Emily Jashinsky rejoins the High Noon pod at the end of each month. This month, the ladies discuss the Tucker Carlson Trump interview and what it says about new media, then move on to talking about what qualities a good society ought to look for when selecting an elite. Compared to past American elite families, they find our current credentialed class wanting. Finally, they discuss ongoing media dereliction of duty in covering the fire disaster in Lahaina.
TRANSCRIPT
Inez Stepman:
Welcome to High Noon, where we talk about controversial subjects with interesting people. And as always, at the end of the month, the last Wednesday is reserved for Emily Jashinsky, who is an interesting, bright person, as she always makes fun of me for not including her in the interesting person bucket. Emily is a senior fellow with us at the Independent Women’s Forum. She’s also the culture editor over at The Federalist. She is the co-host of Counterpoints with Ryan Grim, along with Crystal and Saagar, over at Breaking Points, which is a huge political podcast, if you have not checked that out. She has various other hats, including at YAF and elsewhere.
Emily, the hats are just multiplying. I don’t know how you expect an old person like me to remember them every month.
Emily Jashinsky:
Did you remember my IWF hat?
Inez Stepman:
That was the first hat I said.
Emily Jashinsky:
Okay, good. Good. It’s hard for me to pay attention.
Inez Stepman:
I’m old, not Stenile. Okay?
Emily Jashinsky:
Okay. I can’t keep up with everything. I can’t possibly be expected to listen to everything you say.
Inez Stepman:
Well, I feel like there’s been a literal flood of things that have happened since the last time we spoke, but I want to start out by talking about the Tucker Carlson interview with Trump because there’s been a lot of debate talk and we will get to the debate talk, but I feel like in light of the mugshot, heard around the world, which also wiped out any interest in this interview, Trump gave a long and in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson while the debate was going on. And actually, the angle I wanted to talk to you about it with is the media angle because this is obviously a shot across the battle with Fox, right?
Tucker putting out this interview with the former president and Republican front-runner, who obviously brings big ratings, right as Fox is conducting their Republican debate, which Trump had refused to join. So, one, what does that say about the landscape? And then, what did you think of the interview?
Emily Jashinsky:
Yeah, he put it out at 8:55 PM, and the debate was ready to start at 9:00 PM. So, to your point, Inez, about whether it’s a shot across the bow, it clearly, to your point, absolutely was. You don’t do that unless you’re taking a shot across the bow. The 8:55 dropping a-
Inez Stepman:
There’s so much across the bow as directly into the Captain’s cabin.
Emily Jashinsky:
Yeah, pretty much, and I think it was, what, an hour-long or a 40-minute interview, something like that. So it was really long, and actually, what I did at The Federalist was immediately pull … because he uploaded the video to Twitter. Maybe I shouldn’t give my tricks away, but I uploaded the video to Twitter. I immediately pulled the transcript of the entire video so that while the media … and I think Tucker kind of understands how this works, and so does Trump, while the media was covering the debate fastidiously because this is the first debate of the cycle and everyone was there. Half the media was actually in the wonderful city of Milwaukee, not far from where I grew up.
And I was going through the transcript as I was trying to pay attention to the Republican debate in order to figure out where we needed coverage. And that was a totally intentional thing to sort of split the media in half, barely give journalists time to prepare, which I’m not asking for any sympathy whatsoever, nor will I be extending it to my fellow journalists in the hollowed halls of the so-called mainstream media, but it was very, very strategic. And I would say, actually, I think there was too much coverage of the debate. I know we talked earlier. It might not even be a volume thing so much as it does a tone. When you have … you mentioned the ratings turned out to be pretty good for Fox.
I think Brian Stelter, someone like Oliver Darcy or Brian Stelter, had expected it to get four or five million viewers on Fox News, and it did about 12 million. That’s a big number. Those are good ratings for Fox. It’s less than half of what the first debate in 2016 got. And for some understandable reasons being that … one, being that Donald Trump wasn’t there, yeah, and the field is a little-
Inez Stepman:
Happy reasons to name Trump.
Emily Jashinsky:
He had named Donald Trump. The field is a little bit smaller, so I don’t think … and also linear TV has declined dramatically in the years since. So, was it still important? Yes, but I also think, not even juxtaposing it with Tucker, but when you don’t have the person who’s up by 40 points in the room, even in Iowa at the time of the debate and the real clear politics average, Trump was up by I think 26 points, and that’s just in Iowa. When that guy is not in the room, the coverage should, I think, keep that in mind. And that isn’t to say they should have been like, “What Tucker is doing with Trump is so much more important,” but they should have had way more perspective on what this debate was going to do.
And I actually think that was intentional. I think they knew that the debate wasn’t as important as they were saying it was. I am curious though, to maybe argue with you about Tucker Carlson.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, so to put my full cards on the table before I give my opinion so people know where I’m coming from in terms of a partisan perspective, I’m very, very pro the independent media project. I really hoped that when Tucker was forced out of Fox, that it would be a tipping point for new media, that he would be able to use that platform to really open up the kind of questions and discussion and, yeah, questions that Republican voters would have answered among their candidates, their potential candidates. And the Blaze TV media forum that seemed to be coming true so Tucker gave a series of what I would say were very incisive interviews.
Demolished a few candidates, uplifted a few other ones on the basis of things that I think, whether I agree with them or not in any individual case, they’re things that Republican base voters want to distinguish the candidates on. Questions of foreign policy, posture, questions about corporate power, and how any potential Republican president would deal with corporate, both economic and cultural power. These are questions that, with the exception of Ukraine, didn’t really make it into the Fox debate. Questions about … Chris Rufo called his book Cultural Revolution. I would’ve liked to see questions, more questions asked about the Cultural Revolution. Those did not really make it into the Fox News debate, and we can talk about why.
