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What do Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance have in common? They both called Donald Trump a Nazi before groveling at his feet for their own political advancement.

According to audio obtained by CNN’s KFile of Kennedy during his time as a host of the radio show “Ring of Fire,” in 2016 Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services compared Trump to authoritarians like Adolf Hitler, and lauded critiques calling his supporters “belligerent idiots” and comparing them to “outright Nazis.”

In one 2016 episode,...

“Truths with Vivek Ramaswamy” streams on Fox Nation. (Courtesy image)

Fox News Media will offer a new limited-run television series hosted by former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The show, called “Truths with Vivek Ramaswamy,” will debut on Sunday, September 22 on the streaming service Fox Nation. A condensed version of the show will also air on the Fox News Channel on September 22 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time.

“We are excited to launch this new series showcasing Mr. Ramaswamy’s thoughtful and unique perspective on the state of American politics after his meteoric rise over the last year,” Laure Petterson, the President of Fox Nation, said in a statement on Monday.

Leading up to the debut, Ramaswamy has agreed to a one-hour forum that will be taped in Philadelphia, moderated by “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host and Fox Nation personality Pete Hegseth, the network said. That program will air on Fox Nation on Friday,...

Vivek Ramaswamy is getting into business with Fox News.

The former Republican presidential hopeful has signed on to host a new series for the Fox Nation streaming service. The series, called Truths With Vivek Ramaswamy, will debut Sunday, Sept. 22, and will also run on Fox News that evening at 10 p.m.

Truths will see Ramaswamy present “a positive alternative to the left’s vision for the future by presenting hard ‘truths’ that the American conservative movement must embrace,” per Fox. The five episode series will include a roundtable-style format, with Ramaswamy joined during the series by a panel that includes his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy, journalist Matt Taibbi, American theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, Priovant Therapeutics CEO Ben Zimmer and Rabbi Shmully Hecht.

All five episodes of Truths will be available on Sept. 22. In addition, Fox Nation will run a town hall-style special called Just Ask on Sept. 20, with Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth moderating.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate and ardent supporter of Donald Trump, will host a new series for Fox Nation, the Fox News Media subscription streaming service.

The show, Truths with Vivek Ramaswamy, is a five-episode limited series that will premiere Sunday and also will air in a condensed version on Fox News that night at 10 p.m. Et.

According to Fox Nation, the show will delve into topics including national identity, the war in Ukraine and Israel, and the protests on college campuses.

Fox Nation also will release the project Just Ask: Vivek Ramaswamy, in which he answers questions from the audience, with Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth moderating.

In a statement, Ramaswamy said that the show will feature “provocative dinner table conversations that we rarely have in our country anymore.”

The show will feature a panel including Apoorva Ramaswamy, journalist Matt Taibbi, theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, Priovant Therapeutics CEO Ben Zimmer,...

Vivek Ramaswamy has come off the campaign trail and will soon be taking part in the streaming wars.

The former Republican presidential candidate will lead “Truths with Vivek Ramaswamy,” a limited-series roundtable program that will debut on the Fox Nation streaming service on Sunday, September 22, and then air in a shorter version at 10 p.m. the same evening on Fox News Channel. Ramaswamy aims to depict “a positive alternative to the left’s vision for the future” by discussing issues such as American national identity, the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel and the protests on US college campuses, and religion, among others.

“We are excited to launch this new series showcasing Mr. Ramaswamy’s thoughtful and unique perspective on the state of American politics after his meteoric rise over the last year,” said Lauren Petterson, president of Fox Nation, in a statement. Fox Nation will show five episodes of the program.

“Good job Linda for probably influencing that decision,” read one tweet in response to the change, referring to former NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino, who was named Twitter’s CEO in May. The seasoned executive will be key to building relationships and strategies with advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue. Yaccarino herself tweeted two clap emojis in response to the news.

