Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Matt Taibbi and the New Threat to Free Speech w/ Eoin Higgins / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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Matt Taibbi and the New Threat to Free Speech w/ Eoin Higgins / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast, which is sponsored by the Nation magazine.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm G-T here of the Nation.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this week,
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to take up somebody who if he's a monster is maybe more of a comical monster, but is more the minion who works for monsters, the sort of henchman and it's a sort of tragic comic figure because he had started off as a more admirable figure.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about the journalist Matt Taibi who has recently been both a subject
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: of a book with my guest, Owen Higgins, and also as Blantston unsuccessful lawsuit against Owen, which I think is where we'll start off with.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, first of all, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you so much for having me really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you wrote a book that one of the subjects, we've had to, how you want to talk about the book before, but let's just remind listeners, what's the book and how does Matt Taibi figure
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the book is called Owen, how tech billionaires on the right bought the loudest voices on the left, it's a study of a couple different things.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that probably a good way to describe maybe the narrative through line is this kind of an examination of how we went from the early, odd, splogosphere to where we are today with digital media.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a, it, uh,
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Follows the career specifically of Glenn Greenwell, but also of Matt Taibi as a way of kind of showing this evolution or devolution depend on how you look at it of them as kind of these figures on the left who found varying levels of success within mainstream and online like independent publications.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: to where they kind of are now, and Glenn is, I think, a much more complicated figure in subject than we really have time to go into right now.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I feel pretty confident.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then he's been talking about development as well.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we talked about him in the past, definitely.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's frankly, in my opinion, more interesting character.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And someone who kind of has a career that's harder to define easily.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, that is a compliment.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But of course, the book is quite critical of him.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I am saying that is a compliment.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I think he's a more interesting figure than Tybee, who has just devolved into this right-wing
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you look at the things that you write in podcasts and posts on social media about this point, it's just gutter level, transphobia, and vaccine conspiracy theories, and just generalize right-wing, cultural war, Azure Pro.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think more recently, some sort of curiosity about Jeffrey Epstein, Minimalism, or Denialism,
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, he had Michael Tracy on his podcast for a while, Michael Tracy is an internet figure obviously who has a
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: has an interest in being a contrarian, and his contrarianism has carried over to Epstein, and you know, so TIEB has as well kind of gone along that a little bit, but he's never been in a little bit.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't say he's gone as far as Mr. Tracy, who I think was recently aptly described as perhaps not a political figure, but someone with a very strange fetish for being yelled at.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: and who I think is indulging in that fetish to a great degree.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in any case, so now you your book, can we have the name and the publisher?
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so again the name is Owen, how tech creators on the right, but a lot of toys on the left publishers has shed bolt-type books via
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, but also alongside that examination of their careers is very quickly, it's also about Silicon Valley's interest in the media, how that's accelerated especially over the last 10, 11, 12 years.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And kind of how those two storylines intersect around the end of the book and then you kind of see not, you know, not how there's a direct kind of
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: pay the play element, although those elements I think are kind of there, but it's kind of like, you know, there is a Man you factured space for people with certain opinions to change those opinions in certain ways that
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the book is really about the cervical economy of journalism and the way creates incentives structures for figures and the way in which in the current American flotocracy where the Silicon Valley billionaires and now in the case of a star of us trillionaires have enormous power to restructure and change what journalism is and how one can so can make a living and that that has had a real influence.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: figures like Greenwald and Taipei, not in a sort of direct, you know, here's a bundle of cash pair at this line, but in creating, you know, the sort of financial world in which they operate and how they can like make a living.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, now, but I have, again, encouraged listeners to pick up the book.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've talked about it before.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an excellent book and it reports on something.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it's deeply reported and, you know, like surveys, the major figures in quite a bit of nuance.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This book, you know, presenting this like, um, analysis, a critical analysis, but, you know, one that is sort of backed up by evidence, it did not make Mr. Taiyvi very happy.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so can we go to, like, how he responded to this?
