Latest / Brian Thomas / Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: It's 8.06 at 55KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas here
- 0:04Speaker 1: wishing everyone a very happy Tuesday and welcoming to the
- 0:07Speaker 1: 55KRC Morning Show, a segment we do each week at
- 0:09Speaker 1: this time, the Insight Scoop with Breitbart News. Always start
- 0:12Speaker 1: out by telling my listening audience, bookmark the site, Breitbart, B-R-E-I-T-B-A-R-T.com.
- 0:17Speaker 1: You'll be glad you did because you can read what
- 0:19Speaker 1: Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow writes about among the other topics.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Alex Marlow, welcome back to the 55KRC Morning Show. Your
- 0:25Speaker 1: name came up earlier in the program. We were talking
- 0:27Speaker 1: about Empower You seminars. Welcome back, my friend.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian. I always appreciate what you do for
- 0:32Speaker 2: Breitbart and for your audience.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Well, we're all trying to do it for the audience.
- 0:37Speaker 1: I mean, this is why we exist. We're trying to
- 0:38Speaker 1: keep people on the straight and narrow and logical, reasonable
- 0:41Speaker 1: path and keep our country alive. I mean, Lord Almighty,
- 0:43Speaker 1: we see what's going on in France. We're about half
- 0:45Speaker 1: a baby step away from that reality. Your background is tremendous.
- 0:51Speaker 1: I have to just note, because your bio talks about
- 0:54Speaker 1: your long-term relationship with Andrew Breitbart, you were the first
- 0:57Speaker 1: Breitbart employee... and you started out in his basement. You
- 1:00Speaker 1: started out and you met him in college, and your
- 1:03Speaker 1: first career move was to take a huge risk by
- 1:07Speaker 1: working in the basement. And I got a kick out
- 1:09Speaker 1: of the fact that you were in charge of making
- 1:10Speaker 1: sure there was Diet Coke in the fridge. I had
- 1:12Speaker 1: a similar experience. I left a very large law firm
- 1:14Speaker 1: in Chicago. A couple of partners broke off and asked
- 1:18Speaker 1: me to come with them. So we started out in
- 1:20Speaker 1: a conference room in a rented space, and I was
- 1:23Speaker 1: in charge of coffee procurement. So You've got to do
- 1:26Speaker 1: the little things when you're starting off in a new business.
- 1:28Speaker 1: But it all worked out great for you, and I'm
- 1:29Speaker 1: happy with where I ended up. And I'm glad you're
- 1:31Speaker 1: doing the Empower You seminar tonight because I need you
- 1:34Speaker 1: to react to this. Because one of the things you're
- 1:36Speaker 1: going to be doing, the topic, economics polls and trolls
- 1:39Speaker 1: with Alex Marlowe. Can we believe what we see online?
- 1:45Speaker 1: One of the rhetorical questions you're going to dive on into.
- 1:47Speaker 2: Today....
- 1:49Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with the gubernatorial race
- 1:51Speaker 1: here in Ohio, but it's Vivek Ramaswamy, demonstrably better candidate
- 1:54Speaker 1: than Amy Acton. But Amy Acton's mom just made a
- 1:56Speaker 1: commercial for a pack where she specifically calls out her
- 2:00Speaker 1: own daughter, a liar. My name is Donna Arthur, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 2:05Speaker 1: I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying
- 2:06Speaker 1: about her opponent, it's not easy for a mother to
- 2:08Speaker 1: say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is
- 2:11Speaker 1: a liar. She lies about her past. She says she
- 2:13Speaker 1: grew up living in a tent. None of that's true.
- 2:15Speaker 1: She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, among
- 2:18Speaker 1: the other comments. My first reaction, Alex, and the reason
- 2:21Speaker 1: I bring that up, not just to remind my listening
- 2:23Speaker 1: audience about that going on, but my first reaction was,
- 2:27Speaker 1: this has to be AI. You know, I mean, we
- 2:29Speaker 1: can't tell the difference between truth and fiction with video
- 2:32Speaker 1: even these days. And I thought maybe someone got hook, line,
- 2:35Speaker 1: and sinker drawn into this because whose mom would say
- 2:38Speaker 1: something like that about Amy Acton? Well, apparently, Amy Acton's
- 2:41Speaker 1: mom would.
- 2:43Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an everyday occurrence where there's something online
- 2:46Speaker 3: where you feel like, how could that possibly be real?
- 2:48Speaker 2: And then it does turn out to be real.
