The Influencer Problem

What happens when political content creators replace journalists

If you’ve been a Pantsuit Politics listener for any amount of time, you know we’ve talked a lot about what it means to do this work with integrity in a media environment that does not always reward that. This week, I got to have that conversation with someone who’s asking the same questions from a different angle.

Isaac Saul is the founder of Tangle News, a non-partisan politics newsletter that in their own words “gives you a 360-degree view on the news. No spin. No clickbait. Opinions from the left, right, and center so you can decide.” We talk about the blurring line between journalism and content creation, the Nick Shirley problem, why decency might actually be having a moment, and what gives Isaac genuine hope about where we’re headed.

Plus, he has a 13-month-old and I had some thoughts in outside of politics. -Sarah

Topics Discussed

• News, Journalism, Influencers, and Commentary in the Age of Trump

• Outside of Politics: Navigating Early Parenthood

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Episode Resources

• Tangle News

• Isaac Saul (X)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:03] I listen to Sarah and Beth because I can count on them to bring multiple perspectives to an issue or current event.

Speaker 2 [00:00:09] From people with actual moral virtues who might feel comfortable being around my kids. Sarah and Beth do such a tremendous job of listening to each other and to opinions that don’t immediately align with their own. They’ve done their homework. They ask good questions, and they aren’t afraid to change their lives.

[00:00:26] Minds.

Sarah [00:00:29] This is Sarah Stewart Holland and you’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. If you have ever scrolled past all the actual coverage of a news event just to get to someone’s take on it, first of all, no judgment. Same. And second of all that tension is exactly what we’re talking about on today’s episode. I’m joined by Isaac Saul, the founder of Tangle News, which is an incredible newsletter that presents perspectives from the left and the right. Before giving you Isaac’s analysis, or maybe somebody else’s from the Tangle staff, we talk about the line between journalism and content creation, what the Minnesota fraud story gets right and wrong about decentralized media, why Isaac thinks decency might actually be making a comeback. And Outside of Politics, I give him unsolicited toddler parenting advice. So you’re not going to want to miss that. Before we get started, we are selling tickets to our live show in Minneapolis this summer, and they are going fast. We only have a few tickets left to the Spice Conference. Let me give you an idea of what that’s going to look like if you are a member of our premium community and are on the fence. I’ve been following the substacker who asked a simple question. What are you doing alone that you can do together? So if you’ve been listening to Pantsuit Politics alone for years, we’re inviting you to come do it together in community. We’re going to have three tracks that follow the segments of the show. If you are into news and politics, maybe you can sit down with a listener who will tell you the logistical pragmatic reality of getting involved with a political campaign. If you are civically minded, maybe you can sit and learn about neighborism from listeners in Minneapolis. Or maybe you want to go on the Outside of Politics conference track and talk about parenting or reading or travel. We’re going to take off our AirPods and move beyond the comment thread together in person and share our time together. I cannot wait. So get your tickets to the Spice Conference and the live show in Minneapolis last weekend of August, this summer. All right, up next, Isaac Saul. Isaac Saul welcome to Paintsuit Politics.

Isaac Saul [00:02:31] Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Sarah [00:02:33] You are the founder of Tangle News. Please tell our people what you do at Tangle news, a service that I find highly valuable and check every single day.

Isaac Saul [00:02:41] I very much appreciate it. I like to say that Tangle is a product I went looking for that I could not find or certainly couldn’t find anybody doing well and so I tried to build it myself. The general premise is really straightforward. We tackle one big political issue every day in US politics. So whatever the big main story is that is percolating in the country that day. Oftentimes not the easiest thing to distinguish but sometimes pretty easy to do. And then we give you a really neutral breakdown of the story in the most down the middle, centrist language we can. We just explain the events, the facts that we have, maybe share some quotes from some relevant parties who are involved in the story. And then we tell you what the left and the right are saying about it in their own words. We share excerpts of the most compelling and I think most representative arguments we can find from across the political spectrum. So we’ll share three arguments from the left and three arguments from the right, typically everywhere from the center left and center right out to the fringes. And then we kind of cap all of that coverage off with our own analysis, what’s called the My Take section, which is written often by me, but sometimes by different members of my staff. And that’s sort of our opportunity to share our own opinions in a really forthright manner or our own original reporting if we have it, call some balls and strikes on the arguments and offer an analysis that’s independent from the other stuff that’s out there. So the goal really is if you are trying to understand a story from multiple perspectives, you read our newsletter and you will see seven different opinions in one place, spanning the political spectrum from the far left to the middle, all the way to the far right. And you’ll have a really good understanding of how people are framing the story and what kinds of arguments are out there, which I think in this moment is a pretty unique thing in the political space.