I mean, the candidates didn’t really force them in there, either. So, all of that background is to say that even though I’m not the greatest fan of Trump, I would be very happy to see this interview essentially do the Breitbart thing, Andrew Breitbart, and force the mainstream to actually consider independent media because they would have to cover this interview, right? Because the former president and the leading presidential candidate now, quadruple indicted, Donald Trump would have either said something that was so newsworthy. There had to be a series of a news cycle coverage about it, or because it’s simply was so important that he answered questions about how he would govern the conservative media ecosystem, including Fox, for example, would have to pick up.
Now, I doubt … they’re petty, so I doubt they would play the clip or whatever, but they would have to … if there was something said there that they would’ve had to cover, they would’ve covered it. None of that happened, and I actually blamed Tucker Carlson for this. I don’t think that he asked questions that were particularly … there are questions designed to turn off your typical boomer con Normie who was like, “Well, Trump is not on the Fox debate. Maybe I should switch over to Tucker Carlson on this newfangled streaming thing.” And the questions were designed to send that person right back to Fox, I feel like. The first question out of the gate was about Jeffrey Epstein.
And I don’t even care; there could be a question about Jeffrey Epstein at the end. I’m not sensitive to the issue of Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, it’s pretty interesting to talk about, but if you have the leading presidential candidate from one of the two parties, you start with that, not how would you solve … like what would you do about the war in Ukraine? Not what would you do about the fact that American corporations have a very particular cultural perspective? Not the fact that people are still dealing with extremely high prices both at the gas pump and in the grocery store, and people are increasingly squeezed out and have no savings left to deal with this ongoing inflation crisis.
None of those issues are what we started with, not about Bidenomics. Nothing. It’s Jeffrey Epstein. I couldn’t think of a more online thing to start with. Then, the next question was about whether or not he’s afraid the deep state is going to kill him. And I feel like at that point, the curious Normie who turned that on thinking, “Well, maybe it is time to cut the cable. Maybe it’s time to bring in a new selection of news sources into the news diet,” just turns off and leaves. Why am I wrong?
Emily Jashinsky:
A couple of things, and they’re not necessarily arguments that you’re wrong. I guess I would say I do think it’s interesting. The position that Tucker is in I think, is really interesting right now because you’re very much right, and we talked about this when it happened. The Blaze Forum was extremely productive and focused on the so-called kitchen table issues but also balanced with issues that are kind of important in the abstract in general. Questions about military policy and questions about what freedom is, et cetera, et cetera. So he balanced those really well there. Whereas this interview, I think there was a lot of news in it.
For instance, you have Tucker asking, “Does the deep state need to kill you now,” and Donald Trump responding to that? That’s not a kitchen table question to your point, and that’s very different than what was … or at least what people tune in to a debate to hear. So I actually understand that, and I think Tucker, as he’s finding his place outside of Fox, is right now really enjoying getting lost in these conversations. He did both Andrew Tate and Andrew Tate’s brother for an extended period of time, long, long interviews with both of them and a lot of people have sort of interpreted those as Tucker sort of putting his stamp of endorsement on the Tate brothers.
I think he’s been too friendly to them, more friendly to them than he should have. I also think he’s falling into this Joe Rogan mold that works really well for Joe Rogan and Russell Brand but is not what people want out of Tucker Carlson. What people want out of Tucker Carlson is much more hard-hitting, and so I think we’re seeing him in the transition from Fox to whatever is next because he’s reportedly looking to potentially start another outlet and to build up infrastructure to a new project, whatever it is. I think the transition … this interview was an example of why that transition still needs to change. Why there need to be sort of a next stage of Tucker Carlson because I think his real value to the media ecosystem and to American politics is when he’s really hard-hitting.
So I agree with that completely. I also think … but I think from the perspective of what Tucker was doing, that’s sort of how I would explain it or in my own head, that’s what makes most sense is explaining why he used that interview to have this very long conversation with Trump that was winding from pet interest to pet interest. On the other hand, this question of what constitutes a kitchen table issue is really fascinating, and it’s a huge problem for Republicans right now because there’s … I hear from people who work with activists in the sort of Republican grassroots base that what they care about is DOJ weaponization of government stuff.
I pretty much guarantee you that it is not weighing heavily on any independent voter’s mind. They might really detest it, or they might not know what to think, but it’s probably not informing their voting pattern whatsoever. What is probably informing their voting pattern is, like you said, it’s not UFOs; it’s probably not Jeffrey Epstein. It’s probably going to be like, to your point, Bidenomics, it’s probably going to be competence, like basic competence, ability to do their job. It’s probably going to be education and issues like that. So I agree with you and then also kind of disagree with you. I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out exactly where I disagree with you here, but I do think-
Inez Stepman:
We’re talking about this earlier, to be clear on … for people who don’t listen to NatCon Squad, which we always do every week, and Emily and I were sort of … she was like, “Don’t forget that a lot of people actually do care about the Jeffrey Epstein case and it represents something larger about mistrusting and mistrusting institutions,” and I’ll take that rebuke I guess of … but it does strike me as a very online … even though people know about it and might be interested in it, the number of people who would put that as like, this is the first thing I want to know from a presidential candidate, I feel like it has to be small.
I don’t even think he has to appeal to independence. It could be to the Republican base. That’s a legitimate … those are the people who are going to be voting right now in the primary. He could have focused on weaponization and indictment issues in a way that wasn’t so conspiratorial sounding, which there’s plenty there, without going off into CIA assassination land. There’s a ton there. And he could have gotten some really newsworthy things from Trump that way, I feel like. How does it feel to be the first president who’s been indicted by a sitting president, and he kind of got there at the end, but it wasn’t in the first 15 to 20 minutes. That would’ve been a banger of a first question, right?
