Special Appendix Episode - What's the deal with Louise Mensch? w/Special Guest Arthur Tiersky

The West Wing Thing

Hosts Joshua and David, joined by guest Arthur Tiersky, recount their personal history with former MP Louise Mensch following a recent Twitt

Key takeaways

• Louise Mensch recently targeted host Joshua on Twitter regarding his comments on Russian vodka protests.
• The hosts share memories of interacting with Mensch on a professional writers' guild message board.

Main topics

• Louise Mensch's political evolution
• Twitter controversies and algorithms

Notable quotes

What's the fucking story is with us and Louise Minch

Conclusion

A retrospective look at how social media personalities leverage contro

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:06) We have job to do. There is television we must view. For the sake of Mother Russia, we must toxify the West with online propaganda. For this is what we do best. It's a West Wing thing. Are you ready to smash Western hegemony? Cause I'm Speaker 1 (0:57) He's like, Oh Speaker 4 (1:03) yeah. Speaker 2 (1:06) You're listening to the West wing thing with Joshua and David. Speaker 4 (1:10) Yes. And, and you thought we were done. We are, we're done. We're done. This is more of an appendix. I think I was thinking about it. This is a, we're going to put this up there and people can enjoy it or not, but I feel like. Let's introduce our guest first. Our guest is a screenwriter and a very, very funny gentleman, Arthur Tierski. Artie, to those of us who know him and love him. We all have a past together. And I feel like this comes up enough. I came up on the show from time to time and we'd chat about it. And just the other day, I had an experience and had enough people going, what's your story that I thought we should just do this so it's out there from here on out. Anytime anybody wants to know what the fucking story is with us and Louise Minch, we can just link them to this. Because... What, two days ago? Out of the blue. Normally there's a connection. Totally out Speaker 2 (2:06) of the blue. Speaker 4 (2:07) Totally out of the blue. Louise Mensch came at me on Twitter holding a tweet that I had replied. In fact, I had replied to her friend Matt Chrisman back in March, making fun of people who are pouring their Russian vodka down the drain to protest the invasion of the Ukraine, which I'm not sure where you, our listeners, all come down on the invasion of Ukraine, but I'm... Absolutely 100 % certain. I'm 98 % certain that pouring vodka that you already possess down the drain will not. Dave, you have a history podcast. Is there any precedent for that actually working? No, Speaker 2 (2:44) that's been shown to be very ineffective as an action. Speaker 4 (2:53) And she just went nuts. And what was really interesting to me, because we've had a lot of these before over the years, we have a history and Speaker 3 (2:59) all Speaker 4 (3:00) of us here have a history. And that's what we're just going to sort of break down for you. But I should have done this beforehand. How many followers does she have? This is what really got me about it. Speaker 2 (3:09) Yeah, this was interesting. Speaker 4 (3:11) She came at me. She has 278,000 followers. uh all of them she asserts real people she's never paid for one of them and i completely for the record completely believe that um but she reposted me right she retweeted me on her timeline and there's like an old Speaker 2 (3:31) tweet Speaker 4 (3:31) old tweet it's like two people going i wanted to ask all and she got about 30 likes and then for the rest of the afternoon she kept coming at me and i would just sort of make fun of her and call her names and stuff and she kept getting fucking ratioed I was like, this is really hard. You have 200,000 followers. I don't even have a 10th of that. And you're getting your ass kicked here on Twitter. Like, where are your people? Speaker 2 (3:54) Where are your people, Louise? You know, at some point when you're, you know, tweeting like, you know, Bannon's going to get the death penalty. At some point, people just bail or they just mute you and they don't pay attention to you anymore. Also, the way the algorithm works now, if you're not reading someone's tweets, it recognizes that and just starts to fade them out of the algorithm. Oh, Speaker 4 (4:20) wow. So those people are maybe