- 2:50Speaker 3: I mean, there was one with this French rioting over
- 2:52Speaker 3: the weekend where there was an old couple in their
- 2:54Speaker 3: underpants and a bunch of black-clad younger people taking stuff
- 2:57Speaker 3: from them.
- 2:58Speaker 2: That can't be real. Oh, no, it was real. There's
- 3:00Speaker 2: an Elon Musk flying car from last weekend. How is
- 3:02Speaker 2: that real? Apparently it was.
- 3:04Speaker 3: Each and every day we get another example of something
- 3:07Speaker 3: where we can't tell if it's true.
- 3:08Speaker 2: It was Alyssa Slotkin.
- 3:11Speaker 3: Yesterday, who is saying flat out she is going to
- 3:16Speaker 3: prosecute and to hold legally accountable anyone who works for
- 3:19Speaker 3: Donald Trump simply because they're Republicans.
- 3:22Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 3:23Speaker 2: That's the type of stuff.
- 3:23Speaker 3: I wrote a whole book, which we discussed on the show,
- 3:25Speaker 3: Breaking the Law, my last book, about this phenomenon where
- 3:28Speaker 3: I have to convince people this is how the Democrats
- 3:30Speaker 3: are behaving.
- 3:31Speaker 2: And then she just flat out goes and says it.
- 3:33Speaker 3: I wrote 250 pages explaining that's how they really think.
- 3:36Speaker 3: And then I never had a quote like that where
- 3:37Speaker 3: they're just saying, hey, we're going to go after Republicans
- 3:39Speaker 3: just for the sake of being Republicans. I would have
- 3:41Speaker 3: killed for that quote when I was doing the book
- 3:42Speaker 3: because we all know that's what they think. They just
- 3:45Speaker 3: started saying it out loud. And again, I had the
- 3:47Speaker 3: same thought as you, Brian. That's got to be AI, right?
- 3:50Speaker 2: Like a clever Republican made that up and put those
- 3:52Speaker 2: words in their mouth.
- 3:53Speaker 1: Nope, they didn't. How are we to, you know, how
- 3:56Speaker 1: do we know what's true and what's not online?
- 3:58Speaker 2: I mean, I speak truth.
- 4:00Speaker 1: I try to rely on the most confident resources I
- 4:03Speaker 1: can come up with. I'm a fan of Breitbart. I
- 4:05Speaker 1: know you guys do your due diligence in your reporting.
- 4:08Speaker 1: You also, you know, link sources where some of the
- 4:10Speaker 1: information comes from. I'm a fan of the Wall Street Journal. Yes,
- 4:13Speaker 1: some of the things I like and some of the
- 4:14Speaker 1: things I don't, but they do good, credible journalism and
- 4:17Speaker 1: they're good at fact checking but once you gravitate over
- 4:23Speaker 1: to one of the more suspect sources and that's kind
- 4:26Speaker 1: of any other side page that doesn't get as many
- 4:29Speaker 1: hits isn't known for the you know what they do
- 4:32Speaker 1: then we're lost in a in almost an unnavigable environment
- 4:35Speaker 1: alex how do we deal with something like.
- 4:37Speaker 3: That yeah it's tough i actually if it's some people
- 4:41Speaker 3: see this as maybe a positive others probably less of
- 4:44Speaker 3: a positive but I don't think the AI slop, as
- 4:47Speaker 3: we call it, that we're seeing online, I don't think
- 4:49Speaker 3: it's less accurate than the previous age of media fact checking.
- 4:53Speaker 3: I think the previous age of media fact checking was
- 4:56Speaker 3: somehow even worse. And so we've garbage in and garbage out,
- 5:00Speaker 3: but some of the AI models, particularly Grok, seem to
- 5:03Speaker 3: be less biased than any sort of major newsroom that
- 5:06Speaker 3: you would see. And so they were putting out false
- 5:09Speaker 3: stuff all the time. And Again, not to plug.
- 5:12Speaker 2: All my books.
- 5:12Speaker 3: I'm not making money off of these books anymore at
- 5:15Speaker 3: this point, guys. So if you buy one of my books,
- 5:16Speaker 3: it's just because I believe in what I wrote in it.
- 5:19Speaker 3: My first book, Breaking the News, I wrote about the media.
- 5:21Speaker 3: And I talked about the agendas the media has.
- 5:24Speaker 2: But I go through all these examples. They were just
- 5:25Speaker 2: blatantly false.
- 5:26Speaker 3: They would ride not for a story or two stories,
- 5:29Speaker 3: but for months and months and months, just the same
- 5:31Speaker 3: falsehoods repeated over and over again. And I do think
- 5:35Speaker 3: in an AI era, we actually could probably fight through
- 5:38Speaker 3: those news cycles a little quicker.