Emily Jashinsky:
Well, he also-
Inez Stepman:
250 years to have been indicted. How does that feel?
Emily Jashinsky:
Trump has also been putting out some policy platform ideas that would’ve been interesting to get him on the record about, to ask him certain things would’ve been different … that could be different this time around. There was a hilarious video circulating last week of what Donald Trump said about many of the people he hired and in fact, put in his cabinet. Then, what he said about them after they had left or been fired, that I actually think would’ve been a great thing to ask him about, asking, you say you only hire the best people. What about like literally just watch this video and respond to it?
There are a lot of legitimate questions that Republicans have, and he could have asked … he didn’t really ask specific questions about DeSantis or any of these-
Inez Stepman:
The question was rigged. How do you plan on winning this one, right?
Emily Jashinsky:
Yeah.
Inez Stepman:
What changed between 2020 and now? These are really important questions from the Republican base perspective, and I don’t know. As much as I think it would be fascinating to find out exactly what happened to Jeff Epstein, I don’t know.
Emily Jashinsky:
Jeff, you’re on a nickname basis.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. I’m on the first name turns, I did it just for you, Emily.
Emily Jashinsky:
Well, can I just … I want to make one bigger point though, because I think it’s really interesting what you’re saying. I heard similar things, and actually, the more that we’ve talked about it, I do agree with you. I don’t think that interview was as strong as it should have been. I also think I’ve heard people complain that Fox’s UFO question, like if you’re going to do it, at least ask it in a serious way. I’ve heard people complain about the way they used Oliver Anthony in the opening and just didn’t ask as many kind of nuts and bolts questions as people would’ve liked.
And the bigger point I think in all of this is actually what’s hurting the DeSantis campaign in general, which is that you have this really serious issue of wanting to be part of the so-called new right. Wanting to show that you understand and empathize with the concerns of this new coalition of Republican voters, but not knowing how to do that, not knowing how to actually have a Republican Party that can bring together those rust belt union workers and suburban moms in the Trump era. And I see that over and over again just like this. It’s a real struggle. I think it might even be the defining struggle of the right, right now because it’s not just a matter of knowing that your voter’s in a different place. It’s a matter of knowing then what they want, how to give it to them, when there are these disparate coalitions that seem mutually exclusive.
And I do think with the UFO question, there are a lot of people who could vote Republican, not a huge swath of people, but with Jeffrey Epstein and UFOs Republicans talking insane terms about both of those issues, I think does make a difference to some real average Americans. I don’t think they’re phantoms; I think those are real people, but these just gesturing at the issue or talking about it in a sort of cartoonish way, that doesn’t show a full command or grasp on what the issue actually is, and what it means, what the big implications are and what the big revelations have been. It just shows this half-hearted or lost … that people that are sort of lost in the wilderness of the Trump coalition.
And again, I think this is one of the big things that’s plaguing the DeSantis campaign. I bring it up time and again, the sort of inner sprinting pictures of an actual fictional serial killer, Patrick Bateman, with your candidate, you’re trying to do something for a very small group of people that’s actually going to do way more harm with a bigger group of people than it will help with that smaller group of people. And that, I think, is a really hard balance to strike.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, I mean there are also different ways to talk to different groups of people simultaneously. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but this is, in some ways, a very old political problem. In the 19th century American presidential campaigns, they would say different things on different train stops because especially on tariff issues or whatever where it’s very geographical. Some states are benefiting from it, some are not. You have presidential candidates literally contradicting themselves. Obviously, you can’t quite do that as well in the age of 24/7 media and everybody having a … it’s sort of a traditional part of politics, I guess is what I would say is to campaign on different messages to different people.
I mean, I just felt like it was a big missed opportunity, and all of us to say, I think I’m going to lose this bet that I set with a friend of mine. After Tucker got forced out of Fox, we set a calendar invite a year from that date, whenever that was. I’ve already forgotten to see if Tucker would have more or less mainstream relevance after having left Fox, and I think I’m probably going to … I’m already pretty sure I’m going to lose that, but I mean-
Emily Jashinsky:
With only like three months in.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, anything could happen. He could turn around, I don’t know, but I was really hoping that he would start a media company or that he would continue to bring … I feel like that he sat in that perfect nexus between normal conservative voters and then, bringing in the spice from the people that I enjoy reading or whatever, the very online new right and also very online people. And I thought it was actually a really important function of mainstreaming some of these ideas in a setting where they were presented with some seriousness to go, I guess to the point that you’ve been making. They’re presented with some seriousness, not just … obviously, some of it are like sunning your balls or whatever.
It was clearly for the little spice and fun in life, but he’s kind of gone all in that direction, and I just don’t know that that’s going … I feel like that’s actually going to lose him, that special place that he had with one foot in very online world and one foot in Normie world where he was actually the bridge between those two things, and I don’t know, I just hate to see that happen because I really do … again, I really do want to see a wider … I want to see someone compete with Fox News. I want to see Americans getting their news from a more democratized source and not just the people under 35, right? The people over 35 getting their news from a more diversified media class where there is some room to actually have wildly different perspectives and wildly different focus in terms of what is important.
So anyway, I would’ve been fine if there was … just like the UFO question, there was the Jeffrey Epstein question, but it just seemed like the first 15 minutes of that interview was designed to push all of those people who had been watching Tucker Carlson on Fox News back to Fox News. And I don’t want to see that happen, but-
Emily Jashinsky:
I will say he is reportedly trying to start a media company. He actually is trying to do something new. I think he got fired what, in April or May. So it’s been a few months and I don’t know what exactly his plans are, but I do think some of this is transitional. It’s something that he’s doing in the meantime while he’s working to build something new. That isn’t to say it’ll give him more mainstream relevancy. And actually, one of the interesting points about that is it’ll get to the power that Fox News has, which I still think is pretty vast, despite the fact that all of these other paths to circumvent the gates that were long guarded by the gatekeepers like Fox and NBC and CNN, you now have …
There’s been a bunch of holes poked in the wall, so I get that. The gatekeepers are less powerful than ever before, but I do think to your point, absolutely, those gatekeepers are still very, very powerful.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, it’s funny because they are losing … it’s why I think it’s so important, and that’s why I hate to see an opportunity in my view like this is blown is because they’re simultaneously losing some of that gatekeeping power, but they seem completely not to understand why. So they’re clamping down, and Fox, I think, will probably take a more moderate tack on a whole host of issues, gender, ideology. I mean, all the things that apparently piss off the bosses at Fox, right? And there is going to be an audience that’s disaffected by that.
