Thursday, June 27, 2024

Taibbi tells all to Tucker

I listened to the entire 2 hour 20 minute interview of Matt Taibbi on the Tucker show this afternoon (waiting for a call back that never came). By the end I was almost tearful. It's sad when one's dreams are dashed--even for leftists. Taibbi was considered the golden boy of liberal journalism. Worked 10 years in Russia (speaks Russian) as a journalist and had his dream job for 16 years with Rolling Stone. He got the big exposé about Twitter, how it was infiltrated by government intel. He now works as an independent (Substack) and is called "right wing" by the Demedia, his former friends and colleagues. He really dislikes Trump, but has had to acknowledge the Soviet/Russian style justice he has received (and Steve Bannon). He was such a huge fan of Obama it was almost painful to listen to his confession of faith. Oddly, he is such a believer in the values of freedom of speech and a journalism ethic that I don't believe ever existed in real practice, that he's about as MAGA as one could be without knowing it.

One odd thing I learned during the interview is both men have fathers who were adopted. Taibbi is actually of Filipino/Hawaiian ethnicity, adopted by Italian Americans with a Lebanese surname.

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