Firing Line

- New media for a new world.

This week on "Firing Line."

- All right, listen up.

It's time to talk about it.

There is a direct path for the Democratic Party to.

- [Margaret] Adam Mockler, 23, is an analyst of American politics with more than 1.8 million YouTube subscribers.

- If we compromise on the fundamental core that is MAGA.

- [Margaret] Natalie Winters, 24, is co-host of Steve Bannon's podcast "The War Room" and has a White House press pass, one of the MAGA-adjacent influencers new to the White House press corps.

They joined me at Hofstra University for a discussion about covering politics in the digital age.

- We are now in a post-factual reality where we can't even agree on fundamental things like, did this person win this election?

Is COVID real?

So it just really bothers me when people are in high positions of power and spreading lies and aren't getting fact checked.

- This notion of a fact check, I think we use very loaded terms that connote this sort of agnostic sense- - Wait, do you think the term fact check is loaded?

- 100%.

- [Margaret] What do political commentators Adam Mockler and Natalie Winters say now?

(bright music) - [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, and by the following.

(bright music continues) - Natalie Winters, Adam Mockler, welcome to "Firing Line," here at Hofstra University in front of a student audience.

It's wonderful to welcome you both here.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- You are both online political phenomenon.

Adam, you host "The Adam Mackler Show" on YouTube, which has a subscribership of more than 1.8 million subscribers.

Natalie, you are the co-host of Steve Bannon's "War Room."

At the ripe age of 24, and you at the ripe age of 23, have garnered almost unprecedented mainstream media attention and digital media attention.

This is a time, as you guys know, of really intense disruption in media, and each of you in your massive followings have developed a degree of trust with your audience at a time when trust in media has plummeted.

Why do your audiences, and I'm going to go to both of you, why do they trust you?

Natalie, you go first.

- Well, I think it's not just that we cover issues that Americans actually care about in a way that's truly factual, but we cover the issues that I think for so long, legacy media has just routinely ignored.

I think you can sort of see the convergence of that with what President Trump talked about in 2016, which was immigration, trade deals, and the idea that our government should actually work to represent us and not be importing the sort of class of foreign workers, depressing our wages, and just I think destroying what it means to be an American.

It's the idea that Americans are not allowed to care about certain issues or they're, you know, demeaned as nativists, xenophobic, racist, every -ist or ad hominem attack in the book.

And I think "War Room," I think sort of alternative, at least conservative media, actually says, "No, it's okay to care about wanting to be an American and not having your government replace you with a bunch of foreigners."

- Adam, what do you do that has developed trust with your viewers?

- I think in this new age of media where mainstream media is losing viewership and people are migrating to digital media, people are looking for authenticity.

The Democratic Party, which I oftentimes represent in my videos, has built up a reputation of being a few things: risk averse and a little bit finger waggy in people's faces, always trying to tell people what to say or what not to say, right?

So as somebody in this Democratic sphere, I try to bring an authentic view.

People don't always want to see me in suits on TV like I am now.

Sometimes I'm just in my bedroom telling it how it is, saying what the story of the day is, and that is authentic to people.

People really like that.

- And that's helped you build trust?

- I think the authenticity has helped me build trust.

- The T-shirt helps you build trust.

- In a way, absolutely.

It feels like we come at an angle that mainstream media oftentimes fails to come at.

- The concern older people have, I will speak for older people, right?

No, but the concern is that in the old world, there were journalistic standards at mainstream media organizations attempting to discern what the truth is and correct the record if you got it wrong.

This notion, which may seem antiquated, of journalistic standards.

So in the context of the digital media spaces where both of you exist, what kind of standards do you adhere to as you go about gathering information and disseminating it?

- Most of my work is directly quoting, whether it's government grants, a lot of my early research had to do with Chinese Communist Party infiltration.

I would spend hours in deleted webpages going to the translated webpage versions and just quoting the Chinese Communist Party as is, these foreign influence groups, the Americans that they were meeting with.

I've always just done primary raw source reporting and have carried through.

It's indisputable- - So how do you characterize the standards that you hold yourself to?

- I just report the truth and I think that, but I think that all of this focus on standards I think is sort of this bureaucratic, kinda not gotcha, but where it's all about imposing this sort of idea that in order for a story to be accurate, it has to be fact-checked, it has to be peer reviewed, it has to have this whole kind of editorial- - Wait, it doesn't have to be fact checked?