Sarah [00:04:37] Well, I think your origin story sounds so much like ours that we always say we wanted to have conversations we weren’t hearing anywhere else. We wanted to bring nuance and perspective and processing in a way that cable news certainly didn’t allow, which was the primary political content when we started in 2015. If you wanted to see somebody process the news, you had to go to cable news. There were some podcasts, not a ton. But what I’m interested in talking with you about today is that I feel myself as a user of Tangle News, as a reader of your newsletter, doing what we struggle with here at Pantsuit Politics. I love all of that, and sometimes I read all of it. But Isaac, I’m just going to be honest with you, sometimes I just scroll down to your take. I just go right on down. I scroll down all the editorials and all the neutral language, and I just want to go, okay, I just want to hear what Isaac thinks about this. And I think that happens with us here at Pansuit Politics. We say, like, we don’t want you to agree with us or we didn’t want to convince you, we just want to spark your own thinking. But when you build trust with people in this media environment-- both of us are independent media companies-- it becomes so driven by trust and personality. I was really intrigued recently when someone asked you, like, do you ever worry about cult of personality where people just do exactly what I just admitted I do, which is just scroll down to hear your take. How are you thinking about that as Tangle grows and changes?

Isaac Saul [00:06:09] It’s a great question. And we know from serving our audience that you’re not alone in that. I think there’s a good question.

Sarah [00:06:16] I feel bad about it every time. Does that make you feel better?

Isaac Saul [00:06:19] Yeah. I would say there’s probably 20 or 30% of our audience is doing that. And, look, I think it’s different for different people. I’d say you are immersed in this stuff for a living and there’s a decent chance that a lot of the stuff you would read, given your work, is probably a little bit redundant for you. I think there are a lot people who use our newsletter and consume our content because they have 15 or 20 minutes a day to dedicate to understanding the world and understanding US politics in this moment. And so for them it makes a lot of sense to read top to bottom. And there are political junkies out there who maybe it’s not their job, but they just spend all day reading about politics. And they read it top to the bottom because they want to see all the stuff they miss and make sure they have a really good understanding. I’m okay with people doing what you do so long as they understand that coming to Tangle, the point is not to view me or a staff member of mine’s take as being the sort of arbiter of truth. I think we offer unique analysis and I think approach politics with a really important lens which is one that’s pretty human first, politics is personal, it’s often really moderate. I think one of the things that is just true about me and has made the newsletter successful is my politics do tend to circle the middle and so I’m an independent in many ways.

[00:07:51] And I think our audience picks up on the fact that I’m often on different sides of different issues depending on what the specific topic is and how things have happened and so they sort of trust if they’re a conservative reader and they see me hammering Trump one day that maybe in a week they’re going to read something where I think what he did is really good and I’m going to compliment them. And that’s not something they’re going to get in a lot of other places. So generally speaking, the way I think about it is I don’t want people doing that. I want them consuming the whole newsletter. I want them understanding that the point is to expose themselves to viewpoint diversity. But at the same time, I publish what I publish because I think it’s a quality piece of analysis. And I’m taking into account oftentimes in my writing in that section that people might be skimming the other parts or skipping down there. So you’ll see me sometimes sort of restating or summarizing arguments the left and the right are making just to be sure that people are kind of being exposed to that. Because my goal really it’s not just to deliver that unique analysis. It’s also to make sure people are exposing themselves to a wide range of viewpoints and arguments and kind of getting out of the bubble that so many of us live in thanks to our algorithms and our habits and our media diets of choice right now.

Sarah [00:09:11] Well, I just think it’s so hard because what you named is something we struggle with here all the time. There’s two audiences, right? There’s the audience that only listens to Pantsuit Politics. That’s where they get their news. There’s a people that aren’t like highly engaged with the political and news environment. I mean, really you have several layers of audience because you have people who maybe are engaged with the news. I don’t know how many people there are that are engaged with the new but not politics because it’s so interwoven at this point. But you have what I call like low information news consumers that I do think we have some of at Pantsuit Politics and I know you have a ton probably at Tangle and then you have the political junkies. So you have these like two different audiences and you have a media environment that rewards or I think is structured around the political junkies to a certain extent. Like the algorithm is going to reward someone who’s like clicking and engaging with highly political content. So how do you think about those two audiences? I mean, it’s something we think about all the time; like how do we serve both masters? But it feels sort of tricky.

