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War in Iran, News in America / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm John Weener.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Later in the hour, what news are people getting these days?
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And where are they getting it?
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially the people we call news avoidant and low information voters.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ones we want to vote for Democrats in November, what are the big stories for them?
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tara McGowan will comment.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's founder and CEO of Courier Newsroom.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: a digital media company that operates a network of local news outlets.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But first, the Iran War this week, Tom Stevenson of the LRB will comment in a minute.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: First up, the war in Iran this week.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: For that we turn to Tom Stevenson, he's a contributing editor at the London Review of Books where his piece, Iran Week One, was published recently.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: His collection of essays titled, Someone Else's Empire, British illusions in American and Germany, was published in 2023.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We reached him today in London.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Stevenson, welcome to the program.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, first things first, it seems like Trump didn't try to explain to the American people why a war in Iran would be a good thing because he really didn't think there was going to be a war.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would just be a fast, hard strike that would enable the United States to put a new Iranian leader in place
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The model here, of course was Venezuela.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was no secret.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the first days of the war, Trump described, quote, what we did in Venezuela, close quote, is his ideal scenario for Iran.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think that's right, he wasn't planning on a long war at all?
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very difficult to say with Trump exactly on what he's planning, or whether even planning is precisely the right way to sort of conceptualize it.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean,
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a good chance that Trump believed or was convinced that a show of force or a media use of force might produce a dramatic cracking of the Iranian regime or some kind of spectacular subordination and that that would be some huge political win for him.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think that we also should grant that they may well have considered that this could well go for longer than that.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the war, it's an obvious, it's an obvious case of really criminal international aggression, but then on the side of that speaking to this, how did they think of it or how does Trump think of it?
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's also this almost exuberant somewhat obscene character to it, both in the prosecution and in the presentation, which sort of defies rationalizing about what the precise planning was.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Going back to the beginning, Trump, of course, has said many different things about why, you know, I just say, did this and what he wants to happen next, he has said pretty consistently, we must stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big theme of the Israelis, big theme of the Israelis as well.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: How close was Iran to developing a nuclear weapon in your understanding in the view of American
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this has been one of the long last things like a drummen's of US policy towards Iran.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fixation on nuclear programs stands out for a number of reasons.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: The most important being that for decades, literally for more than two decades now, the firm assessment of the US intelligence community has been that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just emphasize, does not have an active nuclear weapons program?
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Does not have, that's right, no.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Contrary to the vast majority, 90% class of what one hears on the subject, the assessment of the U.S. And of Israel for more than two decades has been that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: This was reiterated incidentally in the most recent declassified report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: which said very clearly, we continue to assess that Iran does not is not building a nuclear weapon.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Defense Intelligence Agency reports exactly the same thing, in fact, an even clearer language if I remember correctly.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't say that Iran is a way to perhaps provide some quick background.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Iran obviously does have a domestic civil nuclear program.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has enrichment facilities, has research reactors, and it has insisted also on enriching beyond levels which are traditionally there for civilian reactors, which has given policy to the international regulatory authorities and so on.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they say that they've insisted on that because they need it for medical research,
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the other hand, they are entitled to domestic enrichment.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, under the details of the nuclear and non-proliferation treatory, they have every right to domestic enrichment, they wanted it.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what is this?
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Iran, basically, in practice, aside from both sides of propaganda about it, has wanted to have breakout statics.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that is in wants to have the technical ability to be able to pursue nuclear weapons should have changed its policy in the future.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the fact is that until he was killed a few days ago,
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ali Kharmanay had formally dismantled Iran's weapons program in 2003, which was a very short-lived reaction to developments in neighbouring Iraq.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: The intelligence agencies incidentally do not say that Iran is not a threat because of this.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the same assessment, the ODII spelled out what the threat from Iran was.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: They said that Iran has expanded its relationships with other key U.S. adversaries, and it works with countries in the global
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: to mitigate US efforts to isolate the regime and blunt the impact of Western sanctions, right?
