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Billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, has recently spoken out on various podcasts about how the Democrats have been so mean to him and forced him to support Donald Trump. Andreessen’s obnoxious whining would otherwise be unremarkable, as many guys in the tech industry blame the backlash against “wokeness” for their support of the MAGA movement. But a new interview published Friday by the New York Times is interesting, if only because the Times cleaned up its transcript to make Andreessen sound less stupid.
Andreessen spoke with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, and the hour-long interview aired in audio via the show. A matter of opinion. But people who actually listened to the audio heard something that the readers couldn’t. Apparently, Andreessen believes that Hillary Clinton was actually president from 2017 to 2021 rather than Donald Trump.
Andreessen reflected on how left-wing ideas permeated every aspect of American culture in the late 2010s, with Silicon Valley companies under fire from all corners. And people who read Times transcript When I read the words of the investor, I saw this:
Andreessen: So you’re in this sandwich from all your constituents and then the press approaches you. You have activists coming against you, and then the (federal) government turns against you.
Douthat: But wait, Donald Trump is running the federal government in this era, right?
Andreessen: Not really.
But if you actually listened to the audio, here’s what you hear:
Andreessen: So you’re in this sandwich from all your constituents and then the press approaches you. There are activists coming against you. And then the government comes after you. And of course the federal government has been seriously radicalized under Hillary and even, excuse me… the federal government… we’ll talk more about that.
Douthat: But wait, the federal government is run by Donald Trump…
Andreessen: Not really.
Douthat: …in this era, huh? So that’s the peculiarity of the narrative, isn’t it?
It’s perfectly normal to clean up your transcript to remove repetitive words or “um”s and “ahs”. But deleting the entire line claiming that the “federal government has become seriously radicalized under Hillary” is ludicrous.
The New York Times defended its decision to drop the line in an email to Gizmodo on Friday.
“In the audio version of the interview, it is clear to the listener that Marc Andreesen mistakenly refers to Hillary (you can hear him trying to correct himself),” wrote Jordan Cohen, the Times’ executive director of communications. “We usually edit transcripts for clarity to avoid introducing factual errors, which is what happened here.”
The problem with this explanation is not that Adreesen is actually correcting himself, but that he is actually doubling down on the idea. Douthat then asks Andreessen how Trump has affected Hillary when she has “real power” as president. And Andreessen asked, “How would you describe Donald Trump running the federal government between 2016 and 2020?” he asks.
“It’s not completely effective. I wouldn’t say that,” Douthat says. “At the same time, it wasn’t like the Democratic Party was in a position to pass some sweeping new legislation in 2018 or 2019 to raise taxes or regulate Silicon Valley in any way.”
Although 2016 and 2020 are US presidential election years, Trump took office in January 2017, so Andreessen would be technically correct that Trump had no office during the first year he was referring to in 2016. he wanted to say. He tries to suggest that Trump didn’t actually control the government because there was a “deep state” that was blocking his will.
When we reached out to the Gizmodo Times, we noted how people like far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin believe in the notion of a “cathedral” where “real” power supposedly resides. Yarvin believes that liberal institutions, those in journalism and academia, exercise real control over society. When we emailed the Times, we had no idea they were about to publish an article Interview with Yarvin saturday morning. Yarvin mentions in the interview that he contacted Andreesen.
The rest of the Times interview with Andreesen is so pointless that even mentioning it seems like a waste of time. Andreessen feels like a terrible victim of the modern world, with enemies constantly judging him from all sides. Andreessen sees tech founders as the real heroes in society who can build companies early on, make huge amounts of money, and then give that money away as they see fit for endless praise.
But now people are raising questions about why billionaires should be allowed to irresponsibly acquire obscene amounts of wealth, often while feeding the government, to have an exclusive say in how philanthropy is disbanded in later life. The real answer, of course, is to tax those billionaires to fund everything for the public good, but Andreessen doesn’t like that idea. You can watch the whole episode YouTube if you really feel like exposing yourself to this garbage.
These guys have everything, billions of dollars, power and influence, and they still see themselves as victims in a society where Donald Trump is about to become president. They long to have something they can’t buy, and it’s the love and admiration they believe comes with philanthropy. Average people have dared to ask in recent years why the rich should pay when and how they feel like it in a system far from meritocratic. And the ruling class can’t stand it.
