Jeffrey Goldberg on "SignalGate," Trump's charm offensive, and why The Atlantic is winning

16:14Ben:No, no, look, writ large, it's an absurd situation. I mean, the guy, the Ellison family has bought these properties. They are hopelessly conflicted, hopelessly entangled. Just like Jeff Bezos, they have more important fish to fry than preserving the journalistic independence of the institutions that they bought. They've got, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars on the line. That's why Jeff Bezos made the decision that the Washington Post is worth sacrificing to protect the rocket business. And I think, Ellison, it's fundamentally clear. I'm separating out. I think Barry has walked into some traps, obviously.

16:55Ben:I think Barry went too fast at CBS. And one of the questions I would have in reporting this out is, did she go fast and break too many things because that's Barry's nature, her management nature? Or was that David Ellison saying, we've got to show the White House quickly that we mean business here in order to get deals done? I don't know. These are all questions. And all I'm saying is there's a lot that's admirable about Barry. We haven't spoken in, I don't know, a couple of years. I don't, I'm not in touch with Barry, but there's a lot that's admirable. And there's also a little bit of, I find this kind of discourse around CBS a little bit too precious, the Tiffany network.

17:43Ben:And it's like, oh, okay, so one of the networks is going to tilt center right, as opposed to the other networks that tilt center left.

17:49Max:Yeah, as their ratings steadily decline in any event.

17:53Ben:So what? So this is a classic case to me of I don't know nearly enough about the actual dynamics, and I want to reserve most of my judgment until I could figure out what level of corruption there is or how the editorial product is being corrupted, if it is being corrupted. Have you interviewed Barry on this? I don't think I—

18:14Max:We tried. No, we tried. Actually, she doesn't do a lot. It's interesting. She doesn't seem to want to. And I always think this is a mistake for media people. Like you might as well do the interviews or else questions just kind of build up. You might as well just say what's on your mind. She wouldn't come to our media summit. So, you know, we got a bunch of other big interviews. But there's another piece of the reporting on CBS I wanted to ask you about or sort of around it, which is – and this is basically Max's reporting, not speculation. As you say, like part of it is, you know, what you described as a corrupt deal with Trump.

18:41Max:Part of it is the Ellisons were very unhappy, as Sherry Redstone was before with the network's coverage of Israel. And I guess I wondered, just like in a sort of broad sense, like you're probably the American journalist I know who has covered Israel most deeply in your career. First time I went to Israel, I don't know if you remember this, I called you and sort of from the street of Jerusalem and was like, hey, who should I talk to? How should I do this? And this was like 15 years ago. You moved there as a young man, served in the IDF. You've been thinking about this stuff a long time. And I'm curious if the last few years have changed your perspective on, I guess, particularly on how the American media covers Israel.

19:16Max:Pass. Can we not talk about this? It's just too big a topic, too long?

19:20Ben:I don't know what to think anymore. I mean, I don't know. What's your actual question? I'll try to answer it.

19:26Max:I feel like I've revised a lot of my thinking on the media and Israel on the way Israel sees the U.S. in the last few years. It feels like it has changed a lot, and it's something I'm trying to get my arms around. I was curious if you think that or if this is more just a complicated story that keeps rolling.

19:43Ben:Well, yeah, of course it's a complicated story that keeps rolling. I think it's actually a story, going back to a point you were making earlier, I think it's a story about Netanyahu as much as anything else. I mean, I think Netanyahu looms so large over the coverage of Israel and America, the perception of Israel and America, the perception of, I mean, and again, he doesn't speak to me anymore. I used to talk to him. I used to interview him fairly regularly, but he, I mean, look, I don't write about this very much. I don't write very much at all.

20:15Max:But that's sort of interesting that your, I mean, that's pretty telling that your persona non grata with him, given that you're of the center, basically, in some sense, right? Well, in Israel, I would be in the left.

