Marc Andreessen, the billionaire tech investor who co-founded Netscape, has recently been making the rounds on various podcasts to talk about how the Democrats were so very mean to him and forced him to become a supporter of Donald Trump. Andreessen’s obnoxious whining wouldn’t otherwise be notable, given how many guys in the tech industry have blamed backlash against “wokeness” on their support for the MAGA movement. But a new interview released by the New York Times on Friday is interesting, if only because the Times cleaned up its own transcript to make Andreessen sound like less of an idiot.
Andreessen spoke with New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat and that one-hour interview was pushed out in audio form through the show Matter of Opinion. But people who actually listened to the audio heard something that readers didn’t get to learn. Apparently, Andreessen thinks Hillary Clinton was actually president from 2017 until 2021 rather than Donald Trump.
Andreessen was droning on about how lefty ideas had permeated every aspect of American culture in the late 2010s, with Silicon Valley companies under fire from all corners. And people who read the Times transcript saw this when reading the investor’s words:
Andreessen: So you’re in this sandwich from all of your constituents, and then you’ve got the press coming at you. You’ve got the activists coming at you, and then you’ve got the [federal] government coming at you.
Douthat: But wait, the federal government is run by Donald Trump in this period, right?
Andreessen: Not really.
But if you actually listened to the audio, this is what you heard:
Andreessen: So you’re in this sandwich from all of your constituents, and then you’ve got the press coming at you. You’ve got the activists coming at you. And then you’ve got the government coming at you. And of course, the federal government radicalized hard under Hillary and then even, sorry… the federal government… we’ll talk about that more.
Douthat: But wait, the federal government is run by Donald Trump…
Andreessen: Not really.
Douthat: …in this period, right? So this is, I mean, this is the peculiar thing about the narrative, right?
It’s completely normal to clean up a transcript to delete repeated words or “um” and “ah” just to make things easier to read. But deleting an entire line that claims “the federal government radicalized hard 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’s clear to the listener that Marc Andreesen mistakenly says Hillary (you can hear him attempt to correct himself),” wrote Jordan Cohen, the Times’ executive director of communications. “We typically edit transcripts for clarity as to not present factual errors, which is what happened here.”
The problem with that explanation, is that Adreesen didn’t really correct himself, but actually doubled down on the idea. Douthat goes on to ask Andreessen about how Hillary held sway when Trump had the “real power” as president. And Andreessen questions the premise, asking “would you describe Donald Trump ran the federal government between 2016 to 2020?”
“Not entirely effectively. I wouldn’t say that,” Douthat says. “At the same time, it wasn’t the case that the Democratic Party in 2018 or 2019 was in a position to pass some sweeping new legislation, whether to raise taxes or regulate Silicon Valley in all kinds of ways.”
While 2016 and 2020 were the years the U.S. presidential elections took place, Trump took office in January of 2017, so Andreessen would technically be correct that Trump didn’t have any power during that first year he cites, 2016. But that’s clearly not what he meant. He’s trying to suggest Trump wasn’t actually in control of the government because there was a “deep state” thwarting his will.
The rest of the interview is so inane that it almost feels like a waste of time to even mention it. Andreessen feels like a terrible victim of the modern world, with enemies on all sides who are constantly judging him. Andreessen sees tech founders as the real heroes in society who used to be able to start companies, make tremendous amounts of money, and then give that money away as they saw fit to unending accolades.
But now that people are raising questions about why billionaires should be allowed to make obscene amounts of wealth without accountability, often while suckling at the government teat, just to have the exclusive say in how charity is dispersed later in life. The real answer, of course, is to tax those billionaires in order to fund things for the public good, but Andreessen doesn’t like that idea. You can listen to the entire episode on YouTube if you really feel like subjecting yourself to this garbage.
These guys have it all, billions of dollars, power and influence, and they still 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 that they believe used to come with being philanthropic. Average people have dared ask in recent years why the wealthy should only give away money whenever and however they feel like it in a system that’s far from meritocratic. And the ruling class can’t fucking stand it.
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