MARY:
Hey, who’s here? It is the awesome Katie Phang. Katie, this week has been a millennium. At 10 o’clock on Monday morning I thought, it has to be Friday because we don’t have weekends anymore, do we?
KATIE:
Yes, you are correct. You used to feel like you got some respite from the insanity of the week on the weekend, but alas, no, the insanity is forever and a day.
MARY:
Remember the Friday night news dump, which is now a thing of the distant past.
KATIE:
Yeah. Every day is a dump.
MARY:
Yeah. A dumpster fire.
KATIE:
McDonald dump.
MARY:
And a big part of what we’re struggling with now is that there are legitimately horrible things happening in the world. And we have in the Oval Office a man, not only who’s incapable of ameliorating the pain or providing solace, but who actively seeks to make things worse for people who are suffering horribly. I’m pretty sure you can imagine what I’m talking about.
First of all, hello to everybody watching on Substack Live, we’re so happy you’re here. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and I’m ecstatic that my awesome friend, Katie Phang, is with me, partially just because I wanted to see her. And these are really tough times. And I know people have a lot of questions about or are wondering why we keep talking about Donald’s role in all of this.
I wanted to tackle this a couple of different ways. One, to see how you personally are negotiating the horrors, which is what I refer to day-to-day life in America. But also, what we seem to be grappling with in the context of corporate media’s determination to normalize moral depravity, which is where we seem to be.
I wanted to start with the fact that over the weekend we had a horrific mass shooting at a temple on the first night of Hanukkah in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. It was a clearly antisemitic attack carried out by two men who were influenced by ISIS. We also had a horrific school shooting at Brown University in which as far as we know, two students have died and at least nine others have been injured.
Then we learned that Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle Reiner were allegedly murdered by their son, Nick, which is unspeakable. Rob Reiner is one of those people who just is part of the soundtrack of my life. He’s been in my life since I was a very small child. I wanted to start with Donald’s post in the immediate aftermath of learning about Rob and Michelle’s deaths. Then I want to talk about why, as awful as it is, we have to talk about Donald and his depravity. Here’s the post and, remember, at the time, we did not yet know the identity of the killer.
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!
Katie, that is the President of the United States blaming the victims of a horrific crime for their own murders.
KATIE:
I don’t know why he’s speaking about himself in the third person. I think that is just bizarre that’s for Donald to do that. Mary, you and I talk about this a lot and I think this is a really important conversation because that post is so predictably low that we shouldn’t be surprised. And yet I was stunned by, and I think I posted on social media like he’s a soulless ghoul. I was just stunned by it. And then I was stunned that I was stunned.
Why am I surprised that this piece of shit would stoop so low as to post that? But then I got angry because, other than Marjorie Taylor Green and maybe a couple of other people, I haven’t seen anyone in a position of authority from the Republican Party speak out. The failure for people to check this behavior or to call it out for what it is, I think is the sign of the times in a really bad way, like end of days type of energy, because this is the stuff that is just an unqualified, completely unjustified low.
And then I went another place in my brain, which was, “I’m sorry, but after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the immediate response was, how dare anybody say anything bad about Charlie Kirk getting murdered? And yet, why is nobody saying this about Donald Trump?” It’s only okay to criticize people who can fairly and justifiably criticize this martyring of Charlie Kirk, but you can’t say anything bad able Donald’s post because it’s him. I have defined that Oval Office and that whole administration as a bully pulpit in exactly the literal definition of those words. He is a bully and he has a pulpit and he uses it as a bully pulpit and people don’t ever either stop him from doing it or they don’t really call him out for it. I think the fact that we are now looking at somebody like MTG who’s saying something about it is, again, end of day’s energy.
MARY:
I totally agree with you. I want to focus again for a second on what you said about being shocked and then surprised that you were shocked. I split those reactions up. We shouldn’t be surprised ever by anything Donald does because, as I often say, there’s no worst, he can always get worse. Some people think, “Oh, there’s no way he can go lower than that.” Well, yes, he can—and he will. He will do something even more depraved than what he did yesterday. No longer being shocked, however, would be bad. We should be shocked. We should be shocked to our core, even though of course Donald would do this despicable. And once we stop being shocked by it, we numb out to it. And then, and this is the next thing I want to talk to you about, it gets normalized because it isn’t going to stop.
You would think, because the backlash to his post was swift and severe, even, though in a limited way, from the right, that a normal, sane, relatively mature person would think, “ I better dial that one back.” Instead Donald went to the Oval Office later that day when we actually knew that Rob and Michelle Reiner’s son was the alleged perpetrator. I cannot fathom what that must be like for the rest of the family, for that. It’s unspeakable. And yet, Donald did what he always does. He doubled down:
Well, I wasn’t a fan of [Rob Reiner’s] at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned. He said he liked, he knew it was false. In fact, it’s the exact opposite that I was a friend of Russia controlled by Russia. It was the Russia hoax. He was one of the people behind it. I think he hurt himself in career wise. He became like a deranged person, Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape, or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.
