Joe Rogan Experience #1114 - Matt Taibbi

Joe Rogan 0:02 Five, four, three, two... That countdown gives me anxiety. I gotta stop doing the countdown. See, look, I spilled my fucking Alpha Brain.

Matt Taibbi 0:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:11 God damn it.

Matt Taibbi 0:12 What is Alpha Brain?

Joe Rogan 0:13 It's, uh, brain juice. It's like a cognitive enhancing supplement.

Matt Taibbi 0:18 Really?

Joe Rogan 0:19 Yeah, you ever fuck with nootropics? You know what nootropics are?

Matt Taibbi 0:21 No. Do you have an extra one? Can I try?

Joe Rogan 0:22 Yeah, sure. For sure. The... Nootropics are essentially the, uh, building blocks for human neurotransmitters. They improve your memory. Not too radically. Not like, uh... Have you ever fucked with modafinil or any of that stuff?

Matt Taibbi 0:35 No.

Joe Rogan 0:37 No?

Matt Taibbi 0:37 No.

Joe Rogan 0:38 Modafinil's like, uh, Provigil. It's, um... They give it to fighter pilots.

Matt Taibbi 0:42 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yep.

Joe Rogan 0:43 You know what I'm talking about? It helps keep them awake. I was just-

Matt Taibbi 0:45 Well, I have a doctor, so yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:46 You have a doctor?

Matt Taibbi 0:47 Yeah, my wi- my wife is a doctor.

Joe Rogan 0:48 Oh, your wife's a doctor.

Matt Taibbi 0:49 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:50 Oh, that's perfect. So she knows about all that jazz.

Matt Taibbi 0:52 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:52 Um, but there was just an article recently about it improving cognitive performance. You're gonna probably have to bite into that. You got it?

Matt Taibbi 1:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01 Um, it's good to meet you, man. I'm- I've enjoyed your work.

Matt Taibbi 1:04 Nice to meet you too. I mean, I've been a fan forever, so-

Joe Rogan 1:05 Thank you. Me too.

Matt Taibbi 1:06 ... I'm looking forward.

Joe Rogan 1:07 Uh, I've enjoyed your writing for sure.

Matt Taibbi 1:10 Oh, thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:10 And, uh... Did you get that? You got it there?

Matt Taibbi 1:13 I don't know. Do I have to bite this?

Joe Rogan 1:14 Might be a mess.

Matt Taibbi 1:14 Yeah, there we go.

Joe Rogan 1:16 Oh, we got scissors.

Matt Taibbi 1:17 Got it.

Joe Rogan 1:18 Jamie's got scissors for you if you don't wanna fuck with that.

Matt Taibbi 1:20 I got it. I got it. There we go.

Joe Rogan 1:22 Um, so let's talk about what we were just talking about.

Matt Taibbi 1:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:26 You were... You wrote a book with a guy about drug dealing, and he was gonna come on wearing a mask.

Matt Taibbi 1:31 Yeah, he wanted to come on wearing a- a Barack O- Obama mask, actually.

Joe Rogan 1:35 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:36 Uh, it's, it's actually really funny. The whole story is really funny. I'm writing this book, um... Oh, I spilled it too. Um, it's called The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing. Uh, you can find it at businesssecretsofdrugdealing.com. Um, and I'm serializing it. Uh, but basically, uh, somebody I knew for ages, um, in a completely different capacity, uh, sort of came out to me last year and said, um, you know, "I've been a high level drug dealer for, for a long time, basically my whole life." And wanted to tell his story about, uh, you know, sort of the, the whole progression of his life.

Joe Rogan 2:18 What kind of drugs?

Matt Taibbi 2:20 Uh, only things that grow out of the ground.

Joe Rogan 2:22 Okay.

Matt Taibbi 2:22 So, uh, he started off, um... This is a, this is an African American guy. Uh, he started off, believe it or not, selling mushrooms. Uh, he, he sort of grew up half in the projects and half in, in an upscale suburb. Uh, and he... In the upscale suburb, he sold mushrooms, which he, um, uh, basically got through mail order at a time early in the sort of history of the internet when there were some loopholes about things.

Joe Rogan 2:53 You could get spores, right?

Matt Taibbi 2:54 Yeah. Well, actually you could get the actual...

Joe Rogan 2:57 Really?

Matt Taibbi 2:57 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:58 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 2:59 Um, so he ends up having this whole career. Uh, and he wanted to sort of explain to me what the rules of the game were, uh, and do sort of a book version of the 10 Crack Commandments.

Joe Rogan 3:16 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 3:17 Uh, and so we sat down and, um, we couldn't quite figure out how to do it at first, but we ended up essentially doing a sort of fictionalized version of, uh, of his life. Um, and the progression is amazing because he, he goes from being a, a dealer in all these different parts of the country and different social spheres. He's, uh, in college. He deals to rich white kids. He deals on the street in, in to- in, you know, tough urban neighborhoods. And then ends up sort of in the legal business, uh, in, in this state. Uh, and-

Joe Rogan 3:59 As a lawyer?

Matt Taibbi 4:00 No, no, no. No, no, no. He... Legal marijuana.

Joe Rogan 4:03 Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Matt Taibbi 4:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and so he's describing that world, which is not, um, there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Uh, there, there are some things about it that are, um, not known terribly well. Like, you know, what do you do when you work, uh, you know, at a, at a farm and, uh, your crop tests dirty, you know, with a, with a contaminant? Um, well, you know, not everybody just throws it away. You know, a lot of that stuff ends up shipped across country, goes to other markets. Uh, and he sort of describes a lot o- of this.

Joe Rogan 4:40 Like what kind of contaminants would that be? Like fungal or pesticides?

Matt Taibbi 4:43 Yeah, like a, like a, like a fungus.

Joe Rogan 4:45 Mm.

Matt Taibbi 4:45 Uh, something like that. Uh, you know, there are labs that basically have to clear, uh... You know, from what I understand, um, that have to clear each of the crops. And, uh, and there are situations where, you know, there's a whole bunch of crop and you got workers that have to be paid, and what do you do with it? And, uh, the legal market isn't big enough, um, to accommodate all the stuff that's grown. And so there's sort of still, you know, kind of a black market that goes on. And he, he, he describes this and, uh... But, uh, even before that, it's just a fascinating book about, you know, all the different things that he learned, uh, in the course of his career about how to get a, you know, um, do the job and not get caught, how to, how to rig a load, uh, to drive cross country, how do you do a dummy car. Um, you know, he, he tells a story about how basically you want four cars, you want the guy in the front seat to be, to be... to look like a drug dealer and have a terrible record, drive badly, uh, basically to attract the police.

Joe Rogan 5:51 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 5:51 Uh, and the, you know, the third car is the load car, the second car is sort of watching to see if there's, there's cops in either direction. And then the fourth car is basically driving up, uh, behind the load car to sort of prevent anybody from seeing the license plate and that sort of thing. And so-

Joe Rogan 6:10 Whoa.

Matt Taibbi 6:10 ... he just talks about all this stuff and it's, it's, it's fascinating and, um-It was a new kind of writing for me because I'd never really done anything except straight journalism and we sort of had to do it in narrative form. And so we're, we're putting it out serially online right now, which is really cool.

Joe Rogan 6:25 So you did one of those ch- change the names to protect the innocent sort of a deal?

Matt Taibbi 6:28 Exactly, yeah, yeah. But-

Joe Rogan 6:29 Or, or the guilty, yeah.

Matt Taibbi 6:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:31 Yeah. But m- for the most part, based on facts?

Matt Taibbi 6:35 Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, the situations were, let's just say, realistic, you know.

Joe Rogan 6:40 Right.

Matt Taibbi 6:41 Uh, yeah, yeah. And, and his ... You know, the observations were that, uh, that he describes are all, you know, things that he actually learned. The situations were, you know, relatively close to things that actually happened, so yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:55 That's interesting. So that's available now?

Matt Taibbi 6:57 Mm-hmm, yep, yep. Again, it's, uh, uh, businesssecretsordrugdealing.com. It's, it's kind of a new thing. I, I, I, I grew up, um, a huge fan of, uh, serialized, uh, detective stories. I was a big fan of like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and I loved, uh, Black Mask Magazine, which was the big pulp noir magazine in the '20s and '30s. And, um, you know, I grew up reading all those stories and I always ... Uh, it was in the back of my mind always that I wanted to try this, uh, and write a book, uh, on a deadline. So I'm doing this now, and it's a, it's basically co-written with this, uh, anonymous character who can't appear with me on shows like this, uh, a- anywhere because he has ... He's, he's still not captured and, um-

Joe Rogan 7:50 So is there... Are there warrants out for this guy?

Matt Taibbi 7:52 No, he's never been picked up. Uh-

Joe Rogan 7:54 Never been arrested?

Matt Taibbi 7:55 Never been arrested, no.

Joe Rogan 7:56 Whoa.

Matt Taibbi 7:57 Yeah. Uh-

Joe Rogan 7:58 Sounds like a smart dude.

Matt Taibbi 7:59 He is a smart dude. He is a smart dude, and some of his employers would be very surprised to know that he's got, uh, a hobby like this. Um ...

Joe Rogan 8:09 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 8:09 Uh, it's funny 'cause I, you know, I knew him ... Again, I knew him for years and didn't have the faintest clue, uh, that, that this was, this was going on, so-

Joe Rogan 8:17 Did he keep a job in order to avoid suspicion?

Matt Taibbi 8:20 So, uh, the, h- The book is actually structured with all these rules. Each chapter has, has rules in it. One of his, his most important rules is always have a job. Uh, and he ... It's for a number of reasons. Number one, um, he w- He talks about how when he was young, he worked at, at places like, you know, a Marriott or Applebee's, and he's like, "You know, if you can serve, um ... Have the patience to serve people at an Applebee's and not blow up and scream at people, then you won't screw up a package." Like ... (laughs) In a- in other words, if, if you can have the self-discipline to actually get through one of these jobs and not blow up and be crazy, then you're gonna handle ... You're gonna handle yourself well at a car stop.

Joe Rogan 9:08 That's fascinating. So he used it almost like as a discipline exercise?

Matt Taibbi 9:12 He used it as a discipline exercise. He learned an- among other things, like, uh, another one of his rules is dress like an off-duty Applebee's waiter, right?

Joe Rogan 9:21 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 9:22 Like, do not dress ... Uh, and he, and he talks about this, about how most dealers, um, they learn their, their, uh, profession, uh, by watching movies, you know. There's no, there's no book out there. I mean, there ... It's not like this generation is growing up reading, like, you know, the old Iceberg Slim or Donald Goines novels or whatever it is. They're watching, you know, The Wire or Blow or, uh, or Ozark now, or whatever it is.

Joe Rogan 9:51 Right.

Matt Taibbi 9:51 Um, but dealers very often dress like dealers. You can, you can kinda spot them, you know? And he says that's exactly the opposite of what you have to do. Um, you know, wear Sperry shoes, wear boring clothes, look like, you know, you've ... You're on your way to, to, you know, your freshman English class or whatever it is. Um, and, you know, sa- sound like a nerdy college kid when, when, uh, the cops pull you over and ... All this stuff is, uh, is sort of central to his, his whole, uh, world view about how to avoid getting caught.

