Right after President Trump announced he planned to nominate Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, my phone rang endlessly, as yours probably did too. Until he pulled out today. 

Yet Mr. Gaetz provided us with a full week of material. One particularly funny friend at D.C., who I will refrain from naming because sometimes he tells me important things in confidence, asked “So, how old are your kids now?” “21” I replied. “Oh, good,” he said, “So they, too, are qualified to serve as Attorney General.”

Of course it was funny precisely because it wasn’t.

I belong, by accident, to a group chat of right-wing guys, mercenaries who operate in the Middle East. A source added me by mistake, and for probably a year now, I’ve sat on it quietly, eavesdropping, hoping no one notices me. Mostly the conversation is predictable — Iran must be destroyed; long live Tucker and Trump; Tulsi is fabulous… Yet, even this group was thrown into disarray by the news: “Matt Gates (sic) as Attorney General? All right I think that’s retarded,” somebody wrote. I’m guessing from his language and spelling this is not a person who goes in for pronouns.

I was almost tempted to blow my cover and post a thumbs-up. Only self-preservation kicked in. I didn’t.

Which brings me to the point I want to make today: as I see it, my job is to lurk on group chats that I belong to by mistake. I want to learn what people who have extremely different backgrounds and experiences — and yes, views — think. Why? Because it makes me a better writer. I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that empathy isn’t just useful, it’s critical. You are never going to be invited into a room if the people in it can’t relate to you. I am always looking for what I have in  common with people to find a connection. From there you establish the trust you need to gain information.

One of the things, in my view, that Trump’s stunning victory showed was that there is a vast chasm of disconnection in America, not just between the Democrats and Republicans, but between the mainstream press and consumers who voted for Trump. There’s a reason Trump chose to do interviews on untraditional bro-media platforms like Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Much of the country no longer trusts established platforms. Hence, for example, the startling drop in audience numbers on CNN and MSNBC on election night. Hence the very reason I write my Substack newsletter. Increasingly, consumers of media seek authenticity and connection with the people who bring them news, opinion, or — as my amusing D.C. friend dubs what I write here — “tea and gossip with Vicky.”

The powers that be at Substack tell us that the data show that most people would rather have spelling mistakes and bad grammar than some overly-edited, overly-polished, overly-run-past-the-standards-committee piece of reporting that feels as remote to them as the summit of Mount Everest. And just as lofty. Trump voters clearly do not want to be told what to think by the press. In fact, the numbers show, they are going in the opposite direction. Understandably, they want to make up their own minds.

As a reporter who was trained in England, I have sometimes been irritated, frankly, by the sanctimonious position of many colleagues and, indeed, friends who take the press’s role as the fourth estate so seriously in this country that they treat our profession not like a job but some sort of vaulted priesthood, which everyone else is supposed to revere. They expect their viewers, listeners, and readers to fall in line with their reporting, which is more often thinly-veiled opinion — because that’s the point of their existence.

I believe in the mantra “show don’t tell,” and if you’ve done the reporting, then the facts will speak for themselves. And I also believe that in order to get accurate facts, you have to listen to all points of view. When I reported on Kushner, Inc. I spoke to just as many Republicans as Democrats. This kind of work takes time, and it also requires understanding, empathy, and trust. You need to be able to get in the room.

Therefore, I am completely baffled by the sudden exodus of journalists from Twitter, now known as X. In case you haven’t been following — and most of you are sensible people who have other things to do than obsessively follow the inside-baseball-media-echo-sphere — there’s been a huge exodus from the platform, following the announcement that X’s proprietor, Elon Musk, will run the new Department of Government Efficiency. The Guardian newspaper announced on X that it would no longer be posting on X because of “the often disturbing content” found on the platform.

The MSNBC anchor Joy Reid left; so too did Don Lemon. A host of celebrities. The platform Bluesky announced today that it has suddenly gained 2 million users, all fleeing X. The great influx ironically caused it to crash.

Full disclosure: I too have signed up for Bluesky because I am curious and I want to see and engage in what conversations evolve there. Yet I have no intention of leaving X. Or Threads. Because how can one be part of a conversation if one only hears one side of it? And if one doesn’t engage with people one disagrees with?

Yes, it’s annoying to have to scroll through endless right-wing — often facile — posts to get to the people you used to see at the top of your feed in the pre-Mr. Musk days. But either we accept that we live in Trump’s America and figure out how to connect. Or we don’t. Some of what Mr. Musk personally posts is actually witty.

For better or worse I choose to engage. Except on the group chat. There, I think I am still going to keep very quiet….