Emily Jashinsky:
Yeah.
Inez Stepman:
And I think it would be a good thing for the entire media landscape if Fox were to lose that … I’m not saying they’re going away. They’re going to be a successful channel, but they will be a successful channel and not the successful channel on the right. I think that would be a good thing, and I don’t know, it seems like it’s a really important tipping point for media, which is why … but it could easily go the other way. It could easily just … they’re doubling down now, and it could easily go the other way, and it just still becomes the mass default, and the rest of us are sort of relegated to the fringes of the debate in online forums or whatever.
And at least for the next 10 or 20 years, I don’t see that … I could see it not changing for another 10 or 20 years. I would like to see it change a lot faster than that.
Emily Jashinsky:
Well, this is important because it’s like when, say, Gina Carano had been fired from Disney by … the Disney Star Wars production, Mandalorian 10 years before she actually was, she wouldn’t have had a place to land. I mean, first of all, that wouldn’t have happened 10 years before, but the point is, when you are the alternative to the old, you have to be really, really good. That isn’t to say it’s easy, but you have to actually do a competitive job, and for some reason that’s easier to do now than it was in the past. Not everything looks like a blog spot that’s an alternative to the gatekeeping traditional media, but you really don’t have as much room for error.
The so-called mainstream media has so much room for error because they have monopolized the space and they have the support of the entire political and cultural class, but when you’re trying to be an alternative space, you don’t have as much room for error, and you actually do have to be really good because otherwise, people are just going to go with muscle memory and they’re going to go with the option that they at least are like, well, these guys have people on the ground in Ukraine, so I’m at least going to watch what they have to say because you are blogging over there, and I get it. I want something competitive.
I don’t trust this information, but I probably trust it more than the dude in his PJs blogging. So I think you do have to be good, and I worry all the time. I completely share those concerns all the time that some of these new institutions are just … it’s hard. There’s no question about it because everyone is against you. The entire culture is against you, but I do worry about some of the institutions for sure.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, I think one of the things your colleagues Crystal and Saagar have done that I think is really smart is building a really great set, a really professional-looking set, wearing a suit and a dress every day. I actually think that that does matter as we sit here in our flannel and T-shirt. This is not the same kind of product. This isn’t trying to be mainstream. This is a conversation for nerds and weirdos. Sorry, I-
Emily Jashinsky:
We are the fringe.
Inez Stepman:
I think it’s very smart because it’s exactly what you’re saying: if you’re trying to get people to move away from their muscle memory, you’re being judged at a higher standard, and you have to realize that, and you have to play into it. Anyway, what did you think about … let’s talk about the debate for a brief second here. Not too long because I’m tired of talking about it, but I’m sure everyone else is tired about talking about it too, but who do you think won the debate? Does it matter who won the debate? Is it just the midget debate?
Emily Jashinsky:
It’s very much just the second-tier debate in 2016 where they would put Lindsey Graham on a second stage on a debate that nobody watched except for journalists. That was my interpretation of basically the whole debate, and I’ve been beating this analogy into the ground over and over again, but one way that I’ve been thinking of it is you have Ron DeSantis, who’s like the varsity player who’s been forced to just practice with a JV squad. You have Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s the freshman, who’s trying to get on the JV squad, and then everyone else is JV. And also, you can put Mike Pence in the varsity basket just because he’s been the Vice President of the United States.
And Pence is constantly dunking on the JV players, just aggressively dunking on the JV players like he’s in the championship game, and Vivek is taking dunks that he might miss, but he’s taking these dunks left and right because he wants to prove that he can jump. It doesn’t matter if he makes the shot; he just wants you to see that he can jump. So the reason I think that’s helpful is that I really think DeSantis did exactly what he had to do, which was not take risks, get in the background, and knock the balls that are thrown his way out of the park. Just hit them, get on base, and do what you need to do. I’m torturing these sports metaphors.
He didn’t take risks because he didn’t have to, because if you go into that debate thinking that anything that happens within that two-hour timeframe is going to significantly help you eat into somebody’s 40-point lead who is not in the room, you’re delusional. You’re delusional. And so I think it’s not surprising that Vivek maybe shot up in some flash poles. I don’t know that he has the steam to keep traction and to really sustain that momentum. I think he probably has a pretty low ceiling to be honest, but he did exactly what he needed to do, which was get out there and be the center of attention and increase his name ID, which he was successful at doing.
So, all this is to say … I mean, I just think the most important thing about the debate is that it wasn’t going to eat into the 40-point lead substantially and the entire political class treated it like it could upend Donald Trump, and I found that very irritating.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, I’m not sure your dunking analogy works, not just because of the multiple sports involved, but because it would be the equivalent of a guy who’s running around dunking on the freshmen, but he just captains the team to the worst finish for the last … I guess the high school analogy, it would be the last three years. He’s the senior who captained the team for four years, and they lost every step of the way, and the dunking comes off differently, I think, to people. Now, that’s not to say that people loved Vivek Ramaswamy. First time we’ve had someone on the debate stage who’s a former High Noon guest.
Emily Jashinsky:
All right. You haven’t had Nikki Haley on?