Progress at Twitter. Inquiries from members of the fourth estate to the company’s official press email are no longer receiving an automatic poop emoji in response. Instead, Musk said, the company “is now changing the auto reply to “a ‘We will get back to you soon’ infinite loop.”

The Tesla and SpaceX founder instituted the poop emoji communications regime in March. He reluctantly acquired Twitter for $44 billion last fall, ushering in a chaotic period marked by massive layoffs, technical bugs, advertising woes as well as jabs at the press,...

Following Woody Harrelson’s controversial SNL monologue, Tim Robbins has come out to protest Covid-19 protocols in Hollywood.

The Mystic River actor re-shared an article on Harrelson’s recent comments and expressed his approval, tweeting that it’s “time to end this charade” of mandates.

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Robbins expressed similar ideas last year, lamenting that particular preventative public health measures could be damaging to the arts industry. The actor, an artistic director for Los Angeles’ Actors Gang Theatre, said he had issues with mandates at theaters.

“We were capable of opening last September, but there were still all of these restrictions,” he told journalist Matt Taibbi in a Substack interview. “I had a problem with this idea of having a litmus test at the door for entry. I understood the health concerns, but I also understand that theater is a forum and it has to be open to everybody.

San Francisco, April 10 (Ians) Popular subscription newsletter platform Substack on Monday hit back at Twitter for blocking the ability to like or retweet any posts containing the word ‘Substack’, saying the whole situation is “very frustrating.”

The company CEO Chris Best responded to Elon Musk with a post on Substack Notes, saying none of his allegations are true and Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter.

“iiiWe have used the Twitter Api, for years, to help writers. We believe we’re in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them. We’d be happy to address any issues,” Best responded to Musk.

Musk last week denied that he blocked access to embedding tweets in posts on online publishing platform Substack.

The Twitter CEO also posted that independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, famous for releasing Twitter Files, “is...

New Delhi, April 9 (Ians) Twitter CEO Elon Musk has denied that he blocked access to embedding tweets in posts on online publishing platform Substack.

Independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, famous for releasing Twitter Files and belonging to the Musk camp, blamed Twitter for blocking sharing links to his articles on Substack.

“I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead. I’m obviously staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week,” he posted.

Musk replied: “Matt’s statement is false. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted”.

He further said that it turns out that “Matt is/was an employee of Substack”.

Twitter has restricted promotion and visibility for tweets with links to Substack posts — a move that has not gone well with people.

“We’re...

All inquiries from members of the press directed to Twitter’s official press email now receive the same automatic reply: a poop emoji.

Elon Musk, who bought the social media company for $44 billion last year, relayed the update on his own Twitter feed over the weekend. The 51-year-old billionaire’s report drew 80,000 likes and thousands of retweets and replies, some of whom posed the rhetorical question of how young Musk must be reveling in a poop joke. (Others noted that the barnyard stance on press relations for such a vast and influential platform is also not exactly the stuff of comedy).

Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has elicited rounds of media backlash with several moves, including suspending journalists’ accounts and continually goading the media. “Some of the smartest people I know actively believe the press … amazing,” he wrote last month in one characteristic tweet.

Last December, the accounts of journalist Aaron Rupar,...

San Francisco, Feb 19 (Ians) Elon Musk on Sunday revealed the next lot of ‘Twitter Files,’ where independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi claimed that there were thousands of moderation requests from every corner of the US government.

He said that the real story emerging in the Twitter Files is about a “ballooning federal censorship bureaucracy” that’s not aimed at either the left or the right per se, but at the whole population of outsiders, who are being systematically defined as threats.

“Feds mistaking both conservatives and leftists for fictional Russians, even Twitter deciding on paper to cede moderation authority to the ‘US intelligence community,’ Taibbi posted in a Twitter thread.

Taibbi further said that beginning in March, “We’ll start using the Twitter Files to tell this larger story about how Americans turned their counterterrorism machinery against themselves, to disastrous effect, through little-known federal agencies like the Global Engagement...

The House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing to dig into why Twitter suppressed the New York Post‘s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The executives involved have already admitted the decision — made because they believed it violated the platform’s hacked materials policy — was a mistake. Nevertheless, Republicans are determined to convince Americans that Twitter was in cahoots with the Democratic Party to prevent the story from hurting Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to prove it on Wednesday by grilling Yoel Roth, Twitter...

House Republicans have made clear they intend to do everything they can to cast President Biden as the ringleader of a global crime racket that he’s now using the White House to facilitate. The House Oversight Committee, led by a guy who just a few days ago wondered if the alleged Chinese spy balloon was carrying bioweapons from Wuhan, is going to be responsible for a big chunk of this effort. It will hold its first hearing on Wednesday to investigate, what else, Hunter Biden stuff.

More specifically, the...

Twitter removed a tweet by Donald Trump Jr. that mocked Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky with an image of a naked Hunter Biden.

The image had edited the nude Biden, standing with his hands over his genitals, to appear next to Zelensky as Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hold a signed Ukrainian flag behind him.

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Trump Jr. posted the image after Zelensky made an address to a joint session of Congress where he was received by uproarious applause. Zelensky made a plea to Congress for continued bipartisan support in anticipation of the upcoming political shift that will give Republicans a majority in the House.

Twitter removed the image for unspecified violating its terms of use. This is not the first time the social media company has chosen to remove explicit content regarding the president’s son.

Over the last month,...

Click here to read the full article.

A number of high-profile journalists and commentators were suspended by Twitter on Thursday night with no warning, and without any obvious sign of what caused the suspensions.

Among those suspended were former MSNBC and ESPN host Keith Olbermann, and CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan. Other journalists suspended Thursday included New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, Matt Binder of Mashable and freelance journalist Aaron Rupar.

It is not immediately clear why Twitter, now owned by billionaire Elon Musk, suspended them, though some of the journalists covered and have been in some cases critical of Musk. Olbermann, shortly before being suspended, tweeted a link to a Mastodon social account that tracked Musk’s private jet (the Elon Musk jet account had been active on Twitter, until Musk changed the terms of service earlier this week to ban accounts that share real-time...

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey took the blame for Twitter’s controversial content decisions that the platform made under his leadership, while warning of content control by governments and corporations.

Dorsey started the statement in a Twitter thread but moved it to a blog post, explaining, “I don’t want to edit everything into 280 char chunks.” The founder said that he hoped to build a Twitter that was based on principles he had learned through his “past actions as a Twitter co-founder,” but that he “completely gave up pushing for those...

In the third installment of the ongoing “Twitter Files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi detailed the internal Twitter correspondence that led to the ban of then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Like the first and second “leak” of documents, which Elon Musk touted as exposés of “free speech suppression,” the third part of the Twitter saga boils down to a lengthy explainer piece about social media’s most historic content-moderation decision: Kicking a sitting president off of their service. “Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?...

San Francisco, Dec 10 (Ians) Elon Musk on Saturday revealed the third season of ‘Twitter Files,’ which claimed that top Twitter executives suppressed and censored former US President Donald Trump in the days before the 2020 election, finally deplatforming him on January 8, 2021 — two days after the storming of the Capitol Hill that left five dead.

Independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi shared the ‘Twitter Files Part 3’, saying there were erosion of standards within the company in months before January 6, “decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies”.

Musk replied to him, saying “election interference by social media companies obviously undermines the public’s faith in democracy and is wrong”.

“Unequivocally true. The evidence is clear and voluminous,” he added.

According to Taibbi, Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by...

Donald Trump is claiming vindication after the release of internal “Twitter Files” showing discussions between employees of the platform’s content moderation policies — and attempting to make a quick buck in the process.

A text sent out by the Trump campaign Friday morning read: “Breaking News: President Trump was Right! The Twitter files exposed Fraud and Corruption from Big Tech.”

The text linked recipients to a website where supporters could donate to the former president’s reelection campaign.

The “Twitter Files” are a series of internal documents intentionally leaked by...

New Delhi, Dec 9 (Ians) Elon Musk on Friday released the “Twitter Files” season 2, revealing that the micro-blogging platform had a secret group that included former legal and public policy head Vijaya Gadde, then Cto Parag Agrawal and Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and safety, that made controversial decisions including “shadow banning” high-profile users without informing then CEO Jack Dorsey.

This time, the “Twitter Files Two” were released by Bari Weiss, Founder and Editor of The Free Press, on the micro-blogging platform and endorsed by Musk.

“Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack’s approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum. Jack has a pure heart imo (in my opinion),” tweeted Musk.

Weiss said that the “investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavoured tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics — all in secret,...

The second installment of the much-hyped “#TwitterFiles” debuted on Thursday night, with conservative writer Bari Weiss outlining — in a Twitter thread — what she described as the “shadow banning” of prominent conservatives including Charlie Kirk, Dan Bognino, and Libs of TikTok.

The #TwitterFiles represent an ongoing “leak” of documents revealing the social media giant’s past content-moderation decisions, directed by new owner and CEO Elon Musk. The files are being doled out to contrarian journalists including Weiss and Matt Taibbi, a Substack writer and former longtime writer for Rolling Stone.

The first #TwitterFiles installment,...

On Monday’s episode of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, Carlson spent a lot of time attempting to gin up outrage about Twitter and Hunter Biden — and during his rant, he made some claims about the concept of misinformation that bordered on itself being misinformation.

You can watch the whole clip above (via Kat Abu.)

We mention this because of “The Twitter Files,” a laughably inept attempt by Elon Musk and former journalist Matt Taibbi to gin up a controversy over the way Twitter treated the Hunter Biden scandal before the 2020 election. Most notably, Taibbi and Musk have dishonestly attempted to paint Twitter’s handling of that as a form of government censorship by implying, falsely, that Democrats controlled the government at the time — and also by asserting that private companies have no right to moderate content.

The two also misrepresented efforts by the Biden campaign to have certain...

Washington, Dec 5 (Ians) For a change, Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Monday sided with the White House in condemning former US president Donald Trump for his call to terminate parts of the US Constitution after the release of “Twitter Files”.

Trump made the statement on his Trust Social app in response to the “Twitter Files” that showed the Joe Biden team was in touch with the company in suppressing Hunter Biden’s laptop story in 2020.

Trump said “a Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founder’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

The White House asked the people to “universally condemn” Trump for arguing that parts of the US Constitution should be terminated.

Musk posted: “The Constitution is greater than any President. End of story.”

Trump also posted...

New Delhi, Dec 3 (Ians) The ‘Twitter Files revealed by Elon Musk has implicated Vijaya Gadde, the Indian-origin former head of legal, policy and trust at the company, in suppressing Hunter Biden’s laptop story on the platform, while giving a clean chit to former CEO Jack Dorsey.

Gadde, who took an unceremonious exit from Twitter along with former CEO Parag Agrawal, had taken the crucial call to ban former US President Donald Trump and stop political advertising on the platform.

Working with Twitter since 2011, she was a key executive responsible for overseeing the microblogging platform’s trust and safety, legal and public policy functions.

Without revealing how he obtained them, independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi shared the ‘Twitter Files’ on the platform on Saturday, which Musk then endorsed, saying “here we go”.

“The decision (to suppress Hunter Biden’s laptop story) was made at the highest levels of the company,...

San Francisco, Dec 3 (Ians) Praising Indian-origin Democrat Ro Khanna, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has released internal ‘Twitter Files’ that revealed how the micro-blogging platform took orders from the US President Joe Biden’s team to suppress the censorship of his son Hunter Biden’s laptop story, published by the New York Times during the 2020 US presidential elections.

Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, who posted a series of tweets revealing the Twitter Files.

“On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published ‘Biden Secret Emails’, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop,” Taibbi posted late on Friday.

He claimed that Twitter took “extraordinary steps to suppress the story,” removing links and posting warnings that it may be unsafe.

“They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography,” Taibbi posted.

Twitter has released a tweetstorm of its internal discussions about its efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story Friday night via journalist Matt Taibbi.

Most shocking revelation in the news, being delivered in a series of separate tweets, is that former CEO Jack Dorsey was not aware of the decisions to hold back. Instead, Vijaya Gadde, the head of the company’s Trust & Safety – and one of the first executives fired by new owner Elon Musk upon taking control of Twitter – made the call.

The controversial material on Biden’s laptop was discovered when he left the computer at a repair shop. When he didn’t return to retrieve it, the owner examined its hard drive, leading to a potential political scandal over its contents shortly before the 2020 presidential election.

The thread is ongoing at the time of this writing and can be found here:

1. Thread: The Twitter Files

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

Earlier,...

Elon Musk released the anticlimatic “Twitter Files” about “free speech suppression” by the social-media platform on Friday evening. On Monday, he teased the release, writing, “The public deserves to know what really happened …”

What followed after was a series of tweeted snippets detailing what the public has known—and what Twitter executives themselves have detailed over the past two years—about the company’s deliberation surrounding the New York Post’s publication of files from Hunter Biden shortly before the 2020 election.

“What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series,...

The vast majority of the entertainment industry was quick to embrace Covid-19 safety protocols, seeing masks and vaccine mandates as a way back to work during a pandemic that would have otherwise shut productions down. But not everyone sees those rules as universally positive.

In a new Substack interview with Matt Taibbi, Tim Robbins expressed his concerns that too much pandemic-related caution could ultimately make the arts less accessible. The “Shawshank Redemption” star explained that the Actors Gang Theatre, a Los Angeles theatre company where he serves as artistic director, made the decision to postpone its reopening in 2021 because he did not want to enforce a vaccine mandate for audience members.

“We were capable of opening last September, but there were still all of these restrictions,” Robinson said of the vaccine mandates in California. “I had a problem with this idea of having a litmus test at the door for entry.

It’s that time of year – schools aren’t open, people are on vacation, the weather is kind of humid and downright terrible in some locations. It’s almost the end of the so-called “dog days of summer,” a sleepy moment on the calendar, which is why Bill Maher can be forgiven for a somewhat meandering Real Time last night.

Actor-director-author David Duchovny came on early to talk about his writing process in his new book, The Reservoir: A Novella. He admitted the book is a thinly-disguised version of his life. More interesting was the former “X Files” star’s take on UFOs, which was then topped by Maher.

Duchovny likened UFOs to the old “Ship of Fools” strategy, wherein a society would cast off its criminals and other unwanted on ships set to sea.

Because most of earth’s alien encounters involve teeth drilling and anal probing, Duchovny posited that maybe,...

It was a mixed bag of nuts on Friday night for HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Rock ‘n roll, budgets, Covid-19 and even a put-down of van life were all on the menu.

The man Maher called “The ultimate rock ‘n roll rebel,” Little Steven Van Zandt, was the first guest, plugging his new book, Unrequited Infatuations. Although most know him through his music and particularly his role as Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, Van Zandt has long been involved in politics, sometimes to his detriment.

“Politics wasn’t cool in our (music) business,” he admitted. “It’s one of those show business things, stay away from politics and religion. So I just just jumped in and made that my identity. When I left the E Street Band, (I asked) how do I justify my existence? So I’ll be the political guy.”

A series of political albums followed,...

In a polarized and fractured society, the truth can be a subjective thing. In this panel, Rolling Stone Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Andy Kroll talks to Vice journalist Anna Merlan (Republic of Lies), writer and producer Billy Ray (The Comey Rule), PBS News Hour White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, and writer and director Cullen Hoback (Q: Into the Storm) about how the challenges of presenting the truth have transformed in modern society, and why people have such a hard time exiting...