I mean, you just said you spent a lot of time finding facts.

- They're just facts.

This notion of a fact check, I think we use very loaded terms that connote this sort of agnostic sense- - Wait, do you think the term fact check is loaded?

- 100%.

- Tell me why.

- It was a construct that was created by this sort of anti-disinformation industry, which I think- - Well, shouldn't we be, we should be against- - Factual.

- Disinformation.

Tell me about the disinformation industry, because we should unpack that.

- I think definitions matter here.

Yeah, because I think all of our definitions of disinformation would differ.

Fact checking is great.

We should check facts, but I think it's important to understand who is actually doing, because I think there's a weaponization of these terms, that there's this implied neutrality that the people who are checking your facts are people who have no bias.

- But then is it- - And that's not true.

- I think you make a very fair point.

So then (chuckles) to quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former Democratic senator who said, you know, "Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts," I mean, is it the case, then, that we might actually agree on a set of facts, consistent facts- - Sure.

- That we can then debate?

- But the point of fact checks, they have really only ever been weaponized to pull content down.

Fact checks have only ever been weaponized to silence content that doesn't fit mainstream narratives.

- Okay, Adam.

- Yeah.

- What journalist standards do you apply to yourself as you internalize information and disseminate it to your audience?

- To get to the heart of the question, I think that there is a difference in mainstream media and digital media in that authenticity sometimes means there aren't as many hoops that you have to jump through.

So when I'm making a video, I and my team, we are the ones that fact check this video.

We are the ones that make sure everything I am reporting is at least coming from something that is backed up in reality.

So if I am reporting- - In a mainstream media source?

- Exactly.

- Or one or two or three or?

- So I rely on mainstream media a lot for this.

So if "The Washington Post" is on the ground reporting something, I think that my standard is I'll use "The Washington Post" reporting.

I'm not going to use a random person on the ground on Twitter who is reporting this.

- You'll take an accredited journalist with a mainstream publication over a YouTuber who's on the ground, an independent journalist on the ground in Minneapolis.

- Well, we trust both, but the independent journalist on the ground in Minneapolis needs to be backed up by some sort of credible information or source.

- What is a world without fact checking?

- I think that we are rapidly moving into a media environment where AI is going to be so prevalent on the internet, it's going to be hard to fact check some of this in real time.

I'm sure everyone's family members has fallen for some sort of AI video, and you're the one that has to tell your mom or your grandma, "Hey, that cat didn't actually save that other cat out of the lake," or whatever, right?

So I think a media, (Margaret chuckles) that one didn't happen.

I think the media environment without fact checking just turns into throwing mud at the wall and everybody trying to push a completely dishonest narrative with no agreed upon, like, not universal, agreed upon truth that we can all at least arrive at.

Like, we are now in a post-factual reality where we can't even agree on fundamental things like, did this person win this election?

Is COVID real?

Is this real?

So it just really bothers me when, I don't know, people are in high positions of power and spreading lies and aren't getting fact checked.

- Okay, I want to go to how you both define yourselves.

Adam, you don't consider yourself a journalist.

I would characterize you, you tell me.

I mean, you're a content creator who offers political commentary and analysis.

Is that fair?

- Yep.

I like to debate.

I like to commentate over the news and, yeah, I don't say I'm like an unbiased person on the ground reporting the truth.

I generally say I am just out here to push my beliefs.

- Natalie, you define yourself as a journalist.

You have a White House press pass, as we all know.

But you have said your assignment, your beat in a way, is, quote, "covering the opposition forces to Donald Trump."

And you have said that, "We are the enforcers of the MAGA agenda."

So, you know, take on your critics who would say, "That's just communications for the administration.

That's not journalism."

How do you define yourself?

- I think anybody who would say that we are sycophants or, you know, regime puppets for President Trump, I think has probably never watched about five minutes of "War Room."

I think that "War Room" strategy- - But that's what you said though.

That was your definition of yourself.

- No, for MAGA.

And that's important, because I think what you're seeing is MAGA be diluted in a way.

It's not being true to what President Trump ran on, whether you see that with mass deportations and immigration.

you see it with the trade deals, you see it with the foreign policy.

So we hold them accountable to what actually putting America first is, and I think first and foremost where I view "War Room's" role in the White House media landscape.

And secondly, I also think, sort of related, I think the mass protest movements that you have seen against the Trump administration, we liken it to a color revolution framework.

I think a lot of people who were involved in sort of the regime change stuff in foreign countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, all the sort of democracy scholars have really sort of used those tactics here at home.

It's why they depict President Trump as an autocrat.

It's why they depict him in those sort of coded terms so they can use those similar tactics.

And we have always covered, I think, the left-wing protest movement, really followed the funding, tried to understand what they're animated by ideologically, what their drivers are, and I think that's a unique thing about "War Room."

So we're not running cover for the administration by covering that.

It's what our audience is just actually interested in.

- I want to do just a little bit more of just the mechanics of how you both do what you do.

I mean, she's actually going for a sort of mobilization of individuals.

Is that your goal?

I sense your goal is a little different.

- It's twofold.

I like to message for the Democratic Party.

Not directly, but I want to push it in the direction that I want to see.

The Democratic Party, and young people in this room can likely relate, has been too risk averse and too finger waggy over and over.

We have candidates that are running that won't even go on mainstream podcasts because they're a little bit too nervous to misstep.

Kamala Harris only had 107 days to run her campaign, but she was not getting in these spaces that she needed to get in.

Trump would go on anyone's podcast as long as they had just a tiny little microphone to stick in his face.

Literally he would go on any podcast.

So what I want to do is return to a Democratic Party that is not so risk averse, that is more authentic, and that can speak to the average American without always being so condescending.

- Okay, so but on the policy, where is that going to come down?

Because there's a real tug of war between the Mamdani, not stylistically, actually on the substance of the policy, between the AOC, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani wing of the party, and the sort of mainstream liberal Democrats, more moderate Democrats.

Like, do Democrats need to take clear stances like- - Yes.

- Abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, implementing universal healthcare, cutting ties with Israel?

Like, is that the direction the party needs to go?

I mean, those are clear stances, but that's a very different vision than the moderate Democratic stances that you- - Well, I'm moderate, but I also think that populism can fit into that, talking to the average person from a moderate point of view.

So I don't want to tax all billionaires out of existence.

I'm not Bernie Sanders.

But I want to reform the tax code in such a way that the 150 loopholes for billionaires to be able to make a bunch of money are maybe more rational.

Maybe we tone down the loopholes so the richest of the rich aren't getting these massive tax breaks while the working class people are getting cuts to their Medicaid or their SNAP.

And it's not like we want to tax billionaires even more.

It's not like I want to increase the wealth tax.

No, I just want to make sure that it's a fair and equitable system.

- You alluded to a wedge on the right that I want to ask you about because if you see your role as holding the Trump administration accountable for the America First agenda, in November, President Trump had a really public falling out with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who criticized President Trump over his handling of the Epstein files, foreign interventions, failing to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, and ultimately she said, you know, "I am America First, not MAGA."

She feels, perhaps like you do or not, she feels that the Trump administration has abandoned some of its America first policies.

Is she right?

- I think it's too soon to tell.

And I think that to answer that question definitively now is to imply that politics is stagnant and it can't be in flux.

Like, there are issues where- - But is she onto something?

I mean, it does sound like- - Of course.

- You agree that there's- - And for people who watch "War Room," but I think where people maybe misunderstand where maybe I would humbly and respectfully push back with what Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying is that I think to just capitulate and say it's over is to give up when the Trump administration has shown that they are receptive to the sort of grassroots, their base, calling them out.

And I think that people who just want to throw in the towel, that's not the American fighting spirit.

I don't think that that's what composes the people who make up the "War Room" audience.

They're willing to make phone calls, they're willing to get involved.

- I think when you say you're putting America first, what I'm actually hearing is you're trying to pull the Republican Party in a more radical direction.

Putting America first is allowing- - You can call it radical.

She would call it populist.

- Well, populist, but not populist because- - I care about borders.

- Well, the majority of Americans think that legal immigration is something that is okay because it benefits the United States.

Republicans view immigrants in a fundamentally different way than they view everybody else.

You guys view immigrants as net drains on the society, but that is not borne out.

You can look at anybody as a drain on society.

I take up housing, you take up electricity, you take up space on the road.

So when you say that immigrants take up housing and immigrants take up electricity, it's sort of a myopic view, and they take up jobs or, because they create.