Isaac Saul [00:10:24] Yeah, it’s another great question. First of all, we are primarily positioning ourselves towards the people who are not political junkies. I mean a good chunk of what our newsletter does is explain the foundational story and the way government works or the way a piece of legislation might work or the background behind a certain conflict. Like if we’re covering the war in Iran, we will spare a paragraph to rehash the history of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement. We will go into some detail for our audience, assuming that maybe they don’t have baked in knowledge that a reader of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times who’s on their homepage every single day might have. And I think that’s one thing a lot of sort of more institutional “corporate mainstream” media groups and outfits are honestly not doing very well is just explaining the news. A, because even the people who read their stuff all the time, I think don’t understand it nearly as well as maybe they think they do. And B, because there’s just a lot of people who are consuming that content because they’re activated for some reason by that issue and they’re becoming a news consumer for the first time or for a period of time because they really care about the specific thing that’s going on. So I think we serve both audiences by honestly constructing our content with the audience that isn’t the super political junkie in mind because a lot of people need refreshers on how a bill makes its way through Congress or what the big, beautiful bill did specifically or how high housing policy works at the federal state and local level, or how somebody’s deported even. I mean, this is stuff that’s complicated.

[00:12:08] So I tend to put those people in the foreground and make sure that we’re really giving enough background and detail that anybody reading the piece can kind of understand it. And another thing I think we do that is specific to the newsletter. And the podcast space that maybe more traditional media outlets don’t necessarily have the luxury of doing is we do have a sort of more personal, informal tone and kind of conversation style in our writing that we approach people with. So we want it to be a space where people feel not entertained, I don’t think news should be entertainment, but they feel engaged. It’s not academic to read it. It’s not a chore to get through a newsletter or a podcast. We want it to be kind of conversational and accessible. And I hear that from our audience a lot. That there is this sort of specific nebulous thing about our writing they can’t quite put their finger on that just makes it easier to digest and get through. And it is really intentional. We’re not dumbing it down. We’re not making stuff like a fifth grade reading level but we’re also not trying to bury our audience in legalese and academic sounding words for the sake of sounding smart. And I think that’s a good approach to the news right now because people are tired and they want to just like understand and hear some different perspectives and be able to go make out their on mind.

Sarah [00:13:33] Well, here’s the thing, though. You and I and our audiences are, I think, fair to say, responsible, pragmatic, care deeply about the impact of their products. What I am increasingly concerned about, and as someone who can be fairly described as a political content creator, that’s a fair description of what we do at Pantsuit Politics, is the growth-- I was thinking about this in preparation for this conversation. For so long this analysis or critique really centered on Fox News. Like that was the boogeyman that not just reported, didn’t just analyze, but changed the reality that we lived in. Like Fox News was making people afraid. They were really playing up certain political narratives in order to push an outcome, right? And I think particularly people of our generation are stuck in that understanding of political content and like what the problem is when really because of our decentralized environment-- Fox News, I think is still problematic. But because of our decentralized media environment and news environment, you have so many political content creators on both the left and the right, whose incentive is to do what we were all so mad at Fox News for doing forever, not to find a solution, to keep people afraid, to keep people angry, to keep people engaged. They don’t care about pragmatic politicians. I’m not sure some of them really care about winning elections.

[00:15:22] So how are you thinking about this as this particular approach to political content creation. I think you see the place I’ve been thinking about it a lot where you’ve seen it play out is the Texas Senate primary on both the Republican and Democratic side. You saw content creators who were not motivated by anyone’s best interest except theirs. They wanted clicks, they wanted conflict, they wanted either MAGA faithful, hardcore, rhino, get everybody out. You still see so much of that in MAGA all the way to the left. I think like a very sort of throwback to woke politics, sort of if you’re with us or you’re against us, even though everybody was like that didn’t work. It works for them. So they’re going to keep doing it.

Isaac Saul [00:16:15] Yeah, it’s interesting. I sort of try and hold two thoughts at the same time, which definitely come in tension. And the first one is I think the democratization of news is a good thing. It’s helpful when the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post parachute into some place or some story that they’ve never really covered before. And a reporter spends three days there, which is a great way to report a story and maybe just like misses something. And then there’s somebody on TikTok or Instagram who grew up in that small town and reads the coverage or sees how the mainstream press is doing it and comes out and is like this is bullshit. Like they totally flood this story. Here’s what actually happened. Here’s what it’s actually like to live here. And they can upload a video that gets millions of views and forces the New York Times to correct something or issue a clarification. I mean, that is something we take it for granted now, but 10 or 15 years ago that did not exist. And I think it’s good that that kind of thing exists. I think its made the mainstream media more careful and better. I think the corporate press has to consider those kinds of outcomes now in a way they didn’t before and reporters have to be sharper and the margin for error or for squishy language or for misleading headlines, any of that stuff is just way less because you’re going to get called out if you do it. And on the whole, I think that’s probably a good thing. At the same time, it is true that a lot of these “content creators “or influencers or whatever you want to call them, they’re functioning in an entirely different standard and under entirely different standards than journalists are. And that’s a huge advantage. I’ll give you a quick example. I consider myself a journalist. I got my start as a politics reporter. I was editing my college newspaper before I became a professional reporter. I was an English non-fiction writing major with a journalism focus. Like that is my background. And now I’m sort of teetering on this line where I have my own independent media company and I have a YouTube channel and a podcast. And I do opinion and analysis. So there is this weird I am also a “content creator” or opinion columnist, but I try and bring journalistic ethics to things. So when we’re talking about the Jeffrey Epstein story, for example, there have been a lot of my audience and readers and listeners who really want me to say things on the air that are very speculative about President Trump or Bill Clinton or what the files actually show or what a redacted email might imply but isn’t clear to me like the hard evidence is actually there.

