‘The Corporate News Model is Dead’: Dave Smith, Reformed Cable News Regular, Builds New Audience Online

Dave Smith , comedian, libertarian, and host of the Part of the Problem podcast, was once a regular presence on cable news. He popped up frequently on Red Eye , the comically late Fox News show ( Greg Gutfeld kicked it off nightly at 3 a.m.) and even had a one-year stint as a contributor on S.E. Cupp’s erstwhile CNN program Unfiltered .

Now, Smith has turned his back on cable news, embracing what he says is a much larger platform online. Like many comedians who got into the podcasting game early, Smith has developed a large and obsessive audience on YouTube, where he’s made a name for himself as a popular yet controversial iconoclast.

He had some help along the way. Smith estimates he’s been on Joe Rogan’s mighty show some twelve times, appearances that have made him famous among that audience. “I got on for the first time in 2016, and that was the last time I’ve been failing at this ever,” he told Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin . “The corporate news model is dead. It’s not like my audience is going back to CNN. These people are, quite literally, unplugged from The Matrix.”

On this week’s episode of Press Club , Smith spoke about the changing media landscape and his place in it. He also discussed the 2024 election and what he thinks of Kamala Harris , Donald Trump , and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

While Smith has been embraced by conservatives (he’s done the pilgrimage to Maine for Tucker Carlson’s show twice) he’s no fan of Trump. “He’s a guy who’s never read a book about anything,” Smith said. “He’s maybe watched a show about it. He heard Sean Hannity talk about it for ten minutes. I just have no confidence in his ability to do anything.”

Smith’s audience has grown over the last year as he emerged as a prominent (and ubiquitous) critic of Israel and its war in Gaza, participating in lengthy debates on the subject on YouTube. “The framing of the issue will always be, does Israel have a right to defend itself?” he said. “And that same question will never be asked about the Palestinians.”

During the interview, McLaughlin questioned Smith about his relationships with some of the more controversial figures on the right, including Candace Owens and avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes . “I could go back 20 years,” Smith said in defense of those ties, “all of the people who sold us a war based on lies, where a million people got killed, who all still have their jobs. None of them are shunned in polite society. Yet I’m supposed to pretend that if Tucker talks about aliens or something, then that’s beyond the pale? I don’t really have that attitude with anyone.”

Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube , Apple Podcasts , or Spotify . Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Aidan McLaughlin: Over the past few years, you have built a large platform. Walk us through how that happened.

Dave Smith: I started standup comedy, I believe, in 2006. I started standup comedy because I just fell in love with it. And I’m still in love with it. I just think it’s the most beautiful art form in the world. There’s something really cool about it. People have seen their favorite comedians on Netflix or on TV or something like that. But if you’ve ever been to a comedy club, there’s just something really intoxicating and beautiful about it. There’s like a one-man band with no instruments except his mind or her mind. Sorry, unintentional sexism of me there, but let’s assume it’s a dude. But they get up and they just with nothing but the power of their thoughts, bring a room to laughter. And it’s just this very positive and very beautiful thing. So I totally fell in love with standup comedy. And I started performing at nightclubs in New York City.

And then in 2007, Ron Paul had launched a presidential campaign that year, for the following year, 2008. And I saw what’s become an internet-famous moment now. But I watched what is called the Giuliani moment, where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who, I’m a New Yorker, he was the mayor for a big chunk of my childhood. And they just started arguing about the causes of terrorism. And I found Ron Paul to be so interesting, and I’d never really heard anyone else making the arguments that he was making, which made a lot of sense, to me at least. And then I just got lost in this rabbit hole. He kept talking about the Federal Reserve and government corruption, all of this stuff, and I just went down the rabbit hole of reading everything I could get my hands on.