20:27Ben:Because the center's moved, I guess. Well, I would be on the left center or whatever. I'd be in the fatalist, realist camp. And it's more comfortable to be on the left when you're in Israel, when you're outside of Israel. which is to say, you know, there's so much genocidal garbage directed at Israel in certain quarters in America, certainly in Europe. You know, the idea that Israel is like an illegitimate country that should be annihilated, that puts people who still believe that a two-state solution is the only solution, that the settlement project has been a big mistake, moral and political, and that the Hamas's continued fantastical belief that it can destroy the Jews has led to incredible damage.

21:19Ben:I mean, everybody, you know, I mean, I'm in the fatalist camp, which is like everybody has screwed this up beyond measure. And I include, and I've written that, I include Netanyahu for, among other things, bringing an extremist into his government and allowing the settlement project to possibly obviate the creation of a Palestinian state. Yeah, so I haven't interviewed him. It's actually funny. I did the first interview with him when he became prime minister the first time, if I recall correctly. And I knew him in the early 90s. It's interesting. I haven't talked to him in probably seven or eight years.

21:59Jeffrey Goldberg:Was there a precipitating event? Was there one story? Was there something that happened?

22:02Ben:You know, it was the original Iran deal issues where I thought the Iran deal was weak but worth pursuing. I mean, more in the Obama camp, except Obama probably wouldn't have ever said that it was weak because of the ballistic missile exclusion, among other things. But, you know, Netanyahu and Ron Dermer thought that I was one of those people who was, you know, flying top cover for a weak Obama-inspired Iran deal. and you know so so i think it i think it stems from that and you know it's interesting because i'm not i mean i don't make any secret of this and you know that's one of the funny parts of the signal business is like i'm anti-houthi i mean the houthi's motto is death to america death to israel a curse upon the jews it's like they're hitting all my erogenous zones there you know like go go fine fight the houthis just don't tell me about it beforehand and the houthis are an Iranian, you know, sponsored organization.

23:02Max:Hold on. You do have, like, I feel like as we're talking, and let's get onto the Atlantic right after this, but there's something about, like, that you're trying very hard, and I think it's just, like, hard now to hold a kind of centrist, or maybe you say, like, kind of doomed fatalist position. There was a line in the piece that struck me that I kind of laughed out loud, but also was like, I don't know about this, which was, the Houthis are despicable terrorists. In my opinion, it should be fought and defeated, but there was still something disturbing about the proliferation of emoji. Yeah, well, that's, these guys are not serious.

23:32Max:It just feels like you're, like, trying to hold this position of, right, a lot of these thoughts are correct, but, like, can we stop with the emoji?

23:39Ben:Here's my, yeah, here's a good rule. When you're killing someone, even if that person should be killed because they're an evil terrorist, like, don't act like a fucking child when you're doing it, you know? It's not a video game.

23:51Max:But I think you're, like, the only person left in that camp, Jeffrey, right? Like you have like some large share of the country is like, no, it's a video game and it's fun and emojis. And then the other half think that we should not be attacking the Houthis. It feels like you're in a very lonely position.

24:05Ben:I don't know most people in the country. It's a big country. I would assume. I actually make the converse.

24:10Max:But I thought most of them subscribe. No, but let me finish.

24:13Ben:I actually make the converse conclusion that I'm pretty much on most issues where 60 to 70 percent of people in America are on most issues. and that's where I kind of want the Atlantic to be. I know you want to keep talking about Israel and you want to get me in trouble for saying something, but the truth is I don't know. We're not trying very hard here, Jeffrey. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's true. You're not even bringing your A game. The truth is I love being editor of the Atlantic, but I'm a frustrated reporter in that, you know, in the subjects that I've written about for 30 years, whether it's Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Israel, Palestine, or whatever, I would like to go back to these places and spend a long time and figure it out for myself.

