Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics

00:00:00.000 | So people need to go back and read the history of the first hundred days under

00:00:03.000 | FDR, the sheer amount of legislation that went through his ability to bring

00:00:06.400 | Congress to heel and the Senate.

00:00:08.040 | He gets all this stuff through, but as you and I know, legislation takes a

00:00:11.040 | long time to put into place, right?

00:00:12.360 | We've had people starving on the streets all throughout 1933 under Hoover.

00:00:16.600 | The difference was Hoover was seen as this do nothing joke who would

00:00:21.280 | dine nine course meals in the white house.

00:00:23.240 | And he was a filthy rich banker.

00:00:24.600 | FDR comes in there and every single day has him fireside chats.

00:00:29.220 | He's passing legislation, but more importantly, so he, he tries various

00:00:33.360 | different programs, then they get ruled unconstitutional.

00:00:35.760 | He tries even more.

00:00:36.680 | So what does America take away from that?

00:00:38.280 | Every single time, if he gets knocked down, he comes back fighting.

00:00:41.120 | And that was a really part of his character that he developed, uh, after

00:00:44.800 | he got polio and it was, uh, it gave him the strength to persevere through.

00:00:49.640 | Personally, what he could transfer in his calm demeanor and his feeling of

00:00:55.520 | fight that America really got that spirit from him and was able to climb

00:01:01.380 | itself out of the great depression.

00:01:03.340 | He's such an inspirational figure.

00:01:04.620 | I think of Johnson and of Nixon, of Teddy Roosevelt, even of FDR, I can

00:01:09.860 | give you a laundry list of personal problems that all those people had.

00:01:13.820 | I think they had a really, really good judgment.

00:01:15.980 | And, uh, I'm not sure how intrinsic their own personal character was to their

00:01:21.440 | exploration and thinking about the world.

00:01:24.140 | So JFK is actually JFK might be our best example because he had the best

00:01:28.120 | judgment out of anybody in the room as a brand new president in the Cuban

00:01:32.560 | missile crisis, and he got us out and avoided nuclear war, which he

00:01:36.020 | deserves eternal credit for that.

00:01:37.580 | And I encourage people out there.

00:01:39.880 | This is a, this is a brutal text.

00:01:41.640 | We were forced to read it in graduate school.

00:01:43.520 | Uh, the essence of decision by Graham Allison.

00:01:46.120 | I'm so thankful we did.

00:01:47.480 | It's one of the foundations of political science because it lays out

00:01:51.160 | theories of how government works.

00:01:52.680 | People really need to understand Washington.

00:01:55.440 | Washington is a creature with traditions, with institutions

00:01:59.640 | that don't care about you.

00:02:01.400 | They don't even really care about the president.

00:02:03.160 | They have self-perpetuating mechanisms, which have been done a certain way.

00:02:07.160 | And it usually takes a great shocking event like world war two to change

00:02:11.360 | really anything beyond the marginal.

00:02:13.600 | Every once in a while, you have a figure like Teddy Roosevelt, who's

00:02:16.200 | actually able to take peacetime presidency and transform the country,

00:02:19.040 | but it needs an extraordinary individual to get something like that done.

00:02:22.200 | Uh, so the question around the essence of decision was the theory

00:02:26.160 | behind the Cuban missile crisis of how Kennedy arrived at, at his decision.

00:02:30.600 | And, uh, there are various different schools of thought, but one of the

00:02:33.240 | things I love about the book is it presents a case for all three, the

00:02:36.240 | organizational theory, the bureaucratic politics theory, and then kind of

00:02:39.800 | the great man theory as well.

00:02:41.560 | So there's a, you know, you and I could sit here and I could tell you a

00:02:44.240 | case about PT 109 and about how John F.

00:02:47.280 | Kennedy experienced world war two and how he literally swam miles with a

00:02:52.160 | wounded man's life jacket strap in his teeth with a broken back, and he saved

00:02:57.120 | him and he ended up on the cover of life magazine and he was a war hero.

00:02:59.760 | And he was a deeply smart individual who wrote a book in 1939 called why

00:03:04.840 | England slept, which to this day is considered a, a, a text, which at the

00:03:10.400 | moment was able to describe in detail why Neville Chamberlain and the British

00:03:15.200 | political system arrived at the policy of appeasement.

00:03:17.480 | I actually have a original copy.

00:03:19.400 | It's one of my most prized possessions because from 1939, because this is a 23

00:03:23.960 | year old kid.

00:03:24.440 | Who the fuck are you?

00:03:25.160 | John F.

00:03:25.520 | Kennedy.

00:03:25.920 | Um, turns out he's a brilliant man.

00:03:27.720 | And.

00:03:28.320 | Another just favorite aside is that at the Potsdam conference, you know, where

00:03:32.120 | Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody.

00:03:33.880 | So in the room at the same time, Harry S.

00:03:36.320 | Truman, president of the United States, Dwight D.

00:03:38.240 | Eisenhower, the general, right.

00:03:40.080 | Who will succeed him 26 year old John F.

00:03:42.960 | Kennedy as a journalist.

00:03:44.680 | And all three of those presidents were in the same room with

00:03:47.640 | Joseph Stalin and others.

00:03:49.120 | And that that's the story of America right there.

00:03:51.240 | It's kind of amazing.

00:03:52.080 | I'm going to give you one of the most depressing quotes, which is deeply

00:03:54.760 | true.

00:03:55.160 | Roger Ailes, who is a genius shout out to the loudest voice in the room by

00:03:59.720 | Gabriel Sherman.

00:04:00.520 | That book changed my life too.

00:04:01.680 | Um, because it really made me understand the media.

00:04:03.960 | People don't want to be informed.

00:04:05.640 | They want to feel informed.

00:04:06.800 | The following is a conversation with Sagar and Jetty his second time in the

00:04:13.680 | podcast.

00:04:14.720 | Sagar is a political commentator, journalist, co-host of breaking points

00:04:19.840 | with crystal ball and of the realignment podcast with Marshall Kozlov.

00:04:25.640 | Sagar is one of the most well-read people I've ever met.

00:04:30.160 | His love of history and the wisdom gained from reading thousands of history

00:04:34.400 | books radiates through every analysis he makes of the world.

00:04:37.800 | And this podcast, we trace out the history of the various ideological

00:04:42.400 | movements that led up to the current political moment.

00:04:45.240 | In doing so, we mentioned a large number of amazing books.

00:04:50.280 | We'll put a link to them in the description for those interested to

00:04:54.080 | learn more about each topic.

00:04:55.560 | This is Alex Friedman podcast to support it.

00:04:59.680 | Please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:05:01.760 | And now dear friends here, Sagar and Jetty.

00:05:05.760 | So let's start with the obvious big question.

00:05:09.040 | Why do you think Trump won?

00:05:10.800 | Let's break it down.

00:05:12.360 | Before the election, you said that if Trump wins, it's going

00:05:15.920 | to be because of immigration.

00:05:17.560 | So aside from immigration, what are the maybe less than

00:05:22.920 | obvious reasons that Trump won?

00:05:24.520 | Yes, we absolutely need to return to immigration, but without that

00:05:28.360 | multifaceted explanation, let's start with the easiest one.

00:05:31.200 | Um, there has been a wave of anti incumbent energy around the world.

00:05:35.440 | Financial times chart recently went viral showing.

00:05:38.160 | So the first time I think since world war two, possibly since 1905, I need

00:05:41.800 | to look at the data set that all anti incumbent parties all across

00:05:45.600 | the world suffered major defeats.

00:05:47.040 | So that's a very, very high level analysis.

00:05:49.640 | And we can return to that.

00:05:50.520 | If we talk about Donald Trump's victory in 2016, cause there was

00:05:53.720 | similar like global precursors that individual level in the United States.

00:05:58.160 | There's a very simple explanation as well, which is that Joe Biden was very old.

00:06:01.520 | He was very unpopular.

00:06:02.600 | Inflation was high.

00:06:03.880 | Inflation is one of the highest determiners of people switching their

00:06:07.240 | votes and putting their primacy on that ahead of any other

00:06:10.840 | issue at the ballot box.

00:06:12.040 | So that's that, but I think it's actually much deeper at a psychological

00:06:15.760 | level for who America is and what it is.

00:06:18.680 | And fundamentally, I think what we're going to spend a lot of time

00:06:20.960 | talking about today is, uh, the evolution of the modern left and its

00:06:25.520 | collapse, uh, in the Kamala Harris candidacy and eventually the loss to

00:06:30.120 | Donald Trump in the popular vote, where really is like an apotheosis

00:06:34.680 | of several social forces.

00:06:35.960 | So we're going to talk about the great awakening or so-called

00:06:38.560 | awokening, which is very important to understanding all of this.

00:06:41.880 | There's also really Donald Trump himself, who was really one of the

00:06:45.120 | most unique individual American politicians that we've seen in decades.

00:06:50.040 | Uh, at this point, Donald Trump's victory makes him the most important

00:06:53.640 | and transformative figure in American politics since FDR.

00:06:56.880 | And a thought process for the audience is in 2028, there will be an 18 year

00:07:01.640 | old who's eligible to vote, who cannot remember a time when Donald J.

00:07:06.160 | Trump was not the central American figure.

00:07:08.120 | And there's stories, uh, in world war two, where troops were on the

00:07:11.920 | front lines, some of their 18, 19 years old FDR died, and they literally

00:07:15.240 | said, well, who's the president?

00:07:16.640 | And they said, Harry Truman, you dumb ass.

00:07:18.400 | And they go, who?

00:07:19.240 | They couldn't conceive of a universe where FDR was not the

00:07:23.400 | president of the United States.

00:07:25.040 | And, you know, Donald Trump, even during the Biden administration, he was the

00:07:29.360 | figure Joe Biden defined his entire candidacy and his legacy around defeating

00:07:33.680 | this man, obviously he's failed.

00:07:35.400 | We should talk a lot about Joe Biden as well for his own

00:07:37.560 | failed theories of the presidency.

00:07:39.720 | So.

00:07:40.000 | I think at a macro level, it's easy to understand at a basic level

00:07:44.280 | inflation, it's easy to understand.

00:07:45.600 | But what I really hope that a lot of people can take away is how fundamentally

00:07:49.480 | unique Donald Trump is as a political figure and what he was able to do to

00:07:53.760 | realign American politics really forever.

00:07:55.880 | I mean, in the white working class realignment originally of 2016, the

00:08:00.320 | activation really of a multiracial kind of working class coalition and of really

00:08:05.320 | splitting American lines along a single individual question of did you attend a

00:08:10.360 | four-year college degree institution or not?

00:08:13.040 | And this is a crazy thing to say.

00:08:15.360 | Donald Trump is one of the most racially depolarizing

00:08:18.920 | electoral figures in American history.

00:08:22.040 | We lived in 2016 at a time when racial groups, you know, really voted in

00:08:27.280 | blocks, Latinos, blacks, whites.

00:08:29.560 | There was some, of course, division between the white working class and the

00:08:33.120 | white college educated, white collar workers.

00:08:36.800 | But by and large, you could pretty fairly say that Asians, Indians, everyone,

00:08:42.160 | 80, 90 percent were going to vote for the Democratic Party, Latinos as well.

00:08:46.720 | I'm born here in Texas, in the state of Texas.

00:08:49.600 | George W. Bush shocked people when he won some 40 percent of the Latino vote.

00:08:53.520 | Donald Trump just beat Kamala Harris with Latino men and he ran

00:08:57.600 | up the table for young men.

00:08:59.120 | So really, fundamentally, we have witnessed a full realignment in American

00:09:04.200 | politics, and that's a really fundamental problem for the modern left.

00:09:07.560 | It's erased a lot of the conversation around gerrymandering, around the

00:09:12.200 | electoral college, the so-called electoral college bias towards Republicans.

00:09:16.720 | Really, the being able to win the popular vote for the first time since

00:09:20.560 | 2004 is shocking and landmark achievement by a Republican.

00:09:24.080 | In 2008, I have a book on my shelf and I always look at it to remind

00:09:29.200 | myself of how much things can change.

00:09:30.520 | James Carville, and it says 40 more years, how Democrats will

00:09:34.120 | never lose an election again.

00:09:36.400 | 2008, they wrote that book after the Obama coalition and the landslide.

00:09:40.720 | And something I love so much about this country, people change

00:09:45.280 | their minds all the time.

00:09:46.760 | I was born in 1992.

00:09:47.960 | I watched red states go blue.

00:09:49.480 | I've seen blue states go red.

00:09:50.880 | I've seen swing states go red or blue.

00:09:52.720 | I've seen millions of people pick up and move.

00:09:55.400 | The greatest internal migration in the United States since World War II.

00:09:58.720 | And it's really inspiring because it's a really dynamic, interesting

00:10:02.760 | place, and I love covering it.

00:10:04.080 | I love thinking about it, talking about it, talking to people.

00:10:06.760 | It's awesome.

00:10:07.360 | One of the reasons I'm a big fan of yours is you're a student of history.

00:10:11.440 | And so you recommended a bunch of books to me and they and others

00:10:16.560 | thread the different movements throughout American history.

00:10:19.200 | Some movements take off and do hold power for a long time.

00:10:22.120 | Some don't.

00:10:22.720 | And some are started by a small number of people and are controlled

00:10:26.840 | by a small number of people.

00:10:27.960 | Some are mass movements.

00:10:29.120 | And it's just fascinating to watch how those movements evolve and

00:10:34.360 | then fit themselves maybe into the constraints of a two-party system.

00:10:38.520 | And I'd love to sort of talk about the various perspectives of that.

00:10:42.480 | Um, so would it be fair to say that this election was turned

00:10:48.960 | into a kind of class struggle?

00:10:51.200 | Well, I won't go that far, um, because to say it's a class struggle

00:10:55.400 | really implies that things fundamentally align on economic lines.

00:10:58.960 | And, uh, I don't think that's necessarily accurate.

00:11:01.080 | Although if, if that's your lane lens, you could get there.

00:11:04.000 | So there's a, a very big statistic going around right now where Kamala

00:11:08.720 | Harris increased her vote share and won households over $100,000 or more.

00:11:12.800 | Uh, and Donald Trump won households under 100,000.

00:11:15.800 | So you could view that in an economic lens.

00:11:18.760 | The problem again, that I have is that that is much more a proxy for four

00:11:22.600 | year college degree and for education.

00:11:24.240 | And so one of my favorite books is called Coming Apart by Charles Murray.

00:11:28.000 | Uh, and that book really, really underscores how the cultural

00:11:33.120 | milieu that people swim in, uh, when they attend a four year college

00:11:37.320 | degree and the trajectory of their life, not only on where they move to,

00:11:40.800 | who they marry, what type of grocery store they go to, their cultural,

00:11:45.520 | uh, what television shows that they watch.

00:11:47.480 | One of my favorite questions from Charles Murray is called a bubble quiz.

00:11:50.920 | I encourage people to go take it by the way.

00:11:52.240 | Uh, which asks you a question.

00:11:54.040 | It's like, what does the word Branson mean to you?

00:11:57.360 | And it has a couple of answers.

00:11:58.800 | One of them is, uh, Branson is Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson.

00:12:02.000 | Number two is Branson, Missouri, which is like a country music

00:12:05.080 | tourist style destination.

00:12:06.360 | And three is it means nothing.

00:12:07.840 | So you are less than a bubble.

00:12:09.720 | If you say country music and you're very much in the bubble,

00:12:12.240 | if you say Richard Branson.

00:12:13.240 | And, uh, I remember taking that test for the first time.

00:12:15.640 | I go, obviously Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic, like what?

00:12:18.040 | And then I was like, wait, I'm like, I'm in the bubble.

00:12:20.440 | And, uh, there are other things in there.

00:12:22.200 | Like, can you name various different military ranks?

00:12:24.400 | I can, cause I'm a history nerd, but the vast majority of

00:12:26.840 | college educated people don't know anybody who served in

00:12:28.840 | the United States military.

00:12:29.800 | They don't have family members who do, uh, the most popular

00:12:32.880 | shows in America are like the big bang theory and NCIS.

00:12:36.080 | Uh, whereas people in our probably cultural milieu, uh, our

00:12:40.000 | favorite shows are white Lotus, the last of us is prestige

00:12:43.000 | television, right?

00:12:43.840 | With a very small audience, but high income, high education.

00:12:46.520 | So the point is, is that culture really defines who we are as

00:12:50.600 | Americans, where we live and, uh, rural urban is one way to

00:12:54.240 | describe it, but honestly, with the work from home revolution

00:12:57.360 | and more rich people and highly educated people moving to more

00:13:01.080 | rural suburban or areas that traditionally weren't able to

00:13:03.880 | commute in that's changing.

00:13:05.360 | And so really, um, the internet is everything, the stuff that

00:13:08.720 | you consume on the internet, the stuff that you spend your time

00:13:10.960 | doing type of books, you read, whether you read a book at all,

00:13:13.120 | frankly, uh, whether you travel to Europe, whether you have a

00:13:15.960 | passport, um, you know, all the things that you value in your

00:13:18.680 | life, that is the real cultural divide in America.

00:13:21.600 | And I actually think that's what this revolution of, uh, Donald

00:13:25.000 | Trump was activating and bringing people to the polls,

00:13:28.440 | bringing a lot of those traditional working class voters

00:13:31.720 | of all races away from the democratic party, along the

00:13:35.440 | lines of elitism of sneering and of a general cultural feeling

00:13:40.400 | that these people don't understand me and my struggles

00:13:43.280 | in this life.

00:13:43.800 | And so the trivial formulation is that it's the wokeism, the

00:13:48.000 | anti-wokeism movement.

00:13:49.240 | Yeah.

00:13:49.560 | So it's not necessarily that, uh, Trump winning was a

00:13:53.600 | statement against wokeism.

00:13:55.320 | It was the broader anti-elitism.

00:13:57.600 | It's difficult to say because, uh, I wouldn't dismiss

00:14:00.160 | anti-wokeism or wokeism as an explanation.

00:14:03.160 | Um, but we need to understand like the electoral impacts

00:14:06.880 | of woke.

00:14:07.320 | So there's varying degrees of like how you're going to

00:14:10.680 | encounter quote unquote wokeism.

00:14:12.920 | And this is a very difficult thing to define.

00:14:15.320 | So let me just try and break it down, which is there are

00:14:17.960 | the types of things that you're going to interact with on

00:14:20.440 | a cultural basis.

00:14:21.600 | And what I mean by that is going to watch a TV show.

00:14:25.400 | And just for some reason, there's like two trans

00:14:27.440 | characters and it's never like particularly explained why

00:14:29.840 | they just are there or watching a commercial.

00:14:32.560 | And it's the same thing, uh, watching, I don't know.

00:14:35.000 | I remember it was watching, I think it was Dr.

00:14:36.680 | Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

00:14:38.400 | And the main, it was a terrible movie, by the way.

00:14:40.680 | Don't recommend it.

00:14:41.320 | Uh, but one of the characters, I think it's her name was

00:14:43.560 | like America and she wore a gay pride flag, right?

00:14:45.760 | Look, many left-wingers would make fun of me for saying

00:14:48.200 | these things, but that is obviously a social agenda to

00:14:51.920 | the point as in, they believe it is like deeply acceptable

00:14:54.800 | that is used by Hollywood and cultural elites who really

00:14:57.920 | value those progress, you know, in sexual orientation and

00:15:01.920 | others, and they really believe it's important to "showcase"

00:15:04.920 | it for representation.

00:15:06.200 | So that's like one way that we may encounter "wokeism."

00:15:08.960 | But the more important ways, frankly, are the ways that

00:15:12.120 | affirmative action, which really has its roots in, you

00:15:15.040 | know, American society all the way going back to the 1960s

00:15:18.320 | and how those have manifested in our economy and in our

00:15:21.720 | understanding of "discrimination."

00:15:24.080 | So two books I can recommend.

00:15:25.400 | One is called The Origins of Woke.

00:15:27.440 | That's by Richard Hanania.

00:15:28.680 | There's another one, The Age of Entitlement, by

00:15:31.360 | Christopher Caldwell.

00:15:32.360 | And they make a very strong case that Caldwell, in

00:15:35.560 | particular, that he calls it like a "new founding of

00:15:37.920 | America" was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

00:15:41.680 | because it created an entire new legal regime and

00:15:45.040 | understanding of race in the American character and how

00:15:47.880 | the government was going to enforce that.

00:15:50.040 | And that really ties in with another one of the books

00:15:52.720 | that I recommended to you about The Origins of Trump by

00:15:55.400 | Jim Webb, and Senator Jim Webb, incredible, incredible

00:15:59.320 | man. He's so underappreciated, intellectual, he was

00:16:03.080 | anti-war, and he was—people may remember him from the

00:16:07.520 | 2016 primary, and they asked him a question, I don't

00:16:11.520 | exactly remember, about one of his enemies.

00:16:13.480 | And he's like, "Well, one of them was a guy shot in

00:16:15.680 | Vietnam." And he was running against Hillary.

00:16:18.120 | And that guy, he wrote the book Born Fighting, I think

00:16:21.560 | it's what's history of the Scots-Irish people, something

00:16:23.640 | like that. And that book really opened my eyes to the

00:16:27.880 | way that affirmative action and racial preferences

00:16:30.920 | that were playing out, you know, through the HR

00:16:33.320 | managerial elite really turned a lot of people within

00:16:37.960 | the white working class away from the Democratic Party

00:16:41.080 | and felt fundamentally discriminated against by the

00:16:44.720 | professional managerial class.

00:16:46.360 | And so there's a lot of roots to this, the managerial

00:16:48.760 | revolution by James Burnham, and in terms of the

00:16:51.560 | origin of kind of how we got here, but the

00:16:54.520 | crystallization of, like, DEI and/or affirmative

00:16:58.520 | action—I prefer to use the term "affirmative

00:16:59.920 | action"—in the highest echelons of business, and

00:17:03.200 | there became this idea that representation itself

00:17:06.200 | was the only thing that mattered. And I think that

00:17:08.120 | right around 2014, that really went on steroids, and

00:17:11.160 | that's why it's not an accident that Donald J.

00:17:12.520 | Trump elected in 2016.

00:17:14.280 | At this point, do you think this election is a kind

00:17:17.240 | of statement that wokeism as a movement is dead?

00:17:20.120 | I don't know. I mean, it's very difficult to say

00:17:22.480 | because wokeism itself is not a movement with a

00:17:25.080 | party leader. It's a amorphous belief that has

00:17:29.520 | worked its way through institutions now for almost

00:17:32.400 | 40 or 50 years. I mean, it's effectively a

00:17:34.760 | religion. And part of the reason why it's difficult

00:17:37.560 | to define is it means different things to

00:17:39.240 | different people. So, for example, there are

00:17:41.280 | varying degrees of how we would define, quote

00:17:43.920 | unquote, "woke." Do I think that the Democrats will

00:17:46.960 | be speaking in so-called academic language? Yes, I

00:17:49.880 | do think they will. I think that the next

00:17:51.440 | Democratic nominee will not do that. However,

00:17:53.920 | Kamala Harris actually did move as much as she

00:17:56.880 | could away from, quote unquote, "woke," but she

00:17:59.160 | basically was punished for a lot of the sins of

00:18:02.240 | both herself from 2019, but a general cultural

00:18:05.600 | feeling that her and the people around her do not

00:18:08.240 | understand me and not only do not understand me,

00:18:10.520 | but have racial preferences or a regime or an

00:18:13.400 | understanding that would lead to a, quote unquote,

00:18:15.680 | "equity mindset," you know, equal outcomes for

00:18:18.040 | everybody as opposed to equality of opportunity,

00:18:20.600 | which is more of a colorblind philosophy. So I

00:18:23.720 | can't say. I think it's way too early. And, you

00:18:26.600 | know, again, like, you can not use the word

00:18:29.520 | "Latinx," but do you still believe in an

00:18:33.200 | effective affirmative action regime, you know, in

00:18:35.720 | terms of how you would run your Department of

00:18:37.880 | Justice, in terms of how you view the world, in

00:18:40.920 | terms of what you think the real dividing lines

00:18:44.080 | in America are? Because I would say that's still

00:18:46.160 | actually kind of a woke mindset. And that's part

00:18:48.000 | of the reason why the term itself doesn't really

00:18:50.240 | mean a whole lot. And we have to get actually

00:18:52.160 | really specific about what it looks like in

00:18:54.880 | operations. In operation, it means affirmative

00:18:57.280 | action. It means the NASDAQ passing some law

00:19:00.320 | that if you want to go public or something, that

00:19:02.480 | you have to have a woman and a person of color on

00:19:04.600 | your board. Like, this is a blatant and

00:19:06.400 | extraordinary, like, racialism that they've

00:19:09.240 | enshrined in their bylaws. So you can get rid of

00:19:12.360 | ESG. That's great. But, you know, you can get rid

00:19:14.920 | of DEI. I think that's great. But it's really

00:19:16.960 | about a mindset and a view of the world. And I

00:19:19.320 | don't think that's going anywhere.

00:19:20.280 | And you think the reason it doesn't work well in

00:19:23.560 | practice is because there's a big degree to which

00:19:27.160 | it's anti-meritocracy.

00:19:28.920 | It's anti-American, really. I mean, you know, DEI

00:19:31.680 | and woke and affirmative action make perfect

00:19:33.880 | sense in a lot of different countries, OK? And

00:19:36.240 | there are a lot of countries out there that are

00:19:38.480 | multi-ethnic and they're heterogeneous and they

00:19:42.480 | were run by basically quasi-dictators. And the

00:19:45.200 | way it works is that you pay off the Christians

00:19:47.680 | and you pay off the Muslims and they get this

00:19:50.000 | guy and they get that guy. And everybody kind of

00:19:51.800 | shakes it. It's very explicit. They're like, we

00:19:53.360 | have 10 spots and they go to the Christians. We

00:19:55.040 | have 10 spots and it goes to the Hindus. I'm

00:19:57.080 | talking India is a country I know pretty well.

00:19:59.080 | And this does kind of work like that on state

00:20:01.000 | politics level in some respect. But in America,

00:20:03.720 | you know, fundamentally, we really believe that

00:20:05.720 | no matter where you are from, that you come here

00:20:08.640 | and basically within a generation, especially if

00:20:10.960 | you migrate here legally and you integrate, that

00:20:13.600 | you leave a lot of that stuff behind. And the

00:20:16.120 | story, the American dream that is ingrained in so

00:20:18.600 | many of us is one that really does not mesh well

00:20:22.880 | with any sort of racial preference regime or

00:20:26.600 | anything that's not meritocratic. And I mean, I

00:20:30.280 | will give the left wingers some credit in the

00:20:33.280 | idea that meritocracy itself, you know, could

00:20:36.080 | have preference for people who have privileged

00:20:38.080 | backgrounds. I think that's true. And so, you

00:20:40.760 | know, the way I would like to see it is to

00:20:42.520 | increase everybody's equality of opportunity to

00:20:46.240 | make sure that they all have a chance at, quote

00:20:48.760 | unquote, willing out the American dream. But that

00:20:50.680 | doesn't erase meritocracy, hard work, and many of

00:20:54.160 | the other things that we associate with the

00:20:55.960 | American character, with the American frontier.

00:20:58.200 | So really, these are two ideologies which are

00:21:00.320 | really at odds, like in a lot of ways, like

00:21:02.640 | wokeism, racialism, and all this is a third

00:21:04.560 | world ideology. It's one that's very prevalent in

00:21:06.960 | Europe and all across Asia, but it doesn't mix

00:21:09.800 | well here. And it shouldn't. And I'm really glad

00:21:11.600 | that America feels the same way.

00:21:13.320 | Yeah, I got to go back to Jim Webb and that

00:21:16.600 | book. What a badass, fascinating book.

00:21:18.720 | Oh my God.

00:21:19.200 | "Born Fighting," how the Scots-Irish shaped

00:21:22.040 | America. So I did not realize to the degree,

00:21:25.600 | first of all, how badass the Scots-Irish are, and

00:21:29.120 | to the degree, many of the things that kind of

00:21:31.560 | identify as American and part of the American

00:21:33.640 | spirit were defined by this relatively small

00:21:37.520 | group of people. As he describes, the motto

00:21:40.320 | could be summarized as "fight, sing, drink, and

00:21:42.160 | pray." So there's the principles of fierce

00:21:44.840 | individualism, the principles of a deep

00:21:47.520 | distrust of government, the elites, the

00:21:49.240 | authorities, bottom-up governance, over 2,000

00:21:52.760 | years of a military tradition. They made up 40%

00:21:56.440 | of the Revolutionary War Army and produced

00:22:00.120 | numerous military leaders, including Stonewall

00:22:02.080 | Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton, and

00:22:05.840 | a bunch of presidents, some of the more

00:22:07.840 | gangster presidents, Andrew Jackson, Teddy

00:22:10.800 | Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Bill

00:22:13.960 | Clinton. Just the whole cultural legacy of

00:22:17.320 | country music.

00:22:18.280 | We owe them so much, and they really don't get

00:22:21.000 | their due, unfortunately. A lot of, for the

00:22:23.280 | reasons that I just described around racialism

00:22:25.560 | is because post-mass immigration from Europe,

00:22:29.160 | the term "white" kind of became blanket applied

00:22:31.720 | to new Irish, to Italians, to Slovenians, and

00:22:36.040 | as you and I both know, if you travel those

00:22:37.840 | countries, people are pretty different, and

00:22:39.680 | it's not that different here in the United

00:22:42.360 | States. Scott Cyrus was some of the original

00:22:44.240 | settlers here in America, and particularly in

00:22:47.240 | Appalachia, and their contribution to the

00:22:49.640 | fighting spirit and their own culture, and who

00:22:51.920 | we are as individualists, and some of the first

00:22:54.520 | people to ever settle the frontier, and that

00:22:56.360 | frontier mindset really does come from them. We

00:22:58.680 | owe them just as much we do the Puritans, but

00:23:00.760 | they don't ever really get their due. And the

00:23:02.800 | reason I recommend that book is if you read that

00:23:04.600 | book, and you understand then, you know, how

00:23:06.800 | exactly could this group of white working class

00:23:09.080 | voters forego from 2012 voting for a man named

00:23:12.080 | Barack Hussein Obama to Donald J. Trump, you

00:23:15.280 | really seem to—it makes perfect sense if you

00:23:17.760 | combine it with a lot of the stuff I'm talking

00:23:19.600 | about here, about affirmative action, about

00:23:21.960 | distrust of the elites, about feeling as if

00:23:24.040 | institutions are not seeing through to you, and

00:23:26.640 | specifically also not valuing your contribution

00:23:30.800 | to American history, and in some cases, actively

00:23:33.760 | looking down. I'm glad you pointed out not only

00:23:36.280 | their role in the Revolutionary War, but in the

00:23:38.560 | Civil War as well, and just how much of a

00:23:41.320 | contribution culturally, really, that we owe

00:23:43.600 | them for setting the groundwork that so many of

00:23:46.400 | us who came later could build upon and adopt

00:23:48.800 | some of their own ideas and their culture as our

00:23:51.200 | own. It's one of the things that makes America

00:23:52.360 | great.