[00:19:04] And so I’ve been very restrained on that story, which has upset a lot of people who read my stuff. And I have to be like, guys, this isn’t an Instagram account where I’m just uploading videos, bloviating about whatever I want. A, I have a business that has liability where if I publish something that’s untrue, somebody could sue me. B, I’ve standards because I’m a journalist, so I’m not going to say things on the air. Even speculative, I will speculate if I have things I can back that speculation up with. But when I can’t, there are certain branches and limbs I’m not going to walk out on that other people are happy to walk out on because they don’t have those consequences lurking around the corner. So you just have to go into the space with that understanding. And I would say the very most basic deep difference between some people in that space who I think you should take with a grain of salt and maybe folks at the New York Times, journalists, whatever, or now in Tangle’s case I have six editors on my staff, is there isn’t a team surrounding some of these influencers that have editorial standards that are fact checking the things they’re posting that are pushing back on what they’re doing because like, oh, that’s kind of a misleading use of language, maybe we should reframe this. Or quote somebody who opposes the perspective that you’re putting out. Like, no, they’re not doing any of that stuff. They are like I’ve got 30 seconds to capture people’s attention. How do I get 5 million views on this TikTok reel? And when that’s the motivation, the reality gets distorted very quickly. And I think as consumers, we just have to understand that and it’s a balance. I think there are elements of it again that are really good, but there are things like that that really scare me because in some ways for some consumers, they’re supplanting actual journalists, doing actual due diligence and editing and work and careful reporting. And I don’t like the way that makes me feel. I mean, that part of it does scare me a bit.

Sarah [00:21:07] I mean, gosh, there’s just so much to untangle here, if you will. I think that, okay, so the first example, you know, when I was growing up I was the victim of a school shooting and we hated some of the choices that the mass media was making. People in my town still hate Matt Lauer. And there was like no way to push back. I think what I often see with these on the ground journalists, it’s not a personal thing with the story. I feel like the best example right now is that dude with the Somali fraud case who like frauded...

Isaac Saul [00:21:53] Nick Shirley. Yeah.

Sarah [00:21:53] And now you have all these offshoot journalists who are going and digging up fraud or staying outside daycare centers and California and all these other places. And they’re not motivated to tell the truth about their place. They’re motivated to get to continue to get clicks and views because now they’re seeing like, oh, I could I can make money being a fraud like my own little personal... What was that guy on 2020 John Stossel, whatever the hell his name was. You know what I mean? So they’re now out there doing that. That it’s not a personal motivation. It’s a business enterprise. They don’t have any journalistic ethics. Then you have the actual like political content creators. They’re not doing any reporting. They are only taking other pieces of reporting and then like you said, bloviating. But again because they don’t see themselves as political reporters, they just see themselves as political influencers. And they don’t understand like you actually can move the needle. Even though I think that’s why they started a lot of them. Like they wanted to move the need and now they can, but they don’t want to move the needle in any productive way. They want to keep people pissed off because that’s what people come to them to read and watch and interact with. So you have these like two kind of different universes. And what I think is so interesting about what you said is, how do you think about that as a place that does both? Because that’s always my beef with CNN. It’s like you never really know am I watching opinion or am I a reporter? Sometimes it’s hard to delineate. Even the New York Times, I read the print New York times, so I know when I pick up the opinion section and when I pick up the news section, but it blurs and it certainly blurs online to when am I reading opinion and when am I reading reporting? And i’m just not sure people know

Isaac Saul [00:23:57] Well, news analysis is like it’s such a euphemism. It’s like, okay, this is opinion then you’re analyzing. I mean, I do news analysis, but it’s like called my take. Like it’s recognized as being opinion. Yeah, I hate that. I genuinely do loathe that kind of the blurring of the lines because it’s really important. It’s already hard enough for news consumers to understand, for instance, that The Wall Street Journal editorial board is very conservative, sort of traditional Republican conservative, but the Wall Street journal reporting team, their newsroom is super down the middle. Like in my opinion it’s like the most unbiased central, if you just read their news reporting, I think they do the best job of not tilting their reader in any direction. Fox News is another good example where Fox News digital is right of center, clearly. Like you can see the conservative kind of undertones injected in the reporting, but it is light years away from Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham prime time Fox News television lineup. It’s just a different piece. Like I know a lot of Fox News reporters who are really honest brokers and they have their worldview, but they’re trying to do their work in a fair way. And it just makes it so hard for the consumer to understand.

