Tucker goes to Hungary, the Taliban take Afghanistan, and a Friend of Pivot on why Epstein couldn't have killed himself

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Scott Galloway is appearing in the new Suicide Squad movie, so this week, I'm happy to be joined by Ben Smith of The New York Times. Hey, Ben.

Ben Smith: Hey, Kara.

Kara Swisher: I think I have to start to ask you a question about a couple of things. The video sharing site Rumble, popular with many conservative viewers, has announced content deals with Tulsi Gabbard and Glenn Greenwald.

Ben Smith: Well, that's a dinner party I don't want to go to.

Kara Swisher: So unlike YouTube, Rumble does not ban videos for spreading medical misinformation. Senator Rand Paul mentioned Rumble as an alternative after he was banned from YouTube last week. If you want to see the video, it's up on Rumble.com. Rumble.com does not censor the news. And Rumble's chief executive, Chris Pavlosky, claims the site went from 1 million users last summer to 30 million users today, still tiny in comparison to YouTube. What thinks you of Rumble?

Ben Smith: Well, I guess, first of all, I would totally love to go to that dinner party, particularly if it's in Rio, where Glenn lives.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true.

Ben Smith: And, you know, I mean, it's a different idea, right? They set themselves up as a competitor to YouTube, but they're a different thing. They're a destination not for regular people who want to figure out how to like repair their bathtubs.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I was descaling my new dishwasher today, but go ahead. Keep going. It's like incredible, right?

Ben Smith: Yeah. You know, it's for people who want alternative political content. Right. And I actually think that maybe it is a healthier world in which we go back to the place that you and I grew up in, which is where people who want all sorts of fringy political content can go find it.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. But there's not a sort of well-organized system for feeding it to just sort of morons looking to descale their dishwashers who suddenly wind up having extreme political views. I realize that is what happened to you.

Ben Smith: Yes, that's what happened to me. I've just suddenly become – so you think they're going to do well. I mean, they're sort of small sites. 30 million users is almost what –

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don't really think that these things are going to be a business. I'm not sure this is a great business. Right. You know, I've been on Getter for the past two weeks, which is interesting. Same thing. It's rather small.

Ben Smith: Have you tried Get Her Out? This is the conservative one.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I spent a bunch of time on its predecessor, the Gab. Yes. And the thing is, for many right-wing activists, the thing they love to do most is troll, and the whole thing is trolling. And when there's nobody to troll, it's not really clear what social media is for anymore. Right, right. It's interesting because it feels like a Trump rally, essentially. Like, yeah, yeah. And I could go in there and someone someone was like, it's listing all the bad things that happened to Biden this week. And they're like, don't you or don't you miss Trump? I guess Trump put in. Don't you miss me now thing. And I was like, hard. No. And everyone went nuts. I was like, hard. No. But it's actually I'm actually finding some people who I'm having good discussions with on policy, which is nice. And I'm sort of the liberal in the room. Sort of the what was the guy from Sean Hannity? What was his name? Combs. Combs. I feel like that's me in this situation.

Ben Smith: Oh, really? No, not at all.

Kara Swisher: But, you know, it's really interesting to see all these things. And I encourage all of them because these things are too big. But you're right, they're not going to be happy not yelling at people like you or me or screaming about the New York Times to each other. It's not quite the same thing.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I think they're less social in a way, right? Like, I mean, Telegram is one that I spent a lot of time on. And it really is mostly top-down broadcast from the dear leader, whoever you think he is. And you're getting a lot of information and following it. And you can be very engaged. But it's more, you know, broadcast.

Kara Swisher: Broadcast. So what do you do on Telegram?

Ben Smith: I just keep up to date on what Mike Flynn is up to.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay. What is he up to on Telegram? Is he's not over on Rumble?

Ben Smith: I don't know. He's probably on Rumble too, but certainly on Telegram, he's telling people to keep the faith.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. The reinstatement didn't happen this weekend. I live here in D.C. I don't know if you're aware. Anyway, speaking of reinstatement, let's talk. You're not going to comment at all. Tucker Carlson doing his Fox News show from Hungary, where he interviewed the nation's right-wing populist leader, Viktor Orban. "Why did you take a different position on migration from other European countries? That was the only reasonable behavior. If somebody without getting any permission on behalf of the Hungarian state cross your border, you have to defend your country." Orban pushed anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ policies. He's been pretty OK on the vaccine stuff. He hasn't been sort of anti-vaccine. What do you make of Tucker doing this kind of stuff? Are you watching it?

Ben Smith: Yeah, I mean, he's doing it in part to get attention from the liberal media, which is going to predictably go nuts and call him a fascist. I mean, there's just something so threadbare about it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: You know, Hungary. Like, you really want to sell out, go sell out to China, to an authoritarian regime, go sell out to China.

Kara Swisher: He mentioned China and they edited it out of his interview. Right. But in fact, the Hungarians already have.

Ben Smith: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: There's just something so threadbare about, like, you know, this idea. He has this idea about sort of a European nationalist leader of his dreams. And he sort of projects it on Hungary. And partly because he, like, you know, because Budapest feels like this great European city. But, of course, everybody in Budapest hates Orban.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: There's one point where he was talking about how everybody in Hungary speaks English better than Americans do, Tucker said. But of course, those are the people who hate Orban. The people who vote for Orban speak no English. I mean, he has this, I think, fantasy of some kind of nationalist model for America that Hungary, in fact, is not.

Kara Swisher: So you think he's just tweaking? I mean, it's part of this, yeah, this nationalist fantasy that he is certainly trying to drive here. Do you think that's good for Fox viewers? Is that good for his ratings to do that?