And so I was just doing stand up comedy, and then I was just obsessed with all of this political theory and economics and foreign policy and stuff like that. And then they just, at a certain point, started bleeding into each other, where I was making more jokes about that stuff in my standup comedy. I had friends too, two friends in particular, Luis Jay Gomez and Nate Bargatze, who were both comedians in New York at the time. And they both really were encouraging me to do a podcast. They were like, dude, you got to do a podcast because you got to just start talking about this stuff because you got a lot of interesting opinions on it. And it seemed kind of crazy to me.

Which it was at first, like I’m just going to record myself talking for no one to listen to. Literally at the beginning, no one was listening. If you zoom out, it’s an exercise in insanity to do a podcast without an audience. You’re just ranting like a madman to no one. But man, those guys were really on to something because it just happened to be that I got in as there was this, as you know, in the world of politics and entertainment, there’s just been this revolution where now the center of the action is on all these shows on the internet. And then Ari Shapiro was a really good friend of mine who’s an amazing comedian. And he loved what I had to say. So he had me on his podcast. And then Rogan heard me on that, and he liked what I had to say. And then he started having me on. And then it all just kept growing from there.

You’ve been on Rogan a bunch of times, I counted four when I looked, which is more than most people.

I’ve been on a lot more than that. I think it’s 12.

What is it like going on Rogan, does that send you into the stratosphere in terms of getting your name out there?

Yeah, every time I’ve done it, it’s always a big bump. A lot more followers and downloads on the podcast. And then it also just puts you in the middle of the national conversation. Because whatever the clipped-up moments are will always be living on Twitter or on YouTube for a while. And there’s still times when someone will cut up a clip of something I did on Rogan five years ago, and then that goes viral just now. So it’s a weird economy. All of the big shows I’ve done have helped to get more eyeballs on me, but nothing like Rogan. He’s still the biggest thing out there. And I’ve done it a lot of times, so I didn’t get launched into the stratosphere by any one appearance, but it was more like a steady incline. But that I think that worked out well for me.

I got on for the first time in 2016, and that was the last time I’ve been failing at this ever. So that was a transition. I remember Seinfeld, I heard him in an interview once, and he was talking about doing Carson back in the day in the 70s. And he compared it to having your first kid, which is for anybody who has kids, there’s something about how you go into the hospital and you leave the hospital a different person, you go in with two and you leave with three, and you’re just never the same after that. And he was like, that was what it was like with Carson. You go in nobody and you come out somebody in show business. And for me, that’s what Rogan’s been like. I think he is like the Carson of our time, where it’s like, oh, you’re on the map now.

You used to go on cable news a lot. Why don’t you do that anymore?

There’s a bunch of factors involved in it, but one of the main ones is just I lived in New York City at the time, so it was easy for me if someone asked to me go on. And there were the shows like Red Eye I used to go on all the time, Kennedy I used to go on all the time. And then I was a contributor for S.E. Cupp. She had a show called Unfiltered, and I worked there for eight months, nine months, something like that. And so at the time, I lived in New York City and I didn’t have kids. And now I’m an hour out of the city, and I have two small kids, so it’s just a little bit more.

And then there’s also that none of those shows are on the air anymore. So they all, I don’t know if I’m the reason they all failed, but they all got kicked off eventually. And then also it was the rise of the internet shows, that’s where all the eyeballs are now. And I have this studio that I built in my house, and so now I can just come down here and do Piers Morgan or whatever, and it’s a bigger audience than those shows are getting anyway. So what’s the point? I still do have some people, I have a good relationship with Greg Gutfeld. I’ve always really liked that guy. If he called me and was like, will you come in, I’d come in to do his show. But in general, I’ve done a lot less of it than I had in years past.

So the policy is you don’t get on a plane for anything less than Rogan or Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, maybe a little bit less than that. But it’s got to be something pretty close. I’ll get on for Tim Pool, there’s a few other ones, Patrick Bet-David, I’ll get on a plane for him any time he calls me. It’s just what makes sense.