not even seeing these. Yes. People who might have joined in in her attempts to expose me for the Russian asset that I am. Speaker 2 (4:31) Yeah, it just shows how few people are reading her. I couldn't find Speaker 3 (4:35) anything in terms of just news, even just lame news about her from the last five years or so. It's all 2017 at the most recent. Yeah, Speaker 4 (4:47) no, it's really interesting. So Speaker 3 (4:48) I Speaker 4 (4:48) thought what we could do is talk for a minute about sort of who she is these days. Because Artie and Dave and I all kind of know each other from the same place and know her from that place. And it'll be fun to talk about that history. And then from here on out, assuming she's not done. I mean, this did feel like a last gasp. What if she ever pops up again? You can just Speaker 3 (5:07) click Speaker 4 (5:07) a link to this and go, here's the story. But she became, she was at the forefront of the kind of amazing, I mean, she was like pre-Lincoln project. Speaker 4 (5:20) Didn't she happen? She happened around the same time as who's that guy that the other guy, the game theory guy. Speaker 2 (5:24) Oh, I forgot his name. Eric something. Speaker 4 (5:28) Eric's Eric Garner. Do you know? Yeah. That was incredible. But we love this already. Do you remember Colin McCall? No way. Colin wasn't on those boards. You do know Colin. I don't know. Speaker 3 (5:38) Colin's a friend of ours. He does our Speaker 4 (5:39) theme song. He's an amazing musician, hilarious writer, but he knew Eric Garner from a drum enthusiast message board. Speaker 4 (5:49) Okay. Which is pretty funny. Yeah. But Louise was like, I guess at one point she called one thing, right? She predicted one aspect of like Trump. Speaker 3 (6:01) Yeah. There was one thing where she was supposedly like the broke the story. I don't think she did though. I think she was just re what she does a lot is retweet stuff and re. post-Lynx. I don't think she was actually the one who broke the story. But it's also possible Speaker 4 (6:13) she knew something. One of the things, and we'll go into this, Louise is like, she's not a celebrity per se, but she's celebrity adjacent and she's in that kind of world. As are we all. And you do find yourself in weird positions from time to time where you're in rooms with people you can't believe you're in a room with who are talking about things you can't believe they're talking about. And you know stuff. Speaker 4 (6:33) people don't know and it's like i mean Speaker 2 (6:34) i'll give you a great example uh someone asked me to go to a soccer game a higher up way back in the day and i went and i found myself in a room picking at a buffet while behind me a table of five men discussed david beckham coming to mls and nobody knew about it in america and i was just like just eating strawberries and you're just listening to this conversation. Like it's the craziest stuff that happens, you know, you just there. Speaker 4 (7:04) I guess probably not the same thing, but I did one of my followers on Twitter told me half an hour before the queen died that they were going to announce that the queen was dead in half an hour. Not quite. But, but yeah, so it's possible. She actually had a line on something once, but sure. She just became this amazing. And I guess she was making money off of it. I don't quite know. How? Speaker 2 (7:29) That's Speaker 4 (7:29) the Speaker 2 (7:29) part I don't get. Like, I don't know what she does for a living anymore. Like, what is her thing? Speaker 3 (7:38) I Speaker 2 (7:38) was Speaker 3 (7:38) looking. I was trying to figure it out. I believe she's still married to the Speaker 4 (7:41) music Speaker 3 (7:42) business guy Speaker 4 (7:42) right there. No, she's not? No, she's twice divorced. So when we Speaker 3 (7:47) knew Speaker 2 (7:47) she was married. Speaker 3 (7:48) I Speaker 2 (7:48) can't imagine that. Speaker 3 (7:49) Yeah. This is a devout Catholic. I mean, she was, you know, very raging against. abortion and all and gay marriage and all that stuff because, oh, I'm this devout Catholic. Yeah. Since we've known her, she's twice divorced. I don't know anybody who's twice divorced. I don't have any friends who are twice divorced. Oh, I've, you know, my friend Harlan was Speaker 4 (8:07) divorced four times. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, all right. Oh, his fifth wife until the day he died. The love of his life. It takes some people longer, but I mean, the stuff, I just want to go through some of our greatest hits and then let's start talking about how we know we're like. She said there was a RICO case against the entire GOP because they were taking laundered Russian money. Remember Rance Priebus? He was the bag man on that. And then he tried to flee the country while he was in Saudi Arabia, but got brought back by U.S. Marshals on Air Force One in chains, I believe. Trump is being investigated for trafficking underage girls into the U.S. for sexual abuse. This is a good one. One of his associates, I love this, the idea that Speaker 4 (8:55) Well, here's one of Trump's associates went to Russia with a videotape of Trump asking Putin to collude with him. Like, surely there's a better way to do that. Speaker 2 (9:04) Yeah. Why would you? So the idea is you have a videotape of yourself Speaker 4 (9:10) going, hi, Vlad. Will you collude with me and make me president of the United States? And then you send somebody. Speaker 4 (9:16) Now, I'll say this about Trump. I mean, I think he's got an innate understanding of how to play crowds, but that guy, I guarantee you, does not know the first fucking thing about region codes. I love the idea of like they get there and they put this DVD and it doesn't play. God damn it. Get him on the phone. Hey, man. This is a good one. The Washington Post had tapes of Putin directly ordering the hack to hurt Hillary. Here's Speaker 3 (9:43) a Speaker 4 (9:43) good one. I like this. Russians murdered Andrew Breitbart. Yeah. Speaker 3 (9:48) Producer Speaker 4 (9:48) of the movie Dave and I watched last week, My Son Hunter. Russians murdered. Speaker 2 (9:53) What did they put in his cocaine? Yeah, exactly. Speaker 4 (9:58) My Son Hunter is so bad. It's so boring. It's really depressing. Speaker 3 (10:02) It's not even fun. Imagine Speaker 2 (10:06) as a Speaker 4 (10:07) writer, Speaker 3 (10:08) you're Speaker 4 (10:09) making this movie in which Honestly, like 70, 75 % of the shit that's in the film is true. And Joe Biden is a major character. And by the end of the movie, first of all, they portrayed Joe Biden as this man who's very large and in charge. Every now and then he fumbles a word. That's it. You're like, you didn't make him like a drooling senile. I mean, you guys are all people. And by the end of it, all this stuff, I'm walking in, I'm going, yeah, about 75 % of this is true. And by the end of it, you're like, this is all an insane conspiracy theory. About stuff you know is true. And it's boring. Yeah, the Speaker 3 (10:42) trailer just... They made the Binders look cool, actually. That was my main reaction. Yeah, although Speaker 4 (10:47) the scene where Hunter, what does he, Dave, does he take early on, I believe he takes meth or something in his heart. No, he takes too much cocaine. He takes too much cocaine and his heart's racing. It's going to explode. And then he smokes crack and it slows Speaker 2 (11:03) his heart down. Crack calms him down. Crack Speaker 4 (11:05) calms him Speaker 3 (11:06) down. I did not know that. Speaker 4 (11:09) Let's see. Oh, this was a fun one. She fired her lawyer over this. Do you remember this? Do you remember Evan McMullen who ran for president on a third-party ticket? Speaker 4 (11:19) He tweeted out about fake Russian Facebook accounts. They bought $100,000 worth of ads and he was outraged. And this guy, Mark Zaid, came on Twitter and made fun of him, pointing out that the U.S. does shit like this all over the world. Fact. And hey, at least the Ruskies are helping our economy, right? McMullen accused him of parroting Kremlin talking points. And Zaid replied, pathetic, Evan, that you have to respond by asserting I'm offering Kremlin talking points. I'm not one of your political flunkies. And then Louise jumped in and tweeted at him because apparently he was her lawyer. You're fired. Evan McMullin is not pathetic. Speaker 3 (11:58) I love this. Speaker 4 (11:59) And the guy replies, thank you, Louise. Notice of withdrawal will be filed with court tonight. You're on your own. Speaker 4 (12:08) That's really amazing. She proposed bombing Moscow at one point. Speaker 2 (12:13) Okay. Does she know what nuclear weapons are? Speaker 2 (12:19) like Speaker 3 (12:19) that Speaker 2 (12:20) that Speaker 3 (12:20) to me i don't remember all this russia hate back back in the day i mean she hated all sorts of Speaker 4 (12:26) things Speaker 3 (12:26) but the russian thing seems to be her bread and butter now Speaker 4 (12:29) yeah and then uh and of course the classic one the absolute classic i Speaker 3 (12:33) can almost recite Speaker 4 (12:33) by heart this one made the news my sources say the death penalty for espionage being considered for steven k bannon i am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting Speaker 4 (12:45) And remember, according to her, Bannon has been coordinating Russian attacks on America since 2010. 