KATIE:
Third person shit again, too. It’s a sign of, I think of mental deficiency, right? Like his faculties are compromised faculties. I was actually having this conversation with Fred Guttenberg, who’s become a very good friend of mine. Fred lost his daughter, Jamie who was murdered at Marjorie Stone and Douglas in Parkland in 2018 on Valentine’s Day. And Fred and I recently did an episode on my YouTube channel about a documentary called All the Empty Rooms. CBS news correspondent, Steve Hartman, went across the country and he documented the empty rooms of children who had died in school shootings. And I was broken not only by the documentary, but also by the conversations that I have with Fred, because I almost have guilt that I have a daughter that is alive and growing and experiencing things with me.
Even though Fred is so gracious and amazing and he’s such a fighter for common sense gun legislation, I still feel guilty when I have these conversations.
I checked in on Fred because I wanted to see how he was doing after the mass shooting at Brown University and the mass shooting at Bondi Beach. All of this is being drowned out by the horrific murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner, yes, but also because, to your point, corporate media is going to spend more time on [Donald] than on the victims at Brown, and the Bondi Beach antisemitism. Why don’t we have conversations on corporate media about how people like Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly and others are politically sane-washing antisemitism from people like Nick Fuentes, which clearly is fueling the flames of antisemitism, which allows all this shit to happen in the first place. But no, we’re going to take up space with the depravity that is Donald Trump. That is why I’m glad I’m not a part of corporate media anymore because I will not be complicit in that.
I know that there are things that are newsy, Mary, and that’s why we talk about them and they deserve the conversation. But the conversation about what Trump posted on social media and what he just said in the Oval Office should be, “Folks, this is an example of a man who is sick, mentally ill. And so he shouldn’t have nuclear code access and he should not be leading our country in economic relations, political relations. He should not be allowed to have control over our military.” These are the conversations that should be promoted by corporate media, but alas, it’s not. It’s more outrage porn.
And the more outraged porn they’re pumping out, the more engagement they’re hoping to have, which is why I am relieved that you exist and I exist and others like Jim, Acosta. We’re living in an independent media space where we can express our own outrage about it, but also put it in the proper context, which I think is a difference.
MARY:
Absolutely. We should be angry, of course, but it’s also heartbreaking. It’s terrifying to some degree. We do have to talk about it, but to talk about it as you suggest, not as if it’s just another thing Donald did; it’s just Donald being Donald. And it’s all baked in. What are you going to do—be offended for five minutes and then move on? No. Doing so contributes to the normalization of the moral depravity because if you don’t focus on the meaning and the dangers posed, then you are allowing people to get numb to this stuff as if it’s perfectly okay. This is not about what Donald had to say about Rob and Michelle Reiner, beyond what it says about him. Nobody cares what his opinion is. They will get their due. Rob Reiner was an American icon. He and Michelle were the best of us. And that will shine through and they will be immortalized and they will last much longer than Donald’s despicable comments about them.
KATIE:
But corporate media should be focusing on the silence of others, people who have the ability to speak up and speak out other than just average Joes. Why is Speaker Mike Johnson allowed to dodge these questions? That motherfucker ain’t going to give me the time of day. I’m not going to lose sleep over it, but you and I both know, Mary, that Mike Johnson would never want to sit down with me, right? But what about the people who have access to him? Why are they not hounding him to say, “Do you understand that you are co-signing what that man has said and done if you do not call it out for the horror that it is? “ Instead, they allow him to just skate by in silence.
As a member of the media, your organization, your corporation, are co-signing on it, too. You’re tasked with a job of exposing the truth providing transparency for the American people come hell or high water.
MARY:
The idea, and I think you alluded to this earlier and I want to connect it to what we’re talking now about now, allowing these powerful people, people who do understand what’s going on to get away with saying, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t follow everything Donald says.” Bullshit. Unless he lives under a rock, there’s no way Johnson and every single congressional Republican doesn’t know what Donald wrote and said in the wake of Rob and Michelle’s murders. Ny not pressing, by not following up, there is a failure to connect the dots because this is not about some random thing Donald posted. It’s about what it signifies as to how unfit and unstable and damaged and depraved and deviant he is.
