EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,129 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Ooh. So Jamie pointed…
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh. So Jamie pointed out ... (laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
This, this, uh, congressman, is that who it is?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ja- Jamie pointed this out that there's a congressman and he released a series of tweets. And the first letter of all these tweets, if you put them all together, it says, "Epstein didn't kill himself," or "did not kill himself." Is that what it is?
- NANarrator
It's didn't, he did the (bleep) I'll pull it up. (laughs) Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
How do you do the apostrophe?
- NANarrator
Yeah, I can't. So like-
- JRJoe Rogan
You should've gone with "did not."
- NANarrator
... starting here with that evidence of a link. And then there's the E.
- JRJoe Rogan
Rep. Paul Gosar. What are the odds that this guy did this accidentally? R- really small, right?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. That's kinda like one of those monkey's typing Shakespeare things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, I don't think it could, uh, it could work.
- NANarrator
Accidentally.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the thing is, he did it backwards, right?
- NANarrator
I see.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you didn't see what the puzzle was until the last tweet.
- NANarrator
Who caught that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Because the last tweet is an E.
- NANarrator
I got a tweet from someone about 35 minutes ago that I don't know if there's a bunch of people online paying attention to it or what, but someone alerted me and a few other people of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, is he, does he have an image of that fucking, that crazy mask? Is that in his shit too? Okay. He's a weirdo.
- NANarrator
Yeah, that might be the H of the-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's got the ...
- NANarrator
But that's all, that was November 1st, so.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs) The V mask?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, what is that mask again? What does it represent?
- MTMatt Taibbi
V for Vendetta.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- MTMatt Taibbi
um, when I was covering the campaign. I started to hear, um, reporters talking about how they didn't wanna report poll numbers that showed the race was close. They thought that that was gonna hurt Hillary, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Like w- so in other words, we had information that the race was close and we're not telling this to audiences because they wanted to hear that it was gonna be a blowout for Hillary, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Um, and that didn't help Hillary, it didn't help the Democrats-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... to not warn people about this, right? Um, but it was just because if you turned on MSNBC or CNN and you heard that Trump was within five points or whatever it was, that was gonna be a bummer for that audience. So we stayed away from it. And, you know, s- this is the kind of thing that it's- it's not politically beneficial to anybody. It's just we're just trying to keep people glued to the set by telling them what they wanna hear, and that's not the news. That's not our- that's not our job, you know? Uh, and it- it- it drives me crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) Yeah, it should drive you crazy. That... What you said about journalism being e- used to be something that you're challenging your reader. You're- you're giving them this reality that may be uncomfortable-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but it's- it's educational and expands their view of the world. This ... Where- where do they get that now?
- MTMatt Taibbi
They don't. That's the whole problem. Like, you get- you can predict exactly what the- each news organization, what their take is gonna be on any issue by going... I'll- I'll... Just so you take an example, when, um, (smacks lips) when the business about the ISIS leader, Al-Baghdadi, being killed, um, hit the news. Instantaneously, you knew that The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, that they were gonna write a whole bunch of stories about how Trump was overplaying the significance of it, that he-
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips)
- MTMatt Taibbi
... you know, um, that he was telling lies about it. They would- they made- they m- ... You knew they were gonna make the entire thing about Trump, uh, and then meanwhile Fox had a completely different spin on it about how her- heroic it was. But- but news audiences didn't have anywhere to go to- to just simply hear who was this person, why was he important, what were the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... what do the people in the region think, you know. What kind of ... What is this gonna mean going forward? Is it actually gonna have any impact, you know? Uh, uh, uh, is... Are we gonna have to continually, um... You know, is there gonna be a new person like this every- every time, right? Are we actually accomplishing anything? Like, you don't get that anywhere. All you get is Trump is a shithead on one side and- and Trump is a hero on the other side.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That's- that's not the news, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, but the thing is this. Like, the business aspect of it is so weird. Like you sh- you have your guys like Hannity where you can absolutely predict what that guy is gonna say every single time. You know what side he's on and he's blatant about it.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And e- th- when you see someone like that, you go, "Okay. Well, this is... Okay. We're... This is- this is peak bullshit." Right? So where- where do we go where I see both sides? Where's the- where's the- where's the middle ground where someone goes, "Well, this is true, but you gotta say this is honest too, and this is- this is what's going on over on this side, and the Republicans have a point here." And you don't- you don't... There's no mainstream media place where you can go for that right now.
