“I was an MSNBC contributor once, but I believe I’m reaching a more important segment of people doing this.”
Photo: Jubilee via YouTube
There is a gladiatorial spectacle to Surrounded, a relatively new YouTube series that pits a lone representative of a belief or a system — a Democrat, say, or a cop — against 20 individuals who hold the opposing position. This week, the lone representative was Sam Seder, host of the progressive internet radio show and podcast The Majority Report, who engaged in a rhetorical gauntlet with an eclectic group of young and diverse Trump supporters. The result was a mix of debate club, speed chess, and musical chairs: Participants leapt from their seats to claim a space in front of Seder, where they could address a progression of claims (“Trump’s policies make the rich richer and the poor poorer,” etc.) and were removed from the spotlight only when ten of their confederates indicate that their views are not being adequately represented by raising a red flag.
Surrounded, which takes place in an almost Squid Game–like setting inside an industrial-stark nowhere space, is quite the watch: At one point in Seder’s episode, you see him square off with a young man who fiercely and falsely believes that government agencies receive tax breaks for hiring diverse employees (they don’t, because federal agencies are not private businesses); at another, you see Seder come to swift awareness that the young blonde woman in front of him is quite literally a Christian nationalist. The series comes from Jubilee Media, a Los Angeles company that’s grown into a YouTube juggernaut over the past eight years by producing social-experiment-esque content that typically involve throwing people with conflicting beliefs in the same room and seeing what happens: scientists versus flat-earthers, vegans versus meat-eaters, cops versus, uh, criminals.
Surrounded is Jubilee’s newest format, and it’s also proven to be the studio’s most head-turning effort for politically explosive bookings. Since rolling out in September, the series has shot videos with right-wing commentators Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and Michael Knowles, along with the anti-abortion activist Lila Rose. Before Seder showed up, former secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was the lone left-leaning figure to anchor an episode. These videos reliably go viral, and Seder’s entry was no different. The full 90-minute YouTube version crossed a million views in just a few days, with its reach further elevated by clips flying across social media and a cottage industry of response videos generated in its wake. Some right-wing personalities curiously mistook Seder to be the conservative presence in the room and the Trump voters to be the liberals, presumably because they didn’t actually watch the video before commenting on it.
Speaking to Vulture about his appearance this week, Seder explains how he went into the experience without the intent to seek common ground, and what, in hindsight, he would like to have done differently.
How did you end up doing one of these videos? Did they reach out to you?
They reached out to a guy who sometimes functions as my manager. He’s out in Los Angeles, and he knew the people, and they brought up the idea before the election. We recorded back in January, back in the wake of the L.A. fires — I wasn’t even sure we were still going to do it. It was still pretty hazy when I got out there.
What made you say yes to doing this? Are you a big consumer of Jubilee’s stuff?
To be honest with you, I only had a vague awareness of it. I think I had seen some clips when some of the right-wing guys had been on it, but my daughter, who’s 19, was like, “You gotta do it. Everybody our age watches that.” So that’s what basically convinced me.
In your perspective, what was this video supposed to achieve?
I went in with the intention of trying to correct some false narratives out there. Defending Social Security was a big one for me, for example. I wanted to communicate what was going on with Project 2025. DOGE hadn’t fully geared up at that point, because we filmed in the last week of January, and they were still in that mode where they were saying these cuts only had to do with DEI. I’d been doing this for 20 years. I know what the Republican agenda is. I knew quite a bit about Project 2025. I knew quite a bit about Russell Vought, who is the head of the OMB. So I wanted to expose the dynamic that when they attack government agencies ostensibly because of DEI, what they’re really doing is what Republicans always do, which is to attack the administrative state.
So you went in ready to engage in rhetorical combat. But my understanding of why Jubilee makes these videos is to establish a sense of potential for “common ground.” Was that something you felt was possible in that room?
I don’t enter into these things with the notion of achieving common ground. Particularly with the advocates of these agendas, I don’t think they’re seeking common ground. When you’re talking about white nationalism, or Christian nationalism, or authoritarianism, there is no common ground. So for me, engaging with this isn’t so much it being about a blood sport, but more about trying to educate the audience — not the people I’m debating with. That’s my primary goal in situations like that.
How did you prepare for this?
I went over the facts behind the macro-narratives I want to talk about. They asked me to write the claims, and I tried to fashion the claims in a way where it was more policy oriented and more concrete than what I’ve seen in the past. But you can’t really be prepared. To some extent, I got thrown off a little because one of my claims was that unless you’re a billionaire, which is a proxy for wealthy people; a religious fundamentalist, which is a proxy for theocrats; or a white nationalist, you made a mistake in voting for Trump. What I did not anticipate is that everybody who would sit down with me would say, “No, actually, I am those things, and I’m so happy I voted for Trump.” I wasn’t fully prepared for people to, almost from the get-go, accept the claim and then proudly proclaim that theocracy or white nationalism is the explicit agenda.
What went through your mind you came to the realization that was what was happening? Because you had to juggle with that alongside debating people simply believed in objectively false statements.
It was exhausting, and the people they cut out were even more, shall we say, off topic. With the people who don’t know the facts, I knew it was gonna be helpful just to impeach their perspective. With the theocrat and the white nationalist, I felt like I didn’t have to do as much of the work here. I’m gonna let them espouse their agenda and allow the audience to decide if that’s the vision of America that they want.