Ben Smith: I don't think anyone wants to hear about Hungary among his, I don't know, maybe. I like Hungarian food. I mean, if you look at those ratings, I mean, he is, I don't know how many multiples of Don Lemon he is, but very, very many.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, very, very many. But I feel like this is a little bit, I think you should stick to the red meat stuff here in the US of A. Speaking of which, the messaging site Discord is reportedly raising money at a valuation of $15 billion, more than double its previous $7 billion valuation. In April, Discord rejected a $12 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Interesting. Big content play there, actually.

Ben Smith: Yeah, Discord is, I mean, it's a great product, among other things. It's the only way I can communicate with my 12-year-old.

Kara Swisher: Oh, really? So I'm on Discord a lot.

Ben Smith: Yeah, people have been using it. A lot of bloggers have been doing joint things together, content and all kinds of stuff.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and gamers have been using it for years for doing what became Clubhouse, actually. Right, right. You know, group audio chats, which, you know, amazed us with this technological breakthrough. But it's Marc Andreessen! Right.

Ben Smith: Yeah, something gamers have been doing since the days of Leroy Jenkins. And, you know, which has mostly migrated to Discord in that world. And that's just a huge, huge world.

Kara Swisher: What do you think of the valuation?

Ben Smith: I think I'm not an expert in valuations, and we'll leave that to you. But it does, I mean, it's clearly a real, it's a great product that many, many, many people just really use.

Kara Swisher: Well, since you mentioned Clubhouse, another content type of play or social audio, I don't know what to call it. How do you look at that now compared to how that space is, you know, it got a lot of excitement at the beginning of the pandemic and now is sort of limping.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think it feels like it was sort of the meerkat of the moment, right? Like it was a really well packaged, cool, you know, version of a technology had been hanging around for a while, but that we all got excited about. I mean, just unbelievably cool stuff happened on there. My personal favorite is that there was this Russian journalist who identified Vladimir Putin's secret daughter. She then got into a clubhouse room to complain about him. He then got into that clubhouse room where they had like a dispute, which ended with her saying that, well, in the end, at least he had gotten her more Instagram followers. I mean, like, how does that happen? So amazing. So it did feel to me like there was a period where just wild stuff was happening on there and you kind of wanted to be on, but I haven't been on in months. But maybe I'm missing out. I don't know.

Kara Swisher: No, you're not. The numbers are terrible. But what happens to something like that? It had a $4 billion, speaking of valuation, a $4 billion valuation. Everyone's on it. You know, a lot of the VCs spent a lot of time yelling at tech reporters, which was exhausting and boring at the same time.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I mean, part of it was this idea. It sort of rode this wave of hype around planning to destroy journalism with it. And we all gave it lots of oxygen because it was going to be the thing that destroyed journalism in the end. And it didn't.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it didn't. Not yet. There's all kinds of things destroying journalism. And speaking of the last thing, the FTC is approaching its deadline for its antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. The commission must file an amended complaint. This got overturned by a judge. And Facebook has asked Lena Kahn, the new FTC chair, since then to recuse herself because she's mean to Facebook. I mean, you know, she is genuinely independent of these companies and has been really clear about what her policy views are. But I think that's why she was appointed. It's absurd that she would recuse herself because she has stated policy views that are the reason she was appointed. So one thing Scott and I talk about is the judges overturning a lot of these cases against the tech companies around speech, around all kinds of things. And most people feel like even if Facebook puts the amended complaint in, which was a lot of states, there's a lot of states attorneys general. and all kinds of people were involved in this, that it's still not going to pass muster with courts, that people feel like there is no move against these large companies, except for, you know, things like Discord or Rumble or things like that.

Ben Smith: Yeah, and I do think that you're already seeing the just existence of the Lina Khan FTC, you know, changing the way these folks look at mergers and acquisitions. I mean, I think just it's obviously the kind of consolidation that you saw over the last 10 years is going to be much, much harder. And so, I mean, there are a lot of deals that just aren't going to be proposed.

Kara Swisher: Right, exactly. And we're going to talk about some of those in a minute. Okay, time for the big story. The Taliban has gained control of nearly all of Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul. Thousands of Afghans are attempting to flee the country by land or aboard U.S. evacuation flights. The sudden turn of events has put the Biden administration on the defensive. People are throwing around Saigon themes to it. On Sunday, Afghanistan's president fled the country. The U.S. evacuated approximately 500 embassy staffers. That's what I was talking about, the Saigon, when they took off from the roof of the embassy. The U.S. is sending approximately 6,000 troops there to assist in the withdrawal of diplomats. So you've been tweeting a lot about this. Tell me, I know that you were joking before, there's all these experts on Afghanistan now, which is always the case. It's always Dr. Google or Dr. Google historian or things like that. So tell me what you think of what's happening there, especially how it's going to impact from a media point of view, the Biden administration.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I mean, I am not an expert and don't want to pretend to be one. There's this obvious sort of outpouring in DC media of how could Biden have let this happen when, you know, ultimately what's happening here is the US lost a war and nobody thinks Biden lost it. But it is ending in humiliation, which, you know, is what people elected Donald Trump for and what people elected Joe Biden for. So, I mean, I think that's, you know, it's not good news. And obviously, the Biden administration, I mean, it's been many, many months that people have been saying there, you know, maybe 10,000, maybe 20,000, maybe more people who worked either for directly for the US military or for US backed NGOs or as journalists who are going to be in huge danger. Let's do something about it. two weeks ago, they finally say, well, we're going to make journalists. And I know more about journalists than about the other categories. We're going to make journalists, which is unusual and eligible for a kind of humanitarian visa known as P2. You just have to, and it's a, you know, there's some paperwork you have to put in your paperwork, and then you have to get to a third country and spend a year there while we process your application. So get out to Pakistan or India or somewhere. Everybody wants to get to India if they can. But the thing was clunky and a little poorly designed and it was just overtaken by events. And now everyone and people are just trapped in the country now. And I spoke to a bunch of Afghan journalists yesterday, including the guy who runs the Radio Free Europe office who was staying up all night to defend his house from looters. There was just seemed to have no prospect. And this guy's a U.S. government employee. You know, this isn't just a journalist. No prospect of evacuation as far as he could tell. You know, and just a very strange situation. They had broadcast an interview with the Taliban spokesman the previous day, the Taliban had actually put a bunch of their transmitters back online as they restored power to a lot of the country. But nobody thinks this is going to end well.