Inez Stepman:
No, I mean, I think he’s a smart guy. I think his performance was probably incredibly polarizing, and some of the polls bear that out, where people didn’t know who he was before. Some of them loved what he had to say. A lot of people didn’t love it, which is why his favorability ratings actually plummeted. They both went up and down, but the down went down so much higher or by a larger number. So, his favorability ratings ended up plummeting. I mean, really, he is just … I guess he hopes that he’s Trump’s heir, right? If Trump, for whatever reason, whether it’s because he’s literally sitting in a Georgia jail, which would be a constitutional crisis of enormous magnitude, or because he’s an old guy, I hate to say it.
That Vivek is going to get the blessing of Trump, that he’s just going to bow out of the race for health reasons or something else, and that Vivek is going to get the endorsement. I mean, that’s what it sort of seems like to me. I do think the exchange between Pence and Vivek was very revealing, where … I don’t know, I keep using the one weird trick analogy. You know, when you’re on the internet, when you’re scrolling stuff, and it’s like one weird trick to know if you have heart disease. One weird trick to lose 80 pounds or whatever it is, and it’s like some kind of weird snake oil thing. I feel like it’s the one weird trick mentality when it comes to Pence and the sort of Morning in America routine.
And I really do think that it’s a generational thing, where I think particularly boomers and older voters, they can’t quite believe that American institutions are as rotten and corrupt as … I think the younger generations have no trouble believing them to be at this point. So, they think, well … and I think Pence even literally said, “We just need our government who’s as good as our people. All we have to do is swap out a few people in the government, and everything is going to be fine.” That’s a very … I don’t know, to me, that reads as wildly optimistic, and Vivek, I think, won that exchange at least in the eyes of not just for me, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the Gen X voters, millennial voters who are not in the palm of the left are probably nodding along with that.
I think there is a dark mood in the country. I don’t think Morning in America is … it’s more like M-O-U, Mourning in America, than it is in 1983.
Emily Jashinsky:
That was a boomerism right there. Morning in America. How about Mourning in America?
Inez Stepman:
Probably a boomer joke. Anyway, no, I don’t know. That exchange to me came off as extremely relevant about where a lot of the Republican Party still is and unable to confront, essentially … and it makes sense because if you’re a small C conservative, right? These are not small C conservative times. We now have institutions that do not need conserving. If you called that there’s any content at all and that conservatism is anything more than progressivism going the speed limit, then you have to be, to some degree or another, anti-institutional, and that does conflict with some deep sense of small C conservatism. Nevertheless, it’s very clearly where the base of the Republican Party is, at least to my mind. I don’t know.
Do you think there’s just a lot of people who don’t have that? Do you think that a sort of Morning in America campaign, forgetting for a moment about the specifics of Reaganesque policy, but the perspective that yes, we’re just going to fix a few things real quick and that we’re going to actually be able to return to the glory days of the 1990s or the 1980s, do you think that that is something that appeals to people or do you think it comes off as Pollyannish?
Emily Jashinsky:
I thought that was one of two moments that were genuinely worthwhile at the debate, and both were between Vivek and Mike Pence, of all people. One of which was when Mike Pence sort of turned to him and was like, “Pipe down little guy, basically like we need somebody with experience to handle the government at this point. We can’t afford to send somebody with inexperience,” which may be a perfectly fine argument to make. It is not an argument that his base wants to hear dressed up in that level of sanctimony because people … and he should know this better than anyone, basically.
People are completely tired of the political class to the point where they actually would trust an outsider way more than an insider because they feel like they’re getting screwed by the insider year after year after year, even when they say the right things, but this gets to what you’re talking about in the second exchange because I think it shows that Mike Pence and people who are in his camp are not willing to concede that a huge swath of Republican voters are in that sort of mindset where they actually … they really don’t want a political insider and they don’t want to “conserve” these institutions. They just genuinely want to throw all the bums out. And that is a difference, I think that they are not willing to fully reckon with, like how deep-seated that is in the Republican base.
You would think after being part of the conservative movement as Mike Pence has been, which has had this populous strain, going back to when he had a talk radio show in Indiana, going back to the Tea Party Movement that he was a part of and going back to the Trump populist wave that he was very much a part of. I don’t know if it’s for Mike Pence, a psychological thing with having gone through the actual horrors that he did go through on January 6th that he just doesn’t want to believe that this is a significant force that people … you sort of need to have a conversation with. And I’m not talking about rioters, I’m talking about that kind of anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party, which is basically the entire Republican Party now, which is why you can’t talk like that.
I mean, Reagan used Morning in America as a reelection campaign. It wasn’t a “Put me in office campaign,” like sunny optimism. It was … we’ve actually done some things, hope you’re feeling better, reelect me, I’ll keep the momentum going message. It wasn’t, “Hey, things are actually okay.” It was, “Literally, I have made things better.” And that’s not a message that Mike Pence really can make, or I mean right now, it’s not, because throughout his administration, the sort of weaponization that people really care about got worse. Then Biden came in, and the culture war hit a fever pitch, and a lot of these problems got worse.
So it’s just completely tone-deaf, and that’s a cliche thing to say, but I think for him, maybe it’s this psychological unwillingness to reckon with what the Republican Party has become and to empathize, again, not with rioters, but to truly empathize with people whether they’re younger or they’re just of a different social class than the suburbs of Indianapolis or of Fort Wayne or Milwaukee or Chicago. There are a lot of people in the suburbs who, despite probably having high levels of obesity and tech addiction materially, they’re doing better than a lot of other people in the country, and they’re okay. The upward mobility still exists for them.