Sarah [00:25:20] Well, think about it this way, too. Even with the news analysis, like I love Ezra Klein, okay? He is doing opinion, but also he will say, I’ve talked to sources in the Trump administration. I’ve done this. And I’m like, well, I make a show where I talk about my analysis, but I don’t have sources inside the Trump administration, so how do you even delineate that level of interplay? You know what I’m saying? It’s getting very, very gray out there.

Isaac Saul [00:25:44] Yeah, it is. And I agree. I think Ezra does awesome work and especially for perspective and to kind of where the center left is. Or he used to be I think a progressive, but he’s sort of been more critical of the progressive left. Like he to me is like an incredibly important voice. I like listen to his show to keep tabs on that. And to your point, he’s often interviewing people and creating this kind of original content that is not just opinion. It’s like he’s tangling up with people who matter and have really important roles in government or the news stories we’re consuming or whatever it is. I think one interesting element of this is the Nick Shirley thing is a great example where the corporate traditional press, its role is almost switching now where a few years ago it was like Nick Shirley would be going out and undermining a New York Times report. And now the New York Times is sending reporters out to cover the thing Nick Shirley did and kind of undermine his report. I mean, we saw that with the Minnesota fraud stuff where CBS sent a bunch of reporters out to these places that he showed this YouTube video and it turned out he’s going to these daycare centers that were closed for spring holiday or winter holiday and he’s claiming that they’re taking all this money but they don’t even have a daycare center open. And then it’s like there are hours on the website are listed as closed or something.

Speaker 5 [00:27:12] Yeah, but it’s too late. Anybody who watched his TikTok ain’t going to go check CBS News.

Isaac Saul [00:27:17] Right, exactly. So it’s like he gets tens of millions of views and then these people kind of come in after the fact and are doing this reporting that’s undermining it. But yeah, it’s the old saying that the truth hasn’t got its pants on before the lie makes it around the world a couple of times. And I just think that ground is shifting under us in a way that’s really important. But I will say I do think it’s important not to overstate it to some degree. I mean, Mike Allen at Axios just had a really-- or maybe it was Jim Vanaheim, one of the co-founders at Axio just had really excellent column about this, that our reality as avid news consumers is distorted. Like one in six Americans log onto Twitter once a week. You know what I mean? Like... most people are not nearly as partisan and polarized and divided as a lot of the Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube channels might make us believe. And the easy test for it, which I think it was maybe Jim VandeHei, what he wrote about in this column is like just think about the people you interact with on a daily basis in your life. Like that is America. That is the actual country that we have. Those are real people in real life and those experiences you have are genuine.

[00:28:40] And most of them are pretty decent, kind, smart people. They’re not like super crazy, far left radicals pointing in your face, demanding you put a mask on. And they’re not some like pizza gate conspiracy theorist Trumper. Like those people are the minority to a large, large, larger degree. And they don’t get featured in the news and we don’t interact with them at time, but to the degree that they’re doing this influencer content creator people are doing something important, I think it is probably distorting our reality about the tenor and belief system of the country right now and making us feel like things are way, way, way more extreme and radicalized than I honestly think they are. And I have a really, really-- I mean that test to me just like consult your personal experience, I think is a really, really important one for a lot of people to take into account when they consider just like the state of the country and where we are politically.

Sarah [00:29:40] Yeah, I live in a purple-ish place. I live in a red state, but my city is purple, blue, depending on where you are. I totally agree with that. I think what gets really difficult is there are still moments, and these are the moments that I’m really trying to dial into and pay attention to and see how these different parts of the media landscape influence them, because there are moments that bubble up that hit everybody, right? And what’s so difficult as a person who creates political content and consumes a lot of news is it’s very unpredictable. It’s not like we can just go check in with Walter Cronkite to see what story everybody’s going to be paying attention to. Because I do think the Minnesota fraud, the Nick Shirley thing, I think it got high enough it reached people who do not engage with this stuff all the time. I think it was important and influential in Renee Good and Alex Prettie, another moment that bubbled up and hit everybody that kind of everybody knew what was going on. But I’m not sure they connected the two because they don’t engage enough with even the news analysis I would love for them to read at the New York Times. So it’s like you’re having to navigate these unpredictable moments when will America kind of pay attention. And when they are paying attention, and I’m sure this has always been true, I’m not like in some sort of like all is lost moment. I think this has historically been true. Like they’re engaging from such different levels of news engagement. I totally agree that most people are engaging not from a hyper-partisan lens. The problem is that like lens still is very influential. Like, it’s almost like everybody doesn’t know. And I think that’s why Axios is pushing this narrative of like don’t feel like these are the only two perspectives. There’s this middle that you probably sit in. And so it’s like it’s just hard to, I think, figure out how to navigate these unpredictable moments when you have all these different audiences from somebody who maybe like just caught a couple of TikToks. All the way to the people who are not only highly engaged, but maybe creating contents that could influence the story overall.

