No, I don't particularly want to, look, I didn't criticize him really before.
>> It seems that Matt Taibbi, one of the journalists,
Elon Musk selected to disseminate the Twitter files wasn't expecting
the grilling he received from MS NBC host Mehdi Hasan on his show Thursday evening.
We have some more clips but first I want to talk about how this
contentious interview came about in the first place.
So serendipitously, it all began on Twitter,
which was the topic of discussion.
So it began with this tweet from Mehdi Hasan,
he's talking about referencing a story about how the Modi government has
been contacting Elon Musk to silence journalists and to silence politicians.
And Mehdi Hassan says, I'm sure Taibbi is all over this.
And Matt Taibbi responded and said,
why don't you invite me on your show to talk about it?
Since you're so absolutely sure of what I'll say.
So what did he say?
Let's take a look at what he had to say when Mehdi Hasan questioned him about this
specifically.
>> You're saying that he's good for Twitter and good for speech.
I'm saying he's using Twitter to help one of the most right wing governments in
the World Center speech.
I will criticize that, will you?
>> I have to do, I have to look at the story first, I'm not looking at it now.
>> Hold on, I posted the story two weeks ago.
You tweeted at me.
>> I don't watch the Mehdi Hassan show.
>> You do actually, you do because you tweeted at me saying invite me on the show
and I'll tell you my views.
What is your view on Musk working with Modi to censor speech.
>> Particulars about it but listen, this came up the first time,
I think it was Twitter files number six.
As that story came out, you were giving me a hard time about tweeting through it,
I think was the was the quote essentially you said you don't so essential.
You're arguing that this information was
not in the public interest that I somehow shouldn't have done
this story that I had worked hard on because Elon Musk tweeted something.
You don't think [CROSSTALK] >> That's banned journalist.
I think, hold on Matt, if you're doing a story about free speech on Twitter and
the head of Twitter bans journalists, yeah, I think most people, by the way,
Barry Weis, your partner in crime on that.
Your sorry, your colleague, your reporter, sorry for that euphemism,
your reporting colleague she actually did call him out.
So it's weird that Barry Weis had more integrity on that some might argue your
critics might say than you did.
>> I really can't imagine a set of words that would cut
deeper than Barry Weis has more integrity than you.
And, just the utter embarrassment of Matt Taibbi
just throughout the entire segment said he wanted to go on,
despite I ask him to go on to talk about that very story.
He said he hadn't read the story, and continues to defend Elon Musk as a free
speech warrior despite him silencing journalists, but there's some other parts
of the interview that I think are really worth highlighting.
Although I would urge everyone to watch the full interview on YouTube,
it's very good.
But Mehdi and his team really clearly did their homework because Mehdi Hasan fact
checks several issues in Taibbi reporting of the Twitter files.
Let's take a look at one of them.
>> You talk a lot about the election integrity project in the Twitter
files which Stanford and
the University of Washington founded to monitor attacks on our elections.
And you say some stuff about them that a lot of your critics say is not true and
that affects your credibility.
You said the EIP was founded in response to the government
dropping its proposal for a disinformation government.
Well, there you are, we're quoting you on screen, it wasn't,
it was formed two years earlier.
You suggest it was government funded even though during the 2020 election
that you're covering it wasn't, you say they labeled
22 million tweets as misinformation in the run up to the 2020 vote.
They didn't, they flagged 3000 election misinformation tweets for labeling.
So you were only 21,997,000 off.
>> He just rounded up just surrounding it, I mean, it's just so
embarrassing but the fact checking didn't even stop there.
According to the Daily Beast, the win every argument author further pointed out
that Taibbi claimed quote, the EIP was partnered with the government
cybersecurity infrastructure agency CISA to censor Twitter.
But the reporter, meaning Taibbi mixed up the government agency with
the nonprofit firm center for Internet Security.
But I will say to Matt's credit,
he did admit that he made an error when it came to CISA versus CIS.
However, he was not willing to back down on his error in the number of tweets that
were flagged.
In fact, in a slew of and I'm sure it's happening still as I'm
speaking right now, angry tweets in response to this
interview that did not go particularly really well for him.