And then the other thing is that, and I think this is a big part of why the corporate cable news model has just been losing to the internet model, is that I got a lot of stuff to say. And it’s really remarkable, now that you have all of these shows, it almost opens your eyes to how stupid the cable news model always was. Literally, you go, okay, here’s a panel of three people. Let’s talk about the most important thing in the world, 30 seconds. And you’re like, what? The war in Iraq. What do you think? I’m like, bad. I’m not for it. And they’re like, good point. Next! It’s all so ridiculous.

So it’s just more meaningful and important to be able to go on the longer-form shows where you could maybe actually get to the bottom of something and really give your thoughts on something rather than the cable news thing that’s just always incredibly truncated.

You’ve reached a bigger audience over the last year by speaking out about Israel’s war in Gaza. You’ve done a series of very lengthy debates on the subject. Why is that an issue that you’ve been speaking out about?

When I first got really interested in politics, it was all about the foreign policy issue. I was 18 when 9/11 happened. So my adult life started with 9/11. And then was the terror wars. And after getting really obsessed with reading about all of the wars in the Middle East and in Northern Africa over the last 20 years, you can’t dive that deep into it before you bump up against Israel and realize that, oh, they’re a pretty active partner in all of this. And there’s no need to caricature that position. I’m not saying the Jews are running everything. And I don’t believe a lot of the hard right-wing theories that essentially America is the puppet of Israel. I don’t think that’s right exactly. I think it’s much more like America is the empire and Israel is one of our satellites.

But there’s no question that they’re an active player in the terror wars. Benjamin Netanyahu came here in 2002 and testified to Congress that, as a regional expert, if we overthrew Saddam Hussein, democracy would sweep the region. And he also advocated that we overthrow Gaddafi and the Iranian regime. And so I’m well aware of where they stand in the bigger foreign policy dynamics.

And I’m Jewish. I grew up with a lot of the propaganda, a lot of the pro-Israel point of view being the only side that was presented to me. And I genuinely think Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has just been horrific and inexcusable. And the fact that I’m forced through my tax dollars to prop that up doesn’t sit very well with me. And then I also see what the wars over the last 20 years have done to my country and the country that I’m raising two kids in. And I would like to be around for them. To watch us flirt with another catastrophic war in the Middle East is just so insane to me.

And I do feel to some degree, and this is probably third after those things, but I’m also just somewhat resentful to the way the pro-Israel side wraps up Jewish identity with the government of Israel, and that somehow now is supposed to represent me. I’m just appalled by that. So I don’t know, it’s just it’s one of the issues I’m very interested in. And I’m not going to bite my tongue. I’m not very good at that.

What do you make of how the American media has covered this issue over the last year?

It’s been fascinating, because you have this war that is now taking all the wars. Obviously there’s the war in Ukraine, which is a little bit of a different issue. But aside from that, all of the wars over the last 20 years, Iraq and Afghanistan, they dragged on for quite a while into the age of podcasts and social media, things like that. But they started before it. And it’s almost like a weird experiment of, well, what happens if there’s a war with this landscape but there is no monopoly on the control of information? There’s nothing like that anymore.

So I think that you’ve seen a lot of people in the corporate media, in the establishment, dealing with it the same way they always would have dealt with it. I know Kamala Harris had a throwaway line in her speech about how, “We’ll always defend Israel, but we’re going to be nice to the Palestinians too,” or something, which is obvious politics, she’s got a huge portion of her base who is against this war. But in general, at the Democratic Convention, at the Republican Convention, the stuff you hear is the same thing that you would have been hearing in the corporate media my entire life.

The framing of the issue will always be, does Israel have a right to defend itself? Does Israel have a right to exist? And that same question will never be asked about the Palestinians. You’ll never hear anyone on CNN just go, okay, let’s talk about October 7th. Do the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? It will just never be framed like that. However, what’s happening now is that you have a true decentralized media where voices like mine and like many others can get out, and you can listen to a 90-minute John Mearsheimer interview and say, whoa, this is way more compelling than anything I’ve ever heard on MSNBC. And there are all these options out there.