00:23:52.680 | Marc Twain.

00:23:53.920 | Yeah.

00:23:54.480 | I mean, so much of the culture, so much of the

00:23:58.000 | yeah, the American spirit, the whole idea, the

00:24:01.280 | whole shape and form and type of populism that

00:24:04.440 | represents our democracy. So would you trace

00:24:07.240 | that fierce individualism that we think of back

00:24:11.440 | to them?

00:24:11.920 | Definitely. It's a huge part of them, about who

00:24:14.160 | they were, about the screw you attitude. I mean,

00:24:17.240 | that book actually kind of had a renaissance back

00:24:20.120 | in 2016 when Hillbilly Elegy came out. I'm sure

00:24:22.640 | you remember this, which it's kind of weird to

00:24:25.080 | think that it's now the vice president-elect of

00:24:27.200 | the United States. It's kind of wild, honestly,

00:24:29.080 | to think about. But J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly

00:24:31.920 | Elegy, I think was really important for a lot of

00:24:34.880 | American elites who were like, how do these

00:24:36.880 | support people support Trump? Where does this

00:24:39.080 | shit come from? That they're really I mean, if

00:24:40.920 | you really think back to that time, it was

00:24:42.840 | shocking to the elite character that any person

00:24:45.720 | in the world could ever vote for Donald Trump

00:24:48.000 | and not just vote. He won the election. How does

00:24:50.360 | that happen? And that's Hillbilly Elegy guided

00:24:52.760 | people in an understanding of what that's like

00:24:54.560 | on a lived day to day basis. And J.D., to his

00:24:57.800 | credit, talks about the Scots-Irish heritage,

00:24:59.840 | about Appalachia and the legacy of what that

00:25:02.080 | culture looks like today and how a lot of these

00:25:04.120 | people voted for Donald Trump. But we got to give

00:25:06.040 | credit to Jim Webb, who wrote the history of

00:25:08.000 | these people and taught me and you about their

00:25:11.000 | original fight against the oppressors in

00:25:13.800 | Scotland and Ireland and their militant spirit

00:25:17.120 | and how they were able to bring that over here.

00:25:19.320 | And, you know, they got their due in Andrew

00:25:21.960 | Jackson and some of our other populist

00:25:24.080 | presidents who set us up on the road to Donald

00:25:26.280 | Trump to where we are today. Dude, it got me

00:25:28.040 | pumped, excited to be an American. Me too. I love

00:25:30.600 | that book. It's crazy that J.D., the same guy,

00:25:33.360 | because that's, Hillbilly Elegy is what I kind

00:25:37.200 | of thought of him as. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you

00:25:40.000 | for me, it's actually pretty surreal. I met J.D.

00:25:41.760 | Vance in like 2017 in like a bar. I didn't ever

00:25:46.040 | think he would be the vice president-elect of

00:25:48.200 | the United States. I mean, it's kind of wild.

00:25:50.440 | One of my friends went back and dug up the

00:25:52.600 | email that we originally sent him, just like,

00:25:54.320 | "Hey, do you want to meet up?" And he's like,

00:25:55.520 | "Sure." I was watching on television. I mean, the

00:25:59.760 | first time that it really hit me, I was like,

00:26:01.280 | "Whoa." It was like naming a history book. It's

00:26:03.080 | whenever he became the vice presidential

00:26:05.000 | nominee. I was watching on TV and the confetti

00:26:06.920 | was falling and he was waving with his wife. And

00:26:09.000 | I was like, "Wow, like, that's it. You're in the

00:26:11.440 | history books now forever, especially now. So as

00:26:15.000 | the literal vice president-elect of the U.S.

00:26:17.640 | But his own evolution is actually a fascinating

00:26:22.120 | story for us, too, because I think a lot of the

00:26:25.040 | time I've spent right now is kind of- a lot of

00:26:27.320 | what I'm giving right now are like 2016 kind of

00:26:29.440 | takes about like why Trump won that time. But we

00:26:32.480 | should spend a lot of time on how Donald Trump

00:26:33.960 | won this election and how what happened, some of

00:26:36.440 | the failures of the Biden administration, some of

00:26:39.160 | the payback for the Great Awakening. But also if

00:26:42.000 | you look at the evolution of J.D. Vance, this is

00:26:44.800 | a person who wrote "Hillbilly Elegy." And not a

00:26:47.520 | lot of people pay attention to this, but if you

00:26:48.840 | read "Hillbilly Elegy," J.D. was much more of a

00:26:51.680 | traditional conservative at that time. He was

00:26:54.640 | citing, you know, report- I think the famous

00:26:56.400 | passage about like payday loans and why they're

00:26:58.320 | good or something like that. I don't know his

00:27:00.080 | position today, but I would assume that he's

00:27:02.400 | probably changed that. But the point is, is that

00:27:04.960 | his ideological evolution from watching somebody

00:27:08.280 | who really was more of a traditional Republican

00:27:11.640 | with a deep empathy for the white working class,

00:27:14.360 | then eventually become a champion and a disciple

00:27:18.160 | of Donald Trump and to believe that he himself

00:27:20.440 | was the vehicle for accomplishing and bettering

00:27:23.360 | the United States, but specifically for working

00:27:25.480 | class Americans really of all stripes. And that

00:27:28.080 | story is really one of the rise of the modern

00:27:33.360 | left as it exists as a political project, as an

00:27:36.200 | ideology. It's also one of the Republican Party,

00:27:39.000 | which coalesced now with Donald Trump as a

00:27:41.520 | legitimate figure and as the single bulwark

00:27:44.200 | against cultural leftism and elitism that

00:27:46.720 | eventually was normalized to the point that

00:27:48.600 | majority of Americans decided to vote for him in

00:27:50.640 | 2024. So let's talk about 2024. What happened

00:27:54.400 | with the left? What happened with Biden? What's

00:27:58.400 | your take on Biden? Biden is, I try to remove

00:28:02.840 | myself from it. And I try not to give like hit

00:28:05.880 | big history takes while you're in the moment.

00:28:08.040 | But it's really hard not to say that he's one of

00:28:10.440 | the worst presidents in modern history. And I

00:28:12.840 | think the reason why I'm going to go with it is

00:28:15.480 | because I want to judge him by the things that

00:28:17.400 | he set out to do. So Joe Biden has been the same

00:28:21.440 | person for his entire political career. He is a

00:28:25.240 | basically C student who thinks he's an A student.

00:28:28.280 | The chip on his shoulder against the elites has

00:28:31.720 | played to his benefit in his original election to

00:28:34.360 | the United States Senate, through his entire

00:28:36.240 | career as the United States Senator, where he

00:28:37.680 | always wanted to be the star and the center of

00:28:39.160 | attention, and to his 1988 presidential

00:28:41.440 | campaign. And one of the most fascinating things

00:28:43.840 | about Biden and watching him age is watching him

00:28:46.200 | become even more of what he already was. And so

00:28:49.120 | book recommendation, it's called what it takes.

00:28:51.440 | And it was written in 1988. And there's actually

00:28:54.400 | a long chapter on Joe Biden, and about the

00:28:56.920 | plagiarism scandal. And one of the things that

00:28:59.280 | comes across is his sheer arrogance and belief in

00:29:01.840 | himself as to why he should be the center of

00:29:04.200 | attention. Now, the reason I'm laying all this

00:29:05.720 | out is the arrogance of Joe Biden, the individual

00:29:08.120 | and his character is fundamentally the reason

00:29:10.400 | this presidency went awry. This is a person who

00:29:13.080 | was elected in 2020, really, because of a feeling

00:29:17.560 | of chaos of Donald Trump of we need normalcy

00:29:20.880 | decides to come into the office portrays himself

00:29:24.120 | as a quote unquote transitional president slowly,

00:29:26.800 | you know, begins to lose a lot of his faculties,

00:29:29.600 | and then surrounds himself with sycophants, the

00:29:32.600 | same ones who have been around him for so long,

00:29:34.520 | that he had no single input into his life to tell

00:29:37.600 | him that he needed to stop and need to drop out

00:29:39.840 | of the race until it became truly undeniable to

00:29:42.920 | the vast majority of the American people. And

00:29:46.120 | that's why I'm trying to keep it as like him as

00:29:48.360 | an individual as a president, because we can

00:29:49.960 | separate him from some of his accomplishments and

00:29:52.000 | the things that happen. Some I support some I

00:29:54.000 | don't. But generally, a lot of people are not

00:29:56.000 | gonna look back and think about Joe Biden and the

00:29:57.560 | Chips Act. A lot of people are not going to look

00:29:59.320 | back and think about Joe Biden and the build back

00:30:01.480 | better bill or whatever his Lena Khan antitrust

00:30:04.520 | policy, they're going to look back on him and

00:30:06.560 | they're going to remember high inflation, they're

00:30:08.480 | going to remember somebody who fundamentally never

00:30:11.760 | was up to the job in the sense that one, again,

00:30:15.640 | book recommendation freedom from fear by David

00:30:17.560 | Kennedy is about the Roosevelt years. And one of

00:30:21.320 | the most important things we will understand is

00:30:23.400 | the New Deal didn't really work in the way that a

00:30:25.920 | lot of people wanted it to write, like there was

00:30:28.400 | still high unemployment, there was still a lot of

00:30:30.680 | suffering. But you know what changed, they felt

00:30:33.480 | that they had a vigorous commander in chief, who

00:30:35.960 | is doing everything in his power to attack the

00:30:38.560 | problems of the everyday American. So even though

00:30:40.640 | things didn't even materially change the vigor,

00:30:43.080 | that's a term that was often associated with John

00:30:45.920 | F. Kennedy at Vega, you know, in the Massachusetts

00:30:48.400 | accent, we had this young, vibrant president in

00:30:51.000 | 1960, and he was running around and he wanted to

00:30:53.080 | convince us that he was working every single day

00:30:55.080 | tirelessly. And we have an 80 year old man who is

00:30:58.720 | simply just eating ice cream and going to the

00:31:00.800 | beach, while people's grocery prices and all the

00:31:03.440 | same go up by 25%. And we don't see the same

00:31:06.320 | vigor, we don't see the same action, the bias to

00:31:09.200 | action, which is so important in the modern

00:31:11.240 | presidency. That is fundamentally why I think the

00:31:13.800 | Democrats, part of the reason why the Democrats

00:31:16.200 | lost the election, and also why I think that he

00:31:18.360 | missed his moment in such a dramatic way. And he

00:31:21.960 | had the opportunity, he could have done it, you

00:31:23.680 | know, if he wanted to, but maybe 20 years ago, but

00:31:26.280 | the truth is that his own narcissism, his own

00:31:29.240 | misplaced belief in himself, and his own

00:31:32.200 | accidental rise to the presidency ended up in his

00:31:35.480 | downfall. And it's kind of amazing, because again,

00:31:38.240 | if we if we look back to his original campaign

00:31:41.320 | speech 2019, why I'm running for president, it was

00:31:43.920 | Charlottesville. And he said, I want to defeat

00:31:45.760 | Donald Trump forever. And I want to make sure that

00:31:47.760 | he never gets back in the White House again. So by

00:31:49.840 | his own metric, he did fail. That was his. It was

00:31:51.840 | the only thing he wanted to do. And he failed.

00:31:53.720 | Failed from

00:31:54.360 | you said a lot of interesting stuff. So one FDR.

00:31:57.200 | That's really interesting. It's not about the

00:32:00.600 | specific policy. It's about like fighting for the

00:32:03.160 | people and doing that with charisma and just

00:32:06.200 | uniting the entire country for a particular this is

00:32:10.840 | the same with Bernie. Like maybe there's a lot of

00:32:13.000 | people that disagree with Bernie that still

00:32:14.400 | support him because like we just want to be

00:32:16.160 | authentic. Yeah, that's it. We just want somebody

00:32:18.560 | to fight authentically for us. Yes, FDR people

00:32:21.880 | really need FDR was like a king. He was like Jesus

00:32:24.040 | Christ. Okay, and in the US, and some of it was

00:32:27.440 | because of what he did. But it was just the fight.

00:32:29.480 | So people need to go back and read the history of

00:32:31.640 | the first 100 days under FDR, the sheer amount of

00:32:33.880 | legislation that went through his ability to bring

00:32:36.160 | Congress to heel and the Senate, he gets all this

00:32:38.560 | stuff through. But as you and I know, legislation

00:32:40.560 | takes a long time to put into place, right? We've

00:32:42.440 | had people starving on the streets all throughout

00:32:44.400 | 1933. Under under Hoover, the difference was Hoover,

00:32:49.680 | which was seen as this do nothing joke, who would

00:32:52.440 | dine nine course meals in the White House and he

00:32:54.520 | was a filthy rich banker. FDR comes in there. And

00:32:58.200 | every single day has him fireside chats, he's

00:33:00.520 | passing legislation. But more importantly, so he

00:33:03.720 | tries various different programs, then they get

00:33:05.880 | ruled unconstitutional, he tries even more. So

00:33:08.120 | what does America take away from that every single

00:33:10.280 | time if he gets knocked down, he comes back

00:33:11.960 | fighting. And that was a really part of his

00:33:13.920 | character that he developed after he got polio. And

00:33:17.360 | it was it gave him the strength to persevere

00:33:20.240 | through personally, what he could transfer in his

00:33:24.640 | calm demeanor, and his feeling of fight that

00:33:27.440 | America really got that spirit from him, and was

00:33:31.960 | able to climb itself out of the Great Depression.

00:33:34.520 | He's such an inspirational figure. He really is.

00:33:36.560 | And I people think of him for World War Two, of

00:33:39.080 | course, you know, we can spend forever on that.

00:33:40.800 | But in my opinion, the the early years are not

00:33:44.160 | studied enough. 33 to 37 is one of the most

00:33:47.320 | remarkable periods in American history. We were

00:33:49.480 | not ruled by a president, we were ruled by a king

00:33:51.160 | by a monarch and people liked it. He was a he was

00:33:53.240 | a dictator. And he was a good one.

00:33:54.680 | Yeah, so to sort of push back against the implied

00:34:01.160 | thing that you said, so when saying Biden is the

00:34:04.120 | worst president, no second worst in modern

00:34:06.000 | history, that's right. So second modern history,

00:34:07.880 | who's the worst W, no question, I see because of

00:34:10.520 | the horrible wars, probably I mean, Iraq is just

00:34:13.040 | so bad. Like, one of my favorite authors is a guy

00:34:16.440 | Gene Edward Smith, he's written a bunch of

00:34:18.040 | presidential biographies. And in the opening of

00:34:20.400 | his book, W biography, he's like, there's just no

00:34:22.800 | question, there's a single worst foreign policy

00:34:24.640 | mistake in all of American history. And W is one

00:34:28.320 | of our worst presidents ever. He had terrible

00:34:30.200 | judgment, and got us into a war of his own

00:34:32.720 | choosing. It was a disaster. And it set us up for

00:34:35.720 | failure. It By the way, we talked a lot about

00:34:37.720 | Donald Trump, nobody is more responsible for the

00:34:40.000 | rise of Donald Trump than George W. Bush. But I

00:34:42.200 | could I could go off on Bush for a long time. Oh,

00:34:44.640 | we will return there. So as part of the pushback,

00:34:47.960 | I'd like to say, because I agree with your

00:34:50.160 | criticism of arrogance and narcissism against Joe

00:34:52.840 | Biden. The same could be said about Donald Trump,

00:34:55.640 | you're absolutely of arrogance. So and I think

00:34:58.320 | you've also articulated that a lot of presidents

00:35:00.640 | throughout American history have suffered from a

00:35:03.680 | bad case of arrogance and narcissism.

00:35:05.720 | Absolutely. But it's sometimes for a benefit,

00:35:07.560 | you know, you have to be a pretty crazy person to

00:35:09.240 | be to want to be president. I, you know, I had

00:35:11.880 | put out a tweet that got some controversy. And I

00:35:15.000 | think it was Joe Rogan, who I love, but he was

00:35:17.720 | like, I want to find out who Kamala Harris is as

00:35:19.560 | a human being. And I was like, I'm actually not

00:35:21.680 | interested in who politicians are as human

00:35:23.240 | beings at all. I was like, I've read too much

00:35:25.440 | about them to know. I know who you are. If you

00:35:28.880 | spend your life, and because I live in Washington,

00:35:31.080 | and I spent a lot of time around would be

00:35:32.880 | politicians, I know what it takes to actually

00:35:35.000 | become the president. It's crazy. You have to

00:35:37.280 | give up everything, everything, every night,

00:35:40.560 | you're not spending it with your wife, you're

00:35:42.200 | spending it at dinner with potential donors, with

00:35:44.120 | friends, with people who can connect to every even

00:35:46.760 | after you get elected, that's even more so now

00:35:48.680 | you got to raise money. And now you're on to the

00:35:50.280 | next thing. Now you want to get your political

00:35:51.960 | thing through, you're gonna spend all your time

00:35:53.400 | on your phone, you and your staff are going to

00:35:55.040 | be more like this. Your entire life revolves

00:35:57.520 | around your career. It's honestly, you need an

00:36:00.120 | insane level of narcissism to do it. Because you

00:36:02.960 | have to believe that you are better than everybody

00:36:05.160 | else, which is already pretty crazy. And not only

00:36:08.640 | that, your own personal characteristics and

00:36:11.920 | foibles lead you to the pursuit of this office,

00:36:15.440 | and to the pursuit of the idolatry of the self,

00:36:18.400 | and everything around you. There's a famous story

00:36:21.040 | of Lady Bird Johnson, after Johnson becomes the

00:36:24.120 | president, he's talking to the White House

00:36:25.320 | Butler. And she was like, everything in this

00:36:27.040 | house revolves around my husband, whatever's left

00:36:29.600 | goes to the girls, her two children, and I'll take

00:36:31.840 | the scraps. So everything revolved around

00:36:35.760 | Johnson's political career, and his daughters

00:36:38.040 | when they're honest, because they like to paper

00:36:39.480 | over some of the things that happened under him,

00:36:41.720 | but they didn't spend any time with him.

00:36:43.240 | Saturday, Saturday morning was for breakfast

00:36:45.800 | with, you know, Richard Russell, I forget. These

00:36:48.000 | are all in the Robert A. Carrow books. Sunday was

00:36:50.440 | for Rayburn, there was no time for, you know, for

00:36:54.160 | his kids. That's what it was. And by the way, he's

00:36:56.840 | one of the greatest politicians to ever live. But

00:36:59.120 | he also died from a massive heart attack. And he

00:37:01.280 | was a deeply sad and depressed individual.

00:37:03.000 | Yeah, I saw that tweet to go back to that. Yeah.

00:37:05.920 | And also, I listened to your incredible debate

00:37:09.080 | about it with Marshall on the realignment podcast,

00:37:11.920 | and I have to side with Marshall, I think you're

00:37:13.920 | just wrong on this. Because I think revealing the

00:37:17.560 | character of a person is really important to

00:37:19.400 | understand how they will act in a room full of

00:37:21.640 | generals and full of...

00:37:23.560 | Yeah, this gets to the judgment question.

00:37:25.080 | The judgment. And that's, I think of Johnson and

00:37:27.680 | of Nixon, of Teddy Roosevelt, even of FDR, I can

00:37:31.560 | give you a laundry list of personal problems that

00:37:34.720 | all those people had. I think they had a really,

00:37:36.760 | really good judgment. And I'm not sure how

00:37:39.880 | intrinsic their own personal character was to

00:37:42.800 | their exploration and thinking about the world.

00:37:45.880 | So JFK is actually JFK might be our best example,

00:37:48.480 | because he had the best judgment out of anybody

00:37:51.280 | in the room as a brand new president in the Cuban

00:37:54.280 | Missile Crisis. And he got us out and avoided

00:37:56.720 | nuclear war, which he deserves eternal credit for

00:37:59.080 | that. But how did he arrive to good judgment?

00:38:02.720 | Some of it certainly was his character. And we

00:38:05.440 | can go again, though, into his laundry list of

00:38:07.680 | that. But most of it was around being with his

00:38:10.600 | father, seeing some of the mistakes that he would

00:38:13.240 | make. And he was also had a deeply inquisitive

00:38:15.560 | mind. And he experienced World War Two at the

00:38:18.000 | personal level after PT 109. So it is, look, I

00:38:22.520 | get it, I actually could steal man. And I could

00:38:24.280 | the response to what I'm saying is judgment is

00:38:27.240 | not divisible from personal character. But just

00:38:30.680 | because I know a lot of politicians, and I've

00:38:32.600 | read enough with the really great ones, the

00:38:34.080 | people who I revere the most, there's really bad

00:38:39.000 | personal stuff, basically every single time.

00:38:41.160 | But you're saying the judgment was good.

00:38:43.560 | His judgment was great.

00:38:44.520 | On the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes. Some of the

00:38:47.120 | best judgment and decision making in the history

00:38:51.280 | of America. Yes. And we should study a lot of it.

00:38:53.360 | And I encourage people out there. This is a

00:38:56.200 | brutal text. We were forced to read it in

00:38:58.280 | graduate school. The Essence of Decision by

00:39:00.920 | Graham Allison. I'm so thankful we did. It's one

00:39:03.200 | of the foundations of political science because

00:39:05.840 | it lays out theories of how government works.

00:39:08.120 | This is also a useful transition, by the way, if

00:39:09.920 | we want to talk about Trump and some of his

00:39:12.040 | cabinet and how that is shaping up, because

00:39:14.720 | people really need to understand Washington.

00:39:17.520 | Washington is a creature with traditions, with

00:39:20.880 | institutions that don't care about you.

00:39:23.480 | They don't even really care about the

00:39:24.720 | president. They have self-perpetuating

00:39:26.720 | mechanisms which have been done a certain way.

00:39:29.240 | And it usually takes a great shocking event like

00:39:31.840 | World War Two to change really anything beyond

00:39:35.040 | the marginal. Every once in a while you have a

00:39:36.720 | figure like Teddy Roosevelt who's actually able

00:39:38.760 | to take peacetime presidency and transform the

00:39:40.680 | country. But it needs an extraordinary individual

00:39:42.840 | to get something like that done. So the question

00:39:45.280 | around the Essence of Decision was the theory

00:39:48.240 | behind the Cuban Missile Crisis of how Kennedy

00:39:50.640 | arrived at his decision. And there are various

00:39:54.160 | different schools of thought. But one of the

00:39:55.320 | things I love about the book is it presents a

00:39:57.040 | case for all three, the organizational theory,

00:39:59.560 | the bureaucratic politics theory, and then kind

00:40:01.840 | of the great man theory as well. So there's, you

00:40:04.240 | know, you and I could sit here and I could tell

00:40:05.760 | you a case about PT 109 and about how John F.

00:40:09.360 | Kennedy experienced World War Two as this, I

00:40:12.680 | think he was like a first lieutenant or

00:40:13.920 | something like that, and how he literally swam

00:40:16.400 | miles with a wounded man's life jacket strap in

00:40:19.880 | his teeth with a broken back, and he saved him,

00:40:22.440 | and he ended up on the cover of Life magazine,

00:40:24.040 | and he was a war hero. And he was a deeply smart

00:40:26.800 | individual who wrote a book in 1939 called Why

00:40:30.080 | England Slept, which to this day is considered a

00:40:34.240 | text which at the moment was able to describe in

00:40:37.800 | detail why Neville Chamberlain and the British

00:40:41.080 | political system arrived at the policy of

00:40:43.000 | appeasement. I actually have a original copy. It's

00:40:45.400 | one of my most prized possessions, because from

00:40:47.880 | 1939, because this is a 23 year old kid, who the

00:40:50.520 | fuck are you, John F. Kennedy? Turns out he's a

00:40:52.920 | brilliant man. And another just favorite aside is

00:40:56.160 | that at the Potsdam Conference, you know, where

00:40:58.000 | Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody.

00:40:59.800 | So in the room at the same time, Harry S.

00:41:02.200 | Truman, President United States, Dwight D.

00:41:04.120 | Eisenhower, the general, right, who will succeed

00:41:06.760 | him, 26 year old John F.

00:41:08.840 | Kennedy, as a journalist, some shithead

00:41:11.400 | journalist on the side, and all three of those

00:41:13.760 | presidents were in the same room with Joseph

00:41:15.800 | Stalin and others. And that that's the story of

00:41:18.680 | America right there. It's kind of amazing. I love

00:41:21.520 | people to say that because you never know about

00:41:23.720 | who will end up rising to power.

00:41:25.440 | Are you announcing that you're running?

00:41:27.040 | No, absolutely not. Yeah. I don't have what it

00:41:29.720 | takes. I don't think so. I'm self aware.

00:41:31.440 | Yeah, well, maybe humility is necessary for

00:41:33.840 | greatness. Okay. So yeah, actually, can we just

00:41:36.560 | linger on that book? Yeah. So the book, Essence of

00:41:39.880 | Decision, Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by

00:41:42.960 | Graham Allison, it presents three different

00:41:45.960 | models of how government works, the rational

00:41:48.560 | actor model. So seeing government as one entity,

00:41:51.360 | trying to maximize the national interest. Also

00:41:55.800 | seeing government is through the lens of the

00:41:59.200 | momentum of standard operating procedures, sort

00:42:01.120 | of this giant organization that's just doing

00:42:05.480 | things how it's always been done. And government

00:42:09.320 | politics model of there's just these individual

00:42:12.800 | internal power struggles within government. And

00:42:16.480 | all of that is like a different way to view and

00:42:19.880 | they're probably all true to a degree of how

00:42:23.000 | decisions are made within this giant machinery

00:42:26.000 | of government.

00:42:26.480 | That's why it's so important is because you

00:42:28.040 | cannot read that book and say one is true and one

00:42:29.960 | is not. You can say one is more true than the

00:42:32.160 | other, but all of them are deeply true. And this

00:42:34.480 | is one, this is probably a good transition to

00:42:36.240 | Donald Trump. Because, and I guess for the people

00:42:39.800 | out there don't think I've been up to obsequious,

00:42:41.360 | he'll be my criticism. Trump said something very

00:42:43.480 | fundamental and interesting on the Joe Rogan

00:42:45.040 | podcast, probably the most important thing that

00:42:46.760 | he ever said, which is he said, I like to have

00:42:49.560 | people like John Bolton in my administration

00:42:52.160 | will because they scare people. And it makes me

00:42:54.720 | seem like the most rational individual in the

00:42:56.680 | room. So at a very intuitive level, a lot of

00:43:00.040 | people can understand that. And then they can

00:43:01.680 | rationalize while there are picks that Donald

00:43:04.080 | Trump has brought into his White House, people

00:43:06.000 | like Mike Waltz and others that have espoused

00:43:08.600 | views that are directly at odds with a quote

00:43:11.200 | unquote, anti neocon, anti Liz Cheney agenda.

00:43:14.720 | Now, Trump's theory of this is that he likes to

00:43:18.120 | have quote unquote, like psychopaths like John

00:43:20.640 | Bolton in the room with him while he's sitting

00:43:23.520 | across from Kim Jong Un, because it gets scared.

00:43:26.000 | What I think Trump never understood when he was

00:43:28.200 | president, and I honestly question if he still

00:43:29.760 | does now, is those two theories that you laid

00:43:32.440 | out, which are not about the rational interest

00:43:34.640 | as the government is one model, but the

00:43:36.120 | bureaucratic theory and the organizational

00:43:38.400 | theory of politics. And because what Trump, I

00:43:40.720 | don't think quite gets is that there are 99

00:43:44.080 | percent of the decisions that get made in

00:43:45.440 | government never reached the president's desk.

00:43:47.440 | One of the most important Obama quotes ever is

00:43:49.280 | by the time it gets to my desk, nobody else can

00:43:51.040 | solve it. All the problems here are hard. All

00:43:53.560 | the problems here don't have an answer. That's

00:43:55.160 | why I have to make the call. So the theory that

00:43:58.880 | Trump has that you can have people in there who

00:44:01.040 | are, let's say, warmongers, neocons or whatever

00:44:03.040 | who don't necessarily agree with you, is that

00:44:05.240 | when push comes to shove at the most important

00:44:06.960 | decisions that I'll still be able to rein those

00:44:09.440 | people in as an influence. Here's the issue.

00:44:12.080 | Let's say for Mike Waltz, who's going to be the

00:44:14.480 | national security adviser, the lot of people

00:44:16.960 | don't really understand, you know, there's this

00:44:18.640 | theory of national security adviser where you

00:44:20.880 | call me into your office and you're the

00:44:22.160 | president. You're like, hey, what do we think

00:44:23.480 | about Iran? I'm like, I think you should do X, Y

00:44:25.120 | and Z. No, that's not how it works. The national

00:44:26.800 | security adviser's job is to coordinate the

00:44:28.720 | interagency process. So his job is to actually

00:44:31.480 | convene meetings, him and his staff, where in

00:44:33.800 | the Situation Room, CIA, State Department, Sec

00:44:36.640 | Def, others. Before the POTUS even walks in, we

00:44:39.200 | have options. So we're like, hey, Russia just

00:44:41.680 | invaded Ukraine. We need a package of options.

00:44:44.640 | Those packages of options are going to concede

00:44:46.400 | of three things. We're going to have one group.