24:56Ben:And I trust what I'm getting less and less, especially through social. I mean, when the New York Times reports X just happened in the West Bank or X just happened in Gaza, I more or less believe the New York Times. I think there's biases in different publications that lean in different directions. Sure, and I can discount for those, but I think it's basically reality. But I need to go figure this out for myself eventually because I haven't really dealt with the fact, let's use Israel one more moment if you don't mind, I haven't fully dealt with the fact in writing that there are two Kahane-oriented extremists in the Israeli cabinet running crucial ministries.

25:41Ben:Like, I dealt with the fact a long time ago that Hamas wants to kill all the Jews. I know that part, but I haven't dealt really in journalism journalistically with the change in Israeli politics. And if you don't mind one more minute on this, this is to me amazing. And this is something that I think about all the time. I was working at the Jerusalem Post when Mayer Kahane was murdered in New York. This is like 1990 or something.

26:05Max:And this, for people who don't know, is a Jewish leader who Brooklyn-based designated as a terrorist.

26:09Ben:He was the extremist, fascist, New York-born, but moved to Israel, ran for the Knesset, but was banned by Israeli law from being in the Knesset as a racist. You can't have a racist party. And at his funeral, it went by where the Jerusalem Post was, you know, 10 ,000 people marching or whatever. And some of these young activists, you know, kind of crazy lunatic activists were chasing Arabs, trying to find Arabs in the street and beat them. and a lot of us in the neighborhood, you know, we were out there and we were like, people like hiding like Arab guys, like just go into this office, stay there for a couple hours and then like go home when these lunatics leave.

26:50Ben:And what I realized then, I have to figure this out. I think Itamar Ben-Kavir, who's now the minister of internal security, was one of those. He would have been the right age and he was a youth activist for that movement. And I just think about this all the time. It's like, well, how did we get there? And I do want to go back and do some reporting and just try to figure it out for myself. It's a good story. I trust a lot of people on the subject, but I also trust my own eyeballs.

27:20Jeffrey Goldberg:Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll be right back after this.

27:36Jeffrey Goldberg:So I wanted to kind of take a step in a very different direction here and ask a big picture question. You have been in charge of the Atlantic for almost 10 years now. What is the Atlantic now? You've swallowed kind of key parts of the Washington Post. You've hired a lot of their top staff. Swallowed key parts of the Washington Post. I think, I mean, you took like half of their White House team, their national security staff. A lot of great reporters, great bylines that used to be in the Post are now writing for the Atlantic, which is a great coup. And you passed the New Yorker in terms of scale, in terms of the number of subscriptions you have.

28:07Ben:Yeah, we are actually the largest, by subscriptions, the largest magazine in the country, which is not something you would ever have imagined 20, 25 years ago.

28:15Jeffrey Goldberg:Looking at kind of some of the recent hires, some of the big stories that you guys have had, you know, they're very scoop and very news driven. Do you consider The Atlantic to be more newspaper-y? Is it magazine-y? Is it a first read, second read, only read?

28:30Ben:We're in that gray zone between first read and second read. I mean, obviously, everybody who reads The Atlantic or subscribes to The Atlantic, certainly, I'm sure, reads a newspaper. I would imagine a large number of them read The Times, The Journal, some of The Post, their local newspapers. I mean, we have a very educated population and a very engaged population and subscriber base. No, what I tell our staff, and it sounds like a line, but I actually believe it, is that I think we're engaged in an experiment to combine what I think of as the best of newspapering with the best of magazine making.

29:08Ben:And I think it's possible to do. We still don't have homework in the way that a newspaper has homework, sports traffic and weather, you know what I mean? And we're not going to do live blogs with that iterative updates on. I mean, maybe we will one day. I don't even know. But like maybe we will get there, but I don't see that in the near future. But we are definitely, and the web has allowed this to happen, you know, we are definitely on the news in a way that the pre-internet Atlantic, of course, was not on the news. It was a monthly magazine. It was about the past and the future. It was about deep features and literary journalism and literature itself.

29:44Ben:But it wasn't about that. I think we can do all the things, honestly. Isn't that hard?