Kara Swisher: No, not at all. No, I think the Russians had their time. And before that, the British, the British, the Russians, us, and then I guess the Chinese are the next group to enjoy.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I think the sense among Afghan journalists is that the Taliban are sort of waiting for the foreign press to get bored and clear out. And then?

Kara Swisher: And then to really shut down any independent voices.

Ben Smith: And independent voices.

Kara Swisher: Talk about the independent voices in Afghanistan over the past few years. There has been a real flowering of that, correct?

Ben Smith: Yeah I mean there this very fragile but real civil society that includes a lot of journalism includes commercial media outlets There a big television network that again as of right now it a very strange situation They on the air covering I saw one of the guys there tweeted that they were covering the quote unquote transition Right You know they have this sort of structure as though they were operating in a normal country right That's what they were promised.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: But, you know, the transition consists of guys with automatic weapons, you know, turning up at the broadcast tower and demanding to be interviewed. And also within the presidential palace, which was – they were actually a lot better behaved than the Americans in the Capitol, I have to say. They sat there. And they've been putting – they've been obviously image conscious in Kabul.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely.

Ben Smith: But these are guys who they were putting car bombs on journalists' cars last November outside this Capitol and have murdered a lot of – I think 70 journalists have been killed.

Kara Swisher: So what is going to happen there in terms of their imagery they're putting out, which is we're sitting here, we're going to behave, we're not going to do it. They're trying not to, even though they've taken the country in a very quick way, going to behave as if they're not going to do anything, correct, from a media point of view?

Ben Smith: Maybe for a little while. I mean, who knows? I mean, you know, it's not, I mean, they've been, they've been who they are for 20 years. And I'm sure there will be some fantasies about how they're really going to be a moderate sort of normal participant in the international community for weeks or months now.

Kara Swisher: And let's talk a little bit about the, you were talking about sort of the DC journalists going crazy. There was a pretty clunky interview with Tony Blinken yesterday by Jake Tapper. Talk a little bit about that. How does it affect or is it just sort of inside the beltway thing and used to score points politically?

Ben Smith: I mean, they obviously horribly screwed up the very end of the war in a way that's going to ruin the lives of thousands of Afghans. I thought Tapper was right to be hard on Blinken. I do think that, you know, there's, and, you know, it's the Biden administration is part of the inside the Beltway conversation. I mean, their big focus reportedly was on not having pictures like Saigon. But I do think there's, you know, I think, you know, the alternative, which some people will say openly is just permanent American military. You know, a permanent American military presence. The casualties had gotten down pretty low since 2015. And I think – but there was no one – there's no political support for that.

Kara Swisher: Right, exactly. Which, by the way, doesn't mean that Obama didn't manage to keep doing it in the face of having no political support. Right, absolutely. The Afghan withdrawal was popular across both parties. So do you think it's going to be a big political issue moving forward? Because most people wanted people out of there, including the Trump administration. Even though they're trying to say it was a disaster, it's what they were going to do anyway. They just said they would have been tougher so they wouldn't have behaved badly or whatever. Whatever their argument is, despite the fact that they let out the guy who is the president, who will be the president. I mean, historically, the voters don't care that much.

Ben Smith: Don't care that much.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, things like that. So what should the Biden administration do, if anything, from a media point of view here? Just move along? Just we're going to move out?

Ben Smith: I don't think it's really a PR or media problem.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it just— Honestly. Like, no, I don't think, I think it's a, it's, I mean, they should try to get the people who have put their lives on the line for the U.S. out as much as they can.

Kara Swisher: And then where do you think the media will focus here? Do you think it'll focus on the women and girls or, you know, this is something that was hard fought to get them into schools and things like that? Because from any, I'm not talking about a PR point of view, from a human point of view, this is a problem.

Ben Smith: There was the media and, you know, the various administrations told a story that was like, you know, in large part false about, you know, that we had built this grand infrastructure of schools all over Afghanistan. Rosa Buzzfeed with a great reporter, Asmat Khan, who went to a lot of those schools and they didn't exist. They called them ghost schools. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of delusion on our end about what was in fact real there. And that I guess in some way we'll have to get unwound.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: As well as, but also there were a lot of people whose lives were changed and who were living, particularly women, in a totally different country than they're about to live in. And I do think that's a great, you know, that's an important story. We'll get a lot of coverage.

Kara Swisher: All right. Let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, movies are coming back to the theaters, but will audiences? We'll speak to author Julie K. Brown about her new book, Perversion of Justice, the Jeffrey Epstein story, which is a story about journalism very much so. Stay with us. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn. From talking about sports, discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them. But it's not just person to person. It's the same connection that's needed in business. And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing, finding the right people, making the right connections. But instead of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals. According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company roles, seniority skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash pivot pod. That's linkedin.com slash pivot pod. Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn ads.

