATT TAIBBI: think I participated in it. Should you swim?

TUCKER CARLSON: But but then you get nine eleven, like, this one, you know, sort of beautiful fall morning and everything changes. And it’s like I I do think it’s fair to ask even if there’s no intent involved. Like, how did we like, what should we have done differently to at least give people the sense that there were highly organized, well funded elements abroad that hated us. Like, I just did not know that, and most people didn’t.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. And it and it

TUCKER CARLSON: came Why didn’t we do that? Honestly.

MATT TAIBBI: And it came it was a shock to a lot

TUCKER CARLSON: of people. Like, a complete shock. Yeah. Were you in the country when that happened? No.

MATT TAIBBI: I was I was in Russia, and

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, so at least you have that excuse. You know, you’re not living in another country. I lived in Washington DC covering the news for c I mean, I hosted the show on CNN, and I had no idea that, like, that’s

MATT TAIBBI: a terrifying feeling, right, to to be you got to cover something that you have no back background in.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there was no covering it. There was just watching it

MATT TAIBBI: kind of.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right? And there’s never actually been any covering of it. No one ever really covered nine eleven. Like, what was that? Yeah. Exactly.

MATT TAIBBI: And and what followed it? Yeah. Exactly.

Unanswered Questions about 9/11

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Well, I mean, we did cover that. But, like, the nine eleven, like, how do how exactly did that happen? We have all these law enforcement and intelligence agencies protecting us, and they had no idea that there, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of, you know, the nineteen hijackers, but then all the support people living in our country, cleaning, getting money from so we we never really like, what? Anyway, I don’t know why I’m going off on that, but it’s like, no one ever asked the basic questions.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. Right. And, you know, there there are a lot of people who didn’t ask basic questions in the last eight years. Yeah. But I You know?

TUCKER CARLSON: Including me, I guess, because a lot of the things you just said were like, yeah. Whatever happened to that?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, there’s it it becomes overwhelming after a while. That’s right. I mean, you know, the fiftieth time they tell you that democracy’s going to end in ten minutes or, you know, you’re going to die if you don’t, you know, take this medicine or what or whatever it is or, you know, your kids are going to die. It, emotionally, it wears on people, and it becomes very difficult. I mean, I I think this was a factor in it it it was a factor in a lot of the corruption stories because the audiences were not were they were not going to be receptive to alternative versions of what they had just heard because it was such an emotionally wrenching experience for them. So, it it’s going to take a while for people to digest a lot of these things. You know, I think it’s happening slowly, but, but what’s going to be interesting about this period is if there’s going to be this avalanche of primary material that’s that’s going to that’s going to come out. And I’m fast I I can’t wait for that.

TUCKER CARLSON: To hire more staff to keep up with it all?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. Probably probably that’s the case, and it’s going to be a fun time for for journalists like me. But just just as a citizen, I can’t wait to read it. You know? So can I

Obsession with Details

TUCKER CARLSON: ask one last question of your your reporting is marked by its command of detail, I would say? I mean, it is. I read it. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. No. But I’m like Mhmm. A lot of detail. Like, a lot of detail. And so you look at things. I I kind of, like you know, I’m not a detail guy. You are. What name one, like, tiny detail that you are personally obsessed with and maybe mildly embarrassing embarrassed to admit you’re obsessed with. But, like, what’s the one thing that you just you want to know, like, you’ve that you’ve been wondering about?

MATT TAIBBI: I I mean, I I I think the thing that happened last year with that frenzied week in July Yeah. With with Biden and, you know, and the and the the lying about the poll numbers and the the phony the clearly planted stories about Nancy Pelosi.

TUCKER CARLSON: Remind about the poll numbers? What part Oh,

MATT TAIBBI: there were look. There were stories that Biden was ahead in the polls that that came out as they were telling us that he had to drop out because the poll numbers were so dire. NPR did a story, like, virtually, I believe it was this, a couple of days after, the debate. I have to go back and look at this. But there but, yeah, there were stories that that that he was doing fine in the polls. And and, of course, we later found out from Biden staffers that they said they never had, I’m sorry. That that was about Kamala. They never had internal polling showing Kamala ahead

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MATT TAIBBI: Even though there were scads of stories telling us the opposite, which is but for me, the the the the story that I I just can’t get past is what happened in that one week. Yes. And and how did they how did they manufacture that whole thing without anybody showing any kind of curiosity about it? You know, had the media been so completely paper trained by that moment that they I I I guess so. Right? But,

Party Loyalty and Media Behavior

TUCKER CARLSON: well, it’s the same but it’s the same impulse that maintains discipline in Washington and in the media, which is commitment to party first. And what is so that is the one thing like, all the things I disagree with the Democratic Party and some of the Republican Party on policy, like, I have all kinds of disagreements. Like, I think that. They think this, like, got it. But the one thing I really can’t relate to is the loyalty to party.

MATT TAIBBI: What is that? I I never understood that. You know, like, what? You’re going to agree with a a bunch of people on everything that they do, and you’re going to support that? It’s one thing for politicians to act that way, but I I cannot understand it in immediate person. Do you

TUCKER CARLSON: think that’s a defining fact of, like, our life is this commitment to to party?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, right now, we have the situation where the only versions of things that you get are essentially party explanations. And that’s why, it’s so inter it’s so interesting that there’s this sort of intermediate podcast space where people are exploring things from all different directions, and that’s where all the people are going. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can that last?

MATT TAIBBI: I think it can. I think what what’s going to happen is you’re go you’re going to have new institutions that are built up around that that are that are just going to find

TUCKER CARLSON: new ways to Then you can’t have as long as that lasts, you can’t have authoritarian rule.

MATT TAIBBI: Right. Oh, yeah. And, and that was proven. I mean, look, the handful of podcasts that a lot of people chuckled about had a huge impact in the la in the last election. And you know what? Shame on those media people who laugh at those podcasts because among other things, they had lower numbers than a lot of those podcasts. Like, significantly lower. Yeah. Right? And, you know, they’re snobs about it. They say, oh, well, that’s, you know, we have we have a better quality of audience. No. You you you just are not convincing. That’s They

TUCKER CARLSON: have a actually, they have a much lower quality of audience. You know, your average Rogan listener is way smarter than your average cable news viewer. Like, sorry. Right.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. And and they’re more willing and partly because they watch shows like Joe Rogan, which which ask them to entertain multiple points of view on things. Right? That’s kind of the whole idea. You you you, like, you’ll see somebody there are lots of people who go on the Rogan show that I disagree with.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too.

MATT TAIBBI: But I hear it, you know? And that’s the whole point, right, is you get to hear different points of view. And that’s been excluded from this other form of media, this kind of bifurcated red blue landscape, which doesn’t work anymore and is in collapse. But, I I just think that this this period now, it’s going to be great for launching the this new media that’s necessary because they’re going to have all this material to work with. And because it’s going to be all documents, people are going to trust it. Right? In in the same way that they trusted the Twitter files, I didn’t have anything to say about it. I just sort of put it out there. But, all these new these independent organs are going to look at this these reams of material, and they’re going to discuss it and pass it around. And that’s going to be how the public is educated, which is great. I love it. The

TUCKER CARLSON: best. Right? Man, you put me in such a better mood. May I tell you, thank you. No. Thank you. Seriously. I mean, I I I think you would do this for free. I get that feeling. Absolutely would. I love it.

MATT TAIBBI: Thanks, Tucker. Thank you. Appreciate it.

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