Marc Andreessen, the billionaire tech investor who co-founded Netscape, has recently been making the rounds on various podcasts to talk about how Democrats are being mean to him and forcing him to become a Donald Trump supporter. Andreessen’s obnoxious rant isn’t all that unusual, as many men in the tech industry have blamed the backlash against “wokeness” to explain their support for the MAGA movement. But a new interview released by the New York Times on Friday is interesting, if only because the Times cleaned up its own transcript to make Andreessen look less of an idiot.

Andreessen spoke with New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat and that hour-long interview was released in audio form by the show Matter of Opinion. But people who actually listen to the audio hear something that readers don’t. Apparently, Andreessen thinks Hillary Clinton will actually be president from 2017 to 2021 rather than Donald Trump.

Andreessen points out how the naysayers affected every aspect of American culture in the late 2010s, with Silicon Valley companies under fire from all corners. And the people who read the Times transcript saw this when reading the words of the investor:

Andreessen: So you have this sandwich from all your constituents, and then you get the press coming at you. You’ve got activists coming at you, and then you’ve got the (federal) government coming at you.

Douthat: But wait, the federal government is run by Donald Trump this time, right?

Andreessen: Absolutely not.

But if you actually listen to the audio, this is what you hear:

Andreessen: So you have this sandwich from all your constituents, and then you have the press coming to you. You’ve got activists coming your way. And then the government will come to you. And of course, the federal government was very radicalized under Hillary and then, I’m sorry… the federal government… we’ll talk more about that.

Douthat: But wait, the federal government is run by Donald Trump…

Andreessen: Absolutely not.

Douthat: …this time, right? So it’s, I mean, it’s the different thing about storytelling, right?

It is normal to clean up a transcript to remove repeated words or “um” and “ah” just to make things easier to read. But removing an entire line claiming that “the federal government has been deeply radicalized under Hillary,” is just ridiculous.

The New York Times defended the decision to remove the byline in an email to Gizmodo on Friday.

“In the audio version of the interview, it’s clear to listeners that Marc Andreesen misspoke Hillary (you can hear him trying to correct himself),” wrote Jordan Cohen, the Times’ executive director of communications. “We usually edit transcripts for clarity to avoid showing false facts, which is what happened here.”

The problem with that explanation is that Adreesen isn’t actually correcting himself, but actually duplicating the idea. Douthat asked Andreessen how Hillary managed when Trump had “real power” as president. And Andreessen questioned the premise, asking “would you picture Donald Trump running the federal government between 2016 and 2020?”

“It’s not completely effective. I’m not going to say that,” Douthat said. “At the same time, it’s not the case that the Democratic Party in 2018 or 2019 will be in a position to pass some new legislation, if the tax or regulate Silicon Valley in every way.”

While 2016 and 2020 are the years in which the US presidential election took place, Trump took office in January of 2017, so Andreessen may be right that Trump was out of power in the first year he cited, 2016. But that’s clearly not what he meant. He tried to suggest that Trump doesn’t really control the government because there is a “deep state” that restricts his will.

When Gizmodo contacted the Times, we noted how men like Curtis Yarvin, a right-wing blogger, believe in this concept of the “cathedral” as being where the “real” power resides. Yarvin thinks that liberal institutions and those in journalism and academia have the real power in society. Little did we know while emailing the Times that they were about to publish a interview with Yarvin on Saturday morning. Yarvin mentioned in the interview that he spoke with Andreesen.

The rest of the Times interview with Andreesen is so bad it almost seems like a waste of time to even mention it. Andreessen seems like a terrible victim in the modern world, with enemies on all sides constantly judging him. Andreessen sees tech founders as the true heroes of society who were once able to start companies, make huge amounts of money, and then give that money away as they saw fit in perpetuity. praise

But now that people are raising questions about why billionaires should be allowed to build obscene amounts of wealth with impunity, often while sucking the government’s finger, to have an exclusive say in how to disperse in love later in life. The real answer, of course, is to tax billionaires to fund things for the public good, but Andreessen doesn’t like that idea. You can listen to the full episode at the YouTube if you feel like lowering yourself to this garbage.

These men have it all, billions of dollars, power and influence, and they still see themselves as victims in a society where Donald Trump is about to become president. They desperately want to have something they can’t buy, and that’s the love and admiration they believe comes with being philanthropic. Ordinary people have dared to question in recent years why the rich should just give money whenever and however they feel like to a system that is far from meritocratic. And the ruling class can’t stand it.