Kara Swisher: All right, Ben, we're back. Warner Media and AMC have announced a deal to bring movies back to the movie theaters. The deal gives AMC an exclusive 45-day window for new releases beginning in 2022. AMC executives expressed concerns when Warner Media previously announced that they would release the film online at the same time as theatrical premieres. Obviously, you and I had long talks about that after I interviewed Jason Kylar. Still, Warner Media says that 10 films will debut exclusively on HBO Max in 2022 still? Will audiences actually come out and shell $8 for popcorn? Obviously, the Scarlett Johansson lawsuit against Disney admits this. She claims simultaneous release hurt her bottom line for Black Widow, which was tied to the theater audience. So give me your, since we talked, Hollywood had its fit, and now we're moving on, and Disney is doing the same exact thing, and so are probably a lot of the other studios thinking about it. So give me your large picture, and then what you imagine is going to happen here with movie going.

Ben Smith: You know, when we last talked, your hero, Jason Kylian,

Kara Swisher: It's not my hero.

Ben Smith: They were thrilled. Disney was thrilled. Everybody wanted to do it. And I think, you know, he then promptly got his head handed to him, but also had really changed the situation for everybody else. And now you're in, you know, the line, the front line in the battle has moved. It's not a total victory for the streamers and the exhibitors retain a lot of power. everything that was released on streaming bombed for most things. Movies, not TV shows. And so it wasn't this sort of – I don't think anyone can say, see, we told you so.

Kara Swisher: Well, the movies bombed, but streamers have been growing. So the streaming services.

Ben Smith: Exactly, yes. So it didn't bomb. Bombing is – depending on how you think of bombing. But go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Ben Smith: And it's very hard. And I think the streamers – the ways in which the streamers account for the expenditures on movies and whether a movie, in fact, earned out enough subscribers is a hazy enough thing.

Kara Swisher: 100%.

Ben Smith: I think who knows. But they didn't have the kind of cultural resonance. They didn't get seen by as many people as they would have, much less make the money if they've been seen in movie theaters. And so I think there's going to be kind of a long slog. I think there's still a question of whether there's a way to make American movie theaters better, to make them a place that you'd want to go to and spend more money, rather than kind of creep along the sticky floor and eat some stale popcorn.

Kara Swisher: The chairs have gotten better.

Ben Smith: The chairs have gotten better.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but that hasn't really been resolved. The idea that is Disney going to buy out one of these chains and turn it into something fun hasn't happened. But I think this is going to continue to be a tug of war now. But it's no longer sacrilege to say, sorry, we're going to release this movie on our app. Right, which is the whole point. I think they loved when Jason... The planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers, I always say. California is where everybody went. Some people died along the way, but that's where they ended up. So talk a little bit about that, where this idea of new economic deals with celebrities and agents and different things is happening where you get paid up front. The Netflix method, essentially, of payment. How does that change and who gets the power? And, of course, all these companies are for sale. Imagine is for sale. The branding company by Maverick Carter and LeBron James is for sale. Obviously, Hello Sunshine got bought, not for $900 million, as we all know. But talk about that, what's happening here in the whole ecosystem.

Ben Smith: I mean, the tug of war between the exhibitors and the studios is coming at a moment when stars have just like more power than they've ever had. You know, and they do, and they have, I think, both when Warner broke all those deals, you know, they have wound up getting paid. They wound up extracting what they want from it.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Ben Smith: And you're talking about production companies, you know, whose real value is that there's one person, whether it's Reese Witherspoon or LeBron James at the center of them, you know, getting these enormous valuations. And I think that really does speak to just the, you know, the power of individuals and social media is a huge part of that.

Kara Swisher: Well, one of the things is they don't just make one thing. Reese Witherspoon does book clubs, does clothing. LeBron James has all kinds of branding and merchandise and things like that. So I don't think anyone can just do these. I think actually celebrities are less powerful. Look at The Rock in this movie. It didn't move at all. You know, I think they have less power than you would imagine going forward in terms of payments and stuff. So how does that shake out with them being paid? If movie theaters, and I think movie theaters, are going to be one of these things like Broadway, like it's going to be a nice business, but not a big business. And it was a big business for them. I don't know if you agree with that.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I think that's probably right. And maybe they make up some of what they lose on volume by charging more.

Kara Swisher: Charging more.

Ben Smith: Yeah, and be nicer, nicer seats, nicer food. You know, I'm about to interview the CEO of Alamo Draft House, which, of course, went into bankruptcy. And that was a nice experience. But it still wasn't enough.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I mean, IMAX is actually the company that's really benefiting. It's not like I haven't been to one in a while, but I think that's the style of movie that people are going to come out for. Right, something cool. And something that you can get an experience you can't get at home. Well, the thing is getting at home is amazing, actually. I just put in a new TV for my kids and they're never going to movie theaters ever. It's not for the pandemic. It's not COVID. They're not worried about stuff like that. They're worried. They just like where they are and they like their food and their tiny little refrigerator there. And I just, getting people to go back is really something I just don't, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think it's going to be a big business. It's going to be a fine business, but not the kind of business that Hollywood's hoping for.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.

Kara Swisher: So what then happens to agents in this sort of, you know, daisy chain of money rolling back and forth? I mean, somehow they always find a way, right? Brian Lord is doing the Scarlett Johansson thing. She's got a lot of people. What do you imagine is going to happen with her? And Disney, Disney is just Bob Chapman. is like, we're just making theme parks and streaming services. And they called Disney a streaming company and not a Hollywood company for sure. And Disney has really more than anyone done something really clever with Marvel, which is have these ensemble casts where if they can't agree with Scarlett Johansson, they can leave her out of the next movie. Or killer. She was killed. She was killed. Oh, right. Sorry. Not bring her back, whatever. The sister's coming back. I'm a big fan of Marvel, but go ahead.

