{"id":3954,"date":"2025-09-19T10:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:21:11","slug":"trumps-cult-of-power-cancels-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=3954","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Cult of Power Cancels Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>    <!-- BLOCK(acast)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22ACAST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Afalse%7D)(%7B%22id%22%3A%22trumps-cult-of-power-smells-blood-in-the-water-over-charlie%22%2C%22podcast%22%3A%22intercept-presents%22%2C%22subscribe%22%3Atrue%7D) --><\/p>\n<p>\n  <iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/intercept-presents\/trumps-cult-of-power-smells-blood-in-the-water-over-charlie?accentColor=111111&amp;bgColor=f5f6f7&amp;logo=false\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"acast-player__embed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(acast)[0] --><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"has-underline\">In the wake<\/span> of Charlie Kirk\u2019s death, conservatives have moved quickly to consolidate power and attack their political enemies, whose relative impotence and penchant for capitulation to power and decorum have been on full display this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have these right-wing forces that smell blood, they smell weakness, and they\u2019re going after everyone who doesn\u2019t comply and run through the obligatory kind of mourning,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/adam-johnson\/\">Adam H. Johnson<\/a>, a media analyst and co-host of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/citationsneeded.libsyn.com\/\">Citations Needed<\/a>\u201d podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This week on The Intercept Briefing, host<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/jessicawashington\/\"> Jessica Washington<\/a> speaks with Johnson about the White House\u2019s weaponization of Kirk\u2019s death and the broader rightward tilt of the media ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think what they\u2019re doing in part [is] to make it very, very difficult for Democrats to ever beat Republicans. If you gut their media, if you gut their nonprofits, if you snuff out any kind of dissent, if you punish people at the workplace and dox them,\u201d says Johnson. \u201cThey\u2019re basically trying to make 9\/10 the new 9\/11. Obviously the scope is different, but in terms of the sort of emotion, the shock. Obviously it was on video, which adds to this extra layer of psychology that\u2019s being exploited. They want to exploit that to jam in policies which they\u2019ve long wanted to jam in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Johnson also noted that part of what we\u2019re witnessing with the increasing alignment between corporate media and Trump is the end of the \u201cveneer\u201d of liberalism among the billionaire class.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have this increasingly postmodern lack of a need for this liberal patina, this kind of veneer of universalism, and everything is just about the exercise of raw power, the exercise of pure racist propaganda,\u201d he said. \u201cSo yeah, things are bad. But I think what we\u2019ve learned is that they can get worse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-intercept-briefing\/id1195206601\"> Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2js8lwDRiK1TB4rUgiYb24?si=e3ce772344ee4170\">Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript-nbsp\"><strong>Transcript\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Jessica Washington:<\/strong> Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I\u2019m Jessica Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The war on free speech continues in the wake of Charlie\u2019s Kirk\u2019s killing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/17\/business\/media\/abc-jimmy-kimmel.html\">ABC announced<\/a> that it was taking Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late night show off the air indefinitely because of comments he made about the MAGA movement politicizing the death. The move came after the FCC Commission Chair threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney.<\/p>\n<p>This was just the latest domino to fall as the Trump administration works to punish critics and silence the left more broadly.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the week, in a broadcast of the Charlie Kirk Show from the White House and hosted by Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, vowed vengeance for Kirk, painting anyone who dares to criticize the administration or the right as criminals and terrorists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephen Miller:<\/strong> It is a vast domestic terror movement. With God and as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie\u2019s name.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Other White House officials have made similar remarks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had denied visas to people \u201ccelebrating\u201d Kirk\u2019s death. President Donald Trump also<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TheFIREorg\/status\/1967974382980284546\"> threatened the press<\/a>, suggesting on Tuesday, that the attorney general would go after the media outlets who criticized him for \u201chate speech.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Donald Trump:<\/strong> Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they\u2019ll have to go after you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> All of this is happening against a wider backdrop of media censorship and a push to remake news in the president\u2019s image. From President Trump suing the New York Times for questioning his record, including if he was responsible for making \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d a TV hit. To journalist-<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2019\/04\/bari-weiss-the-new-york-times-provocateur\">provocateur<\/a> Bari Weiss reportedly being poised to effectively run CBS News, to the Washington Post allegedly firing its last remaining full-time Black columnist, Karen Attiah, for highlighting racist remarks from Charlie Kirk, media independence to report reality feels deeply imperiled.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Joining me now to break all of this down is Adam H. Johnson. He is a media analyst and co-host of the Citations Needed podcast.<\/p>\n<p>Adam, welcome to the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Adam Johnson:<\/strong> Thank you so much for having me on.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> And just because this is a quick-moving news story, I want to tell everyone that we\u2019re speaking on Wednesday, September 17.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So in the aftermath of the Kirk killing, there\u2019s been a real dichotomy in the administration\u2019s response. They eulogize Kirk as a defender of free speech, but want to restrict what people can say about him.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few days ago, Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and others made threats about targeting the left and the media in the wake of Charlie Kirk\u2019s shooting. How could they go about punishing people and organizations?