News Brief: Silicon Valley Patronage, How To Subtly Drift Right, and the New Conservative Media Ecosystem
Added 2025-02-12 15:51:58 +0000 UTCIn this News Brief, we interview journalist and author Eoin Higgins about his new book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," discuss the new model of tech billionaire funding, and detail how some of the biggest names in Left media became MAGA-aligned, Tucker-boosting petty, score-settlers.
**
Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.
***
Citations Merch
Don't forget that the Citations Needed merch store is open! Please consider further supporting the show by picking up a t-shirt, tank top, hoodie, tote, water bottle or mug for yourself or your favorite Citations fan (or everyone you know!).
****
Credits
Senior Producer: Florence Barrau-Adams
Producer: Julianne Tveten
Production Assistant: Trendel Lightburn
Newsletter: Marco Cartolano
Music: Grandaddy
*****
Comments
Ok. I guess I’m wondering where you guys think the line is when a host or journalist has “gone maga”? Maybe I’m a little touchy because I hear a few episodes that I really like from content creators, end up contributing my $, only to find out they say all the right things up to election time then start trying to funneling their audience into vote blue no matter who electoral politics.
Gee Zee
2025-02-17 07:44:20 +0000 UTC? No one ever said otherwise
Citations Needed
2025-02-16 15:44:25 +0000 UTCThis news brief screams of people that have never interacted with Trump voters. I’m in trade work and they’re all over. They have a lot of the same complaints leftists do with the system but are misguided on who’s to blame for those problems. A lot of these people are reachable on class issues…and no that doesn’t mean cultural issues don’t matter.
Gee Zee
2025-02-16 15:38:46 +0000 UTCEven when he was a left iconoclast darling Taibbi was never too ideologically grounded. I remember his angry takedowns about the then-rising Tea Party repeatedly ripped into them for not *actually* caring about the national debt/deficit. As if that's something that matters. Even his much lauded pieces about the GFC, which explain very well *how* banks turned the housing market into a casino, put the blame on "bankers looking in the mirror and seeing Brad Pitt". Uh, no, pretty sure the answer is money, dude. Not to essentialize, but it fits the GenX stereotype of fixating on "sellouts". He could give you a great material explanation of the graft and corruption going on, but he was always allergic to class analysis. There are only bad politicians/bankers/etc , never a bad ruling class. Greenwald's always been a libertarian (warts and all). And around 2020 he decided he wanted a bigger house. It really is that simple. I look forward to reading the book!
Cree Merr
2025-02-16 12:18:16 +0000 UTCI’m not normally one to complain, but how can you use the phrase brotocracy when broligarchy is right there.
Jacob Adamson
2025-02-13 23:22:04 +0000 UTCVery interesting News Brief -- I follow Glenn Greenwald because I think he offers an interesting insight into the intellectual currents of the "populist" side of MAGA. You guys and your guest helped me crystalize and confirm my analysis: Glenn has some genuine libertarian principles that give his punditry some decent substance, but frequently can't seem to resolve apparently contradictory ideas (e.g. "Trump is anti-war" and "Trump says he wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza"; or "COVID lockdowns represented a massive exercise of Government power and in many cases hurt people economically" and "COVID was a genuinely dangerous disease that killed millions of Americans and overwhelmed our healthcare system") and so falls short of a truly insightful worldview. I value his raw knowledge about the way the security state operates and its expansion since the early 2000's, but there are lots of areas where he just seems stuck in an intellectual rut. I agree with your guest: it'll be pretty interesting to see how he deals with the fact that the Trump people are ascendant and whether he can keep an audience.
Mike DeBackPack
2025-02-13 23:12:08 +0000 UTCWas hoping to hear some discussion of more contemporary phenomena, like The Young Turks recent turn, particularly hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, post-Disney and now post-Polymarket
John W
2025-02-13 15:45:27 +0000 UTCI'm leery of nominal lefties who complain about "wokeness"/"DEI" to the extant Taibbi and Greenwald do. IE, Catherine Liu, Christian Parenti, everyone who writes for Compact, the Red Scare hosts (before they became TradCaths), etc. Someone should come up with a term for this phenomenon where supposed leftists make common cause with the right over their (not unjustified) hatred of liberals. First it was the futurists supporting Mussolini, and now it's "post-left" people defecting to MAGA.
Tasselled_Wobbegong
2025-02-13 04:20:11 +0000 UTCMy God, is there any image of Peter Thiel that isn't fucking unspeakable 💀
Matthew
2025-02-12 19:49:30 +0000 UTC