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in subordination, essentially.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, I know, the thing is I think what we have to conclude from this is that the entire drama of Iran and the nuclear weapons program is an effort of misdirection, and it's quite a poor one, given that the US intelligence, and Israel's intelligence, incidentally, says that it simply is an alternative threat.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trump said that when the war was launched, the United States had identified what he called potential new leaders who he wanted to.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: succeed to power in Iran, but he said, quote, most of the people we had in mind are dead, close quote, following the strikes.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is, we accidentally killed the people that we wanted to take over the government.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, he said, quote, we're going to have to find new ones, close quote.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then the Iranians this week named a new supreme leader, the son of
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trump said that was quote, not acceptable.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Close quote, how did that go over among Iranians?
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, the assassination of Framene on the first day appears thus far to succeed it in moving one generation down the Framene family, which I mean, certainly to the extent we can talk about plans and advance that wouldn't have been the plan in advance for anyone in the US government, I wouldn't have thought.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also with Eden Rahn, I think my assessment at least was it worth is that before the war, much to have a Framene was really very unlikely to succeed his father.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's less capable, probably more self-interested, he has a big house in London held under a shell company, and then was already a lot of anger in Iran about nepotism as there are many places in the world, and then Iran's system was supposed to be organized against this sort of thing, as a general delight dislike, common in many countries of nepotistic privilege, as I've been Persian, but then also there's the second religious and historical sense of
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: in Arabic, in religious Arabic, the phrase would be a Tauri, the Sultan, which is in Harrison's power of authority.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then it must be also remembered that Iran's revolution in 1979 was a Republican revolution founded on a rejection of Monarchic practices.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So both on Republican and religious Jewish credential grounds, it's a very sensitive matter.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yet the signs thus far are that both especially within the elite, but also in the popular realm, much time as succession has been largely welcomed.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of the war basically has blown a lot of things out of the water, and with what is perceived as Ali Kamine's martyrdom, this idea of his son succeeding has become much more attractive.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Still, I think what this shows is that there's no sign, or at least no detectable sign of a skism within the ruling elite, which is I think in part what Trump or the Department of War wanted to induce.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: There has been a democratic opposition inside a ram for a long time, mostly in prison for a long time.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do we know about their view of the attack spike by Trump and Bayes Realms?
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, John, that's a fascinating question, and I think first it's fascinating because there has been for years, especially now, a great flattening of the internal domestic political scene within Iran, basically a caricature vision where you have the regime, which is essentially a bandit leadership, a small number of people.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: who are somehow ruling over millions of people who all despise them, and that system has just maintained purely by violence.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now, one would completely dismiss that picture.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's obviously that it contains a certain amount of truth to it.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: But nonetheless, I think it is not an accurate description of the internal politics of Iran.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's a much greater range of political currents.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, off the top of one's head, one can think of, if you go at least four or five major tendencies, you've got reformists, you've got secular monarchists,
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: very well represented internationally as well.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's secular republicans as well who they were in a mere pose to both Iran's monarchical history and to raise a par la vie and the idea of bringing back it, monarchy and Iran.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then you've got, I think, minority nationalists, people who are critical of the government in sort of minor respect and then very importantly, government supporters, who, whatever percentage you think they represent, do remain a powerful political force, it's undeniable.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then within all those political tendencies, you've got a lot of internal divergence.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, I think there is anything you can say is that the internal political system is complex.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's split in a sort of a number of different vectors.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think to sort of flatten all that out into either just as this tyrannical regime,
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: the people as a collective opposed will not, is proved dangerous of a simplification.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The American Intelligence Service concluded on just on the eve of the war that the most likely successor government in Iran given this broad array of different interest, political interest, the most likely successor government, the CIA thought would be run by the Islamic Revolutionary
