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Van Nuys landscaping company fined for 'serious' and 'willful' heat violations

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Van Nuys landscaping company fined for 'serious' and 'willful' heat violations

A Van Nuys-based landscaping company has been fined more than a quarter of a million dollars for “deliberately and knowingly” failing to follow state heat protection rules.

The company, Parkwood Landscape Maintenance, must pay $276,425 for failing to provide employees with access to water, shaded area and proper training on preventing heat-related illness, according to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA.

The landscaping company lacked written procedures for how to protect employees in high temperatures that often exceeded 95 degrees, and employees were forced to purchase their own drinking water, in violation of the rules, which require that employers provide fresh drinking water free of charge, the Cal/OSHA citation said.

The citation marks the first time the workplace safety agency has issued its most severe charge for a heat safety violation, determining the violations were “serious” and “willful.”

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A violation is categorized as serious if it could result in injury, illness or death and classified as willful if the employer knew there was a health hazard and took no action to protect against it or had been previously cited for failing to take action, said former Cal/OSHA investigator Garrett Brown, who retired in 2014 after 20 years with the agency.

Parkwood Landscape was cited previously, in 2022, for failing to meet heat safety requirements. Despite being provided with information on how to change its procedures, the company did not implement necessary preventative measures, Cal/OSHA said.

“Employers have a responsibility to protect their workers from the dangers of extreme heat. It is unacceptable for any business to blatantly ignore safety protocols, putting their employees at serious risk,” Cal/OSHA Chief Debra Lee said in a news release from the agency.

Parkwood Landscape will have the opportunity to appeal the citation. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cal/OSHA began its investigation in June after receiving a complaint about Parkwood Landscape employees working outdoors without access to water or heat illness training.

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The citation represents an effort by Cal/OSHA to better enforce heat standards after fielding criticism that the agency been beset by inadequate staffing and claims of ineffectiveness. The criticisms come as scorching conditions have intensified in recent years due to climate change, endangering farmworkers, construction workers and others who toil in extreme temperatures.

Cal/OSHA is grappling with high vacancy rates and faced condemnation from lawmakers at a February hearing, during which farmworkers testified that they’d been exposed to extreme heat and pesticides on the job. The agency has begun recruitment efforts to fill those positions but remains understaffed and slow at hiring, even as it seeks to enforce a growing list of heat and other safety regulations.

In 2006, California became the first state in the nation to implement heat standards for outdoor work, requiring employers to provide access to shade and water, and cool-down rests when workers need them. In high heat conditions, defined as temperatures of 95 degrees or higher, employers are required to remind workers of safe practices, encourage breaks and drinking water, and observe them for signs or symptoms of heat illness.

Earlier this year the agency adopted new heat protections that apply to indoor workers, expanding safety measures for more than a million workers laboring in warehouses, kitchens, laundry rooms and other hot indoor settings.

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California issues landmark rules to improve home insurance market

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California issues landmark rules to improve home insurance market

Landmark regulations intended to encourage insurers to write more policies in risky wildfire neighborhoods through the use of complex computer models were released Friday by the state.

Under new rules intended to stabilize California’s troubled home insurance market, insurers will be able to set rates by drawing on a wide swath of meteorological, geographic and other data in establishing rates, rather than largely relying on historical losses.

The insurance industry argued the change was imperative given global warming’s role in a number of wildfires, including in 2017 and 2018 when thousands of homes burned down. In setting their rates, insurers also must account for efforts to make properties fire resistant.

“With our changing climate we can no longer look to the past. We are being innovative and forward-looking to protect Californians’ access to insurance,” Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said in a statement.

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The new regulations — a central element of Lara’s Sustainable Insurance Strategy — drew support from the industry and others, including farm and environmental groups, but a mixed response from consumer advocates. Los Angeles group Consumer Watchdog contends that the computer models will be a “black box” that will lead to sharp premium hikes.

The regulations that take effect Jan. 2 arose out of a broad agreement Lara reached with the industry that gave insurers regulatory concessions, including the use of the computer models, in exchange for a commitment by large insurers such as State Farm, Farmers and Allstate to write policies in neighborhoods prone to wildfires equivalent to 85% of their statewide market share. That would mean, for example, an insurer with a 10% share of the state’s homeowners insurance market would have to cover 8.5% of the homes in riskier neighborhoods as identified by the department. No such requirement currently exists.

The changes come as residents living in mountainous and hillside neighborhoods have found insurance harder to come by, forcing them to buy bare-bones policies from the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which has seen its risk exposure mushroom from $153 billion in 2020 to $458 billion as of September.

The regulations establish a process by which the computer models, which are developed by companies such as publicly traded Verisk Analytics, can be reviewed by the state and the public. The department also said it has hired an expert in a newly created position to oversee the process of “examining model integrity and ensuring public review.”

Consumer Watchdog has argued that the review process will still allow the modeling companies and their client insurance companies to keep essential elements of the proprietary models out of the public’s eye, violating the public review provisions of Proposition 103, the 1988 initiative spearheaded by the group that rewrote the state’s insurance regulations.

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It also contends there are loopholes that will allow insurers to skirt the 85% coverage threshold.

“Consumers should expect large rate hikes but not more insurance policies sold under the new rules,” Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement.

Michael Soller, Lara’s chief spokesperson, disputed the criticisms and said the department’s regulatory review process gives it the authority to prevent unwarranted rate hikes and to ensure that insurers are making progress in meeting the 85% coverage goal.

“We don’t get this done unless we have companies writing policies. If you don’t write the policies, you don’t use the tools,” he said.

Amy Bach, executive director of San Francisco group United Policyholders, acknowledged there was “wiggle room” in the regulations regarding the coverage threshold, but she expected there would be negotiations as insurers file for rate hikes and are pushed to meet the 85% figure.

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“The principle is there, the concept is out there, the deal is out there, and honestly, there’s no other solutions on the horizon that are anywhere close,” she said.

The department noted support from the Environmental Defense Fund, which was quoted stating the models “are essential for modeling perils like flood and wildfire that are now worsening as the planet warms.” Also cited was the California Farm Bureau, which said the models should increase insurance access for farmers.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., a national trade association representing home, auto and business insurers, released a statement that called California’s current insurance regulations “outdated” and “too slow to respond to rapidly evolving conditions.”

“California will continue to have a robust regulatory and rate approval process that guarantees that rates reflect the actual cost of covering claims. We look forward to working with [the department] to implement these new regulations and make sure they are efficient and workable,” it said.

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After Los Angeles County bought a skyscraper, a fight over whether to tear down its historic headquarters

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After Los Angeles County bought a skyscraper, a fight over whether to tear down its historic headquarters

With the ink dry on the County of Los Angeles’ $200-million purchase of the Gas Company Tower office building downtown, a fight is brewing over what to do with the 1960s-vintage headquarters it plans to leave behind.

Supervisor Janice Hahn and preservationists are pushing back against a plan to move workers into the newly purchased skyscraper on Bunker Hill and raze the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which was renamed after Hahn’s father and is a centerpiece of the government-oriented Civic Center neighborhood.

“It came as a big shock to me when I realized what was happening,” she said, blaming county administrators for quietly pushing through what she called a closely held plan to move the seat of county power and thousands of workers, then knock down a prominent public building.

“I thought it was a little bit of a secretive process, a little bit of they knew what they were doing, but didn’t exactly reveal it,” she said.

County officials, however, plan to start moving staff from the Hall of Administration and other county buildings into the downtown skyscraper next summer, the start of a process that could take three or four years.

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Los Angeles County’s $200-million purchase of the Gas Company Tower in downtown L.A. is complete and county workers are slated to start moving in next summer.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Preliminary county plans call for razing the Hall of Administration but keeping the building where the Board of Supervisors convenes in public sessions. That building is connected to the Hall of Administration but is a separate structure that could stand on its own.

The plan to raze the Hall of Administration is not set in stone, county officials said. Formal planning for the future of the site will begin in early 2025 and a master plan should be complete in about a year, followed by an environmental review of the plan that may last into 2027. But keeping the building would raise budget challenges because a large portion of the funds used to buy the Gas Company Tower came from money that had been earmarked for seismic retrofits and other necessary fixes to the Hall of Administration and other county buildings.

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Hahn cast the sole “no” vote on the county’s purchase of the Gas Company Tower last month. When she first learned of the proposal to buy the 52-story building, which faced foreclosure, she thought it was an opportunity for the county to make a favorable investment in a down market. The county could potentially consolidate some of its many offices there and then sell it later at a profit when the office real estate market recovered.

Then, she said, “it was revealed” that the plan was to move the the Board of Supervisors offices and county services to the Gas Company Tower, and ultimately demolish the Hall of Administration.

“It’s really still unnerving to me, and a bit of a shock, that this was their plan all along,” Hahn said. “I think the public is still a little in the dark about what the plan is.”

The Hall of Administration was a source of civic pride when it and other key buildings in the Civic Center, including the Los Angeles County Superior Court — Stanley Mosk Courthouse, were being built starting in the 1950s.

“What the Acropolis was to Ancient Greece during her Golden Age, the new Civic Center now being hewn from the shabby slopes of Bunker Hill will be to Los Angeles,” The Times wrote in 1957.

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The Hall of Administration was being built to last a century, it was reported. The capital projects analyst in the office of the county’s chief administrative officer was “ready to wager the Hall of Administration will still be in service by 2059,” The Times said

The building was renamed the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in 1992 in honor of Hahn’s father, who was the county’s longest serving supervisor and a former Los Angeles city councilman.

Hahn said she is not driven by his legacy to save the building.

“Hey, if you want to take the name off, if that makes you feel better about preserving it,” she said, “I’m OK with that.”

The head of the Los Angeles Conservancy, which advocates for the preservation of meaningful local structures, said the Hall of Administration is “definitely historic” and significant. It was designed by a prominent team of midcentury architects including Paul R. Williams, the first licensed Black architect west of the Mississippi, who designed movie stars’ homes and prominent public buildings.

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Knocking the Hall of Administration down would be “a misstep for a lot of reasons,” conservancy President Adrian Scott Fine said.

Among the reasons to keep it, he said, is its position across Gloria Molina Grand Park from the Mosk Courthouse. The two are a pair that frame the park connecting City Hall with the Music Center.

“These two buildings are integral” to the Civic Center, Fine said. “You can’t lose one without losing the function that they were intended to do.”

The Hall of Administration public spaces are filled with light brown marble and terrazzo that can make the halls feel institutional. There are spots in the building that appear to need painting, patching and other maintenance.

“It’s kind of a bleak place,” acknowledged frequent visitor Will Wright, director of government and public affairs for the L.A. chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Which tells me you really need to invest in its upkeep.”

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With investment the county could “restore and uplift” the interior to make it more appealing to employees and visitors, he said.

Ideally, the county would own both the Gas Company Tower and a restored Hall of Administration, Wright said, a position Hahn supports.

“I believe the amount of money that it would take to retrofit this is still an amount of money that we could easily find in a $50-billion budget,” Hahn said in an interview in her office. “I don’t think it’s too big of an ask for what this has meant for decades to the people of Los Angeles County.”

Los Angeles County oversaw the renovation of the Hall of Justice a decade ago.

Los Angeles County oversaw the renovation of the Hall of Justice a decade ago. The historic building was seriously damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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The Hall of Administration is less flashy than other downtown landmarks such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, City Hall and the LADWP headquarters, but it doesn’t need to be eye-catching to be important, real estate developer and preservationist Dan Rosenfeld said.

“Not every public building needs to scream for attention,” he said. “It would be a very discordant city if they did.”

Rosenfeld worked on preserving other significant historic downtown buildings that were seismically unsafe and threatened by the wrecking ball, including City Hall and the Hall of Justice, both of which date to the 1920s and remain in use after renovations.

“It would be relatively simple to reinforce the building for lateral seismic strength and to modernize the interior,” Rosenfeld said of the Hall of Administration. “The building can and should be saved.”

The Hall of Administration is part of a Civic Center with public spaces and state, local and federal buildings “that defines Los Angeles,” he said, and should not be abandoned by the county. The Civic Center “is a symbol of our democracy,” he said, a place where citizens gather to celebrate, protest and mourn.

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“A civic center is more than a collection of buildings,” Rosenfeld said. “It is a symbol of what a community believes in.”

The county will not neglect the Civic Center, Chief Executive Fesia Davenport said.

“We understand the importance of a vibrant and well-functioning Civic Center and are committed to maintaining the County’s presence in this vital public space,” Davenport said in a statement. “As we embark on our Civic Center master planning process over the next year, we will be inviting extensive public input to help shape our recommendations to the Board of Supervisors to help guide their decisions on how best to reimagine our Civic Center buildings for optimal public use.”

The 52-story tower Gas Company Tower at 555 W. 5th St. was widely considered one of the city’s most prestigious office buildings when it was completed in 1991. It has nearly 1.5 million square feet of space on a 1.4-acre site at the base of Bunker Hill.

Slightly more than half of the building is leased to a diverse mix of tenants including law firm Latham & Watkins and accounting firm Deloitte, real estate brokerage JLL said. Its namesake tenant, Southern California Gas Co., said in September that it will move from the tower where it has been a primary tenant since the building was completed to another skyscraper a block north at 350 S. Grand Ave.

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Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.

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I Traded My News Apps for Rumble, the Right-Wing YouTube. Here’s What I Saw.

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I Traded My News Apps for Rumble, the Right-Wing YouTube. Here’s What I Saw.

As soon as President-elect Donald J. Trump won the presidential race, influencers on Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube, flooded the platform with a simple catchphrase: “We are the media now.”

The idea seemed to capture a growing sense that traditional journalists have lost their position at the center of the media ecosystem. Polls show that trust in mainstream news media has plummeted, and that nearly half of all young people get their news from “influencers” rather than journalists.

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In its place, they argue, are right-wing digital creators who have found hordes of fans online. Rumble, for instance, is tiny compared with YouTube, but it is a primary source of news for millions of Americans, according to Pew Research Center. On election night, its active viewership topped out at more than two million, and the company said in a statement that it averaged more than 67 million monthly active users in the final quarter of 2024.

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You are the news now.This is a real story.It’s not about back slaps, it’s about how now, it’s time to floor the freaking gas pedal.When you’re done with me, go watch Graham Allen.When you’re done with Graham Allen, watch Crowder.When you’re done with Crowder watch Tucker, then watch Rogan or whatever.You don’t need old school media anymore.

▶ Dan Bongino, host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” says viewers should follow his program with other Rumble creators in a bid to replace mainstream media.

If Rumble was the media now, I wondered what it would be like to consume an all-Rumble diet. So on Nov. 18, about two weeks after the election, I deleted my news apps, unsubscribed from all my podcasts and filtered all my newsletters to the trash. And for the next week, from early morning till late at night, I got all my news from Rumble.

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An alternate reality

I started by visiting Rumble’s homepage on Monday morning where I saw my first recommended video. It was about the risk of nuclear war, with an A.I.-generated photo of President Biden laughing maniacally above a headline that read: “WWIII INCOMING?! Biden Authorizes Strike on Russia Ahead of Trump Taking Office!!”

Rumble was once an obscure video platform featuring mostly viral cat videos. Founded in 2013 by a Canadian entrepreneur, it was designed as a home for independent creators who felt crowded out on YouTube. But the platform took a hard right turn around the time of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, when social networks and YouTube cracked down on users who violated their rules. Conservatives flocked to other platforms, including Rumble, which quickly embraced its new role as a “free speech” haven — and saw its valuation surge to half a billion dollars practically overnight.

Its content today goes far beyond cat videos. Video game livestreams populate its homepage alongside a bizarre face-slapping competition called “Power Slap.” But political commentary and news remain its most popular categories by far.

The front page

A screenshot from the first day of this experiment shows videos about WWIII and live categories focused on news, entertainment and “conspiracies.”

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I chose a selection of popular “news” shows to watch, along with political content from other areas, like its active “conspiracies” section.

Because my experiment began so soon after Mr. Trump swept to victory on Nov. 5, I expected many of the videos to feel triumphant.

There were a few moments of joy: After the hosts of “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC talk show, visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, hosts of Rumble shows gleefully mocked them, saying they went to “kiss the ring and bend the knee.” Clips of N.F.L. athletes doing Mr. Trump’s dance moves were a sign, the hosts said, that Mr. Trump had recaptured popular culture from the clutches of Hollywood liberals.

Multiple shows criticized the same clip from “Morning Joe”

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▶ Stay Free with Russell Brand

But their happiness quickly gave way to a relentless outpouring of anger and frustration, as they fixated on a cast of perceived enemies to blame for America’s troubles — from Democratic politicians to TikTok personalities to Republican adversaries.

Just a few hours into the experiment, it was clear that I was falling into an alternate reality fueled almost entirely by outrage. Among the claims I heard:

Some people at think tanks in Washington were “morons” and “crazier than any schizophrenic.”

The Department of Homeland Security was running a “sex-trafficking operation,” a claim apparently based on a misreading of a government report. (The report, by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, indicated that more than 300,000 unaccompanied minors had not received a notice to appear in court or had received the notice but had failed to appear. Some conservative commentators said this meant the children were being trafficked, but experts in immigration policy said it meant no such thing.)

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Progressives were trying to get Republicans killed — a claim based on death threats that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she received.

After only one day, I could feel my perspective shifting. When I described to my wife what I was hearing on Rumble, she said I was right to feel uneasy because the world I was immersing myself in sounded genuinely awful.

Hour by hour, Rumble’s hosts stoked fears about nearly everything: culture wars, transgender Americans and even a potential World War III.

‘Do you guys know where your fallout shelters are?’

On the second night, while catching up on the show “Redacted,” I heard that World War III was more or less imminent because of rising tensions with Russia but that most Americans were unaware of it.

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Exactly what to make of this remained unclear to me, but I suspected tensions would need to rise much further before bombs started dropping. Clayton Morris, a former Fox News personality who co-hosts the show with his wife, seemed convinced that nuclear war was coming, describing the lack of fallout shelters in major cities throughout the United States. (I later read news articles that offered a fuller picture, suggesting that the risk of escalation was real but that nuclear threats were also a strategy in Mr. Putin’s saber rattling.)

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We have zero infrastructure in the United Statesthat could save lives in a critical crisis like this.No fallout shelters, no contingency if Russia,you know, fires against, you know, fires missiles into Nashville,Los Angeles, Buffalo, New York City, Los Angeles.Do you guys know where your fallout shelters are?Where you’ll be taken care of?Where food and supplies will be? No, you don’t.

▶ Clayton Morris, co-host of “Redacted,” warns there are not enough fallout shelters in major cities in the United States.

The coverage struck me as particularly scary, but I also paused to consider whether Mr. Morris had any credentials as a Russia-Ukraine analyst. Since 2017, he has pivoted his career from hosting television shows to offering investors “financial freedom” through real estate investing. He was sued in 2019 by two dozen clients who said they were sold ramshackle homes as investment properties, then relocated his family to Portugal before the lawsuits were settled — which some said complicated the litigation proceedings. (Mr. Morris denied any wrongdoing.)

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On Rumble, though, he seemed authoritative: His slickly produced show had more than 560,000 followers and it aired daily with an active comments section filled with supporters. The videos were recommended to me by Rumble’s algorithm, so I kept watching.

Other shows referenced clips directly from Russian state television or the Russian government. During “The Roseanne Barr Show,” a segment about nuclear war bled into an ad for an emergency health kit. (In an email, the show’s co-host Jake Pentland, who is Ms. Barr’s son, told me their show wants to keep Americans “safe and protected from this wildly corrupt administration whether that’s through education or highlighting specific products that can protect them.”)

The prospect of an impending World War III stuck with me long after the livestreams ended. As I shuttled my son to day care or walked down aisles at the grocery store, I found my mind drifting to thoughts of nuclear bombs, a military draft or how a global conflict might actually unfold.

While watching a segment on the dire prediction, I glanced over at my wife, who was enjoying Netflix’s romantic comedy series “Nobody Wants This,” unaware about the threat of nuclear winter.

‘Who’s in charge now? We are.’

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As the days ticked by, I saw how the outrage stoked online could burst into the real world.

Early in the week, multiple hosts on Rumble were furious over a Democratic official in Pennsylvania who they suggested was trying to steal the election by counting invalid ballots. The controversy gained nationwide attention and the official, Diane Ellis Marseglia, the commissioner for Bucks County, Pa., received profanity-laden emails and death threats.

Reading news articles about it later, though, it was clear the situation was more complicated than the hosts had suggested. The courts responded with additional guidance and the county followed the law.

The official eventually apologized for using a badly worded statement that stoked the backlash — and her apology video also made the rounds on Rumble.

“We are all going to learn lessons from this new media landscape,” Ms. Marseglia said in her apology. “Most of all, I am.”

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Dan Bongino, the host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” relished the moment.

“Who’s in charge now? We are,” he said triumphantly. “Who made this a story? Us.”

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Who’s in charge now? We are.Who made this a story?Us.You.You’re like, I didn’t—No, you did.People like me and all of these conservative MAGA podcasters sent that video out.And you made it a story.

▶ Dan Bongino, host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” says that right-wing influencers have replaced mainstream media.

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It seemed clear that actual news — the objective details about complex situations like election proceedings or the war in Ukraine — mattered far less than how these situations could be contorted to support Mr. Trump or deride Democrats. Nearly every show created a visceral feeling that the nation was barrelling from crisis to crisis.

Progressives were getting away with galling levels of incompetence or corruption, the hosts said over and over again. Even though Mr. Trump and the Republican Party would soon control the White House and Congress, and conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court, there were more battles to come.

After just a week, this alternate reality started shifting how I instinctively reacted to the world outside Rumble. I would catch a stray story on the local news radio about something innocuous, like train delays or traffic jams, and wonder: “Can I really trust this?”

It’s true that listening to any single news source long enough will shift your perspective. But few sources have as many ties to Mr. Trump and his incoming administration as Rumble. Its top personalities are frequently seen with Mr. Trump at events or at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, with hosts suggesting they will have special access to the administration.

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We told you we were going to go to Mar-a-Lagoand we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonnaget some interesting access in the next couple of years.And, because so many people that’s been in the administrationhave been, like, true friends of us.Been on this program, been a part of this audiencelocked in with you.

▶ Benny Johnson, host of “The Benny Show,” said he expected to have “interesting access” to the Trump administration.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr. Trump’s pick for a new government efficiency initiative, and Howard Lutnick, the likely commerce secretary, owned millions of dollars worth of Rumble shares when it went public in 2022.

So did Craft Ventures, which was co-founded by David Sacks, an investor who sits on Rumble’s board of directors and was recently named Mr. Trump’s pick for cryptocurrency czar.

Christopher Pavlovski, Rumble’s founder and chief executive, has emerged as a Trump ally, too. In a post on X, he shared a photo from after the election of him standing next to several people, including Elon Musk, one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers. At the back of the frame and grinning was the soon to be 47th president of the United States.

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“Free speech saved,” Mr. Pavlovski wrote. Rumble and Mr. Pavlovski did not reply to multiple requests for comment on this story.

I received a statement from Tim Murtaugh, a representative for Rumble who was also Mr. Trump’s communications director for his 2020 campaign. He said: “The New York Times and its fellow legacy media outlets have lost their monopoly on deciding what information people can have, so of course they’re rushing to attack Rumble, a key alternative in the news marketplace.”

The ‘planet might be saved’ by Trump.

The fear and outrage that infused every show was offset by a sense of hopefulness that the president-elect would fix everything — even that the “planet might have been saved” because he was re-elected.

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It is not an exaggeration to saythe planet might have been savedby the fact that we won the election two weeks ago today.

▶ Charlie Kirk has credited Mr. Trump’s re-election with potentially saving the world.

Blame for any hiccups in Mr. Trump’s strategy was assigned to Democrats or even Republicans who were not sufficiently obedient.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, said on one show that while Republicans controlled the Senate, the party remained “a third MAGA, a third Republican and a third RINO,” meaning “Republican in name only.”

“We’ve got control, but do we have control?” Mr. Tuberville summarized.

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Perhaps the biggest cheerleader for Mr. Trump was Mr. Bongino, the eponymous host of Rumble’s most-watched show, with 3.4 million followers.

Mr. Bongino is a former Fox News host who ran three unsuccessful bids for elected office before striking gold in the right-wing commentary business. The podcast version of his show consistently ranks among the top news podcasts in the country. Rumble’s financial documents show that his company, Bongino Inc., owned 5.8 percent of the company when it went public in 2022, now worth more than $100 million.

Though I listened to an hour of Mr. Bongino’s opinions each day, it seemed like I learned mostly what various progressive or mainstream media figures had said about different culture war topics, and Mr. Bongino’s predictable reactions to them.

Bongino’s focus

Many segments on Mr. Bongino’s show included comments from liberals or mainstream news media, along with Mr. Bongino’s predictable reactions to them.

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Note: Times are approximate

On his Thursday show, he talked about the nation’s intelligence apparatus — but it was in response to what a CNN host had said about its effectiveness.

He talked about cancel culture — but in response to a comment on “The View” about Matt Gaetz, Mr. Trump’s first pick for attorney general.

He talked about identity politics — but in reaction to what a Democratic congresswoman said about race.

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He talked about the murder conviction of an undocumented migrant — but in reaction to what a news anchor had said about the case on ABC News.

Nearly every show I watched on Rumble framed issues this way, focusing on how news was discussed by mainstream media, and then complaining about it.

I don’t remember seeing Mr. Bongino criticize Mr. Trump — not once. He spent the first part of the week saying that Mr. Gaetz, the former Republican congressman who was briefly a contender for attorney general, would surely be confirmed. He seemed to dismiss a federal sex-trafficking investigation into Mr. Gaetz by saying it was impossible to find “good” people for top roles. (Mr. Gaetz denied any wrongdoing and the Justice Department declined to file charges.)

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So all I’m trying to say to you is if you’re using good or bad,as a metric to appoint people who could change the country for the betteryou’re going to lose,because they’re all badso forget it.

▶ Mr. Bongino said anyone seeking political power who could “change the country for the better” is a bad person.

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When Mr. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration later that week after significant pushback, Mr. Bongino never faulted Mr. Trump for the whole ordeal. Instead, he blamed Republicans and said it was part of Mr. Trump’s strategy to intentionally overwhelm his critics with controversial picks.

‘You’re going to become part of the show.’

After watching Rumble nonstop for days, I realized this very article was likely to fuel its own cycle of outrage on the platform. But I was surprised when that happened before it was even published.

I wrote to everyone mentioned in the article to ask for their perspective about Rumble and its popular shows, but few replied. Instead, people like Russell Brand, the former actor turned political commentator, took one of my emails and made an entire segment out of it. Mr. Bongino called me “public enemy No. 1” and claimed my story would focus on Rumble’s fringiest voices in a bid to get the site banned.

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“Don’t ever email us,” he warned. “Don’t. Because you’re going to become part of the show.”

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We’re in charge now.Chew on that —-.I’m serious by the way.Don’t ever email us.Don’t.Because you’re going to become part of the show.

▶ Mr. Bongino says any journalists contacting the show will “become part of the show.”

Mr. Pentland, the co-host of “The Roseanne Barr Podcast,” posted the email I sent him to his X account. Rumble’s chief executive reposted it, then Elon Musk reposted that to his more than 200 million followers. My phone number was visible, and apparently seen more than 50 million times on the platform, so I was soon flooded with angry phone calls and texts calling my article (which hadn’t yet been published) a “hit job” focused on World War III.

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On his show, Mr. Pentland referenced my email and said his original ad for a nuclear fallout health kit was meant to “educate our audience” about alternative medicines.

Then that segment bled into another ad for the health kit.

Stephen K. Bannon, host of “War Room,” relayed a message through his producer, saying that his show “exists as the information arm for the activist cadre at the tip of the spear of the MAGA movement.”

Candace Owens, the host of the “Candace Show,” was the only one who called me back. She said she was focusing less on political outrage lately after growing weary of chasing negativity.

“I realized I was waking up every day and I was looking for things to be angry at,” she said. “And that wasn’t healthy for me.”

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