Trump, Tucker, and the Death of Legacy News
Runaway Country with Alex Wagner
Runaway Country with Alex Wagner
4.8 • 13.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rightwing billionaire takeovers, journalists getting arrested, and endless misinformation. Welcome to the current state of American journalism. This week, Alex speaks to former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta about how legacy news organizations caved to President Trump and the critical role of independent media.
She’s also joined by Jason Zengerle, author of “Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind”, to analyze how Carlson brought fringe ideas into mainstream discourse.
Order Jason Zengerle's book here and use the code ALEX.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you love Positive America and want more of my political analysis, you should subscribe to my |
| 0:06.4 | newsletter, the message box. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, and in |
| 0:10.7 | message box, I break down what's actually happening in politics and what it's going to take |
| 0:14.3 | to beat Donald Trump mega. If you follow every poll and every twist and turn in the campaign, |
| 0:19.0 | message boxes for you. This isn't just hot takes. Every edition delivers clear analysis, behind-the-scenes insight and practical strategy you can actually use whether you're working on a race, organizing your community, or just trying to win the argument in your group chat. So if you're listening to this, hit pause, go to your browser, and head to crooked.com slash yes sweet dan because I have a special offer for |
| 0:38.6 | crooked media fans. You'll get 20% off a message box for an entire year. So go to crooked.com |
| 0:43.9 | slash yes we did. |
| 0:49.4 | Hey listeners, it is Alex from the not so distant past. I'm out of the studio hunting for leprecons |
| 0:55.4 | this week, as one does. So we pre-recorded this episode earlier this month on a topic that |
| 0:59.8 | unfortunately is not going stale anytime soon. Hope you enjoy. Hi, everyone. For the past |
| 1:06.8 | decade, it has felt like we've been living in two Americas. Forget policy. We don't even have a shared reality. |
| 1:13.0 | And apart from one unnamed megalomaniac, the most obvious source of this break between fact-based reality and the universe of alternate facts is the right-wing media ecosystem. |
| 1:24.4 | This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country, not for the Latinos. |
| 1:29.4 | We have artificially elevated the cost of energy to appease this sun god, climate change |
| 1:34.8 | alarmism, this religion, this civic religion that progressives have invented. All you hear from |
| 1:40.4 | Democrats and social media is that ICE and Trump or Gestapo, if you're one of these |
| 1:46.1 | crazy lunatrons, you think that it's time to use new tactics or even real weapons. |
| 1:52.7 | Okay. Generating interest became generating outrage. And the right-wing reliance on questionable |
| 2:00.0 | theories and bunk science |
| 2:01.7 | and distorted analysis got way, way, way out of control. |
| 2:06.9 | There has been a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from we, the people |
| 2:11.9 | of the United States of America. |
... |
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