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remind us what they are in whether you agree that they're likely to be the most dominant force.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well the IRGC is one of the legacies of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 or is the dispensation in which followed from it and it is a powerful political force, it's a paramilitary and military force which runs alongside
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: various other formal state institutions.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has its own navy in addition to the IIS, which is here on in navy.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's own own forces in addition to the, to the Orion National Armed Forces, but then you also have sort of various quasi-placing intelligence functions.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, Iran's system is,
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: is quite devolved in a number of ways.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has quite distributed network effect, which is quite intricate and very interesting.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, that's the, even it's also extremely politically powerful, the no question about that and has been throughout many years, perhaps even gaining in power.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very interesting that the, all the signs are that the US intelligence assessment, that it was quite likely that
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: an external military intervention, in fact, increase its political influence.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I had to say that's an idea that there was also a flirting around in the opposition.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember that we had a very astute around the political analyst in my work name, with the moment we came to our offices at the London Review of Books, and was discussing, you know, what this was a few months ago, what possible routes the political situation might take.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as someone who very, very much opposed to the regime,
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, perhaps the most likely or perhaps the most posted result one could wish for among bad options was an internal coup within the IRGC, the most positive, let me just go back to that, the most positive you were told, please explain why that would be the most positive.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's big, simply as an assessment of how pessimistic you were all situations, looking at all of the tendencies there were certainly a brutal, brutal crackdown of the day protests in January, which was what the process began in December, but
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: the crap down in January and taking into account the dynamic between the external opposition, the US pushing in various ways, the sanctions.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was obviously a pessimistic scenario, but then now looking at the wall could see that something fairly cataclysmic has in fact come to pass.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how it shakes out impossible to say.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the important point is that that's far, would you not really see internal regime fractures?
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I live in Los Angeles, the part of Los Angeles often called Terrangeless, because it has the largest number of Iranian exiles.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think anywhere in the world, my neighborhood, West LA, south of UCL, the UCLA campus.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There have been huge demonstrations of the exile community.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a federal building here that's been thousands of thousands of Persians protesting there before the war began.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: carrying portraits, mostly, of the son of the Shah.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you live in LA, you might think, this is the American favorite to succeed if Trump got to pick the leader the way he wants to.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't live in Los Angeles, how significant are these exile movements supporting the son of the Shah?
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there is a tendency, of course, for political movements, especially one to which half of various reasons are diaspora to diverge to some extent from the political scene within the home country, which was exactly what one would expect.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: For many years, the Iranian diaspora did have something of a bad reputation on this question as being particularly open to the idea of external military intervention in contrast to the domestic Iranian opposition, which, of course, exist under very tight controls,
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: under various forms of repression, having to keep its head down and so on, very difficult conditions, and it undeniably.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, until very recently, the flirtation with monochism, which was really quite prominent in the Iran and elsewhere, especially in the United States, was something of an anomaly and looked on with some suspicion within the country, or not by everybody, but with most.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It must be admitted that there has been every science, just there has been an increase in
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: within Iran in the last year or so, leading up to this.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: That said, I mean, for what to do with my assessment would be that Palavi's chances remain relatively slim, he's obviously hoped, you know, there's a somewhat of a distant echo with the Venezuelan situation, here with Maria Machado, that he's been hoping and pushing as much as possible, being that he is and has been for many years, a further supporter of American military action in Iran,
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: that that would stand him in good stead as a future ruler, and I think he probably believes it, but as it stands, it remains quite implausible.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that he would sort of, you know, ride in as Hamid Khazai did in from, you know, in Tafganistan, from Pakistan, you know, very, very unlikely in this case.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Given that Trump says something different in
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: his pronouncements is definitive of what's going to happen.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: What will you be looking at in the coming week or to as the most significant factors?
