I did all this work, like analyzing where all this stuff comes from, everything they believe.

They're tactics, the tactics that worked, the tactic that failed, what worked to bring the alt-write down.

And nevertheless, their ideas and tactics and vibes and aesthetics have become the mainstream of like at least 50% of the American culture.

Hello and welcome to WISIS happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

There's a lot of ways that you could try to characterize what the first month of the Trump administration has been like, which has been pretty terrible, pretty close to worst case scenario, in my humble opinion.

One way I think that's useful is basically, and a few people have said this online, is

the worst internet trolls have taken possession of the American government.

And I think it's actually a super useful way to think about what's happening, both as kind of metaphor, but also as reality.

Like, for instance, on the day I'm talking to you, a bunch of right-wing influencers who function as trolls essentially are at the White House being released binders of what they're calling the Epstein files.

On the day, I'm talking to you a relentlessly, disgustingly misogynist influencer named Andrew Tate, who has

been indicted by Romanian authorities for sex trafficking, including sex trafficking of minors,

and has been held in Romania for several years, is on his way back to the U.S.,

where he has essentially been allowed by the Romanians to leave

after conversations from the highest levels of the Trump administration's government,

including a special envoy with a Romanian counterpart.

We don't know what was said.

They deny there was any sort of exchange,

but it seems very clear. There was hawk of his case. And then subsequently, this man and his brother, who were arrested by the Romanian authorities for truly heinous crimes, they deny them, are headed to the U.S.

Andrew Tate is a troll. The people at the White House, the Epstein Files are a troll.

Elon Musk, who is the richest man in the world and spends all day posting obsessively on the site that he owned so he would be the main character is a troll.

And for the people that are not familiar with this kind of particular dark ethos, this sort of reactionary, nihilistic ethos. I mean, a troll is someone who,

and I write about this in my book, The Sirens Call, I write at length about trolling politics and the politics of trolls. A troll is someone who essentially sort of seeks negative attention

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