With the theocrat, it took me a while to understand what he was actually saying in terms of he was probably espousing a society where women are subjugated by men, where trans people don’t exist, where marriage rights are not extended to anyone but heterosexual couples. If I had to do it again, I would have attempted to realize that first and then just let him espouse how he envisions America instead of fighting him so hard. Because from my perspective, I do think there is a majority of people in this country, and even a significant chunk of Trump voters, who don’t want that.
But isn’t that a risky thing to do? To sit back and say, “I’ll let them hang themselves,” because we do have a resulting situation where clips from this video then go out into the internet and right-wing commentators like Matt Walsh say, “Look at this guy destroying Sam Seder.”
Because the guy did, to use your words, hang himself. And when Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles or any of these commentators embrace that guy, it exposes them. Chris Rufo tweeted out that I don’t know about Foucault or I don’t know how to address Christian apologia, and from my perspective, I don’t care. He’s making this academic argument when my argument is, “What are the implications of this?” They may think amongst themselves that they have a “rational explanation” for why the Bible should supplant the Constitution, but I’m betting that the majority of the public who watch these things don’t want to live in a world where gay people are ostracized or women are subjugated. That’s my calculation.
In any case, people like Matt Walsh work to obfuscate the things that are at the heart of their political agenda. And by embracing somebody who is so explicit about it, it should cause their audience to realize what is at the heart of their agenda. I haven’t spent too much time noodling around, but somebody sent me Michael Knowles’s video response, and looking through his comments section on YouTube, there are people who are saying, “What are you talking about?” Which, for me, is the goal I had going into this. You might not peel off the majority of his audience. You might not even peel out a substantial chunk. But if you get some percentage of people greater than 0 percent to look at this guy with a more jaundiced eye, you might amount to something.
One of the funnier dynamics in the response to this is how a fair number of people on the internet mistook you to be the Trump supporter. I think that had a lot to do with how Jubilee cast the Trump supporters: It was mostly a young and diverse crowd who present in a way that a glancing person might code as “stereotypically progressive.” That struck me as a conscious choice. What could you tell me about that casting choice? Were you involved in the process?
I wasn’t involved at all. I mean, I flew out to L.A. for literally 24 hours to do this. The first time I saw any of these people was when I walked out to sit in the middle of the room. I had no idea who was there. I have no idea how they cast it. I haven’t really had much communication with the Jubilee people beyond them asking for a few claims, which I sent to them and them asking for me to shorten a couple. That was it.
Wait, really?
Look, I’ve been taking blind phone calls for about 20 years, first on the radio and now on my live show. So the idea of having no idea who’s gonna be on the other end of the line is something I’m comfortable with.
Did you think Jubilee’s casting choices here were trying to communicate something? It feels like there’s a very specific story being told when you’re assembling a group of Trump supporters, and they’re all young and diverse.
Firstly, I think the casting is impacted by it being in L.A., and secondly, and this is all complete conjecture on my part because I literally had no conversations with anybody associated with Jubilee about this, but I can imagine a world where they just had twenty white guys there and conservatives would complain that you’re not showing the diversity of the conservative movement. So it was probably a damned if you do, damned if you don’t type of scenario. But I have no idea about their casting process.
The age dynamic is one that really stood out to me. Many of them were younger than you by quite some margin.
All of them were significantly younger than me. I’m old! It’s possible I was the oldest person in the entire building. I’m 58!
And because of that dynamic, it felt like you were in a situation where you were the older guy having to explain life and the world to confident young people.
Oh yeah. There was one guy who I explained the child tax credit to. He said something like the government can’t control poverty, and I told him we cut child poverty by 45 percent in this country. He did not believe me, and after we were done, I brought him into the green room as I was getting my bag and brought it up on my phone. My hope is that seeing that fact provided a fundamental shift in his worldview. Now, that’s probably a fantasy of mine, but he struck me as being curious enough to find out if that was true, that there might be an opportunity for that guy to sort of reconsider all of his priors.
How did you feel talking with them?
I found it a little bit disturbing. Just the level of assuredness that they had in things I knew were so fundamentally wrong. I was a little bit disturbed by how forthright some of them were in expressing, “Yes, I’m xenophobic.”
Did you ever get the sense that some of these people were playing it up for the camera?
There were definitely a couple of people who were doing that. But I think they did a pretty good job of cutting those people out.
I noticed you made it a point to sort of shake the other person’s hand when their turn was up. Tell me about that choice.
I just think I’m a polite person. And honestly, I appreciated them doing this. There are circumstances where there are people whose hand I would not shake, but I need to know them first and have a reason.
Have you kept in touch with anybody since you shot the video?
No. I’ve seen some of them on Twitter, but I haven’t. The only conversation I had with any of them outside of sitting in that chair was that one guy who just came back and I showed the cut in child poverty.
I want to close out with a question about the format. You went in with the specific goal of refuting false narratives and getting your perspective out there. It seems to me that these Jubilee YouTube videos have a certain belief in the idea of staging these debates as a force that can cultivate empathy. I’m curious what you think about that very premise.
To be honest with you, I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s much value in me thinking about that because I don’t have control over it. This is the media terrain that we have, and you have to deal with the terrain that you have. In a perfect world, I would be very skeptical about YouTube, and video in general, frankly, as a means in which to disseminate this stuff. I got into this during a time when the blogosphere was coming up, and the value of a blog was that the comment section was within the same medium as the blogging voice. So there’s a parity there that I think, over time, regulates misinformation in a way that watching a video and then going down to the comments doesn’t.
But I have to play the hand that I have. I’m 58. The idea of having a YouTube show was not something I aspired to, but that’s the terrain in which our politics are increasingly being fought. I was an MSNBC contributor once, but I believe I’m reaching a more important segment of people doing this than I did on cable television.
