Our job as journalists, the way I see it, is not to make a pronouncement, not to convince people to think one way or the other, but to explain why things happen.

Suddenly they're telling us as reporters, we can't include something that's true because it goes against some kind of narrative.

Colorful, sharp, liberal, often satirical, journalists for 15 years at Rolling Stone with famous articles like the Great American Bubble Machine, in which Matt Taibi refers to Goldman Sachs as a, quote, vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.

Yet, Matt and I are finding a rather large common ground in the year 2022.

Matt Taibi writes across the board and finance,

sports, international policy, presidential campaign trails, and everything else. He started overseas,

specifically in Uzbekistan, until being deported for a peace at the Associated Press that was

critical of the country's president. Then in Russia, Matt edited The Exile, an irreverent newspaper

from Moscow's expatriate community. His time there is told in his first book, The Exile, sex, drugsent newspaper for Moscow's expatriate community.

His time there is told in his first book, The Exile, Sex, Drugs, and Liable in the New Russia.

His entire career is branded by this highly subjective, often brazen journalism, and it's done well for him.

But as we've seen, the left has now fractured, castigating any and every liberal who doesn't accept their orthodoxy without questions. Liberals like Matt.

In 2020, Matt announced the majority of his work would no longer be published at Rolling Stone.

He planted his own flag at Substack, continuing journalism independently.

In this episode, we discuss what's left for liberalism, and even journalism now,

plus some stories from his time on the presidential campaign trail,

and what happened after Matt

committed the egregious sin of reviewing Matt Walsh's What is a Woman?

Hey, hey, and welcome. This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special. This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today. ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. Just a reminder, we'll be doing some bonus questions at the end with Matt Taibi. The only way to get access to that part of the conversation is to become a member. Head on over to DailyWire.com slash Sunday. And click that link in the episode description. Use code Ben for 25% off. They'll have access to all of the full conversations with everyone of our awesome guest. Matt. Thanks so much for joining the show. Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Appreciate it. So why don't we start with the obvious here, Matt, which is that it's super weird that we're talking to each other. So like 15 years ago, this would have been almost unthinkable, right? I was working at Breitbart, circa, about 2012, 2013, and you were writing for Rolling Stone, and it was, you know, pitched battles in the streets and all the rest. And yet now here we are. So what exactly changed, do you think that it's now made conversations like this possible on the one hand and forbidden on the other?

Well, I think there's been a significant changing of what the mentality is on what used to be my side of the aisle.

I mean, people like me, I'm basically like a middle of the road, ACLU, old school liberal.

You know, I believe in free speech, civil liberties, due process, all those things.

...