Joe Rogan 10:29 Wow, that would be a great book.

Matt Taibbi 10:31 It, it ... I mean, it is. It's, it's, it's really fun and, you know, the, the fact that, um, that the, you know, the co-author is actually a person who's pulling this off makes it, makes it really interesting. And it makes it, uh, a, a real challenge to write it too, because, um, you know, I had to kinda, uh, simulate his voice, uh, and kinda communicate to people what, what those situations were like and what things look like from his point of view. And obviously I'm white and he's African American and that's, that's tough, and, uh ... But, you know, it ... I think it works. It- it's kind of a cool story.

Joe Rogan 11:09 But it must've been a juicy ... Like when you found the subject, you must have been like, "Oh, boy, we got something here."

Matt Taibbi 11:13 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:14 That seems like super juicy.

Matt Taibbi 11:15 Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's so much fun. I haven't had this much fun, like fun-fun writing anything for-

Joe Rogan 11:21 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 11:21 ... for a long time because, um, you know, most, most criminal memoirs ... And again, I grew up a junkie in terms of reading this stuff. I love, I love books, uh, that are written after the fact by people who were in crime, you know. Like, Papillon was one of my favorite books growing up. I mean, it's a, it's an amazing story about not, not just crime, but about prison and what's that like. But they're always written by people after they got caught, right? And so there's never that book by the person who's still out there, uh, and, and talking about what outlaw life is like, um, uh, successfully, uh, still on the other side of the law, and that, that part of it is fascinating. It's just, uh, it's a completely new thing and, and he has all these insights that I, that I would never have thought about. Like he, he talks about how, um, uh, there's a thing he calls the hood price. Like if you ... when you're dealing, uh, uh, selling to, um, uh, in, in black neighborhoods, even he charges a higher price, uh, because there's more ... There are more problems that you inevitably v- run into when you're dealing in those neighborhoods because there's more cops, which means more lawyers, which means more security, which means more attention to detail. When you deal to rich white kids, uh-... 'cause nobody's paying attention, so you-

Joe Rogan 12:45 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 12:45 ... just, there's less overhead, you know, in the business, uh-

Joe Rogan 12:49 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 12:49 ... which is, which is fascinating. It's, it's, uh ... And, you know, he talks all about this. And, and he, uh, he has ... He spent a lifetime kind of just keeping all this stuff in his head, always wanting to, to put it down, and he just ... It got to be too much. And he just sort of tapped me on the shoulder one day and said, "Can we have lunch? I just want to talk to you about something."

Joe Rogan 13:10 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 13:10 (laughs) But just-

Joe Rogan 13:11 How long had you known him before this?

Matt Taibbi 13:12 I would say three years.

Joe Rogan 13:14 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 13:15 Three years, four years. Yeah, yeah. Something like that.

Joe Rogan 13:17 That's crazy.

Matt Taibbi 13:18 Yeah, it was very cool.

Joe Rogan 13:18 Wow. Well, he had to trust you. Well, I'm glad we decided to not have him on because he would get busted.

Matt Taibbi 13:24 (laughs) Yeah, exactly. I, I, I, I talked to him about that.

Joe Rogan 13:27 That would be how he would get busted.

Matt Taibbi 13:27 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:27 Wow. Like, you can't ... Like, if you were on something and you had a mask on, people would go, "That's Matt Taibbi's voice."

Matt Taibbi 13:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:34 You know what I mean?

Matt Taibbi 13:34 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 13:34 There would be somebody listening to him. He d- ... Maybe he doesn't understand that there's millions of people listening.

Matt Taibbi 13:41 I totally agree with you.

Joe Rogan 13:41 And hundreds of those people would go, "That's whatever."

Matt Taibbi 13:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:45 "That's Mike, that's John," whatever his name is. They would get it.

Matt Taibbi 13:48 Even the, even the Unabomber got caught and he only talked to like two people, and, uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:52 Mm-hmm. Especially today with this Jeff Sessions motherfucker in place.

Matt Taibbi 13:55 Oh my God, yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:56 He's scary.

Matt Taibbi 13:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:58 Did you see the sh- the shit that he was saying now, that they're going to actively separate parents from their children if they catch illegals coming over with their families?

Matt Taibbi 14:06 I mean, that's just vindictive and-

Joe Rogan 14:08 It's fucking evil.

Matt Taibbi 14:09 Yeah. No, and it's funny, I, I cover Trump obviously when, um, you know, on, on the campaign trail. And I watched, uh, sort of the progression of his thought, uh, uh, or non-thought as it, as, as it is, uh, on, on things like immigration. And it seemed to me that he, he clued in very quickly that people just want to be mean to imor- immigrants.

Joe Rogan 14:35 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 14:36 He just ... It's not so much about the policy.

Joe Rogan 14:38 Right.

Matt Taibbi 14:39 Uh, he, he was very non-specific about that whenever he could be. He just wanted to say things that, that, that, um, feel vindictive and cruel and nasty. And so, you know, doing something to children is just, it's just monstrous, you know? But, uh-

Joe Rogan 14:53 Sess- Sessions is a real creep.

Matt Taibbi 14:55 Oh, horrible.

Joe Rogan 14:56 He's just-

Matt Taibbi 14:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:56 He's a scary guy.

Matt Taibbi 14:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:57 Like, uh, one of the things that he said is, "Good people don't smoke marijuana." Like, just saying that alone, y- do you know how many grandmas out there with cancer are smoking marijuana?

Matt Taibbi 15:07 (laughs) Of course.

Joe Rogan 15:08 You know, fuck you.

Matt Taibbi 15:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:09 Crazy asshole.

Matt Taibbi 15:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:10 Just the fact that someone could be in such a position of influence and say something like that.

Matt Taibbi 15:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:15 Like, this isn't just your dad saying that, "Good people don't smoke marijuana," he goes out in the yard and fucking smokes a cigarette. This is, this is Jeff Sessions.

Matt Taibbi 15:21 This is the Attorney General.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 15:23 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 15:23 It's terrifying.

Matt Taibbi 15:24 Yeah, and, and, you know, when you take ignorance and then the full weight of the executive branch, um, eh, you know, especially the d- the anti-drug apparatus, uh-

Joe Rogan 15:36 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 15:36 ... you know, that's, that's a terrible, terrible combination. When ... And it's too bad because I think, I think even the law enforcement community was kind of coming around on this.

Joe Rogan 15:45 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 15:45 Um, you know, they, uh, they don't want to be picking up people for dealing weed. I mean-

Joe Rogan 15:50 No.

Matt Taibbi 15:51 ... uh, I, I, I talked to ... For my last book, talking ... About the Eric Garner case, I talked to lots of cops, and they, they just hate having to do that, you know? Those-

Joe Rogan 15:58 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 15:58 ... those busts are not fun for them.

Joe Rogan 15:59 Well, the Eric Garner case is the guy who got choked in New York, right?

Matt Taibbi 16:02 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:03 With loose cigarettes, which is even the m- even more fucking crazy.

Matt Taibbi 16:05 Even dumber, yeah, yeah. And that's ... And, you know, cops having to do that, that's not even a misdemeanor in New York.

Joe Rogan 16:12 Right.

Matt Taibbi 16:12 And, you know, if you gotta, if you gotta drag somebody in for selling a 50 cent cigarette, like, you know, that's not exactly Serpico, you know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 16:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Taibbi 16:19 Like, again, uh, cops don't ... You don't join the force dreaming of doing that, so. But, uh, yeah, I mean, uh, the Sessions thing is terrible.

Joe Rogan 16:26 Yeah, having that guy in, in that kind of a position and saying things like, "Good people don't smoke marijuana," or, you know, "When families come across the border illegally, we're gonna separate the parents from the children," like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And then you throw in a good jo- dose of the Jesus.

Matt Taibbi 16:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:42 You got a lot of Jesus behind him.

Matt Taibbi 16:44 Right. Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:45 Scary fucking time.

Matt Taibbi 16:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:46 At least Trump has said that he's gonna ... He's not going to support Sessions on going after marijuana in states where it's legal. He's gonna leave the states to take care of it themselves.

Matt Taibbi 16:58 That's encouraging.

Joe Rogan 17:00 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 17:00 The, the, the problem with Donald Trump, and, and this is something that I didn't clue into until I'd spent a lot of time watching the guy and following him around, is that he can sound like he believes something very deeply, and you can be absolutely convinced that he even, uh, logically thinks a, thinks a thing. But he'll have a meeting with somebody, and five minutes later he'll have a completely the opposite opinion. So I, I have no confidence that Donald Trump will, uh ... Anything that he says that he'll ... That it will stay his opinion on anything.

Joe Rogan 17:34 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 17:34 He, he can be convinced to go do a complete 180 on basically any issue, which is scary, you know?

Joe Rogan 17:39 But isn't he, in some ways, the perfect representative of America because of that?

Matt Taibbi 17:43 Absolutely. He has no attention span and, and, uh, and I, I talked about this whe- when I was covering him, because people said, "Oh, what does, what does this billionaire New Yorker have in common with, with ordinary Americans?" He has a lot in common with them. He has exactly the same media habits that they have. He reads the same dumb shit on the internet. Um, he has the same total inability to separate fact from fiction. Uh, he's completely credulous when he reads, uh, a news item about something that he personally agrees with, uh, and he'll, he'll tweet it out five seconds later before he checks it out, which is like-

Joe Rogan 18:21 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 18:21 ... what every other American does, you know? They get something on Facebook and they immediately share it with, you know, all their friends, um, and this is a, this is an American thing now, just the total inability to, to, uh, logically look at things. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 18:36 Yeah, and the short attention span too. Short attention span, drifting in and out of conversations, not being able to pay attention to memos unless h- his name is in there a hundred times-

Matt Taibbi 18:46 Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 18:46 ... like all that ... It sounds like-... people I know, it sounds like, American.

Matt Taibbi 18:49 Right, right. And, and you know, it's, it's funny because if you, if you watch Trump's speeches, or actually better, better yet, if you read Trump's speeches, it's f-... They would pass out, um, the text of what Trump was supposed to say, uh, before, uh, his events. And so I'd be sitting there, I'd be looking at the, the, the remarks, and they would be cogent from one end to the other. Uh, then he would get up there and the first line would be like, "Oh, it's so great to be back in Manchester, New Hampshire. I always loved, you know, being here," and that would be right. And then he would veer off, and he would, he would start saying one thing and then the other thing, and his thoughts would drift in all these different directions. And then when you looked at the actual transcript of what Donald Trump had said, he not only wasn't completing thoughts, he wasn't completing sentences. He talks in these sort of strange fragments, uh, and he'll, he'll drift from one idea to another and they won't have any logical connection to each other. And people still responded to it, which tells you something both about him and about his audience, right? Because they're on the same weird-

Joe Rogan 19:59 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 19:59 ... mental wavelength where, where just sort of disconnected bits of, of emotion and thought is enough now.

Joe Rogan 20:08 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 20:08 Right? Isn't that weird? I mean, I, as we-

Joe Rogan 20:10 That is weird.

Matt Taibbi 20:10 It's really strange.