Ben Smith: No, that's incredible. But also they have set up a structure where they're not hostage to a single star. All that said, I think usually these big fights with agents always wind up in handshake deals at the end with some compromise. And I think that Disney certainly didn't win the PR war when the Faceless Corporation goes out and calls the popular star greedy.

Kara Swisher: Well, is she greedy?

Kara Swisher: Because question, you answer that. Is she? Was she greedy? I'm sort of supposed to make a moral choice between whether Scarlett Johansson should make money or whether she should go to Disney's corporate bottom line. I guess I would personally rather she got the money if that's the choice, right? I mean, most people probably would. I would like her to have a nicer house or something. She's got that nice husband. The Disney bottom line is a hard thing to root for.

Ben Smith: Yeah, but they did it. Why did they do it? They're not that stupid. I think they were trying to show they were willing to have a public fight with a big star.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, so everybody. To warn the next one.

Ben Smith: To warn the next one.

Kara Swisher: All right. So where do you finally, before we get to Julie, is where do you imagine the streaming wars going next? What is the next big thing? Because people are pushing forward in these. I have all the streamers. Not everybody does. But I was adding it up. And I pay less for streamers than I would going to movie theaters. And that's fine because I get a lot of the stuff I want to see.

Ben Smith: I mean, I don't think normal people have as many subscriptions as you and me.

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's true.

Ben Smith: I mean, the two different things are happening. I think there are some people who are seeing people kind of use it in a more a la carte way. Like I subscribe to Apple TV to see Ted Lasso and then promptly unsubscribe.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Ben Smith: And I don't really see myself as having a relationship with Apple TV.

Kara Swisher: Right, right.

Ben Smith: I see myself as purchasing a show for a minute.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Ben Smith: And that's not really a subscription.

Kara Swisher: Right. I mean, I think the other thing is, are there going to be, I think these things are going to start getting sold as bundles. Or at least some of them are. And will you get the CNN? You kind of get it now with Comcast. I just signed up for a new Comcast. I got Netflix, HBO, they all came in a group to me, which was interesting.

Ben Smith: Yeah. Who's bundling? Is it Comcast?

Kara Swisher: Was Netflix going to say, hey, we're going to allow you to bundle with some news channel? I don't know. I mean, I think there's tons of space for that sort of thing and tons of different levels at which it could be done. Like your phone company could be doing it. So what happens to Netflix? Who is the winner here? As Netflix continues to be on top, they're getting a lot of pressure. They're obviously moving into gaming. They're moving into lots of things. They have run the track around these companies for years, and now they're all here. I tend to think that the content matters more than the technology. In the tech of streaming a movie, it's not that complicated. You play a video, you watch it, you enjoy it. Although HBO seems insistent on proving that wrong, because when it just breaks or starts in the middle or keeps crashing and giving you weird error messages... This isn't complex technology. Or maybe it's tough on the back end. But I think Netflix's edge in having better tech, I don't know, I'm going to watch the better show. And I do think that Disney and actually Warner, when they eventually get their acts together, are going to be more and more competitive with Netflix. But Netflix just has a huge lead.

Ben Smith: Right, right. And so you think in a couple of years, could Netflix be under threat by these companies?

Kara Swisher: I don't think it's an existential threat. I just think that it's going to be a more head-to-head competition. It's going to matter more if you've had a hit.

Ben Smith: Right.

Kara Swisher: All right. We're going to bring on our friend of Pivot. She's the award-winning investigative journalist with the Miami Herald and the New York Times bestselling author of *Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story*. Welcome, Julie K. Brown. I love the K part, by the way, Julie.

Julie K. Brown: Well, there's a lot of Julie Browns in the world, so I had to differentiate myself some way.

Kara Swisher: I always enjoy it. I don't know why. Anyway, your 2018 three-part series threw the Epstein case into the spotlight, leading to federal indictments, the downfall of Jeffrey Epstein. The new book recounts the case, the victims' fight, and how Epstein managed to avoid prosecution for a decade. I'm going to start off because I think one of the things that I was really struck by is this is a lot about journalism, this book. It's, of course, about Epstein and what you've done. I'd love you to sort of talk about that at the top, and then Ben will have a million questions, of course. But talk a little bit about what, because it was a journalism struggle to get the series in. And then also you accounted it really well in the book.

Julie K. Brown: Well, I didn't have a lot of lead time with this book, quite frankly. I only had six months to write it, which is a very, very short turnaround time. So I wasn't going to have a whole lot of time to go out. This story was so mammoth, to go out and try to get new information on Epstein at the same time, write a book that's 100,000 words in six months. So I thought, speaking to my editor, they thought that I should try to put some of the story behind the story. And I sort of was fighting about that a little bit. No reporter likes to really be the story. My first couple of drafts I was resisting and resisting, and my editor kept asking me questions, quite frankly, about how I did what I did. And it occurred to me that, as journalists, we don't write a lot about how we get the story and all the steps and the blood, sweat and tears that sort of goes into putting together a story. And especially at a time this was happening during when Trump was saying reporters are the enemy of the people, et cetera. I thought maybe it would be good to explain to the public all that we go through in order to get these stories.

Kara Swisher: I thought that was gripping. I think your editor was right in terms of understanding how difficult it was to get this story done in the first place, because you sort of revived a story that he had slipped out of prosecution, essentially.