And look, there’s good and bad with that. But I do think the positives far outweigh the negatives. The other thing is that, with social media, there’s just never been a war before where we’ve seen this number of images. That’s one of the major differences that I’ve noticed over the last nearly year.

Have you noticed a shift in how Americans view Israel over the last year?

Yeah, 100%. In terms of the American people? Yes. I think the American political class is probably exactly where it’s always been, with a few notable exceptions, which has always been the case. But yeah, I think there’s no question that the American people are viewing Israel in a completely different light. I don’t know how accurate all these opinion polls are, but it’s something like 50% of Democratic voters view it as a genocide.

There’s never been anything like that before. And it’s horrible, as a Jewish person, I don’t even like talking like that usually, but it’s like oh, man. It’s crazy that now the Jewish state is viewed as the one committing genocide. Forget the whether you view it as a genocide or not, just the fact that that’s even the way so many people view is incredible. And to your point, I think when the images that we saw of the war in Iraq were night-vision from 100 miles away of a little beam of light going in and exploding, it’s easy to support that. Like I guess there’s bad guys on the other side of that. But when you’re watching the 75th video of a baby suffocating to death, that look, whether you’re for the war or against the war, you’re at least seeing it much more for what it really is. That’s what the policy known as war actually is. It’s that. I think the more you see it for what it really is, the more difficult it gets to support.

Let’s talk about the 2024 election. You’re a libertarian. How do you view Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?

So Donald Trump, I think is a fascinating political figure in a lot of ways, who Inspector Gadget’s his way through life. I think Donald Trump was a repudiation of the establishment. And it’s fascinating that almost everybody in the political class and the media class mocked his 2016 run and were all just laughing and joking about how it’s impossible that this guy could ever win. They totally underestimated the temperature in the room, how furious people were with the establishment.

Would you qualify Donald Trump as anti-establishment? It’s an odd argument to make, because he’s obviously a billionaire real estate mogul from New York City, and his first administration was not particularly anti-establishment. But his supporters now argue he is the anti-establishment candidate. What do you think of that?

Right. So it’s not exactly that he himself is anti-establishment. It’s not, He was from Queens and not Manhattan . He was a billionaire who was at cocktail parties with the Clintons and stuff like that. And some worse people than that even. I think that you’re absolutely right, there was nothing particularly threatening to the establishment about the four years that he was in there. As far as I’m concerned, he pretty much got rolled on almost every issue. From foreign policy to domestic policy to monetary policy, just everything. He just ended up getting rolled by whoever the last guy was in the room with him that told him he was tremendous, and then convinced him to support his policy.

However, the appeal of Donald Trump to his voters has always been that. And so he’s the guy who got on stage next to Jeb Bush and said, “Your brother led us into war”. So he said, in a very typical Trumpian way, he’ll say a very provocative thing that’s not exactly right, but there is a lot of truth to it. And then the media flips out about it, and then it just brings the issue to light. He also said that Obama created ISIS, which is one of these forgotten moments of the 2016 campaign. But it was so interesting because if you actually know what happened and you follow it, it’s not exactly true that Obama created ISIS, but —

Funding Syrian rebels —

They were driving around in Toyota trucks, and they did get them from the United States of America. And also the Obama administration knew that they were going into the hands of ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, those type of groups. They were like, well, we want this regime change, so we’ll just deal with it. And they’re the JV anyway. So who really cares? That was until ISIS invaded Iraq. And then they changed their tune.

But then there’s also the fact that the establishment does hate Donald Trump. So they do flip out about him in a way that they won’t about anyone else. And then that gives him more street cred in the, oh, he really is anti-establishment. The problem I’ve always had with Donald Trump is that there’s this weird thing where left-wingers and right-wingers all project something on to Donald Trump that doesn’t exist. The left-wingers see him as this Hitlerian figure who’s going to overthrow democracy. That is all, I think, very removed from reality. And then his supporters see him as this champion of the working class and this anti-establishment guy. And none of that is true. He’s just what you see. He’s Donald Trump. He’s what you always knew he was. He’s a guy who’s never read a book about anything. He’s maybe watched a show about it. He heard Sean Hannity talk about it for ten minutes. He got his talking points and he’s going to roll with that.