Joe Rogan 20:11 Well, people don't know that someone's not smart if they're dumber than the person.

Matt Taibbi 20:16 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 20:17 Right?

Matt Taibbi 20:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:17 So I think what it's revealing is what a small amount of time most people spend actually thinking, thinking about ideas, thinking about themselves, thinking about behavior, thinking about the impact that someone who's in the position of president can have. Very few people are out there actually thinking.

Matt Taibbi 20:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:37 I mean, uh, not... I mean, relative, a pretty large number overall, but very few in, in terms of percentages, in terms of the people that you can reach and the people that'll show up at his press rallies. That's a big thing too, right?

Matt Taibbi 20:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:47 Who the fuck is gonna go to a campaign speech for anybody, unless you're a journalist?

Matt Taibbi 20:51 Well, th- it's... That's, that's interesting because I've, I've been to a million campaign rallies, right?

Joe Rogan 20:57 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 20:57 And, and my opinion on them is, uh, you know, I, I would rather basically stick a railroad spike in my ear than, than-

Joe Rogan 21:06 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 21:06 ... voluntarily go to one of these things-

Joe Rogan 21:08 Right.

Matt Taibbi 21:09 ... um, and not, you know, not be paid to do it, because normally a campaign speech is like this supernaturally boring experience where a guy, uh, or, you know, a, a woman stands up there and reads out a pre-selected, a market-tested list of political cliches that, um, have no meaning whatsoever and that, you know, don't represent what they're actually gonna do in, in, when they're in office anyway. Um, so, and if you have to listen to that 40 or 50 times in a row, which is what ha- happens when you're covering campaigns, like, you wanna kill yourself. So, uh, why anyone would go voluntarily to s- to, to see that as entertainment is, is sort of beyond me, but that happened in, in 2015 and 2016. Trump's events were a little different. They were, um, they were a little bit... And I think he got a little bit of this from his WWE experience, like, he turned them into these kind of menacing, weird, uh, audience participation-

Joe Rogan 22:12 Right.

Matt Taibbi 22:13 ... uh, things where he would have the audience turn on the press and shout at us and throw things. And, you know, we, we... because we're always standing up on those risers, uh, and we have ropes around us, we look like, you know, zoo animals or something.

Joe Rogan 22:29 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 22:29 And, uh, and we were the representatives of the hated elite, you know, and, and he turned-

Joe Rogan 22:35 Right. Hilarious.

Matt Taibbi 22:36 And he turned it into this sort of like physical, menacing, intimate thing. And, you know, people would come from all over. They'd come from down in the hills, you know, and drive 50 miles to, to, to see this spectacle. It was k-... It was fascinating to watch, but kinda terrifying too.

Joe Rogan 22:51 Well, the peop- yeah, the people that are going to those things, like, boy, that is an odd group of humans that have decided this is how you're gonna spend your day. You're gonna go and watch this guy rabble about fake news.

Matt Taibbi 23:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:03 He's gonna ramble about this, "You're fake news," and point at the CNN guy. "You're fake news."

Matt Taibbi 23:08 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:09 "The fake news." CNN's terrible, terrible ratings. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 23:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:13 And like, and people like, "Yes, yes." They wave the flag. "Keep going. Say things that make me feel good. Say things that excite me."

Matt Taibbi 23:21 Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and-

Joe Rogan 23:23 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 23:23 ... yeah. You know, "Look, look at these bloodsuckers." That was a line that he, that he used to pull out a lot.

Joe Rogan 23:27 "Look at these bloodsuckers, these people reporting information, these people."

Matt Taibbi 23:31 Yeah, and we... Again, we'd be sitting there and a whole bunch of reporters, and we're, we're a bunch of geeks in Arrow shirts, you know.

Joe Rogan 23:38 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 23:38 And, and we got, we got pads, and we're kinda looking... We're surrounded by, you know, in some cases, 15,000 people who, you know, are kinda turning in our direction. And, um, you know, in a c- in a couple of cases, it, it, you know, there were... it was definitely up in the air whether this was gonna turn ugly or... And in a few places it did turn ugly and, and, um... But he, he, he was very clued in. The one thing I will say about Trump is that he has a, a, a keen instinct for audience.

Joe Rogan 24:07 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 24:08 He knows where they are. He knows what their mood is. He knows what he has to do to get them, um, you know, to wake them up, uh, to s- to stir them up. He can tell when he's losing them. Um, uh, I mean, that, that is, that is one talent that he does have, uh, but it's, it's a negative talent for sure.

Joe Rogan 24:27 Well, he uses it certainly in a negative way.

Matt Taibbi 24:29 Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 24:30 Yeah. Um, w- how much attention have you paid at all to his, uh, use of diet pills? Have you been following that at all?

Matt Taibbi 24:37 No, that's fascinating. What d- is he using a lot of diet pills?

Joe Rogan 24:40 I don't know. Okay. This... I'm so glad I could talk to Matt Taibbi about this.

Matt Taibbi 24:42 (laughs) This is great.

Joe Rogan 24:43 What was the reporter... Was it Washington Post that first talked about it? They found the Duane Reade Pharmacy where he was, uh, first prescribed diet pills by this doctor who described it for a non-existent condition, like a met- metabolic deficiency or some shit like that, metabolic disorder, I think, he called it. And it allowed him to prescribe... And this guy was like a known...... prescriber of these things.

Matt Taibbi 25:09 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 25:10 You know?

Matt Taibbi 25:10 Like a Dr. Feelgood type, yeah-

Joe Rogan 25:11 One of them guys.

Matt Taibbi 25:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:12 Go to him. He's got it. He's got you covered. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Metabolic disorder."

Matt Taibbi 25:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:16 "Here you go, man. You're gonna feel peppy all day."

Matt Taibbi 25:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:20 And h- he's supposed to be on these for a very short amount of time. He was on them for a long period of time. And, um, this guy, this reporter p- printed out, uh, tweeted out the actual Duane Reade pharmacy where Trump was filling this prescription. And then now they, they're saying that he's on some other diet pill, which is one of the ingredients that was in Fen-Phen. Do you remember Fen-Phen?

Matt Taibbi 25:44 Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 25:46 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 25:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:46 All right. Uh-

Matt Taibbi 25:47 Unfortunately, I know. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:48 Yeah. Fen-Phen was something, for people who don't know, the, the young folks out there, there was a pill that people were taking in the 1990s. And I knew a gal who was a very pretty girl, but she was large, and she got on the Fen-Phen, and I hadn't seen her in like, I don't know, like six months or something, and I saw her, and all of a sudden she was like 120 pounds. I was like, "What? You look amazing." Like, "What are you doing?" Like, "You exercising or something? Did you go crazy and join a gym?" And she's like, "No, I started taking this stuff called Fen-Phen." And she was like ... And acting, and she couldn't stop talking.

Matt Taibbi 26:22 Uh, uh, uh. Grinding the teeth a little bit.

Joe Rogan 26:23 And she was just fucking on speed.

Matt Taibbi 26:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:25 And then she started having weird feelings with her heart, so she stopped it-

Matt Taibbi 26:28 Wow.

Joe Rogan 26:28 ... and got off it, and it turns out people were just dropping dead left and right off of this stuff. I mean, it'd give you fucking heart attacks and all kinds of shit. I mean, this is hardcore stuff, but they recognized that the combination of these two things was the issue, but one of these things by themselves is okay. So this one thing by itself is what they think he's on now, which makes sense that a guy who's in his 70s has so much energy.

Matt Taibbi 26:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:51 I mean, they say he's up at five o'clock in the morning watching Fox News and that he starts tweeting, like at 5:30 in the morning he's tweeting.

Matt Taibbi 26:58 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:58 He, he gets very little sleep. He drinks like 12 Diet Cokes a day. I mean, the guy's just ... He's got boundless energy. Like, when he was campaigning, that was the thing that was so stunning to me. I was like, I know what it's like to go on the road and just do standup.

Matt Taibbi 27:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:12 Just do standup, where you have your act, you fuck around, it's fun, you have a good time. It just fucking wears you out after a couple of days.

Matt Taibbi 27:18 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:19 One town, then the next town. By the time that third day rolls around, you're fucking beat down. This guy was doing day after day-

Matt Taibbi 27:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:26 ... after day after day. He's like, "It's all great to see all you wonderful people. We're gonna make America great again. The wall got 10 feet higher."

Matt Taibbi 27:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:33 And everything is with energy.

Matt Taibbi 27:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:36 And, and this is the speculation. The speculation is he, like ... I mean, I'm sure you're aware, many, many journalists are on Adderall.

Matt Taibbi 27:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:44 He's on something.

Matt Taibbi 27:45 Sure. Yeah, no, of course.

Joe Rogan 27:46 And this is, this is, in my im- ... Like, the way I look at it, it's like this is indicative of where America stands today.

Matt Taibbi 27:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:53 It's not just that he's a good representative of America because he has the same media consumption habits and the same, uh, inability to read books and all these different v- variables, but also because he's pilled up.

Matt Taibbi 28:04 Right, which is everybody in America.

Joe Rogan 28:05 Everybody in America.

Matt Taibbi 28:06 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:07 A good percentage of people.

Matt Taibbi 28:08 I mean, that's ... Look, there's, there's a little bit of a precedent there because, um, uh, you know, Kennedy had so many-

Joe Rogan 28:15 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 28:15 ... physical problems that, uh, I ... Not sure if you remember, there was a book, The Dark Side of Camelot, that came, came out by Sy Hersh, uh, where, uh, it talked about how Kennedy in the morning used to have an s- uh, Secret Service agent give him a, a shot of basically amphetamines every, every morning, and he would sort of pace around the Oval Office talking about who he wanted to whack today, you know? And th- this-

Joe Rogan 28:39 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 28:39 This was like the background for Bay of Pigs and, you know, all these other things. Um ...

Joe Rogan 28:45 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 28:45 So it's very dangerous when a president is, is, you know, pharmaceutically altered.

Joe Rogan 28:50 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 28:50 Uh, when a person who, uh, is ... You know, if he's, if he's on speed and he's tweeting threats to a nuclear power, like, uh, I mean, that would be a very ironic and, uh, but terrible way for (laughs) all of, all of, all of us to end.

Joe Rogan 29:06 Did you find the tweet?

Narrator 29:08 I've been looking for it. It was hard to find the first time. I know who wrote it, but I can't find the tweet.

Joe Rogan 29:11 You know, you gotta, you gotta save that and put it in your favorites-

Matt Taibbi 29:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:13 ... 'cause we talk about it so many times. You gotta figure out a way to save that and put it in a bookmark. Because it was on, i- in, like he had the Duane Reade pharmacy, and then there's this speculation about what the most recent stuff is that he's on, which is ag- again one ingredient in Fen-Phen. But one of the things that they were saying is that when you look at the side effects of this stuff, one of the side effects is, um, delusional perception of reality, delusions of grandeur-

Matt Taibbi 29:45 Of course.

Joe Rogan 29:45 ... aggression, impulsiveness, like all these things that we associate with Donald Trump.

Matt Taibbi 29:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:50 Like, we, we don't even know who he is. Well, we know who he is pilled up, if this guy's right.

