 G'day, May 40 here. So just reading an article in New York Times, Molly Jong Fast. She is the daughter of Erika Jong and here's the article, how Molly Jong Fast tweeted her way to Stardom. And I interviewed her back in 2004. I was doing a whole series of interviews on American Jewish literature and she was one of the Jewish novelists that I interviewed. So why has Molly Jong Fast been able to tweet her way to Stardom? For say, Kyrie Irving and Kanye West got into a ton of trouble recently and a lot of it simply has to do with likability. Like, Molly Jong Fast is incredibly likable. She's incredibly open about her struggles with addiction and I knew she was a lefty when I interviewed her and she knew I was on the right. But she was just incredibly charming and pleasant and fun to talk to. And people like Kyrie Irving and Kanye West, they're just not very nice. Not just very fun. Not exactly fun to talk to. They're difficult people. Molly Jong Young, not such a difficult person. She's very easy to get along with. And so people like easy. So how Molly Jong Fast tweeted her way to liberal Stardom. She wasn't a political expert, but a Trump-era angst found her following among Democrats and even the White House is interested. So she just, the story begins with her interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris. And she tells the owner of the New Republic, Win McCormack. Oh, I just interviewed the Vice President. And McCormack replies, brow-firing the Vice President of the United States. So Erica Jong Fast, 44, she is perhaps best known for being the daughter of her mother, Erica Jong. She wrote the classic feminist novel, Fear of Flying. So Molly Jong Fast went into rehab at 19. She got married at age 23. She read a couple of novels. That's why I interviewed her. She read a book of essays about her bohemia by way of Park Avenue upbringing. Now she's a liberal media star. So how did she do it? By being damn likable. So this week she joined Vanity Fair as a special correspondent. One million people follow her on Twitter. Her podcast is distributed by iHeartMedia. Her first guest was Ron Klain, President Joe Biden's chief of staff. She's interviewed all sorts of senators like Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer. She's interviewed Julia, Louise Dreyfus, John Fetterman, Kamala Harris. She's interviewed people like MSNBC lineup. So her ascent is a little bit like the Woody Allen movie, Purple Rose of Cairo, where she steps into the screen and enters the world of her favorite film. So she marshaled her weapons-grade Twitter habit. And her networking ability, she just slide into journalists DMs. And she's become a star of left-wing media. She's an MSNBC mom who appears on MSNBC. So part of it, in the big picture you say, oh it's because of the growing importance of social media. But a darn lot of it, it's just that she's so likable. You can be right-wing and enjoy a conversation with Molly Jung first. She is not pompous. And a lot of it is that professional pundit tree does not require unique rare skills. There's not a big difference between armchair pundits and professional pundits. This is a woman who's likable and a great networker. She wins friends easily. She wears her privilege lightly. And she has incredible empathy and charm. And most people who rise to media stardom are pretty good at being charming. Richard Spencer was charming. Nick Fuentes charming. The power of likability. Noah Shackman is now the editor of Rolling Stones. Noah wrote three articles about me back in the year 2000 and 2001. Now he's the editor of Rolling Stone. Like when he came to LA we used to go to social gatherings together. He introduced him to Andrew Breitbart and a whole bunch of that crew. So now Noah Shackman has done good. He's like, there's this economics writer for the New York Times. I used to, Adam, Adam, blanking on his name. He used to know him 20 years ago. He introduced himself to me, he showed me around. He's gone on to great success now with the New York Times regular column, I think, weekly on the economy for the New York Times. So she's not adversarial, she's nice. So one big reason why Molly Jung Fast is successful in curry Irving and Kanye West is struggling. So Kanye and Carrie are not very nice. And one key to likability is just Molly Jung Fast is just incredibly open. People generally speak like people are open and honest. People like people are willing to be vulnerable. People like people who open up. So she says, I was a drug addict and nearly died. I got sober. I've had this incredible run. She's grateful. People like people who are grateful. So her grandparents include Howard Fast, the novelist of Spartacus fame and communist. He served in prison time during the McCarthy era. And her mother, Erica Jung, was an early adopter of oversharing. So in 1985, Erica Jung moved six-year-old Molly Jung into the Beverly Hilton for a month because Erica was developing a sitcom based on her daughter's experience with divorce. So Molly Jung's father, Jonathan Fast sued Erica, his ex-wife, and demanded that the TV show change Molly's character's name from Molly to Megan. And a review in the New York Times praises the show's appealing breeziness. Molly Jung Fast is dyslexic. She did poorly in school. She got kicked out of Dalton, this elite private school. It was like a seismic shock to her intellectual family. She got into alcohol and drugs. She spent time at Hazelden, the atelist rehab center, and then published a novel about her struggles. I just did what my mother did, she says. I thought that's what you're supposed to do. The reviews were vicious. She then married her husband, who was an English professor turned venture capitalist. She had three children. She read another book. And Trump came down the escalator and it gave her life meaning, right? We're all looking for meaning in life. We all want to feel so we matter that we have significance. So Donald Trump came along and gave a ton of people meaning, whether they're pro or anti-Trump. So to be successful, it requires energy. And it's a lot easier to get energy if you feel that what you're doing is significant. And so Erica Jung felt like, oh, the Republic is at risk. I need to tweet about my angst. And she hit a chord. She became incredibly successful. I had a bit of an interesting experience last night. So it was probably one in the morning or so. And I was up too late. And I was about to go to bed. And I clicked on this, I