Glad to hear you respect Greenwald and agree he has stayed true to principles so far. I'd agree that billionaire ownership of your platform is automatically suspect and means there's an incentive to not criticise anything to do with the owner's interests. However, Greenwald probably has enough of a personal brand that he doesn't absolutely need sponsorship in that way, and his willingness to resign from the Intercept because of censorship indicates that he would do the same if his work was spiked in a similar way by Thiel or one of his minions.

I won't force you to watch it, as I know your feelings about Dore, but in fairness I felt like I should post this part of the recent Taibbi interview where both of them agree that Trump has behaved in an authoritarian manner with the pro-Palestine censorship & threats to cut university funding:





Greenwald makes an appearance to argue the 1st amendment legalistics of it. Taibbi looks a bit uncomfortable about the Israel criticism (though he always seems a bit 'squirmy', so maybe that's no different to usual?), but he does agree that Trump has shot himself in the foot over this free speech violation. For some reason he seems to think JD Vance is better on the issue. Dore resists Taibbi's depiction of it as a 'mistake', suggesting Trump knows it's wrong, and even against the wishes of his supporters, but pushed ahead with it anyway because of being in the Adelson's pocket, but Taibbi doesn't accept that. Dore asserts that when he spoke at the Rescue the Republic rally there was some MAGA support of Palestine and agreement over arguments he made about the need to support free speech for pro-Palestinians - an example of what I mean of the value of speaking to those audiences.

Anyway, Taibbi seems more invested in the Republican party, whereas Dore sounds to me more like he's trying to use his influence from the outside to steer them in useful directions. But yeah, both have right wing audiences, and the 'audience capture' phenomenon is definitely still something to watch out for. That certainly would seem to explain Brand's recent rightwards lurch - unless the theory that he has been blackmailed is true...

Oh, and yes, Dore's climate change stance is bogus, I would agree. Fair play to criticise govt policies exploiting it to drive through their own agendas, but it doesn't follow that it isn't real, and all the climate scientists have been lying for 50+ years. Still waiting for him to interview someone who actually knows about the science, not just people reheating decades-old denier talking points that were debunked as soon as they first came out.

cheers,
I