Trump's TikTok Dance

Well, House Republicans called Robert Hurd to testify yesterday so they could yell at him for not indicting Biden and generate some content for campaign ads. Here's an example from Republican Representative Tom Tiffany.

Unfortunately, it was very polite the way he said it. Just before the hearing, House Democrats released the full transcript of her interview with Biden, which at one point showed the special counsel contradicting his own characterization of Biden's memory. Let's listen. I now want to turn you to the transcript. And day one, page 47..

You said to President Biden, you have appeared to have a photographic understanding and recall of the House. Did you say that to President Biden?

Trump tried to delete incriminating security tape footage from Mar-a-Lago, and he got his attorney to provide a false certification to the FBI, saying he had produced all the documents in his possession. I'd have to get the exact dates for you. I can do that. Am I correct that you married your current wife in January 2005?? I don't know.

relative to that date. In what years were you the owner of the pub hotel? I don't know the years. James Webb. I don't remember the names.

I don't remember the name. So you don't remember saying you have one of the best memories? I don't remember that. I remember you telling me, but I don't know the answer.

Just being like, did you say this? And the person being like, apparently I did. That sounds great. I would go to law school just to depose people. That's all I want to do.

Because you had Republicans yelling at her about how he's the praetorian guard for Biden, which he is not. And also, I don't know how the praetorian guard got involved here.

Getting actual answers. Everyone involved decided this is a televised hearing. We must do televised hearing things and yell at each other and yell at him. This former special counsel, who did not ask for any of this. He's just there and he was yelled at.

But I think that it was interesting because a couple of write-ups I saw were like, this could have election ramifications. And I'm thinking back to, do you remember four years ago? Do you remember what was taking place roughly four years ago?

This report is not good. This hearing was not good. But whether it will be relevant to people voting in November, which is, it's a while from now. A lot can happen. You can have an entire global pandemic between now and then.

I would prefer we didn't. Four years ago, I was like, all right, goodbye, everybody. Taking my social media break for a let. And I came back and we were in the midst of a global pandemic. So I'm really trying not to instigate that again.

Yeah, please. I'm doing my very best. But I will just say, like, I don't know how relevant this is going to be. I don't know what's going to be at top of mind for voters, especially because the opposition candidate also has apparently memory issues and a deposition and a host of legal issues.

And now there are interviews with former Mar-a-Lago staffers saying, like, yeah, we just move stuff around. And it seemed weird. Like, that's not good. But again, I don't know what it will mean for people voting in November.

In the report, her says Biden, quote, did not remember even within several years when his son Bo died. Of course, what actually happened is that Biden was telling a story to her about why he started thinking about running for president in 2017, 2018, which involved a promise to his dying son. Biden said, what month did Bo die? Oh, my God, May 30th. And then a White House lawyer interrupted to say 2015..

And Biden said, was it 2015? he died? The lawyer said yes. And Biden said it was 2015.. So, like, it's, not like her was completely lying.

But when you say did not remember even within several years when his son Bo died, you wouldn't know from that that he immediately knew what date it was and was just had to be corrected on the year, as he was telling a very, very long story about why he ran for president.

I can tell you everything about it. I can tell you what the weather looked like. But what year? Not sure. Like, might need a moment.

And, like, that was a moment in which I think that and I think Representative Raskin also made the point that, like, there seemed to be Republicans getting really upset about document handling seemed a little bit of a I'm giving a side. I am aware that side is not ideal for a podcast format. But I do think that there is a sense about being like. this hearing was not about documents. This hearing was about Biden should be charged with crimes and removed from the White House.

And, you know, who should take his place in the White House? Donald Trump, another person with documents issues who actually has been charged with crimes.

So, in case that's not going to happen, Biden's old. Yep. Biden's old, and he's senile, even though Robert just said he wasn't. But anyway, that's what they were trying to push. I don't think they successfully.

I don't think they successfully advanced the storyline about Biden's age in this hearing.

I do, like guys do things on occasion. And there is an idea of like. if we talk a lot about how Biden is old, then the media will have to report that he is old. And then they'll have to do like roundtable discussions about how old is Joe Biden? He's so old that he might remember Truman.

