Calling out disinformation pushed by Fox News and other Trumpy outlets—you know, the guys who make up Black Lives Matter “mobs,” have “white power hours” and publish headlines like “Would you rather your daughter have cancer than feminism?”—is no easy feat. But in Episode 17 of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast talk to someone trying to do it, one screenshot at a time.
Sleeping Giants’ Matt Rivitz talks about what it’s like to take on Brietbart, Bill O’Reilly, and Tucker Carlson—and win. He’s been pushing advertisers from Kellogg's to Mars to drop the race-baiters, and they’ve responded.
“This is like the Super Bowl... It's like, OK, brands finally get it. What they choose to support with their media dollars really drives the conversation,” he says. “No media planner is like going to get all fired up about doing a Pepe campaign.”
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But there’s still work to do, as extreme right-wing network One America News (aka OANN) exists, which Rick describes perfectly: “It's like Breitbart and Alex Jones had a love child with no editorial standards.”
Then, former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu joins the duo and goes deep on policing and his long fight to take down confederate monuments.
“Those monuments were put up after the war was over in reverence of the people that fought to destroy the country for the purpose of preserving slavery. Well, nothing could be more un-American than that thought right now.”
Plus! Molly Jong-Fast heralds the return of Matt “Hot Tub Crime Machine” Whittaker, the one-time attorney general. (He mixes “a toxic cocktail of macho mega swagger, the angry cant of the Christian [ultra-conservative], and the whining of a petulant child.”) And Rick Wilson wonders whether Trumpists could “solve a complex puzzle, like stacking blocks in order,” does an impression of Trump’s Rampgate! tweet and ponders the contents of Ted Cruz’s erotic fan fiction.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