was just looking at Twitter. And I clicked on this space that was being recommended to me. And it had, you know, 250 people in it or something. And I was just kind of curious, actually. And I think the title was something like The Big Man Returns or something. So I was curious and then I realized immediately that it was Nick Fuentes who has a... He has some, you know, secret accounts towards it. He's disobeying Twitter's policy by creating new accounts. And there were a lot of people in there. And it was only, I mean, by the time I realized that it was Nick Fuentes, you know, in a matter of, say, 30 seconds or so. They were like, oh, Spencer's in the chat or whatever, you know. And they were like, we've got to get him out here. Accept the request. But I did. And I was expecting a kind of like, you know, blowtorch treatment by Fuentes. It was just going to be this acrimonious and useless kind of thing at the time. And I think Nick kind of got that a little bit. And it was weird. I had not spoken to Fuentes in quite some time. So they're both charming when they want to be, right? They didn't get to where they are by not being charming. You know, everyone has a different persona. You know, there's a certain public persona. There's a persona you might have with your parents, say. There's a persona you have with your child. There's a persona you have at work. There's a persona you have when you're watching a football game or something. But so we all... And that's so important, right? We don't have just like this set personality. There are certain traits where we're outgoing or we're tough or we're vicious or we're ultra competitive, right? These so-called, you know, essential character traits that we have, right? They are domain specific. They're situation specific. We all adopt different personas in different parts of life. Put on a mask, I'm sorry, of course. But, you know, I've heard this about Fuentes. And I heard this from other people. Even people who dislike him intensely. But that is that if you ever can kind of get him off the online debate stage, he can actually be reasonable. And he is intelligent. But he can actually be thoughtful and reasonable and listen to you. And I have to say, I talked with him, I don't know, maybe it was 30 minutes, something like that. It wasn't a huge thing. But I have to handle what Fuentes does. Now, granted, perhaps I'm going to change my mind immediately when he starts doing his usual tricks afterward. But the guy was, he's very reasonable. He's more self-aware than he lets on. I mean, I think one thing that we both... Okay, we all get in situations where we have to change our personalities, whether it's work or we're playing football or in some sort of contest. So this shouldn't be nearly as surprising as it seems to be for Richard. You know, of course he can be intelligent and charming. Of course he switches in and out of different personas we all do. All notice is that kind of weird manic persona where he's the only guy on screen and he is playing this kind of weird zoomer gamer slash mid-western talk radio host, slash video game playing edge lord. And it's, you know, I probably won't do an interpretation of it, but you know what I mean, there's this kind of manic quality to it where it's like, you know, sorry guys, sorry, but you know, if my lord is in hell, according to your religion, you have no place in America. Okay, good, fine, you got to get out, you got to get out. All right, what do we think? You know, there's a certain kind of mannerism and there's a lot of picking up on Trumpism. The use of we is something, there's actually a study in which leaders actually use I more than we, but with Trump it's we. So it's a, you were part of a collective through me in a way. Like, you know... So pundits become successful by feeding an audience. Now by challenging an audience, like Richard wants to develop an audience that wants to be challenged, but there's no money in that. There's no money in being right in your punditry. The money is in being interesting and in feeding an audience's desire to hear reasons for why what they believe and feel is true and good and better than the alternative. He's behind us all the way. We hate Mitch McConnell, he's right okay. It's not a royal we, it's actually kind of a presumed we where you have political consciousness through an individual. He does that, but it's funny. Maybe it was just a fact that he was actually kind of relaxed and I was not hacking him and it was actually good conversation. I think behind all of that craziness, there is someone who's actually intelligent and I think maybe that's a little bit tragic about Nick. But the main thing I told him was, you know, do you feel like you are being used? That was effectively what I asked him. It was a leading question because obviously my assumption is that the answer is yes. And what I was referring to is like, you have these conservative institutions, the women for Trump say that created the... Of course he's being used. We're all being used, right? We're all being used and we're all using other people. So this isn't some giant revelation, right? We all try to use other people to meet our needs. Other people try to use us to meet their needs, of course. They rented out the ellipse actually during January 6th and the whole apparatus, behind the scenes apparatus, of Ali Alexander and Roger Stone and all of these crazies and George and so on. And, you know, they have money to some degree, America First, which was originally a tea party group. They have an institution and so they have like a massive email list. They have a network. So yeah, of course he's being used. That shouldn't be so surprising, right? People just don't do nice things for as purely out of the goodness of their hearts, right? There are a whole lot of transactions going on. We're all using and being used. That's just the nature of reality, right? Your boss doesn't give you a paycheck just out of the goodness of his heart. He gives you a paycheck in exchange for services. Husbands and wives constantly doing things for each other. The man takes out the trash, the woman cleans the bathroom and the man may bring home the majority of the income. Much of life is transactional. You can be subtler or you can be more obvious with it. That's the nature of reality. That's how the world works. You know what? I'm coming back here a thousand times if I have to. We win. They lose. That's how the world works.