00:44:48.200 | We're going to call it the dovish option. Two,

00:44:50.080 | we're going to call it the middle ground. Three,

00:44:51.840 | the hardcore package. Trump walks in. This is

00:44:54.360 | how it's supposed to work. Trump walks in and

00:44:55.880 | he goes, OK, Russia invaded Ukraine. What do we

00:44:58.240 | do? Mr. President, we've prepared three options

00:45:00.200 | for you. We got one, two and three. Now, who has

00:45:02.480 | the power? Is it Trump when he picks one, two or

00:45:04.240 | three? Or is the man who decides what's even in

00:45:06.440 | option one, two and three? That is the part where

00:45:09.880 | Trump needs to really understand how these

00:45:12.080 | things happen. And I watched this happen to him

00:45:13.880 | in his first administration. He hired a guy, Mike

00:45:16.920 | Flynn, who was his national security adviser. You

00:45:19.240 | could say a lot about Flynn, but him and Trump

00:45:21.280 | were at least like this on foreign policy. Flynn

00:45:23.680 | gets outed because what I would call an FBI coup,

00:45:26.520 | whatever. 33 days he's out as a national security

00:45:30.240 | adviser. H.R. McMaster. He's got a nice, nice

00:45:33.320 | shiny uniform, four star, all of this. McMaster

00:45:37.120 | doesn't agree with Donald Trump at all. And so

00:45:39.160 | Trump says, I ran on pulling out of Afghanistan.

00:45:41.640 | I want to get out of Afghanistan. Like, yeah,

00:45:43.160 | we'll get out of Afghanistan. But before we get

00:45:44.960 | out, we got to go back in as we need more troops

00:45:47.120 | in there. And he's like, oh, OK. You know, it's

00:45:49.960 | like all this. And it proves a plan and

00:45:52.160 | effectively gives a speech in 2017 where he ends

00:45:55.600 | up escalating and increasing the number of

00:45:57.960 | troops in Afghanistan. And it's only till

00:46:00.200 | February 2020 that he gets to sign a deal, the

00:46:02.480 | Taliban peace deal, which, in my opinion, should

00:46:04.240 | have done in 2017. But the reason why that

00:46:07.160 | happened was because of that organizational

00:46:09.440 | theory of that bureaucratic politics theory where

00:46:11.840 | H.R. McMaster is able to guide the interagency

00:46:14.600 | process, bring the uniform recommendations of

00:46:17.640 | the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to give

00:46:19.400 | Donald Trump no option but to say we must put

00:46:21.920 | troops. Another example of this is a book called

00:46:24.560 | Obama's War by Bob Woodward. I highly encourage

00:46:26.840 | people to read this book because this book talks

00:46:29.080 | about how Obama comes into the White House in

00:46:30.960 | 2009. He says, I want to get out of Iraq and I

00:46:33.400 | don't want to increase. I want to fight the good

00:46:35.320 | war in Afghanistan. Right. And he's doing Obama's

00:46:38.520 | a thoughtful guy, too thoughtful, actually. And

00:46:41.680 | so he sits there and he's working out his

00:46:43.160 | opinions. And what he starts to watch is that

00:46:46.880 | very slowly his narrow his options begin to

00:46:50.080 | narrow because strategic leaks start to come out

00:46:52.880 | from the White House Situation Room about what

00:46:55.280 | we should do in Afghanistan. And pretty soon,

00:46:57.520 | David Petraeus and Stan McChrystal and the

00:47:00.280 | entire national security apparatus has Obama

00:47:03.200 | pegged, where he basically politically at the

00:47:06.040 | time decides to take the advantage advantage

00:47:09.240 | position of increasing troops in Afghanistan, but

00:47:11.960 | then tries to have it both ways. But by saying,

00:47:13.960 | but in two years, we're going to withdraw. That

00:47:16.080 | book really demonstrates how the deep state can

00:47:19.280 | completely remove any of your options to be able

00:47:23.480 | to move by presenting you with ones which you

00:47:26.760 | don't even want and then making it politically

00:47:29.200 | completely infeasible to travel down the extreme

00:47:32.400 | directions. That's why when Trump says things

00:47:34.400 | like I want to get out of Syria, that doesn't

00:47:36.400 | compute up here for the Pentagon. Because first

00:47:39.080 | of all, you know, if I even asked you how many

00:47:40.840 | troops we have in Syria, and you go on the DOD

00:47:42.680 | website, it'll tell you a number that numbers

00:47:44.200 | bullshit, because the way they do it is if you're

00:47:46.400 | only there for 179 days, you don't count as

00:47:48.560 | active military contracts, the real numbers,

00:47:50.800 | let's say five times. And so Trump would be

00:47:52.800 | like, hey, I want to get out of Syria that it

00:47:54.440 | will do six months, right? We need six months

00:47:56.080 | after six months ago. So so are we out of Syria

00:47:58.520 | yet? And they're like, No, well, we got to wrap

00:48:00.240 | this up, we got this base, we got that we have

00:48:02.000 | this important mission. And, you know, next thing

00:48:03.720 | you know, you're not you're out of office, and

00:48:05.000 | it's over. So that there's there's all these

00:48:07.320 | things, which I don't think he quite understands.

00:48:09.800 | I know that some of the people around him who

00:48:11.440 | disagree with these pics do is the reason why

00:48:14.000 | these pics really matter is not only the voices

00:48:16.200 | in the situation room for the really, really

00:48:17.600 | high profile stuff, it's for all the little

00:48:19.520 | things never get to that president's desk, of

00:48:21.680 | which can shape extraordinary policy. And I'll

00:48:23.760 | give you the best example. There was never a

00:48:27.560 | decision by FDR as President United States to

00:48:30.800 | oil embargo Japan, one which he thought about as

00:48:34.480 | deeply as you and I would want. It was a

00:48:36.160 | decision kind of made within the State

00:48:37.400 | Department. It was a decision that was made by

00:48:39.880 | some of his advisors, I think he eventually

00:48:41.360 | signed off on it. It was a conscious choice, but

00:48:43.400 | it was not one which ever was understood the

00:48:46.280 | implications that by doing that, we invite a

00:48:49.200 | potential response like Pearl Harbor. So think

00:48:51.160 | about, you know, what the organizational

00:48:53.000 | bureaucratic model can tell us about the

00:48:55.440 | extraordinary blowback that we can get, and why

00:48:58.000 | we want people with great judgment all the way

00:49:00.720 | up and down the entire national security chain

00:49:02.640 | in the White House. Also, I just realized I did

00:49:05.440 | not talk about immigration, which is so insane.

00:49:07.840 | One of the reasons Donald Trump won in 2024, of

00:49:10.600 | course, was because of the massive change to the

00:49:12.760 | immigration status quo. The truth is, is that it

00:49:15.160 | may actually be second to inflation, in terms of

00:49:18.240 | the reason that Trump did win the presidency was

00:49:20.560 | because Joe Biden fundamentally changed the

00:49:22.720 | immigration status quo in this country. That was

00:49:24.680 | another thing about the Scots-Irish people and

00:49:27.040 | others that we need to understand is that when

00:49:28.920 | government machinery and elitism and liberalism

00:49:31.800 | appears to be more concerned about people who

00:49:34.840 | are coming here in a disorderly and illegal

00:49:37.120 | process, and about their rights and their, you

00:49:39.920 | know, ability to, quote unquote, pursue the

00:49:41.840 | American dream, while the American dream is

00:49:44.040 | dying for the native born population. That is a

00:49:46.600 | huge reason why people are turning against mass

00:49:50.000 | immigration. Historically as well, my friend

00:49:52.880 | Raihan Salaam wrote a book called Melting Pot or

00:49:55.160 | Civil War. And one of the most important parts

00:49:58.360 | about that book is the history of mass migration

00:50:00.800 | to the United States. So if we think about the

00:50:03.520 | transition from Scots-Irish America, to the

00:50:06.320 | opening of the of America to the Irish and to

00:50:09.120 | mass European immigration, we, what a lot of

00:50:12.480 | people don't realize is it caused a ton of

00:50:14.920 | problems. There were mass movements at that time,

00:50:17.640 | the Know Nothings and others in the 1860s, who

00:50:20.120 | rose up against mass European migration. They

00:50:23.040 | were particularly concerned about Catholicism by

00:50:25.840 | as the religion of a lot of the new immigrants.

00:50:28.760 | But really what it was is about the changing of

00:50:31.120 | the American character by people who are not

00:50:34.320 | have the same traditions, values, and skills as

00:50:37.560 | the native born population and their

00:50:38.960 | understanding of what they're owed and their

00:50:41.040 | role in American society is very different from

00:50:43.200 | the way that people previously had. One of the

00:50:45.960 | most tumultuous periods of US politics was

00:50:48.920 | actually during the resolution of the

00:50:50.880 | immigration question, where we had massive waves

00:50:53.800 | of foreign born population come to the United

00:50:56.320 | States. We had them, you know, integrated,

00:51:00.120 | luckily, actually at the time with the industrial

00:51:03.360 | revolution. So we actually did have jobs for

00:51:05.320 | them. One of the problems is that today in the

00:51:08.040 | United States, we have one of the highest levels

00:51:10.400 | of foreign born population than ever before

00:51:12.400 | actually since that time in the early 1900s. But

00:51:15.840 | we have all of the same attendant problems, but

00:51:18.440 | even worse is we don't live in an industrial

00:51:21.160 | economy anymore. We live in a predominantly

00:51:23.600 | service based economy that has long, you know,

00:51:26.040 | moved past manufacturing. Now, I'm not saying we

00:51:27.920 | shouldn't bring some of that back. But the truth

00:51:29.880 | is, is that manufacturing today is not what it

00:51:31.840 | was to work in a steel mill in 1875. I think we

00:51:34.920 | can all be reasonable and we can agree on that.

00:51:37.080 | And part of the problems with extremely high

00:51:39.640 | levels of foreign born population, particularly

00:51:42.240 | unskilled, and the vast majority of the people

00:51:44.960 | who are coming here and who are claiming asylum

00:51:47.200 | are doing so under fraudulent purposes. They're

00:51:49.480 | doing so because they are economic migrants and

00:51:52.120 | they're abusing, you know, asylum law to basically

00:51:54.640 | gain entrance to the United States without going

00:51:56.960 | through a process of application or of merit. And

00:52:00.360 | this has all of its traces back to 1965, where the

00:52:04.880 | Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965

00:52:07.360 | really reversed and changed the status quo of

00:52:10.360 | immigration from the 1920s to 1960, which really

00:52:14.200 | shut down levels of immigration in the United

00:52:17.000 | States. In my opinion, it was one of the most

00:52:18.920 | important things that ever happened. And one of

00:52:21.040 | the reasons why is it forced and caused

00:52:23.720 | integration. It also forced by slowing down the

00:52:27.400 | increase in the number of foreign born

00:52:28.920 | population. It redeveloped an American character

00:52:32.480 | and understanding that was more homogenous and

00:52:35.200 | was the ability for you and me to understand

00:52:36.920 | despite the difference in our background. If you

00:52:39.360 | accelerate and you continue this trend of the

00:52:41.680 | very high foreign born unskilled population, you

00:52:44.720 | unfortunately are basically creating a mass, you

00:52:47.640 | know, on it's basically it's a non citizen

00:52:51.040 | population of illegal immigrants, people who are

00:52:53.760 | not as skilled. You know, I think it was I read

00:52:56.480 | 27% of the people who've come under Joe Biden

00:52:59.560 | illegally don't even have a college degree. That

00:53:02.400 | means that we're lucky if they're even literate

00:53:04.320 | in Spanish, let alone English. So there are

00:53:06.960 | major problems about integrating that type of

00:53:09.040 | person. You know, even in the past, whenever we

00:53:12.200 | had a mass industrial economy, now imagine today,

00:53:15.120 | the amount of strain that would put on social

00:53:17.400 | services, if mass citizenship happened, you know,

00:53:20.560 | to that population would be extraordinary. And

00:53:23.760 | even if we were to do so, I don't think it's a

00:53:25.280 | good idea. But even if we were to do so, we would

00:53:28.720 | still need to pair it with a dramatic change. And

00:53:31.080 | part of the problem right now is I don't think a

00:53:33.320 | lot of people understand that immigration system,

00:53:35.200 | the immigration system in the United States,

00:53:37.320 | effectively, they call it family based migration, I

00:53:40.960 | call it chain migration. chain migration is the

00:53:44.160 | term, which implies that, let's say you come over

00:53:47.560 | here, and you get your green card, you can use

00:53:50.520 | sponsorship and others by gaming the quota system

00:53:53.120 | to get your cousin or whatever to be able to

00:53:55.440 | come. The problem with that is who is your cousin?

00:53:57.520 | Like, is he a plumber? Is he you know, does he

00:53:59.480 | have is he a coder, you know, that doesn't

00:54:01.160 | actually matter because he's your cousin. So

00:54:02.480 | actually his preference, the way that it should

00:54:04.560 | work is it should be nobody cares if he's your

00:54:06.680 | cousin. What's what does he do? You know, what

00:54:09.360 | does she do? What is she going to bring to this

00:54:11.040 | country? All immigration in the United States, in

00:54:13.160 | my opinion, should be net positive without doing

00:54:15.000 | fake statistics about, oh, they actually

00:54:17.080 | increased the GDP or whatever. It's like, we

00:54:19.120 | need a merit based immigration system. We are

00:54:21.520 | the largest country in the world. And one of the

00:54:24.560 | only non Western or one of the only Western

00:54:26.760 | countries in the world, it does not have a merit

00:54:28.240 | based points based immigration system, like

00:54:30.520 | Australia, and or Canada. And I mean, I get it

00:54:33.880 | because a lot of people did come to this country

00:54:35.720 | under non merit based purposes. So they're

00:54:37.640 | really reluctant to let that go. But I do think

00:54:40.440 | that Biden by changing the immigration status

00:54:42.520 | quo, and by basically just allowing, you know,

00:54:44.920 | 10s of millions, potentially 10s of millions, at

00:54:47.760 | the very least 12 million new entrants to come to

00:54:50.200 | the US, under these pretenses of complete

00:54:54.240 | disorder, and have no conduct really broke a lot

00:54:58.560 | of people's understanding, and even like mercy in

00:55:02.400 | that regard. And so that was obviously a massive

00:55:04.760 | part of Trump's victory.

00:55:05.800 | Speaking of illegal immigration, what do you

00:55:09.000 | think about the borders are? Tom Holman?

00:55:11.440 | Tom Holman is a very legit dude, got to know him

00:55:13.920 | a little bit and Trump 1.0. He is an original,

00:55:18.840 | like, true believer on enforcing immigration law,

00:55:23.480 | as it is. Now notice how I just said that that's

00:55:26.520 | a politically correct way of saying mass

00:55:28.160 | deportation. And I will point out for my left

00:55:31.760 | wing critics in that Yeah, he really believes in

00:55:35.800 | the ability and the in the ability in the

00:55:40.000 | necessity of mass deportation, and he has the

00:55:42.520 | background to be able to carry that out. I will

00:55:44.600 | give some warnings. And this will apply to doge

00:55:46.960 | to czar has no statutory or constitutional

00:55:51.080 | authority. czar has as much authority as the

00:55:54.280 | President of the United States gives him. Donald

00:55:56.520 | Trump, I think it's fair to say even as critics or

00:55:59.200 | even the people who love him could say he can be

00:56:00.800 | capricious at times. And he can strip you or not

00:56:04.760 | strip you or give you the ability to compel. So

00:56:07.600 | czar in and of itself is frankly a very flawed

00:56:10.480 | position in the White House. And it's one that I

00:56:12.680 | really wish we would move away from. I understand

00:56:15.160 | why we do it. It's basically to do a national

00:56:17.280 | security advisor interagency convener to

00:56:20.200 | accomplish certain goals. That said, there is a

00:56:23.760 | person Stephen Miller, who will be in the White

00:56:25.400 | House, the Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who

00:56:27.400 | has well founded beliefs, experience in

00:56:30.640 | government, and a rock solid ideology on this,

00:56:34.200 | which I think would also give him the ability to

00:56:36.400 | work with home and to pull that off. That said, a

00:56:39.360 | corollary to this, and frankly, this is the one I

00:56:42.520 | am the most mystified yet, is Kirstie Noem, as the

00:56:46.880 | Department of Homeland Security Secretary. So let

00:56:50.240 | me just lay this out for people because people

00:56:51.560 | don't know what this is. Department of Homeland

00:56:53.240 | Security, 90% of the time, the way you're gonna

00:56:55.480 | interact with them is TSA. You don't think about

00:56:57.400 | it. But people don't know the Department of

00:56:59.880 | Homeland Security is one of the largest law

00:57:01.560 | enforcement, if maybe the largest law enforcement

00:57:03.960 | agency in the world. It's gigantic. You have

00:57:07.040 | extraordinary statutory power to be able to prove

00:57:10.840 | investigations. You have Border Patrol, ICE, TSA,

00:57:14.480 | CBP, all these other agencies that report up to

00:57:17.200 | you. But most importantly, for this, you will be

00:57:19.960 | the public face of mass deportation. So I was

00:57:23.200 | there in the White House briefing room last time

00:57:25.280 | around when Kirsten Nielsen, who was the DHS

00:57:27.320 | secretary under Donald Trump, and specifically

00:57:29.720 | the one who enforced child separation for a

00:57:31.560 | limited period of time, she was a smart woman. She

00:57:36.320 | has long experience in government. And honestly,

00:57:39.120 | she melted under the criticism. Kirstie Noem is

00:57:43.240 | the governor of South Dakota. I mean, that's

00:57:44.640 | great. You have a little bit of executive

00:57:46.040 | experience. But to be honest, I mean, you have

00:57:47.840 | no law enforcement background. You have no

00:57:50.520 | ability to, you have no, frankly, with

00:57:53.400 | understanding of what it is going to be like to

00:57:56.120 | be the secretary of one of the most controversial

00:57:59.240 | programs in modern American history. You have to

00:58:01.600 | go on television and defend that every single

00:58:04.600 | day, a literal job requirement under Donald

00:58:06.720 | Trump. And you will have to have extraordinary

00:58:09.760 | command of the facts. You have to have a very

00:58:11.880 | high intellect, you have to have the ability to

00:58:14.240 | really break through. And I mean, we all watch

00:58:17.160 | how she handled that situation with her dog and

00:58:19.200 | her interviews. And that does not give me

00:58:20.960 | confidence that she will be able to do all that

00:58:23.120 | well in the position.

00:58:24.240 | So what do you think is behind that? So Crystal

00:58:27.240 | Falls, your breaking point is that there's some

00:58:30.840 | kind of interpersonal, like, I didn't know, I

00:58:36.000 | guess I should know this, but I didn't know any

00:58:38.320 | of the, there was some cheating or whatever.

00:58:41.120 | There's a rumor, nobody knows if it's true, that

00:58:43.120 | Corey Lewandowski and Kirstie Noem had a

00:58:45.080 | previous relationship and ongoing. Corey

00:58:47.400 | Lewandowski is a Trump official and that he

00:58:49.720 | maybe put her in front. I don't know.

00:58:51.760 | Is this like the Real Housewives of DC?

00:58:53.600 | Yeah, kind of. Although, I mean, it was the most

00:58:55.320 | open secret in the world. Allegedly, I don't

00:58:57.120 | know if it's true. Okay. All right. I mean, I

00:58:58.600 | don't like to traffic too much in personal

00:59:00.280 | theories, but I mean, in this respect, it might

00:59:02.720 | actually be correct in terms of how it all came

00:59:05.560 | down. I have no idea what he's thinking to be. I

00:59:07.720 | truly don't. I mean, maybe it's like he was last

00:59:10.560 | time. He said, I want a woman who's like softer

00:59:13.160 | and like emotionally and the ability to be the

00:59:15.760 | face of my immigration program. I mean, again,

00:59:20.200 | like I said, I don't see it in terms of her

00:59:22.560 | experience and her media. It's frankly like not

00:59:25.760 | very good. So you think she needs to be able to

00:59:28.200 | articulate, not just be like the softer face of

00:59:31.440 | this radical policy, but also be able to

00:59:34.880 | articulate what's happening with the reasoning

00:59:36.960 | behind all this? You need to give justification

00:59:38.760 | for everything. Here's the thing. Under mass

00:59:40.360 | deportation, the media will drag up every sob

00:59:43.640 | story known to planet Earth about this person

00:59:46.920 | and that person who came here illegally and why

00:59:49.680 | they deserve to stay. And really what the quasi

00:59:51.880 | thing is, that's why the program itself is bad

00:59:53.720 | and we should legalize everybody who's here

00:59:55.160 | illegally. Okay. So the thing is, is that you

00:59:57.440 | need to be able to have extraordinary oversight.

01:00:00.400 | You need a great team with you. You need to make

01:00:02.440 | sure that everything is being done by the book.

01:00:04.400 | The way that the media is being handled is that

01:00:07.120 | you throw every question back in their face and

01:00:09.280 | you say, well, you know, you either talk about

01:00:11.480 | crime or you talk about the enforceability of

01:00:13.880 | the law, the necessity. I mean, I just, I think

01:00:16.720 | articulated a very coherent case for why we need

01:00:19.480 | much less high levels of immigration to the

01:00:21.960 | United States. And I am the son of people who

01:00:25.240 | immigrated to this country. But one of the

01:00:27.480 | favorite phrases I heard from this, from a guy

01:00:29.440 | named Mark Corian, who's the center for

01:00:31.520 | immigration studies, is we don't make immigration

01:00:34.240 | policy for the benefit of our grandparents. We

01:00:37.720 | make immigration policy for the benefit of our

01:00:40.120 | grandchildren. And that is an extraordinary and

01:00:42.400 | good way to put it. And in fact, I would say it's

01:00:44.240 | a triumph of the American system that somebody

01:00:46.520 | whose parent family benefited from the

01:00:48.440 | immigration regime and was able to come here. My

01:00:50.760 | parents had PhDs, came here legally, applied,

01:00:53.720 | spent thousands of dollars through the process,

01:00:56.160 | can arrive at the conclusion that actually we

01:00:59.080 | need to care about all of our fellow American

01:01:01.920 | citizens. I'm not talking about other Indians or,

01:01:04.080 | you know, whatever. I'm talking about all of it.

01:01:06.080 | I care about everybody who is here in this

01:01:08.040 | country. But fundamentally, that will mean that

01:01:10.840 | we are going to have to exclude some people from

01:01:12.880 | the U.S. And I mean, another thing that the open

01:01:16.240 | borders people don't ever really grapple with is

01:01:19.600 | that even within their own framework, it makes no

01:01:22.480 | sense. So, for example, a common left wing talking

01:01:26.080 | point is that it's America's fault that El

01:01:28.960 | Salvador and Honduras and Central America is

01:01:32.480 | fucked up. And so because of that, we have a

01:01:34.520 | responsibility to take all those people in

01:01:36.240 | because it's our fault or Haiti. Right. But, you

01:01:39.160 | know, if you think about it, America is

01:01:40.680 | responsible, and I'm just being honest, for

01:01:42.720 | destroying and ruining a lot of countries. They

01:01:45.360 | just don't benefit from the geographic like

01:01:48.000 | ability to walk to the United States. So, I mean,

01:01:51.080 | if we're doing grievance politics, Iraqis have

01:01:53.440 | way more of a claim to be able to come here than

01:01:55.680 | anybody from El Salvador who's talking about

01:01:57.480 | something that happened in 1982. So within its

01:02:00.840 | own logic, it doesn't make any sense. Even under

01:02:03.760 | the asylum process, you know, people I mean,

01:02:06.360 | people don't even know this. You're literally

01:02:07.880 | able to claim asylum from domestic violence. OK,

01:02:10.640 | there are I mean, imagine that like that's

01:02:13.600 | frankly, that is a local law enforcement and

01:02:17.040 | problem of people who are experiencing that in

01:02:19.520 | their home country. I know how cold hearted this

01:02:21.800 | sounds. But maybe honestly, it could be because

01:02:24.360 | I'm Indian. One of the things that whenever you

01:02:26.520 | visit India, and you see a country with over a

01:02:29.080 | billion people, you're like, holy shit, you know,

01:02:31.000 | this, this is crazy. And you understand both the

01:02:35.600 | sheer numbers of the amount of people involved.

01:02:37.960 | And also, there is nothing in the world you

01:02:40.600 | could ever do to solve all problems for

01:02:41.800 | everybody. It's a very complex and dynamic

01:02:44.160 | problem. And it's really nice to be bleeding

01:02:45.960 | heart and to say, Oh, well, we have

01:02:47.640 | responsibility to this and to all mankind and

01:02:50.040 | all that. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work

01:02:51.640 | with a nation state. It doesn't work with a

01:02:53.160 | sovereign nation. We're the luckiest people in

01:02:55.280 | the history of the world to live here in this

01:02:56.520 | country. And it you need to protect it. And

01:02:59.440 | protecting it requires really thinking about the

01:03:02.000 | fundamentals of immigration itself and not

01:03:04.560 | telling us stories like what there's a famous

01:03:07.320 | moment in the Trump White House, where Jim

01:03:09.640 | Acosta, CNN, White House correspondent got into

01:03:12.920 | it with Stephen Miller, the current, you know,

01:03:15.760 | he'll be the current deputy chief. And he was

01:03:18.240 | like, what do you say something along the lines

01:03:20.280 | to people who say you're violating, you know,

01:03:22.320 | that quote on the Statue of Liberty, like,

01:03:24.040 | give me you're tired, you're poor, you're

01:03:25.320 | hungry, all of that, the Emma Lazarus quote. And

01:03:28.160 | Stephen, very logically was like, what level of

01:03:31.120 | immigration comports with the Emma Lazarus

01:03:33.600 | quote? Is it 200,000 people a year? Is it 300?

01:03:36.720 | Is it 1 million? Is it 1.5 million? And that's

01:03:40.000 | such a great way of putting it because there is

01:03:42.600 | no limiting principle on Emma Lazarus quote,

01:03:45.120 | there is when you start talking honestly, you're

01:03:47.680 | like, okay, we live in X, Y and Z society with X,

01:03:50.680 | Y and Z GDP, people who are coming here should

01:03:53.640 | be able to benefit for themselves and us not

01:03:56.640 | rely on welfare, not, you know, be people who we

01:03:59.000 | have to take, take care of after because we have

01:04:01.560 | our own problems here right now. And who are the

01:04:03.720 | population, the types of people that we can

01:04:05.200 | study and look at who will be able to benefit?

01:04:07.200 | And based on that, yeah, immigration is great.

01:04:09.800 | But there are a lot of economic, legal, and

01:04:13.720 | societal reasons for why you, you definitely

01:04:17.760 | don't want the current level. But another thing

01:04:20.680 | is, even if we turn the switch, and we still let

01:04:25.000 | in a million five people a year, under the chain

01:04:28.440 | base, the chain family based migration, I think

01:04:31.080 | it would be a colossal mistake, because it's not

01:04:33.680 | rooted in the idea that people who are coming to

01:04:36.160 | America are explicitly doing so at the benefit of

01:04:39.160 | America, it's doing so based on the familial

01:04:41.240 | connections of people who already gained the

01:04:43.560 | immigration system to be able to come here. I

01:04:45.680 | have a lot of family in India. And you know, I

01:04:48.120 | love them, but and some of them are actually very

01:04:49.680 | talented and qualified. If they want to come here,

01:04:51.960 | I think they should be able to apply on their own

01:04:53.800 | merit. And that should have nothing to do with

01:04:55.640 | their familial status to the fact that I'm a US

01:04:57.360 | citizen.

01:04:57.800 | Like you mentioned the book Melting Pot or Civil

01:05:00.800 | War by Raihan Salam, he makes an argument against

01:05:04.200 | open borders. The thesis there is assimilation

01:05:08.720 | should be a big part. I guess there's some kind

01:05:11.720 | of optimal rate of immigration, which allows for

01:05:13.960 | assimilation.

01:05:14.600 | Yeah. And there are ebbs and flows. That's kind

01:05:16.800 | of what I was talking about historically, where,

01:05:18.600 | you know, I mean, the truth is, is you could walk

01:05:21.720 | the streets of New York City in the early 1900s

01:05:23.600 | and late 1890s. And you're not gonna hear any

01:05:25.360 | English. And I think that's bad. I mean, really,

01:05:28.120 | what you had was ethnic enclaves of people who

01:05:30.840 | were basically practicing their way of life, just

01:05:32.880 | like they did previously, bringing over a lot of

01:05:35.200 | their ethnic problems that they had, and even some

01:05:37.480 | of their cultural, like unique capabilities or

01:05:40.080 | whatever, bringing it to America, and then New

01:05:42.360 | York City police and others are figuring out,

01:05:44.040 | like, what the hell do we do with all this? And

01:05:46.040 | it literally took shutting down immigration for

01:05:48.680 | an entire generation to do away with that. And

01:05:51.160 | there's actually still some. The point about

01:05:53.360 | assimilation is twofold. One is that you should

01:05:56.560 | have the capacity to inherit the understanding of

01:06:01.280 | the American character that has nothing to do

01:06:03.280 | with race. And that's so unique that I can sit

01:06:05.720 | here as a child of people from India and has

01:06:08.680 | such a deep appreciation for the Scots-Irish. I

01:06:12.400 | consider myself, you know, American first. And

01:06:15.560 | one of the things that I really love about that

01:06:17.320 | is that I have no historical relationship to

01:06:20.960 | anybody who fought in the Civil War. But I feel

01:06:23.840 | such kinship with a lot of the people who did,

01:06:26.360 | and reading the memoirs and the ideas of those

01:06:29.600 | that did, because that same mindset of the

01:06:33.440 | victors and the values that they were able to

01:06:36.920 | instill in the country for 150 years later, gives

01:06:40.520 | me the ability to connect to them. And that's

01:06:42.520 | such an incredible victory on their part. And

01:06:44.440 | that's such a unique thing. In almost every

01:06:46.280 | other country in the world, in China, in India,

01:06:48.560 | or wherever, you're kind of like what you're what

01:06:51.600 | you are, you're a Hindu, you're a Jew, you're,

01:06:53.640 | you know, you're Han Chinese, you're Uyghur, or

01:06:56.360 | you're Tibetan, something like that. You're born

01:06:58.640 | into it. But really here was the only one of the

01:07:00.920 | only places in the world where you can really

01:07:02.960 | connect to that story, and that spirit, and the

01:07:05.560 | compounding effect of all of these different

01:07:07.720 | people who have come to America. And that is a

01:07:09.600 | celebration of immigration as an idea. But

01:07:11.880 | immigration is also a discrete policy. And that

01:07:14.760 | policy was really screwed up by the Biden

01:07:17.720 | administration. And so we can celebrate the idea

01:07:20.760 | and also pursue a policy for all of the people in

01:07:23.880 | the US are citizens to actually be able to

01:07:26.840 | benefit. And look, it's going to be messy. And

01:07:30.840 | honestly, I still don't know yet if Trump will be

01:07:33.160 | able to pursue actual mass deportation, just

01:07:35.800 | because I think that I'm not sure the public is

01:07:38.080 | ready for I do support mass deportation. I don't

01:07:40.280 | know if the public is ready for it. I think I

01:07:43.280 | don't know, I'll have to see because there's a

01:07:44.800 | lot of different ways that you can do it. There's

01:07:46.240 | mandatory verify, which requires businesses to

01:07:49.080 | basically verify or US citizen or illegally

01:07:51.720 | whenever they employ you, which is not the law of

01:07:53.600 | the land currently, which is crazy, by the way.