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: right so so as as you said like there is a lot of nuance in the portrayal um you know there's some rhetorical forces obviously with the with the title and the subtitle that's the way that this stuff usually goes as anyone who's read a headline or book title ever tell you uh but mister tybie uh decided that he wanted to sue framing that i had defamed him and maliciously defamed him
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... by calling the book by by suggesting that he was quote unquote owned that he had been directly paid uh... it's none of that appears in the book obviously or even on the cover or or the title uh... but nonetheless like like that was the uh...
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was his case that he brought against me.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: He used a lawyer called Robert Garson, who represented Donald Trump against Bob Woodward, last summer, and he sued me and both type, which is, you know, and his shot, basically.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he sued the publisher and myself for damages exceeding $1 million claiming that his reputation had been damaged.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then I want to just like zero it also because I think is like very interesting, which is as far as I can tell the substantial basis of this lawsuit is literally the title of your book and that he did not actually, and I think the judge point of those own did not substantially challenge like any of the facts in the book itself.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's upset at the title.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now now I just like draw that sort of
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: comparison.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bookway historian, Francis Stone Saunders, who paid the paper.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is about the CIA, and it's influenced on cultural institutions, such as encounter magazine, partisan review magazine, many movies.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it documents at Great Lent, the fact that the CIA was funding a lot of cultural institutions.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some of the people that were in these
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I can imagine it's like someone like look at that title that's at who paid the paper, are you suggesting that we're simply rats who like the pipe bear is leading along?
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can't get upset, but like I think a normal person with like a kind of even not a very intelligent person will just as a room temperature intelligence who's aware of how rhetoric works would say like, no, that's just like it's a title.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: two like make a point that there's a pie paper that was the leading people along and to me this this lawsuit is the equivalent of that of you know like like I'm getting upset at a headline
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, like, they filed a complaint, the complaint was very weak.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They filed an amended complaint, which then kind of wins what you're talking about, right?
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then it started to talk about the title.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It talked about Jeep, so Jeep blurbs the book on the back and they cited snug a patronage, which was one of your, the way that you referred to it, cited that as, because that was on the cover, they cited that as defamation.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They also, uh, and this is my favorite part in the book, I say, and I am paraphrasing here, but I say that, uh, Tybee cached in his well-earned reputation to launder a billionaires, uh, you know, to basically launder, like, what must wanted to get out there, as far as, like, what Twitter was with the Twitter files, and they, uh,
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: They said that by saying cash in, even though I immediately say after that, his well-earned reputation as a true teller, that I was suggesting that there was cash involved, right?
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like this whole thing was completely ridiculous, and our lawyers represented Bob Woodward against Trump, so they were very well aware of Mr. Garcin.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they just, I mean, they brutalize him in their responses.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's really, you can find the case online at court listener.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think almost all of the documents are up there.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the judge, see, he filed it in November.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The judges know him as a relatively slow judge, but we had a judgeman six months later in May.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he also, and this I think will become relevant as we continue to talk about this, but he filed it in the York if he filed it in federal court in New York.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reason he filed in federal court in New York is if he found the state court in New York, we could have sued him under anti-slap statute, and God not only are court fees back, we're probably a lot more.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he obviously intentionally filed it in federal court for that reason,
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now the way the case is now, so it was found in our favor in the beginning of May, and now the state of play is that he has appealed it, the second circuit court of appeals, appealed the judgment.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the judgment was a full dismissal.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't even go to discovery, nothing.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just got completely thrown out.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And where it's at now is he's appealed it, and we have made a motion to the courts to have him cover our legal fees, which currently are over $178,000 from for myself and the publisher.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that we filed it is because there is some precedent for using New York's
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But after we filed it, after we filed our motion, and before they filed their response, and before he filed his appeal, there was another case that came out, which found pretty conclusively that, actually, yes, you can get your legal fees in federal court in the
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: order like slapping this down.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was just basically like there's, you know, he, everything that he's saying is just on the cover of the book.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is all protected, speech protected, rhetoric essentially like what you, what you said there, G. And, and, you know, I think that,
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is really a situation where, in my view, what happened is that Matt did not like the book that I wrote and he didn't like the content of it and so he's willing to spend money to waste my time and to cause me stress and to cause me money.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's A and that B to send a message to anyone else who criticizes him, that if you criticize him, like, yeah, it might get thrown out, yeah, but you are still going to have to go through this process.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that is the important thing here, is that this is like kind of an implicit threat to anyone else who wants to write a book for
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: that he is willing to spend his money.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's quite wealthy, man.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's willing to spend his money to go after you in court.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a bigger problem, I think.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, around, like US political business interest society at the moment, where a lot of people are willing to do this.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, to serve full back a little bit.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I do want to underscore what a serious lawsuit this is.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: For a variety of reasons, and what actually looks at the decision of the judge, I mean, it's like,
