Don't believe their narrative. Go back to any episode in the 2009/2016 range and you'll notice a significant difference on the amount of time they spent discussing politics and criticizing the government vs. just 'deconstructing' the media. Weirdly - for a media deconstruction podcast - they rarely had any criticism of right-wing media, they even came to an agreement at some point about explicitly ignoring right-wing media.

The 'purely media deconstruction' script was adopted when a Republican they liked became president. Suddenly the show became exclusively about criticizing the media's coverage of the Trump administration and all criticism of government was dropped or became about 'optics'.

Someone with a cynical streak would conclude that they always had an agenda.