Rolling Stone and Variety are pleased to announce additional programming for the inaugural “Truth Seekers” virtual summit on August 26th, presented by Showtime Documentary Films. RZA will participate in a keynote conversation about creating, executive-producing, and composing Wu-Tang: An American Saga, a series that examines the Wu-Tang Clan’s formation, mega-success, and cultural influence.

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Todd Haynes will take part in a keynote conversation about his new documentary feature, The Velvet Underground, and give an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at his creative process in telling the story of the legendary rock band.

Variety and Rolling Stone are pleased to announce programming for the inaugural Truth Seekers virtual summit on August 26th, presented by Showtime Documentary Films. Keynote speakers will include Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War), with panels from documentarians behind Allen v. Farrow, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer, and more.

Stanley Nelson will receive the Truth Seeker Award. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Peabody Award recipient,...

Today, Variety and Rolling Stone announced that the iconic brands will bring together documentary filmmakers, journalists, and other tastemakers for the inaugural Truth Seekers Summit, presented by Showtime Documentary Films. The virtual event will feature key conversations, panel discussions and the first-ever “Truth Seeker Award,” honoring a documentarian or journalist for their essential work in the pursuit of the truth. The inaugural virtual summit will be accompanied by a special joint issue and new website verticals on Variety.com and RollingStone.com.

“For over a century, Variety has been the most trusted source in entertainment,...

Matt Taibbi’s “Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another” has been optioned by Vespucci, a media company that has made a practice of teaming up with journalists on movies, shows and podcasts.

Vespucci partnered with Charles Dorfman’s production company Samuel Marshall Films to option the rights to the non-fiction book. The plan is to develop “Hate Inc.” into a feature documentary. The company is still looking to attach a director.

“Hate Inc.” is a trenchant look at the changing media landscape, examining the ways that cable news and other platforms have turned reporting into entertainment and deepened the political divide. It also explores the mistakes that certain members of the media made while reporting on everything from Wmd in Iraq to the Mueller Report. The book was partly inspired by Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent,” which looked at the ways that market forces and self-censorship skew media coverage.

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Stella Moris, a lawyer and the life partner of Julian Assange.

Matt and Katie discuss a recent Twitter thread by Dr. Sarah T. Roberts of UCLA, in which she laments the fall of journalistic integrity by reporters and writers moving to Substack.

“I worry about this because it’s this whole idea that alternative media, which has already taken such a huge hit in the last 20 or 30 years… all the...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friend-of-the-podcast Shahid Buttar, a constitutional lawyer and 2020 challenger of Nancy Pelosi.

For this week’s “Republicans Suck,” Matt and Katie take a look at a Tennessee GOP push to prohibit kneeling during the national anthem at college sports games.

“This is the Republicans we grew up to love, the Dixie Chicks-hating Republicans. And this is frankly one of the reasons why they’re not getting as much sympathy as...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friend-of-the-podcast Glenn Greenwald.

Matt and Katie cover Neera Tanden’s contentious confirmation hearing to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Omb). Our hosts break down the exhaustive GOP questioning of Tanden, in which lawmakers notably cited troves of her old, shit-talking tweets, many of which were aimed at Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters. This included a debate around the phrase “ignorant slut.”

“You just had...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Andre Damon, writer and editor for World Socialist Web Site.

First on this week’s docket is a discussion of the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol.

“For the first time in the entire four years of Trump’s tenure, I’m worried on a very severe level,” says Matt. “My analysis of Trump, and maybe I was wrong, was always that his potential for damage was always limited...

Editor’s Note: This episode was taped early Wednesday, before the events at the Capitol on January 6th.

In the first socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast of 2021, which was recorded before the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi of the Italian newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano.