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It says exactly what you said that, you know, like this is a case of a stop on the title of a buck and a few words on the cover, which does not dispute the actual, you know, contents of the buck, which is all protected speech, I will add that in the United States, and this is, you know, like something that's actually quite commendable at the United States, they have started free speech protections.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: reliable involving public figure are like there's like enormous hurdles you have to basically under Sullivan if you have a public figure which meta-ev is you know you have to prove that not only like where they're like false claims made against them but that these were made maliciously by somebody who knew that they were not true like I cannot see
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: like how anyone could have thought that like this lawsuit could win, you know, given those rules and here are the fact that there's not even factual dispute about anything other than this sort of rhetoric that's used on the cover.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to bring up one thing as you say here, right?
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is in their March final, like motion basically, you know, before the judgment came out.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to read this.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is from their case.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We begin with a thought experiment.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine this court spying the book shop, a book with the cover bearing the title about.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: island, how tech billionaires on the right, but the judges of the Southern District, with the same puppeteers strains, the same marketing language promising to follow the money and name names, the same claims of an explosive professional greed.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And picture that your name, your honor, appeared on the back cover as one of the bot cronies operating under the snug patronage of billionaires.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the opening to their final attempts here to make their case.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what they're doing is a relying on a completely ridiculous hypothetical.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's still, as you say, still does not reach the level of
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... defamation it's still rhetoric what they're referring to is still rhetoric is still political rhetoric um... it didn't you know that the court did not even need to take a new account the truthfulness of any of these statements which which obviously they would be backed up or we weren't worried about that at all but they didn't even have to because the the this is so obviously protected speech that even if it wasn't
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: true, it would be impossible to kind of prove any kind of malice here.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like this is this is interpretation and rhetoric.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's really nothing in here.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, given like the case of the arguing, so what they're basically is if you have like a cartoon that would say like show a judge or Donald Trump and there's like a puppet master, let's say Peter T.L.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: or Elon Musk,
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: pulling the strings, that would be like a lot of libelas and should be punished, like that is not how the first amendment works.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're allowed to have opinions.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in any case, it's like I cannot underscore enough.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: how furious it is.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as you say, there is a sort of method to the madness, which is not to like win this lawsuit, but to cause, you know, a critic of anti-ev, a lot of stress.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was saying, it's interesting that he took the sort of root of
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: using the libel laws and the courts, because one of the sort of other figures in your book is Peter Tiel.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Tiel, young, notoriously covertly funded like a lawsuit to destroy Gocker.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was because Gocker, the case itself involved Hulk Hogan, but like Tiel's actual motive was that Gocker had printed something about it.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was true.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That he was gay, but closeted.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, sort of, that's one of the kind of accepted reasons, but Max Chaffkin are using his biography of Teele, and I buy this.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Teele's real problem here, and I buy this, by the way, because during my research for the book I talk to a number of people.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: in Silicon Valley, who were contemporaries of tales, both like him, college, and in the early 2000s.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And really the problem was that the thing that he really didn't like to gok her valley wag, which was its Silicon Valley gossip vertical.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: was that they portrayed him in a way that made him seem crazy and unserious, like, you know, they made fun of his investments and they made fun of his connection to Ron Paul.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, like, they did, you know, this isn't even what your apologies.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: like you're, you know, in a free society you're allowed to think that Peter Deal is a crackbuff.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm happy to say that Neil.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is actually in many ways as unhinged figure, you know, who wants to harvest the blood of young people so he can live forever.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, you'd be allowed to say that.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Neil, in that case, was actually quite successful.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: in part because God could kind of shut themselves in the foot in a number of ways.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that sort of is the kind of like model, you know, like a successful internet website.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was like basically destroyed through a lawsuit.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, fortunately, I don't think you know, under existing laws that can happen too much in terms of like a victorious lawsuit.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I said, I think so far the First Amendment and especially the sort of
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: decisions extending the first amendment in journalism like it seems still pretty robust, but it is the case that people on the right are very interested in rolling that back and you as you mentioned like Donald Trump had the lawsuit against Bob Woodward then Trump is always threatening lawsuits, you know,
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: quite often.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is actually, you know, someone like cash per tell is also doing the same.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is actually become a real sort of political thing.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do you want to like talk about the what's the kind of state of flame of this use of lawsuits?
