- Alright, well first of all, I wanna say that Jeffrey Goldberg should never have to buy a drink on his own for the rest of his life.

(all laugh and applaud) as far as I'm concerned.

- Lemme tell you something- At any bar in America.

- Right.

My response to you is fist emoji, flag emoji, fire emoji.

(all laugh and applaud) - But my real question, Ashley, is this, how bad are things for America in this current moment?

Should I be merely angry, if I'm in opposition to what President Trump's doing, should I be merely angry as I am, or should I be angry and terrified?

- It's an easy first question, right?

- If you took a poll of, say, the top 20 political reporters that you know, and say the top 20 American historians, what would your answer be, what do you think the general answer would be?

- So, again, I appreciate you saying if you're in opposition, because there's plenty of people who like what he's doing, - There are.

Half the country.

- But if you are someone who does not like what he's doing, I would think you should be incredibly concerned, because as I mentioned, having covered him over since 2015, he's returned to power more confident in sort of understanding what he didn't understand the first time with people who are willing to do what he wants this time.

And he has a much better sense of the levers of power, how to use them to bend Washington, the country, and the world to his will, and he has a much better sense of which norms of democracy you can potentially, as we're still seeing play out, run rough shot over, and he's doing it.

I think this was something Evan and I were talking about previously, but he's doing it in a gleeful way.

- Yeah.

Sir?

- Hello.

I had a question about social media, specifically X-Twitter.

- Sure.

- Yeah.

- So six years ago, Twitter was regarded as the height of where journalists talked and shared stories and, you know, the information flow in Twitter was...

But things have changed since it became X.

Does it still have the same "pache" in the journalistic world, or is that changing our other media platforms having a role to play?

- We sort of talked about this earlier too, didn't we?

- Yeah.

It's a great question.

I do think it's changing a little bit, in part because the algorithms have changed, right?

And so the algorithms now, in some ways, work against journalists, and so I don't 100% know what the new replacement will be, but sort of the closest answer right now, it feels like, is Bluesky, which is essentially trying to be old Twitter.

But you know, that you do tests, and people will tweet something, so right now, if I publish a story and I wanna get it out, I will go put it out on X, and I'll go put the exact same thing out on Bluesky.

And my understanding is, in terms of, you're wanting to get people to come and read your articles and engage and subscribe, which is what we all want, that even though Bluesky has a smaller audience, often things will be more successful there in terms of those metrics than they will be on X.

- Well, for one thing, there are a lot of bots on X now, not to get too down into gears of this, but I mean, the platform has just totally changed hasn't it?

- Yeah.

- And you've, not left, I've not left, but there are a lot of people in our line of work who have left, right?

- Right, right.

Yeah.

And some have left sort of on "principle," I mean, my principle is I want as many people to read my work as possible, so I'm still there.

- And also, if you want to just preach to the converted, go to church, right?

(all chuckle) And in some ways, if you move off of that because you don't agree with people on there, I'm not sure that's necessarily the right strategy.

Sir?

- By the way, there was somebody who wrote about George Bush, Molly Ivins wrote- (audience clamors) - [Ashley] Yes, fair, fair, fair.

- So I live in Austin, the rest of the world voted differently than we did.

You were talking about talking to these voters.

Do they distinguish between Trump policies and the human being with all his history and faults?

You know- - It's a great question.

- I've always been curious.

- This was a despite election and a because election, in that sense, right?

They know who he is at this point.

- Right.

Yeah, I mean, I think they clearly distinguish in the sense that a lot of people don't, a lot of Trump voters don't will say, "I don't love his character, I don't love the tweets, I don't love how he behaves, I don't love the name calling, I don't love the chaos, but..." And this is why anyone going up against him, Democrats, Republicans, never Trumpers, the character attacks never work, because they're sort of, by now...

But even, I mean, I can make the case that when people went to the polls in 2016 to vote for Trump, you fundamentally knew who he was, and you liked it or hated it, but you knew.

And certainly by 2024, you know.

- [Moderator] Totally.

- And so, when you talk to Trump voters, and you talk to Democrats who are trying to understand what happened, there is a sense that a lot of this had to do with the economy.

And it was, yes, I don't, I don't love X, Y, and Z, but prices are so high, and I'm struggling, and it's no longer enough for me to work, you know, two different shifts and have to take three buses to get between my two jobs and still at the end of the month be moving around money in my accounts to be able to pay, not for vacation, but my basic bills.

And there was a sense that Donald Trump was gonna be the person who was going to fight for them.

- People don't vote about Stormy Daniels, they vote about pocketbook issue.

I mean, like, it's the economy, stupid, right?

- Which, same as it ever was, right?

- Same as it ever was.

Last question, sir.

- Sure.

So in previous administrations, you know, when data would come out from the government, you know, granted, you would question it, but there was a methodology behind it.

This administration is showing a willingness to just change the methodology completely, reconfiguring GDP, changing job numbers, probably even going to put their fingers on how we vote.

How do you adjust for that, given that, you know, all this methodology, all this history, you know, the data that we're getting from the government, could be changing how it's calculated.

Even the bureaucrats that were there before are gone now, and politicians are in charge of it now.

- [Moderator] How do you solve for that, - Right, I mean, well part of it is, this is not quite the answer to your question, but one of the lessons Trump learned is that, he believes, and he's not entirely incorrect on this, that you can bend reality to your will by repeating something enough, by repeating it audaciously enough, by picking and choosing your facts and figures.

You know, I think the flip side is that just speak, and it's more challenging, because the government may not tell you how the methodology has changed, or what they're tweaking behind the scenes, right?

That's the job of the media to find that out.

But I mean, an example that I think is a good one that was out in public view was, Doge put out this website with a list of all of their cuts.

And one of the things that the New York Times did that I thought was a very good idea, was kind of, they went through and they brought to bear truth and facts.

And it turned out that it sometimes, what Doge was claiming as a cut for billions was actually just millions, someone had typed in billions instead of millions.

Other times they were counting as cuts, cuts for Trump programs that had been cut in the Biden administration.

So you can still go through and fact check these things, now that's an easier one because it was put up in the public view.

But they still had to do the digging of, okay, well what contract are they referring to, and what agency, and when did it actually close, and what is the actual savings?

And so I think you could bring that to bear throughout the government, although it would be admittedly a bit more challenging.

- All right, we gotta stop, we have another taping to do, and Ashley has to go off and have fun in Austin, Texas.

(audience laughs and applauds) So we're gonna let her go do that.

Ashley Parker, give her a big hand.

Thank you.