#AIS: Glenn Greenwald & Matt Taibbi discuss the new political divide, moderated by David Sacks

**David Sacks** (0:00)
So, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, folks.
So, by way of introduction, I want to just sort of tell the story of how this panel happened. It arose out of almost a throwaway comment that Jason made on an episode of the pod where he was talking about, you know, lining up speakers for this event, and he said that, you know, he was having a hard time getting liberals, and all he could find were like right-wingers like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, and in terms of just to explain their backgrounds a little bit, you know, Matt used to be the, they're both independent journalists who write phenomenal columns on Substack, and all of you should check it out and subscribe, and by the way, they also do call-in shows on a phenomenal podcasting platform that you should all check out. But Matt was sort of like the left-wing firebrand, sort of populist firebrand on writing for Rolling Stone who back in 2009 was asking the question why the people who caused the great financial crisis, why no one was going to jail, and Glenn, you know, broke the Snowden story about how the government was engaging in mass surveillance on all of us and raising questions about the infringement of our civil liberties. So both these guys have, I'd say, well-established bona fides, used to be considered left-wing sort of liberal bona fides, but now today somehow they've been read out of what you would call liberalism today. And so that comment that Jason made sort of, I think there's so much to unpack there on how that happened. What does liberalism today mean if it doesn't include you guys?
And so that maybe that's the place to start is trying to understand what has happened in our politics that makes you guys not liberal anymore. And what is liberalism? And then what is conservatism? And are we even thinking about the political divide in our country the right way if left versus right doesn't really capture it anymore? So that was sort of the starting point for this. Who wants to just react to anything I just said?

**Glenn Greenwald** (2:26)
Yeah, well, first of all, it's of course very gratifying to realize that your attendance at a conference is due to a throwaway line from David Sacks, so super honored to hear that. That's the reason why we were invited.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I guess we join a long list of other far-right luminaries like Russell Brand, who has spent the last 15 years as one of the most vocal devotees to the socialist Jeremy Corbyn. He's now also on the right. And Joe Rogan, who just 18 months ago said to millions of people that his favorite candidate running for president was Bernie Sanders, the socialist left-wing candidate from Vermont. And even now, Elon Musk, who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 over Mitt Romney and is one of the largest owners to the ACLU. Somehow he's also on the far right. So in some sense, it's just become a kind of punishing label that's designed to stigmatize or demonize anybody who in any way descends from or diverges from liberal orthodoxy. It's just kind of an enforcement or coercive label that has no meaning, just bereft of any actual substance. But I think there's a broader dynamic underneath it all, which is that, you know, it is true that every five years, ten years, what was once an issue at the forefront of our debates goes to the background and other issues go to the forefront. So ten years ago, we were spending a lot of time debating things like Obama's drone program or Guantanamo not being closed. Or as you said, the work Matt was doing on, you know, derivatives and the fraud on Wall Street. We don't talk much about that anymore. We spend a lot of time now talking instead about whether the internet should be this instrument of censorship and information control, whether we should trust the US security state to dictate what is and is not disinformation, whether we should be involved in very similar kinds of proxy wars like we spent the cold war doing over places like Ukraine.
And so in one way, it's natural that political alliances shift as different issues go to the fore and alliances change as a result. But I think something much more important is that liberalism itself has changed largely by virtue of Donald Trump, because liberals as a defining view, maybe as an overarching view, maybe Democrats, not liberals. Yeah, by liberals, I just mean kind of the mainstream wing of the Democratic Party, the way Hillary Clinton calls herself progressive. So again, illustrating the bankruptcy of these terms. But by liberals, I just mean kind of like the Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer wing have come to believe that the overarching way to understand politics is that there's one primary menace and risk to the United States, which is Donald Trump, his movement and the Republican Party. And it's not just that they have a bad ideology, but that they're actual fascists trying to instill a white nationalist dictatorship.