Matt Taibbi 29:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:56 Which is fucking fascinating-

Matt Taibbi 29:58 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 29:58 ... that we might be dealing with essentially a pharmaceutical intervention into not just, um, American lives in terms of individuals, but in terms of the way policy is driven-

Matt Taibbi 30:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:10 ... and the way the country moves forward. It might literally be pharmaceutically enhanced.

Matt Taibbi 30:16 (laughs) That's very Philip K. Dick, but it could easily be true, right?

Joe Rogan 30:19 It could easily be true. Lookit-

Matt Taibbi 30:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:20 It all seems true.

Matt Taibbi 30:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:22 It seem ... Like, like I'm not saying anything that's outlandish. First of all, not ... We're talking about something that's real. Pills are, these pills are real. We're talking about something that's widely consumed. Everybody knows this. And we're talking about a guy who has an extraordi- extraordinary amount of energy for someone who doesn't work.

Matt Taibbi 30:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:35 D- workout, rather, doesn't eat healthy-

Matt Taibbi 30:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:39 ... and, like, w- where's he getting all this energy?

Matt Taibbi 30:40 Yeah, no, I mean, I remember talking about this with some of the other reporters, because e- a- as you say, the, the campaign trail is incredibly grueling. Uh, there's a reason why some candidates can't do it, um, or, or they opt to do lots of legacy media appearances or ad buys. They, they travel less and appear more. The people who tend to succeed are the ones who can do three or four appearances a day, fly to three different cities a day, um-... and they ... M- most of those people are either health freaks, uh, people who are, you know, in good physical condition. Obama was, was definitely one of those people who, who, you know, had to have a run at some point or else he couldn't do that schedule. But Donald Trump, you know, you look at him and it's kind of a mystery because-

Joe Rogan 31:29 There it is. There it is. Fun fact, in 1982, Trump started taking amphetamine derivatives, abused them. Only supposed to take two for 25 days, stayed on for eight years. Really.

Matt Taibbi 31:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:39 And this is Kurt Eichenwald.

Matt Taibbi 31:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:42 Um, White House submit- uh, admitted it to me. Uh, said, "Only a short time for diet," in quotes, "when he was not overweight. I countered with medical records. They cut me off. People misreading. Drug was diethylprop- propion, 75 milligrams a day. Prescription filled at Duane Reade on 57th Street in Manhattan."

Matt Taibbi 32:02 Oh, I know that one.

Joe Rogan 32:03 Not that I know things.

Matt Taibbi 32:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:04 "Doctor who, uh, wrote prescription, Dr. Joseph Greenberg, diagnosed him with metabolic imbalance," which we have never heard about again. "Greenberg was later publicly slammed as someone who provided uppers to rich (laughs) people in Manhattan. A metabolic imbalance, in quotes, uh, if true, could be electrolyte insufficiencies, anaerobic imbalances, acid imbalances and an assortment of related disorders that can have serious health consequences. Yet his other doctor, Dr. Harold Bornstein, said he had been Trump's doctor since 1980 and had never mentioned the metabolic imbalance found by Greenberg." Yeah. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 32:43 Hm.

Joe Rogan 32:44 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 32:45 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 32:46 So save that.

Matt Taibbi 32:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:48 Save that and bookmark it. Now find out what the, the other stuff, 'cause he was in ... Just, just Google Trump is on one of the ingredients in Phen-Fen.

Narrator 33:00 Yeah. So I Googled that. That came up in like a Gawker article. Excuse me, Ga- Gawker article.

Joe Rogan 33:05 Gawker? Gawker?

Narrator 33:06 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 33:06 (laughs)

Narrator 33:06 Uh, from 2016 that said he was on Phentra- well, the actual name of Phen-

Joe Rogan 33:09 Yeah.

Narrator 33:10 ... Phentermine or ...

Joe Rogan 33:11 Yeah.

Narrator 33:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Um, so this is what they think he's on now.

Matt Taibbi 33:14 Phentermine?

Joe Rogan 33:15 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 33:15 Hm.

Joe Rogan 33:16 Which is also a stimulant, which this makes sense. If that guy is telling the truth, if Kurt Eichenwald is telling the truth, that means that he was on pills, amphetamines for eight years.

Matt Taibbi 33:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:25 Which means he was, is having good results. So if he was ... (laughs) Look at this.

Matt Taibbi 33:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:30 Rumor, a doctor prescribes Donald Trump cheap speed, and this is Ashley ... What is her name?

Matt Taibbi 33:36 Ashley Feinberg.

Joe Rogan 33:37 Ashley Feinberg.

Narrator 33:38 Who is a really good reporter.

Joe Rogan 33:39 Well, I'm sure she's right.

Narrator 33:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:41 It makes ... Like, it fucking makes sense.

Matt Taibbi 33:43 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 33:44 It makes sense.

Matt Taibbi 33:45 Absolutely. I mean, everybody in America-

Joe Rogan 33:46 You never heard about this, huh?

Matt Taibbi 33:47 ... is built up and, and, you know, I, I, I don't know how a person whose diet is cheeseburgers and Diet Coke, uh, could run for president without drugs.

Joe Rogan 33:57 He eats fried chicken with a fork and knife-

Matt Taibbi 33:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:59 ... like a weirdo. You see that?

Matt Taibbi 34:01 No, I have never seen that.

Joe Rogan 34:02 He's like on, on the Trump jet eating fried chicken with a fork and knife.

Matt Taibbi 34:06 Wow.

Joe Rogan 34:06 That alone should be like, who are you?

Matt Taibbi 34:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:08 You know, fucking alien in a Trump suit.

Narrator 34:11 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 34:11 So I wouldn't know that because-

Joe Rogan 34:12 Look at him.

Matt Taibbi 34:13 ... they keep the press on a separate plane. Oh, yeah, there you go. That is odd.

Joe Rogan 34:16 There he goes.

Matt Taibbi 34:16 Oh my God, look at the bucket.

Joe Rogan 34:17 Yeah. Eating fried chicken with a fork and knife.

Narrator 34:20 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 34:20 See, that's bad. I mean, I think it ... I would, I would think ordinary America would, would ding him for that because-

Joe Rogan 34:26 You're supposed to use your fingers-

Matt Taibbi 34:27 You're supposed to use your fingers.

Joe Rogan 34:28 ... you fuckin' weirdo.

Matt Taibbi 34:28 Just put your face in it if you have to.

Joe Rogan 34:30 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 34:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:30 What are you doing, man?

Matt Taibbi 34:31 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:32 Fork and knife for fried chicken-

Matt Taibbi 34:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:34 ... you goddamn elitist.

Matt Taibbi 34:36 (laughs)

Narrator 34:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:36 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 34:37 Amazing. Phen, Phen was actually the, the, um ... It was the name of the very cheap speed that used to be imported. When I lived in Russia they, there was, there was a type of speed that used to come from the Baltics, um, that allegedly, uh, you know, the, the urban legend was, was that, um, the Nazis, uh, had all their soldiers on a cheap speed for the long marches going into, into Russia and they set up these, uh, these pharmaceutical plants. Uh, and theor- and again, the street legend was that that was what this drug was, but they called it Phen, so, uh-

Joe Rogan 35:15 Wasn't that the or- origin, the origins of methamphetamines? Wasn't methamphetamines created by the Nazis? I believe it was, and I, I think this is one of the speculations as to why they could get suicide bombers, the kamikazes, to slam their jets into aircraft carriers.

Matt Taibbi 35:35 Loading them up on pills.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Was that they were meth-ed up.

Matt Taibbi 35:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Just meth-ed up.

Narrator 35:38 Right. Oh, we have those Go Pills, right?

Joe Rogan 35:40 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 35:40 That is ... No, that's, that's what they're called, isn't it?

Joe Rogan 35:42 Well, that's also ... Yeah, we, we ... There's definitely some speed that gets prescribed and steroids-

Matt Taibbi 35:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:48 ... also to soldiers. Um, I mean, if you talk to people that have been in, you know, they'll, they'll tell you about what different things that they allowed them to take and gave them to take.

Narrator 35:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:57 But, um, that modafinil stuff is, um, that's really common.

Narrator 36:02 Hm.

Joe Rogan 36:03 And then, I know, I know a lot of fighter piler- pilots will take that. Keeps you from getting sleepy.

Narrator 36:07 Hm.

Joe Rogan 36:08 Keeps you alert and awake, and that was also something Hillary Clinton was supposed to be on.

Matt Taibbi 36:11 Really?

Joe Rogan 36:12 Yeah, she was supposed to be on modafinil. That was one of the things that she admitted to, um, and it's legal. It ... It's do- it's a weir- have you ever tried that?

Matt Taibbi 36:19 No.

Joe Rogan 36:20 It's a weird one. It doesn't speed you up in terms of like heart rate. It's not like, like drinking five cups of coffee.

Matt Taibbi 36:26 Right.

Narrator 36:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:26 But it does give you this weird sense of alertness.

Matt Taibbi 36:29 Huh.

Joe Rogan 36:29 Like, "Oh, like, I'm, I'm fucking really awake."

Matt Taibbi 36:32 That sounds kinda good.

Joe Rogan 36:33 It's kinda good.

Matt Taibbi 36:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:34 Yeah. I have a buddy of mine who's a writer who, uh, he's got some health issues, and he, he's on it all the time. And he said, "If I don't take it, I'm a mess." I just-

Matt Taibbi 36:41 Really?

Joe Rogan 36:42 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 36:42 Huh. Well, I mean-

Joe Rogan 36:44 Stay fit and slim.

Matt Taibbi 36:45 It sounds, sounds perfect for writers, so, um-

Joe Rogan 36:48 Look at that fucking ad.

Matt Taibbi 36:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:50 Stay fit and slim by taking amphetamine.

Matt Taibbi 36:53 By taking amphetamine.

Joe Rogan 36:54 Look at her. She looks happy.

Matt Taibbi 36:55 She looks really happy.

Joe Rogan 36:57 Super happy.

Matt Taibbi 36:59 (laughs)

Narrator 36:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:59 (laughs)

Narrator 36:59 Now they should have the next day picture.

Joe Rogan 37:01 Oh, she's dead.

Matt Taibbi 37:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:02 She's been dead for decades. She died a day after they took that picture.

Matt Taibbi 37:06 (laughs)

Narrator 37:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:07 What is this one?

Narrator 37:08 Tons of them.

Joe Rogan 37:09 Mornedine. She can ... Now she can cook breakfast again-

Matt Taibbi 37:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:14 ... when you prescribe new Mornedine. Morn- Mornedine.

Matt Taibbi 37:18 Mornedine.

Joe Rogan 37:19 What is Mornedine? It's ... You take it in the morning. It wakes you up. Well, she can make breakfast again. Thanks, honey.

Matt Taibbi 37:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:26 Fucking, she's bouncing off the wall.

Matt Taibbi 37:28 Yeah, she's gonna put a line on tha- on that spatula-

Joe Rogan 37:31 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 37:31 ... after, uh, after she's done and just ... Yeah.That's great.

Joe Rogan 37:35 Yeah. There was, um... I think there was a time where people didn't understand how bad that stuff was for you, and there's probably a lot of people on it-

Matt Taibbi 37:42 Right. Well, I think we're-

Joe Rogan 37:43 ... that we don't know about.