29:50Max:Yeah, it's hard. It's a culture clash. Like, I really, like, even having worked in the internet for 20 years, think of myself as a newspaper guy. And these magazine people with their style of editing where you, like, leave all these notes and it takes forever just, like, makes me insane, the preciousness. I mean, we hire very smart people. And then similarly when I hire magazine people, they want to kill me. Like, it feels like there's this culture clash that's very hard to deal with.

30:10Ben:We're managing. First of all, we hire smart people. Second, we hire nice people. That must be my problem. Yeah, well, I mean. We go for sort of dumb mean people. On our next episode, on our next session, we could talk about your problems. It's actually going, the absorption of a large number of Washington Post people is going much better than I thought it would, because there would be a culture, not just a culture clash, but a stylistic clash. I mean, I obviously prefer magazine. Look, I think you could take newspaper stories and invest them with magazine qualities, meaning idiosyncrasy and the writer's presence.

30:42Ben:And, you know, I mean, they're basic iron laws of magazine that you could put in newspapers. Like, just tell me the most interesting thing. Don't think about what's the most important thing. Tell me, start with the most interesting thing. We'll get to the important thing. It has everything to do with lead writing. And like, you know, and I tell, and obviously newspaper writers have a hard time doing this at first, but it's like, I want to know what you think. Do the reporting. The scoops are great. The scoops are a source of propulsion and energy, among other things, and attention. But have the scoops add up to something.

31:11Ben:I just don't want to know a thing. I want to know why that thing is the way it is or how it happened. And then tell me all the way through what you think. I don't like the newspaper style of, now I interview a guy who says X, and then this guy disagrees with him, and then in the end, who knows? Like, I never found that satisfying. So maybe we can invent here a new kind of 360 way of doing a story. One of the things I talk about here all the time is, you know, it's like, let's try to do the second day story on the first day. It's like, project your mind out. What are people going to want to know tomorrow?

31:46Ben:And let's try to do it today. All these things are hard. You know what it is? It's the newspaper or it's the journalism corollary to the Buffett rule. Investing is simple but not easy. This is all very simple. It's just not easy to actually execute. It's very hard to build a story, as you guys know, that has narrative propulsion, scoops, beautiful writing, embedded argument, right? You can't put all those things into every story, but you can try to get some combination of them so that—and, you know, the first and only rule is be interesting. Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

32:22Jeffrey Goldberg:It seems like you've gotten a lot out of the Washington Post reporters that you guys have hired over the last year listening to you— And editors, too.

32:30Ben:You don't see the editors, but—

32:31Jeffrey Goldberg:But I am curious, like, did they ever ask you, did the Post, did Bezos—did they ever ask you if you wanted to run the Washington Post? I mean, I think part of the reason that they've struggled is that they've been, you know, somewhat adrift in between a lot of different editors in a few years. Did they ever approach you and ask you if you were interested?

32:46Ben:I'm trying to think of a reason not to answer this question, but I guess it's sort of all in the past now. I had a couple of weird conversations a while ago already, and I didn't want them to go anywhere because I love the Atlantic and I love what I'm doing. but I it's attempting it was a tempting idea in theory in large part because I started at the Washington Post I was a Washington Post intern literally sorry to say it 40 years ago this summer this coming summer and I love the way and I started I was a night police reporter at the Washington Post and the glory you know to me like I mean the first day as an intern they sat me next to ben bradley at the intern lunch i almost died you know i i mean it was the first famous person i ever met and i can't believe this is the guy from all the president's men sitting next to me and so like i have a i mean this is why i'm so fucking sad about the washington post too because like what why did they take a great institution and destroy it it doesn't make any

33:52Max:there's a lot in the world what do you think the answer to that question is because i don't know

33:56Ben:Occam's razor tells me that sometimes people are just stupid and do stupid things. I mean, I don't know what motivates Jeff Bezos to do what he does. Obviously, looking at the evidence from the outside is that Bezos or his team or whatever neglected to pay attention to the leaders that they had in place at the Washington Post. And I saw Bezos at a thing recently, and we talked about this a little bit. And, you know, he says the collapse of Google search really, really killed them. I believe that. I also believe that the Atlantic is using the same Google that the Washington Post is using, and it didn't kill us.