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think that one can get, one can really get sort of danced in a circle, if one pays too close attention to the precise writing of the statements.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even main thing will be,
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: whether there's an effort to try and declare victory or not, at this point, and again, going back to optimism among pessimistic scenarios, the idea of the United States, from our perspective, deciding that it's can declare victory on the ways of something and then start widening this down or withdrawing.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's going to be difficult to do because the enemy has a vote.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this case, Iran also has an obvious vote with his targeting or whether or not
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think the positive sign would be look for any sort of practical indication of the air wall decreasing in intensity a few accrued missile launches that sort of thing.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's not what we see at the moment, incidentally.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's it's been quite striking.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: The bombing campaign it must be stressed.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The air campaign in a line has if anything been picking up in pace.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was heavy bombing of Tehran and it's for hand.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: over the last couple of days, oil storage facilities have been hit, desalination plans have been hit.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Iranian Red Crescent reported that more than 3,000 residential buildings have been impacted in one way or another, not necessarily targeted but impacted, which is remarkable.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: There seems to be a degree of resilience within Iran and society about this, but who knows how long that could last.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think what we should really look for is any sign that I, the general Cain or Cooper orders a lessening of the intensity of the air campaign, which thus far has not obtained.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: For Americans, this is obviously a historic event, war with Iran.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What does it tell us about the larger trajectory of America in the world today?
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's obviously very worrying.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's no doubt.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that this is an argument that the United States status as a unipolar superpower retains many of its characteristics, at least at least many of its more dangerous characteristics.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: What we'll see right now is an America that is American power in the world that is unchecked.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: There may also be a risk that this crisis precipitates some sort of a more general global crisis.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what seems to be holding that back at the moment is the relative weakness of American competitors, Europe is, of course, subordinated for the most part to American desires, Russia is tied up in a brutal regional war.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: China remains for now, quiet and regionly contained and hasn't weighed in too much on this.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it stays lashing out as it were, the chaotic element in the campaigning is, I think, very concerning, and it points to, it points to a sense that the U.S. is willing to risk a lot to gamble, to push out the bone, what held back, I think, a past generation of American planners.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: even Belocos American planners from taking military action in Iran was a sense of competence really, right?
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: They had the foresight to see that the dramatic options were also a perilous, and it's not obvious that the current administration does have that level of competence, having sort of clean house and got rid of a lot of people who might have, whatever their fault and other respects have might have been able to foresee the dangers.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tom Stephenson.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote about the Iran War for the LRB.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Tom.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a pleasure.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What news are people getting these days?
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And where are they getting it?
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially the people we call news avoidant and low information voters, the ones we want to vote for Democrats in November.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are the big stories for them?
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: For that we turn to Tara McGowan.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's founder and CEO of Courier Newsroom, a digital media company that operates in network of local news outlets.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: She also is host of the podcast, Gloves Off.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me, John.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I asked two different AI assistance, whether the biggest new story in America today was the war in Iran or the Epstein files.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Microsoft Copilot said, quote, the Iran War story is drawing a vastly larger audience right now.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Close quote.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Google Gemini said, quote, rather than competing for attention, the Epstein files in the war with Iran are currently fueling each other's visibility.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a large portion of the audience, the two stories have become a single polarized narrative about transparency, accountability in the motivations of the current administration, close quote Google Gemini, you're a media professional, what do you think?
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is fascinating.
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that prompt and that you gave it the two different AI.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I very much agree with the latter one.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm very delighted to hear that an AI agent also is identifying that trend.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The two are deeply, deeply integrated, and I believe that
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: the president and his administration in large part have been launching these rather spontaneous, deathly, deeply dangerous and deeply unconstitutional military interventions over the past few months to distract the American public and the global public from the Epstein files.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the crimes and perpetrators of those crimes inherent in them, which very likely include the president.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I imagine that he and the administration would be very upset, that the public is not dumb and that understands that these two stories are actually in fact interrelated.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that they both do shed a big light on the lawlessness and corruption inherent in the Trump administration.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm surprised and delighted at the Google AI as I identify that.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: What proportion of Americans know something about the Epstein files?
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have data in front of me, but I've got to imagine that the vast majority, well over 80% I think, was one thing that I saw recently, had heard of it in some way.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I bet that's even a conservative estimate at this point.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of the speed at which the Epstein files went from somewhat of a fringe conspiracy theory topic.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: into the mainstream conversation with the calls for the release of the files and then of course the passage of the bill and the signing of that bill into law by the president for the department of justice to release those files was I mean faster than I would have even imagined but I think it's it's it's so important and and obviously
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this massive cover-up, being orchestrated by the Trump administration, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, they're all involved.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're strategy to both drip releases of the files in small proportions, and then have the drip of those files that be released be a disaster in terms of accessibility,
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: related to the redaction policy.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think has had a backlash effect than what they may be hoped, right?
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: They think that they can just control the release in a way that would distract folks from it or that would make it too difficult for it to stay a story so it would just go away and in fact it's done the opposite.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This story is not going away, it's never going away even when every single file is released which is not the case today.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going away until there's accountability in justice and they seem not to understand that equation.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Post an I've seen show 70% of Americans say the Epstein files show that wealthy and powerful people in the United States are rarely held accountable for their actions.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: and 75% of Americans believe Trump is intentionally hiding information specifically regarding Epstein's clients.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our fellow citizens, as you say, are not stupid.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the thing about the Epstein files and this scandal in this cover up is that it really is this perfect storm that reinforces all of the deep seated beliefs and concerns of the American people when it comes to feeling rightfully so that there are a different set of rules for the most elite wealthy and powerful individuals of this country that is very different than the rules for all of us.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is also being reinforced by the cruel and lethal actions of ice under this administration that are also illegal and unconstitutional.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just across the board, you know, it's no longer sufficient to just talk about the threat of authoritarianism or fascism with the Trump administration.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this deep-seated belief that Americans have always felt, again, that they were treated differently than the elites in the powerful, and that is so much more explicit on the surface and on a apologetic right now by this administration in a way that is really shocking and yet at the same time, you know, folks are like, well, I'm not really surprised, but I am furious about it.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this is another reason why it's just it's not going to go away, right?
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: They think that they can just just distract the public domestically and globally away from the biggest cover up story in our history.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just not going to happen.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course the idea that the wealthy in powerful are rarely held accountable for their actions was a central theme of the mega base and the reason they voted for Trump, what do we know about mega voters leaving Trump because of the cover-up and the revelations we've gotten so far?
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean everything that I have seen both anecdotally and in terms of polling, et cetera, shows that the Epstein story is the most powerful wedge issue that is peeling long-time Trump supporters and even three-time Trump voters away from Trump.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's going to be increasingly hard for us to distinguish one reason or issue or story that is peeling them apart from others now because now, of course, we are in an constitutional war that has already left seven in counting American service members.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: have lost their lives to this war and this was also a president who not only campaigned on releasing the files and quote-unquote draining the swamp of corruption and the protection of pedophiles, he also ran very explicitly and consistently as someone who was not going to be an interventionist, who was not going to start a senseless wars, especially in the Middle East, that have
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are two really powerful wedges where his, the hypocrisy is on the surface, the bait and switch of this administration and this president are on the surface.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think every single day he is losing more support and that's why it's going to be very hard for us to measure.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we are seeing it in things like elections and special elections in primarys like we just saw in Texas where we are seeing
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: massive, massive migration from consistent Republican and Trump voters to actually voting for Democrats, including in the Democratic primary in Texas, as a referendum against this administration.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they are scared.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are obviously very scared.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: They see the same numbers.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We do the same election results we do, and they know, and this is why there's so much conversation right now about election interference and rigging and the
• 28:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: President saying ridiculous claims like we should nationalize elections, which he cannot do, he has no authority to do, because they know that if the midterms this November or free and fair, Republicans don't stand a shot at protecting their very, very thin majority in Congress.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second big topic I want to talk about, where are people getting their news about the Epstein Files?
