Our reaction to the Steyer interview

After our interview with Tom Steyer, Tracy and I decided to take a few minutes to record our immediate reactions. Here’s that tape!

Also, for the subscriber community, I want to be transparent: I’m not used to this medium yet! I’ve spent almost half my life now doing interviews for written articles, and I’m finding that interviews for video are a whole new ball game. So I appreciate your grace as I figure out how to be a better on-camera interviewer AND immediate reactor.

I also just appreciate you being here in general. I’m having a lot of fun figuring all this out, and your support is what’s making that fun possible.

Alright, enough sap. Here’s the written transcript.

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Emily Atkin:
All right, I just want to start by saying: I told you that question was all right.

Tracy Wholf:
Ha! So we should let everyone know what happened right before we started interviewing Tom Steyer.

I’m going to paint the scene. Emily and I have been working really hard and burning the candle at both ends, so I only had a chance to look at Emily’s question set about a half hour before we got on with Tom. And the first question I read is — and I’m going to read it the way I interpreted it. Is that okay? Can I do a dramatic reading here?

Emily:
Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Tracy:
“I’ve made no secret over the years of my deep skepticism of the billionaire class. So it would be weird if I didn’t ask you something that a lot of my listeners are probably thinking, but nobody has said to your face yet. Do you think it’s ethical that you exist?”

Emily:
So you call me immediately — you look at it and you call me — and you’re like, “You can’t start with that question.”

Tracy:
First of all, you know that meme of the cat where it’s frantically typing? I read that and I was like: Emily.

And this is where we tell everyone: I am yin and you are yang. I am A and you are B.

But I was so impressed. I was really impressed, because you were right. You said if he can’t answer this, he shouldn’t be governor. And he did not flinch when you asked it. In fact, he sat there cool as a cucumber. And to your point, he’s clearly been very well prepped. I take it all back — you were right.

Emily:
That was my thought. I was like: if he’s not prepared to answer the question, should you exist as a billionaire, when agreeing to be interviewed by me, then he’s not prepared to lead a garbage can. If you search my name and the word billionaire, you don’t get anything positive.

And I still do — even after that interview — have some skepticism.