- MTMatt Taibbi
No, there isn't, and that's, I mean f- I mean, and one of the... This is one of the things I write about. This is one of the reasons why shows like yours are so popular. I mean, I- I- I- I think there's a complete loss of trust that they feel like people are not being honest with them, right? And they're not being straight. And, you know, they-They come to people like you and, and a lot of other peop- in- inter- uh, sort of independent folks who aren't, like, the "mainstream media", um, because they, y- it's not really thought, it's not reporting, it's not anything. If you can predict 100% what a person is gonna say-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... that's not thinking, that's not reporting, that's not ... it's just marketing, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, for someone like me, that's so disturbing. I'm a fucking comedian and a cage-fighting commentator.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
When people are coming to me, like, this is, this is the source where you go for unbiased representations of what's going on in the world? That's crazy.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Well, I mean, let's just e- I mean, I saw your interview with Bari Weiss, right? And y- you just p- you did a simple bas- you didn't go to journalism school, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Right, never. …
- MTMatt Taibbi
pull it back later, but they ne- but you never do pull it back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, never.
- MTMatt Taibbi
You know what I mean? It, it always ends up being used by somebody in the wrong way, and I think w- we're starting to see that that's gonna be a problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I'm real concerned about p- places like Google and Facebook altering the path of, of free speech and, and leaning people in certain directions and silencing people that have opposing viewpoints, and the fact that they think that they're doing this for good because this is how they see the world and they don't understand that you have to let these ideas play out-... in the marketplace of free speech and free ideas. If you don't do that, if you don't do that, if you don't let people debate the merits, the pros, the cons, what's wrong, what's right, if you don't do that, then you don't get real discourse. If you don't get real discourse, you're essentially, you've got some sort of an electoral dictatorship going on. And because it's a progressive dictatorship, you think it's okay, because it's people who want everybody to be inclusive and, you know-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I mean, this is, this is a weird time for that. It's a really weird time for that because as, as you said, people are so short-sighted. They don't understand that these, like, the First Amendment's in place for a very good reason. It's set up a long fucking time ago 'cause they did the math. They saw where it was going and they were like, "Look, we have to have the ability to express ourselves. We have to have the ability to freely express thoughts and ideas and challenge people that are in a position of power 'cause if we don't, we wind up exactly where we came from."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, and, and courts continually reaffirmed that idea that the, the, the way to deal with bad speech was with more speech.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And they did it over and over and over again. You know, we, we... The, the legal standard for speech, you know, still I think remains that y- y- u- unless it's directly inciting violence, you can, you c- like, you can have speech that incites violence generally and even, and the Supreme Court even upheld that. You can have speech that's f- that comes from, you know, material that was stolen illegally. That's okay. Um, but we had a very, very high bar for prohibiting speech always and, you know, the, the liable cases, those are the cases for defamation, um, you know, that also established a very, very high standard for punishing speech. But now all of a sudden people have a completely different idea about it. It's like w- you know, forget about the fact that this was a fundamental concept in American society for, you know, 230 years or whatever, but they just wanna change it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... uh, you know, without thinking about the consequences, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's where a guy like Trump could be almost like a... It's like a, almost like a Trojan horse in a way. Like, if you wanted to play 3D chess, what you would do, you would get a guy who's just so egregious and so outrageous and then so many people oppose him. Get that guy, let him get into a position of power, and then sit back. Watch the outrage bubble and then take advantage of that and funnel people into certain directions. I mean, I don't think that's what's happening, but if I was super fucking tinfoil Hatty, that's how I would go about it. I would say, "This is what you want. If you really want to change things for your direction, put someone that opposes it that's disgusting." And that way people just, uh, uh, a rational, intelligent person is never gonna side with him.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they're gonna side with the people that oppose him and then you could sneak a lot of shit in there maybe they wouldn't agree with in any other circumstance.