Ep. 12: The whims of the federal government, enforced by the world's richest man. The Taegan Goddard interview.

The creator and publisher of Political Wire joins Patrick and Tom for the latest episode of The Ground Game with a wizened look at Trump and Elon Musk and more

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For today’s episode of The Ground Game Pod, Patrick and I brought on an OG in the world of online political journalism, Taegan Goddard, founder and publisher of Political Wire. It’s one of the originals of the now dominant world of RSS feeds, newsletter news outlets (including your author here), original blogs and microblogs and all other manner of digital delivery.

Goddard draws from a deep world of experience and understanding in analyzing what happened in the ‘24 election and what’s up next. This is one of my favorite episodes, just look at these show notes.

Show Notes:

• A pretty extraordinary transition

• Focus on Hannibal Lecter and electric boats and sharks to your detriment, because this is “exactly what he said he would do”

• Does the Gilded Age work as a framework for now?

• Remains to be seen, but quite a few billionaires are around Trump and the incoming president is clearly blurring the lines between business and the White House. But it’s too early to say what this will be.

• Elon Musk is a constant presence around Trump and now is promising to be Trump’s “enforcer”, including spending millions upon millions on the president’s preferred candidates against sitting members of Congress and others.

• “That’s something we have never seen before in American politics, the wealthiest man in the world taking a side in all this.”

• “You’ve got the political retribution, but then you’ve got it backed up by Elon Musk’s money”

• “Pete Hegseth makes John Tower’s nomination

• “Harriet Miers looks like a statesman”

• Why is Tulsi Gabbard so in line with Putin and Assad?

• On Gabbard’s media intake and that she could “easily be the most damaging of his nominees”

• The hearings could be largely behind closed doors, because of the nature of intelligence. But public hearings may benefit Republicans because of how much would not be able to be discussed.

• What did Democrats miss on the economy?

• Prices went up after the pandemic, and they were never going to come back down. It was impossible.

• On immigration, Democrats completely whiffed on the sentiments of Latino voters. (For more on this, check out our interview with

  Mike Madrid
  from before the election, in which he COMPLETELY nailed this dynamic.)

• “Trump completely bypassed the legacy media”

• “Long gone are the times of the soundbite, you remember when the evening news was 22 minutes long. … Now Donald Trump can sit down with Joe Rogan for three hours and shoot the shit.”

• “It turns out swing voters don’t get their news from these traditional sources anymore.”

• It’s time for us, of the legacy media, to acknowledge the reality of the dominance of the new mainstream media (podcasts and YouTubers with massive online followings.)

• Taegan’s adult sons were home for Thanksgiving, and unwound not by turning on the tube, but by turning the YouTube.

• “After a weekend of watching some of this stuff, it was pretty interesting, it was pretty engaging.”

• The media environment is vastly different from 2008

Friends, make sure to listen to the whole thing. Share this with your friends and family. Subscribe to our nascent podcast. If you enjoy actually interesting pods with informed sources decoding and clarifying the world around us, rather than gunking it up w/ junk science and bad takes, The Ground Game Pod is for you.