Julie K. Brown: Right. And a lot had been written about it. I sort of got hammered from some in the media about how this had been out there and it had been out there. But I knew that, but I felt like I needed to take it apart and put it back together in a way that maybe helped people understand all the moving parts that had happened over the years, because there were a lot of different things that had happened in the 10 years since this story happened.

Ben Smith: Yeah. Also, I love the just the sort of reality, just how complex and real your relationships with your sources are. I think people often watching Washington dramas imagine that these relationships are these very transactional relationships with two-dimensional people. And I don't know, you really capture just how complicated and real it is. To go back to something you just said, you have a passage in the book, I think kind of suggesting that you thought a lot of media was in some way complicit with Epstein or assisting in the cover-up. I wasn't quite sure how to read it. I'm curious if you could elaborate on that a little. Like that there was, obviously the media allowed this story to drop off the map, but how do you understand how that happened and why that happened?

Julie K. Brown: Well, I think there's a lot of different factors. It's not one thing. And I don't mean to imply that they were complicit because I don't think that all journalists want to get a story. I don't think that that was it. What I thought was the problem with this story is that the journalists that had written about it in the past had mostly written about the celebrity political aspect of it. The Lolita Express, Clinton on the plane, is Trump related. It was so frenzied in the celebrity gossipy part of the story that the part that to me wasn't really examined was how did he get the prosecutors to let him basically off the hook. And so I put blinders on. I purposely really didn't write much in the book about Clinton or in the series either about Clinton and Trump and who visited the island or whoever. I wanted to really zone in on the criminal justice system. And that's what I think that the media didn't cover. I don't think it was a purposeful thing. I just think that we tend to focus on sometimes the thing that we think readers want to read.

Kara Swisher: So talk about that a little bit, that process. Because Trump's labor secretary, Alan Acosta, gave Epstein the original sweetheart deal plea in 2008. And then he stepped down after Epstein was arrested again in 2019. Talk a little bit about that, how Epstein squirreled himself out of prosecution for so long.

Julie K. Brown: Well, as I go into detail in the book, I think I more finely connect the dots between all these people. Epstein was masterful in how he picked his attorneys, very strategic. One of the attorneys he picked, for example, had dated the head of the criminal division in Miami. There were lawyers who had ties to Kirkland and Ellis, where Acosta, of course, had worked there before. And in fact, these lawyers were with the Federalist Society, which Acosta had dreams of becoming a Supreme Court justice. The Federalist Society really is behind a lot of the nominations for the Supreme Court. So he was masterful and strategic in how he picked his lawyers, people who had some kind of ties to other prosecutors in the system.

Kara Swisher: And socially, too, to give himself image. He was all over the tech people. He showed up at TED. I never met him there, but he was near me. He was at these dinners that they had. It was interesting because he invited a lot of them to his island, for sure. I know a lot of them who went there and I don't think they were doing what he was doing. But it was interesting how he moved into the tech sector quite a lot more, including at MIT and other places. And at one point, one of his PR people said, "Would you like to come meet him at his mansion?" And I was like, "No, he's a convicted pedophile." I wasn't covering the story. I was like, "He has nothing to do with tech." And this person meets him and this person meets him. So when you think about how he did that, why did people give him a pass after that original plea deal happened?

Julie K. Brown: Well, remember, he pleaded guilty to solicitation of just a single charge of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor for prostitution. And we all think of prostitution as really not that big of a deal of a crime. So he could easily point to people, "Look, I got caught with a prostitute. I didn't know how she was so young. She looked 18."

Kara Swisher: I think that was one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julie K. Brown: And the idea that he had, and remember, especially when he got out, it took a while for that plea agreement to become public. It was sealed. It was like a year before that became public. And even when it did, it was unclear what "co-conspirators both named and unnamed" means. What does this really mean? And you couldn't tell really how many victims there were. It took a while for this whole thing to kind of unfold where you realized what the depth of this crime was. So initially, it was just a prostitution crime, or at least that's what he could tell people.

Ben Smith: One of the things, I mean, I sort of picked up the book in part hoping that it would resolve all remaining mysteries of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which is perhaps a high expectation. But it seems to me sort of hanging over all of this. And the thing, if you sort of talk to regular people about Epstein, there is a belief that he wasn't just a rich felon who kind of paid people off to get himself off the hook. He was the leader of some kind of sex trafficking ring. And there are obviously suggestions all over the place in popular culture that he was blackmailing prominent people to whom he had supplied underage girls. And I think, reading this, I don't know. What do you think? Is that true?

Julie K. Brown: Well, here's the thing. There's no doubt he had cameras in his houses. We know that that happened. And we know that right before they served the search warrant, they pulled out a lot of computers from his house. So he had his places pretty wired. So if you were a guy that went to his house and maybe you did something that you shouldn't have done, it is now, how many years later, over a decade later, you might still be worried about whether there might be something out there. So in my mind, it's not even material whether it really exists and in what format does it exist, because it was back in 2008 and our technology wasn't as great back then and who knows. But just the fact that it's possible is enough to make these people not sleep well at night, I would think, because you just don't know whether it is. And he probably did have some tapes at some point, whether they still exist or not. I mean, we don't know what they took out of his vault, out of his safe in his house when he was arrested. We don't know what the FBI has. But I've never heard that he actually blackmailed people. But like I said, if they were there and they were doing something they shouldn't have, there is a good chance that there is a recording of that somewhere.

Kara Swisher: So where does that go? Where do those recordings go now?

Julie K. Brown: Well, the FBI would keep them. The FBI has never released even its original investigation from back in 2007. They've never even released those files. The files they've put out there are so heavily redacted and full of gobbledygook, you would never really be able to understand them. There's really nothing there because it's still not released to the public.