Isaac Saul [00:32:11] Yeah, no, I think that’s a really good point. And to be clear, I’m not saying that these people aren’t moving the country in meaningful ways or changing the way that people are consuming stories or the lenses that they’re looking at stories through.

Sarah [00:32:27] Well, some of them have the cell phone number of the president of the United States. So they’re clearly moving the needle.

Isaac Saul [00:32:33] Yeah, definitely. And to be clear, there is even underlying good in some of the stories that I’m criticizing. I think actually the Minnesota fraud story was a really important story that in a different era would not have penetrated the media landscape in the way that it should have. And I think it’s good that somebody like Nick Shirley is “raising awareness” about that story. Well, maybe not somebody like Nick Shirley. I think it’s good that awareness was raised about the story. It’s probably not good that it was somebody like Nick Surely doing it. The frustrating part about it is that was a fraud story that was being prosecuted two years ago under president Joe Biden. It’s something that’s been a local story that a lot of people in Minnesota, like I have friends who grew up in Minneapolis. We have a writer on staff who grew up in Minnesota like this was something that was known and talked about, and it’s a story that sort of percolated there. It shouldn’t take some YouTube guy making the story a national news story. So you kind of have to, again, hold these two thoughts where you’re like this story is arguably way more important than a lot of other stories that get tons of purchase in the mainstream media. It’s a huge fraud story that goes back to COVID. It’s about how we responded to the pandemic. It’s About federal funding. It’s, about billions of dollars. And it’s an immigration story too. And like all of those things are really important. And I think they’re things that matter to a lot of people. And maybe they get drowned out by like a bad bunny halftime show. And that’s not good. I think that’s a problem. So you have to accept like it’s a good thing that this story became a national news story because this is an actual story we should be debating as a country. It just sucks that the lens through which a lot of people saw it was what I think was a pretty dishonest and disingenuous and clearly motivated report by somebody who wasn’t a journalist and didn’t really know anything about the area and hadn’t really-- which again, parachuting in to just kind of tell this story with like zero humility about what he did or didn’t know, and then made a lot of obvious mistakes that a typical journalist or a media organization would have caught before publication. So I think that part of it’s really challenging to hold both those things at the same time.

Sarah [00:35:07] Well, and I think the paradox of what you’re saying is, yes, it brings awareness, and that is positive on the consumer side. It creates a set of motivation on the creator side that is intoxicating, but ultimately toxic. Like, first of all, I just want to pull some of these people aside that think they’ve got lightning in a bottle and be like you have no idea how difficult what you are about to go into is. Like, this industry is tough. If you think this is some sort of like easy gig... And you can see, I think right now in the way that the far right is just eating each other alive, like the sort of Candice Owen, Erica Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly drama, do you see that this is not some sort of easy thing? You have to constantly feed the beast in a way that is hard on you, hard on your relationships, hard on-- I don’t think any of them are having a good time right now. Do you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s brutal. And I just want to be like don’t thing that because you’ve hit some sort of like viral moment-- and I think there are people on the left who do this too-- that you think this is going to be easy. Like especially if you are building some sort of content creation on a platform, on an Instagram, on a TikTok, where you do have to feed the algorithmic beast all the time, you can see where now I think they’re like, again, post Charlie Kirk, like, something that was a political asset to the right is now a political liability to not only the the movement, but these individual people.

Isaac Saul [00:36:49] First of all, it does seem to me like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. Megan Kelly tweeting about Mark Levin having like a micro penis or something. I don’t know how much further we can go.

Speaker 5 [00:37:03] I didn’t even see that, Isaac! I missed that all together!

Isaac Saul [00:37:07] I mean, it’s just like we can’t go much further in my opinion. And if I were to offer an optimistic take about this, actually, to building on the point that you just laid out, my sort of hot take, I suppose, about the future that is optimistic is I think decency is about to make a pretty big comeback. And I think we have some canaries in the coal mine already that people are either choosing to ignore or that just haven’t really gotten enough attention. You mentioned the Texas Senate race. I think that’s one. Like whatever you think of James Tallarico, he intentionally chose to run a campaign that was decidedly different from Jasmine Crockett, who’s a flame thrower and is calling Abbott Governor Hot Wheels and doing a lot of race conflict stuff and drumming just that overall tension. And he really stayed above the fray. And did this kind of decent, quiet Christian guy schtick. I mean, I think it’s genuine, so I shouldn’t diminish it as schtick. But that was the approach he took and it worked and it won. Marjorie Taylor Greene leaving the MAGA movement or leaving the Trump party and really coming out and saying like I think I went too far.