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the war in Iraq, I've heard that the New York Times, although it is still our national newspaper of record, is not read by a lot of people.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, that's right.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And most legacy media today, both publications like The New York Times, that have, you know, I think tried more than most to not count to this administration.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: They still do in certain ways.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've identified that a career, but
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're better than others, the bar is low, but and also including the ones that have capitulated to the administration like Washington Post, under Jeff Bezos, CBS, obviously now run, CBS News by Barry Weiss and the Ellison's who own it now, they are not going to lead on these stories.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they often feel a responsibility once parts of these stories are
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you're right.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't have the reach that they once had, right?
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: The vast majority of Americans today are learning about these stories on social media in their inboxes from independent media outlets like ours and yours from independent creators and independent journalists who are working on their own and then they gain a lot of traction and then we see.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: legacy news outlets, like NPR, New York Times, contribute to that reporting, and so they don't have the numbers, but they still play a really pivotal role because their audience is elite.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, so they still play a role in shaping the conversation, and certainly when it comes to getting the attention and the pressure placed on elected officials and members of this administration, I think that those outlets still matter, which is why it's so critical they don't count at the
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: that the audiences, they do hold, are able to trust them that they're being fair and accurate in their reporting, which is not always the case.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: These stories are gaining a lot of traction, including the ice executions and the violence of ice because of independent outlets and creators, and that's why independent reporting is so important today.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're especially interested in courier media, your organization.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: On Instagram, I looked this morning.
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have 1 million followers on TikTok, 3.5 million followers, 586 million likes.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's half a billion.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: likes for the courier page at Tik Tok.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is courier and how did you do this?
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And those are just our national accounts, Don.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So courier is a network of independent newsrooms across the country, including our national bureau.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I started it about seven years ago.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really, I started courier.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a journalist at the
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And CBS news, I went into politics for about a dozen years running some of the largest digital media communications campaigns on the left for folks like President Obama at the time during his reelection progressive organizations.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: superpacks that stood against Donald Trump in many elections and I started career because I wanted to marry quality, factual reporting, but with values driven transparency and a lot of what I learned in politics of being much more surgical, figuring out how to get in front of audiences in this new, very decentralized, very algorithm run media ecosystem we live in.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what career is, it focuses not on elite audiences, but on actually reaching the Americans who don't pay for news products, who are not proactively looking for news, but are consuming a ton of it for free every day by scrolling, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we have to interrupt at this point because you said the word free.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The New York Times costs a lot of money to be a subscriber.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: How can career be free?
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is a big reason I started it, right?
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there was a recent study out of Pew that showed 83% of Americans today do not pay for one single news product.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Say that again.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: 83% of Americans do not pay for one single news product.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That means they don't pay for a paywall, like New York Times or many state newspapers online.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't pay for a sub-stack membership or a podcast membership.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: They do not donate two things like NPR.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where I often talk about the information cousin in America, people, the haves and the have nots.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The people who have good, trusted, factual reporting and information are the wealthiest, most educated Americans.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is the minority of Americans.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: The vast majority do not pay for news.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we started career.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it was core for our model from day one.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: that we would never charge for our news.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also why we have on good faith are free five-day-week newsletters across all of our local newsrooms have over a 50% open rate.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: People love it because they do not have access to free local journalism.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The way that we make that possible is that we are a public benefit corporation that relies and always will rely in part
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: on philanthropic contributions from large foundations down to grassroots small dollar donations of which we bring in over a million dollars a year from donations that average $20 or less from folks who love our news products as well as underwriter underwriting support.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So individuals organizations that want to support the ability for us to cover more beats, more issues.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, without putting their thumb on the scale of that reporting, and then of course traditional revenue sponsored content that advertisers can purchase events are an increasing part of our strategy.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I believe all news organizations today need to have a diversified revenue model.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is never going to be another silver bullet revenue strategy such as there was with average traditional advertising in the past.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we need philanthropy to pay to play an increasing role to make sure that good information persists in this country.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's how we've been able to build in scale is a combination of really mission-aligned individuals and organizations.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's really two parts of courier.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's these massive national social media platforms.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's the local online publications, which in some ways are the most fascinating to me, explain dogwood.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, so Dogwood is our Virginia newsroom.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was our very first newsroom we launched back in 2019.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We did not actually launch careers national accounts or products until about two years ago.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I built career to be a local news organization first.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's where I really feel there's a direct correlation between access to good local journalism and civic participation.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are a civic mission-minded organization.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We want people to be informed and to vote.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to participate in their communities, we are explicit about that.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the dogwood is like all of our state newsrooms has a team of reporters on the ground who live in the communities they serve.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are a remote organization which allows us to hire folks in rural communities across the states as well as urban.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: areas, every newsroom including Dogwood has a political correspondent who lives within the capital, who reports on the state house, what's happening there, that drives local relevant human-centered political coverage of what's happening in Washington and in their state houses.