Kara Swisher: And when will it be or what will happen to it?

Julie K. Brown: I doubt it. I don't know unless maybe some members of Congress demand, but I don't know if there's a stomach for that. Who knows what's in that file? It will open up a lot of cans of worms, I'm sure, and I'm not so sure if the FBI wants to go there.

Kara Swisher: Right. But one of Epstein's longtime accusers, Virginia Giuffre, filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew last week, claiming that he took part in the abuse. What do you make of this? And he's suggesting photos of him and her and Ghislaine Maxwell are fake. Does that bring out this information?

Julie K. Brown: Well, yeah. If it goes to discovery, he's going to have to show where he was. There is a date that that particular event happened that she was with him. So there's going to be discovery around this. I'm sure that he's going to have to show exactly where he was and when. And that's part of it. They're going to try to prove it. And that's exactly what Virginia tried to do with the Maxwell suit. She sued Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's ex-partner, now awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in New York herself. But there was an extended, very lengthy, bitter lawsuit between Virginia and Maxwell that led to an awful lot of material involving. It became more of a lawsuit into showing what Maxwell was doing. So I theorize that exactly what this lawsuit, what the prince is going to do, they're going to try to prove in this lawsuit that he actually was involved.

Kara Swisher: One of the chapters of the book is titled "Jeffrey Epstein Didn't Kill Himself." Why do you think that?

Julie K. Brown: You know, I covered Florida prisons for a long time, for four years. I know the way things happen in prison and some of the things that they said happen just don't make any sense to anybody that follows prisons. Look, it doesn't matter what I think. The fact that his lawyers who had seen him up until the time this happened, his brother, and the forensic pathologist that was at the autopsy, don't believe he killed himself. That's one side. And then the other side is we have this medical examiner in New York who wasn't, by the way, the one that made the decision was not the one at the autopsy. There was another medical examiner at the autopsy who agreed with Baden, saying, "I don't think this looks like a suicide." But the medical examiner who wears the hat, so to speak, in New York, she ruled it a suicide, but has provided no evidence to dispute what Baden has said, which he believes for a number of reasons that he didn't commit suicide. Now, I think it's possible he could have had help in that. He was a guy who probably didn't even tie his own shoelaces. He had butlers doing everything for him. I just don't see him doing this by himself. Even if he had wanted to commit suicide, I think that he probably would have paid somebody to do it, because it's a pretty hard thing to do what he is alleged to have done, which was tie this around the top bunk and pull himself with such ferocity that he would have broken three bones in his neck.

Kara Swisher: So which way do you go? That he hired someone or you just don't know?

Julie K. Brown: Well, I just don't think he could have done this by himself.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Julie K. Brown: And the fact that the video wasn't working. The cellmate was pulled out an hour, and the cellmate wasn't just pulled out, the cellmate was taken to another facility for whistleblowers. The cellmate was taken out hours before, the videos weren't working. Then you have not one guard, but two guards essentially falling asleep at the wheel. Then they take his body out. That's crime 101: you don't remove a body. You leave it as it is because it's a crime scene and you've got to preserve the evidence. So they don't even have a picture of exactly how his body was found. So it's just so problematic that I think that it deserves another look. And certainly the Justice Department is looking at it for two years. We still don't know the results of their investigation.

Kara Swisher: And but Ghislaine Maxwell is still living and has certainly has a lot of information, presumably.

Julie K. Brown: That's it. That's right.

Kara Swisher: She's got – I think she knows everything.

Julie K. Brown: Yeah, she does.

Kara Swisher: I think you probably know more about her than most people. Do you think that she will ultimately tell whatever her story is? Or are the prosecutors so set on throwing her in jail forever that she has no incentive to?

Julie K. Brown: I don't think it comes down to her. I think it partially comes down to whether prosecutors want to go down that road. And I, quite frankly, don't think that they do. I think that they want this to go away. And one of the ways they can do that is to just prosecute her and then say they did their job. Do they really want to go down the path of trying to prove all these other people were involved when it's really Ghislaine trying to save herself in a sense? How credible is that going to be unless she has some other evidence to back up what she would tell them?

Kara Swisher: Are you going to go back to the Herald and at some point pick up another big investigative project?

Julie K. Brown: Well, I hope to. I mean, I'm still with the Herald. But I'd like to get off of the Epstein story eventually. I find what I find most rewarding about what I do is being able to expose injustices that other people aren't paying attention to. And obviously, everybody's paying attention to this story right now. I don't know that it needs me to stay on it. I think that I'd like to move on to something else to help someone else perhaps who isn't getting justice.

Kara Swisher: Well, I think you have changed the way society looks at sex workers and trafficking victims. Absolutely. And how power is easily manipulated by people, no matter what awful thing they do. It's a real credit to you. Much more so than I think you realize. Maybe you realize it. I think a lot of people feel it.

Julie K. Brown: I actually don't. I kind of... Emily in the show is my videographer on this project. I'd like to get her name in because her documentaries really were probably more powerful than the story itself. But we often, even now, say that we can't believe that it happened. It just seems amazing to me that we're just still in shock, I think, of everything. It's like a domino effect, one thing after another thing, after another thing. It's kind of crazy what happened.

Kara Swisher: Wonderful journalism. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Julie K. Brown. Ben?

Ben Smith: Yeah, thanks. And I just, another thing is if you are somebody who wants to be a reporter, looking for a book to read about just keeping your eye on the ball. And there's a bunch in there that I really related to and loved about how you did not spend a lot of energy trying to be the most popular person in the newsroom, but spent all your energy trying to do good stories. And that is so important.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But Ben is the most popular person in the newsroom, just so you know.