But it’s the same conundrum we have with the failure to connect the dots when it comes to the rise of antisemitism. It’s not just some isolated, father and son team down in Bondi Beach, Sydney, who independently decided to go commit a horrific act of mass murder. It’s happening here. It is happening under the guise of the Trump regime’s alleged war on antisemitism, which is merely desdined to target Muslim people in this country. As you said, people like Tucker Carlson are mainstreaming Nick Fuentes who is a fan of Hitler.
KATIE:
He’s a self-avowed white nationalist fan of Hitler. He doesn’t like minorities. He doesn’t like women. Fuentes has made it explicitly clear how he feels. When Tucker Carlson gives him hours of time on his show, which reaches millions of people, and when Megan Kelly also whitewashes Fuentes’ statements . . . Listen, I’m all for the divide that’s happening in that world between the Ben Shapiros and the Fuentes and the Candace Owens and the Erica Kirks. I’m all for that. Let them self-implode. The self-immolation on that side of the fence, I’ll give you the kerosene and the matches.
But I also am concerned because they do have an expansive reach to reach people. And it’s one thing if you are advancing something of this ilk. They say, “Well, he’s just provocative;” or “This is the Charlie Kirk way. We allow opposing points of views to have oxygen.” I’m say, “No, that’s not an opposing point of view. That is extermination of people point of view.” We don’t tolerate that, but they do.
And then you see an antisemitic massacre of people on Bondi Beach and I say, “You can’t act like it’s just an independent standalone siloed event.” You also have to link it to your well taken point that they can weaponize antisemitism and their war on antisemitism in a way in which speech is silenced. And trying to justify illegal executive orders and policies that are being promulgated and implemented by federal agencies and departments all in the name of allegedly combating antisemitism.
I would love to combat antisemitism. I love to combat any and all hatred that is happening in this country, but I’m not going to do it in a way that is specifically targeting groups of people because it makes it politically convenient. We’re not going to do that.
MARY:
We’re not going to do that, and quite frankly, they’re not only doing that, but they’re still also engaging in horrific antisemitism by elevating people like Nick Fuentes, Remember, Donald had Nick Fuentes over for lunch.
KATIE:
It was him and Kanye, another antisemite. Remember what a big deal that was? This gets back to the very beginning of this conversation. When you normalize that, and now it’s been normalized because it what’s happening now should be as much of a shitstorm when Fuentes went to Mar-a-Lago. But people don’t want to connect to these dots because—is it just too much heavy lifting for corporate media to do the work? Is it too much brain power to have to sit there and connect all the dots? I don’t know.
MARY:
I think it’s money.
KATIE:
It’s access. Access is something that is incredibly intoxicating, right? They say proximity to power is incredibly intoxicating. For a lot of corporate media, access has been defined as something that has so much value. Here’s a classic example: the Pentagon changed its rules, which has necessitated a lawsuit. But now you have Laura Loomer and you’ve got Tim Poole and you have freaking My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, covering the Pentagon. Yet we still get information out of the Pentagon because there are people who are decent who understand that this is how real journalism is supposed to work. You’re not getting breaking news from Laura Loomer from the Pentagon, but you’re still getting breaking news about the Pentagon from credible outlets.
Mainstream media, do better because you do the money and the means and the access to be able to have these important questions answered that sometimes some of us can’t. So if you can, do better.
MARY:
I don’t think we should hold our breath, but I think what needs to happen is happening. We need people like you. We need independent media gaining a foothold, getting more traction. Sometimes we can find a workaround. We don’t necessarily need access to people like Mike Johnson if we are, as you do every day, speaking truth to power. There are other ways to educate people. I want you to tell everybody where to follow you, because Katie has a phenomenal YouTube channel and Substack.
KATIE:
On Substack, I am at Katie Phang, P-H-A-N-G, where I am on all social media, but I would love the support as well at my YouTube channel at Katie Phang News. It’s been a labor of love, this YouTube channel. I’m incredibly proud of being able to do the work that I do there as well. So I appreciate that.
MARY:
Awesome. Now, as you guys know, Katie is a very dear friend of mine, but I am saying this with as much objectivity as I can muster. Katie is one of the few essential voices out there working today. Listen to her, watch her, spread the word. And as always, it’s such a pleasure to talk to you. I’m sorry things are so crazy these days, and I hope you get some downtime. Thank you truly for everything you do, and mostly thank you for being my friend.
KATIE:
You and our core group are my sanity grounders. You guys allow me to fly and spread my wings because I always know you guys are there to help me and to catch me. So that is a gift. That is truly a priceless and not just an end of year Christmas gift.
MARY:
I agree completely. Have an amazing holiday. I know will speak before then, but to everybody watching, thanks guys. It was great to have you here and Katie and I will see all of you soon undoubtedly.