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, uh, Trump's election is sort of like another 9/11, right? Like, you know, 9/11 happened. All of a sudden people who weren't in favor of the government being able to go through your library records or listen to your phone calls, and all of a sudden they were like, "Oh, Jesus, I'm so freaked out."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Like, yeah, fine. When Trump got elected, all of a sudden people suddenly had d- very different ideas about speech, right? Like, they, you know, "Hey, that guy's so bad," um, you know, "That maybe we should consider banning X, Y, and Z." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And, uh, I, yeah. I... It's... If y- ma- y- if he was conceived as, as a, as a way to discredit the, the First Amendment and w- and some other ideas, it would, that would, that would be a, a brilliant 3D chess move, for sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, super sneaky.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, like, China level.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Many steps ahead.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, yeah, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you... Uh, I mean, where do you think all this goes? It, it seems like this is... I mean, obviously you just wrote a book about it, but it seems like this is accelerating and it seem- doesn't seem like anyone's taking a step back and hitting the brakes or opting out. It seems like people are just ramping up the rhetoric.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, I mean, I, I think the, the, the divisiveness problem is, is gonna get worse before it gets better. The, the business model of the, of, of the media now is so entrenched, um, that until some of these, these companies start going out of business because they're doing... you know, they're, they're losing audience because people don't trust them anymore, um, the, you know, the news is gonna keep doing what it's doing. It's gonna con- it... The, the Hannity model is gonna become normal for, for news companies. I think. It ar- it already basically is, you know, on both the left and the right. Um, and in terms of, you know, the internet companies, they're consolidating. They're getting more and more power all the time, and there's... I, I think we've already seen that people have, I think, too much tolerance for letting m- letting them make decisions about what we can and cannot say, and I think that's gonna get worse before it gets better. I don't know, what do you think? I, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what I think. I mean, Fa- Facebook, Twitter, all these pla- I mean, Twitter has some of the most ridiculous reasons for banning people. One of them is deadnaming.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
like forever, you're just gonna make a bunch of angry people.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're just gonna m- make a bunch of people that are completely distrusting and you're gonna absolutely empower the opponents of your ideas. But, like, people that do get to ... When, when do they get a chance to have their voice? Well, when they vote.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the, the more you do this shit and the more you censor conservatives, the more they're gonna vote against liberals. This is just a fact.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's no getting around that. This is human nature.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I lived in the former Soviet Union, um, you know, for 11 years and 100%, if, if you lived in Soviet Russia and something was published by an official publisher, people thought it was basically full of shit. Right? But if it was in the Samizdat, if it was in the privately circled stuff that had been repressed and censored, people thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Like that, that was the hot ticket. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And you're automatically giving something, uh, cache and, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... and added weight by censoring it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
I mean, this is just pro- it's just the way it works. It's human nature. If, if people think that you don't want them to see something, they're gonna run through it twice as hard. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So I, I just don't understand a lot of that instinct. I think people, people have this idea that it works, um, that, you know, that deplatforming works, but you can't deplatform an idea, you know? You may be able to do it to a person or two.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
But you, eventually you have to confront the idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
You can do it to a few people and, and it has been successful, which is one of the reason why people are so emboldened. Like, they have a successfully deplatformed Milo.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, they really have.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very hard to hear him talk anymore. You don't ... He's not in the public conversation the way he used to be.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because they kicked him off of all these different platforms. And if you go into why they kicked him off these different platforms, bo- even if you don't agree with him, and I don't on a lot of things, like, boy, I don't agree with kicking him off those platforms. If you, you listen to what he got kicked off for, it's like, man, I don't know. This, this doesn't seem like this makes a lot of sense.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. No, I mean, and same thing with Alex Jones.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