01:07:55.360 | There's, you know, you can cut off or tax

01:07:59.320 | remittance payments, which are payments that are

01:08:01.280 | sent back to other countries like Mexico,

01:08:03.760 | Honduras and Guatemala. Again, illustrating my

01:08:06.320 | economic migrant point. There are a lot of

01:08:08.520 | various different ways we just make it more

01:08:09.760 | difficult to be illegally here in the US so

01:08:11.640 | people will self deport. But, you know, if he

01:08:14.200 | does pursue like real mass deportation, that will

01:08:17.600 | be a that will be a flashpoint in America.

01:08:19.720 | Aren't you talking about things like what Tom

01:08:23.200 | Holman said works at raids, sort of increasing

01:08:26.240 | the rate of that?

01:08:27.120 | Yeah, we used to do that.

01:08:28.480 | You know, yeah, but there's a rate at which you

01:08:31.280 | can do that, where it would lead to, I mean,

01:08:36.000 | radical social upheaval.

01:08:37.880 | Yeah, it will. I mean, and I think some people

01:08:40.000 | need to be honest here. And this actually flies

01:08:42.040 | in the face of, I mean, one of the most common

01:08:45.440 | liberal critiques is this is going to raise

01:08:48.400 | prices. And yeah, I think it's true. I think it's

01:08:52.160 | worth it. But that's easy for me to say. I'm

01:08:54.080 | making a good living. If you care about

01:08:56.240 | inflation, you voted for Donald Trump and your

01:08:58.280 | price of groceries or whatever goes up because

01:09:00.320 | of this immigration policy. I think that needs

01:09:03.120 | to be extremely well articulated by the

01:09:04.760 | president. And of course, he needs to think

01:09:06.240 | about it. The truth is, is America right now is

01:09:08.800 | built on cheap labor. It's not fair to the

01:09:11.120 | consumer. It's not fair to the immigrants, the

01:09:14.320 | illegal immigrants themselves. And it's not

01:09:16.160 | fair to the natural born citizen. The natural

01:09:18.440 | born citizen has his wages suppressed for

01:09:20.760 | competition by tens of millions of people who

01:09:23.280 | are willing to work at lower wages that compete

01:09:26.000 | for housing, for social services. I mean, just

01:09:28.640 | even, you know, like basic stuff at a societal

01:09:31.280 | level, it's not fair to them. It's definitely

01:09:33.640 | not fair to the other person because, I mean,

01:09:35.240 | whenever people say like, who's going to build

01:09:37.800 | your houses or whatever, you're endorsing this

01:09:41.480 | quasi-illegal system where, you know, uninsured

01:09:45.880 | laborers from Mexico, they have no guarantee of

01:09:50.200 | wages. They're getting paid cash under the

01:09:51.960 | table. They are living, you know, 10 to a room.

01:09:55.880 | They're sending Mexican remittance payments

01:09:58.280 | back just so that their children can eat. I

01:10:00.000 | mean, that's not really fair to that person

01:10:01.400 | either. So that's the point. The point is, is

01:10:04.120 | that it will lead to a lot of social upheaval.

01:10:06.720 | But this gets to my Kirstie Noem point as well

01:10:09.600 | is you need to be able to articulate a lot of

01:10:12.120 | what I just said here, because if you don't,

01:10:13.960 | it's going to go south real quick.

01:10:15.440 | The way Vivek articulates this is that our

01:10:19.400 | immigration system is deeply dishonest. Like we

01:10:21.800 | don't acknowledge some of the things you just

01:10:24.440 | said.

01:10:24.720 | Yeah, exactly.

01:10:25.360 | And he wants to make it honest. So if we don't

01:10:27.960 | do mass deportation, at least you have to be

01:10:29.760 | really honest about the living conditions of

01:10:32.600 | illegal immigrants, about basically mistreatment

01:10:37.240 | of them.

01:10:37.720 | Yes, it's true. I mean, you know, if you support

01:10:40.640 | mass illegal migration, you're basically

01:10:43.200 | supporting tens of millions who are living

01:10:46.200 | lives as second-class citizens. That's not fair

01:10:48.920 | to them. I also think it's deeply paternalistic.

01:10:51.920 | So there's this idea that America has so ruined

01:10:56.600 | these Central American countries that they have

01:10:58.600 | no agency whatsoever, and they can never turn

01:11:01.320 | things around. What does that say about our

01:11:03.480 | confidence in them? You know, one of the things

01:11:05.320 | they always say there, "Oh, they're law-abiding.

01:11:06.920 | They're great people," and all that. I agree,

01:11:08.840 | okay? By and large, I'm not saying these are bad

01:11:10.920 | people, but I am saying, like, if they're not

01:11:13.640 | bad and they're law-abiding and they're citizens

01:11:15.960 | and thoughtful and all that, they can fix their

01:11:17.680 | own countries. And they did in El Salvador.

01:11:20.080 | That's the perfect example. Look at the

01:11:22.160 | dramatic drop in their crime rate. Bukele is

01:11:24.800 | one of the most popular leaders in all of South

01:11:27.280 | America. That is proof positive that you can

01:11:30.280 | change things around, despite, perhaps, the

01:11:32.120 | legacy of U.S. intervention. So, you know, to

01:11:34.840 | just say this idea that, you know, because it's

01:11:38.520 | America's fault that they're screwed up, it

01:11:40.280 | takes agency away from them. You know, another

01:11:42.480 | really key part of this dishonesty, this really

01:11:44.680 | gets to Springfield and the whole Haitian thing,

01:11:46.560 | because everybody, you know, beyond the eating

01:11:49.160 | cats and dogs, everybody does not even

01:11:51.920 | acknowledge, because when they're like, "The

01:11:53.040 | Haitians are here legally," they need to

01:11:54.760 | actually think about the program. The program is

01:11:56.560 | called TPS, so let me explain that. TPS is called

01:11:59.360 | Temporary Protected Status. Note, what's the

01:12:01.920 | first word in that? Temporary. What does that

01:12:04.360 | mean? TPS was developed under a regime in which,

01:12:08.040 | let's say that there was a catastrophic, I think

01:12:10.880 | this is a real example, I think there was like a

01:12:12.360 | volcano or an earthquake or something, where

01:12:14.800 | people were granted TPS to come to the United

01:12:16.840 | States. And the idea was they were going to go

01:12:18.520 | back after it was safe. They just never went

01:12:20.400 | back. There are children born in the United

01:12:23.560 | States today who are literally the descent, who

01:12:27.400 | are adults, who are the descendants of people

01:12:29.520 | who are still living in the U.S. under TPS.

01:12:32.760 | That's a perfect example of what Vivek says is

01:12:35.320 | dishonest. You know, you can't mass de facto

01:12:37.760 | legalize people by saying that they're here

01:12:39.880 | temporarily because of a program or because of

01:12:42.840 | something that happened in their home country,

01:12:45.080 | when the reality is that for all intents and

01:12:48.680 | purposes, we are acknowledging them as full

01:12:51.360 | legal migrants. So, you know, even the term

01:12:53.880 | migrant to these Haitians in Springfield makes

01:12:56.320 | no sense because they're supposed to be here

01:12:58.120 | under TPS. Migrant implies permanency. So

01:13:02.560 | the language is all dishonest. And people don't

01:13:05.160 | want to tell you about the things I just said

01:13:06.920 | about chain migration. You know, the vast

01:13:08.640 | majority of Americans don't even know the

01:13:09.960 | immigration system works. They don't understand

01:13:11.840 | what I just said about TPS. They don't really

01:13:13.800 | understand the insanity of asylum law, where you

01:13:16.120 | can just literally throw up your hands and say,

01:13:17.840 | I fear for my life. And you get to live here for

01:13:19.840 | four or five years before your court date even

01:13:21.840 | happens. And, you know, by that time, get a work

01:13:25.240 | permit or whatever. You can, you know, get

01:13:28.120 | housing, like you just said, in substandard

01:13:29.880 | conditions. And you can kind of just play the

01:13:32.120 | game and wait before a deportation order comes.

01:13:34.720 | And even if it does, you never have to leave

01:13:36.280 | because there's no ICE agent or whatever who's

01:13:38.040 | going to enforce it. So the whole system is nuts

01:13:40.280 | right now. And we need complete systematic

01:13:42.600 | reform that burns it all to the ground.

01:13:44.280 | That said, sort of the image and the reality of

01:13:47.920 | a child being separated from their parents seems

01:13:52.880 | deeply un-American, right?

01:13:54.840 | Well, I mean, look, it gets, okay, so, you know,

01:13:58.560 | I'm not going to defend it, but I'll just put it

01:14:00.000 | this way. Nobody hate children. Yeah. See, this

01:14:04.000 | is what I mean. Do you think twice whenever you

01:14:06.120 | see a drug addict who's put in prison and their

01:14:08.040 | child is put in protective services? Nobody in

01:14:12.160 | America thinks twice about that, right? Right.

01:14:14.280 | So, I mean, well, that's kind of screwed up.

01:14:16.800 | Well, we should think about why did we come to

01:14:19.000 | that conclusion? The conclusion was that these

01:14:21.920 | adults willingly broke the law and pursued a path

01:14:25.240 | of life, which put them on a, you know, which

01:14:27.720 | put them on a trajectory where the state had to

01:14:29.920 | come in and determine that you are not allowed

01:14:32.920 | to be a parent, basically, to this child while

01:14:35.040 | you serve your debt to society. Now, child

01:14:37.360 | separation was very different. Child separation

01:14:39.200 | was also a product of extremely strange

01:14:42.560 | circumstances in U.S. immigration law, where

01:14:45.040 | basically at the time, the reason why it was

01:14:47.760 | happening was because there was no way to

01:14:50.080 | prosecute people for illegal entry without child

01:14:53.320 | separation, because previous doctrine, I believe

01:14:55.800 | it's called the Flores Doctrine, under some

01:14:59.120 | asylum law. People will have to go check my work

01:15:01.360 | on this. But basically, the whole reason this

01:15:03.600 | evolved as a legal regime was because people

01:15:06.840 | figured out that if you bring a kid with you

01:15:08.680 | because of the so-called Flores Doctrine or

01:15:10.680 | whatever, that you couldn't be prosecuted for

01:15:13.160 | illegal entry. So it was a de facto way of

01:15:15.880 | breaking the law. And in fact, a lot of people

01:15:18.600 | were bringing children here who weren't even

01:15:20.880 | theirs, who weren't they weren't even related to

01:15:22.880 | or couldn't even, you know, prove it, were

01:15:25.440 | bringing them to get around the prosecution

01:15:28.800 | for illegal entry. So I'm not defending child

01:15:31.080 | separation. I think it was horrible or whatever.

01:15:33.160 | But, you know, if I give you the context, it

01:15:35.600 | does seem like a very tricky problem in terms

01:15:38.040 | of do we enforce the law or not? How are we

01:15:40.800 | able to do that? And the solution, honestly, is

01:15:44.120 | what Donald Trump did was remain in Mexico and

01:15:47.200 | then pursue a complete rewrite of the way that

01:15:50.040 | we have U.S. asylum law applied and of asylum

01:15:54.360 | adjudication and really just about enforcing our

01:15:57.960 | actual laws. So when I try to explain to people

01:16:00.840 | is the immigration system right now is a

01:16:03.240 | patchwork of this deeply dishonest, such a great

01:16:06.240 | word, deeply dishonest system in which you use

01:16:11.240 | the system and set it up in such ways that

01:16:14.520 | illegal immigration is actually one of the

01:16:16.880 | easiest things to do to accomplish immigration

01:16:19.680 | to the United States. That is wrong. My parents

01:16:22.760 | had to apply. It wasn't easy. Do you know, in

01:16:25.320 | India, there's a temple called the Visa Temple

01:16:28.160 | where you walk one hundred and eight times around

01:16:30.360 | it, which is like a lucky number. And if you do

01:16:32.440 | it when you're applying for a visa to the United

01:16:33.840 | States. All right. It costs a lot of money and

01:16:36.640 | it's hard. People get rejected all the time.

01:16:38.120 | There's billions of people across the world who

01:16:39.720 | would love to be able to come here. And many of

01:16:42.200 | them want to do so legally. And they should have

01:16:44.240 | to go through a process. The current way it

01:16:46.280 | works is it's easier to get here illegally than

01:16:48.560 | it is legally. I think that's fundamentally

01:16:49.880 | right. It's also unfair to people like us whose

01:16:51.800 | parents did come here illegally.

01:16:52.800 | Can you steel me on the case against

01:16:54.680 | mass deportation? What are the strongest

01:16:56.240 | arguments?

01:16:57.240 | The strongest argument would be that these

01:16:58.720 | people contribute to society, that these people,

01:17:01.320 | many of whom, millions of here, have been here

01:17:04.240 | for many years, have children, natural born

01:17:07.040 | citizens because of birthright citizenship. It

01:17:09.520 | would require something that's fundamentally

01:17:11.480 | inhumane and un-American, as you said. The idea

01:17:13.800 | of separating families, you know, across

01:17:16.120 | different borders simply because of what is a

01:17:19.560 | quote unquote, like, small decision of coming

01:17:21.920 | here illegally. And the best case beyond any of

01:17:25.920 | this moral stuff for no mass deportation is it's

01:17:29.480 | good for business. Illegal immigration is great

01:17:32.320 | for big business. It is great for big

01:17:34.920 | agriculture. So if you want the lowest prices

01:17:37.760 | of all time, then yeah, mass deportation is a

01:17:40.440 | terrible idea.

01:17:41.440 | But first of all, very convincing. And second

01:17:44.920 | of all, you can't just do mass deportation

01:17:48.840 | without also fixing the immigration system.

01:17:50.960 | Yes, exactly. And I mean, there are there's

01:17:53.480 | several pieces of legislation, H.R.2. That's

01:17:55.680 | something that the Republicans have really

01:17:56.880 | coalesced around. It's a border bill. I

01:17:58.880 | encourage people to go read it and see some of

01:18:00.720 | the different fixes to the U.S. immigration

01:18:02.240 | system. I'm curious whether it'll actually

01:18:05.040 | pass or not. Remember, there's a very slim

01:18:07.080 | majority of the House of Representatives for

01:18:08.920 | Republicans this time around. And people vote

01:18:11.640 | for a lot of things when they're not in power.

01:18:13.240 | But when it's actually about to become the law,

01:18:14.720 | we'll see. There's a lot of swing state people

01:18:17.520 | out there who may think twice before casting

01:18:20.280 | that vote. So I'm definitely curious to see how

01:18:22.760 | that one plays out. The other thing is, is

01:18:24.520 | that, like I just said, the biggest

01:18:27.040 | beneficiary of illegal immigration is big

01:18:29.160 | business. So if you think they're going to

01:18:30.600 | take this one lying down, absolutely not. They

01:18:33.600 | will fight for everything that they have to

01:18:36.120 | keep their pool of cheap labor because it's

01:18:38.280 | great for them. You know, I think J.D. said a

01:18:40.640 | story. I think he was on Rogan about how he

01:18:43.120 | talked to a hotelier chain guy. And he was

01:18:46.600 | just he was like, yeah, it's just terrible.

01:18:48.280 | You know, it's like they would take away our

01:18:49.560 | whole workforce. And he was like, do you hear

01:18:51.560 | yourself in terms of what you're talking?

01:18:54.080 | You're bragging about. But that's real. That's

01:18:56.120 | a real thing. And that, you know, Tyson's

01:18:58.800 | foods and all these other people like, you

01:19:01.560 | know, that's another really sad part is what

01:19:05.480 | I mean by second class citizenship is this

01:19:07.600 | presumption, first of all, that Americans

01:19:09.640 | think it's too disgusting to process meat or

01:19:11.880 | to work in a field. I think anybody will do

01:19:13.920 | anything for the right wage, first of all. But

01:19:16.520 | second is, you know, the conditions in a lot

01:19:19.240 | of those facilities are horrible and they're

01:19:20.960 | covered up for a reason, not only in terms of

01:19:23.000 | the way that businesses like they actually

01:19:25.480 | conduct themselves, but also to cover up

01:19:26.920 | their illegal immigrant workforce. So honestly,

01:19:29.120 | I think it could make things better for

01:19:30.120 | everything. You have studied how government

01:19:32.400 | works. What are the chances mass deportation

01:19:34.080 | happens? It depends. I define it. So I mean,

01:19:35.920 | mass deportation can mean one million. I mean,

01:19:38.080 | nobody even knows how many people are here

01:19:39.400 | illegally. It could be 20 million. It could be

01:19:40.960 | 30 million. I've seen estimates of up to 30

01:19:43.200 | million, which is crazy. That's almost one

01:19:44.920 | eleventh of the entire U.S. population. What

01:19:46.640 | number do you think will feel like mass

01:19:49.240 | deportation? One million people? A million

01:19:51.440 | people is a lot. I mean, that's a lot of

01:19:52.960 | people. That's a lot. I mean, but the crazy

01:19:55.000 | part is that's only one twelfth of what Joe

01:19:56.600 | Biden let in the country. So that's one of

01:19:59.080 | those that just to give people the scale of

01:20:01.760 | what it will all look like. Do I think mass

01:20:05.040 | deportation will happen? It depends on the

01:20:07.160 | definition. Will one million over four years?

01:20:10.720 | Yeah, I feel relatively confident in that.

01:20:14.680 | Anything over that, it's going to be tough to

01:20:17.280 | say. Like I said, probably the most efficient

01:20:20.120 | way to do it is to have mandatory verify and

01:20:23.800 | to have processes in place where it becomes

01:20:26.760 | very difficult to live in the United States

01:20:28.440 | illegally. And then you will have mass self

01:20:30.840 | deportation and they will take the victory lap

01:20:33.800 | on that. But actual like rounding millions of

01:20:37.480 | people up and putting them in deportation

01:20:40.840 | facilities and then arranging flights to God

01:20:43.560 | knows all across the globe. That's a

01:20:45.880 | logistical nightmare. It also costs a lot of

01:20:48.120 | money. And don't forget, Congress has to pay for

01:20:51.440 | all of this. So, you know, we can have doge or

01:20:55.120 | we can have mass deportation. So those two

01:20:58.400 | things are kind of irreconcilable. Actually,

01:21:00.440 | there's a lot of competing influences at play

01:21:02.880 | that people are not being real about at all.

01:21:05.120 | Yeah, that was one of the tensions I had

01:21:07.560 | talking to Vivek is he's big on mass

01:21:10.640 | deportation and big on making government more

01:21:13.880 | efficient. And it really feels like there's a

01:21:16.720 | tension between those two in the short term.

01:21:18.640 | Well, yes, absolutely. Also, I mean, this is a

01:21:21.600 | good segue. I've been wanting to talk about

01:21:23.200 | this. I am sympathetic to doge to the whole

01:21:25.680 | Department of Government Efficiency.

01:21:26.920 | How unreal is it that it's called doge?

01:21:28.960 | Actually, with Elon, it's quite real. I guess

01:21:31.520 | I've just, you know, I've accepted Elon as a

01:21:33.960 | major political figure in the US. But the doge

01:21:37.760 | committee, the Department of Government

01:21:39.200 | Efficiency, is a non statutory agency that has

01:21:43.360 | zero funding that Donald Trump says will advise

01:21:46.800 | OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. Now,

01:21:49.680 | two things. Number one is, as I predicted, doge

01:21:54.000 | would become a quote unquote, blue ribbon

01:21:55.800 | commission. So this is a non statutory blue

01:21:57.880 | ribbon commission that has been given authority

01:22:00.760 | to Vivek Ramaswamy and to Elon Musk. Secondary,

01:22:04.200 | their recommendations to government should be

01:22:06.200 | complete by July of 2026. According to the

01:22:08.960 | press release, released by Trump. First of all,

01:22:11.880 | what that will mean is they're probably gonna

01:22:13.880 | need private funding to even set all this up.

01:22:15.680 | That's great, not a problem for Elon. But

01:22:17.760 | you're basically going to be able to have to

01:22:19.920 | commission GAO reports, Government

01:22:21.760 | Accountability Office, and other reports and

01:22:24.720 | fact finding missions across the government,

01:22:26.520 | which, which is fantastic. Trump can even

01:22:28.960 | empower you to go through every agency and to

01:22:31.360 | collect figures. None of it matters one iota. If

01:22:35.160 | Republican appropriators in the House of

01:22:36.880 | Representatives care what you have to say.

01:22:38.760 | Historically, they don't give a shit what the

01:22:41.040 | executive office has to say. So every year, the

01:22:43.840 | president releases his own budget. It used to

01:22:46.680 | mean something, but in the last decade or so,

01:22:49.040 | it's become completely meaningless. The House

01:22:51.120 | Ways and Means Committee, and the People's

01:22:52.760 | House are the ones who originate all

01:22:54.520 | appropriations and set up spending. So that's

01:22:57.040 | one is that doge in and of itself has no power.

01:23:00.680 | It has no ability to compel or force people to

01:23:04.840 | do anything. Its entire case for being, really,

01:23:09.280 | if you think about it mechanically, is to try

01:23:11.120 | and convince and provide a report to Republican

01:23:13.520 | legislators to be able to cut spending. So

01:23:15.840 | that's that. Now, we all know what how

01:23:17.960 | Congress takes to government reports and

01:23:21.120 | whether they get acted on or not. So that's

01:23:23.240 | number one. Number two, is the figures that

01:23:26.400 | Elon is throwing out there. I again, I want to

01:23:28.720 | give them some advice because people do not

01:23:31.080 | understand federal government spending. The

01:23:33.160 | absolute vast majority of government spending is

01:23:36.880 | entitlement programs like Social Security, and

01:23:39.440 | Medicare, which are untouchable under Donald

01:23:42.360 | Trump and their most politically popular

01:23:43.720 | programs in the world, and military spending,

01:23:46.320 | discretionary non military spending, I don't

01:23:48.840 | have the exact figure in front of me is a very,

01:23:50.800 | very small part of the federal budget. Now,

01:23:53.520 | within that small slice, about 90% of that eight

01:23:58.560 | is bipartisan and is supported by like

01:24:00.560 | everybody, Noah, you know, the hurricane guys,

01:24:03.720 | like people like that, you know, people are

01:24:05.280 | flying into the eye of the hurricane, people who

01:24:07.320 | are government inspectors of X, Y, and Z. The

01:24:10.960 | parts that are controversial that you're

01:24:12.560 | actually able to touch things like welfare

01:24:15.520 | programs, like food stamps is an extraordinary

01:24:18.920 | small slice. So there, what's the number he put

01:24:21.160 | out there? 5 trillion, something like that.

01:24:22.960 | There is only one way to do that. And it

01:24:25.240 | realistically under the current thing, you have

01:24:27.000 | to radically change the entire way that the

01:24:28.720 | Pentagon buys everything. And I support that.

01:24:32.600 | But I just want to be very, very clear, but I

01:24:34.920 | haven't seen enough energy around that there's

01:24:38.240 | a there's this real belief in the US that we

01:24:40.720 | spend billions on all of these programs that

01:24:44.560 | are doing complete bullshit. But like the

01:24:46.160 | truth, the absolute vast majority of it is

01:24:48.920 | military spending and entitlements. Trump has

01:24:51.040 | made clear entitlements are off the table, it's

01:24:52.360 | not gonna happen. So the way that you're going

01:24:54.680 | to be able to cut realistically military

01:24:57.240 | spending over a decade long period is to really

01:25:01.080 | change the way that the United States procures,

01:25:04.560 | you know, procures military equipment, hands out

01:25:07.720 | government contracts. Elon actually does have

01:25:10.240 | the background to be able to accomplish this

01:25:11.600 | because he has had to wrangle with SpaceX and

01:25:14.000 | the bullshit that Boeing has been pulling for

01:25:15.640 | over a decade. But I really want everybody's

01:25:18.600 | expectations to be very set around this. Just

01:25:21.240 | remember, non statutory blue ribbon. So if he's

01:25:25.080 | serious about it, I just laid out all of these

01:25:27.640 | hurdles that he's gonna have to overcome. And I'm

01:25:30.520 | not saying him and Vivek aren't serious dudes,

01:25:32.440 | but you got to really know the system to be able

01:25:35.200 | to accomplish this.

01:25:35.960 | So you just laid out the reality of how

01:25:37.960 | Washington works. To give the counterpoint that I

01:25:42.720 | think you're probably also rooting for is that

01:25:46.120 | one is a statement like Peter Thiel said, don't

01:25:48.480 | bet against Elon. Sure. One of the things that

01:25:51.680 | you don't usually have with blue ribbon is the

01:25:54.600 | kind of megaphone that Elon has. And I would

01:25:59.320 | even set the financial aspects aside, just the

01:26:03.200 | influence he has with the megaphone, but also

01:26:06.520 | just with other people who are also really

01:26:10.360 | influential. I think that can have real power

01:26:13.520 | when backed by sort of a populist movement.

01:26:15.880 | I don't disagree with you. But let me give you

01:26:17.280 | a case where this just failed. So Elon endorsed

01:26:20.240 | who for Senate Majority Leader, Rick Scott,

01:26:22.400 | right? Who got the least amount of votes in the

01:26:24.720 | U.S. Senate for GOP leader, Rick Scott. John

01:26:28.640 | Thune is the person who got it. Now, the reason

01:26:31.240 | I'm bringing that up, one of my favorite books,

01:26:33.280 | Master of the Senate by Robert Caro, part of the

01:26:35.920 | LBJ series, the Senate as an institution, it

01:26:38.920 | reveres independence. It reveres, I mean, the

01:26:42.760 | entire theory of the Senate is to cool down the

01:26:46.280 | mob that is in the House of Representatives and

01:26:48.920 | to deliberate. That's its entire body. They are

01:26:52.760 | set up to be immune from public pressure. Now,

01:26:55.160 | I'm not saying they can't be pressured, but that

01:26:57.520 | example I just gave on Rick Scott is a very

01:26:59.160 | important one of you. He literally endorsed

01:27:01.200 | somebody for leader. So did Tucker Carlson. So

01:27:04.000 | did a lot of people online. And only 13

01:27:06.320 | senators voted for Rick Scott. The truth is, is

01:27:08.320 | that they don't care. Like they're set up where

01:27:10.680 | they're marginally popular in their own home

01:27:12.840 | states. They'll be able to win their primaries.

01:27:15.400 | And that's all they really need to do to get

01:27:17.160 | elected. And they have six year terms, not even

01:27:18.680 | up for four years. So will Elon still be

01:27:21.000 | interested in politics six years from now? That's

01:27:22.920 | a legitimate question for a Republican senator.

01:27:25.040 | So maybe he could get the House of

01:27:26.960 | Representatives to sign off maybe on some of his

01:27:29.240 | things. But there's no guarantee that the Senate

01:27:32.120 | is going to agree with any of that. There's a

01:27:34.560 | story that Karos tells in the Master of the

01:27:37.280 | Senate book, which I love, where Thomas

01:27:39.640 | Jefferson was in Paris during the writing of the

01:27:42.400 | Constitution. And he asked Washington, he said,

01:27:45.160 | why did you put in a Senate, a bicameral

01:27:48.600 | legislature? And Washington said, why did you

01:27:51.640 | pour your tea into a saucer? And Jefferson goes

01:27:54.880 | to cool it. And Washington says, just so. It was a

01:28:00.360 | man of very few words. He was a brilliant man.

01:28:02.360 | Okay, so you actually outlined the most likely

01:28:06.000 | thing that's going to happen with Doge as it

01:28:08.960 | hits the wall of Washington. What is the sort

01:28:13.800 | of the most successful thing that can be pulled

01:28:16.720 | off? The most successful thing they could do is

01:28:19.240 | right now, I think they're really obsessed with

01:28:21.080 | designing cuts, right, and identifying cuts. I

01:28:25.920 | would redesign systems, systems of procurement, I

01:28:29.000 | would redesign the way that we have processes in

01:28:32.280 | place to dispense taxpayer dollars. Because the

01:28:35.840 | truth is, is that appropriations itself, again,

01:28:38.920 | are set by the United States Congress. But the

01:28:41.320 | way that those appropriations are spent by the

01:28:46.000 | government, the executive has some

01:28:47.960 | discretionary authority. So your ability as the

01:28:51.600 | executive to be a good steward of the taxpayer

01:28:53.840 | money, and to redesign a system, which actually

01:28:56.480 | I think Elon could be good at this and Vivek too,

01:28:58.400 | in terms of their entrepreneurial spirit is the

01:29:00.760 | entire Pentagon procurement thing, it needs to be

01:29:02.720 | burned to the ground. Number one, it's bad for

01:29:04.760 | the Pentagon, it doesn't get some substandard

01:29:06.640 | equipment, it rewards very old weapons systems

01:29:10.600 | and programs and thinking that can be easily

01:29:12.800 | defeated by people who are studying that for

01:29:15.280 | vulnerabilities. The perfect example is all of

01:29:18.120 | this drone warfare in Ukraine and in Russia. I

01:29:20.960 | mean, drone warfare costs almost nothing. And yet

01:29:24.760 | drone swarms and hypersonic missiles pose huge

01:29:27.960 | dangers to US systems, which costs hundreds of

01:29:31.560 | more than hundreds of billions of dollars. So my

01:29:34.160 | point is that giving nimble procurement and

01:29:37.600 | systemic change in the way that we think about

01:29:40.480 | executing the mission that Congress does give

01:29:42.320 | you actually could save the most amount of money

01:29:44.680 | in the long run. That's where I would really

01:29:47.280 | focus in on. The other one is, you know, counter

01:29:49.720 | to everything I just said, is maybe they listen.

