The Hanania Show

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comThis is a podcast review of the book The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman (2014), a biography of Roger Ailes, and the miniseries based on the book, The Loudest Voice (2019). Ailes’ life story brings together many of my main interests. He created Fox News in 1996, and ran the network until 2016, the year before his death. Fox can be considered the beginning of modern conservative media. There had long been talk radio, magazines like National Review, and conservative newspapers, but nothing on the scale of a cable TV news network that would shoot to number one in the ratings just six years after its founding.The story of Fox is also part of the story of the decline of American institutions. From the beginning, there was a tension between people who wanted to do straight news, and Ailes, who sought to create an entertaining product that played to the audience. The latter tendency would win out, and be rewarded by the market. By the time of the Obama administration, Fox was reacting to conservative grassroots energy rather than shaping it. Through looking at what were considered scandals in the first decade and a half of the network, we can understand how far standards have fallen. I discuss the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Fox started hemorrhaging viewers because it would not go along with Trump’s stolen election narrative. The market competition to Fox comes from outlets that are even more biased and sloppier with the facts. Conservative media had an audience problem, and although Fox could shape and harness that energy for a while, the culture the network created led to the rise of Trump and total victory for the angry ignorant masses over more refined sectors of the conservative movement.Ailes’ predatory behavior towards women is also an important part of the story, and what eventually brought him down. I argue that what he was doing and the fact that he could get away with it for so long tell us something about rightist culture divorced from religious norms. Ailes had a cult of personality at Fox that was similar to the one that Trump would establish on a larger scale over the entirety of the conservative movement. I explain why I don’t think sexual harassment in the workforce is something government usually needs to get involved in, but in this case in particular because it occurred in a major journalistic institution it had negative societal consequences. Sherman’s book was published in 2014, just before the rise of Trump, Ailes’ resignation from Fox News, and his death a year later. So the miniseries covered a lot of things that weren’t in the book, though the edition I read did have an afterword based on an article about how Ailes was brought down, which can be found online here. The miniseries, which was nine episodes and ran on Showtime, has a star-studded cast, including Russell Crowe as Ailes and Seth MacFarlane as Fox head of media relations Brian Lewis. Unlike the book, which is a full biography, the show only covers the founding of Fox News until Ailes leaves the network.The miniseries does a good job of stringing the viewer along through the morbidly fascinating spectacle of the elderly and obese Ailes preying on his young dolled-up employees. I described the show as porn for smug libs, but I guess I’m a smug lib now so I enjoyed it. I talk about where the miniseries diverged from real life events as recounted in the book and where the producers took some creative license with the story. For all the talk of TV being dead, Fox News just posted record ratings for the first quarter of 2025. Based on the clips I’ve seen, the network seems to be getting even dumber and more sycophantic towards Trump, so this is a depressing development. As with social media and the podcast circuit, low-quality content is winning in the marketplace of ideas.If you’re interested in the history of conservative media, or simply want to learn about a dark character who revolutionized American politics, I strongly recommend both Sherman’s book and its TV adaptation.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey is at a Senate hearing today like a real journalist, so I’m flying solo.My mood is becoming pretty dark, as reflected in my article on how Trump’s plan is to maintain a North Korea of the right. I discuss why things have gotten this bad, and the necessity of acknowledging where people who supported Trump went wrong. Someone asks about the difference between me today and me on November 5. The big mistake is that I didn’t take my own ideas seriously enough! My opinion of Trump sycophants and assorted rightoids was already extremely low. But it’s sunk even lower, which I didn’t think was possible. There just weren’t any more guardrails. They lasted throughout the first term, but a lot has changed since then. I wrote about this extensively, but thought we’d somehow get lucky. As I was streaming, we learned that Trump is putting a 90-day pause on tariffs, for now placing 125% on Chinese goods and 10% on other countries. This is still an insane policy, but much better than the previous plan. Maybe focusing all of his hatred on China can help spare the rest of the world. I discuss how I’m annoyed by China-bashing. I’m not a fan of the CCP, but I take issue with the belief that the problem with them is the fact that we trade with one another. This idea has taken hold as a form of bipartisan demagoguery, and I expect a lot of the anti-China policies Trump has implemented to stick, even if other tariffs get rolled back.