Sarah [00:38:32] Yeah, I got scammed.

Isaac Saul [00:38:34] Her central critique is not just that Trump isn’t doing America first, which is part of it. She’s also like, I’m sorry. Like I look back at things that I was doing and I realized like I did not help anybody. Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor in Ohio. And he said explicitly, I am not in the business of owning the libs anymore. He like came out and said like, this is not... And look, maybe with him I’d be curious to see how that holds. And I want to know is this a genuine evolution he’s had, or is it because he’s running in a state where a Republican doesn’t always win the governor’s ship slam dunk, and he knows he has to win some independent and democratic voters. But he’s at least talking the talk. And I think he seems to have had a real genuine revelation from what I’ve read of just like my style of communication wasn’t working and I wasn’t winning over anybody outside MAGA and I realized like, this is bad. The progressive movement, like the George Floyd era progressive movement on the left has been completely bulldozed. I mean, it’s basically dead now. That approach of just like post your black box, silence is violence or you’re out, it didn’t work and there was huge blowback to it. And I think the left has really recalibrated in a lot of important ways. I just think there’s a decency of like don’t assume the worst. Don’t say the nastiest thing about somebody who disagrees with you politically possible. That just approach I think is on the downward trend.

[00:40:13] And I know it’s hard to believe with everything going on with like the conservative inviting you’re talking about and like Candice Owens being on Erika Kirk killed Charlie Kirk thing for months on end. It’s like, oh my God, how can it get much worse? And I kind of think it can, honestly. I know we always find new bottoms, but I do really feel like there is this rising tide of people who are just like, just stop. I just don’t want anything to do with this. I’m exhausted. And I’m looking for people who are being decent. David French, who I interviewed on my show, he put it in really interesting terms because it was an idea I’ve been scratching at, and I asked him about the Telerico stuff, And he said, look, we’re a thermostatic country. And we always talk about being thermostactic in the context of policy. Like the country goes left on policy, then there’s going to be this right wing. But he said I think we’re thermostratic on the decency, indecency thing too. In the last 10 years, like we have gone indecent. Like we have become as indecent as you can. And I just think there’s going to be a thermostat backlash to that of people who want something a little bit better. And we’ve done it before. We had it with McCarthyism and Nixon and the different eras of the Obama administration. And I think that’s right. So I’m hopeful. That’s my fingers crossed, given where I am politically optimistic take about where we’re headed. But I think there’s a lot of reason to believe that we might be sort of bottoming out right now. And I certainly hope that’s the case.

Sarah [00:41:43] Well, from your lips to God’s ears, I think that’s a hopeful note. I do want to keep you for a few more minutes to do Outside of Politics up next. So on our show, we always have an exhale. That’s what we call it. Where we talk about what’s on our mind Outside of Politics. So what’s your mind Outside of Politics in news and media, all of it.

Isaac Saul [00:42:10] I mean, for me personally, I have a 14-month-old son who is my first kid who’s becoming kind of like a toddler all of a sudden. He can walk, he’s ambulatory, he’s like, ba,ba,ba, all day babbling, like demanding things, crying when he’s not getting what he wants. And I’m just thinking a lot about, like, the example I want to set for him. Like I’m in full dad mode on just the world I want him to operate in and see and be curious about. And I think, for me, it has been very rewarding to have somebody at this age who like lives with you and you’re responsible for, and we wake up in the morning before the sun comes up and he sees like a half crescent moon out the window and is gobsmacked by it. And like reaching for it and looking at, and I’m like, oh, wow, that is incredible. Like, there’s just like these little things, a bloomed flower, that’s like the first flower of spring popping up in our garden, and he’s like standing over it, trying to pick it and is obsessed with it for five minutes. And it’s all this little stuff that I just take for granted. When you have a kid and you’re seeing them experience things for the first time, it sort of blows your mind. I feel like I’m being very grounded by this experience and also he’s teaching me a lot about this stuff that I kind of like walk past blinders on because I’m on my phone reading the latest about the Iran war or whatever.

Sarah [00:43:46] Well, listen, a few weeks ago on Pantsuit Politics, we talked about parenting, and particularly we shouted out Supernanny, and I offered up my services. I have a 16 year old, a 14 year old and 11 year old. Do you need any parenting advice, or would you like me to share some unsolicited parenting advice for you? Is there anything you’re struggling with?