I don't know. And like. that's the point. But I do think that the challenge is that like Trump is also old. I'm aware that that is not a discussion that we have all the time.

I think that a couple of people, I think McKay Coppins, who's a great writer for The Atlantic, has made the point that, like so much of Trump's weirdness is baked in with American voters and with, you know, kind of the media that like, if you just keep saying like weird things, Trump says, there's a certain moment. There's a sports writer. He owns The Ringer, Bill Simmons. He came up with this thing years ago, called the Mike Tyson zone, which is that like Mike Tyson. If you, if you hear that Mike Tyson did anything like Mike Tyson jumped off the Eiffel Tower, you'd be like, yeah, probably like there is a certain zone.

And like Donald Trump is within the Mike Tyson zone of like, yeah, if I heard, if you told me that Donald Trump went on a long rant about the Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls and how terrible it was, I'd be like, yeah. 100 percent, not a surprise at all. Nope, nope, nope. I'm like now. I'm going to incept myself into believing that this happened.

But like there it, this hearing was an effort to put this conversation about Biden's age back into media spaces and make the media talk about it. And I think that the media will continue to talk about Biden's age, because I do think it is relevant for obvious reasons. Namely, he is elderly. Actuarial tables are actuarial tables for a reason. But I also think that, on this particular issue of the documents issue, I don't think that they got what they wanted out of it.

It's the same way that the Biden impeachment didn't go anywhere. Like you can, you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make it into a document scandal, as the saying says.

But what did you think?

that's not how this works. And I do think like how his. I don't think it's going to have any impact on polling. But I do think that Republicans keep setting the expectations for Joe Biden on the floor. We saw this in 2020 and we have seen this over and over again that Joe Biden is supposed to be barely alive.

He is supposed to be unable to do literally anything, and that he will do anything. He will. he will appear to be a member of the human race in good standing. And then Republicans are like, well, he was loud. He was very loud and he jacked up.

He seemed annoyed. And like at a certain point, like maybe set your expectations for Joe Biden, like slightly above comatose. Like. I think that that is the challenge here. Like if you have baked in this idea that Joe Biden is senile and then Joe Biden does things that make it obvious that he is not senile.

I think that you are ignoring, if you're a Republican, things that are actually things you could go after Joe Biden. You could go after Joe Biden on any number of subjects. You go after the withdrawal from Afghanistan or any number of actual policy issues. This is me trying to make this election about policy, while it will not be about policy. I know that.

I know that. But, like. I think that it just. it's so easy, it's so easy to just be like, oh, he's old and can't do anything, whereas Donald Trump, not old, not weird, is, you know, this vital person like a Ben Garrison comic. And it keeps not working and they keep doing it over and over and over again.

And we were. we were much more afraid of that line of attack than we were what they ended up with by the end, which is like, you know, he did Benghazi. And because, once again, the Republicans let, like the fringe, take over the messaging. And it's just not, as it's not. the people had doubts about Obama, but they didn't believe that he was some evil, whatever that they painted him out to be.

And that is the same thing that the Republicans are doing with Biden.

But like, it is interesting how I mean, I mean, it's a. it's a cultural discussion. His Biden's age is an easier conversation to have that everyone makes sense of. when talking about withdrawing from Afghanistan gets complicated because a lot of people wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan and everyone was always going to be mad at the person who actually did. Everyone was going to be mad about the economy, or about biodynamics, or about inflation.

But, like, all of that is a little challenging to talk about. But like, he's old. That's easy. Yeah. And he's senile.

That's something that people kind of understand. It just happens that it keeps not necessarily being true.

Yeah. Like, and I have been. it is Joe Biden in that transcript is like to Joe Biden. Anyone who knows Joe Biden, who has been in meetings with Joe Biden, who has talked to Joe Biden, like, we have all heard those kind of stories where he has the mental acuity. He is sharp.

Right. And he remembers a lot. He goes on at length. Right. And he tells these stories.