Their neighborhoods are relatively safe. They’re able to put food on the table and save. That is not representative of the majority of Republican voters or voters in general. For me, maybe that’s the best explanation for it after having a front-row seat to all of this, all I can say he’s a smart guy. All I can say is maybe it’s a psychological sort of block.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. Certainly a divide, if not a block. It’s interesting. The one other thing that I was thinking about when I was watching this debate, and this is actually not necessarily at least a knock on Vivek, but there’s been these videos going around of young Vivek asking questions at a candidate forum, I think in 2008. There’s also, apparently … so Pete Buttigieg was at the same exact forum, and it struck me as sort of a moment. We have these two bright young guys, hustlers both obviously looked in the mirror at age 12 and are like, “You’re going to be president someday.” So I have sort of a nebulous problem with this that goes beyond the particulars of either one of these people. So whether you hate them or love them or you love one or hate the other.
It seems to me that we do have a society, and I’m thinking about this a lot because I’m finally putting the finishing touches on an essay I’ve been writing forever about what I think is wrong with Palo Alto and with a Palo Alto model that I grew up in, is that it really does select for a few things that on their own are not bad, but to me do not add up to leadership caliber at least on their own. And that’s intelligence, IQ of a certain type. It’s hard work, many hours. It is being able to color within the lines, being able to advance in this kind of academic complex, credentialism complex that involves necessarily a certain amount of compliance in terms of now with the ideology of that professional class.
And again, none of these things are in isolation, the worst thing ever, and many of them are positive traits. Certainly, hard work is a positive trait. Certainly, having that kind of American hustle I think, is a positive trait. Having being a smart person is obviously a good thing, but I think about who our best presidents have been, for example, and it’s not clear at all to me that the smartest presidents have been the best ones. Our smartest presidents, probably a handful of them, right? Wilson, Nixon. It’s hard to be president if you’re an idiot. Don’t get me wrong. If you can’t tie your shoes, you’re probably not on the presidential shortlist, although I’m sure there are people would argue with me on several of our presidents.
The most universally appreciated president in his own time was George Washington. I think if you administered an IQ test to the founders, right? George Washington probably wouldn’t crack the top 10. There were an enormous number of brilliant men at the founding, involved in the founding, and yet they all deferred to this guy and all found him to be worth following because he was a leader of men, and I think that has something to do with virtue. It has to do something with a certain amount of vitality, especially, I think, masculine vitality actually, that there’s clearly something … there are qualities that are not measured by this kind of credentialed professional class.
You can throw sort of a capitalism into the mix too, that have designed an economy and now, a political system that elevates people like Ramaswamy and Pete Buttigieg, to the exclusion of other qualities that are perhaps more ephemeral that don’t show up on an SAT or LSAT tests, that are somehow … more tactile, in some ways more personal and have more to do, and you can throw if you want, Ron DeSantis into this mix, although I do think he’s a little bit in the middle. He doesn’t have Trump’s charisma for sure, but he clearly has a flare for actual executive authority.
Emily Jashinsky:
Right. He’s not a technocrat.
Inez Stepman:
No, he’s not a technocrat. He’s a nerd, maybe, but he’s not a technocrat. I don’t know if that comes from the military or what in him, but he’s clearly not that same kind of technocratic manager or managerial type. I don’t know, a lot of us still, as I said, is kind of nebulous in my thinking. I have this strong gut instinct that we are selecting against some qualities that are necessary for genuine leadership or statesmanship when it comes to this kind of professional class. And whether that’s in our political class, could have all kinds of reasons for that, but even in our economy, we’re not … I mean, I think about the titans of industry, the 19th century, you think of a very different class of people than we think about billionaires today.
Jeff Bezos is not a 19th century, depending on your perspective, titan of industry or robber baron. He’s just not. He doesn’t have that quality to him, that sort of dominant quality to him that makes men flock to follow him, or even women flock to follow him. He doesn’t have that. We have a sort of society of billionaire nerds who don’t often seem unable to look up from their own shoes, and then those of them that do, they have this very systematic way and technocratic way of looking at the world and solving problems, which has its uses, but seems to me has also had its limits and we’re running into them.
Emily Jashinsky:
Yeah, there are a couple of things. I would say one: I wonder what all of this says about masculinity, and that isn’t to exclude wonderful girl bosses like Sheryl Sandberg or Hillary Clinton from the conversation. We would not want to do that under any circumstance because they deserve a seat at the table, but it is to say that there was … while you were talking, I was actually thinking about … because we’ve discussed this before, that the 19th century, either you see them as titans of industry or robber barons, but that archetype of Carnegie or Rockefeller or whoever it is, and I think the first person actually to be full circle here that put that in my mind was Tucker Carlson who did a monologue, I don’t know, maybe five years ago on the differences between today’s class of billionaires and the gilded ages class of billionaires.
And we can all come to this discussion with the sort of premise, accepting the premise that a lot of the so-called robber barons, whether they were robber barons or not, did not conduct themselves honorably in every circumstance. There’s no question about that. At the same time though, they existed in a culture of shame, and they existed in a culture of small R, republican virtue that does not exist today. And I think maybe Obama ushered in this era, and that isn’t to say there wasn’t a sense of shamelessness in the Bush administration from Dick Cheney or others when they presented information, dubious information to the American public as though it was concrete truth.
That isn’t to say they didn’t have problems. I do, though, think when you look at the sort of archetypical personalities of the technocrats, there’s a sort of sliminess or a Pete Buttigieg is running away from taking responsibility for all of these things that have happened under his watch with airlines and trains. He’s never man enough to step up to a microphone and say, “I take complete and full responsibility for this problem.” He’s constantly pointing fingers in other directions and constantly running away from the problems and trying to figure out how to shape his image in a way that … he seems more concerned about his image sometimes than the substance of the question.
