"Why Was This Election Even Close"?

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OK, but this airtight cultural hegemony of liberalism what they call "cancel culture," which is kind of a weird euphemism for "hegemony." These people run the show and if you speak out, you will be punished. And it's happened to friends of mine who are totally decent. Like, way-to-the-left kind of people, you know, really good people. But you cannot challenge this hegemony publicly. And you see it in the news media. It's everywhere. It's in the art world. It's in the medicine world. It's in the university; in higher education. It's everywhere you go.

This is a recipe for turning people off. In 1936, the media did the exact same thing to Roosevelt. They were on the other side back then. They were very, very, very conservative. Newspapers, were owned by these very wealthy men, like what's-his-name in Chicago, McCormick. They hated Roosevelt. They came together against him with unprecedented unanimity, attacking him. Like, there'd be a city with two or three papers: all of them would be against Roosevelt, attacking him on the front page. Every news story was biased, you know. Just this incredible climate of hysteria against Roosevelt.

And, you know, one of the journalism studies of the day that I was reading basically said after Roosevelt proceeded to win this incredible landslide he won forty-eight states, you know this wipeout and they attribute it in part not only to the fact that he was popular and was doing a good job as president, but to this incredible snob-union against him, this sort of common front of the a**holes, you know, the rich and the conservative newspaper-owners, the newspaper barons. And it's satirized in movies of the period. What is it called? Meet John Doe. Or Citizen Kane, you know, which isn't really about the thirties, but Meet John Doe is. It's a Capra movie in which this newspaper owner is plotting this kind of malign campaign.

But, yeah, the public hated these people. Absolutely hated them. And we walked right into the trap. I mean, it's the exact same thing all over again. I mean, Trump is no Roosevelt. Trump is just a jackass. But the mistake is exactly the same.

Well, that's what you've said many times. The right has captured the anti-elitism, even though they represent the worst parts of the elite.

Well, they used to: they're slowly losing them. But, yeah, big oil. Big polluters. Yeah. Yes, that is exactly right. And they're going to ride that for the rest of our lives.

Oh, God, I hope not. But I go back to this media issue

Paul, you've got to treat it as a spectator sport. Otherwise you're going to go crazy.

Yeah. I'm not going crazy. [Laughter.] So what Fox did, I think is a very important piece of how this unfolded. Fox showed a business model

Yes!

not so much the political model; it was the business model: you make money throwing red meat to a segment of the society, meaning the hard right. And just keep throwing red meat at them and you will make money.

Yeah.

MSNBC and CNN start falling down. They start really losing to Fox, so they start adopting a similar business model, which is totally anti-Trump, totally anti-Fox. No journalism, you know just "liberal" (if you want to even call it that) red meat to their base. And there's no journalism left, which means the people watching Fox who might be willing to look at a news network that actually did journalism and was willing to critique Obama in a serious way and willing to go after the corporate Democrats and so on, journalistically, there's no such thing on a mass scale.

In America, that's true. And I'm living testimony to it. I used to be on there all the time until I started criticizing Obama. And I mean, friendly criticism, remember. But even that is not acceptable. Now, how's that for freaky in the land of the free press, you know? That's crazy.

So, to go back to what you said about Fox News, you're exactly right. I mean, that's the whole cable revolution. That's when they figured out you can make tons of money just by hitting a small demographic. Remember in the old days where there were only three networks, you tried for these gigantic mass audiences. The lowest common denominator, all that stuff. But cable comes along and they start figuring this out. And it was Roger Ailes who was Nixon's campaign manager. You remember this? Roger Ailes was the boss of Fox News, and he figured out something very simple and yet, today, so obvious: a lot of this is really good entertainment. People get caught up in these stories. You know, the stories have a natural kind of human appeal. It's all about, you know, Christians being persecuted or ordinary Americans being disrespected or, you know, the fantasy of the war on Christmas. You know, whatever the nutty fantasy of the day is, that stuff nevertheless is compelling and it really draws you in.

And so, news becomes entertainment and it becomes excellent entertainment. Remember Glenn Beck, you remember that show? I mean, to call that a news show was just absurd, but it was really compelling. You know, you're surrounded by communists. They're all secret. The president himself is probably one. [Laughing.] It was berserk. It was nuts.

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