Immigrants also create a lot for this country.

I mean, immigrants are net taxpayers.

For a personal anecdote, my grandpa moved here from Syria in the late '90s and you could argue, yeah, he was taking up space.

Why was this person from Syria taking up space in the United States?

We shouldn't have let him here.

But my grandpa has built a business that now employs dozens of people that feeds dozens of families.

I grew up in Indiana where my community was full of a lot of Muslims who became heart doctors or surgeons or very productive members of society.

30% of working physicians in this country are immigrants, are people who are coming here to help Americans.

That is putting America first.

How are physicians that are immigrants helping Americans not putting America first?

- Don't take that.

Don't take that.

Don't take that.

I'm going to ask you a question.

What I would like you to respond to is, is there a positive story about immigrants who aspire to live the American dream that are living in a way that isn't undermining the American experience for Americans already here?

I mean, do you subscribe to that notion in any way?

Or do you reject it?

- Of course there are some, but the way that you're seeing legal immigration happen now is just historically empirically extremely different from the waves that you saw before.

You used to have an on period of people coming in and an off period, and the people who would come in would assimilate, much like your grandfather.

They would actually, I think, enjoy American culture because you had to.

Now I think you have this sort of weird, perverse, left-wing ideology where we're told that assimilation is racist, and I don't think that that works.

And I think when you talk about the immigration issue, it's like we have to do this performative, to some extent, ritual where we have to praise immigrants as like the greatest thing that has ever happened in this country.

I'm not bashing or negging all immigrants, but I also think we can appreciate the contributions that Americans have made to this country.

The American people have been abused by the legal immigration system.

And, sure, are there some immigrants that are good?

Yes, but there's also a lot of problems with our immigration system.

It's a problem of scale.

It's too many people.

- Okay, hold on.

I'm going to show you guys a clip of William F. Buckley Jr.

Have you ever heard of him?

- Yes.

- Okay, so William F. Buckley Jr.

hosted a program called "Firing Line" for 33 years.

In 1979, he actually tackled the question of immigration.

How many people should be allowed in and from where?

Listen to what he says in this exchange with the first Latino Commissioner of the Immigration and National Naturalization Service.

Take a look.

- Well, is the question purely a numerical question or is it one that has also to do with ethnic balance?

- I think it has to do with the whole vision of the country.

- If my memory's correct, it was only about 13 or 14 years ago that we officially renounced the preference that had previously been written into the law for two groups.

Number one, Western Europeans, number two, residents of this hemisphere.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, we've gradually moved toward a non-racial type policy.

- Okay?

So he's saying we have gradually in our immigration policy moved towards a non-racial policy.

There is a sense that sort of implicitly we are moving towards a racial policy for immigration under this administration.

The criticism is that the Trump administration wants a whiter America.

Is that fair?

- I think that's absolutely absurd.

The idea of populism, economic nationalism, is maximizing the value of what it means to be an American citizen.

I don't care what race you are.

I don't care what your religion is.

I don't care what your ethnicity is.

I don't care about any of that.

I care that first and foremost, you are an American citizen.

The American people, my "War Room" audience, they don't care about immigration because of race.

They care about it because of American identity, of which we are all Americans, I assume, in here, and that the idea that our government should not be making our lives more difficult.

- Adam, do you want to- - I disagree entirely.

This administration is absolutely looking at immigration through a racial lens.

You can look at the temporary protected status they have removed from many groups, all minority groups.

You can look at the refugee status they're allowing from South Africa.

They are banning countries from coming in, or people from countries that are Black or that look a certain way, but white refugees are the only ones that are being allowed to come in.

- Only?

- Steven Miller's guidance of this immigration policy is absolutely racial.

- We have to get to student questions.

- Okay.

- Olivia Anstatt, freshman political science major.

What's your question?

- Thank you for having me.

So I think we can all agree that social media is inherently biased towards extremists and very, like, controversial people seeing as their content invokes emotion and therefore they attract a much larger audience.

And that being said, how do we now as a society recenter our popular media around truth, diversity, and good intent in this age that is so fueled by bias and prejudice?

- [Adam] That's a really good question.

- Take it.

- I don't have the exact answer.

I mean, that's a really good question, but I know exactly what you are talking about.