2010? Yeah, Dave. Back when we were making fun of her, I believe. We'll get to that. Some Speaker 3 (12:56) of the folks who have liked Speaker 4 (12:58) or shared her tweets, Speaker 2 (12:59) Joanne Reed, one of our favorite idiots, Speaker 4 (13:01) Keith Olbermann, Ted Lieu, and Speaker 2 (13:03) Lawrence Tribe. Wow, Ted Lieu. Speaker 4 (13:07) Yeah. So, I mean, she had reach for a while. We haven't talked about this. The Speaker 3 (13:12) Trump hatred, you know, I think, you know, one of the, if there's a takeaway from this, it's just because somebody hates Trump. It doesn't mean they're your friend. You know, she wanted, she wanted to get Speaker 4 (13:22) rid Speaker 3 (13:22) of Trump and Pence and the next, Ryan, so that Orrin Hatch would become president. That was her hashtag, Hatch. President Hatch. That's what she wanted. And Hatch, I think it's Hatch, voted 100 Speaker 2 (13:39) % with Trump. So truly, it's Speaker 3 (13:42) not Speaker 2 (13:42) Trump's Speaker 3 (13:43) politics that bother her. She just doesn't like him. But I think the thing is, what Speaker 4 (13:48) success she had came from the fact that literally, because I thought about this for a long time, like, why is she going over here? Because she's got this long sort of right-wing history, and why is she now this darling of, you know, brain-dead Democrats who are buying into this craziness? Speaker 4 (14:03) I really find after some time, it's like she's not she's not only not threatening everybody, she's enabling everybody's agenda. She's whitewashing the GOP. Right. She's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not it's not the GOP. It's Trump as though Trump is just, you know, he's a symptom of this shit as though he's this unique disease. Speaker 1 (14:21) So Speaker 4 (14:21) she's getting the Republicans off the hook for that shit. Democrats love her because she's telling them all this stuff about why, you know, they're. their their person lost the election wasn't because she's terrible or whatever and trump loves her because he's he's feeding this stuff it's like this has allowed him to do what he's doing now to claim there's this wild conspiracy against him that you know um you you can't one of these makes me crazy someone's like he's claiming the election was stolen it's like well yeah they they did that to him in 2016 it's like he you handed this to him on a plate and people like him coming in nothing better You know, we all said this about Hillary when she said there's a far, what is it, a vast right-wing conspiracy against me and Bill. She was right. And what that did is it allowed them to like blame everything on that conspiracy. Trump could point to this insanity and go, there's insane people saying crazy things about me. And you look at it and you're like, nope, yep, there certainly are. And if that's as far as you took it, you're like, hey, this poor guy is being framed. It's like everybody loved her. Speaker 3 (15:19) She Speaker 4 (15:20) did go on NAMAR a few times, I know. Yeah. Yeah, I almost looked those up. I thought, I can't do it. I can't. Those two people were just nauseous. But she does. We've got three people here that she hates. And her seething hatred of us goes way back before any of this. I'm the only Speaker 3 (15:40) one who's met her, I think, of the three of us. You Speaker 4 (15:42) are. Yes, for sure. Yes. It was fantastic. Speaker 3 (15:45) She signed my book. I picked up one of her novels in the bargain. Because a lot of people know. Glamour, glitch, passion, Speaker 4 (15:52) desire, Venus envy. Which of these? Speaker 3 (15:54) So she was a romance novelist. Most people don't. They're only following now. She was called Louise Bagshaw when we