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael joins me again to talk about last night’s election results and Trump’s coming tariff announcement. Democrats won the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, and over performed in other races. Florida’s First District went from R+32 to R+15 according to the current count, while the Sixth District shifted from R+33 to R+14. We debate whether Elon was rational to put so much money and effort into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. My argument is that Republicans need to do something about the fact that the other side is more energized, along with the fact that Democratic voters are more educated, which makes current trends worse. Elon did not help them win in Wisconsin, but giving away giant checks is at least a strategy. The alternative right now seems to be to just accept that Republicans are going to get crushed in every election from now until 2028. Michael and I do our best to speculate on what might happen with tariffs based on current reporting. We recorded this beginning at 1ET, while Trump’s big announcement is at 4ET, so by the time you listen to this there may be more information. We go on to talk about a blockbuster report in The New York Times from over the weekend: “The Secret History of the War in Ukraine.” Michael and I go over what we learned that is new here, and how the story changed our perspective on the conflict. As for the future of the war in Ukraine, I wonder whether Trump seems to be just getting bored with the conflict. The most likely scenario now looks to me to be a petering out of American support as the Europeans assume more responsibility and the fight continues. Michael, in contrast, seems to find it easier to imagine Trump escalating support to Ukraine.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me to talk about the crazy groupchat story. We discuss why this has caught on, and whether it tells us anything new about the administration and how it operates. See here for the full release. I argue that the reason that this is such a big story is that it’s the kind of awkward situation people can relate to in their personal lives, except in this case it happened to top administration officials while planning a military strike. Michael and I then debate the logic that was used to justify the attack on Yemen. We go back and forth on the question of whether “deterrence” or “credibility” can be a good reason to do something. Michael says no, but I disagree.I play this hilarious video of Steve Witkoff talking about the special relationship between Trump and Putin. See these articles on Putin’s religious beliefs. Finally, we close with what has been going on with immigration enforcement. Of all the things that the Trump administration is doing, this might be the most disturbing. ICE has apparently been hunting down a Columbia student who is a legal permanent resident and has been in the US since she was 7. Venezuelans are getting sent to a Salvadoran prison camp based on allegations that they have gang ties. We’re not talking about people convicted of crimes, or even arrested for crimes. Simple speculation about who they are means that they get locked up indefinitely! Michael notes that this goes well beyond anything that Bush and Cheney did back when they were criticized for violating civil rights. See here for the latest legal news on this that broke as I was typing these show notes. For the thumbnail, see here.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me on the livestream to discuss the latest foreign policy news, including on the Ukraine war and Gaza. Late in the conversation we talk about how the Trump administration has gone beyond being pro-Israel, and is more implementing a policy of fighting anti-Semitism across the board, which has reached into education and immigration policy. I note the parallels I see between woke hysteria on college campuses and the narrative that universities are hotbeds of Jewish hatred, namely exaggerated and subjective claims of persecution, along with alleged anecdotes only weakly supported by evidence.Some links that come up in the conversation or are related to its themes:Mikhail Zygar, “Putin Won’t End the War. He Can’t Afford to.” (NYT)Michael with a clip of Laura Ingraham asking Trump about the Putin call, and the seeming contradiction between his account and that of PutinMe, “Too Gay to Rebel.”Wall Street Journal on Israel sending troops back into GazaWall Street Journal, “Columbia Is Nearing Agreement to Give Trump What He Wants.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comDerek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic (profile, X account), and the host of the Plain English podcast. He joins me to discuss his new book Abundance, co-authored with Ezra Klein. Derek was actually responsible for the first article I ever published in a mainstream media outlet, which was a response to him in The Atlantic in 2012 on the question of whether clutch matters in basketball. He had encouraged me to submit it after I emailed him. I was really proud of the accomplishment at the time, and it got me thinking that I could publish in mainstream outlets, though it would be years until I would do so again. Derek had understandably forgotten about our initial connection, and it was fun to remind him of it here. After a bit of sports talk, we get to the substance of his book. I was already well versed in some of the intellectual currents that flowed into it, including progress studies, state capacity liberalism, and basic free market economics, yet I still learned quite a bit. Thompson and Klein do an excellent job of putting together the data, anecdotes, and anecdata necessary to make a compelling case of where liberalism has gone off the rails.We spend a good bit of time talking about how the authors decide to frame the issues involved. In particular, I wonder why they do not make a full-throated defense of markets, since so much of the abundance agenda involves getting government out of the way. This leads to a discussion of why conservative states do so much better on the housing issue, and whether a pro-abundance agenda can actually make for a popular political program. See Klein’s recent article, “There Is a Liberal Answer to