Isaac Saul [00:44:03] I always take parenting advice. I would say like a big thing that I’m struggling with is when like I shut the fridge door and he starts crying like somebody just put a nail through his foot. I’m like do I pick him up and open the fridge door and let him, or do I just like walk away from the scene and wait till he’s distracted by the next thing? Like, I don’t know. I don’t want to like reinforce the crime. You know what I mean?

Sarah [00:44:32] I got you. First of all, have you read Happiest Toddler on the Block?

Isaac Saul [00:44:37] I haven’t, no.

Sarah [00:44:39] By Dr. Cart. Okay, I’m a big believer in both happiest baby on the block and happiest toddler on the block. Toddlers are not my favorite phase, okay? Just don’t love them because they’re real unreasonable. But what I thought was always so helpful in that book is he said a lot of what we do to toddlers is it’s like, if you came to me and you said, “I want to go see Rocky.” And I would be like, “Don’t you want to see Steel Magnolias?” And you’re like, “I want to See Rocky.” “Isn’t Steel Magnolia the greatest movie of all time? Let’s go see it.” And we do it to them. Like we’re trying to convince them. And he would always say like, say back to them so they understand you’ve heard them. Their language is not great. Like they’re little and they barely understand everything that’s happening, much less everything you’re saying. And we assume a knowledge gap. And so we want to explain it with a lot of language. When really what he wants to hear is, you wanted something in the fridge? You can’t have it right now, but you wanted in the fridge. You have to like say back what they’re experiencing. So they go, okay, they heard me, or else they just escalate because they think they’re not conveying what they wanted. So I would not give into it because my mother’s excellent advice is you have until they’re three to call their bluff. And if you don’t, your life is going to get exponentially worse. So like they have to understand like I’m at your beck and calls of your emotion. I understand what you’re upset about. We can’t do anything about it right now, but I hear you. I know why you’re mad. I get it. I can’t fix it, but I get. And then I had varying success with the distraction. Like my youngest, listen, he would just shred all the advice. I’d be like, do you want to put on your blue shoes or your red shoes? You’re supposed to like give him a choice. And he’d be, like, I don’t want to put all my shoes. You ding dong. Like I don’t care what color they are. I see the game you’re playing here, I don’t care. But I think with toddlers it’s just a real confidence game. Like they’re scared, they’re little, they can’t talk. They want to know someone’s in charge. And so as long as they feel like you’re leading and like somebody knows what’s going on and I don’t need to panic because nobody knows what’s going on, I think that’s a lot of it too. It’s like understanding with confidence what’s kind of going on in their head and being able to help them through it.

Isaac Saul [00:46:54] I love that. All right. I didn’t know I was going to learn to be a better dad on this show today. This is great. I got to come back more often.

Sarah [00:47:01] Look at that. Yeah. Listen, I love giving unsolicited parenting advice, even though that was vaguely solicited. I did have a couple listeners be like, no, I will take you up if you want to show up in my house and be Supernanny. Also, not for nothing, watch some Supernanny on YouTube. That show is wildly helpful. Very, very helpful.

Isaac Saul [00:47:17] I’ll tell you, I’ve had a few like parenting books here and there that I’m using as my like Bible right now for dadding, but I haven’t entered the YouTube space yet. So maybe I’ll check out very specific, only recommended from you YouTube channels.

Sarah [00:47:31] Beth and I are devoted Jo Frost fans. I am a better parent because I watched Supernanny before my kids came along. You probably could like, I wonder if you could filter like by age and be like I just want to watch Supernany with like really young toddlers. What has she got for them? You maybe like just grow up along the way.

Isaac Saul [00:47:48] Yeah, I like that.

Sarah [00:47:50] Well, thank you so much for coming on Pantsuit Politics.

Isaac Saul [00:47:53] Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure being here.

Sarah [00:47:55] Tell all our listeners how they can get that Tangle newsletter with your take that they will not scroll right down to. I promise.

Isaac Saul [00:48:07] Go to readtangle.com and subscribe to the newsletter. It’s totally free. We have a paid membership offering too to unlock some additional content, but subscribe to newsletter, sign up, see if you like it. And if you’re a strictly podcast listener, we have a podcast too that you can find by just looking up Tangle News. And we welcome all the Pantsuit Politics fans. I know they’re like-minded folks.

Sarah [00:48:33] You will like it, guys.

Isaac Saul [00:48:34] And we would be thrilled if they came and joined us.

Sarah [00:48:37] You don’t even have to see if you like it. I promise you’ll like it and we’ll put the link in the show notes. So it’ll be easy for you to check it out. Thanks again, Isaac. Thank you so much.

Isaac Saul [00:48:44] Thanks for having me.

Sarah [00:48:46] Thank you to Isaac for joining me. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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