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The Ezra Klein Show

MAGA’s Big Tech Divide

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

MAGA has long been hostile to Big Tech. So now that Big Tech is shifting rightward, what does that mean for MAGA? “We’re seeing a true political coalition having to navigate very, very big questions about how to keep themselves together,” James Pogue told me. He’s a contributing writer at Times Opinion who has been covering the intellectual ferment on the New Right for years. And he just published a great piece about the tensions between the techno-optimists and skeptics within the MAGA coalition. In this conversation, we cover a lot: How the New Right’s intellectual scene has evolved, the renewed fascination with Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, why some of the most passionate critics of tech are also the most online, how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fits into this world, the New Right’s ideas about masculinity and how much Donald Trump cares about any of this. Recommendations: Regime Change by Patrick Deneen “God’s Socialist” by Darryl Cooper Between Two Fires by Stephen Pyne Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. Second terms are usually intellectually exhausted.

0:35.2

And maybe if Trump had been reelected in 2020, that's how it would be.

0:39.0

But he wasn't. And so between 2021 and 2025, the ferment driving Maga's ideas deepened quite a bit.

0:47.7

The nature of its coalition expanded quite a bit. How much does Trump himself care about this fight over ideas, these visions of the future?

0:58.0

I'm not sure he does. But the people were staffing his administration, both people at the top,

1:03.9

but much more than that, the 20 and 30-somethings who actually do the work of presidencies, they do care.

1:10.0

Ideas do matter. The intellectual cultures

1:12.5

that form political parties, they matter. James Pogue is a contributing writer at Times' opinion,

1:19.0

and he's been covering the new right at Vanity Fair, and over the past few years, he has published

1:23.4

piece after great peace on the MAG intellectual scene and the various factions and ideas and people

1:28.9

within it. As I wanted to talk with him about the ideas that hold MAGA together, the factional

1:34.0

fights that threaten to tear it apart, and whether any of this actually affects what President

1:39.0

Donald Trump does or thinks. As always, my email as a recline show at NMytimes.com.

1:54.0

James Pogue, welcome to the show.

1:56.0

Thanks for having me.

1:56.8

I'm so honored.

1:57.8

So you've been covering the new right for a while now.

2:01.6

How would you describe the thing you've been covering?

2:04.8

Is it a coalition?

2:06.8

Is it a scene?

2:08.7

What's the term for it?

2:10.4

It's a coalition now.

...

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