And some of the stories are a little kooky, might make you roll your eyes time to time. But the guy is sharp. He is really sharp.

So the house is on a real tear this week on the heels of that very successful special counsel hearing. They just passed a bill three hundred and fifty, two to sixty five that would ban tick tock from all U.S. app stores, unless ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the social media platform, agrees to sell tick tock to an American based owner within one hundred and sixty five days. The legislation passed overwhelmingly bipartisan support. It also has support from President Biden.

This is all based on assessments from the intelligence community and the FBI that tick tock poses a threat to national security. They believe the Chinese government will use, or is using, the app to spy on American users, spread propaganda and interfere in our elections. The bill may or may not pass the Senate. We don't know yet, but it does have one brand new opponent, Donald Trump, who tried to ban tick tock when he was president, but just changed his mind recently after a fierce lobbying campaign by people with financial ties to tick tock, including a billionaire donor and Kellyanne Conway. Imagine that.

All right. Before we get to the Trump of it all. Like, what do you think of the ban or the potential ban?

Grindr in 2020, owned by a Chinese company, Kunlun, the U.

S. forces the sale of Grindr to San Vicente Acquisition because of security concerns, and people are still grinding. Is that what? I'm not going to ask. Someone will email me to tell me what the verb is.

It's a thing that you can do, but it's not about objectively what TikTok actually is. It is about what TikTok means. If you're former Vice President, Mike Pence, you believe it is digital fentanyl, which I don't entirely understand what that means, or what Mike Pence thinks fentanyl is, but that's neither here nor there. If you are Rand Paul, you believe that this is all deeply unfair. There are obviously a lot of libertarians with, I think, on many issues, I agree with them with regard to attempting to ban TikTok or limit TikTok.

Some of the arguments against TikTok that I've seen from Republicans seem to literally be like, it's poisoning our children with liberal nonsense. The idea that in China, TikTok is like, ah, they watch orchestra performances, but in America, they watch pornography on TikTok. No, that sounds stupid. If you have actual security concerns with regard to the ownership of TikTok, that is different from TikTok is bad, ban TikTok, no more TikTok for anyone. Those are two different things.

I think that how people are thinking about this app is actually how people are thinking about tech and this type of tech. On the one hand, you have people who I think are a smidgen too enthusiastic about it. Some of them are being paid to be enthusiastic, our good friend of the Bowling Green massacre, Kellyanne Conway.

There have been a host of TikTok influencers who have been on Capitol Hill to talk to people. I don't know if you may have seen, others may have seen, TikTok has had a big ad campaign in the United States to being like, I'm able to support my family. I'm educating toddlers. I'm making soap. I'm the nicest person in the entire world and I'm on TikTok.

Nothing bad could happen here, which I'm like, fine. But I think that the conversation is less about what TikTok is and more about what TikTok means, which is about a social media platform that is confusing and loud and sometimes filled with really bad stuff and sometimes filled with really good stuff. And it is currently seemingly out of control. And a lot of people don't like that. And a lot of people don't like that.

Other people don't like that.

I think TikTok is maybe one of the worst of all the platforms, because the algorithm is more determinative, right? There's very little choice involved. You're just being fed video after video, based on your own interests.

But you're right. If you want to do that, great. But operating in a country where the government is actively hostile to U.S. interests and looking for ways to spy on us, not good. I don't think we would have accepted, during the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union owning NBC.

That's something that would have been a problem for people.

There is a security concern that has been raised by many people of both parties, people who I do not think are completely insane. I think that that is worth hearing, especially because if TikTok is owned by an American company, then you can continue to watch. Keep TikToking. Whatever. Yeah, you can keep on TikToking or inventing TikTok dances.

And please just don't film your TikTok in public, because you look insane. What is also of interest to me is that Donald Trump, on this particular issue, who, as you mentioned, wanted to ban TikTok in 2020.. Donald Trump occasionally is accused, or given, accused is too negative a term. He is admired for his ability to do three, four, five dimensional chess on any number of issues. But Donald Trump is actually the most easily influenced person in the history of time.