Ben Smith: It is hard. You know, nobody beats myself up more than me. And it is kind of hard. But I've tried to get a little nicer in my old age, kind of.

Kara Swisher: Don't do it, Julie. Don't do it. Don't growl as much as I used to, I guess.

Ben Smith: Don't do it. Don't do it. Better to be feared than loved. Double down. Double down, Julie. It's working for you.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we really appreciate it so much. It's a really, really wonderful book. And everyone should read it. It's called *Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story* by the very fantastic Julie K. Brown. Thank you.

[Commercial break]

Kara Swisher: Well, she is quite a legend. I don't think she realized how important she is as a journalist. And that was some story she wrestled to the ground, essentially. All right, Ben, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Commercial break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Ben, wins and fails. I'm going to just let you have this one this week.

Ben Smith: On the win side of the ledger, I suppose, a really interesting story in the Times about how the essentially right-wing backlash publishing business is just minting money right now. And I think it would be safe to say that in the media business, the backlash is basically winning.

Kara Swisher: Meaning? Explain that.

Ben Smith: I mean, these books anti-anti-racism, books about how terrible critical race theory is, that whole universe of media is just exploding right now.

Kara Swisher: Why do you think that is?

Ben Smith: I think big gains in civil rights are always followed by a really vicious backlash. And that's, I think, where we are right now. But I think it's still kind of ramping up. And if you sort of look at this story and just look at the sales figures, it's probably not a surprise. And looking at Fox News' ratings, you see it too. But I think that's a real window into where the country is politically right now.

Kara Swisher: All right. Fails?

Ben Smith: Fails? I mean, I think Twitter experts on Afghanistan had a pretty rough 24 hours. It's depressing to say.

Kara Swisher: Why? You mean you got off the COVID doctors, the Dr. Googles?

Ben Smith: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is a very complex and horrible conflict that's been going on for 20 years. And you see people trying kind of glibly to fit it into the politics of this particular moment on Twitter to get some retweets. And it's depressing.

Kara Swisher: It is. I always love getting my, for example, vaccine advice from venture capitalists who seem to enjoy doing it. That's always my thing. The venture capitalists, they were, you know, it's funny because like everybody else at some point, they were actually early on, they were so on it. And actually, they were very early to think that shaking hands was dangerous. And I remember in February going into a room full of VCs and them saying like, "No, no handshakes, no handshakes." And then of course we sat inside in this room for an hour.

Ben Smith: Right, right. Yep, yep, yep.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they lost their minds. All right. Those are good ones. So Ben, that's the show. But what are you working on? What are you working on right now? What interests Ben Smith?

Ben Smith: I mean, I think that media is so often the story of this pendulum that is swinging. And wherever you decide that, well, it's all about small-scale subscription businesses. Whenever that consensus is reached, it's almost immediately wrong. And then it's sort of the moment to be like, "Oh, look, actually, it's giant advertising businesses like Red Ventures," which I wrote about this week. And in general, I think I'm sort of interested in how that pendulum is going to swing away from wherever we think it is right now. I mean, obviously there's also just real decline in, I mean, everybody's subscription, either their subscriptions are falling or their subscription growths have slowed post-Trump. And I think for a lot of publishers, that's a really complicated, interesting challenge. And then the other thing that I hope one of your listeners will tell me how to write this column, I mean, just the world's biggest open secret is the sort of shameful Hollywood capitulation to China on everything at every moment. That is a fail. It's become sort of a boring story because you write the story, you say, "Well, Apple has a rule that they're not allowed to say anything mean about China," and everybody shrugs and moves on. And I'm sort of trying to figure out how do you write a column like, "Here's how to stop the media business from doing this." And I don't really know the answer.

Kara Swisher: It is a really interesting thing because every time I've been writing about problems with China for years in terms of tech and things like that, which is usually sort of a Tucker Carlson zone, going after China. And it's a really fascinating thing to get the reaction to it. They're the menace of the next century to us, at least for sure. And they're very good at it. It's not like they're the stumble bums of Russia. These are very good at what they're doing. It's an interesting issue. The John Cena thing made me sad for days, I have to say.

Ben Smith: Yeah. The John Cena thing was loathsome. And there's no professional consequence for him for that. There's no consequence for the studio. And there's obviously a strong argument that, well, on balance, it's better for the U.S. that Chinese consumers are seeing these American movies and buying these American movies. It's better for Disney that they're buying these American movies.

Kara Swisher: I guess that's the argument. It doesn't teach them anything. When I call China a surveillance economy, people go nuts. I'm like, it's a surveillance economy.

Ben Smith: Yeah, I'm not sure it's that sort of straight. I mean, I'm sure there are lots of different factors at play. But you would think that you could shift the incentives so that Disney was not rewriting its movies to please the Chinese government. And then does raise the question, should you have companies that both operate theme parks in China and make movies, or should that not be allowed?

Ben Smith: That is a very good question. I mean, one of the things, if you remember going back, Murdoch at News Corp had that. It goes back a long ways. And there was another Disney movie that they did the same thing to. It's almost persistent. And tech companies, when they get there, they have all those issues or they don't go there at all.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Smith: And in the news business, I think people have really found that you cannot both do news and business in China.

Kara Swisher: 100%. 100%. Anyway, really smart show, Ben. I really appreciate it. You can check out Ben Smith's column, The Media Equation at the New York Times. Come back Friday, where I'll be joined by guest host Casey Newton, the tallest man in Silicon Valley. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast. The link is in our show notes. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. And if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. I would like to also thank everyone for listening to something from Vox Media. I've never had that opportunity before. Thank you, Ben. You