Matt Taibbi, Editor in Chief of Racket News, joins to discuss the mainstream media's bias against ICE while Donald Trump is president.

Journalist Matt Taibbi discussed the evolution of media coverage regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), noting a shift from positive portrayals during the Obama administration to more critical coverage under President Trump. Taibbi highlighted that many enforcement practices criticized today were also common in previous administrations, but media attitudes have changed, potentially due to political dynamics and audience engagement strategies.

Taibbi also addressed the decline in public trust in legacy media, attributing it to politicized content and factual inaccuracies. As a result, more people are turning to independent journalists, who are perceived as less predictable and more independent, continuing a tradition of innovation in American journalism during periods of lost confidence in mainstream outlets.

Media accused of being anti-ICE

We're joined by the editor-in-chief of Racket News, Matt Taibbi. Matt, always great to see you, and thank you for making the time for us. Back in May of 2016, during the Obama administration, CNN got an exclusive ride-along with ICE. Watch. Just before the sun rises in the Windy City, immigration and customs enforcement agents fan out across Chicago. You have evidence, right, that he's using a fake identity? That is correct. We believe he's been using a U.S. citizen's identity to live and work. He has an Illinois driver's license. What do you think about what ICE is doing to get criminal, undocumented immigrants off the street? That's good. We really appreciate that, because, I mean, sometimes they get people that are not doing anything, and they come over here to work. The piece, Matt, was overwhelmingly positive. Ten years later, this is how the media feels about ICE. Watch this. This is not an administration that's focused on deportation. This is an administration that's focused on punishment, that's focused on trying to scare the American public. And these ICE agents are just there to kind of be part of that propaganda. We don't believe that it's law enforcement. We believe it is state-sponsored terrorism. We do not need you. You're not welcome. And you need to get the hell out of our community. Matt, what's changed? Well, this is very strange to me. I mean, I wrote a book and significantly covered the immigration question back in the Obama years. And so many of the practices that are now here being described as unprecedented are things that we knew were common 10 or 15 years ago, things like people being pulled off the streets and never seeing their families again, you know, stopping cars to check people's immigration status. You know, that was going on in Los Angeles. That was going on in Georgia. That's right. It's going all over the country. And there were record numbers of people being deported at a time when it was popular. Right. And now it isn't. And I think, you know, the main difference is that Donald Trump is president. Is it as simple as the press just wanting to support the open border? To support the open border policy of the far left, or is it about at this point now, 10 years later, you stoke division for ratings and for clicks and to placate the algorithm? What are your thoughts? It's a combination of a lot of things. A lot of news agencies are really reflexively sort of anti-Trump. And so any policy that he's going to undertake is going to get criticism whether or not they previously supported that policy or not. In this case, I think the ICE deportation policy, what makes it different is the scale of it. Maybe the fact that the agents are masked and there are more of them on the streets, so they're more visible. But apart from that, these are exactly the same policies that have been in place in the United States for 20 years. And it's just that it wasn't reported on as much. Yeah. Well, and the law hasn't changed. I mean, at the end of the day, they're all, they're enforcing laws that have been on the books for a very long time. You know, Matt, what do you think of the independent journalists who are out there today because of the media's refusal to be balanced on this? Folks like Frank Scales, who was just here, and his team, Nate Friedman and Nick Shirley. It seems like we've now moved into a new era to try to go around some of this bias. Undoubtedly, the conventional legacy media has lost a lot of confidence. You know, the media is a trust business. When you make a lot of mistakes or when the audiences can tell ahead of time what you're going to say about anything, they will tune you out. And right now, there are two different things going on. People are leaving because they're tired of the politicized content, but they're also leaving because they're tired of the facts turning out to be wrong. And so, they're going to independent journalists. Now, not all of them, you know, have great records on that second point either. But they're at least independent and less predictable. And so, they're going to get a lot of audience. I mean, that's inevitable. And frankly, that's how American journalism has always worked. We innovate in these moments and persevere.

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