Ever. Like at any time. And on this particular issue, he has been effectively influenced because there is a person that he hates. That person's name is Mark Zuckerberg. That person runs Facebook and a host of other entities.

For years, Donald Trump has hated Mark Zuckerberg, hated him a lot. And so the brilliant people who are paid millions of dollars to do this very thing go to Donald Trump and are like, hey, you know what Facebook hates? TikTok. You know what your supporters love? TikTok.

And, you know, your supporters are free on TikTok. David Urban, who's a lobbyist, longtime advisor to Trump, I believe he ran the Pennsylvania campaign in 2016, for Trump, said that the app could be a campaign tool. You've got Kellyanne Conway, who's being paid by Club for Growth, to defend TikTok, which is a circle that I really want to put a pin in to have a conversation about later, because Club for Growth doing this is weird to me as someone who's been following conservative politics for a long time. So, and then, you know, I think most importantly, you have Jeff Yass, who owns about 15 percent of ByteDance. He's the biggest donor to Club for Growth, and thus Kellyanne Conway.

And so, all of a sudden, Donald Trump, again, most easily influenced person in the history of time. Like, there are eight year old boys who are less easily influenced than Donald Trump. Actually, eight year old boys are really hard to convince of a lot of different things. Not Donald Trump. So Donald Trump now is like, TikTok, whatever.

But in comparison to the evil Mark Zuckerberg, we got to keep TikTok.

He will abandon it in a second if it's going to help him politically. And I do think, having said what I just did about TikTok, that there is a good case to be made that a TikTok ban, that it will. if this legislation is signed into law and ByteDance doesn't sell and TikTok has been banned in the United States and President Biden has signed that into law, and Donald Trump is out there opposing the ban. I think there's a very good case to be made that this will politically benefit Donald Trump, especially with a group of voters, young voters, who Joe Biden has been struggling with compared to how he did in 2020.. And so, like all that said, I'm like the political strategist in me.

I'm like, yeah, I might wait until after the election to do anything about this legislation. Right. Which I think that seemed to have been the path that was attempted four years ago.

Well-meaning millennials. And I will also say that in other countries where this has been attempted, TikTok basically just did what it has already done in the United States, which is that it became Instagram Reels. Like Instagram Reels are essentially repurposed TikToks. There are thousands. I don't actually have TikTok, but because of Instagram, I feel like I do.

And so it's not as if like TikTok has broken. contain. TikTok, like the people who are on TikTok do not stay there. They are also posting their content on YouTube. But like the content is there.

The users are there. Like you can't really attempting to limit. We are now in a point of like kind of social media amalgamation in which people who are on one platform don't just stay there. Their content doesn't just stay there. It crosses over.

But I do think, I mean, if I'm ByteDance, I just sell. I just sell. I do it like Grindr. I just sell to an American company for whatever millions of dollars.

And also, by the way, the Chinese government that does not allow any American social media platforms to operate in their country. Yes. And also has tight limits on their social media platforms, as has been found out 90 bazillion times over the last five years.

But like, how people think about this particular issue might be a little more complicated. I mean, yes, I am fully convinced that House members have been diluted with calls from young people, which I will say, it's kind of funny to me that people are like, why aren't young people more politically active? And then young people get politically active and then call their representative about an issue that matters to them. And people like, whoa, stop it.

Go away. They're doing the thing they're supposed to do.

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The Washington Post then followed up with the report that Kennedy has in fact selected his running mate and will announce his choice within two weeks. Kennedy's currently only on the ballot in four states, though his super PAC says he has enough signatures to qualify in Georgia and Arizona as well. Like Kennedy, Rogers and Ventura, both conspiracy theory guys. Rogers spreads misinformation about COVID. Ventura thinks the government did 9-11..

Gonna be tough to choose between them, huh? Apparently, Discovery Channel host Mike Rowe and Tony Robbins. Yes, that Tony Robbins are also in the mix. What do you think, Jane?

With respect, that is due, Jesse Ventura did serve as governor of the great state of Minnesota. That is a real thing. that happened. Many of us were there. Aaron Rogers.