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> What\u2019s important to understand is that there\u2019s obviously a very long history of exploiting traumatic moments to ram in preexisting agendas using the emotion of the moment to exploit people, right? You have obviously the creation of <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/02\/21\/adl-palestine-terrorism-legislation\/\">all kinds <\/a>of draconian laws post-9\/11, many of which are, by the way, still being used today to execute so-called war on terror. And in fact, Trump\u2019s blowing up of boats in Venezuela recently \u2014 in the Caribbean rather \u2014 have used the same legal authority that was established on September 14, 2001. Obviously, after Katrina, charter school forces and the super wealthy who use that to privatize and to bring under state control schools in New Orleans. <\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s all kinds of examples we could list \u2014 the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sTcELLklap4\"> shock doctrine<\/a>, right? It\u2019s 101 stuff of how moments of trauma and heightened emotion are used to push preexisting agendas. In this administration and those in its orbit, specifically anti-Palestinian groups, pro-Israel groups especially, have been wanting to go after certain segments of <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/04\/25\/trump-nonprofits-philanthropy-donors\/\">the nonprofit world<\/a>, the foundation world, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/05\/10\/terrorism-bill-nonprofit-journalists-israel-hamas\/\">take away<\/a> their <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/05\/19\/nonprofit-killer-trump-big-beautiful-bill\/\">nonprofit status<\/a>, thus kind of rendering them no longer viable, and then going after free speech more broadly in conjunction with this more avert right-wing takeover since Trump got in the office.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to Jeff Bezos explicitly moving the Washington Post to the right: They no longer have any Black columnists in a newspaper that\u2019s called the Washington Post, a city that is the largest Black city in the country in terms of percentages. You have the takeover at CBS of the Ellison family. The Ellison family will now own \u2014 very soon will own \u2014 CBS News, CNN, and<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/02\/18\/oracle-tiktok-israel-palestine-gaza\/\"> TikTok<\/a>. These forces have been brewing for a while in terms of snuffing out dissent.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You know, there\u2019s a kind of conventional wisdom in some parts of the liberal and left world that Trump does not plan on having an election in 2028, if not 2026. And I think that\u2019s partly true, but I think that kind of misreads what he\u2019s actually doing. I think what they\u2019re doing in part [is] to make it very, very difficult for Democrats to ever beat Republicans. If you gut their media, if you gut their nonprofits, if you snuff out\u00a0any kind of dissent, if you punish people at the workplace and dox them as part of these kind of brown-shirt campaigns, which we can get into, of doxing people based on their comments on social media, most of which are fairly benign.<\/p>\n<p>And so you have this gathering storm, as I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/trump-vance-charlie-kirk-assassination-maga-free-speech-left\">In These Times<\/a>, of all these anti-free speech, anti-assembly, anti-worker, anti-Palestine forces that are all coalescing, and they\u2019re basically <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/09\/11\/charlie-kirk-killing-trump-left-political-violence\/\">trying to make 9\/10<\/a> the new 9\/11. Obviously the scope is different, but in terms of the sort of emotion, the shock. Obviously it was on video, which adds to this extra layer of psychology that\u2019s being exploited. They want to exploit that to jam in policies which they\u2019ve long wanted to jam in.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And, and to be clear, they\u2019re not coy about this. They\u2019re fairly explicit about it. Stephen Miller especially is speaking in these kind of Marshall terms. These we\u2019re gonna come get them \u2014 I mean, again, very sort of generic milquetoast George Soros funded liberal groups as terrorists, which anyone on the left would obviously smirk at because these Ford Foundation and Soros Foundation, they largely exist to, for want of a better term, co-op the left to sort of bring it into the partisan chum machine. They\u2019re not there to promote extremism. Billionaires don\u2019t typically promote extremism as a rule.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all rather goofy, but really what they want to do is they want to get rid of any partisan opposition. And so that\u2019s why they\u2019ve been working to gut the administrative and liberal state since they came into office. Obviously Musk did this under the pretense of DOGE.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What this administration is doing and what they\u2019ve done from the beginning \u2014 unlike the first time, which was obviously far more restrained by other elements \u2014 they continue to test the fence, right? Like the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park. They\u2019re testing the fence to see what they can get away with repeatedly, over and over and over again. And even someone who\u2019s as jaded and as cynical as I am is surprised by how utterly weak and facile the liberal state has been in opposing Trump. The courts especially, which are supposed to be this kind of bulwark against authoritarianism, have mostly kind of rolled over with some notable exceptions and kind of let him do what he wants to do.<\/p>\n<p>The opposition from Democrats in Congress, they are sleepy. Remember when Trump called Jeb Bush, low energy Jeb? They\u2019re low energy Hakeem Jeffries and low energy Chuck Schumer. They don\u2019t really seem like they\u2019re up to the task. They have people like David Shor in their ear telling them, just focus on the economy. And it\u2019s like, yeah, that\u2019s generally true, but also like we should also focus on the authoritarian takeover that he\u2019s planting. It\u2019s kind of urgent, and by the way, it polls well too if you frame it the right way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> You know what you mentioned in terms of the lack of opposition, and you wrote about this a little bit, a lot about this, in your piece. You said \u201cThis increasingly goofy harassment campaign would be bad enough if it weren\u2019t married to tremendous state power.\u201d And I guess, do you think the kind of goofy nature of the Trump administration of Trump in general, do you think that hides what he\u2019s really doing? Or do you think that the media and the Democratic kind of larger apparatus is comfortable to hide behind the goofy nature of what he\u2019s doing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Well, I suppose what I meant by goofy in that context \u2014 although they are goofy and to some extent is, I mean, again, going after NFL teams for not doing a Charlie Kirk moment of silence \u2014 that you have these right-wing forces that smell blood, they smell weakness, and they\u2019re going after everyone who doesn\u2019t comply and run through the obligatory kind of mourning.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I mean, again, people throw the F-word I think kind of lightly, but this is a feature of fascism, which is absence of deference and absence of humiliation and obsequiousness rituals, is itself seen as suspect. So if you\u2019re not towing the line and doing the obligatory kind of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/11\/opinion\/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html\">Ezra Klein<\/a> mopey-left \u2014 left flagellation \u2014 piece, like we all need to do better, the left is partly responsible for this.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t run through these kind of motions of venerizing Kirk as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/story\/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates?srsltid=AfmBOor7fkKsUhL03117TsOtWahAP8UROMtk1Q2H6Tim2xIDCzk3lrei\">Ta-Nehisi Coates <\/a>pointed out, right? Ezra Klein wrote this 2,000 word piece on Charlie Kirk and didn\u2019t once actually quote any Charlie Kirk words. And there\u2019s a reason for that because he wasn\u2019t the person he was making him out to be. But if you don\u2019t go through this veneration process\u2014 This kind of faux morning. I mean they were baseball games. They were doing moments of silence right? In the Bronx. Like what does that have to do with anything? Again, you know, people die every day, right? School children, people in the Bronx are killed in gun violence, none of that merits this kind of response.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And this is all, again, pursuant to an effort to kind of 9\/11 this situation. There\u2019s no way that this group of people, right, there\u2019s no way that Stephen Miller and JD Vance \u2014 these demagogues, these ideologues to a great extent \u2014 are going to let an opportunity like this pass up.<\/p>\n<p>And so, I suppose what I meant by goofy harassment campaign is that it took on an element of organic vigilantism that was working with the White House, which is unprecedented. I mean, people want to talk about some of the vigilante elements of MeToo, or post-George Floyd, or people were getting fired for this or that comment. And we can talk about maybe, some of the ways in which that was not necessarily rigorous, but it was never in a million years backed by the White House. It was never backed by the Department of Justice. It was never backed by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Secretary of State.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, these are, and this all started again with the Secretary of State working with <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/11\/22\/israel-boycott-canary-mission-blacklist\/\">Canary Mission<\/a>, a shadowy Zionist group that has been trying to get people fired and doxed for several years now. Now they\u2019re embedded in the state apparatus. <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/04\/02\/penn-israel-canary-mission-peisach\/\">Canary Mission<\/a> was how they decided who to deport, who to rip away from their families, who to put in jail for months on end.<\/p>\n<p>And you see this combination of brownshirtism, which is what these vigilante doxing efforts are. Going after random nobodies. There\u2019s people with 1.2 million followers posting the names of the wife of a Texas Roadhouse manager in Boca Raton, Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW<\/strong>: Yeah, I remember you mentioning that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Right. So these are nobodies. This is not any one of relative import. And they built this list of, as of Monday, it was 63,000 names. I\u2019m sure the list is a hundred thousand. And they kept moving the goalposts. It started off with, oh, these are people that made light of, or supported the killing of Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n<p>And then it was people who were mean to him. Well, OK. And then it was people who misattributed a quote. And it\u2019s like, well, the goalpost has to keep moving because what they realized very early on is that, despite what JD Vance kept insisting and kept insinuating in his three hour demagogue fest when he hosted Charlie\u2019s Kirk show on Monday, that there\u2019s no one in the media who made light of Charlie Kirk killing. Nobody.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>No publication ran anything that did that. So what they had to do is they have to go do what\u2019s called nut picking, right? This is kind of the Bernie bro formula of find a random person who supports you and then say, look, you\u2019re responsible for this random person online. The left, the sort of George Soros Foundation, the Nation magazine, all these sort of left people are responsible for like a random Texas Roadhouse manager.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I mean, it\u2019s absurd. And then you go into this demagogue cloud of rhetoric \u2014 and then the person listening says, \u201cOh my God, the media, the quote unquote media\u201d\u2014 is making light of Charlie Kirk\u2019s death or supporting it because they don\u2019t make a distinction.<\/p>\n<p>Vice President Vance did the exact same thing the week prior when he claimed that the media said that Trump was on his deathbed. The media never said that. It was just random shit-posters on Twitter. And so here you have this idea that there\u2019s always this dark unnamed ill-defined left-wing conspiracy out to get them, and then that there justifies their state clampdowns.<\/p>\n<p>The response from a lot of leftists and liberals is to say, \u201cyou\u2019re hypocritical.\u201d Here\u2019s JD Vance saying you shouldn\u2019t fire people for their speech two years ago. Here\u2019s Elon Musk saying, you shouldn\u2019t fire people for their speech on Twitter four years ago. It\u2019s like, yeah, they know they\u2019re hypocritical. They don\u2019t care. They\u2019re complete nihilists. They just care about one thing and that\u2019s power.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And they will turn on a dime with the supposed free speech, which is why everyone knew in 2022 and 2023, all the free speech stuff from the right was bullshit. Of course it was inconsistent. Of course they didn\u2019t care. Of course it was just because they were tired of being called racist and being called sex pests. Right?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> I think what you\u2019re saying about power is really important. That what we\u2019re talking about is, you know, the Trump administration is throwing all of this language about hate speech and who they\u2019re going to go after. And in some ways it feels silly, but it\u2019s also very real and it\u2019s real to them clearly. I wrote about this in February and it still feels really applicable now, but I get this sense from the Trump administration that what they believe is that the role of government is to protect the American public in this really narrowly defined way, which to then means white Christian conservatives.