- 5:40Speaker 2: So the best thing that you could do.
- 5:42Speaker 3: Is you try to find sources that are consistently accurate
- 5:46Speaker 3: because we're all busy. And then if you do find
- 5:48Speaker 3: something that you feel like is suspect, try to see
- 5:52Speaker 3: if it appears at one of those sources you trust.
- 5:55Speaker 3: And if it doesn't, then that's a good time to
- 5:57Speaker 3: run it through a rock or something like that and say,
- 5:59Speaker 3: is this true? And you're not going to get 100%
- 6:00Speaker 3: batting average doing that. But for busy people, that's generally
- 6:03Speaker 3: a pretty good process.
- 6:04Speaker 1: Indeed. And I guess one of my concerns along those
- 6:07Speaker 1: lines is the learning models that these AI systems use,
- 6:12Speaker 1: it's sort of a volume-based thing. I recall a Reddit
- 6:15Speaker 1: subgroup conducted a test, and the purpose was to perpetuate
- 6:19Speaker 1: an absolute outright lie. I mean, it was bizarre. Like, J.D.
- 6:23Speaker 1: Vance was dead, or J.D. Vance killed Donald Trump, or
- 6:25Speaker 1: something really crazy. And it involved even more something, even
- 6:28Speaker 1: something crazier than that. But they went around and they
- 6:30Speaker 1: repeated it, and they put it on different news sites,
- 6:33Speaker 1: and they posted it elsewhere. So repetition appeared ultimately to
- 6:37Speaker 1: give credibility to it so much so that when you
- 6:39Speaker 1: typed in a question about that in AI, it confirmed
- 6:43Speaker 1: at least to a certain degree that that lie was
- 6:45Speaker 1: in fact true. I mean, that's a reality that we
- 6:48Speaker 1: might run into unless they change the learning model.
- 6:50Speaker 3: We're definitely, particularly with you, Anthropic and ChatGPT, which is
- 6:55Speaker 3: open AI, both are very left and everyone there is left.
- 6:58Speaker 3: And we're going to have the same issues as we've
- 7:00Speaker 3: seen with Google searches with a By the way, so
- 7:03Speaker 3: anything Gemini is going to be the same thing where
- 7:05Speaker 3: Google basically banishes a lot of conservative sites from their results.
- 7:11Speaker 3: And so this has been a big thing in the
- 7:12Speaker 3: news business lately, Brian, is that a lot of these
- 7:14Speaker 3: websites are losing tons of traffic now because of AI,
- 7:18Speaker 3: because people are going to AI instead of Google and
- 7:20Speaker 3: they relied on Google for their traffic. Well, I can't
- 7:23Speaker 3: rely on Google for my traffic because we're basically banned
- 7:25Speaker 3: from Google. Again, something that we've researched and reported on
- 7:28Speaker 3: repeatedly shows up in my first book as well, how
- 7:31Speaker 3: Google doesn't allow for people to get to Breitbart stuff
- 7:35Speaker 3: unless you put the word Breitbart in the search. So
- 7:37Speaker 3: unless you physically search the word Breitbart, you're not getting
- 7:40Speaker 3: any of our stories, even if they're exclusive or the
- 7:42Speaker 3: authoritative story on that subject matter, which is horrific.
- 7:46Speaker 2: And I don't know how it's legal, but it's held
- 7:49Speaker 2: up to this point. But so then I'm not dependent
- 7:51Speaker 2: on them.
- 7:52Speaker 3: A lot of these websites that you read, a lot
- 7:54Speaker 3: of these newspapers that you read are dependent on Google
- 7:56Speaker 3: funneling them tons of traffic. And people aren't going to
- 7:59Speaker 3: Google to figure out what's going on. They're going to
- 8:01Speaker 3: their AIs at this point. So it's kind of interesting
- 8:04Speaker 3: that that's a new thing. They're going to get hoisted
- 8:06Speaker 3: on their own petard, as the expression goes.
- 8:08Speaker 1: Well, one might hope, but I mean, a lot of
- 8:11Speaker 1: my listeners, I always consider myself like you. We can
- 8:14Speaker 1: label ourselves, and it's a positive, weed dwellers when it
- 8:17Speaker 1: comes to politics. We can label ourselves weed-drawers when it
- 8:20Speaker 1: comes to ferreting through nefarious information versus accurate information. We
- 8:23Speaker 1: can search for the truth because we know the trusted
- 8:26Speaker 1: news sites, and you, as you pointed out, know how
- 8:29Speaker 1: the quote-unquote nefarious forces work, like your illustration with Google.