Matt Taibbi 37:43 ... we're probably going through a similar period now-

Joe Rogan 37:46 For sure.

Matt Taibbi 37:46 ... where all kinds of stuff is being prescribed that we're gonna find out 50 years from now, like, "Oh, really?" (laughs) Like, we prescribed Adderall to 50 million children or whatever it was.

Joe Rogan 37:56 Oh, yeah. Oh, sure.

Matt Taibbi 37:56 I mean, like, it's gonna seem monstrous, I think-

Joe Rogan 37:59 Sure.

Matt Taibbi 37:59 ... you know, or some- someday.

Joe Rogan 38:00 Prozac, Adderall-

Matt Taibbi 38:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:02 ... and then the numbers of SSRIs that are prescribed needlessly.

Matt Taibbi 38:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:05 Like, who- who knows how many people actually need those things versus how many people are just having a bad day and went to the doctor, and they give you something that numbs you up?

Matt Taibbi 38:12 Right, right. And how many, how many schools are, are mandated to, you know, to put, you know, a bunch of kids on- on these drugs? I- I think probably, in hindsight, some of that is gonna look really bad when- when- when-

Joe Rogan 38:24 Oh, for sure.

Matt Taibbi 38:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:26 I mean, we're experimenting, experimenting on peoples' brains. And absolutely, these pharmaceutical companies have billions of dollars and massive influence, and they're making it so this stuff is okay.

Matt Taibbi 38:36 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:37 I mean, if you just had a look at the number of people that are dying, just dying from opiate pills.

Matt Taibbi 38:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:42 If- if those were illegal drugs, we'd be saying that there's a- there's a goddamn epidemic.

Matt Taibbi 38:46 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 38:47 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 38:47 Yeah, yeah. But they, uh... There's no question that it's a conscious strategy to get people hooked and- and get them taking those pills for... in every conceivable scenario so that they will seek them out in other areas, you know, non-legally. Um, I- I think, uh... But some- some prosecutor is gonna have to figure out some way to get, uh... to hold some of those companies accountable, because they're definitely doing that on purpose.

Joe Rogan 39:16 But even if they do, it seems like they just... It's like the tobacco thing. They get paid.

Matt Taibbi 39:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:20 You know, they pay off a few billion dollars. It barely scratches a dent in them. They write it all off, jack up the price of everything a little bit. Over the course of 10 years, it balances itself out to zero.

Matt Taibbi 39:30 Right, right, right. A couple of movies will be made, but the same thing will happen-

Joe Rogan 39:34 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 39:34 ... going forward. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 39:36 Like that Russell Crowe movie, The Insider.

Matt Taibbi 39:38 The Insider, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:39 That was great.

Matt Taibbi 39:39 Yeah, it was a good movie. It was a good movie. It was actually kind of more a movie about- about the death of the press, as it turned out, than it was a movie about the death of the tobacco industry. But, um, yeah. It was- it was really interesting. Um...

Joe Rogan 39:52 What is it like being a reporter, and being a journalist, rather, today with all this fake news talk? Like, this- this is a new thing, this whole calling something fake news.

Matt Taibbi 40:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:06 I mean, there's- there certainly is manufactured stories and things that just aren't true, websites that are just designed to get people to click on them, and they have crazy stories that didn't really happen.

Matt Taibbi 40:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:17 But they're pretty obvious, right?

Matt Taibbi 40:19 Yeah, and I think a lot of what people call fake news is just news that is very heavily slanted in one direction.

Joe Rogan 40:25 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 40:25 And, you know, people- people talk a lot about how Fox is fake- fake news. Well, most of the time when you wa- watch Fox, what they're just doing is they're selectively picking out stories that they know are gonna rile up their elderly, uh, freaked out, terrified audience.

Joe Rogan 40:41 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 40:41 You know? And so, they- they pick out the four or five things that are... that actually happened around the world. They- they can do that without lying.

Joe Rogan 40:50 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 40:50 You know? They don't- they don't have to make this stuff up. They can find the- the- the lineup of facts that they want. Um, but, you know, to... Working as a journalist now is- is, um, very, very different. The business is undergoing, uh, extremely rapid change, and it's not something that we really, um, have reckoned with. We haven't sat down and had a discussion about where this is all going and, uh, how we can fix it, because, um, the business is changing in a way that is extremely negative, and no one's talking about how to- how to reverse that. Like, long-form investigative reporting is- started to disappear, uh, in the '80s, but it's accelerated to the point where there's almost none of that now. Almost everybody who works in the business is doing quick hits, um, and there's almost no, um, time left to do, you know, kind of real- real hardcore investigative work. And we've trained our audiences also to be unable to consume that kind of stuff. Um, so, you know, we're all- we're all basically doing clickbait now, and- and I- I... Yeah, I think it's re- it's a really b- dark time in our business.

Joe Rogan 42:03 Well, it's- it's also this weird time of transitioning between paper and digital and trying to get people to pay for digital. I mean, I subscribe to a few of them online, uh, Washington Post, New York Times, where you pay, but I don't think very many people are doing that. I think-

Matt Taibbi 42:20 No.

Joe Rogan 42:20 ... it's probably a small amount of people that are paying.

Matt Taibbi 42:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:22 You know? And I think The New York Times gives you, like, 10 articles a month or something like that for free.

Matt Taibbi 42:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:27 And they're like, "Come on, man. You're here every day."

Matt Taibbi 42:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:30 "Time to pay up."

Matt Taibbi 42:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:31 You know, they give you, like, a little countdown, and you're like, "Oh, this is a good article. All right, I'm gonna pay."

Matt Taibbi 42:35 Yeah, and this is- this is a fascinating sort of subplot to what happened to the media business, because a lot of that is because of something that Google did a long time ago. They had this thing called the first-click rule, which so- sort of mandated that all- all news sites have at least some free content, or else the algorithm would- would push the- the, uh, news story far down on the search results. Right? So if you- if you didn't have free content on your site, if you didn't meet Google's first-click rule, uh, when you searched for a news story, you just wouldn't find it. So all of these, um... In the early days of sort of digital journalism, uh, all the news companies offered their content basically for free. And, uh, that trained audiences to not pay for-... journalism, basically.

Joe Rogan 43:32 Oh.

Matt Taibbi 43:32 Uh, and it's pr- it's pretty hard to put the genie back in the bottle and, and tell everybody to go back and, and pay for everything. It just doesn't work that way. Uh, so, uh, we're e- we're in this place where everybody's sort of consuming free media. And not only that, there's this additional problem of the, you know, the internet platforms like Facebook and Google, um, sh- pushing news that they already know people are gonna agree with to users. So there's-

Joe Rogan 44:03 Hmm.

Matt Taibbi 44:03 ... there's, there's sort of less news that challenges people. Uh, they're just not gonna see it, you know, because that's not the way the algorithms work.

Joe Rogan 44:10 The algorithms are really confusing. So the algorithms, like, will actively pick out things they think you'll be interested in.

Matt Taibbi 44:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:19 So if you're someone who's got a particular set of interests, it, it becomes sort of a- an echo chamber.

Matt Taibbi 44:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:24 Your Google search becomes an echo chamber. Your Goo- I have that Google News app on my phone-

Matt Taibbi 44:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:29 ... where I'll check it every morning, see what's going on, but it's all shit that I'm interested in.

Matt Taibbi 44:32 Right, right. It's, it's probably a little bit worse on Facebook than it is on Google but ... 'Cause it's Google, y- you at least have some c- some control over what you search for.

Joe Rogan 44:41 Right. Right.

Matt Taibbi 44:42 But even Google will, will prompt you, uh, with things, right? Like it did-

Joe Rogan 44:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 44:46 Uh, so... But with, um, with both of them, yeah, they- they're, they're accumulating lots and lots of information about your m- not only about what you read, but about the things that you buy, the movies that you watch, what your predilections probably are, what your opinions, your political stances. And so they pick out, uh, news stories that they think are y- you're l- you're likely to endorse or spend a lot of time reading, um, which likely means that you're never gonna see a news story that says you personally are responsible for something bad, right?

Joe Rogan 45:21 Right.

Matt Taibbi 45:21 That's like thing one. Uh, you will see a lot of news stories that say your neighbor is responsible for something bad, um, and that's one of the reasons why, like, divisiveness is a conscious commercial strategy. It's just, it's, it's a natural, uh, result of a lot of this, uh, a lot of these behaviors.

Joe Rogan 45:40 What is the mean age of people that are watching Fox News? You're talking about like old-

Matt Taibbi 45:44 Oh, it's like-

Joe Rogan 45:45 ... people freaking out.

Matt Taibbi 45:45 68. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:46 Is it really?

Matt Taibbi 45:47 Yeah. It's, it's something ridiculously old. And, and, and that's true of all the, all the cable networks. They're all pre-

Joe Rogan 45:52 Even MSNBC?

Matt Taibbi 45:53 Yeah, even MSNBC. Um, the ... You know, it's, it's worse, uh, with Fox and, and, uh, and, um, CNN, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna misquote it, but, uh, I know they're all like above 65. Um, so if TV is-

Joe Rogan 46:12 68. You're right. Look at that.

Matt Taibbi 46:14 Is that-

Joe Rogan 46:14 Median age of, uh, prime time at Fox News. Whew.

Matt Taibbi 46:18 Yeah. Do we, do we have MSNBC?

Joe Rogan 46:21 MSNBC, 65. The youngins. CNN, 60. Oh, they're little kids.

Matt Taibbi 46:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:27 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 46:28 Yeah. And so, a lot of that has to do with the fact that young people just don't watch television, right? Like-

Joe Rogan 46:34 Right.

Matt Taibbi 46:34 ... they-

Joe Rogan 46:34 They're done.

Matt Taibbi 46:35 Yeah. They're done. So, th- they're getting their news some other way, uh-

Joe Rogan 46:39 They're not getting it. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 46:40 Right. Well, yeah, they're not ... Or yet-

Joe Rogan 46:41 They're watching-

Matt Taibbi 46:41 ... or they're not getting it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:42 ... Netflix and YouTube videos-

Matt Taibbi 46:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:44 ... and they're getting almost no news.

Matt Taibbi 46:45 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 46:46 Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:47 I mean, it's a- it's opposed to like when I was a kid, I mean, one of the ... I used to deliver newspapers.

Matt Taibbi 46:52 Me too.

Joe Rogan 46:52 So I read newspapers quite a bit. Did you?

Matt Taibbi 46:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:54 You were-

Matt Taibbi 46:55 Did you do the Globe?

Joe Rogan 46:55 Yeah, I did the Globe.

Matt Taibbi 46:56 Me too. I was a Globe paperboy.

Joe Rogan 46:57 Where, where were you doing? Where was your route? (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 46:59 Uh, let's see. I had one in Hingham. I had one in Norwell, uh-

Joe Rogan 47:03 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 47:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:04 Yeah, I did, uh, mostly Newton.

Matt Taibbi 47:06 Newton. Okay.

Joe Rogan 47:07 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 47:07 Yep, yep, yep.

Joe Rogan 47:08 I did the Globe. I did the, um, the Herald, Boston Herald, and I delivered The New York Times for a while.