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> And so also what we\u2019re seeing to me is also an effort to normalize the really extreme form of anti-Blackness that Charlie Kirk practiced and kind of punish those who call that out. What do you think both about how the Trump administration perceives their role and then also specifically with Charlie Kirk\u2019s anti-Blackness and the normalization of that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean when \u201cconservatism\u201d \u2014 such as it is when it morphs into, and its popular domain, perhaps, again, I think there\u2019s more systematic forces of capital at work here \u2014\u00a0but in its kind of popular domain it is literally devoid of any coherent intellectualism. It is literally just triggering the libs and putting bisexual baristas at Starbucks that you envision in your head and uppity Black women who you have as a manager at your shitty email job in the suburbs, putting them in their place is the entire animating force of conservative media and has been since the rise of Trump. And obviously you have anti-immigration as well.<\/p>\n<p>When you see them talk. When you see them discuss these things, when you hear Elon Musk talk about it, there\u2019s this idea that the white man was displaced. He was removed from his pedestal. It\u2019s most manifested in terms of gender. It\u2019s a hatred of women. But then when you have the kind of double whammy of a Black woman, then that visceral hatred is so raw and so real and traffics so well. I mean, and you see this with the whole Cracker Barrel dust up \u2014 which I think in some ways, again, speaking of goofy \u2014 that this really portended, I think this latest effort because they would always talk about it and then post this picture of some woman with glasses who looked like this avatar of woke and political correctness and the whole thing was so fucking dumb. As if these investment banks give a shit about social justice. They were just trying to appeal to younger demographics. But their whole world is animated by this idea that there\u2019s these globalist forces \u2014 they traffic in anti-Semitic tropes a lot \u2014 that are conspiring with sort of high status Black people and high status women to remove you from your position.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019m not, again, I\u2019m not saying anything particularly novel here \u2014 but you see the ways in which when you point that out with someone like Charlie Kirk \u2014 it does not comport with the facts. And you see that Kirk is a smart businessman. Although he is astro-turfed by billionaire and multimillionaire Republican donors, he knows full well where the base is going.<\/p>\n<p>And he knows that this kind of going after MLK day trying to be edgy or trying to be more raw. And this is an element of, we\u2019ve seen in conservative media, accelerated under Trump, which is how edgy can you be? How politically incorrect \u2014 \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d \u2014 it can be. And when that becomes your animating force and then of course sort of marries with this idea that you\u2019re going to preserve the white Christian man in more explicit terms, that you lose all pretense like you did say under the Bush years where like, I mean, go back and watch the 2004 Republican National Convention and it is an alien party.<\/p>\n<p>I think the fundamental forces remain similar, remain the same, but the ways in which it speaks and talks about things like racism, like the way it talks about what the vision for society is. It used to be some modicum, some patina, of moral vision of like Black entrepreneurship, right?<\/p>\n<p>It was horseshit, but at least it was something that felt inclusive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW<\/strong>: They pretended.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: <\/strong>They pretended. And now they don\u2019t even pretend it\u2019s just raw white nationalist power. And maybe if you\u2019re lucky, if you\u2019re like South Asian or you\u2019re sort of a polite Black person, you know, maybe they\u2019ll let you in the club as a kind of token.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But broadly speaking that\u2019s their entire animating force at work. And the whole administration\u2019s been staffed with these nutters, which simply wasn\u2019t the case in the first Trump administration. And you know this because, you know, my wife\u2019s a reporter for Workday Magazine, and she repeatedly will send questions to the EPA or send questions to OSHA or send questions to the labor department. And the responses you get are batshit insane. They are like, \u201cTrump was elected by the people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW<\/strong>: Yup.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: \u201c<\/strong>These unelected bureaucrats and liberal journalists trying to do blah, blah, blah.\u201d And you\u2019re like, oh, like this is no longer even remotely a civil servant. They\u2019ve replaced everyone with people that are in this cult.<\/p>\n<p>People say it\u2019s a cult of personality. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s a cult \u2014 it\u2019s a cult of power. And whether that avatar is Trump, or whether it\u2019s Vance \u2014 who\u2019s of course, who\u2019s seamlessly stepping into the role as demagogue in chief and is far more sophisticated than Trump \u2014\u00a0it is about power and it\u2019s about the punishment of enemies.<\/p>\n<p>And you\u2019re seeing that on display here in a way that is going to be so overreaching and so overarching. And they are going to their allies in Congress and they\u2019re working on passing laws that means the judges to the extent to which they provide any check to this power grab will basically be null and void.<\/p>\n<p>And the Kirk killing and the disciplining of liberal media post that \u2014 and again, all the sort of mopey like, well, we need to do better kind of nonsense people do to fill space \u2014 that is being exploited to push through these preexisting agendas. Which again, I know the Intercept has reported a lot on it, specifically the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/05\/19\/nonprofit-killer-trump-big-beautiful-bill\/\">nonprofit killer bill<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: <\/strong>Which saw a lot of support last November during the lame duck session, and then they tried to bring back in May, but it was killed. But I\u2019m pretty convinced they\u2019re going to take another swing at this thing along with other power grabs. Again, you have Marco Rubio, who wants to take away people\u2019s passports based entirely on their \u2014 American citizens \u2014 based entirely on their ideological so-called support of terrorism, whatever, as Marco Rubio unilaterally deems fit. They\u2019re coming and they\u2019re coming hard for these groups, and they\u2019re going to come hard for the liberal nonprofits who will not be safe.<\/p>\n<p>And you saw this with a lot of the ways universities responded to these authoritarian bullying campaigns. There\u2019s one thing I know about Trump is he knows how to size up weakness.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: <\/strong>He sees weakness in the liberal institutions and he knows how to exploit it. As does Stephen Miller, as does their team of 25-year-old Adderall fueled fucking Heritage Foundation interns who are all hardcore believers, is that people are looking to cover their own ass and their own institution\u2019s ass. And they say, OK, well I\u2019ll compromise here. I\u2019ll just compromise here and he\u2019ll leave us alone.<\/p>\n<p><!-- BLOCK(newsletter)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22NEWSLETTER%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%7D) --><\/p>\n<div class=\"newsletter-embed flex-col items-center print:hidden\" id=\"third-party--article-mid\" data-module=\"InlineNewsletter\" data-module-source=\"web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\">\n<div class=\"-mx-5 sm:-mx-10 p-5 sm:px-10 xl:-ml-5 lg:mr-0 xl:px-5 bg-accentLight hidden\" data-name=\"subscribed\">\n<h2 class=\"font-sans font-light uppercase text-[30px] leading-8 text-white tracking-[0.01em] mb-0\">\n      We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. 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On Monday, President Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437\/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437.1.0.pdf\">filed<\/a> a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/sep\/16\/trump-new-york-times-lawsuit\">$15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times<\/a> for their reporting on him. And to me, it seems like the president was likely emboldened by his success suing Paramount earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: <\/strong>Correct<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Where the company agreed to pay him<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/02\/business\/media\/paramount-trump-60-minutes-lawsuit.html\"> $16 million to settle <\/a>a dispute over a 60 Minutes interview that he felt was unfairly favorable to his opponent, vice President Kamala Harris. I guess my question is, why do you think Trump is dropping this lawsuit now?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> It\u2019s a power play. He knows that if you sue these media companies, just like when you sue universities, it\u2019s leverage. You have leverage over them to get other things from them. It\u2019s not about the money. The money doesn\u2019t even go to him, right. And what [Trump has] realized is that there\u2019s no such thing as a unified liberal or left institutional system in place. There\u2019s no cohesion. And this is what happens when your institutions get increasingly taken over by mercenaries, PR agents and lawyers as the Democratic Party and many of their institutions have, is that they don\u2019t have any sense of solidarity.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no coordination between anything. Everybody\u2019s looking for their own ass. And it\u2019s like what, you know, Picard says about the Borg, they invade this planet. We retreat, they invade this planet. We retreat. You know, the line must be drawn here, and there\u2019s no sense that there\u2019s ever a line drawn anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>You know, occasionally you\u2019ll get some pushback. You\u2019ll get maybe a big lofty op-ed piece in the New York Times. But what he understands is that these institutions \u2014 since the liberal institutions got divorced from labor in particular \u2014 they don\u2019t actually have any muscle. They don\u2019t have any ideologues.<\/p>\n<p>They don\u2019t have any socialist in their tent anymore. These institutions at their top echelons are run by people in public relations. They\u2019re run by pollsters, they\u2019re run by mercenaries, they\u2019re run by lawyers. They\u2019re run by people who have no institutional sort of pedigree in solidarity as a concept.<\/p>\n<p>And so he knows he can keep chipping away and chipping away and chipping away. And unfortunately, I believe he\u2019s wagered correctly. And the only meaningful bulwark one can hope is that the liberal state, such as it is, the sort of deference to the rule of law is at least something, whether it be the courts or separation of powers with respect to the states or some of these governors that are standing up here and there. I mean, that\u2019s pretty much the big hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And you saw it. You saw it when he tried to bring in the National Guard to Chicago and Brandon Johnson and JB Pritzker told him to jump in a lake and he balked. Like all bullies, he probably is a paper tiger. The problem is there\u2019s very little coherent \u2014 again, aside from these blue state governors really \u2014\u00a0there\u2019s not really coherent opposition to Trump in any meaningful sense. And I think that\u2019s what people are looking for. And I think that\u2019s why your kind of random MSNBC-aunt has become so radicalized in the last six months because they\u2019re seeing that.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Again, I mean the responses from the two most powerful Democrats in the Senate \u2014 whether it\u2019s Trump bombing Iran, whether it\u2019s Trump going after Gaza protestors \u2014 they\u2019re just sleeping through this. There\u2019s these lukewarm statements that come out. There\u2019s again, all this language around compromise and bipartisanship. And they\u2019re just not up to the task. Because again, I think that these institutions have become so atomized and so disparate that there\u2019s no sense that they have any shared stakes here. And he knows this, so he is just picking off people one by one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Yeah, no, I think that\u2019s really interesting. I think about it a lot. I live in D.C. I think about it a lot in the D.C. context, thinking about how we saw Mayor Muriel Bowser continuously capitulate to Trump. Obviously we saw Columbia University. I mean, pretty much everyone who has laid down has suffered.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But I want to get back to Paramount because there\u2019s a lot obviously that\u2019s happening with them. They\u2019ve been the center of a lot of controversy. Last month regulators approved the merger of Skydance Media, founded by billionaire Larry Ellison\u2019s son David Ellison and Paramount Global, which owns CBS in a highly criticized move.<\/p>\n<p>After the merger, CBS canceled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who had obviously been an outspoken critic of the president. Paramount is also reportedly in talks to purchase the Free Press and install its founder, conservative media commentator Bari Weiss as the editorial advisor for CBS. What do you make of the direction CBS is going and do you think it says anything more broadly about the media landscape?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, look, you know, David Ellison is someone who donates millions of dollars to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. When he announced his purchase of, or his attempt to purchase Paramount a year ago, he put out a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/article-812772\">press release<\/a> in the Jerusalem Post saying that this was going to be good for Israel. It\u2019s not his only motive.<\/p>\n<p>He obviously, as a conservative, has other ideological preferences, but clearly one of the motivators here is that Israel\u2019s losing the PR battle. You look at Israel\u2019s support among people under the age of 40, it basically doesn\u2019t exist, especially among Democrats. Jewish people in the United States below the age of 40, almost uniformly say it\u2019s a genocide, not uniformly, but overwhelmingly say it\u2019s a genocide. And overwhelmingly we don\u2019t care about Israel. They are losing the PR battle. Everybody knows this. You can\u2019t commit a genocide in 4K in 2023, 2024, and 2025 without losing support. So, you know, the effort is, I think, largely just to kind of control the narrative more.<\/p>\n<p>The Ellison family is buying TikTok. They\u2019re buying CBS and they\u2019re buying CNN. That\u2019s a lot of media right there. And obviously you have MSNBC kind of shedding its liberal appearance. It fired its, you know, primary pro Gaza personality Joy-Ann Reid. And she says explicitly it was over Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>So I think part of the goal is from these mega billionaire pro-Israel media owners is to just control the narrative. I mean, they\u2019re quite open about it. You know, Shari Redstone, who owned CBS prior to that, who actually sold it to the Ellison family herself, was a funder for the IDF. And herself intervened twice on behalf of Israel, scolding 60 Minutes to the extent to which longtime producer Bill Owens left over that. And 60 Minutes is really what they want. 60 Minutes is considered a gold standard of journalism. So if you can have 60 minutes, produce a bunch of stories about, you know, Hamas sleeper cells in Columbia [University] and human shields over hospitals or whatever kind of nonsense, and give it the kind of veneer of serious journalism\u2014 I mean, that\u2019s what Jeffrey Goldberg did to the Atlantic, right? It\u2019s again, another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/mar\/27\/who-is-jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-signal-chat-leak\">former IDF prison guard<\/a> who turned the Atlantic Magazine into a totally one-note pro-Israel propaganda rag.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You lend it this kind of liberal veneer \u2014 this credible veneer \u2014 and that\u2019s ultimately what you\u2019re paying for. And so people have framed Ellison\u2019s takeover as a kind of pro-Trump thing, and it\u2019s true to an extent, but it\u2019s also very much about helping Israel finish out its genocide over the next year or two in Gaza, and then eventually the annexing of the West Bank as a kind of ideological project, which is why you hire Bari Weiss.<\/p>\n<p>Bari Weiss is not a journalist. They keep referring to her as a journalist. I mean, name me one piece of journalism Bari Weiss has done that\u2019s notable or credible. Can you do it? I can\u2019t. It doesn\u2019t exist because she\u2019s not a journalist. She, like me, is a pundit and that\u2019s fine. I\u2019m a pundit. I tell people at parties, I\u2019m a pundit. I have no shame in that. But I\u2019m not a journalist and neither is she.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> She does not produce journalism. The Free Press does not produce journalism. It produces commentary and demagoguery and genocide denial first and foremost. If you use the math of subscribers, which they allegedly are worth $150 to $200 million. My guess is that The Intercept would be worth about a hundred million dollars. And I think we can all agree that there\u2019s no one willing to buy The Intercept for $100 million dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW<\/strong>: Not that I know of.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Obviously this is an artificial valuation. Obviously it\u2019s to bring in Bari Weiss to take the CBS news brand and turn it into a Zionist propaganda rag. Ellison also wants to buy Warner Brothers, which is CNN. Again, it\u2019s not like these things don\u2019t make money on their own anyway, but if you can have an ideological play toy and buy the brand \u2014 because ultimately you\u2019re just buying the brand, right, you\u2019re buying the name \u2014 and turn it into your own ideological play toy, then that\u2019s what you do. Because if I have, you know, $40 billion, what\u2019s $2 billion to me? It\u2019s nothing. It\u2019s pocket change. It\u2019s going to align with other things that benefit people like the Ellisons in terms of low taxes. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll do stuff against labor. I mean, name it. But the thing is that CBS had institutional power. CBS News had institutional power within Paramount, 60 Minutes, especially, had institutional power. People that worked in there for decades and even if you wanted to, they were hard to purge. And it\u2019s very clear you bring in Bari Weiss to do that, to purge out the sort of last vestiges of independence.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Again 60 Minutes is already not good. 60 Minutes already has David Simon doing Pentagon press releases and you know, denied U.S. participation in the mass killing in Yemen in 2016 and 2017. I\u2019ve written about this, but, so they\u2019re already not great. But like everything in the Trump era, you take things that are already bad and you make them much, much worse.<\/p>\n<p>And you say, oh, well look at that. It got worse. And I think that\u2019s the gambit here. The gambit is to take Trump aligned billionaires and then you add on the extra layer of helping propagandize on behalf of Israel and trying to sort of recalibrate public opinion in favor of genocide. You own TikTok, CBS and you\u2019re halfway there really.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Within six months to nine months, we\u2019ll be getting all sorts of stories about, you know, Hamas sleeper cells inside of the Intercept.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>[Laughs.]<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong>\u00a0I mean, whatever. I mean,\u00a0I\u2019m not even joking. I mean, this is the kind of schlock that the Free Press pumps out. And this is the kind of schlock he wants to\u2014\u00a0That\u2019s why you buy this stuff. And again, this is by his own statements.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Skydance published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/article-866452\">press release<\/a> in the Jerusalem Post saying this was what\u2019s going to happen. They didn\u2019t phrase it in those sinister terms. They said like good for Israel, you know, blah, blah, blah. But it\u2019s basically what he\u2019s doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And so you know, that is obviously very, very ominous because our liberal institutions \u2014 and I\u2019m writing a book on this to be published in March, about the failures of liberal media, so-called liberal media or center left media, you know, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS \u2014 not the failures, I would say the sort of deliberate attempt to help and The New York Times, et cetera, to promote the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>But there was always this kind of liberal veneer. This kind of liberal performance of objectivity. And I think we\u2019re sort of just going to see that more and more go away. We\u2019re going to get this more overt kind of cartoon propaganda that is not very sophisticated, but I think what people realize is that it still kind of works as long as it has this sort of trappings of real journalism.