Tina Brown On Trump Panic, Media, Autism
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The inimitable Tina Brown revived Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, before turning to the web and The Daily Beast (where I worked for her). She’s written three books, the latest of which we covered on the Dishcast a few years ago, The Palace Papers. This week she launched a substack, Fresh Hell: Tina Brown’s Diaries — “observations, rants, news obsessions, and human exchanges.” And yes, this chat really is unplugged. We had a lot of fun.
For two clips of our convo — on the personal cruelty of Donald Trump, and why politicians in the UK are tougher than American ones — head to our YouTube page. Other topics: Tina sitting behind Trump during Obama’s WHCD; the impact another Trump term will have on our sanity; the sad decline of Tucker Carlson; Jon Stewart on Crossfire; Vance and resentment over liberal condescension; being a right-of-center person in academia and the MSM; my defenestration at New York Mag; Alexandra Pelosi’s The Insurrectionist Next Door; Obama telling black men how to vote; the most multi-racial GOP coalition since Nixon; Trump’s tariffs and inflation; his interview with Micklethwait; candidates moving to podcasts; Biden’s decline; his failure to tackle immigration; the lack of an open primary; Bill Clinton on a killer migrant; Springfield; Alvin Bragg; the passion of the Trump cult; the new film The Apprentice; Roy Cohn’s crush on Trump; the stark racism of Fred Trump; Musk at the Butler rally; the exhilaration of fascism; lying as a form of obedience; PM’s Question Time; Corbyn getting mocked in Parliament; Brexit; Boris and Partygate; Keir’s early floundering as PM; Ukraine; Applebaum’s new book; the new Woodward book; Tina’s late husband Harry Evans and their storied marriage; their son Georgie and the difficulty of dating on the spectrum; Walz’s son; Tim Shriver “the only Kennedy worth anything”; the challenges of being a working mother; the importance of living near grandparents; and the intimacy of blogging and Substack.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day, the return of the great John Gray, Damon Linker on the election results, Anderson Cooper on grief, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and Mary Matalin on anything but politics. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. |
| 0:28.6 | Welcome. |
| 0:29.6 | Hi, Andrew. |
| 0:30.6 | I'm nice to hear from you, the Dean of Substack, his Honourable Self. |
| 0:35.6 | Now you've blown the intro. Hello to everyone out there and to my guest this week. |
| 0:41.3 | This is kind of a media moment, I think. |
| 0:45.3 | This is certainly having lived my life, my particular generation, |
| 0:49.3 | to see my guest today arrive as she is, last week on Substack, today, a new column, is an event, |
| 0:59.2 | I think, because the old media, she was the master mistressov. |
| 1:04.8 | And back in the 80s and 90s, I know 2000, when we were, you know, when magazines were actually mattered and people |
| 1:12.6 | actually cared about them and they really did have a presence because they had papers and |
| 1:17.8 | staples and it all came in one package. No one had the clout or the talent or the balls, |
| 1:26.6 | really, of Tina Brown. And so I'm delighted to have you back, Tina, on the talent or the balls, really, of Tina Brown. |
| 1:27.8 | And so I'm delighted to have you back, Tina, on the disgust. |
| 1:31.0 | Oh, thank you, my dear. |
| 1:32.6 | You're very welcome. |
| 1:33.3 | Such a fan of the New Republic in the Sullivan years, too. |
| 1:36.5 | That was a, I mean, we had such fun. |
| 1:39.4 | I mean, that's the other thing. |
| 1:40.3 | We enjoyed ourselves. |
| 1:41.4 | We had, I like stirring shit up and having debates and having fun and |
| 1:46.4 | challenging the readers as well as giving them what they wanted. It was, and I was, you know, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Andrew Sullivan, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Andrew Sullivan and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.