01:29:53.520 | Maybe the Republicans are like, yeah, okay, let's

01:29:56.120 | do it. The problem again, though, is swing state

01:30:00.440 | people who need to get reelected, they need to do

01:30:02.600 | one thing they need to deliver for their

01:30:04.400 | district, they need to run on stuff. And nobody

01:30:07.440 | has ever run on cutting money for your state.

01:30:10.000 | They have run on bringing money to your state. And

01:30:13.120 | that's why earmarks and a lot of these other

01:30:15.920 | things are extraordinarily popular in Congress is

01:30:18.400 | because it's such an easy way to show

01:30:20.680 | constituents how you're working for them whenever

01:30:23.080 | it does come reelection time. So it's a very

01:30:26.720 | difficult system. And I also want to tell people

01:30:29.200 | who are frustrated by this, I share your

01:30:31.040 | frustration. But the system is designed to work

01:30:33.760 | this way. And for two centuries, the Senate has

01:30:36.720 | stood as a bulwark against literally every popular

01:30:39.920 | change. And because of that, it's designed to

01:30:42.800 | make sure that it's so popular for long enough

01:30:45.800 | that it has to become inevitable before the

01:30:47.920 | status quo can change. That's really, really

01:30:49.920 | frustrating. But you should take comfort in that

01:30:52.120 | it's always been that way. So it's been okay.

01:30:54.360 | Well, as I've learned from one of the

01:30:56.760 | recommendations of the age of acrimony, as I feel

01:31:01.000 | embarrassed, I didn't know that senators used to

01:31:03.240 | not be elected. What a crazy system, huh? Yeah, I

01:31:05.840 | mean, many of the things we take for granted now,

01:31:09.200 | as defining our democracy, was kind of invented,

01:31:15.040 | developed after the Civil War in the sort of 50

01:31:18.480 | years after the Civil War. Absolutely correct. Age

01:31:20.960 | of acrimony. Oh my God, I love that book. I cannot

01:31:23.360 | recommend it enough. It is so important. And one

01:31:26.640 | of the biggest mistakes that Americans make is

01:31:28.960 | that we study periods where greatness happened.

01:31:31.480 | But we don't often study periods where nothing

01:31:33.640 | happened or where really bad shit happened. You

01:31:36.960 | know, we don't spend nearly enough. Americans know

01:31:39.400 | about FDR. They don't really know anything about

01:31:41.040 | the Depression or how we got there. What was it

01:31:43.840 | like to be alive in the United States in 1840?

01:31:47.320 | Right? Nobody thinks about that, really, because

01:31:49.600 | it's kind of an in-between time in history. There

01:31:51.560 | are people who lived their entire lives, who were

01:31:53.040 | born, who had to live through those times, who

01:31:55.280 | were just as conscientious and intelligent as you

01:31:58.160 | and I are, and we're just trying to figure shit

01:31:59.800 | out. And things felt really big. So the age of

01:32:02.280 | acrimony is a time where it's almost completely

01:32:04.600 | ignored outside of the Gilded Age aspect. But

01:32:07.000 | like you just said, it was a time where progressive

01:32:09.440 | reform of government and of the tension between

01:32:12.480 | civil rights, extraordinary wealth, and democracy

01:32:17.680 | and really the reigning in of big business. So

01:32:21.080 | many of our foundations happened exactly in that

01:32:24.160 | time. And I take a lot of comfort from that book

01:32:25.920 | because one of the things I learned from the

01:32:27.920 | book is that voter participation is highest when

01:32:30.880 | people are pissed off, not being happy. And that's

01:32:34.040 | such a counterintuitive thing. But voter

01:32:36.360 | participation goes down when the system is

01:32:38.400 | working. So 2020, right, I think we can all agree

01:32:40.920 | it was a very tense election. That's also why it

01:32:43.160 | had the highest voter participation ever. 2024,

01:32:46.840 | very high rates of participation. Same thing.

01:32:49.320 | People are pissed off. And that's actually what

01:32:51.080 | drives them to the vote. But something I take

01:32:53.560 | comfort in that is that people being pissed off

01:32:55.560 | and people going out to vote, it actually does

01:32:57.400 | have major impact on the system. Because

01:32:59.560 | otherwise, the status quo is basically allowed to

01:33:02.640 | continue. And so yeah, like you just said, I

01:33:05.040 | mean, direct election of senators wasn't I mean,

01:33:07.400 | there are probably people alive today who are

01:33:09.200 | like, who could who were born when there was no

01:33:11.640 | direct election of senators, which is an insane

01:33:14.000 | thing to think about. I mean, it'd be almost 100

01:33:15.960 | or so. But the point is, is that that time, it was

01:33:19.960 | so deeply corrupt. And it was one where the

01:33:22.920 | quasi aristocracy from the early days leading

01:33:25.800 | into the Gilded Age were able to enforce their

01:33:28.080 | will upon the people. But you can take comfort in

01:33:30.560 | that that was one of those areas where Americans

01:33:33.440 | were so fed up with it, they changed the

01:33:35.240 | Constitution, and actually forced the aristocrats

01:33:38.000 | in power to give their own power. It's like our

01:33:40.760 | version of when they flipped power and took away

01:33:43.600 | the legislative power of the House of Lords in

01:33:45.880 | the UK. I just think that's amazing. And it's

01:33:48.160 | such a cool thing about our country in the UK

01:33:50.520 | too.

01:33:50.800 | It's the continued battle between the people and

01:33:54.880 | the elite. Right. And we should mention not just

01:33:58.640 | the direct election of senators, but the election

01:34:03.120 | of candidates for a party.

01:34:05.200 | Yes.

01:34:05.720 | That was also invented. It used to be that the

01:34:08.160 | quote unquote party bosses, I say that with a

01:34:11.120 | half a chuckle, chose the candidate.

01:34:15.040 | Yeah, the whole system is nuts. The way that we

01:34:17.320 | currently experience politics is such a modern

01:34:19.800 | invention.

01:34:20.200 | With a little asterisk with Kamala Harris, but

01:34:22.840 | Right. Yeah, good point. But that was actually

01:34:25.960 | more of a mean reversion, right? We're living in

01:34:28.200 | an extraordinarily new era where we actually have

01:34:30.120 | more input than ever on who our candidates are.

01:34:32.200 | It used to be this is crazy. So the conventions

01:34:35.760 | have always took in place two months before.

01:34:37.400 | Right. Imagine a world where you did not know who

01:34:39.520 | the nominee was going to be before that

01:34:41.320 | convention. And the nominee literally was

01:34:43.760 | decided at that convention by those party bosses.

01:34:46.640 | Even crazier, there used to be a standard in

01:34:49.880 | American politics where presidents did not

01:34:52.640 | directly campaign. They, in fact, did not even

01:34:55.240 | comment about the news or mention their

01:34:57.120 | opponent's names. They were they give speeches

01:34:59.720 | from their doorstep, but it was unseemly for

01:35:02.680 | them to engage in direct politics.

01:35:04.920 | You would not get a Bernie Sanders. You would

01:35:07.880 | not get a Donald Trump.

01:35:09.160 | Obama, Bill Clinton. I mean, basically every

01:35:11.880 | president from John F. Kennedy onwards has been

01:35:14.160 | a product of the new system. Every president

01:35:16.200 | prior to that has been much more of the older

01:35:18.240 | system. There was a in between period post FDR

01:35:20.960 | where things were really changing. But the

01:35:22.640 | primary system itself had its first true big

01:35:26.360 | win under John F. Kennedy.

01:35:27.600 | I think that the lesson from that is there's a

01:35:30.080 | collective wisdom to the people, right?

01:35:31.760 | I think so.

01:35:32.720 | I think it works.

01:35:33.520 | Yeah, I mean, well, OK, I'll steel Matt. We had

01:35:38.160 | some great presidents in the party boss era. FDR

01:35:40.760 | was a great president. FDR was the master of

01:35:43.840 | coalitional politics of his ability. In fact,

01:35:46.440 | what really made him a genius was his ability to

01:35:48.320 | get this overthrow the support of a lot of the

01:35:51.800 | corruption and the elite Democrats to take part

01:35:54.360 | or to take control. And they're at the convention

01:35:56.560 | and then combine his personal popularity to fuse

01:35:59.760 | all systems of power where he had the he had the

01:36:02.600 | he had the elites basically under his boot

01:36:05.120 | because he was the king and he used his popular

01:36:07.840 | power and his support from the people to be able

01:36:10.600 | to enforce things up and down. I mean, you know,

01:36:14.000 | even in the party boss era, we would have no a

01:36:17.400 | lot of the a lot of people we revere really came

01:36:19.920 | out of that. People like Abraham Lincoln. I mean,

01:36:22.320 | I don't think Abraham Lincoln would have won a

01:36:24.480 | party primary in 1860. There's no chance he won.

01:36:27.680 | He won luck, thank God, from an insane process in

01:36:32.160 | the 1860 Republican Convention. People should go

01:36:35.320 | read about that because that was wild. I think we

01:36:37.360 | were this close to not having Lincoln as

01:36:39.720 | president. And yeah, I mean, Teddy Roosevelt,

01:36:42.400 | there's so many that I could point to who made

01:36:44.400 | great impacts on history. So the system does find

01:36:46.880 | a way to still produce good stuff. That was a

01:36:49.960 | kind of beautiful diversion from the Doge

01:36:52.120 | discussion. If we're going to turn briefly to

01:36:54.440 | Doge. Sure. So we kind of talked about cost

01:36:57.960 | cutting, but there's also increasing the

01:37:00.560 | efficiency of government, which you also kind of

01:37:02.720 | talked about with procurement. So maybe we can

01:37:05.840 | throw into the pile, the 400 plus federal

01:37:09.240 | agencies. So let's take another perspective on

01:37:12.600 | what success might look like. So like radically

01:37:15.840 | successful Doge, would it basically cut a lot of

01:37:20.760 | federal agencies? Probably combine, combine.

01:37:24.120 | Okay, so I can give great examples of this

01:37:26.080 | because I have a great insight, like for each

01:37:28.800 | agency will often use different like payroll

01:37:31.440 | systems, they'll have different internal

01:37:33.520 | processes, right? That makes no sense. And it's

01:37:36.480 | all because it's antiquated. Now, everybody

01:37:39.280 | always talks about changing it. But there are a

01:37:41.880 | lot of, like, party interests about why certain

01:37:45.800 | people get certain things. The real problem with

01:37:48.400 | government, the people like us who are private,

01:37:50.600 | and like, for example, when you want to do

01:37:52.280 | something, you can just do it. So I was listening

01:37:54.560 | to a really interesting analysis about law

01:37:57.920 | enforcement, and the military. So I think the

01:38:01.960 | story was that the military was assigned, some

01:38:05.920 | National Guard guys were assigned to like help

01:38:07.560 | with the border. And they were trying to provide,

01:38:09.800 | I think it was translation services to people at

01:38:12.360 | Border Patrol. But somebody had to come down and

01:38:14.600 | be like, hey, this has got to stop. According to

01:38:17.240 | US Code X, Y, and Z, the United States military

01:38:20.480 | cannot help with law enforcement, you know,

01:38:22.920 | abilities here. And so even though that makes

01:38:25.600 | absolutely no sense, because they're all work,

01:38:28.320 | there are literal legal statutes in place that

01:38:30.960 | prevent you from doing the most efficient thing

01:38:32.680 | possible. So for some reason, we have to have a

01:38:34.960 | ton of Spanish speakers in South Com, you know,

01:38:37.600 | in the, the US command that is responsible for

01:38:41.160 | South America, who literally cannot help with a

01:38:43.360 | crisis at the border. Now, maybe you can find

01:38:46.360 | some legal chicanery to make that work. But man,

01:38:49.600 | you got to have an attorney general who knows

01:38:51.920 | what he's doing, you need a White House counsel,

01:38:53.640 | you need to make sure that shit stands up in a

01:38:55.040 | court of law. I mean, it's not so simple.

01:38:57.480 | Whereas, let's say, you know, you have a software

01:38:59.400 | right here, and you want to get a new software,

01:39:00.600 | you can just do it, you can hire whoever you

01:39:02.720 | want. When you're the government, there's a

01:39:04.560 | whole process you got to go through about bidding.

01:39:07.640 | And it just takes forever. And it is so

01:39:11.040 | inefficient. But unfortunately, the

01:39:13.560 | inefficiency is really derivative of a lot of

01:39:16.400 | legal statutes. And that is something that, yeah,

01:39:20.920 | again, actually, you know, radically successful

01:39:22.960 | doge, quote unquote, would be study the law, and

01:39:26.600 | then change it. Like, figure, instead of cost

01:39:30.120 | cutting, like, cut this program or whatever, like

01:39:33.120 | I just said about why do different systems use

01:39:35.240 | payroll, just say that you can change the statute

01:39:39.520 | under which new software can be updated, let's

01:39:42.280 | say, after 90 days, you know, I've heard stories

01:39:44.680 | of people who work for the government who still

01:39:46.520 | have like IBM mainframe, that they're still in

01:39:48.840 | 2024, that they're still working, because those

01:39:50.920 | systems have never been updated. There's also a

01:39:53.760 | big problem with a lot of this clearance stuff.

01:39:55.880 | That's where a lot of inefficiency happens,

01:39:57.640 | because a lot of contractors can only work

01:40:00.240 | based upon previous clearance that they already

01:40:02.320 | got. Achieving a clearance is very expensive.

01:40:04.760 | It's very lengthy process. I'm not saying it

01:40:06.840 | shouldn't be talking about security clearance,

01:40:09.200 | but it does naturally, you know, create a very

01:40:12.000 | small pool that you can draw some contracts

01:40:14.360 | fund. And I even mean stuff like, like the

01:40:17.200 | janitor at the Pentagon needs a security

01:40:19.280 | service, right? So clearance, so there's only

01:40:22.080 | like five people who can even apply for that

01:40:25.080 | contract. Well, naturally, in an interim

01:40:27.440 | monopoly like that, he's going to jack his price

01:40:29.720 | up, because he literally has a moat around his

01:40:32.560 | product. Whereas if you were I are hiring a

01:40:35.040 | gent, whatever anybody for anything that type of

01:40:37.680 | credentialism and legal regime, it doesn't matter

01:40:39.760 | at all. So there are a million problems like

01:40:41.960 | this that people in government run into. And

01:40:44.760 | that is what I would see as the most successful.

01:40:46.960 | You know, paperwork slows everything down, and

01:40:49.560 | it feels impossible to break through that in a

01:40:54.160 | sort of incremental way. It's so hard. It feels

01:40:56.320 | like the only way to do it is to literally shut

01:41:01.320 | down agencies in some kind of radical way, and

01:41:04.320 | then build up from, from scratch. Of course, as

01:41:08.320 | you highlight, that's going to be opposed by a

01:41:11.640 | lot of people within government.

01:41:13.000 | Yeah. Well, historically, there's only one way to

01:41:14.880 | do it. And it's a really bad answer. War.

01:41:17.120 | War. Yeah. So I was gonna say, basically, you

01:41:20.720 | have the kind of consensus where, okay, all this

01:41:24.600 | stupid bureaucratic bullshit we've been doing,

01:41:26.520 | we need to, like, put that shit aside, get the

01:41:29.320 | fuck out of here, we need to win a war. So like,

01:41:32.240 | all the paperwork, you know, all the lawyers go

01:41:35.520 | go leave.

01:41:36.320 | No, but I want people to really understand that,

01:41:40.040 | you know, up until 1865, or 1860, what I forget

01:41:43.280 | the exact year, we didn't even have national

01:41:45.360 | currency. And then we were like, well, we need a

01:41:48.640 | greenback. And prior to that, people would freak

01:41:52.160 | out if we were talking about having national

01:41:53.800 | currency, greenback backed by the, you know, the

01:41:56.200 | US government and all that. Not even a question

01:41:58.400 | passing like two weeks in the US Congress, an

01:42:01.120 | income tax eventually went away, but not even in

01:42:04.480 | the realm of possibility. And they decide to pass

01:42:06.880 | it. Same thing after World War One. And you think

01:42:09.960 | about how World War Two, I mean, World War Two

01:42:12.000 | just fundamentally changed the entire way the

01:42:14.720 | United States government works. Even the DHS,

01:42:17.280 | which I mentioned earlier, the Department of

01:42:19.080 | Homeland Security, it didn't even exist prior to

01:42:21.600 | 9/11. It was done as response to 9/11 to coalesce

01:42:25.320 | all of those agencies under one branch to make

01:42:27.960 | sure that nothing like that could ever happen

01:42:29.800 | again. And so historically, unfortunately,

01:42:33.360 | absolute shitshow disaster war is the only thing

01:42:37.800 | that moves and throws the paperwork off the

01:42:40.680 | table. And I wish I wasn't such a downer, but I've

01:42:43.640 | just I've both I've read too much. And I've had

01:42:46.680 | enough experience now in Washington to just see

01:42:49.520 | how these dreams get crushed instantly. And I

01:42:53.680 | wish it wasn't that way. I mean, it's it's a cool

01:42:55.720 | idea. And I want people who are inspired, who are

01:42:58.080 | getting into politics to think that they can do

01:42:59.760 | something, but I want them to be realistic, too.

01:43:01.800 | And I want them to know what they're signing up

01:43:03.400 | for whenever they do something like that. And the

01:43:05.120 | titanic amount of work it is going to take for you

01:43:07.160 | to be able to accomplish something.

01:43:08.240 | Yeah, but I've also heard a lot of people in

01:43:10.480 | Silicon Valley laughing when Elon rolled in and

01:43:13.960 | fired 90% of Twitter. Here's this guy, Elon Musk.

01:43:16.920 | You are absolutely correct.

01:43:17.920 | He knows nothing about running a social media

01:43:20.120 | company. Of course, you need all these servers, of

01:43:22.800 | course, you need all these employees. Right. And

01:43:24.960 | nevertheless, the service keeps running.

01:43:27.240 | He figured it out. And you have to give him

01:43:28.920 | eternal credit for that. I guess the difference

01:43:31.000 | is no, there was no law that he could fire him.

01:43:33.120 | You know, there was no, there was no, like, like

01:43:36.880 | at the end of the day, he owned the company, you

01:43:38.200 | know, he had total discretion of his ability to

01:43:40.280 | move. So I'm not even saying his ideas are bad.

01:43:42.520 | I'm saying that the ability that's what makes him

01:43:46.360 | such an incredible visionary entrepreneur, it's

01:43:49.360 | movement, it's deference at times to the right

01:43:53.320 | people, but also the knowledge of every individual

01:43:56.560 | piece of the machine and his ability to come in

01:43:59.720 | and to execute his full vision at any time and

01:44:02.200 | override any of the managers. So I talked

01:44:04.720 | previously about the professional managerial

01:44:06.840 | class and the managerial revolution. Elon is one

01:44:09.200 | of the few people who's ever built a

01:44:10.360 | multibillion-dollar company who has not actually

01:44:13.360 | fallen victim to the managerial revolution and

01:44:15.760 | against entrepreneurship and innovation that

01:44:18.000 | happens there. There are very few people who can

01:44:19.760 | do it. Elon, Steve Jobs. But, you know, what do

01:44:22.800 | we learn is that unfortunately, after Steve

01:44:24.960 | died, Apple basically did succumb to the

01:44:27.080 | managerial revolution and has become like the

01:44:29.680 | product, you know, they make all their money by

01:44:32.000 | printing services and making it impossible to

01:44:34.080 | leave this ecosystem as opposed to building the

01:44:37.680 | most cool product ever. As much as I love my

01:44:40.200 | vision pro, don't get me wrong.

01:44:41.360 | I think you just admitted that you're part of a

01:44:43.200 | cult.

01:44:43.560 | I know I literally am. I am. I fully admit it.

01:44:46.680 | Yeah. Yeah. I miss Steve.

01:44:48.560 | The grass is green on the other side. Come come

01:44:50.520 | join us. Okay. Whether it's Elon or somebody

01:44:53.720 | else, what what gives you hope about something

01:44:56.280 | like a radical transformation of government

01:45:00.560 | towards efficiency towards being more slim? What

01:45:05.120 | gives you hope that that that will be possible?

01:45:06.880 | Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I don't think

01:45:08.840 | slimness in and of itself is a good thing. What I

01:45:11.680 | care about is the relationship to people in its

01:45:14.400 | government. So the biggest problem that we have

01:45:17.520 | is that we have a complete loss of faith in all

01:45:19.480 | of our institutions. And I've really encouraged

01:45:23.160 | people, I don't think people can quite understand

01:45:26.240 | what the relationship between America and its

01:45:28.440 | government was like, after World War Two, and

01:45:30.960 | after FDR, like 90% of the people trusted the

01:45:34.400 | government. That's crazy. Like when the

01:45:37.160 | president said something, they were like, Okay,

01:45:39.160 | he's not lying. Think about our cynical attitude

01:45:42.680 | towards politicians today. That is largely the

01:45:45.160 | fault of Lyndon Johnson and of Richard Nixon, and

01:45:48.360 | that entire fallout period of Vietnam, Vietnam in

01:45:51.280 | particular really broke the American character

01:45:53.560 | and its ability and its relationship with

01:45:55.560 | government. And we've never recovered faith in

01:45:57.840 | institutions ever since that. And it's really

01:45:59.960 | unfortunate. So what makes me hopeful, at least

01:46:02.960 | this time, is anytime a president wins a popular

01:46:06.080 | vote and an election is they have the ability to

01:46:08.760 | reset and to actually try and build something that

01:46:11.720 | is new. And so what I would hope is that this is

01:46:15.920 | different from the first Trump administration, in

01:46:18.400 | which the mandate for Donald Trump is actually

01:46:22.120 | carried out competently. Yes, he can do his

01:46:26.320 | antics, which got him elected, you know, at this

01:46:27.960 | point, we can't deny it. McDonald's thing is

01:46:29.720 | hilarious. It's funny. It is. People love it.

01:46:32.560 | People like the podcasting people like garbage

01:46:35.520 | truck, the garbage truck. Yeah, exactly. They

01:46:37.440 | like the stunts and he will always excel and he

01:46:39.800 | will continue to do that. There are policy and

01:46:42.480 | other things that he can and should do like the

01:46:44.280 | pursuit of no war, like solving the immigration

01:46:47.600 | question, and also really figuring out our

01:46:50.680 | economy, the way that it currently runs and

01:46:53.920 | changing it so that the actual American dream is

01:46:57.320 | more achievable. And housing is one of the chief

01:47:01.400 | problems that we have right now. The real thing

01:47:03.720 | is Donald Trump was elected on the backs of the

01:47:05.800 | working man. I mean, it's just true households

01:47:08.320 | under $100,000 voted for Donald Trump. Maybe they

01:47:10.760 | didn't do so for economic reasons. I think a lot

01:47:12.440 | of them did for for economic, a lot of them did

01:47:14.680 | for immigration, for cultural, but you still owe

01:47:16.920 | them something. And there is a, I would hope that

01:47:20.440 | they could carry something out in that respect

01:47:22.560 | that is not a similar continuation and chaotic

01:47:26.120 | vibe of the first time where everything felt like

01:47:28.080 | it exploded anytime with staffing with even his

01:47:32.560 | policy or what he cared about or his ability to

01:47:35.080 | pursue. And a lot of that does come back to

01:47:37.080 | personnel. So I'm concerned in some respects. I'm

01:47:39.720 | like, not thrilled in some respects. I'm happy in

01:47:42.920 | some respects, but it remains to be seen how he's

01:47:45.920 | going to do it to the degree it's possible to see

01:47:48.520 | Trumpism and Maga as a coherent ideology. What do

01:47:51.640 | you think are the central pillars of it?

01:47:53.440 | Maga is a rejection of cultural elitism. That's

01:47:58.160 | what I would say. Cultural elitism though, has

01:48:00.600 | many different categories. Immigration is one,

01:48:04.760 | right? Is that cultural elitism and cultural

01:48:06.920 | liberalism has a fundamental belief that

01:48:09.440 | immigration in and of itself is a natural good at

01:48:12.080 | any and all levels that all immigrants are like

01:48:14.480 | replacement level, that there is no difference

01:48:16.400 | between them. Cultural elitism in a foreign

01:48:19.240 | policy context, comes back to a lot of that human

01:48:22.720 | rights, democracy stuff that I was talking about

01:48:25.760 | earlier, which divorces American values from

01:48:28.480 | American interests, and says that actually

01:48:30.440 | American values are American interests. Cultural

01:48:34.200 | elitism and liberalism leads to the worship of

01:48:37.640 | the postal rights era bureaucracy that I talked

01:48:39.960 | about from those two books of DEI, quote unquote

01:48:42.640 | woke and of progressive social ideology. So I

01:48:46.880 | would put all those together as ultimately what

01:48:50.520 | Maga is, it is a screw you. I once drove past it

01:48:55.920 | was in rural Nevada and I was driving and I

01:48:58.240 | drove past the biggest sign I've ever seen

01:49:00.960 | political sign to this day. And it's just it was

01:49:03.120 | in 2020 and just said Trump, fuck your feelings.

01:49:06.400 | And I still believe that is the most coherent

01:49:08.960 | Maga thing I've ever seen because everyone's

01:49:11.920 | always like, how can a neocon and Tulsi Gabbard

01:49:16.400 | and RFK and all these other people, how can they

01:49:18.880 | all exist under the same umbrella? And I'm like,

01:49:21.840 | it's very simple. All of them have rejected the

01:49:24.280 | cultural elite in their own way, certainly, but

01:49:27.560 | they've arrived at the same place. It's an

01:49:29.800 | umbrella. And it's an umbrella fundamentally,

01:49:32.440 | which has nothing to do with the status quo. And

01:49:35.640 | with the, you know, currently established

01:49:37.960 | cultural elite. That doesn't mean they're not

01:49:39.760 | elite, and they're not rich in their own regards.

01:49:41.600 | That doesn't mean they don't disagree. But

01:49:43.120 | that's the one thing that unites the entire party.

01:49:45.240 | And so that's the way I would put it.

01:49:46.680 | Anticultural elite. Is that synonymous with

01:49:50.880 | anti establishment? So basic distrust of all

01:49:53.320 | institutions? Is elitism connected to

01:49:55.760 | institutions?

01:49:56.680 | Yes, absolutely. Because elites are the ones who

01:49:58.800 | runs our institutions. That said, anti

01:50:02.040 | establishment is really not the right word,

01:50:03.680 | because there are a lot of left wingers who are

01:50:05.840 | anti establishment, right? They are against that,

01:50:08.240 | but they're not anti cultural leftism. And

01:50:10.280 | that's the key distinction between MAGA and like

01:50:13.200 | left populism. Left populism basically does

01:50:16.600 | agree. They agree with like basic conceits like

01:50:19.760 | racism is one of the biggest problem facing

01:50:22.520 | America. They're like one of the ways that we

01:50:24.280 | would fix that is through class oriented economic

01:50:27.760 | programs in order to address that. But we

01:50:30.160 | believe in, I don't know, like reparations as a

01:50:33.120 | concept. It's just more about how we arrived

01:50:35.280 | there. Whereas in MAGA, we would say no, we

01:50:38.200 | actually don't think that at all. We think we

01:50:39.640 | have evolved past that. And we think that the

01:50:42.200 | best way to fix it is actually similar policy

01:50:44.280 | prescription, but the mindset matters a lot. So

01:50:47.560 | the real distinction between MAGA and like left

01:50:50.600 | populism really is on culture, trans in

01:50:53.520 | particular, orientation about actually

01:50:56.240 | immigration may be the biggest one. Because if

01:50:58.880 | you look at the history of Bernie Sanders, you

01:51:01.040 | know, Bernie Sanders was a person who railed

01:51:03.200 | against open borders and against mass migration

01:51:05.880 | for years. There are famous interviews of him

01:51:08.560 | on YouTube with Lou Dobbs, who's one of the

01:51:11.160 | hardcore, hardcore immigration guys. And they

01:51:13.480 | agree with each other. And Lou is like, Bernie's

01:51:15.600 | one of the only guys out there. Bernie, at the

01:51:18.160 | end of the day, he had to succumb to the cultural

01:51:20.840 | left and its changing attitudes on mass

01:51:23.160 | immigration. There are some famous clips from

01:51:25.680 | 2015 in a Vox interview that he gave where he

01:51:28.960 | started. I think he started talking about how

01:51:30.320 | the open borders is a Koch brothers libertarian

01:51:32.760 | concept, right? Because Bernie is a basically of

01:51:36.440 | a European welfare state tradition. European

01:51:38.920 | welfare states are very simply understood. We

01:51:42.160 | have high taxes, high services, low rates of

01:51:44.760 | immigration, because we have high taxes and high

01:51:47.200 | services, we have a limited pool of people who

01:51:49.720 | can experience and take those services. He used

01:51:52.160 | to understand that he changed a lot of his

01:51:54.040 | attitude. Bernie also, I will say, look, he's a

01:51:57.160 | courageous man, and a courageous politician. You

01:51:59.600 | know, as late as 2017, he actually endorsed a

01:52:02.120 | pro life candidate, because he said that that

01:52:04.600 | pro life candidate was, you know, pro worker, and

01:52:07.440 | he's like, at the end of the day, I care about

01:52:08.640 | pro worker policy. He took a ton of shit for it,

01:52:10.960 | and I don't think he's done it since. So the sad

01:52:12.920 | part that's really happened is that a lot of left

01:52:16.280 | populist, you know, agenda and other has become

01:52:19.760 | subsumed, you know, in the hysteria around cultural

01:52:24.160 | leftism, woke ism, whatever the hell you want to

01:52:25.880 | call it. And that ultimately, that cultural

01:52:28.520 | leftism was the thing that really united, you

01:52:30.960 | know, the two wings of that party. And that's

01:52:32.680 | really why MAGA is very opposed to that. They're

01:52:35.720 | really not the same, but the left populist can

01:52:38.160 | still be anti establishment. That's the key.