Vivek Ramaswamy told him about this central bank digital currency thing. And he told him it’s no good. And then he went out and said it’s no good. And it got big cheers. So okay, that’s in now because that gets cheers. It’s that shallow. To actually drain the swamp, what are you talking about here? You’re talking about rolling back the biggest honeypot in the history of the world. All right? That might take some book reading.

Steve Mnuchin won’t stand for that.

Right. I just have no confidence in his ability to do anything. I think he’s wrong on a lot of issues. Particularly as we were talking about with the Israel stuff, I think his attack on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as Palestinians is so bizarre and out of touch with reality.

As if that is somehow evil.

As if that’s an insult somehow. And somehow the entire media class who’s been calling this guy a bigot nonstop for the last decade didn’t jump on that one, that didn’t seem to bother them that it was uttered as a pejorative. You’re a Palestinian, like if you turned to someone and said, you’re a dirty Jew or something like that, I think we’d all be talking about how unacceptable that is. Also his handling of Covid was such a disaster and not in the way that the corporate media said.

And as far as Harris goes, I’ve never seen anything quite like this campaign, where it is purely the machine. That entire campaign is the machine. And every political campaign, with the exception maybe of Donald Trump, but every successful political campaign always has a machine behind it. There’s always some degree of a machine, but then there’s usually also a candidate. Obama had a machine behind him, but then Obama is the most talented speaker you’ve ever seen, and is this guy with real grassroots support, and this guy who’s running on ideas, none of which he actually implemented. But he did run in 2008 on ending the war in Iraq and closing Guantanamo Bay and ending torture and re-instituting habeas corpus and all of this stuff. With the Harris campaign. it’s just like, hey, we subbed out that guy. We’re subbing in this lady. We’re going to all tell you she’s a cultural phenomenon. Joy, hope, all this stuff. There’s nothing there. Not only is she not running on what she ran on in 2020, she’s also not running on Joe Biden’s administration. And she’s not doing interviews, she’s got no policies on her own website. There’s nothing.

I want to ask about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Trump. This goes for almost everyone that now supports Trump in any position of power, but RFK Jr. recently said that Trump is a “sociopath,” called him a “threat to democracy,” a “terrible president” who “appealed to bigotry, hatred and xenophobia.” He said his administration was “corrupt” and “brought into disrepute the entire American experience with self-governance.” How do you think people are able to do that?

It is wild, man. And this does happen a lot in primaries and after the primary is over. But it is wild. I don’t have an answer for you to how you can say that, and then turn around and support the guy. It’s like, okay, were you exaggerating? Were you lying? Or are you now just totally selling out? I don’t know how you can square that circle. And it is interesting to watch. It’s very fascinating that there’s this core group around Donald Trump now, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy and more recently, Tulsi Gabbard, this whole group of former Democrats who are all coming around to supporting him. And J.D. Vance, actually, is in that category as well of people who were once totally criticizing Donald Trump in the sharpest language. And he was like, oh, I fell for the propaganda or something like that.

He said he fell for the media’s spin. Does anyone believe that?

It just seems so disingenuous. And it’s also just like, you assumed that in order for you to succeed, you needed to signal to certain people that you were just as appalled by Donald Trump as they were. And now, you think in order to succeed, it’s actually better to support him. It’s hard to look at it any way other than cynically.

You are close with some figures who, it’s safe to say, provoke a lot of controversy. Take Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. You seem to be comfortable engaging with figures that a lot of people would consider beyond the pale. Why is that?

First of all, I would say that both Candace and Tucker have millions and millions of viewers. And so I don’t know about the framing that they are controversial figures. They are controversial figures, I’m not disagreeing with that exactly, but it is interesting how you’ll always have Brian Stelter-type guys who are like, “This fringe, controversial figure,” and you’re like, well, that’s one way to say it. Another way to say it is a wildly more popular, wildly more successful at what you do than you are.