I mean, Alex, Alex Jones has, has said, you know, he's, he's gone after me a couple times in ways that were pretty funny actually. Um, but when he was, you know, kicked off the- all these platforms, you know, I wrote a piece saying, uh, "I think people are kinda doing a, uh, an end zone dance a little early on, on this one." You know? Because, um, you- Jones is a classic example of how the system, uh, the way the system used to work, they would've punished him for, for being, you know, libelous about the Sandy Hook thing. Right? Because that, that was sort of fit the classic definition of what was, what prohibited speech was before. But we wouldn't in a- he would've lost probably a, a lot and, and he still might on, in those court cases. Um, but to remove him forever, I think, you know, uh, it just sets ... It, it, it creates a new way of dealing with speech that I think is very dangerous. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, because the goalposts keep getting moved.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- 1:00:00 – 1:09:46
Right. …
- JRJoe Rogan
run it were already getting away with enforcing their own personal bias, their ideological bias. And this is, this is at, when you're at this position where you go, "Well, how does that ever get resolved?" They're not gonna resolve it on their own. They're still making ass-loads of money. What do you d- Does the government resolve it? Well, if Trump steps in and resolves it, it looks like he's trying to resolve it to save his own political career or-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to, to, you know, to help his supporters. It's like...
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, no, and, and, and n- no matter what, if Trump does anything about it, automatically everyone's gonna be against it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right? You know, even, even if it's, um... Even if there's some sense in there somewhere, people won't, won't, uh, won't get behind it. But no-
- JRJoe Rogan
And if they do anything about it, there's gonna be a correction time. There's gonna be a, a gab time where it's gonna be like that, where it's just gonna f- flood with people that are just like with this newfound freedom, they're just gonna go pa-pa-pow, pa-pa-pow-
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and shoot up the town, you know?
- MTMatt Taibbi
But I mean how, but how would you, how would you fix it now?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That, that's the thing, because it's not only about rules, it's also about culture.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Like people have already... They're in this pattern of, you know, not saying the wrong thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And they don't... I, I think there's... We're in a culture that doesn't even really know how to deal with free speech if we actually had it in the same way we used to, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
No one seems to have a forecast-Like, no one's like, "Well, the storm is gonna last about four years." And then it's like, there's no, there's no forecast.
- MTMatt Taibbi
No. No.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everyone's like, "Well, uh, it's, uh, fucking the unchartered waters."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right. Right. But if you, historically, the tendency is once you have a tool that kind of can be used to, um, keep people in line and f- enforce compliance of ideas, and, uh, then it always ends up worsening and becoming more and more dictatorial and authoritarian. I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... again, you go back to the Soviet example, like, once they started, you know, really exercising a lot of control over the press and literature and things like that, uh, it didn't get better, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
It, it just continued becoming more of a, a, you know, an entrenched thing until ... So I, that's what I worry about. I think we're headed more in that direction. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think so too. And I'm not really con- I'm just really concerned with, uh, on both sides, when people dig their heels in ideologically, the other side just gets even more convinced they're correct.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And there's no cross dialogue of any kind-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... anymore. There ... And, uh, n- even now, I mean, uh, it's, it, it's interesting, if you had, you had Bernie Sanders on your show, and Sanders, uh, uh, Sanders i- is one of the few politicians left who has this idea that we should talk to everybody. Like, there's n- there are no illegitimate audiences out there. There are no, uh, and, and, like, we know, that's my job as a politician is to try to convince you of things. But that's not normal in the Democratic Party anymore. I mean, Elizabeth Warren, uh, you know, has made a big thing about not going on Fox and about having certain people taken, taken off Twitter. And, and, y-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And, and I, uh, I think that's increasingly the, the sort of line of thought in mainstream Democratic Party thought now is, is that we're just gonna rule out whatever, whatever that is, 47% of the electorate. We're just not gonna talk to them anymore.
Episode duration: 2:05:29
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