• 36:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a flagship newsletter that goes out five days a week, again, that is free run by a community newsletter editor that includes a combination of local lifestyle cultural and political reporting.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what we do both in our states end at national is we don't only produce an enormous amount of really quality and award winning original reporting.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also aggregate a lot of news from other trusted sources and package them in a way on social media and through our newsletters that our audiences will consume because they won't get it access to it elsewhere.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So everything from cable news and local broadcast,
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: to legacy publications at the state and national level we make sure that we're actually putting the most relevant information in front of them and always citing it and sourcing it appropriately, but our audiences don't read long articles.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we need to make sure that we get them the headlines and the facts and the data points that are most relevant and that we break through the noise with that and I think that's that's our superpower.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, for Virginia right now, early voting has begun on a statewide referendum to re-apportion the congressional seats in response to Trump's initiatives to Jerry Manders, congressional seats in other states.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Virginia is in the middle of a crucial political campaign right now, and of course, that is the latest headline at Dogwood Early Voting begins on Virginia redistricting referendum.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where are the other local news websites for courier?
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we have reporters on the ground and newsrooms currently in 11 states.
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just announced a few weeks ago, we're expanding to 20 by the end of this year.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to have reporters on the ground and newsrooms set up in 20 states by the end of this year.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're already in 11.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those 11 are Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin.
• 39:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are the states.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just happens to be that we would really like to win more congressional and statewide offices in November.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our expansion states include Georgia, Minnesota, Kentucky, Colorado.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you name it.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we built a scalable model.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: My goal was always to be in 50 states and in US territories.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are on our way there, so it really, you know, it doesn't matter what the political makeup is of the states.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It comes down to us having the resources to get there and that can often be defined by donors or underwriters who have a particular interest in a state, but we we are unbiased.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We would like our model to be everywhere and think it could be really effective at filling that vacuum left by a lot of local news closing down over the past number of years.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if our listeners want to see what courier is up to, I recommend going to VADogwood.com just for a starter on what a wonderful local news publication looks like or you can go to their TikTok page if you're young and know how to do that.
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to say the best way to actually see how our audiences do the reporting is to go to the sign up for the newsletters or go to the go to the social media pages.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And career local.com is a good kind of hub site where you can find all the states and all their social channels as well.
• 40:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tara McGowan is founder and CEO of Career Newsroom, a digital media company that operates a network of local news outlets.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tara, thanks for all your work.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for talking with us today.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, John.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am a long time, long time reader in fan of the nation, so very, very humbled to be on the pod with you.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast from the Nation Magazine.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Renée Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer, Jack Merkinson is Executive Producer.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pascal Sunkara is President of the Nation, Katrina Vandenhuvul is editor and publisher of the Nation.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobe, License by Creative Commons.
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can find out more about Start Making Sense at the Nation.com.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can subscribe to start making sense on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm John Weener.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.