<\/p>\n<p>And again, this is what the Free Press is. I mean, the Free Press published a story about the \u201cmyth of famine\u201d in Gaza in May of 2025, and then turns around in July of 2025, once these images started to appear \u2014 these horrific images of emaciated children \u2014 saying, actually there\u2019s starvation, but it\u2019s not that bad.<\/p>\n<p>So you have this increasingly postmodern lack of a need for this liberal patina, this kind of veneer of universalism and everything is just about the exercise of raw power, the exercise of pure racist propaganda. So yeah, look, things are bad. But I think what we\u2019ve learned is that they can get worse.<\/p>\n<p>One could make the argument that, OK, well once this sort of liberal veneer is erased from a lot of this performance, can we have a discussion about what it means for the left, such as it is, to have power? What does it mean to exercise power? Why are we always the one to defer to the referees? Why are we always the ones to refer to the parliamentarians? Why are they always the ones to act like, you know, oh, sorry, there\u2019s some mysterious rule we can\u2019t do it. You know, maybe at the very least, this could invite a conversation about what it means to live in a world where one side cares deeply about power and the other side cares deeply about playing by the rules. And those are two totally different criteria for success.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Yeah. And I want to\u2014 Obviously I have heard on this podcast things are bad, but things are about to get a lot worse multiple times, and it never gets any less scary. But one question I did have kind of on the media power grab from the billionaire class that you\u2019ve been talking about, that you\u2019ve been writing about that I think is really important. I mean, do you think we can put the alleged firing of Karen Attiah from the Washington Post within that kind of larger billionaire class power grab<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Yes. 100 percent. This is literally\u2014 I\u2019m surprised she lasted that long, to be honest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ: <\/strong>I think back in February when Jeff Bezos published that open letter saying he was going to support patriotism and free markets, you know, very thinly veiled codes for here\u2019s our new right-wing ideology, both to sort of suck up to Trump, but also, I mean, again, he\u2019s worth $500 billion. You don\u2019t really have to twist a guy\u2019s arm hard who is worth $500 billion to be a right-wing racist, right? That was the position they were going and they brought in editors from The Economists, you know, a kind of pseudo highbrow right-wing rag, and that was the direction they were taking. I know, you know, people like Perry Bacon left, who again we\u2019re familiar with and lived within the milieu of progressive politics. There was a reason why he did it in February of 2025. You know, billionaires are good at adapting to the winds. They were never going to be liberal or God forbid, left or anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>But under Biden, they kind of knew where the political winds were, and they played ball. And now once Trump takes office, then everyone can sort of drop the act. You know, Zuckerberg doesn\u2019t have to act like he wants to be your friend and do these bullshit little world tours. Once Trump takes office a second time, everyone can say, oh, finally I can just kind of come out as a right-winger.<\/p>\n<p>And you saw that. And you know, it\u2019s like with the Columbia stuff. People kept referring to Columbia as capitulation with respect to Trump. But look, a lot of those things that they supported were things that the administrators and the donors and the deans they wanted to support anyway. To some extent, I feel like a lot of these wealthy center, center-left types like Bezos, like Gates, like the, you know, Columbia donors, they don\u2019t necessarily agree with the far-right \u2014 everything in the far right agenda, especially all the kind of red meat stuff \u2014 but they believe that Trump is useful in disciplining their mutual enemies: A, Gaza protestors; B, the sort of \u201cwoke left,\u201d the nonprofit types who they thought got way too big for their britches post George Floyd. And they wanted to instrumentalize Trump to go after their mutual enemies. That\u2019s what they\u2019re doing. So like, yes, are they capitulating? Are they bending the knee? To an extent, but I think one doesn\u2019t want to overplay that dynamic.<\/p>\n<p>I think that a lot of people in the ruling class, again, this is why he raised more money from the Republican Party in 2024, raised more money from billionaires than Democrats did. I think they know that they can use Trump to their own ends. They can use it to gut the federal government. They can use it, of course, to lower taxes. They can use it to bloat the military, all kinds of typical Republican stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He does it, he just does it with a little bit of vulgarity that they had to kind of distance themselves from, but ultimately, like they believe that he can be instrumentalized to discipline their mutual enemies, and I think a lot of those on the fence don\u2019t necessarily realize that they\u2019re not going to stop at just mutual enemies. They\u2019re going to keep going. And this is, I think, where you do see this bend the knee element more and more where it\u2019s like, oh, well they\u2019re going to just keep going and going. They\u2019re going after, you know, when they said they were gonna go after immigrants, they were being sincere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> I mean, again, look at tariffs like something that nobody,\u00a0like most of the ruling class does not support tariffs. The Wall Street Journal doesn\u2019t like them. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hates them, but Trump does them because he ideologically believes in it. He also has this weird thing where he treats politics like he\u2019s playing a game of Risk. Like it\u2019s very weird, right? Take over Greenland. It\u2019s absurd.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But to the extent to which they will indulge the ridiculousness of what Trump does because he\u2019s so effective at snuffing [out] the mutual enemies \u2014 of labor, of the left, of nonprofit people \u2014 of these left-wing constituents who the ruling class uniformly hates. Environmentalists, you know, climate change activists, you name it. Everyone\u2019s running around putting out fires. No one\u2019s got time to protest Jeff Bezos anymore. So it\u2019s like, yeah, it\u2019s a little bit of capitulation, but I think that can be overstated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I also think Trump ultimately \u2014 idiosyncrasies around tariffs and stuff aside \u2014 he largely, 90 percent, just carries out the wishes of the very rich in this country and they\u2019ll deal with the other weird psychodrama around that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So if they can, you know, get rid of the Color of Change and Palestinian Youth Movement and all these groups that give them a big fucking headache \u2014that they don\u2019t like \u2014that\u2019s what they\u2019ll do.