34:36Ben:So, like, there are other—or it didn't kill the New York Times, certainly. Did you tell him that?

34:41Jeffrey Goldberg:Did you say, hey, you were still on there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

34:44Ben:I mean, like, we're in the same—I mean, I literally—I think I used that line. Like, we're in the same—I think it's the same Google. Yeah. You know what I mean? But, you know, when I talked to him, he seemed very committed to, you know, saving the Washington Post. I mean, he said this to me. He said this to other people so I can quote it. Yeah. Saying it to me. He said, I saved the Washington Post once and I'll save it again. You know, this opens the question of why did it, you know, head down. Anyway, I just find the whole thing sad. And so going to the Washington Post could have been an interesting thing, but it never really was an operative.

35:22Ben:It wasn't an operative thing from their standpoint necessarily, and it wasn't an operative thing certainly in my mind because I love where I am. I think you should buy it. By you, I mean Max, not Ben.

35:33Max:I think as its value diminishes, it's getting within his price range. It could be one of those.

35:38Ben:No, no. It could be weird.

35:39Max:What is that? A dollar and the assumption of debt?

35:42Jeffrey Goldberg:Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't have$100 billion to lose, I got to say.

35:45Max:Bezos was one of, I think, four or five billionaires who I think genuinely in all good, like, you know, stepped in to rescue the American media after the great financial crisis. Benioff bought Time, Patrick Sunchong bought the LA Times, and Lorene Powell Jobs bought the Atlantic. And for kind of different reasons, but all of them, I think, revolving to some degree around like attention span, neglect, how annoying the news business is, how annoying journalists are, the universal factors. We all have the same Google and we also all have the same annoying journalists. Like they, all the rest of them got sick of it and have, and in retrospect, did a lot of damage to their reputations.

36:23Max:I don't mean to ask such sort of a, you know, a suck up question, but what is the sort of secret of Laureen Powell Jobs? Like the one good billionaire in this regard?

36:33Ben:She's got guts. First of all, character is important here and And she's a brave person. She's not a scared person. She's a patient person. And, like, everybody should know this. Like, we run at a profit, and we run at a profit because she says, like, you're running at a profit. Like, you can't, there's no screwing around here. This isn't, you know, I'm not running a charity. She spends plenty of money on worthy projects that don't pay a return. This is not one of them. And she also believes, and this is one of the things that I love about her, She also really believes that good journalism is worth paying for.

37:10Ben:She never had that crisis of confidence where it's like, well, maybe people won't buy it. She's like, this is good. Charge more. Get people to read it and then ask them for money. That's the formula. And one of the great things about Lorene is that she says, look, and you make money, whatever profit you end up with at the end of the year, plow it back into the business. Hire more journalists. Do interesting things. I'll tell you this I mean the very specific signal gate manifestation of this which is like to me the the story of Lorene in a kind of way you know obviously it was a very fraught moment what we were doing and you know and a lot of advisors and attorneys floating around and all the rest and it was decided for very obvious reasons that we were not going to share specifics of the story with the ownership because there was all kinds of anxiety about you know consequences for them consequences of the company if the government decided to pursue me or the Atlantic in some kind of way, right?

38:05Ben:But she deserves, she owns the damn thing. She deserves to know that something, we're cooking up something. So through a turn, and I was, I talked to her regularly, text, phone, whatever, in person, but I was not talking to her in that period on purpose. But it was communicated to her through intermediaries that I'm working on a story. It has national security implications. The Trump administration might not like this story at all. It could have serious whatever consequences. And we just want you to know, but we're not going to tell you on purpose what it is. And the message that came back from Lorene instantly was, if the story is true and Jeff believes it's important to publish, then publish.

