Sean Illing

Yeah. And this is actually helping me clarify what I find annoying about the popularism debate, which is something I know you've written about, you've talked about on the show. This idea that a political party should just figure out what's popular and then appeal to it. Okay, that's fine.

Yeah. And this is actually helping me clarify what I find annoying about the popularism debate, which is something I know you've written about, you've talked about on the show. This idea that a political party should just figure out what's popular and then appeal to it. Okay, that's fine.

But if you take media ecology seriously, then you start with the media environment and then notice how it favors certain kinds of rhetorical appeals or incentivizes certain styles of communication. And then notice how that in turn influences public opinion. So it's like Trump's just a good example. He's a dude who just gets social media and he knows what drives news coverage more generally.

But if you take media ecology seriously, then you start with the media environment and then notice how it favors certain kinds of rhetorical appeals or incentivizes certain styles of communication. And then notice how that in turn influences public opinion. So it's like Trump's just a good example. He's a dude who just gets social media and he knows what drives news coverage more generally.

So he just said and did outlandish shit

So he just said and did outlandish shit

in spectacular ways and he rode that attention straight to the white house and this is partly why we emphasize persuasion a lot in the book and it's not persuasion in the sense of democrats convincing people that universal health care is a good idea it was his ability to get attention to use the media environment to reinforce the image of trump the brand of trump and to turn the campaign itself

in spectacular ways and he rode that attention straight to the white house and this is partly why we emphasize persuasion a lot in the book and it's not persuasion in the sense of democrats convincing people that universal health care is a good idea it was his ability to get attention to use the media environment to reinforce the image of trump the brand of trump and to turn the campaign itself

a kind of circus that is itself an act of persuasion and it's the kind of thing you could never do if you were just following survey data and then trying to craft your opinions around that right i mean republicans they just use the asymmetries in the media to create salience around issues that favor them and they just drive public opinion with persuasive rhetoric or propaganda or whatever it is.

a kind of circus that is itself an act of persuasion and it's the kind of thing you could never do if you were just following survey data and then trying to craft your opinions around that right i mean republicans they just use the asymmetries in the media to create salience around issues that favor them and they just drive public opinion with persuasive rhetoric or propaganda or whatever it is.

And Democrats just don't operate like that.

And Democrats just don't operate like that.

I think that's right. But I think also...

I think that's right. But I think also...

trump was willing to test a hypothesis that i don't think republicans were willing to test before he showed it was that it could work you know maybe that's one of his real contributions is to show that everything he just said is right but he also showed that if you just don't give a at all about the liberal democratic game and you just go after power and you just signal that you you're going to win you're going to win that your enemies are my enemy

trump was willing to test a hypothesis that i don't think republicans were willing to test before he showed it was that it could work you know maybe that's one of his real contributions is to show that everything he just said is right but he also showed that if you just don't give a at all about the liberal democratic game and you just go after power and you just signal that you you're going to win you're going to win that your enemies are my enemy

That works. That works because there's a decent subset of the country that actually isn't invested in liberal democracy in that way. They do just want to win and they are convinced that the other side is a kind of existential threat. And Trump was willing to go farther than anyone else in testing that. But now that he has and it worked, I think that pretends bad things.

That works. That works because there's a decent subset of the country that actually isn't invested in liberal democracy in that way. They do just want to win and they are convinced that the other side is a kind of existential threat. And Trump was willing to go farther than anyone else in testing that. But now that he has and it worked, I think that pretends bad things.

I think a lot turns on what you mean by healthy, right? For me, healthy just means stable, right? Like not imploding, you know? But the price of that stability might be a lot of injustice or it might mean a lot of people are excluded from political life. I mean, you could make the case that mid to late 20th century politicians

I think a lot turns on what you mean by healthy, right? For me, healthy just means stable, right? Like not imploding, you know? But the price of that stability might be a lot of injustice or it might mean a lot of people are excluded from political life. I mean, you could make the case that mid to late 20th century politicians