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, Trump, I think at any time has any number of these lawsuits going.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think at the moment he has several, I think, you know, some of them are aimed at larger media institutions.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some are aimed at at individuals.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: For someone like Trump, who's kind of an easy person to describe this via, it's a way of making criticizing him cost money, making it a difficult thing.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what he's trying to do.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really all that he's trying to do.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and to get bright, obviously, by CBS.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I didn't actually, in that case, he has that's even quite successful.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, not because his losses had any Marin.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if, um, he were up against people who, um, willing to fight, he would have lost those losses, but
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the case of like large media organizations that have business before the government, they're happy to use these lawsuits as a way to bribe Trump and to win his good favor.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that in itself is quite disturbing.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he is definitely
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: been doing that.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is, yes, that is like definitely a big part of his motivation.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Caspatel is trying to sue the Atlantic for like $250 million, something ridiculous, because they wrote an article about his hard partying.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, basically, shirking of duties as the FBI director, Elon Musk went after media matters for America.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: claiming that they were involved in, like, I think it's like some sort of conspiracy against him and Twitter for trying to organize a boycott because of how Twitter or Axis is now called is just you know, a hotbed for
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: hate and, you know, musk himself is everything but an out now Nazi by name at this point.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the stuff that he posts, he's fermenting racial hatred all over the place.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And these suits are effective because they
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: are nuisance suits, but they're being filed by some of the most powerful people in the world, right?
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm lucky.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got a suit by Matt Titan.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not one of the most powerful people in the world.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't pick a good lawyer.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not like super worried about it.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't think this appeal is going to go anywhere.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, I should also mention that he, he, um,
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: also sued U.S. Representative Sidney, kind of like a dove who referred to him as a serial sexual harasser, you know, in an open session when he was a witness for the Republicans in a house hearing.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He suited that was that was dismissed I believe earlier this month, but you know this is something where you know you're seeing someone like him doing this stuff You're seeing very powerful people do it This rapper named yeah, like yes, because like what was the thinking there because that's he's like even more kind of serious because he like it's like isn't like anything I represent if says the during a in session like protected speech
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: the way that they got around it was they said because she posted it on her axe account.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, so therefore it's abandoned like reach that level.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, it's not that still like if you, if a representative says something like in session and that's protected speech and then it gets reposted like that the it still has was originally said in session like I don't actually see how they could
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Think that they could win that lawsuit unless they were willing to like get a judges like win to radically restrict the speech of Congress Which is like a gay yeah against the stated intention of the constitution like that that's amazing to me that they thought they
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's what the court found.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it doomed his case because he, first of all, he just failed to respond to the assertion that the court lacks subject matter.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And his claim call falls under the line and numerated exceptions.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The FTCA and, quote, must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, interestingly, they did, they dismiss it without prejudice.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: They dismiss ours with prejudice, which means that they can't bring it up again.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They did leave it open for him to do it.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is a different jurisdiction.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: to what excuse that matters.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, New Jersey.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I want to underscore like the these are, in fact, furious lawsuits, you know, that are, you know, made with the intent of winning it.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have to say, I have to like question like the lawyers that have taken these cases.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like almost like they should be said, the soft subject to like examination by the bar association.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you're not supposed to like, you know, take cases
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Garcin, his lawyer, is like this kind of ambulance chaser style guy who lives in Florida.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's originally a British attorney.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's very connected with Trump and the Republicans.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's connected to Jim Jordan on some level, though.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a hundred percent sure on that.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that would make sense.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering Jim Jordan and Tybee are good buddies now.