Matt Taibbi 47:14 Wow.

Joe Rogan 47:14 But just so I didn't ... Like the, The New York Times is interesting 'cause it wasn't, didn't pay as well, and there were larger routes. Like you had to go much further-

Matt Taibbi 47:23 Huh.

Joe Rogan 47:24 ... because there was very few houses that would get the Times.

Matt Taibbi 47:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:27 But you felt like you were doing something special-

Matt Taibbi 47:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:30 ... delivering The New York Times.

Matt Taibbi 47:31 The prestige.

Joe Rogan 47:32 Yeah, the clout to it. And they had clear blue plastic bags.

Matt Taibbi 47:35 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 47:36 It was different.

Matt Taibbi 47:37 Wow.

Joe Rogan 47:37 The Times had a blue bag.

Matt Taibbi 47:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:39 Like, The Boston Globe had clear bags.

Matt Taibbi 47:41 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:41 The Herald, we would deliver those in clear bags, but the Times had a blue bag.

Matt Taibbi 47:44 The Herald should've been in a brown paper bag-

Joe Rogan 47:46 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 47:47 (laughs) ... like a, like a porno or something like that.

Joe Rogan 47:49 Yeah, right?

Matt Taibbi 47:50 Yeah (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 47:50 Do they ... I don't ... Do they deliver like the Daily News and the Post in New York? Does that get delivered?

Matt Taibbi 47:55 Uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:55 Or is it just-

Matt Taibbi 47:56 I mean, they, they, they must. Uh, um, yeah, they have, they have subscriptions and they ... And, and the, the Times is, is, uh ... The Daily News definitely does have, uh, delivery for sure. Yeah. I would think so.

Joe Rogan 48:08 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 48:09 But, but that, uh ... And I, I just spent a lot of time writing about this, but the- that model where, uh, newspapers had this direct relationship with their readers, right? Like they not only owned, uh, the content and created the content, but they also, uh, could completely control the distribution, right? They, they had the trucks, they had the, the paper kids like us, right?

Joe Rogan 48:34 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 48:34 Um, that was all part of what gave the press its power, is that we were... We had the unique ability to reach all these people. Well, you know, once the internet came along, they cut that in half, right? So now the distribution is all Google and Facebook, uh, and the content is all being made by somebody else. So it's, um ... It, it makes it very difficult to make money, uh, A, and then B, you just don't have that, that personal relationship with the, with the, the consumer anymore, which is, which is a completely different sort of paradigm.

Joe Rogan 49:11 I ... Do you think there's a connection ... Now, I've pondered this myself. It seems like in the early days of the internet, one ... A big factor with the music industry for sure was Napster.

Matt Taibbi 49:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:21 Napster came along and then people got this initial taste of getting a bunch of stuff that you normally paid for, for free.

Matt Taibbi 49:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:28 Get- just get tons of it. And then so the internet sort of got associated with being a free thing. And then there was BitTorrent, and through BitTorrent you can get films and all kinds of different stuff. You could download movies and, and people just started filling up hard drives with this stuff that they would get off of BitTorrent. And-... in my mind at least, it became this connection with the internet, stuff's free. There's so much stuff free, like, "Why would I pay for this?"

Matt Taibbi 49:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 49:53 The internet's free. And I've, I've tried to say this to friends who get involved with podcasting w- who have come over from radio.

Matt Taibbi 50:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:02 Like, there's friends that have been fired from radio jobs, and like, "You know what? I'm just gonna start a podcast and charge people five bucks a month." But as soon as you do that, people are like, "Why the fuck would I pay?"

Matt Taibbi 50:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 50:11 "I can get Adam Carolla for free."

Matt Taibbi 50:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 50:13 "And Joey Diaz for free. Why would I pay $5 for you?"

Matt Taibbi 50:17 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:17 You know?

Matt Taibbi 50:18 Absolutely. No, the, y- y- t- the audience expectations now are that they're gonna get free content.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Everything's free.

Matt Taibbi 50:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:23 Everything's free.

Matt Taibbi 50:24 And, um, obviously that has, uh, huge consequences because th- that forces people who create the content to get the money from somewhere else. They either have to be sponsored by an advertiser who might have, you know, certain expectations, um, but it, you know, it's certainly not good for the people who, who make content that, that, that it's like that.

Joe Rogan 50:46 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 50:46 Uh, and, and it creates, I think, a lot of bad habits with, um, with, with the readers too. I mean, they, they just, you know, rather than, rather than look for the best stuff, they just look for what's available and what they can read for free.

Joe Rogan 51:00 Also, I think it opens up the door to all this wacky advertising, where pop-up ads and, and scroll down ads. Like you try to scroll down a screen and the ad follows with you, and then it-

Matt Taibbi 51:10 Oh, God, that's so annoying, right?

Joe Rogan 51:11 It's weird.

Matt Taibbi 51:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:12 It's just, it, it's, they're so invasive and they're everywhere. Even on really good websites, like, like say if you go to CNN. You get the real stories, and then below, you get this stuff that looks like stories, but there's very faint print that says, "Paid content."

Matt Taibbi 51:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:28 And then you look at it like, "You're not gonna believe what she looks like now."

Matt Taibbi 51:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:31 "What does she look like now?" (laughs) And, and then you click and you can't even-

Matt Taibbi 51:35 Oh, the Outbrain, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:36 Yeah, you can't even find out what she looks like now 'cause you gotta go through 40 other people that look like shit now too.

Matt Taibbi 51:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:42 And then finally you get... and sometimes you don't even get to the original one, so you're confused. Like, I think it's better if they don't satisfy you, 'cause then you just go back to the rest of the site. "Well, what does he look like now?"

Matt Taibbi 51:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:52 And then you, you know, you go to all these different, uh, there was like one of those pages that you go to where there's just dozens and dozens of windows and boxes that you can click on-

Matt Taibbi 52:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:04 ... of different individual, like, clicky bait stories where you go to each one of them and they'll take you to 40 pages.

Matt Taibbi 52:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:11 Of different people that have gained weight or lost weight or are poor now, or-

Matt Taibbi 52:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:16 ... whatever it is.

Matt Taibbi 52:16 But that's, I mean, (sighs) I think it's... One of the things that's really bad about that is that if you spend enough time doing that, your brain stops being able to do other things. You know, like, uh, when you're reading books, books require you to sit there and construct in your head all the visuals for everything that you're reading. You have to imagine what the people look like. You have to, you know, d- do all this mental work to construct the scene, right?

Joe Rogan 52:45 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 52:45 So your brain is actively engaged in, in this, in this really highly specific and, and creative way, right? Um, but the internet now just has it moving from place to place, clicking from place to place.

Joe Rogan 52:58 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 52:58 Go- going from sensation to sensation. Um, you don't have to ponder anything. You don't have to have an opinion about anything. You don't have to look at both sides of anything. You just have to move from one thing to another, to the next thing. Which is what you're talking about with Trump.

Joe Rogan 53:12 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 53:12 That's the way his brain works, right? Like, and i- it's, it's a, I think it's a bad thing. It, you know, it, it's not only bad in itself, but it makes it impossible for us to do the other thing, you know, which is, which is more constructive.

Joe Rogan 53:25 Yeah, no, it's almost like mental range of motion. Like if you're, somehow or another, your joints were restricted where you could only like move a certain amount. After a while, you would lose your full range of motion.

Matt Taibbi 53:36 Absolutely, it gets atrophied.

Joe Rogan 53:38 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 53:38 I mean, I have, I have a harder time reading books now than I did when I was, you know, probably 11 years old, right?

Joe Rogan 53:44 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 53:44 And, and that's just from-

Joe Rogan 53:46 And you're a writer.

Matt Taibbi 53:47 Right, I'm a writer.

Joe Rogan 53:48 So you're probably-

Matt Taibbi 53:48 I mean, I love, I love it, but-

Joe Rogan 53:50 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 53:50 ... you know, I, I-

Joe Rogan 53:50 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 53:50 ... I still, I find that I have a harder time doing the work, you know?

Joe Rogan 53:55 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 53:55 Uh, and that's difficult. Or y- like, when I was, when I was younger, I, I read more fiction, which, which is harder because it requires you to do more, y- you know, sort of mental construction work. Um, now, it's much, if I'm gonna read a book, it's typically non-fiction, which is linear, which is an argument, right? It's, it's, um, it's, it's less... It requires less work of the reader, right?

Joe Rogan 54:20 Right.

Matt Taibbi 54:20 I mean, it may be just as interesting, but it just requires less work. Uh, so like the hardest thing to read is, you know, Anna Karenina or something like that, right?

Joe Rogan 54:29 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 54:29 Because y- you, you have to not only think, but you have to construct. But with your, if you're just reading, you know, The Diary of Kim, Kim, Kim Kardashian or something like that-

Joe Rogan 54:37 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 54:37 ... you're just, you're just kind of listening to somebody, you know, going like that, so-

Joe Rogan 54:41 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 54:42 ... I, I, I think it's bad. I think all of this stuff is negative, but I don't know. You know, maybe I'm an old fogey about it.

Joe Rogan 54:47 Well, I, I definitely think it's not the most ideal in terms of constructing a, a healthy mind.

Matt Taibbi 54:53 Right. Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:54 But, but it's what we got.

Matt Taibbi 54:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:56 And it's, it's weird. It's a weird time.

Matt Taibbi 54:59 Absolutely, and it's... And you know, there's, there's lots of positive things. The positive things are like that anybody can have a voice now and anybody who has something interesting to say can be instantly elevated and have a, a audience overnight, and that's great, right? Like, you know, the, the, in the, in the old days, if you, you had to penetrate this t- ridiculous oligarchy of entertainment people who, who really own, tightly controlled who got access to what, who got to be... you know, have an audience.

Joe Rogan 55:29 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 55:30 Uh, and now you get to bypass that entirely and sort of directly appeal to, to, to people, which is great. I mean, that's an amazing thing, but-

Joe Rogan 55:37 Then you get YouTube stars.

Matt Taibbi 55:38 Right, yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 55:39 And you get Lil Tay.

Matt Taibbi 55:40 Right, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:41 (laughs) I went down a Lil Tay rabbit hole the other day, you fucking asshole.

Matt Taibbi 55:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:45 Jamie told me about Lil Tay. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 55:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:48 He was telling me about Lil Tay, so I went down this crazy rabbit hole, and then I read this Jezebel article about another, uh, writer who went down a Lil Tay rabbit hole, and so I went down that rabbit hole. Oh my God.

Matt Taibbi 56:00 Wait, who is Lil Tay? Wait, no.

Joe Rogan 56:01 Lil Tay is a nine-year-old girl-

Matt Taibbi 56:04 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 56:04 ... who is famous now-... now on the internet for talking shit and showing all the money she has-

Matt Taibbi 56:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:09 ... and all the things she buys. Have you ... You don't know about Lil Tay?

Matt Taibbi 56:12 No, no.

Joe Rogan 56:13 I'm gonna t- ... This is the death of society.

Matt Taibbi 56:15 Okay.

Joe Rogan 56:16 I'm like ... Lil Tay is the death of societ- ... Lil, Lil Tay.

Matt Taibbi 56:19 Can we, can we see, uh ...

Joe Rogan 56:19 Yes, for sure.

Matt Taibbi 56:20 Oh.

Joe Rogan 56:21 Meet Lil Tay-

Matt Taibbi 56:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:22 ... the youngest flexer of the, flexer of the century who makes cash-me-outside girl look like a scholar.

Matt Taibbi 56:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:30 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 56:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:30 She's fucking nine, dude, okay? I have a nine-year-old, all right? This is crazy. Play, play this video, Jamie-

Matt Taibbi 56:36 How about it?

Joe Rogan 56:36 ... so he can understand what Lil Tay's all about. (engine revving) Look at ... That's her revving up her Lamborghini. She gets out.

Narrator 56:45 Bitch, I just bought a Lamborghini. Y'all bitches can't afford this shit, okay?

Matt Taibbi 56:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:51 (laughs)

Narrator 56:51 I am nine years old and I'm the youngest flexer of the century. Me and my boy, Jake Paul, are out here flexing on these-

Matt Taibbi 56:55 Jake Paul.

Narrator 56:56 ... broke-ass haters. Tell 'em what's up, Jake.

Joe Rogan 56:59 Tell 'em, Jake. Just throwing money around.

Matt Taibbi 57:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:03 Look at this.

Matt Taibbi 57:04 (laughs)

Narrator 57:04 Bitch, I just bought a Lambo. I'm the youngest flexer of the century, and I'm only nine years old. What are y'all doing with your lives? Y'all only hating on me 'cause y'all broke and jealous.

Matt Taibbi 57:14 (laughs) Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Look at ... And he's-

Matt Taibbi 57:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:17 ... he's bowing in the background. I mean, this is what we're doing.

Matt Taibbi 57:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:21 This is what we're doing. This is what society's doing today.

Matt Taibbi 57:24 This makes Honey Boo Boo look like-

Joe Rogan 57:25 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 57:25 ... Marie Curie, you know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 57:28 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 57:29 That's great.

Joe Rogan 57:29 God damn, it's got 337,000 likes.

Matt Taibbi 57:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:32 God damn it, Jamie. What have you done?

Matt Taibbi 57:36 Uh-

Joe Rogan 57:36 "We all here stunting on all y'all broke-ass haters. 500K in cash, and this Lambo costs more than your college tuition. I'm nine, and I ain't got no license. Apparently all our shit's rented." Okay.

Matt Taibbi 57:52 You know, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I would watch this over reading my own articles.

Joe Rogan 57:58 (laughs)

Narrator 57:58 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 57:58 So, what the fuck?

Joe Rogan 58:01 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 58:01 I might as well just give up now.

Joe Rogan 58:03 What to do, what to do? What do we do?

Matt Taibbi 58:05 Yeah. Shit.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Where's little, where's, where's Lil Tay in 40 years? That's what I wanna know. Where's Lil Tay?

Matt Taibbi 58:10 The White House. Definitely the White House.

Joe Rogan 58:12 (laughs) Uh...

Narrator 58:12 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 58:12 Where, where else?

Joe Rogan 58:13 After Kanye's children-

Matt Taibbi 58:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:16 ... win. Yeah, she's gonna, she's gonna be next.

Matt Taibbi 58:19 I mean, that's an interesting thought exercise, though. Like, where do you go down from Donald Trump? I mean, 'cause the progression has to go down, right? We, we all thought that-

Joe Rogan 58:27 Does it?

Matt Taibbi 58:27 'Cause I remember when Bush was president, uh, uh, like our ... Uh, talking to reporters, Bush used to do this thing where he would carry around a biography of Dean Acheson, um, for weeks and weeks and weeks, just to prove to reporters that he could read. Uh-

Joe Rogan 58:43 Ah.

Matt Taibbi 58:43 And we all used to joke with each other like, "Nobody, nobody stupider than this is ever gonna be president," right?

Joe Rogan 58:49 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 58:50 And now, you know, you look back and, and Bush is, you know, he's, he's like Einstein compared to, to, to, to Trump.

Joe Rogan 58:56 I had a joke that I did back in my Netflix special from 2005 when, when Bush was in office, where it was a bunch of people were trying to figure out how dumb people are, and they're like, "The only way ..." They were like, they were speculation, like, "Let's get a smart guy to act dumb." Like, no, no, no. You gotta get a real dumb guy. Otherwise, we'll never know.

Matt Taibbi 59:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:18 You gotta have a real dumb guy. And then, so, they get the real dumb guy, and they put a, do a bunch of things. You know, they, they vote him in a second time, and then someone in the back of the room goes, "I think we can go dumber."

Matt Taibbi 59:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:30 (laughs) And this is, and this is where we are.

Matt Taibbi 59:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 59:34 This is a bit from 2005, but, you know-

Matt Taibbi 59:37 It's true.

Joe Rogan 59:37 ... here we're 13 years later.

Matt Taibbi 59:38 Life imitates art.

Joe Rogan 59:39 We went way dumber.

Matt Taibbi 59:41 That's right. Right, went through 11.

Joe Rogan 59:42 Well, Bush seems super reasonable in comparison to some of the shit that Trump says in terms of like Supreme Court rulings and like, um, there was a Supreme Court ruling that went against Bush's way while he was in office, and he had a really reasonable response. He was like, "Of course we're disappointed, but we have to abide by the court and, and their ruling." And you know, it was like something you would never hear Trump say.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:03 You'd never hear him say something like that.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:05 No, absolutely. I mean, uh, I, I, I look back and Bush seems to me almost like a Scandinavian statesman compared to-

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:00:14 ... compared to Donald Trump. (laughs) I mean ...

Joe Rogan 1:00:16 Lil Tay.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 Tell 'em, Lil Tay. Lil Tay, she would go to the White House, too. You know a lot of people didn't wanna go to the White House for the inauguration.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:22 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 Lil Tay will go. She'll go.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:25 I mean, the White House is gonna, it's gonna look like the White House in Idiocracy when she's, when she's in there, right? I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's gonna be terrible, but, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 Well, that was a weird time, too, right? Like during the inauguration when no celebrities wanted to go-

Matt Taibbi 1:00:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 ... and they had to dig out like really weird, like s- s- real fucking on the outskirts celebrities.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:45 Oh, it was ... Yeah. And it was the same thing with the RNC. I cov- ... I remember I covered the RNC and, and, uh, and they had to have Scott Baio, uh, do one of the first day's speeches, um, and he-

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Yeah, Scott Baio's a huge supporter.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:59 Right, but I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:01:00 I know Scott.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:01 Do you?

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 I know him personally.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:02 Yeah?

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 He's a very nice guy.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:03 I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is.

Joe Rogan 1:01:04 Super nice guy.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:05 Yeah, yeah, but that was their-

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:01:07 ... that was their A-list for the Republican National Convention.

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:01:11 And, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Whoo.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:12 Um, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:13 Outside of, you know, like, the Hannitys and-

Matt Taibbi 1:01:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 ... those type fellas.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:17 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:17 Exactly, yeah, yeah. It's fascinating.

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 Yeah, it is ... It's just, it's just weird. It's, it just seems like everything's off, like we, we, we skipped dimensions. We like jolted over to like-

Matt Taibbi 1:01:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:33 ... this parallel world where things just don't seem ... Like at least things used to make sense. Like you'd be disappointed that this guy won or you'd be disappointed that the country was doing this or that we were invading Iraq or whatever it was, but it would kind of seem like the world.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:50 Right. Well, this is, it's, it's kinda like what we're talking about, we were talking about before. I mean, previously, like the entertainment industry, politics was tightly controlled by a small group of cigar-chumping people who sat in the back room and in both parties, they, they-... had a ... They carefully outlined a sort of narrow, uh, range of acceptable political opinions. And, and in one party you could be all the way up to, you know, somebody like Ron Paul, uh, but they tended to put somebody like George Bush as the, as the candidate. Um, but, you know, there was no directly appealing to the electorate and asking them who they wanted to be the candidate. I mean, Donald Trump is really the first internet president. He completely bypassed that entire oligarchy. He didn't have to go through, um, you know, the priesthood to, to get to be president. Which on the one hand, is evidence of a good thing, because it's actually more democratic than the, the, the system was before, where it was pretty much closed to everybody except for a few people who paid their dues through the system. Uh, but Trump directly ... You know, just by being famous and just by attracting media attention, uh, he was able to bypass all the usual tests and bypass the party's, you know, decision-making process, and he got to be president. But he's like Little Tay, right?

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:03:20 I mean, he's, he, he, he just represents the dumber side of us-

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 (coughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:03:23 ... as opposed to the more enlightened side of us. So, uh, it's, it's hard to know what to think about it. I mean, I, I, when I was covering it, I thought, on the one hand, this is evidence that, you know, the electorate is breaking away from being told who to vote for. Uh, on the other hand, the first time they take that freedom out for a test drive, this is what they pick? I mean, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 Well, at least it throws a giant monkey wrench into the gears.

Matt Taibbi 1:03:47 Right. Yeah. Absolutely. It's certainly done that.

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 At least.

Matt Taibbi 1:03:49 Yeah. But, you know, what, what the result of that will be is, is-

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 Yet to be determined?

Matt Taibbi 1:03:55 ... yet to be determined. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:03:56 I mean, it could be the end of civi- ... And I, I, I said this, uh, uh, before that, you know, when I was covering the, the Trump run, part of me wanted to write it as a comedy. Like all the early stories were, were like highly comic. I was trying to write about the funny aspect of it. And then, after he became president, it's like, well, this is either the funniest thing that's ever happened in America or it's the end of civilization, right? Does that make it funnier that it's the end of civilization? I don't know. I mean, you're, you're a comic, so you, I should, I should ask you about this.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 I don't know either. It's, well, it's, uh, all depending upon how it plays out, right?

Matt Taibbi 1:04:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:33 I mean, civilizations have absolutely fallen in the past.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 We ... This idea that civilization won't fall, in my opinion, is akin to the people that live on the Big Island thinking that the volcano won't erupt again.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:45 Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Right? It happened. It's going to happen again.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 Like, so w- ... All our ideas about maintaining civilization are an attempt to prolong this state or mitigate any possible disastrous effects of collapse.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Right? But it's going to fall apart.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:03 Of course. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 And it's an old system that was constructed on scrolls by people writing with feathers-

Matt Taibbi 1:05:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 ... that really had no idea what the future had in store.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 They, there's ... Just we, we, they didn't, they didn't know what the future had in store. They had no idea. They, they, they-

Matt Taibbi 1:05:17 They would've been terrified by a toothbrush.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:20 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 The, the ... Well, certainly by a fucking airplane.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 And, and, and cellular communication, and d- ... And, you know, this ... We live in a, a world that requires a completely new set of rules and guidelines. And, you know, this has always been the argument against the Second Amendment. Like, okay, th- they had muskets when they wrote this. They didn't have AR-15s.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:41 They, they didn't have .50 caliber guns that can kill things when they miss them.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 We were playing a video yesterday of a, a guy shooting a deer and, with a .50 caliber rifle and he misses the deer and it still kills the deer. The, the bullet going past the deer's head, just the sheer force of it, blows the deer's brains out-

Matt Taibbi 1:06:00 Jesus.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 ... and it falls down dead. Yeah. It's real.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:01 Does that actually happen?

Joe Rogan 1:06:02 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:03 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 You wanna watch it?

Matt Taibbi 1:06:04 Yeah, abso- absolutely.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Okay. We'll pull it up.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 (laughs) Keep that one on, uh, favorites too. Make a folder for shit we repetitively talk about. Um ...

Matt Taibbi 1:06:15 I, yeah, I, uh, when I was embedded in Iraq, they, the, they took me out, uh, and the guys apparently for recreation, they, they cut cars in half with .50 cal- caliber guns.

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 Jesus.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Here's the, here's the gun. Now watch this. He misses, boom, and watch, it just falls down dead from the bullet passing it. This is like-

Matt Taibbi 1:06:40 Jesus.

Joe Rogan 1:06:41 It just whizzed by it and the force of the bullet passing by-

Matt Taibbi 1:06:46 He's psyched, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wa- but watch the slo-mo. It just falls down.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 He's like, "Get ... Thank God this guy's got camo on."

Matt Taibbi 1:06:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 He's a million miles away, literally sitting on a bench. He's on a bench shooting something in the distance, but he, he picks this deer up and the deer's brains are just completely scrambled.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:10 God.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 No, no bullet wound at all. Nothing. No hole. Dead. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:15 That's a, that's a horror movie waiting to happen. That deer's gonna wake up in the middle of the night and, and reanimate and, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:07:22 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:07:22 Oh, what happened? So the brain's-

Joe Rogan 1:07:23 Nothing.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:23 ... coming out of the ears? Is that what's happening?

Joe Rogan 1:07:24 Yeah. Everything's coming out of the ears. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:27 Jesus.

Joe Rogan 1:07:27 Just from the sheer force of the bullet passing it.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:30 Jesus. That's terrifying.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 Yeah. This is not ... Uh, all I'm saying is, it would be a good time to reconsider how we run things.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:37 And I think one of the good things about having a guy like Trump in office is maybe we should sit down and say, "Hey, we probably shouldn't have a popularity contest to see who controls the nukes."

Matt Taibbi 1:07:46 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:47 Do, see who's the commander-in-chief of the greatest army the h- the planet has ever known.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:53 By far the most destructive force the planet has ever known. Shouldn't we at least find out if he's on diet pills?

Matt Taibbi 1:08:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:00 Shouldn't we at least, shouldn't we say, "Mr. President, we'd, uh, we'd like a urine sample from you?"

Matt Taibbi 1:08:05 (laughs) Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 You have to ... They test your pee if you work at UPS, right?

Matt Taibbi 1:08:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:09 You know?

Matt Taibbi 1:08:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:11 Right?

Matt Taibbi 1:08:11 Yeah, yeah. No, I think there, there, there should, uh, be more than a pee test for launching a nuclear strike, definitely.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 There should be a lot, a lot of changes.

Matt Taibbi 1:08:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:21 And one thing I'm hoping is that this-... this presidency and this, the, the whole idea of, like, having a popularity contest-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:28 ... will allow people to realize, like, first of all, we shouldn't have one alpha chimp running things.

Matt Taibbi 1:08:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:33 That's, that's an antiquated idea that was really great in a tribe of 50 nomads.

Matt Taibbi 1:08:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:38 You get them together and you have the wisest, strongest one with the most battle experience, that guy should be running things, he knows more than I do.

Matt Taibbi 1:08:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:44 I get it. Let's vote for Orc. Orc-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 Orc is, Orc's the guy with the knowledge, you know?

Matt Taibbi 1:08:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:50 It makes sense. But when there's 350 million people and you have the ability to manipulate things and you have tweets and Facebook posts and-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:59 ... you can make wacky little Tay videos, we're not designed for this.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:03 No, no. And we have some structures that rely on the popularity contest and some that have w- m- the public has no control over whatsoever, like-

Joe Rogan 1:09:13 Right.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:13 ... the Federal Reserve. Like, it doesn't, uh, a lot of it makes no sense at all. And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 Or how net neutrality got passed with-

Matt Taibbi 1:09:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:09:20 ... five different people or how it got rescinded.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:22 Right, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's, the, the system doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. The, the, the, uh, s- congress, and I'm covering congressional races now in the run-up to, to 2018, and, you know, the process is almost 100% about money. It's just like, you know, d- m- l- like I t- I talked to a guy who was, who, who jumped in the r- in the ring to run for a seat in the, in the 19th District, and he told me he calls up the national party and they re- they basically had two, two questions for him, like, "Can you raise $300,000 within the next three months?" And "Can you raise a million dollars by election day?" And, you know, that was the whole of the conversation and, and it has to be based on more than something, uh, more than how much money can you raise. Uh, w- we have to do b- that, that, there has to be another variable for picking leaders, uh, beyond, you know, how much cash can you get your hands on in the next three months.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 Did you see that Rosie O'Donnell got in trouble for, uh, raising money under various names and, and donating too much money? To, like, Roy, Roy Moore's, uh, opponents and-

Matt Taibbi 1:10:30 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Yeah. What, what exactly happened?

Narrator 1:10:32 I read that she had used a website that (clears throat) she thought should have, like, stopped her from donating the extra amount, because it was being divvied amongst many people and that it should've been returned to her.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 1:10:44 Which I s- I don't know enough about it that, uh, candidates are supposed to return extra funds once they've crossed over the amount that a individual is supposed to give.

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 Oh, but there's this-

Narrator 1:10:53 I guess that happens, but it didn't happen in th- these cases.

Joe Rogan 1:10:56 Oh.

Narrator 1:10:56 And that it should have happened and, uh, again, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:58 But shouldn't ... Doesn't she know how much you're supposed to donate? Isn't, there's f-

Narrator 1:11:02 That's what she was saying, she's-

Joe Rogan 1:11:03 $2,700, right?

Narrator 1:11:04 She used a website and she just gave them a shitload of money, I think.

Joe Rogan 1:11:07 Oh, I see. But I thought she used different names.

Narrator 1:11:10 I don't know about that part, I didn't hear about that part.

Joe Rogan 1:11:12 Hm. We should probably look that up.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:13 Yeah, there were, that was one of the, um, sort of stories that wasn't followed up after 2016, but it was, i- it was one of the things that came out in the, in those hacked DNC, um, uh, things, was that there was a, a little bit of a scam going on in terms of, um, you know, the, the, as you said, the individual do- lim- donation limit is pretty small, it's like $2,700 for an individual, so a couple, it's $5,400. So what they would do is they would host these, these dinners with celebrities, like, you know, George Clooney and a bunch of his friends, and, uh, they would raise all this money and theoretically the money was supposed to go only a, a tiny portion of it to the presidential campaign, the rest of it's supposed to go to the regional parties. But what was actually happening, according to Politico anyway, uh, was that the money was basically g- going to the parties and then going immediately back to the presidential campaign and, and, uh, they, uh, a lot of the people who gave the money didn't even know that that was happening and, and they were upset about it and, uh, and, but that was a story that wasn't followed up after, after 2016.

Joe Rogan 1:12:21 Yeah, there's just entirely too much money.

Matt Taibbi 1:12:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:23 Entirely too much money in politics, but how would you ever do it without the money? Now once the money's in, how do you pull it out? How do you say, "No, no, no. No more influence, no more special interest groups, lobbyists are illegal"?

Matt Taibbi 1:12:36 Yeah, I mean, I, uh, th- l- I think they should, they should probably have very brief publicly funded elections where there's o- you know, the, the course of time is maybe five weeks and w- oh, is this, is this the O'Donnell thing?

Joe Rogan 1:12:52 Yeah, it says, "O'Donnell don- donated $4,700 to a, a bom- uh, Alabama Senator Doug Jones in his special election against Roy Moore, $3,600 to Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb for the special general election, uh, he won in March, $2,952 to California Rep. Adam Schiff for his primary, $4,200 to Illinois congressional candidate Lauren Underwood for her primary run, and $3,400, $450 to Omar Vaid, a Congressional candidate in Staten Island and Brooklyn." Nothing nefarious, she's, Rosie O'Donnell says, "I was not choosing to over donate. The $2,700 cutoff, uh, candidate should ref- refund the money," she wrote. Uh, "I don't look to see who I can donate most to, I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit." Hmm.

Matt Taibbi 1:13:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:13:40 Uh...

Matt Taibbi 1:13:41 Yeah. I don't know how convinced I am by that explanation, but-

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:13:46 ... uh, it doesn't really matter because the reality is there are a million ways that you can legally give money to campaigns now that don't involve just the individual donation. Like you can, you know, you can give money to a foundation or-

Joe Rogan 1:14:02 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:02 ... uh, you know, a 501 (c) (3) or whatever it is, uh, that buys an ad, uh, that will help the candidate just as much as the, you know, as, as it would if you di- donated directly. So, you know, in the post-Citizens United universe, this is, this, this is a, it's a story, but, you know, the bigger story is that you can bas- that p- very rich people in companies can basically spend unlimited amounts of money on, on campaigns and-

Joe Rogan 1:14:28 Yeah, this is, this whole story is over, like, what was that, all told, $4,000 or $5,000 most?

Matt Taibbi 1:14:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:34 (clears throat) Not a lot.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:35 Yeah, I don't, uh, that, that doesn't, I mean-You know, I don't have feelings one way or another about Rosie O'Donnell, but, uh, that, don't... That doesn't make me outraged terribly.

Joe Rogan 1:14:44 Well, Trump hates her-

Matt Taibbi 1:14:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:45 ... which is what's fascinating about it all.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:47 Yeah. Well, he, you, he, he, he got a big bump from talking about her in the debate.

Joe Rogan 1:14:52 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:52 And, you know, he... But that was another thing that he did very early on, is he, he clued into the fact that people hate, people hate journalists and they hate Hollywood actors.

Joe Rogan 1:15:01 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:01 And so he made, he made sure as much as possible to talk about, uh, all the, all the groups, the major food groups of pe-

Joe Rogan 1:15:08 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:15:08 ... of hate in America, right? Like immigrants-

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 Immigrants.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:12 ... Hillary Clinton, Hollywood actors, and reporters, and th- those were the staples of his routine, and, and, uh, it worked. I mean, he wa- it, it was, it was smart on his part, uh, you know. And I think, uh, particularly the targeting of journalists was brilliant because he was able to portray us as the wealthy elite. And, you know, he's the billionaire, uh, but he's pointing the finger at us as, "Oh, look, the, you know, they're the guardians of, of rich America," which, which worked and was a brilliant thing.

Joe Rogan 1:15:43 It's just, um, it's unprecedented.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:46 When was last time any presidential... Well, maybe Nixon complained about them at the time, but I believe it was privately.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:53 Yeah. Well, he, he, he hated the press pretty openly. I mean, he had that 1962 press conference where he's like, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

Joe Rogan 1:16:02 Right, right.

Matt Taibbi 1:16:03 Uh, and, uh, he... From all accounts, he was an incredibly profane, nasty person in private, and he only talked to a few reporters. Um, I, I, I mean, I think all politicians hate reporters. If they,