38:47Ben:Why are you even asking me? And it's like, you know, that is everything right there. That's the whole nine yards. right there. That's gutsy, visionary, confident ownership by someone who understands what the free press does.

39:07Max:One of the, to me, smaller delights of The Atlantic lately has been a kind

39:11Ben:of stunt casting that you're doing, putting brilliant writers in places that are personally

39:18Max:very strange and uncomfortable for them. And I sort of wondered how you think about that and where that's coming from.

39:23Ben:It comes from me. That's what I loved to do when I was a young journal i would do that when i was at the new york times magazine i would like you know try to hang out with weird people and look look the greatest joy of journalism yes we're here to save democracy and we're here to inject more truth into the universe and all those other things is true the greatest thing about being a journalist is that someone pays you to go to strange places and meet weirdos and then tell other people about them like at its best it's not even a job it's just like the greatest way to live your life. And so I've always thought about my own career in journalism as, I mean, you know, I'm sitting, this is a long time ago already, but I'm at a dolphin show at the Havana Aquarium with Fidel Castro, who's given me a lecture about why Cuban dolphins are superior to American dolphins.

40:13Ben:It's a Tuesday afternoon. And I literally thought to myself, how is this a job? How are they better? What was his argument? Because they're socialists. I mean, you know. No, and I said, he said, you know, the Cuban dolphins are healthier and smarter than American dolphins. And I said, they're the same dolphins. It's the same exact dolphins. What are you talking about? They're from the same—Jesus Christ.

40:37Max:Wow, that's individualism versus socialism in a nutshell.

40:39Ben:Yeah, no, no, because these dolphins—well, the Cuban dolphins probably eat better than many Cubans at this point, alas.

40:47Jeffrey Goldberg:Jeffrey, last question we want to ask you is, in the 10 years that you've been doing this job, what's a big lesson that you learned? You had a long journalism career before this, but I imagine this has taught you a few things that you didn't know.

40:59Ben:Is this going to be compiled in the book that you're going to sell in airports one day, Keys to Effective Journalism Management?

41:05Jeffrey Goldberg:Absolutely. That's a bestseller.

41:06Ben:Something that I learned about myself, and this was a question that people had about me, my friends and enemies and bosses had about me when I became editor, which is like, okay, so you're doing magazine journals, which is a very solo kind of journalism, you know, for 25 years. and it's all about you the writer like this is my story and this is my cover and this is my media whatever and it's like and people were like how are you going to transition to like making other people have success and I said I don't know like maybe I'll be frustrated and want to just write my own stories now I still as I mentioned I want to do my own journalism because I like finding out for myself things that I'm interested in but what I found out is that And I feel sort of silly saying this because it sounds a little bit like, gee, golly gee, but I get such joy and happiness when someone nails a great story, especially when they're younger.

42:08Ben:And these days, most of the people around me are younger than I am. I'm there to hold them up and to try to protect them and to say to them, what do you most want to achieve in life and let me help you achieve it. and it might take a while and we're in this for the long run and if you give people that security in their life, they will achieve great things. Well, you really could use this in your forthcoming management guide. I can see it flying off the shelves already.

42:38Jeffrey Goldberg:Well, Jeffrey, thanks again. This was really interesting.

42:40Ben:Thanks, Jeff. Good, I'm glad we could do it. Thank you.

42:54Max:So, Max, at the end of the show there, Jeff was asking if he'd made any news. You're the fastest draw on the beat. Did he make any news? What did you think?

43:01Jeffrey Goldberg:I mean, certainly whatever conversation he had with Jeff Bezos recently at whatever sort of gathering they were at, that, to me, felt like news. And particularly the fact that Jeffrey Goldberg was asking whether Bezos was still interested and invested in the post and getting an answer directly from him. That, to me, felt like news.

43:21Max:Jeff's comeback to Bezos there, which is to say we're all on the same Google, is, I think, a pretty good point.