But because I’ve always been focused on issues of war and corruption and just things that are really so evil, that whenever there’s a consensus amongst the establishment that this topic is beyond the pale or something like that, I’m like, wait, what? I’m 41, so I’m transitioning into being an old person. And what’s interesting about that is now I could go back 20 years, and I remember it quite well. I remember what was going on and all of the people who sold us a war based on lies, where a million people got killed, who all still have their jobs. None of them are shunned in polite society. Yet I’m supposed to pretend that if Tucker talks about aliens or something, then that’s beyond the pale? I don’t really have that attitude with anyone.

But specifically with Candace, lately she’s been getting a lot of heat for commentary that is quite clearly anti-Semitic. In the last couple of years her commentary has gotten really extreme. She staked her own reputation on Brigitte Macron, Emmanuel Macron’s wife, being a man, which is obviously insane. Does that stuff give you pause about her?

No, it wouldn’t stop me from engaging with her. And it’s funny because there’s so many little worlds out there, but both me and Candace Owens were being sharply criticized by Nick Fuentes earlier this week because he does not agree with you, and he does not think we hate the Jews enough. And so there’s all these different angles of looking at this stuff.

Look, I’m a Jewish kid who grew up with a single mom in Park Slope, Brooklyn. And my whole life was living in Brooklyn and then being a stand-up comedian, I am a product of almost the most diverse lifestyle and background you could have. I don’t even know exactly the best way to put this. I don’t think anybody is without their bigotry, but I really don’t hold ignorant prejudices about any group of people because I’ve been around every group of people. I don’t have as strong an allergy to prejudice as a lot of people in this country do. I don’t think if somebody’s like, I don’t really like Jewish people. Like, okay, that’s your right. I’m probably not going to be your friend, but I’m not against having a conversation with you. I don’t think that’s correct that you have that view, but again, you’re not lying people into a war that’s going to kill a million people. It’s just a view I disagree with.

Personally, in every conversation I’ve ever had with Candace Owens, both on air and off air, she’s bent over backwards to be like, I genuinely have nothing against Jewish people. I’ve loved Jewish people my whole life. My roommate that I used to live with is Jewish. I grew up going to Bat Mitzvahs all the time. I take her at her word on that. I think there are some conspiracies that she’s diving headfirst into, and I don’t really know how much any of them are right or wrong.

But I do find it very rich that Ben Shapiro and some of the stuff he’s said about Arabs, almost like Mr. Take The Gloves Off with every single group of people. Ben Shapiro, go watch some videos of Ben Shapiro talking about black people. He has no problem taking the gloves off and being like, here’s the problem with black people. This is what you guys do wrong. This is what you guys need to do. I’m like, wait, are you saying all black people don’t take care of their kids or something like that? And he’s like, no, I’m just looking at the statistics. So you’re okay playing that game. I don’t think it’s necessarily the worst thing in the world that he says some of those things. I don’t think it’s 100% true, but maybe some of it needs to be heard. But then if anybody were to ever do that with Jews, he’ll be the first, he turns into a woke leftist and starts just calling everybody a racist. I don’t believe in doing that.

I recall some deleted tweets about Arabs that —

I don’t even think they’re deleted. I think they’re still up there [Editor’s note: They are ] . I think he apologized for them but left them up there. It was literally something about how Arabs like to play in mud and blow things up. And Jews like to build civilization. Real deal, hardcore bigotry stuff. Whatever platform I go on, I’m going to say what I believe. I’m never going to find a platform with someone that 100% agrees with everything I say or I 100% agree with them. But I really have enjoyed my conversations with Tucker and Candace, and I like them both as people.

Let me ask you a tougher one, because you brought up Nick Fuentes. You’ve taken heat for doing interviews with him. I watched an interview you did with him from 2021, and you had kind words for him. He’s obviously an avowed white supremacist. Do you regret that at all?