All I’m saying is not that one group of people was better than another group of people. It’s to say, I think for all of the horrible flaws that our culture had at the time, among those things was obviously rampant racism that was codified into law in certain parts of the country. There was that sort of small R, republicanism that meant you had a duty to your community, that meant you had a duty not just to yourself. And maybe I just sort of talked my way into the point that technocrats have this sort of naked self-interest that’s incredibly unbecoming and masculine and makes for poor leaders.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, there’s definitely something about the service to something higher. And even as late, like I’m thinking now about Teddy Roosevelt, for example, who was born into the highest echelons of privilege, now we might call it. He was born as a member of the elite but took it as a requirement for himself to have respect for himself that he would put his own life on the line, that he would lead men in a real way before accepting positions, some of the positions that he held later in life, including president, that there was something that he could learn, that the kind of leadership that is required is something that cannot be learned through spreadsheets.
Even though he was quite a historian, by the way, quite a scholar and a historian, wrote some great histories. I think even if you run the through line all the way, and part of this is about, I think, the military and Marshall virtue. It requires something different, and I think, sadly, even in the military today, that is disappearing. In other words, I wouldn’t say that our class of generals, for example, on the whole exhibit this, I think in a previous generation, they would have much more, it is becoming more technocratic. So, in other words, even the military has become more in this direction. Forgetting for a moment about the woke stuff and ads with transgenders in it and everything else.
I’m talking about something separate, like to get promoted. It’s clearly … it’s always been a political game, but this time it’s more of a managerial game, and it’s a different creature. A military is a different creature now, but I would say as late as John McCain. Regardless of what you think about John McCain’s particular politics and being in a moderate side of the Republican Party and blah, blah, blah, there really was in his family, still that sort of treat through line. I mean, most of his male children serve. He himself is a son of an admirable admiral who went into the military. It was expected of him. The idea of it being expected that a son of Jeff Bezos would go into the military is laughable.
It’s laughable now, but even in our own lifetimes, it was not just laughable but expected for the son of an admiral who wanted to have a future in politics to serve.
Emily Jashinsky:
It doesn’t make you a great guy.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah.
Emily Jashinsky:
Right, it doesn’t necessarily make you a great guy. It just means you’re responsive to these cultural norms that are objectively better.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, it means that you have done something and risks yourself in some way, right? If you’re seriously leading men into battle, you have risked yourself in some way that we demand. Now, of course, Buttigieg, as far as I know, did serve, right?
Emily Jashinsky:
Yes.
Inez Stepman:
So look, I’m not saying even that it’s only … I think it’s connected, but not exclusively with this military thing, but it does strike me that even the military is going away from this ethos, especially in the upper echelons of “leadership,” and we really have lost, there is something lost. If our competitions are between people who have essentially distinguished themselves in being smart asses, it’s not, “Look, I’m a smart ass. I know. Okay, it’s out there,” laughing at me for describing myself. I get it.
Emily Jashinsky:
Maybe you’re more of a dumbass. I don’t know. You flatter yourself.
Inez Stepman:
Yes, maybe I’m flattering myself, but I know that … and I do think it’s connected, by the way, with masculinity. I don’t think it’s disconnected from the male/female divide, but in any case, I do think we’ve lost something. When I look at what is the pinnacle of what our society produces, what is … if you are successful in our society, what do you look like? You look like Pete Buttigieg, and I’m not talking now about being a White male. I’m talking about how you conduct yourself, what your resume looks like, what you’ve done with your life, right? I think there’s something fundamentally missing in that map.
Emily Jashinsky:
I agree, and actually, Pete Buttigieg, as you were talking, strikes me as an interesting transitional figure. You mentioned the kind McCain family within our own lifetime and Buttigieg, I have no idea what his motives for enlistment were. I have no idea what prior generation’s motives for enlistment were, in particular, cases. Except for that I know it was a norm and that it felt embarrassing in certain war times for men not to be able to serve. That was a fate worse than death for some men. They hated the idea that they couldn’t have gone to Europe on the battlefields, and whatever you think about that, it was a different cultural situation.
So I think Buttigieg … Bezos, to me, Buttigieg, Bezos right now, they’re so just self-interested, palpably, self-interested, every time they’re on the public stage. And that is … again, even things that they do, things that they don’t do, like in Buttigieg’s case, he should have … and I think, in a healthier society, he would’ve resigned from his post at the DOT over what has happened under his watch to people with airlines, just the levels of complete chaos. Granted, he took over in a hard time, in COVID, but still, I mean from the southwest debacle to what’s happened with supply chains and shipping and trains. I just think in a healthier society, all of the incentives would’ve been to bow your head gracefully and step down.
It would’ve been shameful to cling to that position of power at a different time. And Bezos would be completely abjectly humiliated over some of the things he’s done at Amazon. And in fact, Amazon factories had a significantly worse safety record by their own reporting in years past than their competitors, Walmart, et cetera. Carnegie was so ashamed socially stigmatized by what was happening on his watch with his employees that he decided to turn around and become charitable in a totally different way, I have to think that there was social stigma, it wasn’t just a come to Jesus moment for Andrew Carnegie. I have to think that there was a whole lot of social stigma coming in his way that genuinely changed his behavior.
And there are different cases like that from years past as well, where you look at today, and it’s just like Mark Zuckerberg. Okay, so you get hounded by Hillary Clinton, the entire Democratic Party for apparently allowing Russia to change the election, to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, and you turn around and give all of your charity money or a significant … huge portion of your charity money to partisan electioneering. Again, if that’s your way to make up for doing what’s perceived as a grave error, just pumping billions into partisan causes. Yeah, it’s a very different time.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. It’s occurring to me, as you’re saying this, that the last time … I think I actually watched this era of shame fall away in terms of business practices. The last time I remember it being relevant in the discussion was in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a series of boycotts of American companies for Chinese sweatshop labor, like Nike and relevantly to this discussion, Apple, where there were a series of suicides in Apple factories because the conditions were just awful. Now, we don’t know exactly why people commit suicide, but that was the reporting. You know what, it just kind of went away. It just kind of went away. That moment just left and there hasn’t really been any backlash or shaming of business practices since then.