43:26Jeffrey Goldberg:That is a good point. I don't know if in that moment I would have it to go back to make a joke to Bezos like that. But who knows? Hopefully I'll get the opportunity at some point. But I also thought that he had really interesting things to say about media ownership and Lorene Powell Jobs' stewardship of the Atlantic. I feel like he revealed a lot more about media ownership than I was really expecting. A lot of times people in Jeff's job are a little scared, frankly, to talk about the owner. It suggests to me that they have a very good and close working relationship. Ben, what did you think? Were you struck by anything specific that Jeff had to say about Laureen Powell Jobs' ownership?

44:03Jeffrey Goldberg:I mean, he also talked at length, obviously, about his thoughts on Barry Weiss. He shared a little bit of Trump's office interior decorating details that I had not heard before, and I don't think that that was in the transcript that he shared of their interview. But Ben, were you struck by anything that Jeff had to say about the powerful individuals who are shaping media today?

44:23Max:I mean, there's a lot that I think exactly the same way he does on certain things. I think my favorite line is that it beats working for a living. And I think that's how he feels about journalism too. That's how I feel about it. And I do think at the heart of these news companies, media companies, publishers, whatever you want to call them, it is the journalism. And you do have to really love it and be excited about it. And then the fact that the really like most core function of an editor is having your reporters back. Like I just totally believe that too. As people who have called to complain about Max's work may have occasionally found.

44:55Max:Nobody's ever done that. Which no one has ever done. But I mean I do think that like in a big part of a successful newsroom is that swagger and that confidence and that sense of just like we love the stories. We want more stories. Like that's just so important. And you can see how that gets managed out of these big institutions that are nervous about their finances and are in decline in some sense. That kind of confidence can be replaced by a sort of neurosis that – and I think if you want to look at sort of the gap between where the Wall Street Journal went and where the Washington Post went, like journalistic confidence is sort of underestimated as an ingredient in essentially commercial success.

45:31Jeffrey Goldberg:I think that's true across media. It's not just news. Pretty much everyone wants to. But it's the same thing in politics as well. Everybody wants to be on the side of a winner and they're interested in that. And you can see that even Trump was kind of drawn to that, you know, talking a little bit about the Atlantic's success and how they basically, they got one, right?

45:50Max:And it's very true in all the creative businesses. Like you need, if you're in film, if you're in TV, like you got to be able to take risks and feel like somebody has your back. And then, I don't know. I mean, I found it very interesting to hear Jeffrey think, talk about kind of his, like where he sits in the Israel story and the kind of broader foreign policy story he's been covering forever. I didn't know he'd had this falling out with Netanyahu, who I guess saw him as kind of like a Obama stooge. And, you know, and now Jeffrey, who, you know, is in American terms, often criticized from the left, I mean, sort of, you know, sees himself as aligned with the Israeli left.

46:22Max:I mean, I'm very, I would love to read that. I mean, the story about that, this arc, and it's a story I care about a lot and I'm interested in, of these fringe right-wing figures in Israel who are now in the government. I mean, I'm very interested in reading his story of this kind of violent march, you know, 30 years ago that now represents the mainstream politics in that country is, you know, obviously a very interesting story and I want to read it.

46:46Jeffrey Goldberg:Ben, I thought it was a really, really interesting conversation. I was so glad that we were able to get Jeff, particularly at the one-year anniversary of SignalGate, which probably still is the single defining story of Trump 2.0. Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Mixed Signals from us here at Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Manny Fidel, with special thanks to Josh Billinson, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Daniel Haift, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Steve Bone. Our public editor is Laureen Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic.

47:25Jeffrey Goldberg:Laureen, we would love to have you on the show. We've tried before. I thought this went super well with Jeff. You know, he had a lot to say. You could come on here and respond.

47:32Max:If you like the show, please subscribe on YouTube and please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

47:37Jeffrey Goldberg:And please leave us a review, preferably five stars. But if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.