Now that he’s been attacking me for the last week, I feel a little bit different. That’s where he went too far. But listen, I still stand by doing those interviews. This is how I am in general with people. I’m interested in radical politics. I’m interested in people who are very critical of the regime, and particularly when there’s someone like Nick Fuentes who, first of all, became way too radioactive at way too young of an age. Nobody should ever be this appalled by what a 20-year-old is saying, literally I think he’s 25 now. He was 20 when he first became this boogeyman that everybody freaks out about. No one should ever treat a 20-year-old that way. That is freaking insane. It’s insane. He was a child and people are acting like, oh my God, he’s the second coming of Adolf Hitler or something like that. And then trying to ruin the kid’s life?

To me, it was always very clear with him that he’s doing a right-wing shock jock thing. There’s a lot of it that has a wink and a nod. There’s a lot of it that’s very funny. Or attempting to be funny. He’s a very talented broadcast star, and that’s why he’s been successful despite being kicked off of everything. And I’m a big believer, perhaps this is the classical liberal in me, I think the worst way to handle somebody like that is to say, I denounce him, I shun him, let’s censor him. That is the worst way to do it.

I’m not proposing any of that. And I’m not even proposing a solution to this. But do you not, regardless of his age, think it is dangerous that he has such a large audience to spout such horrific ideas about every group that’s not white men?

From my perspective, there is some danger in almost anybody having a large audience if they’re preaching any type of authoritarian politics. But I don’t know that I see a unique danger in Nick Fuentes. Personally, again, I’m laser-focused on the people with power and how corrupt they are. In Barack Obama’s 2013 NDAA, where he signed into law that the U.S. government has the right to detain American citizens and hold them without charges indefinitely, he put a signing statement on there that they don’t intend to use that, but they still signed it into law. We’re talking about potential dangers of authoritarianism, Nick Fuentes is not even on my radar.

They tried to set up a Ministry of Truth by another name and only didn’t get it set up because there was so much pushback against it. I’m watching real-deal fascism unfold right in front of my eyes. And no, my concern is not a young guy who says edgy stuff online. And look, there’s probably a lot of things he says that I disagree with, but he’s also an intelligent guy. And some of the conversations are thought-provoking. And I enjoyed the conversations. We also did a 90-minute debate in 2021, something around there. And I enjoyed the debate. So no, I don’t regret any of that. I always felt like if I could go into Fox News, and I could sit down on a panel with a CIA guy, and I could be cordial and friendly with him, then I can sit down and have a conversation with a far-right-winger. That’s fine.

What’s the future of media as you see it?

Well, a lot of this depends on what the government ends up doing and what they’re able to pull off. If you read that Mark Zuckerberg letter that he just sent over to Congressman Jordan the other day, obviously, there’s been a major attempt over the last few years by the government to rein in free speech, essentially, on the internet. If that happens, who knows? If a central bank digital currency is instituted, and all of a sudden they can shut off your bank accounts if you’re talking against the regime, then who knows what’s going to happen?

Short of something like that, I think the corporate news model is dead. I think there’s really no saving it. I think one of the things that during 2022, when there was that real attempt to cancel Joe Rogan, and they put a lot of pressure on Spotify to get rid of him. And Brian Stelter was talking about him every single day on CNN, ultimately they failed. They couldn’t get him off. He’s bigger than ever. But not only did they fail, I think they totally didn’t understand what they were up against.

Take me, for example. I’m obviously much smaller than Joe Rogan, but if you were to take me out, it’s not like my audience is going back to CNN after that. It’s not like they’re going to be like, there’s no more Part of the Problem podcast, so I guess I got to go listen to Wolf Blitzer now, and I’ll take his word for it. These people are, quite literally, unplugged from The Matrix. They’re never going back. And so there is no future where we’re all just listening to Walter Cronkite and taking his word as gospel, those days are gone. For better or for worse, I think it’s more for better than for worse. But I think this is the new model, and I think short of some real-deal authoritarian government crackdown on it, this is the future.