Marc Andreessen, the billionaire tech investor who co-founded Netscape, recently made the rounds on various podcasts to talk about how the Democrats were so meaningful to him and forced him to become a supporter of Donald Trump. Andreessen’s obnoxious whining wouldn’t be otherwise remarkable, given how many guys in the tech industry have blamed the backlash against “wokeness” on his support for the MAGA movement. But a new interview published by the New York Times on Friday is interesting, if only because the Times cleaned up its own transcript to make Andreessen sound less of an idiot.
Andreessen spoke with New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat and that hour-long interview was pushed in audio form through the show. Matter of opinion. But the people who actually listened to the audio heard something that the readers didn’t. Apparently, Andreessen thinks Hillary Clinton was actually president from 2017 to 2021 rather than Donald Trump.
Andreessen was curious about how left-wing ideas had permeated every aspect of American culture in the late 2010s, with Silicon Valley companies under fire from all corners. People who read Transcription of the times saw this when reading the words of the investor:
Andreessen: So you are in this sandwich from all your constituents, and then you have the press that comes to you. You have the activists coming to you, and then you have the (federal) government coming to you.
Dutto: But wait, the federal government is led by Donald Trump this period, right?
Andreessen: Not really.
But if you actually listened to the audio, this is what you heard:
Andreessen: So you are in this sandwich from all your constituents, and then you have the press that comes to you. You have activists coming to you. And then you have the government coming to you. And of course, the federal government radicalized hard under Hillary and then also, sorry…the federal government…we’ll talk more.
Dutto: But wait, the federal government is led by Donald Trump…
Andreessen: Not really.
Dutto: … in this period, right? So this is, I mean, this is the peculiar thing about narrative, right?
It’s completely normal to clean up a transcript to remove repeated words or “um” and “ah” just to make things easier to read. But deleting an entire line that says “the federal government has been severely radicalized under Hillary,” is just ridiculous.
The New York Times defended the decision to omit 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 is mistakenly saying Hillary (you can hear him trying to correct himself),” wrote Jordan Cohen, executive director of communications for the Times. “Typically we edit transcripts for clarity so as not to introduce factual errors, which is what happened here.”
The problem with that explanation, is that Adreesen didn’t actually correct it himself, but actually doubled down on the idea. Douthat goes on to ask Andreessen about how Hillary held influence when Trump had the “real power” as president. And Andreessen questions the premise, asking “do you describe Donald Trump running the federal government between 2016 and 2020?”
“It’s not completely effective. I wouldn’t say that,” Douthat says. “At the same time, it was not the case that the Democratic Party in 2018 or 2019 was in a position to pass sweeping new legislation, either to raise taxes or to regulate Silicon Valley in any way.”
While 2016 and 2020 were the years in which the US presidential elections took place, Trump took office in January 2017, so Andreessen would technically be correct that Trump did not have power during that first year he mentions, 2016. But this is clearly not what he meant. I’m trying to suggest that Trump wasn’t really in control of the government because there was a “deep state” that was thwarting his will.
When Gizmodo reached out to the Times, we noticed that guys like Curtis Yarvin, a far-right blogger, believe in this concept of “the cathedral” which is where “real” power supposedly resides. Yarvin thinks that liberal institutions and those in journalism and academia have a real influence on society. Little did we know while emailing the Times that they were about to publish one interview with Yarvin on Saturday morning. Yarvin mentions in the interview that he communicates with Andreesen.
The rest of the Times interview with Andreesen is so inane it seems almost a waste of time to even mention it. Andreessen seems to feel like a terrible victim of the modern world, with enemies on all sides constantly judging him. Andreessen sees the founders of technology as the real heroes of society who will be able to launch companies, earn huge amounts of money, and then give that money as they had adapted it to endless praise.
But now that people are asking questions about why billionaires should be allowed to make obscene amounts of wealth without accountability, often while under the government’s teat, only to have the exclusive say in how the charity is later dispersed in the life The real answer, of course, is to tax those billionaires to finance things for the public good, but Andreessen doesn’t like that idea. You can listen to the whole episode YouTube if you really want to submit to this garbage.
These men have everything, billions of dollars, power and influence, and they also see themselves as victims in a society where Donald Trump is about to become the president. They want so desperately to have the one thing they can’t buy, and that’s the love and admiration they believe comes from being philanthropic. Average people have dared to ask in recent years why the rich should just give money every time and how they feel in a system that is far from meritocratic. And the ruling class can’t stand it.
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2025-01-18 17:00:00