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> And I want to ask about the role of the media. We tend to be really careful about how we\u2019re perceived. Most of us who call ourselves journalists \u2014 but even those who call ourselves pundits depending on how you see yourself \u2014 we don\u2019t want to seem biased or emotional or angry or insensitive. Objectivity is this really core tenant of our industry. But do we have what it takes to meet this moment with all of that kind of fear and anxiety and all the things that we have that hold us back?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> You know, the thing with objectivity \u2014 because obviously I gave up on that a long time ago \u2014 I think it exists because we have this broad sense of credibility. Look back at how [George W.] Bush promoted the Iraq war in 2002, 2003. They needed the New York Times to support that. They needed the New York Times to vindicate that and validate that. And to a great extent, Biden needed the New York Times to vindicate his support for genocide and Gaza. You need these kind of institutional markers to give it validation. What organizations like the New York Times \u2014 and to some extent MSNBC and CNN \u2014 do [is] they police and gate keep the sort of acceptable left-wing pole of the country.<\/p>\n<p>And I think that so many resources and so much time and so much effort went into disciplining the left-wing pole there was no one watching the right side. And Republicans were so well funded and so good at working the refs and using objectivity against itself and ideological and intellectual cul-de-sac of like liberal fact-check-ism. And you saw this during the first Trump administration. And I think there\u2019s a place for that stuff. I don\u2019t necessarily think it\u2019s categorically bad, but it\u2019s just not sufficient. It\u2019s not enough. And when the party and the institutions \u2014\u00a0and I\u2019m obviously speaking in generalities, one can take it or leave it \u2014\u00a0when they spent so much of their time policing the left-wing flank, disciplining the left-wing flank, snuffing it out, making sure it didn\u2019t achieve any electoral success, removing it from any of its publications, right, then there\u2019s not going to be a meaningful counterbalance because then it\u2019s like, well what is the project I\u2019m getting behind here. And that\u2019s why you had this kind of zombie-liberalism over the past five-six years that the only thing you could really offer was to say, \u201cWe\u2019re not Trump.\u201d And that\u2019s a perfectly fine thing to offer. In fact, I think we\u2019ve seen very well that it\u2019s better than Trump. Right? But it\u2019s not a counter narrative. It\u2019s not a counter moral vision for the world. It doesn\u2019t really offer a better future \u2014 offer anything to replace that right-wing dark doomy populism.<\/p>\n<p>And so this is all a very lofty way of saying, I think, yes the fetish for objectivity, the fetish for neutrality has shown how impotent it is because again, if the other side doesn\u2019t need that \u2014 like Bush need[ed] the New York Times in 2000, 2003 \u2014 once the other side ceases to care about those validators. And again, when you alienate your muscle, when you alienate your youth, when you alienate your canvassers, when you alienate labor, when you alienate environmental groups, when you alienate LGBTQ groups repeatedly just sort of brushing off, telling them to fuck off, triangulating, we\u2019ll deal with you guys later, you have no choice but to vote for us, vote scolding, then yeah, like naturally you\u2019re not going to have the muscle to push back in these moments.<\/p>\n<p>And obviously I have an ideological agenda to say that as someone who fits within that orientation. But I genuinely think it\u2019s true. I think that when you fetishize objectivity and neutrality in this kind of high-minded liberalness, that stuff works within a particular system, within a particular domain of applicability.<\/p>\n<p>But once that domain is no longer that important, especially to the \u201cother side,\u201d then you\u2019re just shadow boxing. And I think the way that they work the refs around the Charlie Kirk killing \u2014 to circle back to our initial topic \u2014 just shows how feeble that is. Like when you have the New York Times most influential podcaster having Ben Shapiro on and having these mopey apologies tours about how mean the left has been to the right. I want to pull my fucking hair out. I\u2019m like, what are you talking about? This is not the issue at hand, man. A, because all that stuff about preemptively apologizing \u2014 even before we knew who the killer was \u2014 you\u2019re implicitly saying, we take ownership of this killing when we don\u2019t even know what the guy\u2019s politics were. For all we know, he seems rather incoherent. He\u2019s steeped in internet culture. But preemptively, all these major liberal outlets were, implicitly taking ownership of the killing. And I\u2019m like, why would you do that? You think the right would ever do that? Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband [was] beaten with a fucking hammer. And you know what they did? They spent a week making fun of him.<\/p>\n<p>And like again, you have this totally one-sided battle that they are doing gorilla tactics. And we are lining up in our red coats with our bayonets in formation. And we wonder why we get smoked every time. And it\u2019s like, because you\u2019re just playing by a different set of rules.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Adam, we\u2019re going to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing. This was a really insightful conversation and I\u2019m so glad that you were able to share with us.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AJ:<\/strong> Yes. Thank you for having me on to rant.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> [Laughs.] We appreciated the rant.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We want to hear from you.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That\u2019s 530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts at the intercept dot com.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Slip Stream provided our theme music.<\/p>\n<p>You can support our work at <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/Donate_Podcast?source=interceptedshoutout&amp;recurring_period=one-time\">theintercept.com\/join<\/a>. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven\u2019t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us, and better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us.<\/p>\n<p>Until next time, I\u2019m Jessica Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for listening.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/09\/19\/briefing-podcast-charlie-kirk-trump-right\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the wake of Charlie Kirk\u2019s death, conservatives have moved quickly to consolidate power and attack their political enemies, whose relative impotence and penchant for capitulation to power and decorum have been on full display this week. \u201cYou have these right-wing forces that smell blood, they smell weakness, and they\u2019re going after everyone who doesn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}