For “Democrats Suck,” Matt laments the reelection of Nancy Pelosi to the Speaker of the House.

“[Nancy Pelosi’s] role is to be a representative basically of the oligarchs, as Bernie would say.

Each year we publish tens of thousands of stories, covering music news and trends, political analysis, how culture is constantly shifting, and critical takes on our entertainment landscape. So we realize some may get lost in the shuffle — especially in a year when it seemed we were consuming more media than ever before as we tried to make sense of the world in which we live.

And there are always interviews, investigative features, and provocative storytelling that deserves to be revisited. Our most-read story of the year was an essay by anthropologist Wade Davis,...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Edward Ongweso Jr., a prolific journalist currently at Vice’s Motherboard.

Matt submits a story he recently published on the flailing efforts of Democrats to negotiate a Covid-19 relief package, citing a Congressional staffer close to the negotiations who was appalled at the Dems’ performance.

“Democrats basically negotiated against themselves, going back months, so that the relief package that people are ultimately going to get is by a factor of three or four,...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Matt Christman of the “dirtbag left” cult classic podcast Chapo Trap House.

For “Republicans Suck,” Matt has a laugh at the Republican’s winning strategy in U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia. A contingent of Trump voters may sit out the election, citing displeasure at what they see as a lack of effort by other elected Republicans in contesting the Presidential election results in Georgia.

“Either the Republicans make...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by legendary environmental activist Erin Brockovich.

For “Democrats Suck,” Matt and Katie discuss Biden’s nominee for his head of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden.

“She’s really known for two things, she’s know for tweeting and hating Bernie Sanders,” says Matt. “Putting her in the Omb, where Sanders is going to be the ranking member of the Budget Committee, it’s just such a gigantic ‘f.

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Ryan McMahon and Jon Thompson of the Thunder Bay podcast.

For “Democrats Suck,” Katie dives into former President Barack Obama’s new best-selling memoir A Promised Land, particularly the section in which Obama laments overseeing the deaths of people that he asserts he had actually wanted to help.

“Yeah, he wrote that,” says Katie.

“That takes some stones to write that, I have to say. I’m very impressed,” responds Matt.

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by none other than rock legend Roger Waters.

For Democrats Suck, Matt critiques Joe Biden’s appointment of Rick Stengel, who will be on the President-elect’s transition team for the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

“Stengel is basically one of these guys who’s been at the forefront of this new content moderation movement,” says Matt. “This was my Number One concern heading into this Biden presidency, was these...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friend-of-the-show journalist and historian Thomas Frank.

For this week’s Democrats Suck, Katie takes issue with Democrats “punching left,” citing a leaked conference call among House Democrats where some Dems reportedly blamed the poor results in Congressional elections on leftist policy agendas.

For Republicans Suck, Matt and Katie pontificate on the scope of the “Million Maga March,” a pro-Trump rally planned for this weekend in Washington, D.C., without a permit.

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by none other than newly-freelance journalist Glenn Greenwald. [Editor’s note: This episode was taped on November 5th, the Thursday after Election Night.]

Matt and Katie take a deep dive into how some of the early results will speak to the future of both parties, assuming there is a Joe Biden victory over President Donald Trump.

“The Democratic Party is going to take this as a validation of all of the tactics of the last four years, which we spent a lot of time chronicling, that really were terribly ineffective,...

Ahead of the general election, Tinashe joined Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper on Rolling Stone‘s Useful Idiots podcast to discuss her recent political involvement during Covid-19 and this year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

“This year has been kind of crazy for all of us,” the singer tells the hosts. “It’s been a wakeup call for me especially — as an entertainer, someone who’s a public figure — just realizing that there’s so many more important things than what’s happening inside of your current, day-to-day bubble…I think this year,...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friends of the show Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, of The Hill’s “Rising.”

For Republicans Suck, Matt submits a clip of Jared Kushner that’s made the rounds for it’s repugnant take on how a Trump government can address social equity.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can...