- 8:34Speaker 1: But how are the run-of-the-mill folks who've got more important
- 8:37Speaker 1: things to do with their lives and follow the minutiae
- 8:39Speaker 1: of this, how are we out there supposed to deal
- 8:42Speaker 1: with this in this emerging brave new world, if I
- 8:44Speaker 1: can call that, drawing Aldous Huxley reference?
- 8:47Speaker 3: Well, I'm new as much as I can on the
- 8:50Speaker 3: politics and international news front at Breitbart.com.
- 8:53Speaker 2: So you get the Breitbart app. It's the best thing
- 8:54Speaker 2: you can do. That's number one.
- 8:56Speaker 3: I think that's the first thing you can do because
- 8:59Speaker 3: if we're doing stuff, you know it's accurate because, first
- 9:02Speaker 3: of all, we have morals and standards.
- 9:03Speaker 2: But second of all, the fact-checkers are on our case.
- 9:06Speaker 2: So anything that is wrong, we're getting corrected the moment
- 9:09Speaker 2: it happens.
- 9:10Speaker 3: And all of you guys are good fact-checkers too. So
- 9:13Speaker 3: we keep an eye on what our audience is telling us.
- 9:15Speaker 3: If they think something is inaccurate, then they're not going
- 9:17Speaker 3: to get it. But overall, I think that there is
- 9:21Speaker 3: a huge crisis in credibility and trust in the media,
- 9:24Speaker 3: and it's on individual outlets to be able to sort
- 9:27Speaker 3: it out. But the people are smart, and there's lots
- 9:30Speaker 3: of volume. So if you go to– again, if you're
- 9:34Speaker 3: skeptical of a story, I would recommend going to Grok
- 9:39Speaker 3: or X, the Everything app, and putting it in the
- 9:41Speaker 3: Grok thing.
- 9:42Speaker 2: Saying, is this accurate?
- 9:43Speaker 3: And usually you're going to get a pretty good sense
- 9:45Speaker 3: of if something's accurate at that point.
- 9:47Speaker 2: And if you're not convinced, then just don't repeat it
- 9:49Speaker 2: to your friends or don't share it with people until
- 9:51Speaker 2: you are.
- 9:52Speaker 1: That's sound advice right there, Alex. Well, and you know,
- 9:55Speaker 1: the idea of social media influencers, perhaps that people, and
- 9:58Speaker 1: here's my, my often repeated rules for memes. I get
- 10:02Speaker 1: memes all the time. I have friends who are just
- 10:04Speaker 1: meme fanatics. So I'll get, I'll get 15, 20 in
- 10:06Speaker 1: a row from some folks. Sometimes you're like, wow. But
- 10:10Speaker 1: most of the times I'm, wait a second, that can't
- 10:14Speaker 1: be true. So I'll follow up with it and I'll
- 10:16Speaker 1: type in the information that's in a meme and I'll
- 10:17Speaker 1: find out, yeah, you know, Andy sent me another one
- 10:20Speaker 1: that sounds plausible, but it is not true. So maybe
- 10:23Speaker 1: we need to fact check what we're hearing from social
- 10:26Speaker 1: media influencers online and various podcasts online.
- 10:30Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very interested in exploring this. I was thinking
- 10:32Speaker 3: about this recently about how the memes, the individual influencers online,
- 10:40Speaker 3: particularly I've been noticing this on the meta platform, Instagram,
- 10:45Speaker 3: and I'm not on Facebook a lot, and I'm not
- 10:48Speaker 3: on TikTok a lot, but I know the stuff on
- 10:50Speaker 3: TikTok is just completely deranged. At this point, TikTok's 100%
- 10:53Speaker 3: responsible for the Lindsay Clancy phenomenon that we all were
- 10:56Speaker 3: forced to live through that was completely egged on by TikTok.
- 11:00Speaker 3: There's so much false stuff from individual creators that's promoted
- 11:03Speaker 3: in the algorithms, and then it'll get hundreds of thousands
- 11:07Speaker 3: of likes on it, And as a person who runs
- 11:09Speaker 3: a pretty big newsroom, I feel very odd, you know,
- 11:12Speaker 3: correcting some person with 12,000 followers who had one viral post,
- 11:17Speaker 3: but the algorithm does keep pushing the inaccurate posts because
- 11:21Speaker 3: people engage with it. And that is a curse. It
- 11:24Speaker 3: really is a curse that we're dealing with this right now.