01:52:39.920 | It's interesting to think of the left cultural

01:52:43.640 | elite, subsuming, consuming Bernie Sanders, the

01:52:48.280 | left populist. So you think that's what happened?

01:52:50.520 | That's what I would say.

01:52:51.320 | What do you think happened in 2016? With Bernie?

01:52:54.080 | Is there a possible future where he would have

01:52:57.120 | won? You and Crystal wrote a book on populism

01:52:59.800 | 2020. So from that perspective, just looking at

01:53:02.760 | 2016, if he rejected woke ism at that time, by

01:53:07.600 | the way, that would be pretty gangster during

01:53:09.080 | 2016. Would he have, because I think Hillary

01:53:14.160 | went towards the left more, right? Am I remembering

01:53:18.040 | that correctly?

01:53:18.400 | It was a very weird time. So, uh, yes and no, it

01:53:22.120 | wasn't full on BLM mania like it was in 2020, but

01:53:27.000 | the signs were all there. Uh, so the great

01:53:29.280 | awokening was in 2014. I know it's a ridiculous

01:53:32.680 | term. I love it. Please keep saying the origin,

01:53:37.080 | the great awakening is about the great religious

01:53:39.120 | revival in the United States. So people had, you

01:53:41.240 | know, because woke ism is a religion, you know,

01:53:43.520 | that's a common refrain. They were like, the

01:53:44.960 | great awokening is a really good term. So thank

01:53:46.920 | you for explaining the joke. Yeah. So the great

01:53:48.960 | awokening is basically when racial attitudes

01:53:52.000 | amongst college educated whites basically flipped

01:53:54.560 | on its head. There are a variety of reasons why

01:53:56.800 | this happened. Um, I really believe that Ta-Nehisi

01:53:59.760 | Coates is case for reparations in the Atlantic

01:54:01.840 | is one of those. It radicalized an entire

01:54:04.400 | generation of, uh, basically like white college

01:54:06.960 | educated women to think completely differently

01:54:09.360 | on race. It was during Ferguson. And then it

01:54:11.920 | also happened immediately after the Trayvon

01:54:14.160 | Martin case. Those two things really set the

01:54:17.360 | stage for the eventual BLM takeover of 2020. But

01:54:21.640 | fundamentally what they did is they changed

01:54:23.640 | racial attitudes amongst college educated elites

01:54:26.040 | to really think in a race first construct. And

01:54:28.960 | worse is that they were rejected in 2016 at the

01:54:32.640 | ballot box by the election of Donald Trump. And

01:54:35.200 | in response, they ramped it up because they

01:54:37.680 | believed that that was the framework to view the

01:54:39.960 | world that people voted for Trump because he was

01:54:42.160 | racist and not for a variety of other reasons

01:54:44.640 | that they eventually did. And so the point around

01:54:48.080 | this on question of whether Bernie could have

01:54:50.240 | won in 2016, I don't know. Crystal seems to think

01:54:53.520 | so. I'm skeptical. Uh, I'm skeptical for a variety

01:54:57.880 | of reasons. I think the culture is honestly one

01:55:00.120 | of them. One of Trump's core issues in 2016 was

01:55:03.040 | immigration and Bernie and him did not agree on

01:55:06.040 | immigration. And if immigration, you know, even

01:55:08.600 | if people did, you know, support Bernie Sanders

01:55:10.960 | and his vision for working class people, like the

01:55:13.120 | debates and the understanding about what it

01:55:15.680 | would look like, like a healthcare system, which

01:55:17.640 | literally would pay for illegal immigrants, I

01:55:20.440 | think he would have gotten killed on that. Um,

01:55:22.560 | but I could be wrong. I honestly, I will never

01:55:24.560 | know, you know, what that looked like. Let me

01:55:26.320 | reference you from earlier in the conversation

01:55:29.200 | with FDR. It's not the policy. I think if he went

01:55:32.840 | more anti-establishment and more populist as

01:55:38.080 | opposed to trying to court, trying to be friendly

01:55:41.360 | with the DNC. Yeah. I mean, that's a good

01:55:44.120 | counterfactual. Nobody will really know. Look, I,

01:55:48.200 | I have a lot of love for the Bernie 2016 campaign.

01:55:51.160 | He has a great ad from 2016 called America. You

01:55:53.840 | should watch it. It's a great ad. That's another

01:55:55.920 | very interesting thing. It's unapologetically

01:55:57.920 | patriotic, and that is not something that you see

01:56:00.400 | in a lot of left-wing circles these days. So he

01:56:03.800 | understood politics at a base level that a lot of

01:56:06.520 | people did not. Um, but you know, Bernie himself,

01:56:10.040 | and then a lot of the Bernie movement was

01:56:11.720 | basically crushed by the elite democratic party

01:56:14.760 | for a variety of reasons. They hated them. You

01:56:17.240 | know, they basically, they attacked Joe Rogan for

01:56:18.920 | even having him on, um, and for, uh, giving him a

01:56:21.840 | platform that was ridiculous, obviously

01:56:23.960 | backfired in their face, which is really funny.

01:56:25.920 | Uh, there is a, but there were a lot of million

01:56:29.040 | examples like that, you know, when they attacked

01:56:31.120 | Bernie for, uh, endorsing a pro-life politician

01:56:33.880 | and he never did it again. They attacked Bernie

01:56:35.920 | for running, for having Bernie bros, you know,

01:56:38.120 | people online, the bros who were super bro Bernie,

01:56:41.240 | and it was his fault. His supporters would say

01:56:43.880 | nasty things about Elizabeth Warren, and he

01:56:46.160 | would like defend straight himself and be like,

01:56:47.880 | yes, I'm sorry. Please. My bro is like, stop that.

01:56:51.240 | I think the, his biggest problem is he never went

01:56:53.960 | full Trump. Like he didn't go, like he kept

01:56:57.200 | saying, sorry.

01:56:58.040 | Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. And actually in

01:57:00.600 | 2020, I did a ton of analysis on this at the

01:57:02.840 | time. He would always do stuff like Joe Biden,

01:57:05.480 | my friend. And it's like, no, he's not your

01:57:07.840 | friend. He stands for everything that you

01:57:09.960 | disagree with everything. He'd be like, yeah,

01:57:12.520 | he's a nice guy, but he's not my friend. But he

01:57:15.200 | would always be like, Joe and I are great friends,

01:57:17.440 | but you know, you know, we have a small

01:57:19.080 | disagreement on this, but you know, like you

01:57:21.080 | just said, in terms of going full Trump, they

01:57:23.120 | wanted to see Trump up there, humiliating all of

01:57:25.960 | the GOP politicians that they didn't trust

01:57:27.760 | anymore. That's what people really wanted. But

01:57:30.160 | the other side of this is that the Democratic

01:57:32.560 | base in 2020 was very different than 2016,

01:57:35.360 | because by 2020, they full on had TDS. And they

01:57:39.200 | were basically like, we need to defeat Trump at

01:57:42.800 | all costs. We don't give a shit what your name

01:57:45.600 | is, Bernie, Biden, whatever, whichever of you is

01:57:49.920 | going to be best defeat Trump, you get the knob.

01:57:52.520 | 2016 is different because they didn't full on

01:57:54.960 | have that, like love and necessity of winning. By

01:57:59.120 | the way, this is a strategic advantage that the

01:58:00.920 | Democrats have. Democrats just care about winning

01:58:03.680 | the current base of the party. All they want to

01:58:06.120 | do is win Republican base, they don't give a shit

01:58:08.160 | about winning. They just love Trump. So it's

01:58:10.200 | nice to win. But one of those where they will

01:58:14.160 | express their ID for what they really want. Now

01:58:17.360 | it's worked out for them, because it turns out

01:58:18.760 | that's a very palpable political force. But one

01:58:21.800 | of the reasons why, you know, you won't see me up

01:58:24.760 | here doing James Carville 40 more years is there

01:58:28.080 | is a law of something called thermostatic public

01:58:30.200 | opinion, where, you know, the thermostat, it

01:58:33.720 | changes a lot. Whenever you actually so when you

01:58:36.520 | have a left wing president power, the country

01:58:38.360 | goes right, we have a right wing president power,

01:58:40.160 | country goes left. Amazing, right? You can

01:58:42.880 | actually look at a graph of economic attitudes

01:58:45.680 | from the two months where Joe Biden became

01:58:48.520 | president after Donald Trump. So Republicans,

01:58:50.840 | Trump was president of the last year in office,

01:58:52.560 | economy is great. Two months later, the economy

01:58:55.080 | is horrible. That is a perfect example of

01:58:57.800 | thermostatic opinion. And I'm not counting these

01:59:00.720 | Democrats out. 2004, George W. Bush wins the

01:59:03.960 | popular vote. He has a historic mandate to

01:59:06.480 | continue in Iraq. By '06, he's toasted. We have a

01:59:10.000 | massive midterm election. And by '08, we're right

01:59:12.680 | in books about 40 more years and how there's

01:59:14.240 | never going to be a Republican in office ever

01:59:16.040 | again. So things can change a lot in a very short

01:59:18.680 | period of time.

01:59:19.240 | I think also for me personally, maybe I'm

01:59:21.200 | deluded. Sort of the great man view of history. I

01:59:25.080 | think some of it is in programming circles, the

01:59:27.760 | term skills issue. I think some of it just has to

01:59:31.800 | do how good you are, how charismatic you are, how

01:59:34.160 | good you are as a politician. I maybe disagree

01:59:37.080 | with this. I'd love to see what you think. I think

01:59:39.280 | if Obama if you were allowed to run for many

01:59:41.320 | terms, I think Obama would just keep winning. He

01:59:44.080 | would win 2016. He would win 2020. He would win

01:59:47.400 | this year, 2024.

01:59:48.640 | It's possible, but I would flip it on you. And I

01:59:50.960 | would say Obama would never be elected if there

01:59:52.920 | were no term limits. Because Bill Clinton would

01:59:54.800 | have still been president. Yeah.

01:59:56.240 | Well, those two, right. Those two examples of

01:59:58.800 | exactly. They extremely skilled politicians and

02:00:03.840 | somehow can appear like populists.

02:00:07.360 | Man, Bill Clinton was a force in his time. And

02:00:11.040 | it's honestly sad what's happened to him. I was

02:00:13.400 | actually just talking with a friend the other

02:00:14.600 | day. I'm like, I kind of don't think the

02:00:16.520 | president should become president when they're

02:00:18.160 | young because they live to see themselves become

02:00:21.720 | irrelevant. And that must be really painful

02:00:24.040 | because I know what it takes to get there. Imagine

02:00:27.480 | being Clinton. I mean, your entire legacy was

02:00:30.240 | destroyed with Hillary Clinton in 2016. And then

02:00:33.560 | imagine being Obama, who in 2016, you could argue

02:00:36.960 | it's a one off and say that Trump is just, oh,

02:00:39.400 | Hillary was a bad candidate. But Michelle and

02:00:41.920 | Barack Obama went so hard for Kamala Harris and

02:00:45.560 | they just got blown out in the popular vote. I

02:00:47.200 | mean, the Obama era officially ended with Donald

02:00:49.640 | Trump's reelection to the presidency in 2024. And

02:00:52.760 | that was a 20 year period where Obama was one of

02:00:55.200 | the most popular central figures in American

02:00:57.840 | politics. But I want to return to what you're

02:01:00.080 | saying, because it is important. And by the way,

02:01:02.000 | I do not support term limits on American

02:01:03.960 | presidents. Are you a fascist? Well, that would

02:01:06.000 | imply that would imply that I don't believe in

02:01:08.840 | democracy. I actually do believe in democracy

02:01:11.120 | because I think the people if they love their

02:01:13.360 | president should be able to reelect him. I think

02:01:15.560 | FDR was amazing. I think that the term limit

02:01:18.160 | change was a basically what happened is, is that

02:01:22.880 | Republicans and a lot of elite Democrats always

02:01:25.720 | wanted to speak against FDR, but he was a god so

02:01:28.440 | they couldn't. So they waited until he died. And

02:01:31.120 | then after he died, they were like, yeah, this

02:01:33.080 | whole third, fourth term that can never happen

02:01:34.960 | again. And America didn't really think that hard

02:01:38.040 | about it. They were like, yeah, okay, whatever.

02:01:40.320 | But I mean, it had immense consequences for

02:01:43.400 | American history. Clinton is the perfect example.

02:01:46.280 | I mean, just Bill Clinton left office, even

02:01:48.920 | despite the Lewinsky bullshit, he had a 60%

02:01:51.600 | approval rating. Okay, no way George W. Bush

02:01:55.000 | gets elected. Impossible. Clinton would have

02:01:57.320 | blown his ass out. And imagine the consequences

02:02:00.120 | of that. We would have no Iraq. I mean, I'm not

02:02:02.720 | saying he was a great man, like he we probably

02:02:05.000 | still would have the financial crisis. And

02:02:06.400 | there's still a lot of bad stuff that would have

02:02:08.280 | happened. But he was a popular dude. And, you

02:02:10.240 | know, I wouldn't say the best judgment at times

02:02:13.200 | presidentially, not personally, definitely not

02:02:15.320 | personally, but you know, presidentially, but I'm

02:02:17.920 | pretty confident we would have not gone into the

02:02:20.280 | Iraq war. And so that's where it really cost us.

02:02:23.160 | If you're left wing and you're talking about

02:02:24.760 | Obama, yeah, I think Obama probably would have

02:02:26.800 | won in 2016. Although it's a counterfactual

02:02:30.960 | because Obama was never challenged in the same

02:02:34.360 | way that Maga was able to, to the liberal

02:02:38.080 | consensus, like Romney really ran this like,

02:02:40.840 | awful campaign, honestly, about cutting spending

02:02:44.040 | and very traditional Republican was deeply

02:02:45.920 | unpopular. The autopsy of that election was we

02:02:50.080 | actually need to be more pro immigration that

02:02:52.080 | literally was the autopsy. But Trump understood

02:02:55.560 | the assignment. There are two people who I so

02:02:58.520 | deeply respect for their political bets, Peter

02:03:01.280 | Thiel and Donald Trump. So one of the books that

02:03:04.320 | I recommended called The Unwinding by George

02:03:06.440 | Packer, he actually talks about Peter Thiel there.

02:03:08.440 | This is in 2013. And Thiel talks about, he was

02:03:12.880 | like, you know, whoever runs for office next,

02:03:15.600 | they don't need to run on an optimistic message.

02:03:18.200 | They need to run on a message that everything is

02:03:20.080 | fucked up and that we need to fix. And if you

02:03:22.720 | think about that's why Thiel's endorsement of

02:03:26.400 | Trump with the American carnage message is, I

02:03:30.320 | mean, it took it was shocking, right at the

02:03:32.280 | time. But he had that fundamental insight that

02:03:34.840 | that's what the American people wanted. Trump,

02:03:36.920 | too, comes out of an election in 2012, where the

02:03:40.560 | literal GOP autopsy, the report produced by the

02:03:43.160 | party says we need to be pro mass immigration.

02:03:46.040 | What happens immediately after 2012, they start

02:03:49.840 | to go for mass immigrant, basically, they go for

02:03:53.160 | like these amnesty plans, the so called gang of

02:03:55.680 | eight plan, Marco Rubio, and all this in 2013, it

02:03:58.840 | falls apart. But Republicans get punished by

02:04:02.440 | their base in 2014. So Eric Cantor, who was the

02:04:06.960 | House Majority Leader, the number two Republican

02:04:09.160 | spent more on stake in his campaign than his

02:04:11.480 | primary opponent who successfully defeated him.

02:04:13.320 | Guy named Dave Bratt. Dave Bratt kicked his ass

02:04:15.800 | on the issue of immigration and said that Eric

02:04:17.840 | Cantor is pro amnesty. All of the forces were

02:04:20.560 | there. And then in 2015, Trump comes down the

02:04:23.160 | escalator, and he gives the message on

02:04:25.600 | immigration that the GOP base has been roaring

02:04:27.880 | and wanting to hear now, but that nobody wanted

02:04:30.240 | to listen to them. And that was his fundamental

02:04:32.960 | insight. That bet was a colossal and a titanic

02:04:36.160 | political bet at a time when all political

02:04:39.000 | ideology and thought process would have said

02:04:42.160 | that you should come out on the other side, which

02:04:43.800 | is where a Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and all these

02:04:46.440 | other guys were effectively there. And in

02:04:48.840 | varying different ways, like they were hawkish or

02:04:51.080 | whatever, but Trump was just so had such a

02:04:53.520 | monopoly on that as an idea. That's why he wins

02:04:56.920 | the 2016 primary. And then paired with

02:04:59.680 | immigration, a hard line position on immigration

02:05:02.080 | is this American carnage idea that actually

02:05:05.280 | everything is wrong. The American dream is is

02:05:08.120 | has gone. You know, we will we will stop this

02:05:10.840 | American carnage. And I think American carnage

02:05:14.160 | is one of the most important inaugural speeches

02:05:15.840 | ever given in American history. It's put it up

02:05:18.680 | against every single other speech. There's

02:05:21.080 | nothing else like it. But that was what the

02:05:23.560 | country wanted at the time. And that's what

02:05:26.360 | great politicians are able to do is they're able

02:05:28.480 | to suss something out. That's also why Peter

02:05:30.440 | Teal is who he is, because he saw that in 2000.

02:05:34.040 | Imagine, you know what it takes to come out of

02:05:36.520 | the 2012 election to be and to be honestly

02:05:39.280 | totally contrarian to the entire national mood

02:05:41.760 | and this entire theory of Obama asked star

02:05:44.440 | politics and say, No, you need somebody who runs

02:05:47.040 | on the opposite of that to win.

02:05:48.520 | Well, we'll never know. And I love this kind of

02:05:51.440 | Mike Tyson versus Muhammad Ali. I still think I

02:05:54.520 | would have loved to see Obama versus Trump. Me

02:05:56.800 | too. I agree. And first of all, Obama versus

02:06:00.120 | Trump in 2008, Obama wins hands down. Well, yes,

02:06:04.280 | definitely. So this is I love how this is a

02:06:06.480 | boxing talk. Yeah. Now, when 2016 Obama has a

02:06:10.720 | bunch of, you know, he Iraq and Afghanistan.

02:06:14.120 | He's vulnerable, though. I'll tell you why.

02:06:15.720 | DACA. That's what nobody ever talks about in the

02:06:17.640 | Obama Trump thing. Don't forget, Obama takes his

02:06:20.480 | 2012 victory basically says, Oh, the GOP even now

02:06:24.640 | agrees with me on immigration. And then he does

02:06:26.800 | DACA and he legalizes, you know, X million and a

02:06:29.400 | number of illegal immigrants who are here who

02:06:32.200 | are brought here as children. That also

02:06:34.640 | fundamentally changed the immigration consensus

02:06:36.960 | on the Republican side because they were like,

02:06:38.600 | Wait, holy shit, you can just do that because we

02:06:41.480 | don't agree with that at all. And that really

02:06:43.840 | ignited the base as well. So I'm not sure. I mean,

02:06:47.160 | a moment I think about a lot with Trump and just

02:06:50.560 | like being able to unleash the rage of the

02:06:52.400 | Republican bases. In the 2012 debate, Candy

02:06:55.320 | Crowley was the moderator with Mitt Romney, and

02:06:57.680 | she fact check him famously. This was when fact

02:07:00.280 | checking was shocking and impressive. And she

02:07:03.360 | said something about Benghazi. And she was like,

02:07:06.200 | No, he did say that she like, corrected Romney on

02:07:09.040 | behalf of Obama. To this day, it's questionable

02:07:11.440 | whether she was even right. But and Romney was

02:07:14.000 | just like, Oh, he did. Okay. Trump would have

02:07:15.880 | been like, excuse me, excuse me. Look at this

02:07:18.920 | woman. You know, he would have gone off. And I

02:07:21.320 | was like, and I think about that moment, because

02:07:23.960 | that's what the Republican base wanted to hear.

02:07:26.720 | But also it turns out America had a lot of

02:07:29.320 | festering feelings about the mainstream media

02:07:31.280 | that it needed unleashed. And Trump was just this

02:07:35.120 | incredible vector to just blow up this system,

02:07:38.600 | which I mean, if you asked me about optimism,

02:07:40.640 | that's the thing I'm most. Yeah, but don't you

02:07:42.520 | think Obama had a good sense and how to turn it

02:07:45.360 | on how to be anti establishment correctly, I

02:07:47.760 | will not deny that he's one of the most talented

02:07:49.400 | politicians literally to ever play the game. And

02:07:51.960 | he is, I mean, just unbelievable rhetorical

02:07:54.720 | talent. It look, as a counterfactual, it would

02:07:57.080 | have been more talented than Hillary. Yeah, okay.

02:07:58.880 | No question in terms of in terms of anybody would

02:08:01.800 | have been for that one. But at the same time, all

02:08:05.400 | the signs were there all the signs for the Trump

02:08:07.760 | victory, and for the backlash against Obama ism

02:08:11.040 | kind of as a political project. It all existed.

02:08:13.600 | You know that the T if you like I just laid the

02:08:15.480 | tea leaves out there from 2012 to 2015. In

02:08:19.160 | retrospect, it's the most predictable thing in

02:08:20.800 | the world that Donald Trump will get elected. But

02:08:22.680 | it was crazy in the moment I got to live through

02:08:24.360 | that, which was really fun, like professionally.

02:08:26.520 | I think it's unfortunate that he kind of let

02:08:31.160 | Kamala Harris borrow his reputation. Oh, it's it's

02:08:34.160 | I mean, it's like, you know, better, dude, you

02:08:36.760 | know, you defeated these people, this Clinton

02:08:40.600 | machine, you destroyed them. And it was awesome

02:08:43.600 | in Oh, eight. What is that? Why do you what? Why

02:08:46.640 | did he like he's so much bigger and better than

02:08:50.200 | the machine? I don't get it. Interesting, right?

02:08:52.240 | It's so weird, though. I just think I think this

02:08:54.720 | was a wake up call. 2024 was a wake up call like

02:08:57.000 | the the DNC machine doesn't work. Absolutely. I

02:08:59.760 | mean, there needs to be new blood, new, new

02:09:01.720 | candidate, new Obama like candidates. Well, I'm

02:09:04.040 | glad you brought that up because that's important

02:09:05.520 | to in terms of the process and the way that

02:09:07.400 | things currently stand. The DNC actually rigged

02:09:10.880 | its entire primary system under Biden way to the

02:09:14.440 | not to the benefit of Obama. So, for example, you

02:09:17.720 | know how they moved away from the Iowa caucuses

02:09:19.880 | and they actually moved some other primaries and

02:09:22.320 | move the calendar to reward traditional states

02:09:25.760 | that vote much more in line with the Democratic

02:09:27.680 | establishment. So the story of Barack Obama is

02:09:30.160 | one that not many actually probably a lot of

02:09:32.160 | young people today don't even remember how it

02:09:33.920 | happened. In 2008, Obama was the underdog, right?

02:09:36.960 | And actually, here's the critical thing. Obama was

02:09:40.160 | losing with black people. Why? Black Democrats

02:09:43.040 | simply did not believe that white people will

02:09:44.840 | vote for a black guy. So Barack Obama goes to

02:09:47.720 | where this white state Iowa all in on the Iowa

02:09:50.600 | caucuses and shocks the world by winning the Iowa

02:09:53.680 | caucuses. Overnight, there is a shift in public

02:09:56.920 | opinion amongst the black population in South

02:09:59.080 | Carolina. It says, oh, shit, he actually could

02:10:00.880 | win. And it comes out and he went South Carolina.

02:10:03.120 | And that's basically was near the death knell for

02:10:05.160 | the Hillary Clinton campaign. The problem is by

02:10:07.440 | moving South Carolina up and by making it first,

02:10:10.920 | along with other more pro establishment, friendly

02:10:13.200 | places. What do we do? We make it so that Barack

02:10:16.000 | Obama could never happen again. We make it so

02:10:18.160 | that an older, you know, base of Democratic Party

02:10:21.920 | voters who listens to the elites can never have

02:10:25.960 | their assumptions challenged. And that's one of

02:10:28.560 | the worst things Joe Biden did. You know, I

02:10:30.840 | talked about his arrogance. He was so arrogant. He

02:10:33.080 | changed the freaking primary system. He was so

02:10:35.680 | arrogant. He refused to do a debate. I mean,

02:10:37.920 | imagine history. How lucky are we, honestly, that

02:10:42.040 | Joe Biden agreed to do that debate with Donald

02:10:45.280 | Trump early? And again, that was his arrogance. I

02:10:48.120 | think we're so lucky for it, because if we hadn't

02:10:51.160 | gotten it, we got to understand as a country how

02:10:54.720 | cooked he was and how fake everything was behind

02:10:57.560 | the scenes in front of all of our eyes. And they

02:11:00.320 | tried for three straight years to make sure that

02:11:02.080 | that would never happen. So, I mean, it's still

02:11:05.960 | such a crime, honestly, against the American

02:11:07.720 | people.

02:11:08.120 | I've been thinking about who I want to talk to for

02:11:10.800 | three hours. That's why I bring up Obama, because

02:11:14.480 | he's probably the number one person on the left I

02:11:19.960 | would like to hear analyze what happened in this

02:11:23.040 | election and what happened to the United States

02:11:26.120 | of America over the past 20 plus years. I can't

02:11:29.840 | imagine anybody else.

02:11:31.000 | Look, if anybody could do it, it'd be you. But

02:11:33.120 | there are layers upon layers with that man. I

02:11:35.160 | would love to actually sit with a talk with him,

02:11:36.720 | for real.

02:11:37.560 | I think it's fair to say that we talked about the

02:11:40.760 | great man view of history. I think you have a

02:11:44.880 | psychopath view of history, where all great

02:11:48.240 | leaders are for sure psychopaths.

02:11:50.040 | Not for sure. There are many who are good people.

02:11:51.760 | Harry Truman was one.

02:11:52.360 | You're like, some of my best friends.

02:11:53.520 | Yeah, some-

02:11:54.120 | Harry Truman.

02:11:54.720 | Some, I assume, are good people. To be fair,

02:11:58.840 | though, most of the good ones are accidents, like

02:12:02.840 | Harry Truman. He never would've gotten himself

02:12:04.200 | elected. He was a great dude.

02:12:05.400 | How do you know he was a great dude?

02:12:06.600 | David McCullough book. I highly recommend it.

02:12:09.120 | Everybody should read it. Truman loved his wife.

02:12:11.640 | I think that's really awesome. I love when

02:12:12.920 | politicians love their wife. It's so rare. He

02:12:15.600 | adored his wife. He adored his daughter, spent

02:12:19.120 | time with them. He made family life a priority.

02:12:22.320 | He had really good small town judgment that he

02:12:25.280 | would apply to foreign affairs. He was just a

02:12:27.560 | very well-considered, very stand-up man. I so

02:12:32.720 | appreciate that about him. Another one is John

02:12:35.120 | Adams. I love and revere John Adams. He's my

02:12:37.240 | favorite founding father. Him and John Quincy,

02:12:39.600 | they don't get nearly enough of their due. They

02:12:42.840 | were some of the most intelligent, well-

02:12:45.440 | considered. They were family men. The love, the

02:12:49.680 | relationship between John and Abigail Adams is

02:12:52.320 | literally legendary. I think it's amazing,

02:12:54.160 | especially in the context of the 1700s, the way

02:12:56.440 | that he would take her counsel and into

02:12:59.520 | conversations and her own ability. She would sit

02:13:03.200 | there and go toe-to-toe as much with Thomas

02:13:05.760 | Jefferson. There are some who are great, who are

02:13:08.000 | really, really good presidents, who have good

02:13:11.120 | judgment, and who are really good people and

02:13:13.320 | really think deeply about the world and have

02:13:15.440 | really cool personal lives. There's also the

02:13:18.240 | vast majority of them, especially in the, I

02:13:20.480 | would say, especially in the modern era, where

02:13:23.440 | the price of the presidency extracts everything

02:13:25.720 | that you have. You have to be able to, you have

02:13:28.240 | to be willing to give everything. And it's just,

02:13:31.000 | that's not a price that most people want to pay.

02:13:33.720 | Is it possible that some of the people who you

02:13:37.240 | think are sociopaths in politics are, in fact,

02:13:39.760 | really good people, and some of the people you

02:13:42.440 | think are good, like Truman and Adams, are

02:13:45.920 | actually sociopaths?

02:13:46.880 | Definitely. I mean, I could just be reading the

02:13:48.240 | wrong books, right?

02:13:49.240 | Yeah, that's right. It sounds like you just read

02:13:53.080 | some really compelling biographies.

02:13:55.360 | Okay, to be fair, I don't base this on one book.

02:13:57.640 | I read a lot of them. And I'll get like a, for

02:14:00.320 | example, I've read books about LBJ. You wouldn't

02:14:02.800 | know any of his foibles. But then you find out

02:14:05.400 | that they're written by his friend, or, you know,

02:14:07.120 | it was written by, and then you read the truth.

02:14:08.800 | I really worry about this kind of general,

02:14:11.240 | especially now the sense of the anti-establishment

02:14:16.320 | sense that every politician must be a sociopath.

02:14:19.160 | Now, while the reason I worry about that is it

02:14:23.080 | feels true.

02:14:24.840 | Yeah.

02:14:25.280 | So it's, you can fall into this bubble of

02:14:31.960 | beliefs where every politician is a sociopath.

02:14:34.400 | And because of that,

02:14:36.440 | it can be a self-reinforcing mechanism.

02:14:37.560 | Self-reinforcing mechanism, yeah.

02:14:38.440 | I understand what you're saying. I agree, by

02:14:40.040 | the way, we do need to dramatically change it.