Hang on, I need to gather myself. In January, I started out writing about the NFL and college football. That is my first love, my true passion.

A quote went around a bunch yesterday. The absolutely fantastic ESPN commentator and reporter, Meena Kimes, shared it, as did a host of other people. In January, Aaron Rogers, Jets quarterback, who played two plays for the Jets before tearing his Achilles, he told Pat McAfee on ESPN, because Aaron Rogers had time to call into Pat McAfee anytime he wants. He loves it. He said the Jets need to eliminate distractions.

Aaron Rogers, I want to talk at the very micro about the football of it all, because this is a rare opportunity in which I can do this.

People are mad at you all the time. You are working all the time. Aaron Rogers came over from the Packers. If you watched Hard Knocks this year, which was excellent. Aaron Rogers came across as a nice, interesting person with a lot of strange views, but he didn't really talk about those.

He seemed kind of like, oh, he was going to make the team better. He was doing a lot with team camaraderie and people got along. And then he gets hurt. And in normal peopleville, it would have been like, you know, you would have just seen a lot of like hashtag grind set posts on Instagram, as he like, works his way back from an Achilles chair, which is like the fact that you can do that now, like an Achilles chair in football or in sports in general, used to just be like, well, that's your, that's done. He was even hinting in December that like, oh, I could make a return.

That was never going to happen, but he just likes to hear himself talk. Being an NFL quarterback is a full time profession. Like if you're an NFL quarterback, that's all you do. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has been recovering from a hand issue. That's all he does.

He goes to physical therapy and recovers from his hand issue. He's not like, well, we're here. I'm going to enter the seminary and become a priest in my spare time.

And I like more than elections. Football.

Football is taking place. then. The fact that I saw that headline in the New York Times and for just a second, I was like, this isn't like some of that, one of those like weird, you remember like early 2000s, like internet scam stuff that was like political scams, where it's like, oh, you know, we fake the cover of a magazine and it's supposed to talk about how this is actually all about climate change or something like that. Like, for a second, I was like, wow, this is a really involved fake.

's candidacy, because he is not quite a serious person, has proved himself to be, nor is Aaron Rodgers in his spreading COVID misinformation and random conspiracies about Jimmy Kimmel and Jeffrey Epstein. that turned out, of course, not to be true. So, like Aaron Rodgers, not a serious person at this point, nor is Jesse Ventura at this point, or arguably ever. A lot of the other people on this list as well.

Like, it's like the guy you work with, where you have had approximately one beer with him and were like, that will never happen again because he just randomly started being like, so how do you think they fake the moon landing? And you're like, oh no, it's this person. He is like every time. I mean, he always has that plausible deniability about being like, I'm just, you know, I'm just thinking out loud, trying to think outside the system. But like he does have and should stay within his actual job, his actual job at which he is, let's remember, very good.

at multiple MVPs. He's won a Super Bowl. He has been very successful and he just happens to have this sideline of saying things that are fucking insane. RFK Jr. is actually a very serious person, which is why he is of concern, because he very seriously says and does the things that he says and does.

Like, yeah, this is not a sideline. He is a former environmental attorney who has been spreading vaccine misinformation for years, not because it is fun for him. It actually seems like it's not fun for him at all. He is very serious about this. He really, really believes that this is not like a being contrarian thing or trying to think outside the matrix.

He is absolutely 100 percent convinced of it. That is not good. And I think, too, I'm guessing what you're thinking of, like, how, you know, what are, what role RFK will play in the election? I think that the challenge is going to be that each party believes that he is going to be a problem at best for their opposition, at worst for them. And so, for instance, there's been talk about RFK joining the Libertarian Party ticket.

I don't think that is going to happen, because I will say this for the Libertarian Party. RFK is a very non-libertarian person. Very non. Like, the adjacent, it's not, it's, he, the ways in which he wants to wield the government on a host of issues, ranging from environmental issues, which, let's keep in mind, that is where he started out. Like, not very libertarian.