the Trump-Musk Wrecking Ball.” See also my article “Forty Years of Economic Freedom Winning.”I go on to ask Derek something that I’ve always been curious about, which relates to the sociological and demographic characteristics of the people on the left with views contrary to his own. I read outlets like The New York Times and The Atlantic, and I see pro-abundance views, and very little in terms of NIMBYism and favorable coverage of NEPA review. Since elite liberalism, as represented by Klein and Thompson themselves, seems to be oriented in the right direction, why has policy not changed all that much? Near the end, I ask about how much of the abundance/anti-abundance split on the left is reflecting an underlying difference in neuroticism.I’ve written a lot about how pessimistic I am about the trajectory of the right, but the rise of ideas represented by Klein, Thompson, and other thinkers who are pro-progress in the best sense makes me much more optimistic about where the left is going. As we discuss here, I worry about whether there may be difficulty in overcoming vested interest groups, even if Klein and Thompson win in the marketplace of ideas. If liberals are all abundance agenda types in a decade and not much has changed in blue state governance, it seems to me that there perhaps needs to be consideration of whether the left as currently constituted can provide answers in areas like housing and energy. In other words, perhaps those in favor of abundance cannot hope to achieve their goals as long as they find themselves in the same coalition as degrowthers, the highly neurotic, and bureaucratic elites who benefit from complex and open-ended regulations.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comJust did a livestream with Michael Tracey. We talk about the latest news in the Ukraine War. The Ukrainians have accepted a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the Trump administration, and the ball is now in Putin’s court, in Rubio’s words. This seems to us like the minerals deal all over again, where Ukraine hawks are maneuvering in the hopes of getting Trump committed to supporting Ukraine and angry at Putin. We discuss the motivations of the various actors involved and whether anyone has an incentive to stop fighting, or alternatively whether it would make sense for Trump to pull the plug on Ukraine. Our outlook is grim, as it doesn’t seem like we are anywhere near peace. From the outside, it looks as if Putin has every reason to continue the war.Michael tries to convince me to take Trump’s supposedly expansionist aims literally, and argues for a connection between tariffs and promises to make Canada the 51st state. I at first think he’s crazy and ask what evidence he has for that link. Michael delivers by pointing to a recent Truth Social post where Trump makes the association explicit. He moved my perspective on this a bit. On the idea that Trump now sees himself as a kind of messianic figure, I loved this profile of the man and his ear from September by Olivia Nuzzi, which was truly a work of art. Near the end, we take some questions from the audience. Michael explains why he’s “Mearsheimered out,” and we give our overall outlook on the tariffs and what to expect from Trump going forward. We talk about why right-wingers are so pro-Putin these days, and I argue that it actually does mostly come down to gays, fealty to symbols of Western civilization, and a trad aesthetic. I also try to convince Michael to take seriously the idea that Russian propaganda has a major role to play in how the right is perceiving reality. See the thread here for my recent conversation with Tucker and how he has bought into a Russian influence operation regarding Ukraine selling weapons online. See also my article, “Putin as the Patron Saint of Right-Wing Misanthropy.”Note: if you’re listening to this show on your podcast app and it cuts off around 26 minutes in, you’re listening to the free preview. Become a paid subscriber to listen to or watch the whole thing.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comJust did an AMA. I took questions on whether I would ever have another institutional affiliation again, why Substack is so much higher quality than Twitter, Nick Fuentes’ intelligence, what parts of the Trump agenda might be undone by a future Democratic administration, whether I watch Severance, anime, nationalism and immigration restriction, and more. Note that the new time for the weekly show is Wednesdays at 1ET/10PT, rather than 4ET/1PT. Finally, I was on Destiny’s stream on Monday. These always get massive numbers of views, and you can check out our conversation here.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI did a livestream yesterday after a viral tweet on the Zelensky press conference from hell. I discuss what I saw, scroll Twitter for reactions, and take some questions from the audience. The first hour and a half or so was good, but it dragged out a bit at the end. Yet it’s all here for the superfans.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI did my first weekly show with Michael Tracey today. Michael begins by discussing his experience at CPAC and his time at a DOGE appreciation party, where I was apparently a topic of contention. The bulk of our conversation is then spent talking about the deal for the US to supposedly take a cut of Ukraine’s resources, to be signed Friday according to Trump. Here is what is reportedly a copy of the current text. We try to read the mixed signals from the Trump administration, and debate what it all means. Near the end, we discuss the big announcement that Jeff Bezos is going to be making sure that the Washington Post editorial page promotes individual liberty and free markets. As announced, this is the first in what is going to be a regular show on Wednesdays at 4ET/1PT. You can join us live for free by downloading the app below or get the whole thing as a paid subscriber later.