The algorithms currently incentivize and promote the most outrageous content.

I think this gives us a warped perception of each other, and I think it quite frankly allows extremists to control the media message and it elects extremists.

We are currently living in an environment where the social media incentivization of radicalization is beginning to translate into our electeds being more radical because they're using social media, therefore they're giving more and more radical takes and they're elected.

- What do you think about the algorithms and their ability to potentially throttle or incentivize certain actors?

- Well, I think you've got to differentiate it between pre Elon purchasing Twitter and post.

- Definitely, - And I think that a lot of this stuff started in 2017 after President Trump won, where you saw a lot of the elites, Republican and Democrat, it's no secret that the Republican establishment did not want him to win, I think start to be very fearful of free speech on the internet.

And after that, that was the advent of what we call the censorship industrial complex, where you saw the propping up, I mean, almost overnight, of this whole entire grant making industry to universities, to NGOs, to the sort of idea of media literacy, where they were funding studies not just to censor misinformation, but these very radical ideas of pre-bunking and debunking misinformation around topics that we all in this room would not agree on are actually misinformation.

And that stuff was leveraged to, I don't know, censor the sitting president of the United States and rip him off of, like, every social media network ever, even probably Uber Eats.

So that was the culmination.

- Didn't work, did it, though?

- But this is the point.

Because this censorship is not actually of falsehoods.

It's censorship of ideas that threaten the power of the current ruling elite.

Whether or not they think their ideas are true or not, it doesn't matter.

They use censorship as a tool of political power.

- Okay, Morgen Mighty, Class of 2027, what is your question?

- Thank you.

So I wanted to ask how should digital influencers be held accountable, given that they often fail to disclose biases while their content also operates within social media algorithms that subtly recommend content that potentially sway users toward particular political affiliations or trains of thought without their knowledge?

- It's hard.

That's the problem with digital media is that it's decentralized.

Anybody can post anything with any lies at any moment, and it can be boosted in the algorithm.

So how do you hold people like that accountable?

I guess through tension with people who disagree with them.

Like, for example, if I see someone spreading BS in my Twitter algorithm, I quote tweet them and I make sure that I push back and hold them accountable.

- When it comes to, I've heard you talk about sort of your POV on bias and you're very clear that you have a point of view, you have your own bias and your position is it's your responsibility to reveal that bias, and the audience then gets to decide what to do with that.

Is that a fair characterization of how you would take on that question?

- 100%.

I mean, I don't think I'm unique.

I think everybody has a bias, right?

And I think that that bias can be shown in ways, honestly, beyond just the actual coverage of stories.

It's the issues that people choose to cover or not to cover, right?

I think this idea of holding people accountable and, like, always having to outsource what you have within yourself to do, you know how you hold people accountable?

If they're lying, don't consume or share their stuff.

- Don't reward them for their lies.

- That's my point.

You don't have to feed the beast.

- Yeah.

We're coming up on the 250th anniversary of this country.

And I think there's this question about what is it going to mean to be an American into the next century?

So I just want to put that question to both of you as we approach our 250th anniversary.

You take it first, Natalie.

- I think it means to understand and appreciate our founding for what it was, how just amazing and unique and novel and in a time period where the ideas that they were advancing were so radical, but how we have just come to feel them as second nature.

I think that is what it means to be an American.

If you go back to those founding documents and the rich, raw, and vigorous debate that they had, I think you can find answers to a lot of questions that we're having now.

Not just textually, but the spirit of, I believe in something, you believe in something, you believe in something, my audience believes in something.

That's why they make their phone calls.

It's worth fighting for.

We probably shouldn't have won the Revolutionary War, but somehow by the grace of God, we did.

And I think that's what it's about.

- Adam?

- I agree with a lot of that.

I think that the founding of this country was amazing, of course.

It's amazing, genuinely.

I think the debates that you can read at some of the conventions are very, very interesting, of course.

When I think of American values in a present-day setting, I think of things like democracy or human dignity or a peaceful transfer of power or strength and decency on the global stage.

I view America as a leader, a leader of things on the global stage.

My fear is a lot of that is being stripped away.

So when I think of American values, I think of decency, democracy, peaceful transfer of power.

I don't see those being represented by our leadership right now.

- All right.

Adam Mockler, Natalie Winters, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line," and best of luck to you as we watch your careers moving forward.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

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