It’s been relegated really to the sort of AOC left, which is still a small percentage of the American political spectrum. Speaking of things that people used to commit Harry Curie for, let alone resign in the, let’s say, the post-Christian world, I don’t want to close out this hour without talking about Lahaina. I am not going to stop talking about Lahaina until there is some kind of investigation, which I hope will happen. At this point, we still … this many days, weeks later, we don’t have an accurate death toll. There are outstanding, some over a thousand people still missing, is my understanding. So this will be Katrina-level death toll, right?
I think Katrina was around 1500 people, died in Katrina. Not to mention, of course, the devastation to property. I think this will be on that level, and one, it’s incredible, we don’t know this yet, and I cannot shake the feeling that the media is just not reporting on this because they hope that we will forget about Hawaii and the natural disaster there and another couple news cycles and then, quietly on page 14, they will release that the actual death toll is not 114, but something like around 1100 or more with a high percentage of children. So you cover media malfeasance. That’s a lot of what you’ve done as a reporter.
I mean, I will confess to genuinely … I didn’t think the bar could be any lower, but this kind of shocked me still, not that they were covering for the Democratic Party, and everyone involved here has a D after their name. So that doesn’t shock me, but that they would actually not cover an incident of this magnitude with this many Americans who died, that they would just try to memory hole it and not cover it. I mean, I expected all the spin. I expected that kind of stuff. Maybe try to … it seemed like in initial days they were trying to really shoehorn it into the climate change narrative, right?
And that’s before … there are now reports of at least, I think at this point, there are seven or eight different points at which this fire could have been prevented or mitigated, and loss of life could have been prevented or mitigated by pure government ideological incompetence. Where is the story going? Are they going to get away with it, Emily? Are they going to get away with just memory holing an incident where hundreds and hundreds of Americans likely died?
Emily Jashinsky:
Yes, because once it goes away, it doesn’t come back, and it actually reminds me most of the Las Vegas shooting that really dipped out of news coverage quickly and never came back. And it’s a nonsense excuse that they don’t have enough news to cover. If that is their excuse for the disproportionately low share of the news cycle the story has been assigned to in the last couple of weeks since it happened, it’s nonsense because there are all kinds of angles, to your point, coming out about where this could have been stopped. And there’s all kinds of news coming out every single day about the federal government’s response.
And in fact, I shouldn’t say there’s news coming out. I should say there’s potential for news to be coming out because what you need to have is an army of journalists and activists on the ground in Hawaii. I know there are a lot of people doing a lot of good down there, and I know there are journalists who have done some good work down there, but it’s not the army that it should be. Without that, you might not even actually know. You might not get to the bottom of some of the really serious things that are happening during the federal government’s response and watching the state government’s response, watching the nonprofit sort of NGO response to the disaster when you don’t have enough people on the ground covering it, proportionate to its level of importance.
And there’s this misconception. The last thing I’ll say is this misconception that media runs on, if it bleeds, it leads. So, of course, they’ll cover anything that’s a natural disaster tragedy. They sort of are ambulance chasers in the pejorative sense and are constantly milking things exactly like national disasters for drama. They do that sometimes, but when it doesn’t serve a political purpose, now they don’t, they don’t. And that’s … I think when you get to the Harvest Festival and you look back on a bunch of country music fans in Las Vegas and this guy who should have been known to authorities, and you’re talking to a bunch of survivors and a bunch of families of the victims who are not going to want the issue to be shoehorned into gun control.
You might, sadly, tragically have the story that you think you want, and if you realize that you can’t shoehorn this natural disaster into a broader climate narrative, they might, at best, just have a business explanation for that. They might say, “Listen, if we can’t tie this to a broader national international story, a broader international theme, then it’s not going to do numbers for us. Everyone is going to tune out. So we’ll give its allotted time, and we’ll do a little bit. We’ll send Norah O’Donnell down there, and we’ll do what we can but it’s not going to pop those numbers off the screen. We’re going to be losing people if we don’t move on to something else for indictments, et cetera, et cetera.
That’s really no excuse. It’s just really, really no excuse at all whatsoever. That is the most sanctimonious people in the country telling us that it’s just dollars and cents that’s more important than worthwhile stories to cover. So I agree with you, Inez. I’m glad that you’re on top of this because there’s a lot to learn still, and I’m not sure that we’re going to learn it.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. They need me on top of it, it’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Yeah. Obviously, our thoughts are with the people who lost family in this incident. I want to repeat again from my episode with Tony Kinnett, who was doing reporting on the ground in Lahaina, if you have a family trip planned, do consider Maui. Do not avoid the island, as some people are telling you, that it was the … that’s what he told me, the locals the most, that the thing that they were most worried about is that people were going to listen to the idea, the message, to cancel their trips to Maui.
They really do need that tourism economy there. And then, obviously, if you have a reliable direct connection with someone, please do. If you can share your wallet, be it besides your thoughts and prayers, please do so. This was a devastating, devastating fire, and just how devastating, we will continue not to know because of media malfeasance. On that somewhat downer note, Emily, thanks for doing another episode of High Noon: After Dark with me. It’s always good to have you, even when you insult me.
Emily Jashinsky:
It’s always a highlight of my month, Inez, but I can insult you any day, so that’s fine, too.
Inez Stepman:
And thank you to our listeners. High Noon, including After Dark with Inez Stepman is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. As always, you can send comments and questions to [email protected]. Please help us out by hitting the subscribe button and leaving us a comment or a review on Apple Podcast, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, or iwf.org. Be brave, and we’ll see you next time on High Noon.