02:14:41.720 | But the problem is, is that, you know, people

02:14:43.920 | vote with their eyeballs and with their

02:14:45.440 | interests, and people love to, you know, dissect

02:14:48.440 | people's personal lives. And one of the reasons

02:14:51.920 | why you were probably more likely in the

02:14:53.680 | pre-modern era to get a "good people" is they

02:14:56.200 | were not subject to the level of scrutiny and

02:14:58.320 | to the insanity of the process that you are

02:15:00.680 | currently. Like I just said about you, I mean,

02:15:03.080 | theoretically, you could run for president and

02:15:05.440 | you would just get your nomination at the

02:15:07.200 | convention. It's only two months to election

02:15:09.680 | day. That's not so bad. But, you know, you run

02:15:11.960 | for president today, you got your ass on the

02:15:14.000 | road for two years, two years before that. And

02:15:17.800 | then you have to run the damn government. So

02:15:19.960 | the price is so extraordinarily high. I also

02:15:23.480 | think that, oh God, and just Washington as a

02:15:26.560 | system, it will burn you. It will just, it will

02:15:29.200 | extract absolutely everything that you can give

02:15:32.920 | it. And at the end of the day, you know, I mean,

02:15:35.920 | everyone always talks about this. It's

02:15:37.200 | hilarious. How Trump is the only president not

02:15:39.960 | to age in office. I think, I actually think it's

02:15:42.600 | crazy. Like when you look at the photos of how

02:15:44.640 | he actually looks better today than he did

02:15:46.160 | whenever he went into the office. That's

02:15:48.360 | amazing. And it actually says a lot about how

02:15:51.000 | his mind works. I think Trump is pure id. Like, I

02:15:54.160 | think he's having observed him a little bit and,

02:15:57.120 | you know, both at the White House and having

02:15:58.880 | interviewed him, it's pure, just like it's

02:16:00.880 | calculating, but it's also pure id, which is

02:16:02.960 | very interesting. The ones who are the thinkers,

02:16:05.360 | guys like Obama and others who are really in

02:16:07.360 | their heads, it's a nightmare. It's a

02:16:09.200 | nightmare. It will, they will, I mean, I mean,

02:16:11.960 | apparently Obama would only sleep four hours a

02:16:13.600 | night, you know?

02:16:14.680 | Yeah. Add like some empathy on top of that. It's

02:16:17.320 | going to destroy.

02:16:17.920 | It will, it will kill you, man.

02:16:19.920 | All right. Speaking about the dirty game of

02:16:21.680 | politics, several people, different people told

02:16:24.880 | me that of everyone they've ever met in

02:16:27.760 | politics, Nancy Pelosi is the best at attaining

02:16:31.640 | a wielding political power. Is there any truth

02:16:33.600 | to that?

02:16:34.080 | In the modern era? Yeah, I think that's fair in

02:16:36.040 | the last 25 years. Definitely. Let's think

02:16:38.320 | about it. Number one is longevity. So she's had

02:16:40.520 | the ability to control the caucus for a long

02:16:44.040 | period of time. So that's impressive because as

02:16:46.040 | I just laid out with Clinton, Obama, these

02:16:47.800 | figures come and they go, but over a 25 almost

02:16:50.680 | year period, you've been at the very top in the

02:16:53.680 | center of American politics. The other case I

02:16:56.160 | would be is that in this modern era has been

02:16:58.560 | defined by access to money. She's one of the

02:17:00.480 | greatest fundraisers in Democratic Party

02:17:02.400 | history. And again, consistently Obama, Kamala,

02:17:05.800 | all those people come and go, but she's always

02:17:08.000 | had a very central understanding of the

02:17:10.880 | ability to fundraise, to cultivate good

02:17:13.640 | relationships with Democratic Party elites all

02:17:15.840 | across the country, use that money and dole it

02:17:18.000 | out to her caucus. She's also was really good at

02:17:21.320 | making sure that legislation that came to the

02:17:23.560 | floor actually had the votes to do so. She ran

02:17:26.440 | an extremely well ordered process in the House

02:17:29.120 | of Representatives, one in which you were able

02:17:32.120 | to reconcile like problems within her office. It

02:17:34.920 | didn't usually go public and then it would make

02:17:37.160 | it to the floor and it would pass so that there

02:17:38.760 | will be no general like media frenzy and you

02:17:42.600 | know, Democrats in disarray or any of that. Put

02:17:45.080 | that on display with the Republicans and we've

02:17:46.960 | had multiple speakers all resign or get fired in

02:17:50.000 | a 16 year period. That's pretty remarkable.

02:17:52.320 | Basically, ever since John Boehner decided to

02:17:54.640 | leave in what was it, 2012? I forget the exact

02:17:57.160 | year. My point is that if you compare her record

02:18:00.200 | to the longevity on the Republican side, it is

02:18:02.640 | astounding. The other interesting thing is that

02:18:04.880 | she also has pulled off one of the real tests of

02:18:08.520 | political power is can you rule even when you

02:18:11.200 | don't have the title anymore? So she gave up the

02:18:13.240 | leader position to Hakeem Jeffries, but everybody

02:18:16.000 | knows she pulled Joe Biden out of the race.

02:18:18.360 | That's pretty interesting, right? So she's

02:18:20.720 | technically just a backbencher, nobody member of

02:18:23.280 | Congress, but we all know that's bullshit. So

02:18:25.720 | that's that's actually a very important case of

02:18:28.200 | political power is can you rule without the

02:18:31.440 | title? And if you can, then you truly are

02:18:33.720 | powerful. So I would make a good case for her.

02:18:36.440 | Yeah, she's she's done a lot of remarkable stuff

02:18:38.640 | for for her party. I will say they played Trump

02:18:41.080 | like a fiddle, man. Last time around, they were

02:18:43.240 | able to. I mean, they really got him. One of the

02:18:46.240 | craziest elements that I covered was during the

02:18:50.400 | Trump basically threatened to shut down the

02:18:53.040 | government and actually did shut down the

02:18:54.400 | government for a period of time over a dispute

02:18:56.560 | over border wall funding. And Pelosi and Schumer,

02:18:59.720 | despite like genuine mass hysteria in the

02:19:02.440 | Democratic Party, with even some people who are

02:19:04.680 | willing to try and to strike a deal, never

02:19:07.480 | wavered, and actually basically won and forced

02:19:11.400 | Trump to back down. Not a lot of MAGA people want

02:19:14.840 | to admit it. But that was honestly really

02:19:16.840 | embarrassing for the Trump administration at the

02:19:19.080 | time. And, yeah, I mean, the amount of

02:19:21.600 | discipline that it took for her and Chuck, to a

02:19:24.720 | lesser extent, but for the two of them to pull

02:19:27.120 | that off, it was honestly impressive that they

02:19:29.480 | were able to do that even when the President has

02:19:31.040 | so much political power, and it literally shut

02:19:33.280 | down the government over it.

02:19:34.680 | Speaking of fundraising, Kamala raised one

02:19:38.440 | billion dollars.

02:19:39.480 | Insane.

02:19:40.080 | But I guess the conclusion is she spent it

02:19:43.120 | poorly. How would you spend it?

02:19:46.000 | I don't think money matters that much. I think

02:19:49.040 | Donald Trump has proven to us twice that you can

02:19:51.240 | win an underdog campaign through earned media.

02:19:53.960 | And I don't think that paid advertisement moves

02:19:57.440 | the needle that much. Now, don't notice I didn't

02:19:59.560 | say it doesn't matter. But am I buying $425,000 a

02:20:03.880 | day spots in the Vegas sphere? No, we're not

02:20:05.880 | doing that. Are we building? Okay, as people who

02:20:09.360 | do this for a living, how do you even spend

02:20:11.920 | $100,000 to build a set for one interview?

02:20:15.160 | This is the call her daddy thing. Okay, how's

02:20:17.920 | that possible? So think about the dollar per hour

02:20:20.600 | cost. That's like running a jet airplane in terms

02:20:23.080 | of what they did.

02:20:23.880 | You know what I want to note behind the scenes?

02:20:26.080 | Haven't gotten and I'm not good with this. I get

02:20:29.760 | really frustrated and I shouldn't. But dealing

02:20:32.200 | with PR and comms people can sometimes break my

02:20:35.080 | soul. It's maddening. Can we not talk about this?

02:20:37.480 | And we need to pull them in to 12pm and you're

02:20:40.440 | like, but that's only 30 minutes. Yeah, that but

02:20:43.840 | there's stuff like, like where to put the camera.

02:20:47.000 | It's not that it's not actually hypothetically,

02:20:50.120 | I don't even disagree with any of the suggestions

02:20:52.440 | or this, but it's like the micromanagement, just

02:20:55.600 | the micromanagement and your and the politeness,

02:20:59.560 | but the fake politeness. And it just makes me feel

02:21:03.000 | like, I think like, what would Kubrick do? Would

02:21:06.480 | he murder all of them right now?

02:21:08.120 | He would just ban them after he became Stanley

02:21:10.760 | Kubrick, but he dealt with it for a while. I just

02:21:13.880 | went on a Kubrick binge, man, he was awesome. I

02:21:17.720 | watched that World War One movie of his the one

02:21:19.440 | from the 50s. That is such an underrated film. I

02:21:23.480 | feel like people don't, whatever, we'll get

02:21:25.040 | past it. But she Yeah, I guess you paid for 100

02:21:30.120 | grand, bro. 100 and the Oprah thing. She paid for

02:21:34.600 | the interviews. So you know, that's another one.

02:21:36.720 | I do this for a living. And as you can tell, I'm

02:21:39.160 | very cynical person. I did not even know that

02:21:42.000 | celebrities got paid for their endorsements. I

02:21:44.360 | could never have imagined a universe where Oprah

02:21:47.600 | Winfrey is paid $1 million to endorse Kamala

02:21:50.360 | Harris. I'm like, you're first of all, you're a

02:21:52.120 | billionaire. Second, I thought you'd do this

02:21:54.800 | because you believe no, I think to be fair, I

02:21:57.720 | think the million just helps do the thing you

02:22:01.160 | would like to do. It's like a it's a nudge

02:22:03.480 | because I don't think any celebrity would

02:22:05.000 | endorse. Yeah, they're not doing it because of

02:22:07.440 | the money. But you should just do it for free. I

02:22:10.640 | can't even believe that you're doing this for

02:22:13.240 | money. I mean, and the fact what was it Alanis

02:22:15.320 | Morissette, you know how they were able they had

02:22:17.240 | to cut her because they didn't have the funds to

02:22:19.440 | pay her. I'm like, first of all, if you believe

02:22:21.240 | you should just play for free. But second, again,

02:22:23.600 | as a person who is deeply cynical, I still am

02:22:27.320 | genuinely shook that we are paying celebrities

02:22:30.320 | for their endorsement.

02:22:30.880 | Yeah, it's really fucked up.

02:22:31.800 | That's insane.

02:22:32.560 | Why do you think people on the left, who are

02:22:36.360 | actually in the political arena, are afraid of

02:22:38.920 | doing anything longer than an hour?

02:22:40.920 | That's a great question.

02:22:42.040 | So let me just say, probably most of the people

02:22:45.680 | I've talked to on this podcast are left wing, or

02:22:49.440 | have been for a long time. They just don't sort

02:22:52.240 | of out and say it. Like most scientists are left

02:22:55.640 | wing. Most sort of vaguely political people are

02:23:00.360 | left wing that I've talked to. But the closer

02:23:03.640 | you get to the actual political arena, and I've

02:23:05.760 | tried really hard, they just, nope. I had a bunch

02:23:11.560 | of people, the highest profile people say 15

02:23:14.440 | minutes, 20 minutes.

02:23:15.760 | Yeah. I'm used to that. So welcome.

02:23:18.040 | Yeah. I just can't, you know, like, I can't

02:23:23.040 | imagine a conversation with Kamala or with Joe

02:23:27.080 | Biden, or AOC.

02:23:31.120 | Obama.

02:23:31.760 | Or Obama that's of any quality at all, of any,

02:23:36.120 | shows any kind of humanity of the person, the

02:23:39.560 | genius of the person, the interesting nuance of

02:23:42.840 | the person in like 30 minutes. Like, I just

02:23:45.400 | can't, I can't, like, I don't know, maybe there's

02:23:48.840 | people that are extremely skilled that can do

02:23:50.640 | that. You just can't.

02:23:52.640 | You should be optimistic because a huge

02:23:54.680 | narrative out of this election is that the

02:23:56.800 | Democrats massively fucked up by not coming on

02:23:58.960 | this show or a Rogan show. So I actually

02:24:01.280 | fundamentally, number one, that's going to change

02:24:03.200 | dramatically. So be optimistic and keep

02:24:04.920 | pushing. But two is, this is a good segue

02:24:07.800 | actually, is I've been thinking a lot about, I

02:24:10.600 | know a lot of people listening to this show who

02:24:12.400 | are in tech and may have some influence on the

02:24:14.120 | admin. So this is kind of a, this is something

02:24:16.880 | I want people to take really seriously is I was

02:24:19.640 | a White House correspondent for the Daily

02:24:21.680 | Caller. It's a conservative outlet in Washington

02:24:24.320 | during the Trump years. And the most important

02:24:26.920 | thing I learned from that was that under the

02:24:31.160 | White House Correspondents Association, the way

02:24:34.080 | that the media cartel has everything set up for

02:24:36.960 | access for press to the president is

02:24:39.200 | fundamentally broken, anti-American and bad for

02:24:43.400 | actual democracy. So let me lay this out at a

02:24:46.080 | very mechanical level because nobody knows this.

02:24:48.360 | And I was a former White House Correspondents

02:24:50.280 | Association member. So anybody who says I'm full

02:24:52.320 | of shit, I was there. For example, number one,

02:24:54.880 | all the seats in the briefing room, those seats

02:24:57.000 | are assigned by the White House Correspondents

02:24:58.960 | Association, not by the White House itself. The

02:25:01.760 | White House Correspondents Association requires

02:25:03.800 | you to apply for a seat, right? That adjudication

02:25:06.880 | process can take literally years for bylaws,

02:25:09.960 | elections, and all these things to do. This means

02:25:12.440 | that they can slow roll the entrance of new

02:25:14.760 | media, online outlets who are allowed into the

02:25:17.400 | room. The reason it really matters not having a

02:25:19.520 | seat is if you don't have a seat, you have to get

02:25:21.560 | there early and stand in the wings like I used to

02:25:23.960 | and raise your hand like this and just hope and

02:25:25.800 | pray that the press secretary can. It's

02:25:27.680 | extremely inconvenient. I'm talking. I have to

02:25:29.360 | get there hours early at a chance during a 15

02:25:31.760 | minute briefing. So one of the things is that

02:25:34.640 | Trump has is he owes a huge part of his election

02:25:37.680 | to coming on podcasts and to new media. Now,

02:25:41.120 | because of that, it's really important that the

02:25:43.560 | White House Correspondents Association, which is

02:25:45.760 | a literal guild cartel that keeps people out of

02:25:49.400 | the White House and credentials itself and

02:25:52.320 | creates this opaque mechanism through which they

02:25:55.640 | control access, you know, to asking the press

02:25:58.320 | secretary questions is destroyed. And there are a

02:26:00.920 | lot of different ways you could do this because

02:26:02.960 | the what nobody gets to is that all of these

02:26:06.000 | rules are unofficial. So for example, they're

02:26:09.280 | just traditions. The White House is like, yeah,

02:26:11.000 | it's our building, but you guys figure it out,

02:26:12.760 | right? Because that's a long standing tradition.

02:26:14.880 | Let me give you another insane tradition that

02:26:17.160 | currently exists in the White House. The

02:26:19.120 | Associated Press, the White Press Secretary or

02:26:21.440 | the Associated Press correspondent gets to start

02:26:24.840 | the briefing. Traditionally, they get the first

02:26:26.520 | question. They also get to end the briefing when

02:26:28.920 | they think it's been enough time. Like, okay,

02:26:30.960 | cringe up here. Thank you. Right. And that calls

02:26:33.440 | the briefing over. What? Who? You're not even the

02:26:36.160 | White House Correspondents Association. You

02:26:37.840 | literally just happen to work for the Associated

02:26:39.840 | Press. Why? Like, why do we allow that to happen?

02:26:42.840 | So number one, stop doing that. To their credit,

02:26:46.440 | the Trump people didn't really do that. But it's a

02:26:47.920 | long standing tradition. The other thing is that

02:26:50.840 | what nobody gets either is that the first row is

02:26:53.640 | all television networks for logistical reasons so

02:26:55.920 | that they can do their little stand ups with their

02:26:57.680 | mic and say, you know, I'm reporting live for the

02:26:59.440 | West. Well, what people don't seem to know is

02:27:02.840 | that all the television networks are basically

02:27:05.720 | going to ask some version of the same question.

02:27:08.160 | The reason they do that is because they need a

02:27:11.320 | clip of their correspondent going after the White

02:27:14.720 | House press secretary all out Robert Mueller, like

02:27:17.000 | whenever I was there. So you get the same goddamn

02:27:20.200 | version of the stupid political questions over and

02:27:23.040 | over again. The briefing room is designed for

02:27:25.720 | traditional media, and they have all the access in

02:27:28.360 | the world. So in an election where you owe your

02:27:30.760 | victory to at least in part to new media and

02:27:33.880 | recognizing the changing landscape, you need to

02:27:36.760 | change the conduit of information to the American

02:27:40.080 | people. And in an election, I don't know if you

02:27:43.480 | saw this, but election night coverage on cable

02:27:45.880 | news was down 25% just in four years, 25%. That's

02:27:50.040 | astounding. That's cable news had a monopoly on

02:27:53.800 | election night for my entire lifetime. And yet my

02:27:56.760 | show had record ratings that night. And look, I'm

02:27:59.080 | a small slice of the puzzle here. We've got Candace

02:28:02.800 | Owens, Patrick, Matt, David, Tim Pool, David

02:28:04.640 | Pacman, TYT, all these other people, every from

02:28:07.240 | what I understand, all of us blew it out that

02:28:09.080 | night, because millions of Americans watching on

02:28:11.760 | YouTube, we even partnered with some decision

02:28:15.000 | desk HQ. So we had live data, we could make state

02:28:17.400 | calls. And we're just a silly little YouTube show.

02:28:20.040 | My point, though, is that in an election where the

02:28:23.160 | vast majority of Americans are the age of 55, are

02:28:25.880 | listening to podcasts consuming new media and are

02:28:28.000 | not watching cable news, where the median age of

02:28:31.600 | CNN, which is the youngest viewership is 68. 68 is

02:28:34.880 | the median. So statistically, what does that tell

02:28:37.040 | us? Right? There's a decent number of people who

02:28:41.600 | are watching CNN, who are in their 80s. And in

02:28:45.320 | their 90s. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Alex,

02:28:48.280 | because he deserves a tremendous shout out Alex

02:28:50.440 | Bruce wits. He was the pioneer of the podcast

02:28:53.200 | strategy for the Donald J. Trump campaign. He got

02:28:56.360 | on your show, he was able to get on Andrew Schultz

02:28:58.960 | show, Rogan, he was the internal force that pushed

02:29:02.840 | a lot of this. My personal hope is that somebody

02:29:05.880 | like Alex is elevated in the traditional White

02:29:08.280 | House bureaucracy, that the number of credentials

02:29:11.120 | that are issued to these mainstream media outlets

02:29:13.320 | is cut. And there is a new lottery process put in

02:29:15.880 | place where people with large audiences are

02:29:18.000 | invited. And I also want to make a case here for

02:29:20.760 | why I think it's really important for people like

02:29:23.560 | you and others who don't have as much traditional

02:29:25.920 | media experience to come in and practice some

02:29:28.840 | capital J journalism, because it will sharpen you

02:29:31.480 | to giving you access in that pressure cooker

02:29:34.720 | environment. And having to, to really like sit

02:29:38.160 | there and spar a little bit with a public official

02:29:40.400 | and not have as long necessarily as you're used

02:29:42.560 | to, it really hones your news media skills, your

02:29:45.960 | news gathering skills, and it will make you a

02:29:48.640 | better interviewer in the long run. Because a lot

02:29:50.720 | of the things that I have learned have just been

02:29:52.240 | through osmosis. I've just lived in DC. I've been

02:29:55.000 | so lucky. I've had a lot of cool jobs. And I've

02:29:57.320 | just been able to experience a lot of this stuff.

02:30:00.040 | So I'm really hoping that people who are listening

02:30:03.040 | to this who may have some influence or even the

02:30:05.920 | viewership, if you want to, you know, reach out to

02:30:07.640 | them and all them. This is a very easily changeable

02:30:11.280 | problem. It's a cartel which has no official power.

02:30:14.720 | It's all power by tradition. And it needs to be

02:30:17.240 | blown up. It has, it does not serve America's

02:30:19.520 | interests to have 50, 48 seats, I think, in the

02:30:21.920 | White House press briefing room, which who people

02:30:24.040 | who have audiences of like five, it's just makes

02:30:26.760 | absolutely zero workspace seats, access

02:30:30.200 | credentials, and also credentials that are issued

02:30:33.760 | to press and to other like new media journalists

02:30:37.000 | at major events should take precedence, because

02:30:40.920 | it's not even about rewarding the creator. The

02:30:43.640 | American people are here. You need to meet them.

02:30:46.600 | That's your job. And I'll just end with a

02:30:49.160 | historical thing. Barack Obama shocked the White

02:30:52.600 | House Press Corps in 2009, because he took a

02:30:54.840 | question from the Huffington Post, a brand new

02:30:57.920 | blog, but they were stunned, because he knew he

02:31:01.840 | said these blog people, they went all in for me,

02:31:04.320 | and I got to reward them. So there's long

02:31:06.400 | standing precedence of this. They'll bitch and

02:31:08.320 | they'll moan, they'll be upset. But it's their

02:31:10.920 | fault, you know, that they don't have as much

02:31:12.440 | credibility. And it's incumbent upon the White

02:31:16.560 | House, which serves the public to actually meet

02:31:18.760 | them where they are. So I really hope that at

02:31:20.640 | least some of this is implemented inside of

02:31:22.760 | that. Yeah, if you break apart the cartel, I

02:31:25.840 | think you can actually enable greater journalism,

02:31:29.160 | frankly, with a capital J. Because actually, in

02:31:31.800 | the long form is when you can do better

02:31:34.080 | journalism of from even just the politician

02:31:37.400 | perspective, you can disagree, you can get

02:31:39.080 | criticized, because you can defend yourself. I

02:31:41.480 | had an idea, actually, tell me what you think. I

02:31:43.280 | think a really cool format would be there's a

02:31:45.520 | room right near the press briefing room called

02:31:47.840 | the Roosevelt Room. Beautiful room, by the

02:31:49.520 | way. It's awesome. It has the Medal of Honor for

02:31:51.840 | Teddy Roosevelt. And it has a portrait of him

02:31:54.040 | and a portrait of FDR. It's one of my favorite

02:31:55.840 | rooms, the White House. It's so cool. And so my

02:31:58.800 | idea would be in the Roosevelt Room, which

02:32:00.600 | traditionally used for press briefings and

02:32:03.080 | stuff, is like, you as the press secretary sit

02:32:08.360 | there, I think there's like 12 seats, something

02:32:10.120 | like that. And you set it all up and you have,

02:32:12.120 | let's say, sure microphones like this. And that

02:32:14.680 | person, that secretary is going to commit to

02:32:16.000 | being there for like two hours. And, and new

02:32:18.560 | media people like can sit around the room, all

02:32:20.680 | of this being stream live, by the way, just like

02:32:22.440 | the White House press briefing room. But the

02:32:24.560 | expectation is that the type of questions have

02:32:27.640 | to be substantive. Obviously, nothing is off

02:32:29.680 | limits. You should never, ever, you know, except

02:32:32.320 | I'm not going to ask about this, especially as a

02:32:34.480 | journalist, you can't do that. Every time

02:32:36.120 | they're like, hey, please don't ask about this.

02:32:37.520 | It's like, actually, that's probably the one

02:32:38.720 | thing you should ask about. But my point being

02:32:41.680 | that the expectation is, is that there's no

02:32:43.800 | interference on the White House side, but that

02:32:46.200 | the format itself will lend exactly to what

02:32:48.640 | you're saying to allow people to explain. And

02:32:51.080 | again, in a media era where we need to trust the

02:32:53.760 | consumer, like my show is routinely over two

02:32:57.440 | hours long on cable television, uh, on cable

02:33:01.160 | television, you know, the Tucker Carlson

02:33:03.240 | program, whenever it was on Fox news without

02:33:05.600 | commercial breaks was about 42, 43 minutes,

02:33:08.200 | something like that of runtime. So I'm speaking

02:33:10.400 | for almost triple what that is on a regular

02:33:13.560 | basis. The point is, is that millions are

02:33:17.120 | willing to sit and to listen, but you just had

02:33:19.640 | to meet them where they are. So I would really

02:33:21.680 | hope that a format like that, uh, like a

02:33:23.840 | streamer briefing or something like that. I

02:33:26.560 | think, I think it's, look, I know they would

02:33:28.360 | dunk on it endlessly, but I think it could work.

02:33:30.800 | Yeah. I think the incentives are different. I

02:33:33.080 | think it works because you don't have to, uh,

02:33:36.800 | like you saw good, don't have to signal to the

02:33:39.440 | other journalists that you're part of the clip.

02:33:41.280 | Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up because

02:33:42.800 | that was another lesson I learned. I go, Oh,

02:33:44.680 | none of you are asking important questions for

02:33:46.600 | the people you're asking questions because you

02:33:48.400 | all hang out with each other and you're like,

02:33:50.280 | Oh, wait. So this entire thing is a self

02:33:52.920 | reinforcing guild to impress each other, uh,

02:33:56.280 | at cocktail parties and not to actually ask

02:33:59.280 | anything interesting. Um, I remember people

02:34:01.400 | were so mad at me because this was 2018 or

02:34:04.840 | maybe 2017. And I said, do you think that Kim

02:34:08.160 | Jong-un is sincere in his willingness to meet

02:34:11.720 | with you? Something like that, to that effect.

02:34:13.760 | Um, they were furious cause I didn't ask about

02:34:16.240 | some bullshit political controversy that was

02:34:18.840 | happening at the time. So in the historical

02:34:21.680 | legacy, what was more important? The Mueller

02:34:24.360 | question or Donald Trump breaking 50 years or

02:34:29.000 | whatever of tradition with America's

02:34:31.000 | relationship with North Korea and meeting him

02:34:32.920 | in Singapore and basically resetting that

02:34:34.960 | relationship for all time. As you can tell, I

02:34:37.240 | read a lot of book. I like to take the long

02:34:39.120 | view. Every time I would ask a question, I go,

02:34:41.000 | okay, when, when the future Robert Caro is

02:34:44.800 | writing books and he, he sees, he's reading the

02:34:47.600 | transcript of the White House press briefing.

02:34:49.160 | You don't even know who this kid is. He goes,

02:34:50.880 | Oh, that was a pretty good question right there.

02:34:52.240 | That's pretty relevant. You know, you got to

02:34:54.840 | think about all the bullshit that gets left on

02:34:56.400 | the cutting room floor.

02:34:57.120 | I love that view of journalism. Actually. The,

02:34:59.640 | the, the goal is to end up as, as one line at a

02:35:02.680 | history in a history book.

02:35:04.040 | I just want a quote of what the president said

02:35:06.760 | to something that I asked in a book. That's, I

02:35:08.440 | would be happy. I would die happy with that. If

02:35:10.520 | you told me that when I'm like a 90 year old

02:35:11.840 | man, I'd be like, man, I, that means I succeeded.

02:35:15.320 | When the AI is right, the history of human

02:35:18.120 | civilization. One of the things I continuously

02:35:21.600 | learn from you when looking back through history

02:35:23.920 | is how crazy American politics has been

02:35:29.080 | throughout history. It makes me feel a lot

02:35:30.400 | better about the current day. It should.

02:35:31.760 | Corruption. Yes. Um, just the, the divisiveness

02:35:36.760 | also stealing elections at all levels of

02:35:42.600 | government and direct stealing and indirect

02:35:45.520 | stealing all kinds of stuff. So, uh, is there

02:35:48.000 | stuff that jumps out to mine throughout history?

02:35:50.760 | That's just like, uh, um, the craziest

02:35:55.080 | corruptions or stealing of elections that, uh,

02:35:58.680 | come to mind.

02:35:59.240 | I'll give you the micro and the macro. So my

02:36:01.160 | favorite example is, uh, Robert Caro, who I've

02:36:03.920 | obviously probably talked about him a lot. Uh,

02:36:05.480 | God bless you, Robert. I hope you live to write

02:36:07.560 | your last book because we really need that from

02:36:09.400 | you. Um, but Robert, uh, came to Texas. He only

02:36:14.200 | intended on writing three books about Lyndon

02:36:17.040 | Johnson. He's currently completed four and he's

02:36:19.720 | on his fifth and it's taken him over 40 years to

02:36:21.520 | write those. And one of the reasons is he just

02:36:23.560 | kept uncovering so much stuff. And one of them

02:36:26.560 | is book two means of ascent. He never intended

02:36:29.880 | to write it, but as he began to investigate

02:36:32.480 | Lyndon Johnson's 1948 Senate election, he

02:36:35.880 | realizes in real time how rigged and stolen it

02:36:39.360 | was. And so I often tell people, what if I told

02:36:43.520 | you that we lived in the most secure election

02:36:46.480 | period in modern history, they wouldn't believe

02:36:49.320 | it. But if you read through that shit, I'm

02:36:52.000 | talking about bags of cash, millions of dollars,

02:36:55.040 | literal stuffed ballot boxes. It's great to be

02:36:58.360 | back here in Texas because I always think about

02:37:00.680 | that place like down in Zapata and star County.

02:37:03.920 | I'm talking like basically Mexico, um, where

02:37:07.120 | these dawns were in power in the 1940s and they

02:37:10.960 | would literally stuff the ballot boxes with the

02:37:13.240 | rolls and they wouldn't even allow people to

02:37:14.760 | come and vote. They just checkmarked it all for

02:37:16.880 | you based upon the amount they paid. Means of

02:37:20.000 | ascent is the painstaking detail of exactly how

02:37:24.000 | Lyndon Johnson stole the 1948 Senate election.

02:37:26.640 | And so nothing, nothing like that, as far as I

02:37:29.840 | know, is still happening. Macro. Uh, we can talk

02:37:32.760 | about the 1876, uh, election Rutherford B Hayes,

02:37:36.240 | one of the closest elections in modern history.