- 11:26Speaker 3: And it's very hard to fight through it, especially when
- 11:30Speaker 3: you're seeing, you know, Mark Zuckerberg 2.0 is he's been
- 11:34Speaker 3: kind of cool to Trump all of a sudden. And so,
- 11:36Speaker 3: What's the Trump administration going to do? Just go in
- 11:39Speaker 3: there and say, hey, Mark, all these false stuff that
- 11:41Speaker 3: make us look bad are going viral. Can you shut
- 11:43Speaker 3: that down? It's kind of a weird move. It's kind
- 11:46Speaker 3: of a weird move if the White House were to
- 11:47Speaker 3: do that. So it's a real new frontier that we're in,
- 11:50Speaker 3: and we've got to work through it each and every day.
- 11:52Speaker 1: Well, haven't we been through that or down that road
- 11:54Speaker 1: before with the prior administration and having agents inside Facebooks
- 11:58Speaker 1: and other social media platforms?
- 12:00Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's not a great look when
- 12:03Speaker 3: you learn that Joe Biden was pressuring Trump zuckerberg to
- 12:07Speaker 3: change stuff in the election zuckerberg said so it's not
- 12:09Speaker 3: a great look so trump's got to be thinking about
- 12:11Speaker 3: that but you know on the zuckerberg platforms there's just
- 12:13Speaker 3: tons and tons of far-left falsehoods that go viral every
- 12:16Speaker 3: day and a lot of people aren't going to be
- 12:19Speaker 3: smart about sorting it out is that your audience will
- 12:22Speaker 3: my audience will but that's not the whole world unfortunately.
- 12:25Speaker 1: Well and going back to the number of clicks likes
- 12:27Speaker 1: reposts we can't even trust that. I mean, there are
- 12:30Speaker 1: bot farms out there that self-serving, politically motivated Chinese Communist
- 12:34Speaker 1: Party bot farms that seek to undermine America's interests and
- 12:38Speaker 1: will stir the pot of whatever it's in its best
- 12:41Speaker 1: interest by giving the appearance that any given post is popular.
- 12:46Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally right.
- 12:47Speaker 3: It's very, it's just, it's so challenging out there in
- 12:50Speaker 3: this regard because so many people buy followers so you
- 12:53Speaker 3: think they're credible because you have a lot of followers,
- 12:55Speaker 3: but a lot of them aren't real. There's a lot
- 12:56Speaker 3: of followers who are, you know, foreign, but, but that
- 13:00Speaker 3: just means we can't count who they are. It's not
- 13:02Speaker 3: that I, we have an international audience too.
- 13:04Speaker 2: That's great.
- 13:05Speaker 3: But a lot of them are these farms that are
- 13:07Speaker 3: overseas and they're simulating lots of people and they're not
- 13:11Speaker 3: in a lot of the engagement. You can see a
- 13:12Speaker 3: lot of the engagement on certain platforms is AI. I
- 13:15Speaker 3: noticed this in my mentions on certain platforms that a
- 13:18Speaker 3: lot of it is just clearly not a human being
- 13:20Speaker 3: who wrote it. It's just really sloppy AI stuff that
- 13:23Speaker 3: people are doing to try to build their own accounts
- 13:24Speaker 3: by engaging with other accounts. And It is very hard
- 13:27Speaker 3: to sort out what's real and what's fiction now. So
- 13:29Speaker 3: that's why I recommend get some books, go take a walk,
- 13:32Speaker 3: go touch some grass. Don't spend your whole day on
- 13:34Speaker 3: the Internet.
- 13:35Speaker 1: And log in at 7 p.m. EmpowerYouAmerica.org where my guest
- 13:39Speaker 1: today from Breitbart, Alex Marlow, will be doing economics, polls,
- 13:42Speaker 1: and trolls. You can talk to him, ask questions. This
- 13:45Speaker 1: is going to be a nice one. You have interactive exchange,
- 13:47Speaker 1: and he can give you a lot more information about
- 13:49Speaker 1: what we scratched the surface on this morning on the
- 13:51Speaker 1: Breitbart Inside Scoop. Thank you, Alex, for everything that you
- 13:54Speaker 1: do throughout the week. I appreciate your teaming up with
- 13:56Speaker 1: Andrew Breitbart so many years ago and doing the great
- 13:59Speaker 1: work that he started. I look forward to having your
- 14:01Speaker 1: team back on the program next Tuesday at the same time.
- 14:03Speaker 1: Have a great week and enjoy the seminar tonight, my friend.