Scott MacFarlane

They all had sandwiches in beautiful irony.

What's the incentive structure for the next person, the next president, to unilaterally surrender power that Trump has just taken from the other branches of government or just taken for himself?

Like these pardons, these pardons of the famous, these pardons of the rich, these pardons he's given to his supporters before they even go to trial, which is not the system for pardons.

Why would the next person give that power back?

Will the next person not want to just unilaterally build ballrooms for hundreds of millions of dollars and get donors to give the money to pay for it?

A lot of this is difficult to restore.

I think what concerns me and what keeps me up at night is how do you rebuild this shattered stuff in democracy?

Probably takes generations and it's really dispiriting to our kids to watch.

I think people are underestimating how fragile legacy and linear media is right now.

I'm not sure some linear media organizations make it years from now, maybe a matter of months.

I'm wondering about that third and fourth TV station in some American cities or the last standing radio station in American cities.

I was certainly concerned about the status of linear media where I was working in network news, not just because independent journalists following your lead largely are going in there and

in an unfiltered, unilateral way, just telling people what happened without the bells and whistles and hurdles and obstacles of linear media.

But also, the revenue that linear media is generating is shrinking fast, which means the operations are shrinking fast.

But most importantly...

One of the things that was a motivating factor for me is linear media is platforming lies, whether they choose to or not.

When they carry unfiltered, you know, press conferences, news briefings in which people deny January 6th happened, where they deny the realities of the 2020 election, where they deny the truth that's in front of them.

That is linear media's cross to bear right now.

If you're going to platform this stuff, people are going to abandon you by choice.

Do they want their blood pressure raised?