02:37:38.720 | It was one of those that got kicked with House

02:37:40.600 | of Representatives. That was an insane, insane

02:37:43.000 | time. The corrupt bargain that was struck to

02:37:45.560 | basically end reconstruction and federal

02:37:47.840 | occupation of the South. And of course, the

02:37:49.840 | amount of wheeling and dealing that happened

02:37:52.200 | in inside of that was absolutely bonkers and

02:37:55.360 | nuts. That was what an actual stolen election

02:37:57.520 | looks like. Just so people know. Uh, so on a

02:38:00.240 | micro and a macro, yeah, that's what it really

02:38:02.760 | looks like. Uh, and so look, I understand where

02:38:05.280 | people are coming from. Also, let's do what

02:38:07.560 | 1960, that was pretty wild. I mean, uh, in 1960,

02:38:11.080 | there was all those allegations about Illinois

02:38:13.800 | going for Kennedy. Um, if you look at the actual

02:38:16.120 | vote totals of Kennedy Nixon, wow. I mean, it's

02:38:19.200 | such an insanely close presidential election.

02:38:22.240 | And even though the electoral college victory

02:38:24.480 | looks a little bit differently, Nixon would

02:38:26.720 | openly talk about, he's like, Oh, old Joe

02:38:28.920 | Kennedy, uh, rigged Illinois for his boy. And

02:38:32.440 | he'd be like, and we didn't even have a chance

02:38:33.960 | in Texas with Linden pulling, you know, like

02:38:36.160 | Linden or Linden stuffing the ballot boxes down

02:38:39.640 | there. So, and this is open on the, like they

02:38:42.480 | openly admit this stuff. They talk about it. So,

02:38:44.760 | uh, actually there's a funny story. Uh, LBJ lost

02:38:49.480 | is, uh, I think it's 1941 Senate primary. Um, and

02:38:54.400 | it's because the, his opponent Papio Daniel

02:38:57.240 | actually outstole Linden. So they were both

02:39:00.200 | corrupt, but Papio Daniel stuffed the ballot box

02:39:03.440 | and like the fifth day of the seven days to

02:39:05.760 | count the votes and FDR loved LBJ. And, uh, it's

02:39:10.040 | interesting, right? Uh, the FDR recognized

02:39:12.520 | Johnson's, uh, his talent and he goes, Linden,

02:39:16.000 | you, you know, in New York, we sit on the ballot

02:39:19.560 | boxes till we count them, you know, cause he's

02:39:21.880 | admitting that he, you know, you know,

02:39:23.720 | participated in a lot of this stuff. So this

02:39:26.240 | high level chicanery of stolen elections is

02:39:29.120 | actually, uh, an American pastime that we

02:39:31.840 | luckily have moved on from. Um, and, and quite a

02:39:35.360 | lot of people do not know the exact intricate

02:39:37.960 | details of how wild it was back in the day.

02:39:39.920 | Yeah. It's actually one of the things it's

02:39:42.320 | harder to pull off a bunch of bullshit with all

02:39:44.440 | these cameras everywhere now. Transparency to

02:39:47.120 | lack of cash banking regulation is a variety of

02:39:49.360 | reasons, but yeah. So that said, let's talk

02:39:51.760 | about the 2020 election. It seems like forever

02:39:54.440 | ago. Do you think it was rigged the way that

02:39:57.360 | Trump claimed? No. And was it rigged in other

02:40:01.240 | ways? Look, this is the problem with language

02:40:04.640 | like rigged. And by the way, when I interviewed

02:40:06.800 | Vivek Ramaswamy, he said the exact same thing.

02:40:08.680 | So for all the MAGA people who are going to

02:40:10.280 | get mad at me, uh, Vivek agrees. All right. And

02:40:13.240 | if, okay. I, I, I have observed, and I'm going

02:40:18.600 | to put my analyst hat on. There are two theories

02:40:21.520 | of stop the steal. One I call low IQ, stop the

02:40:24.360 | steal. And when I call high IQ, stop the steal

02:40:26.760 | low IQ, stop the steal is basically what Donald

02:40:29.840 | Trump has advocated, uh, where, you know,

02:40:32.200 | Dominion voting machines and bamboo ballots and

02:40:35.800 | Venezuela and Sidney Powell and all the people

02:40:38.600 | involved basically got indicted by the state of

02:40:40.480 | Georgia. I'm not saying that that was correct.

02:40:41.960 | I'm just like, that's what that actually looked

02:40:43.720 | like. Rudy Giuliani, et cetera. High IQ stop the

02:40:47.600 | steal is basically, and actually, I mean, these

02:40:50.400 | are not illegitimate arguments. The school of

02:40:53.320 | thought is it was illegitimate for the state of

02:40:57.040 | Pennsylvania and other swing States to change

02:41:00.040 | mail-in balloting laws as a response to COVID,

02:41:03.560 | which enabled millions of people more to vote

02:41:06.240 | that wouldn't have. And that those change in

02:41:08.080 | regulations became enough to swing the election.

02:41:11.200 | I actually think that that is true. Now, would

02:41:13.600 | you say that that's rigged? That's a very

02:41:15.920 | important question because we're talking about a

02:41:17.720 | Republican state legislature and Republican

02:41:19.600 | state Supreme court, right? The two that actually

02:41:21.920 | ruled on this question. So could you say that it

02:41:23.960 | was rigged by the Democrats to do that? Another

02:41:26.720 | problem with that theory is that while you can

02:41:29.520 | say that that's unfair to change the rules last

02:41:32.040 | time around, you can also understand it to a

02:41:34.680 | certain extent. And I'm not justifying it. I'm

02:41:36.400 | just giving you an example. So for example, after

02:41:39.120 | her, the hurricane hit North Carolina, Republican

02:41:42.720 | officials were like, Hey, we need to make sure

02:41:45.320 | that these people who had Western North Carolina

02:41:47.600 | who were affected by the hurricane could still

02:41:49.520 | be able to have access to the ballot box. And

02:41:51.720 | people were like, Oh, so you're saying in an

02:41:53.320 | extraordinary circumstance that you should

02:41:54.880 | change voting, right? You know, access and

02:41:56.600 | regularity to make sure that people have access.

02:41:58.840 | So my point is, you can see the logic through

02:42:01.920 | which this happened. And the high IQ version is

02:42:05.600 | basically the one that was adopted by Josh Holly

02:42:08.920 | whenever he voted against certification. He said

02:42:11.600 | that the state Pennsylvania, particularly

02:42:14.560 | election law, and that those changes were

02:42:16.600 | unfair and led to the quote unquote, rigging of

02:42:19.240 | the election against Donald Trump. Now there's

02:42:21.480 | an even higher IQ galaxy brain stopped the steal

02:42:24.440 | galaxy brain stopped the steal is one that you

02:42:27.520 | saw with great love and respect my friend JD

02:42:30.120 | Vance, uh, at his debate with Tim Walz, when Tim

02:42:34.400 | Walz asked him, what did he say? He said, he

02:42:36.440 | said, did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?

02:42:38.400 | He's like, Tim, I'm focused on the future. And

02:42:40.800 | then he started talking about censorship, the

02:42:43.680 | hunter Biden laptop story. Uh, if you take a

02:42:46.360 | look at the Joe Rogan interview, Rogan actually

02:42:48.960 | asked JD this, he's like, what do you mean you

02:42:50.560 | in the election was some version of that. And

02:42:52.760 | JD was like, well, what I get really frustrated

02:42:55.120 | by is people will bring up all these insane

02:42:57.760 | conspiracy theories, but they ignore that the

02:43:00.120 | media censored the hunter Biden laptop story and

02:43:03.320 | that big tech had its finger on the thumb for

02:43:06.720 | the Democrats. Now that is empirically true.

02:43:08.880 | Okay. That is true. Right now. Would you say

02:43:11.720 | that that's rigged? I'm not going to use that

02:43:14.000 | word. Cause that's a very different word. Now

02:43:15.720 | would you say that that's unfair? Yeah. I think

02:43:17.680 | it's unfair. Um, so there's another, there's a

02:43:20.880 | lot of MAGA folks, uh, picked up on this one.

02:43:23.800 | There was a time magazine article in 2020.

02:43:26.040 | That's very famous in their crowd called, you

02:43:28.000 | know, the, the, it was like the fight to

02:43:29.520 | fortify the election. And it was about all of

02:43:32.280 | these institutions that put their fingers on the

02:43:34.880 | scale for Joe Biden against Donald Trump. So I

02:43:38.880 | will put it this way. Was Donald Trump up

02:43:41.480 | against the Titanic forces of billionaires, tech

02:43:45.600 | censorship, and elite institutions who all did

02:43:49.760 | absolute damnedest to defeat him in 2020. Yes,

02:43:53.720 | that is true. And in a sense, the galaxy brain

02:43:57.840 | case is the only one of those, which I think is

02:44:01.640 | truly legitimate. And I'm not going to put it

02:44:04.000 | off the table, but this is the problem. That's

02:44:07.800 | not what Trump means. You know, Trump, Trump,

02:44:10.480 | by the way, will never tell you what I just

02:44:12.040 | told you, right? JD will. If you go, when you

02:44:15.240 | ask any of these Republican politicians, when

02:44:18.640 | they're challenged on it and they don't want to

02:44:20.000 | say that Trump, a loss of 2020 election, they'll

02:44:22.720 | give the galaxy brain case that I just gave. And

02:44:25.600 | again, I don't think it's wrong, but it's like

02:44:28.000 | guys, that's not what he means when he says it.

02:44:30.680 | And that's the important parsing of the case.

02:44:33.120 | Right? So first at a high level, Trump or

02:44:35.560 | otherwise, I don't like anyone who whines when

02:44:37.480 | they lose period. Yeah. Although he did tell you

02:44:39.840 | he lost, you'd notice that that's the only time

02:44:41.960 | he's ever said it ever. You're famous here in

02:44:44.360 | history for that one. Lost by a whisker. Yeah.

02:44:46.840 | Lost by a whisker. I mean, there is a case to

02:44:50.960 | be made that he was joking. I don't know. But

02:44:54.280 | there is a kind of weaving that he does with

02:44:56.240 | humor, where sometimes it's sarcasm, sometimes

02:44:58.360 | not. Much easier to showcase in a three hour

02:45:02.480 | interview, I'll say. Good call. Go ahead. I

02:45:05.000 | couldn't even like play with that when you have

02:45:07.000 | 40 minutes. I know. You're like, you know, I

02:45:11.320 | could do just 40 minutes on weaving alone. For

02:45:14.000 | your style, it doesn't work. And I can tell you

02:45:16.200 | how the way I interview politicians is I just do

02:45:19.000 | pure policy. So when I the first time I

02:45:21.440 | interviewed Trump, I compiled a list of 15

02:45:23.520 | subjects, me and my editor, Vince, calling a

02:45:26.120 | shout out to Vince, and the two of us sat in an

02:45:28.520 | office. And then we had questions by priority in

02:45:31.160 | each category. And if we felt like we're running

02:45:33.000 | short on time, we would move around those

02:45:35.480 | different ones. But that was purely he's the

02:45:37.280 | president, we're asking him for his opinions on

02:45:39.120 | an immigration bill or whatever. For what you

02:45:41.400 | do, it's impossible to do. Yeah, I just want to

02:45:43.560 | say that. Thank you for everybody involved for

02:45:48.360 | making my conversation with Donald Trump

02:45:49.960 | possible. But I've learned a lot from that, that

02:45:52.600 | I just if if I'm told that all I have is 40

02:45:56.560 | minutes, I'm very politely sparing. In that case,

02:46:01.560 | Donald Trump, the 40 minutes and just walking

02:46:03.520 | away, because I don't think I can do a good job.

02:46:05.720 | I think that is the correct decision on your

02:46:07.480 | part. Yeah. And I also would encourage you to

02:46:10.440 | have the confidence at this point, that you are

02:46:13.200 | in a position of something that we call in the

02:46:16.200 | business, the ability to compel the interview.

02:46:18.480 | And by to compel means to be able to bring

02:46:21.800 | somebody else to you and not the other way

02:46:23.720 | around. And I think that you and Rogan and a few

02:46:27.080 | others are in that very unique position. And I

02:46:29.480 | would really encourage you guys to stick to your

02:46:31.800 | guns on things that make you feel comfortable.

02:46:34.120 | Because, you know, those of us in news, we will

02:46:36.800 | always negotiate, we'll always we're willing to

02:46:38.880 | do short form because we're asking about policy.

02:46:40.600 | But for the style that you help popularize, and I

02:46:43.160 | think that you're uniquely talented and good at

02:46:45.200 | that's very important not to compromise on. So

02:46:47.520 | thank you for saying those words. And that's not

02:46:49.480 | just in the interest of journalism in the interest

02:46:51.400 | of conversation is the interest of the guests as

02:46:53.800 | well. Yeah, absolutely. Bring out the best in

02:46:55.640 | them. Yeah, I mean, I would feel really at a

02:46:57.600 | disservice. And I would feel like people would

02:47:00.000 | not get a unique understanding of like my own

02:47:02.960 | thought process and my backstory if I was not

02:47:05.080 | able to sit here for literally hours and to

02:47:07.520 | explain in deep detail like how I think about the

02:47:11.080 | world, not that anyone cares that much. But you

02:47:13.000 | know, it's just like, I hope all I can do is I

02:47:16.040 | hope it's helpful. I want to help people think.

02:47:18.120 | Because when I was growing, I was growing up not

02:47:21.120 | far from here, 90 minutes from here, and College

02:47:23.560 | Station, I felt very uniquely closed off from the

02:47:26.600 | world. And I found the world through books and

02:47:29.480 | books saved my life. They many, so many different

02:47:32.520 | times. And I hope to encourage that in other

02:47:35.080 | people. I really, no matter where you are, no

02:47:38.000 | matter who you are, no matter how busy you are,

02:47:40.080 | you have some time to either sit down with a book

02:47:42.720 | or put on an audio book, and you can transport

02:47:45.480 | yourself into a different world. It's so

02:47:47.920 | important. And that's something that your, your

02:47:50.040 | show really helps me with too. I love listening

02:47:52.120 | to your show whenever sometimes when I'm too

02:47:53.720 | into politics, I need to listen to something. I'll

02:47:55.400 | listen to that Mayan historian guy. I love stuff

02:47:58.080 | like that.

02:47:58.520 | I've been a deep dove on Genghis Khan, reading

02:48:01.800 | Genghis Khan and then making the modern world.

02:48:04.600 | Yeah, Jack Weatherford.

02:48:05.680 | Yeah, he's coming on.

02:48:07.360 | Is he?

02:48:07.920 | Yeah.

02:48:08.640 | Amazing.

02:48:09.240 | And again, shout out to Dan Carlin.

02:48:11.360 | The GOAT, the OG. Dan, I've never met you before.

02:48:15.360 | I would love to correspond at some point. I love

02:48:17.520 | you so much. You changed my life, man.

02:48:19.000 | I met him once before. And it felt-

02:48:21.560 | I listened to your interview with him.

02:48:22.640 | I was starstruck. Very, very starstruck. And his,

02:48:26.520 | I mean, just so much. Painful Attainment. I've

02:48:28.600 | listened to that many times.

02:48:29.240 | I think his best series, one of his best series,

02:48:31.000 | it gets no credit for, Ghosts of the Osferon.

02:48:33.120 | Nobody gives him credit for that one. That's OG.

02:48:35.640 | This is a 2011 series. But his Ghosts of the Osferon

02:48:40.200 | on the Eastern front of the Nazi war against

02:48:43.520 | Russia fundamentally changed my view of warfare

02:48:46.240 | forever. And also, at that time, I was very young.

02:48:49.280 | And to me, World War II was Saving Private Ryan.

02:48:52.120 | I wasn't as well-read as I am now. And I was like,

02:48:55.400 | "Oh, shit. This entire thing happened, which

02:48:58.080 | actually decided the Second World War. And I

02:48:59.920 | don't know anything about this." So shout out to

02:49:02.960 | Dan. God bless you, man.

02:49:04.240 | And his "short episodes," I think, on slavery in

02:49:09.280 | general throughout human history.

02:49:10.400 | That was an awesome episode. I actually bought a

02:49:12.760 | bunch of Hugh Thomas books because of that

02:49:14.520 | episode. I'd never really read about African

02:49:17.000 | slavery or the slave trade outside of the civil

02:49:19.760 | war context. So again, shout out to him for that

02:49:21.680 | one. That was an amazing episode. His Japan

02:49:23.600 | series, too. I'm going to Japan in a few days. And

02:49:26.640 | I keep thinking of what he always talked about in

02:49:28.760 | his Supernova in the East. The Japanese are like

02:49:31.360 | everyone else, but only more so. And God, I love

02:49:35.360 | that quote.

02:49:35.840 | Okay, he's great. And we, ironically, arrived at

02:49:40.720 | this tangent while talking about the 2020

02:49:43.520 | election.

02:49:43.880 | That's why podcasting is fun.

02:49:46.760 | Because you said, "Lost by a whisker." And now

02:49:49.920 | we're dragging a screaming back to the topic. One

02:49:55.600 | of the things I was bothered by is Trump claiming

02:50:01.200 | that there's widespread, as you're saying, low IQ

02:50:04.360 | theory, the widespread voter fraud. And I saw no

02:50:07.720 | evidence of that that he provided. And all right,

02:50:12.960 | well, let's put that on the table. And then the

02:50:15.200 | other thing I was troubled by, that maybe you can

02:50:18.040 | comfort me in the context of history, how easily

02:50:22.440 | the base ate that up. That they were able to

02:50:28.160 | believe the election was truly rigged, based on no

02:50:31.760 | clear evidence that I saw. And they just love the

02:50:34.880 | story. And there is something compelling to the

02:50:37.320 | story that, you know, like this DNC type, like

02:50:40.600 | with Bernie, the establishment just, they're

02:50:43.480 | corrupt and they steal the will of the people. And

02:50:48.360 | like, the lack of desire from the base or from

02:50:54.360 | people to see any evidence of that, what's really

02:50:57.120 | troubled me.

02:50:57.840 | Yeah. I'm going to give you one of the most

02:50:59.720 | depressing quotes, which is deeply true. Roger

02:51:02.680 | Ailes, who is a genius. Shout out to The Loudest

02:51:05.560 | Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman. That book

02:51:07.480 | changed my life too, because it really made me

02:51:09.760 | understand media. People don't want to be

02:51:11.800 | informed. They want to feel informed. That is one

02:51:14.880 | of the most fundamental media insights of all

02:51:17.360 | time.

02:51:17.680 | What a line.

02:51:18.400 | Roger Ailes, a genius, a genius in his own right,

02:51:22.160 | who, you know, he changed the world. He certainly

02:51:25.160 | did. He, you know, he's the one who kind of gets

02:51:29.200 | credit for one of the greatest debate lines of

02:51:31.320 | all time, because he was an advisor to President

02:51:33.440 | Reagan. Whenever he broke in, he was like, Mr.

02:51:36.280 | President, people want to know if you're too damn

02:51:37.720 | old for this job or not. And he inspired that

02:51:40.000 | joke that Reagan made, where he was like, I will

02:51:43.400 | not use age in this campaign. I will not hold my

02:51:46.160 | opponent's youth and inexperience against him.

02:51:48.440 | That was Ailes, man. You got, he did the Nixon

02:51:51.360 | town halls. He did it all. He's a fucking genius.

02:51:55.160 | And I'm not advocating necessarily for the world

02:51:57.920 | he created for us, but he did it. And people

02:52:01.120 | should study him more. If you're interested in

02:52:02.560 | media in particular, that book is one of the most

02:52:04.800 | important books you'll ever read.

02:52:05.880 | Yeah, you know what, that quote just really

02:52:08.280 | connected with me, because, you know, there's all

02:52:11.880 | this talk about truth. And I think what people

02:52:15.560 | want to, they want to feel like they're in

02:52:18.280 | possession of the truth.

02:52:19.200 | Correct.

02:52:19.800 | Not actually be in the possession of the truth.

02:52:21.920 | Yeah, I know. It's one of the, it hit me too.

02:52:25.360 | Actually, Russell Crowe does an amazing job of

02:52:27.840 | delivering that line in the Showtime miniseries.

02:52:30.400 | So if you have the chance, you should watch it.

02:52:32.840 | And look, this is the problem. Liberals will be

02:52:35.400 | like, yeah, see these idiot Republicans. I'm

02:52:37.200 | like, yeah, you guys have bought a lot of crazy

02:52:39.080 | stupid shit too. Okay. And if actually, I would

02:52:41.240 | say liberal misinformation, quote unquote, is

02:52:43.200 | worse than Republican disinformation because it

02:52:45.600 | pervades the entire elite media like Russiagate

02:52:48.920 | or Cambridge Analytica or any of these other

02:52:51.280 | hoaxes that have been foisted on the American

02:52:54.600 | people. The people who listen to the Daily and

02:52:57.400 | from the New York Times are just as brainwashed,

02:53:00.200 | lack of informed, want to feel informed as people

02:53:04.160 | who watch Fox News. So let me just say that out

02:53:06.840 | there. It's an equal opportunity cancer in the

02:53:09.560 | American.

02:53:09.960 | Actually, we started early on in the

02:53:11.840 | conversation talking about bubbles. What's your

02:53:16.840 | advice about how to figure out if you're in a

02:53:20.640 | bubble and how to get out of it?

02:53:21.920 | That's such a fantastic question. Unfortunately,

02:53:24.960 | I think it comes really naturally to someone

02:53:26.920 | like me because I'm the child of immigrants and

02:53:29.360 | I was raised in College Station, Texas. So I was

02:53:31.760 | always on the outside. And when you're on the

02:53:34.320 | outside, this isn't a sob story. It's a deeply

02:53:37.080 | useful skill because when you're on the outside,

02:53:39.480 | you're forced to kind of observe. And you're

02:53:41.600 | like, oh. So like when I was raised was the

02:53:44.240 | Bible belt and people really, you know, people

02:53:47.920 | were hardcore evangelical Christians and I could

02:53:50.560 | tell them like, oh, they really believe this

02:53:51.840 | stuff. And, you know, they were always trying to

02:53:54.040 | proselytize and all of that. And then the other

02:53:56.960 | gift that my parents gave me is I got to travel

02:53:59.280 | the entire world. I probably visited 25, 30

02:54:02.000 | countries by the time I was 18. And one of the

02:54:04.880 | things that that gave me was the ability to just

02:54:08.960 | put yourself in the brain of another person. So

02:54:11.600 | one of the reasons I'm really excited to go to

02:54:13.120 | Japan and I picked it as a spot for my honeymoon

02:54:15.800 | was because Japan is a first world developed

02:54:19.720 | country where the vast majority of them don't

02:54:22.160 | speak English. It's distinguish, distinguishly

02:54:25.080 | non-Western and they just do shit their own way.

02:54:28.200 | So they have a subway, but it's not the same as

02:54:30.520 | ours. They have restaurants. Things don't work

02:54:32.640 | the same way. They have, you know, I could go to

02:54:35.120 | a laundry list, their entire philosophy of life,

02:54:37.680 | of the daily rhythm, even though it merges with

02:54:41.800 | service-based managerial capitalism and they're

02:54:44.320 | fucking good at it too. They do it their own way.

02:54:47.640 | So exposure to other countries in the world gave

02:54:50.880 | me, and also just being an outsider myself, gave

02:54:53.440 | me a more detached view of the world. So if you

02:54:56.080 | don't have that, what I would encourage you is

02:54:58.240 | to flex that muscle. So go somewhere that makes

02:55:01.640 | you uncomfortable. This will be a very boomer

02:55:04.040 | take, but I hate the fact that you have 5G

02:55:07.200 | everywhere you go in the world, because some of

02:55:08.920 | the best experiences I've ever had in my life is

02:55:11.480 | walking around Warsaw, Poland, trying to find a

02:55:14.600 | bus station to get my ass to Lithuania with a

02:55:17.480 | printed out bus ticket. I have no idea where the

02:55:20.040 | street is. I'm in a country where not that many

02:55:22.280 | people speak English. We're pointing and

02:55:24.200 | gesturing, right? And I figured it out. And it

02:55:27.080 | was really easy. I got to meet a lot of cool

02:55:28.440 | Polish people. Same in Thailand. I've been in

02:55:30.800 | rural like Bumbuk, Thailand, Columbia, places

02:55:33.720 | where people speak zero English. And your

02:55:37.080 | ability to gesture and use Pidgin really connects

02:55:41.080 | you and gives you like the ability to to get an

02:55:44.640 | exposure to others. And so I know this is a very

02:55:47.680 | like wanderlust, like travel thing. But

02:55:50.760 | unironically, if you're raised in a bubble,

02:55:52.840 | pierce it. Like that's the answer is seek

02:55:55.080 | something out that makes you uncomfortable. So

02:55:57.600 | if you're raised rich, you need to go spend some

02:55:59.280 | time with poor people and consider that they

02:56:01.160 | might actually understand the world better than

02:56:03.560 | you. Well, in some respects. So I think a lot of

02:56:05.840 | rich people have really screwed up personal

02:56:07.240 | lives. So if you're poor and you really value

02:56:09.320 | family, you say, oh, that's interesting. There

02:56:11.720 | seems to be a fundamental tradeoff between

02:56:13.880 | extraordinary wealth and something that I value.

02:56:16.360 | But what can I take away from that person? Oh,

02:56:19.520 | put my money in index funds. Make sure that I

02:56:22.680 | am conscientious about my budgeting and

02:56:24.760 | common-sense shit, right? And vice versa. People

02:56:29.680 | who are very wealthy get so caught up in the rat

02:56:32.480 | race about their kids going to private school and

02:56:35.480 | all of this. And then, you know, they very rarely

02:56:38.000 | engage with there's that famous study where they

02:56:39.960 | ask people on their deathbed, like what they

02:56:41.880 | valued in life. And every single one of them was

02:56:43.720 | like, I wish I'd spend more time with my

02:56:44.840 | children. I think about that every time that I

02:56:47.680 | am thinking about pursuing a new work endeavor

02:56:49.880 | or something that's going to have me spend

02:56:51.840 | significant time away from my wife. And I'm

02:56:55.240 | almost always these days now that I've achieved

02:56:58.400 | a certain level of success. The answer is I'm

02:57:01.360 | not doing it unless you can come with me.

02:57:03.680 | One of the bubbles I'm really concerned about

02:57:05.320 | the San Francisco bubble. I visit there recently

02:57:08.160 | because there's so many friends there, uh, that I

02:57:11.760 | respect deeply. So many brilliant people in San

02:57:16.040 | Francisco, the Silicon Valley, but there's just

02:57:19.160 | this, um, I don't even want to criticize it, but

02:57:23.200 | there's definitely a bubble. Yeah, that thought

02:57:26.040 | I'm with you. I'm friends with some SP Silicon

02:57:29.200 | Valley people as well. I'm similarly struck by

02:57:32.400 | that, uh, every time I go. And honestly, I do

02:57:35.800 | admire them because they, what I respect the most

02:57:39.680 | amongst entrepreneurs, business and political

02:57:41.480 | thinkers is systems thinking. Nobody thinks

02:57:43.720 | systems better than people who are in tech

02:57:45.760 | because they deal with global shit, right? Not

02:57:48.400 | even just America. They have to think about the

02:57:49.800 | whole world, about the human being and his

02:57:52.280 | relationship to technology and coding in some

02:57:55.040 | ways is an expression of the human mind and

02:57:57.280 | about how that person wants to achieve this

02:57:59.000 | thing. And Hey, you mechanically can type that

02:58:01.840 | into a keyboard or even code something to code

02:58:04.360 | for you to be able to achieve that. That's a

02:58:06.600 | remarkable accomplishment. I do think those

02:58:10.040 | people and people like that too, who think very

02:58:12.880 | linearly through math and their, their geniuses

02:58:16.320 | are the ones who can take their creativity and

02:58:18.440 | merge it with linear thinking. But I do think

02:58:21.520 | that that actually, those are the people who

02:58:23.520 | probably most need to get out of the bubble,

02:58:27.080 | check themselves a little bit and look, it's

02:58:30.000 | really hard, you know, once you achieve a

02:58:32.040 | certain level of economic success and others,

02:58:34.600 | like what do most rich people do? They closed

02:58:36.720 | himself off from the world, right? That's the

02:58:38.720 | vast majority of the time. What do you do?

02:58:40.440 | Economy is annoying flying. They fly first

02:58:42.760 | class. Living in a small house is annoying.

02:58:45.680 | They buy a bigger house. Dealing with a lot of

02:58:48.200 | these inconveniences of life is annoying. You

02:58:49.960 | pay a little bit more to make sure you don't

02:58:51.240 | have to do that. There's a deep insidious thing

02:58:53.840 | within that each one of those individual

02:58:55.600 | choices, where the more and more removed that

02:58:58.480 | you get from that, the more in the bubble that

02:59:00.280 | you are. So you should actually seek out those

02:59:01.800 | experiences or create them in a concerted way.

02:59:05.200 | Speaking of bubbles, Sam Harris. Oh, uh, he has

02:59:12.200 | continued to criticize me directly and

02:59:14.440 | indirectly, I think unfairly, but I love Sam. I

02:59:18.440 | deeply respect him. Everybody should listen to

02:59:21.280 | the making sense podcast. It always makes me

02:59:23.160 | think, uh, it's definitely in the rotation for

02:59:26.560 | me. That's a, that's very admirable of you. I

02:59:28.800 | mean, he's, I think one of the sharpest minds

02:59:33.520 | of our generation. And for a long time I looked

02:59:36.920 | up to him as one of the weird moments for me to

02:59:39.160 | meet him. Cause you listened to somebody for

02:59:41.920 | such a long time. I feel that way with you. I'm

02:59:45.080 | serious. Yeah, it was, it's a beautiful moment.

02:59:48.520 | I mean, same with Joe and stuff like this. It's,

02:59:50.640 | it's, it's, it is one of the most surreal

02:59:52.560 | moments of your life, uh, to be able to meet

02:59:55.040 | somebody who you spend like hours listening to.

02:59:57.640 | I actually think about that when people come up

02:59:59.480 | to me. Cause I'm like, oh, they're feeling what

03:00:01.320 | I felt whenever I, yeah. Yeah. And you have to

03:00:04.480 | like, you see it, you feel it and you have to

03:00:07.640 | celebrate that because there is an intimacy to

03:00:09.600 | it. