TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, there was this piece, I'm sure you saw this in Business Insider, it was pretty unbelievable by one of your former employees who has gone on to become a kind of pro-Trump activist online. He didn't start that way. But he recounts what it was like to work at BuzzFeed. I'm quoting, he says “I was talking to my colleagues about the new Justin Bieber album and I said I love this album, I love Bieber, he's my spirit animal. And someone came up to me at buzzfeed and said, 'Hey, bro, you can't say spirit animal, that's culturally appropriating native American culture. And it's not cool.” And he said, I didn't really think this happened. But it does happen at BuzzFeed. That doesn't seem like a culture of free inquiry to me.
BEN SMITH: So that was, he was an employee of our Los Angeles entertainment division. I did actually try to report out that anecdote because it sounds pretty preposterous. I don't think it happened. I was not there. More broadly, that story, it's a guy, he goes under the name Baked Alaska, his name is Tim. I mean, I don't think, he was not somebody who was, I think, persecuted for his conservative beliefs. This was somebody who I think, obviously did not have a great experience at BuzzFeed. Left BuzzFeed, for a while hung out in the sort of pro-Trump movement, and then started tweeting about how Jews control the media and got tossed out of the pro-Trump movement. I don't really see a straight line between not having a great experience in our office and tweeting about the Jews.
CARLSON: He may be a wacko. But I am still pretty sympathetic. I don't know anything about him beyond this. But I'm, this sounds right to me having been around this alot. He said “I got a lot of dirty looks and people stopped inviting me to meetings when I said I was voting for Trump. It was like I was a heretic. Nobody wanted to talk to me. All their opinions about me changed.”