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, I think he's just willing to take these cases and probably assumes probably correctly that there won't be any consequences for this, at least not in any time in the near future.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: again, like as we said, but this goes beyond just making fun of Tibery, which is very fun to do, and I enjoy doing I don't want to give the impression that I don't, but you know, the thing here is that this is a really kind of nefarious and vicious thing that these guys are doing, and if he hadn't sued
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: as well if he had just sued me this would have been a much more difficult thing for me to deal with because he sued his shed and the shed had a white shoe first amendment law firm i really didn't have to worry that much i mean they they they really just battered you know battered his lawyer around like you know a cat playing with a mouse and then you know the the the judge drop a hammer on them so it was pretty
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: effective, but it's this kind of stuff, if you have the money to file it, if you have the money to pay for the legal action, it's something that
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But first of all, could financially destroy the person who you're going after, even if they went, right?
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because anti-slap laws, not a federal, national thing, anti-slap law is regularly applied in different states.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that in New York, Texas and Florida have like the strongest ones, maybe California too.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's not universal.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it doesn't necessarily apply from state to federal.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of ways around it.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, if you may end up being on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you're somebody like me, you can't afford that.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's an amount of money that is just it's a constant, it makes it cost prohibitive to criticize people who are powerful if you're
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just me and so there's sort of that.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's one and then too like there's the personal stress of being sued.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'll tell you that like even though I knew he didn't have a case every time there was an amended complaint, I obviously booked at it and I would be concerned that maybe they had found some regular room to wiggle room to uh,
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it sounds something in there that they could get at me for.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's also professionally damaging.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I have been sued for defamation now, right?
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, even though it was obviously a spurious lawsuit, even though I'm hoping to write a book about my experience here and anti-slap in general, like, you know, I mean, hopefully that happens, right?
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that would be the best outcome.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's also an outcome where, you know, I'm now
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: radioactive and no, you know, no publisher would want to touch me because of that.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And and I think that those like negative knock on effects are the
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: idea behind filing a lawsuit like this because for someone like Matt, if he ends up spending say, you know, say, $178,000 for our attorneys say he ends up having to pay that say his attorneys fees are the same, which I don't think that they are, but so that would be $350,000 that he was spent to make sure that one of his critics shuts up.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have more of a fight than a flight response and that's something that hasn't always served me well in my life, but it is something that is part of who I am and so my response to Matt Suimi and to him appealing this and stuff like that has been to really just kind of double down on my criticisms of him and make them even more public.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: people are really like that.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm certainly not saying that it's a positive.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying it is just who I am.
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that a lot of people would just be like, you know, what is just not worth it to do this.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is the outcome.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that someone like Tyvee wants to have with a critic like me.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we are too kind of like, I mean, he's probably like, you know.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: minor celebrity in media and I'm far below that, but, you know, somebody like Elon Musk and somebody, you know, like Peter Teele, someone like President Donald Trump, right, going after a mainstream outlet like CBS news, going after media matters for America, a longstanding advocacy group, this is Elon right, going to Peter Teele, going after
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't grow that particular case as well, it's like Trump, where like I mean, I think if they have like substantially damaged media matters and like, you know, like thwarted, like, you know, what a major, you know, however much one can criticize media matters are on a bunch of different grounds, you know, was a major voice for criticizing racist in American society.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Musk has as NTL and Trump have been remarkably effective in sort of weaponizing libel law, even on the sort of most scariest grounds to shut up their critics.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that's a major story, and I think that's why like your story, and I think your forthcoming book about it will be important.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will admit to being a little disappointed in some of the so-called free speech warriors who have just been silent about not only my case, but also the medium-atter stuff like that because they don't like us for whatever reason, whether it's that we criticize them, whatever, but if you are really in favor of free speech, you have to really be in favor of it, you have to.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if that's going to be your brand and that silence has been deafening
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: but I really do think that we are at a moment here where this is maybe not the most urgent thing for everybody, like this use of defamation law, but if you use of light a law, right, use of these defamation suits, but if you just kind of put it in context of everything else
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take Ellison take over of CBS news and now CNN that's coming that I know that you and Dave spoke about last week that Dave and I have been Talking about together for months at this point.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is, you know, this is a major media crisis point We have all of the other restrictions on free speech having to do with Demonstrations for Palestine people protesting against ice and and it just all starts to kind of snowball into this
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: really dangerous situation for the country where like I don't think anyone who's listening to this nation podcast right probably thinks that like what Trump is doing is it's is positive and that we're not in trouble anyway, but I'm saying that but this is a very specific side of it
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to say it's kind of like a major problem.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll throw in or maybe ask you about, aren't like some of this sort of media personalities on social media, like this guy destiny, haven't they also been like kind of using lawsuits, Ethan Klein?
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that's part of the story or is that a separate thing?
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think I'm not familiar with whether this guy Destiny has done any of that stuff.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't pay a whole bunch of attention to those guys.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't necessarily mean that disparagingly.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just mean that they're not really kind of like in my orbit.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I did look at the Ethan Klein lawsuit, though.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did look at the loss of the hefile about the criticism that he got from this guy's video and you know, especially having just gone through this with Typing and with the lawsuit and now being like so much more familiar with with these laws, like my immediate reaction was like this guy does not have that, I mean this is a nuisance lawsuit.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this guy is just trying to get him to shut up.
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what this is.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I, you know, I'm not like super familiar with the guy who's being sued.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I get enough super funny with even climb, but, you know, I certainly like know like who they are.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, the, you know, the one other case I wanted to bring up, though, is the, um, the Afro-man case.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is state case.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't get it.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so he was sued because he wrote a song about the Sheriff's Department in his county who rated his house and he caught them on video doing all kinds of stuff and he implied that he hadn't affair with one of the guy's wives and the all they see is you know a very humorous song and he's making fun of them.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They sued him for defamation over it and they lost and you know all of the transcripts and stuff are out.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all very funny, right?
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there is one part of it that I find actually quite disturbing, which is that in the final judgment, which I don't think the judge had no choice.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he had to throw it up.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like they did not have a case here, right?
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in the final judgment, the judge basically said that Afroman had to pay like X amount of the legal fees.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And really in a case like this, the people who brought this spurious lawsuit, who lost on like every level, they should have paid that.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: they should have paid back and the impression that I get and whether or not this is fair or not I don't know.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the impression that I get from that is that the judge did not want to find in favor of Afroman.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: He did not want the jury to find in favor of Afroman.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He did not like this outcome.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted the sheriff's department to win even though as a matter of law, they were so completely in the wrong.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so he used whatever little power he could to punish Afroman anyway.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: for making this song and for winning against these guys, and to me that's kind of like a microcosm of the big problem here, which is that it's not only that these people in power are using the courts to silence their critics, right, to go after their critics.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also that the entire system is kind of set up in this way, that it's set up to protect the interests of the powerful and to punish people even if they win.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, that is a really disturbing thing.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm glad that didn't happen to me and I'm glad that at the federal level, these big cases, I don't think, is the kind of thing that happens that much.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at the state and local level,
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: People in power are going to use libel law like this more liberally, especially if it comes to more like state and local things as I said, you know, are we going to see more of this or we're going to see like, hey, you might get thrown out, you know, on on on a basis of law, but the judge will do whatever they can to make sure that the person who is being.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: sued by the person who's in power, the defendant here still has to be punished on some level.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's kind of like a broader longer conversation, obviously.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that was something that I found just really bothered me and kind of nagged at me after I read the judgment, which otherwise is great.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: He won resoundingly.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was really no question.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: yeah yeah yeah and and again like that was the case of something that was uh basically the songs you did were satire just like you know definitely kind of uh protected uh uh uh speech maybe like on a survey closing that because you had mentioned that you were disappointed.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the sort of free switch warriors.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that maybe it might be good to distinguish between two classes of people here.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I, I would say you'd be like, he sort of has worked with a very wise and those people are all for claim to be free switch warriors, but are obviously not have never been have a long history of sort of persecuting legitimate Palestinian speech in the carries of very wise.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not kind of surprising that that quadrant and including Taibi now, because he is, I think, fully on board with people of that elk.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not surprising that they are hypocrites and can't be trusted.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think more interestingly is the kind of centrist and centred liberal quadrant.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of people like amatically CEOs.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan Chade who made a lot of noise about free speech about 10 years ago like almost always involving like cases of like university students or like junior staffers at liberal nonprofit who are like you
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, whatever the factual disputes of all these cases, like these are people, it's very little power in the world.
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it's like they really made an issue, like, well, you know, like resources and fortune, whatever the views of the person that made the offensive speech is.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I haven't seen, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't seen that quadrant of the center of liberal types.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Spend a lot of time worrying about this new abuse of free speech.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Perhaps I think they might complain about Trump and the CBS lawsuit, but the middle tier cases such as yours, they're not speaking out of the list all.
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: As far as I can tell, am I wrong?
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that, you know, certainly not that I've heard.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, first of all, as far as Barry goes, you know, Matt wrote an article for the free press on January 5th, saying, to protect free speech on suing the man who defamed me.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have not, I was never contacted for comments on that A, and B, Barry has not reached out to me to write a rejoinder now that he has lost.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So quite disappointed about that.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I won't like, let's be, like, Frank, like, I'm not surprised like that.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Getting the list thinking does, is the prize of very nice is a free speech of a crit.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that, I think that that sort of center liberal space is a little bit more interesting, because I mean, I think their silence on a lot of this stuff is very telling.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: sure you know i mean i think i i i i don't really expect john um to speak out uh in defense of me uh i've certainly been extremely critical of him over the years um and that has uh upset him on a number of occasions um you know if he had principles he he certainly would but you know i don't really expect that from him i
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I don't, a, a, a, a, a, a glaciest.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all these guys, Thomas Chatterton Williams haven't heard from him.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, all, all these.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They do seem to care about speech when the speech that is being suppressed is a case of someone having a view that college students find offensive and the college students say shut up.
• 41:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: that seems to be the extent of like what they see as like the real threat to freedom of speech.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I personally disagree.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that that is an emergency in the same way.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but again, you know, to take the focus off of me, even, I mean, I haven't seen the speak out about this this aforementioned case that I mentioned.
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm unsure if they
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I haven't seen much of it.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's very striking as I said.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I will say that like I do think some of them occasionally comment on say Trump suing serious, but like like anything at a lower level than that, like they have been notably silent and I think this underscores the fact that you know push them to shove they're not that different from very wise.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, and it's kind of like clicking me as I think a lot because, you know, like they don't want to like hand it to someone to their left Like on on kind of anything and and and I find it I find it, you know
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find it disappointing if not unsurprising, I guess, it's kind of where I'm at.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it'll be nice to hear Glenn Greenwald talk about it, although he has taken a smarter move than Matt, I think, has just never mentioned the book that I wrote ever.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is because Glenn is a lot smarter, but you know, but but I don't really expect him to say anything or any of those and any of his little group there, but you know, I mean, it's it's it's something that I know that people are aware of, you know, I spoke to people about it.
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: last month at this event that I was at, and you know, I'm aware that people, you know, they know about it, but maybe they just don't feel like it's worth getting mad mad to talk about, or I don't know.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's a very principal position to have, but, you know, they're going to make their own decisions.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, you know, but in any case, I think the case itself is very significant.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as you said, you know, points to like sort of like larger problems.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank Owen once again for being on the program, but I will link to the book, which I think one way that listeners can support him in this kind of struggle is to purchase the book.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as a bonus, it's very much well worth reading.
• 43:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.