He tweeted again doubling down maybe at this point, quadrupling down on his point
that the number of tweets the 22 million number was not incorrect.
And it prompted Alex Stamos from the EIP to respond to the claim directly.
He said Taibbi claim is false, the whole core role of the EIP was to document and
analyze election misinformation.
22 million is the number we calculated after the election of the number of
tweets regarding false claims.
And then he links Matt Taibbi the document and
says here is the document please read chapter five.
I'm not a journalist and but I can understand wanting to defend your work and
maybe not being super excited to have would fact check you and
tell you that your reporting is inaccurate.
But I think that Taibbi's response to it is more than that,
to the point where he is just as I said,
like quadrupling down on things that were just proven to be blatantly false.
And I think that there really could be important information to come out
in the Twitter files if it was not handled in the manner that it was,
I think that this interview honestly raises questions about all of
the reporting from the Twitter files, coming from Matt Taibbi.
Max, why don't you speak on this first?
What are your thoughts?
>> I think Matt Taibbi is like the Sideshow Bob of journalism.
I mean, it's like if you bought your propaganda off Fivver,
he can't be bothered to do basic research.
I mean, this is a guy who went before Congress and
midway through the hearing seemed to not understand why he was there or
have researched any of the facts that Congress members were bringing up.
You would think that in the meantime, he'd like read a book or something, but
he's now just as clueless today as he was then.
And now, as you mentioned, watch that interview.
It's incredible because he ends by saying,
I know Elon Musk, he has a commitment to free speech and
then today announced he's leaving Twitter because Elon Musk is going to censor him.
So this is a guy who does not know what's directly in front of his face yet
he's Twitter's investigative reporter of notes.
>> Yeah, it's very strange what's happening there because Taibbi used
to be so wonderful at keeping people to account abusers of their power.
And keeping a lot of the bad actors on the right to account and something shifted.
And I guess until just today or yesterday leaving Twitter,
he seemed just so clearly very evident in this amazing interview
from Eddie Hasan to just be a complete lapdog for Elon Musk.
It's very strange, he refused to say a negative word about him.
I don't particularly want to criticize him later in the interview he says,
I like Elon Musk.
I trust what he's saying, great words to say if you're his brother maybe or
his significant another not if you're a journalist trying to discern one way or
the other.
Whether the information you're being given is accurate or
filtered BS to push a particular agenda that Elon Musk wanted to settle scores
of him thinking that Twitter pre-himself was this place that
was censoring conservatives in a completely unfettered way.
When in fact, Hasan kept proving over and
over again that all they were doing was fielding requests from not even
the government oftentimes from the Biden campaign, for example,
saying this is an unapproved revenge porn, basically nude image of my son.
Maybe could you take it down and they agreed to take that down and
only only took down 38 some change percent of the request that they received,
which does not make them an unfettered government sick of it and
in bed with them.
But in fact, the accusation that Taibbi seems to not know about even though
he does know about it.
Twitter today under Musk is working with the Indian government to
silence critics and to flag legitimate concerns and
criticisms of the government and taking that down and censoring it.
And that is something that does not affect it because he likes him,
people always say he likes him, he seems like a nice guy.
I like that guy.
Grea every horrible person in history had friends who like them.
What's it got to do with anything people that excuse,
I think Kid Rock is fantastic, I like him.
He's nice to me personally, that's great.
Hitler was nice to his family personally doesn't mean that you excuse
the public actions of someone.
The worst monsters are still going to be nice to the people in their inner circle
because they want to have a fun social life and private life.
It's got nothing to do with anything and he just proved that he has this very
terrible weak spot and soft spot for Musk for the main place.
He has been charged with investigating and bringing out to light these obviously
heavily filtered and heavily doctored Twitter files.
>> Exactly and of course, Elon Musk is gonna be nice to Matt Taibbi when he
expects Matt Taibbi to release his documents and push his narrative.
And if he wants Taibbi to fall in line and push the narrative,
he's gonna be nice to him.
But, I think it's absolutely utterly embarrassing that Taibbi to base himself
in this way just for Musk to unfollow him on Twitter today.
So definitely go check out the full interview.