Now, that, he could still attempt to run on that ticket, but I don't think that the LP will permit that. I do think that RFK can thread this very particular needle of being someone that appeals to people who are conservative on social issues, but fairly liberal on economic issues, with regard to the welfare state, with regard to social security. You know, when you have conservative influencers and pundits saying, like, why should anyone retire? Retirement will kill you. Just work forever, as Ben Shapiro implied, I believe, yesterday.

A candidate who is talking a lot about the need to build up the welfare state, while espousing the same kind of anti-corporate, anti-quote-unquote, big pharma attitudes, that used to be something that, like, lefties, talked about in the early 2000s. Like, when you have a candidate who can appeal to people who think of themselves as being conservatives, while also sounding like somebody who would be at the WTA protests in 1999, like, that's an interesting through line. However,

I will also say, like, I think that that's a concern also for Biden. Like, you have someone who sounds this particular way, who can thread that particular needle, that I think that is a populace that neither party is reaching out to or understands. That is not to say that, like, everyone, should be aiming themselves at the vaccine-skeptical conservative voter. Like, that's, you know, that's not that big a population, and also vaccines are cool and good. But, like, I understand why both parties are concerned about this.

And I think, like, it is, this list of potential candidates really speaks to the, I'm not socially conservative, I'm, like, the kind of the, like, the political middle, that political, muddle-y middle of people who are also vaccine-skeptical, and really, like, state power, but also don't want to be told what to do, which is a large swath of people. Like, I think that I understand this list of people as being representative of that, when you get, like, Tulsi and Rand and Aaron Rodgers. Like, I get why people are worried. I get that.

Yeah. Didn't work out so well for him. You wrote a piece that you and I talked about before on the 2020 Trump campaign being too online. And it does seem like the terminally online reactionary manosphere is the real driving energy in at least some segment of Republican politics right now. I know you've been thinking and writing about this.

What's your sense of what that's all about and sort of why it's bubbling up right now?

That has to do with how, basically, it says that, like, if you post something on Facebook, Facebook is not liable for the thing you post. If you post a comment on a website, the person who runs that website, whether it's InfoWars or a recipe website, with two long descriptions at the top that you have to scroll all the way through, they are not liable for that. That's awesome. I love it. Donald Trump does not.

A lot of people do not. Most people don't know what it is or care. And I think that the onlinification of the right, which I think that has been ramped up by the fact that X is now a, what I would argue to be a conservative, not conservative like William F. Buckley conservative, but like a right-leaning social media outlet,

and is still incredibly popular with online conservatives and the people who care what they think. It means that you spend a lot of time fixated by issues and talking about issues and hyping yourself up about issues that only matter to other members of the online right or the online left that hates the online right. And I think you saw this over and over again in 2022, where you had a midterm election, where Biden did that speech about how this is about democracy. This is about fighting against the forces that would end democracy. And the online right and, like the super online left, make fun of him and talk about how he looked like Hitler and how it was scary.

And this is actually going to be a red wave, because you're transing our kids and moms for liberty and libs of TikTok and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you might recall there was no red wave.

But they're also very mad.

That's a thing you have. You got to keep them locked in. You got like in 2020, you had a host of people who were talking about how rioting was great and how this is awesome. And then, you know, you had a lot of people looking at actual voting numbers from including, like from working-class African-Americans who were like, no, it's not not cool at all. And Joe Biden, notably, won the Democratic primary.

out of what, 85 people? How many people ran for president among Democrats in 2020?? I believe it was 85 people. And he is, and to his credit, he is very not online, like absolutely 100% not online. I know he now has a TikTok now, but, like that is run by nice people who are like 25 years old.

That's fine. This is a person who, like in the State of the Union, was like, I was born during the Second World War.

I don't remember it, but I think about it a lot. And I'm like, yeah, you do. Of course you do. But like that is something that is adjacent to reality. And I think for the online right, the challenge is that they are not adjacent to reality and that reality will take place.

And they are so put off by reality, they retreat even more into the loving embrace of the online right.

All right, everyone, we will be back with another episode Friday morning. Take care. Bye, Jane. Bye. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our friends of the pod subscription community at crooked dot com slash friends.

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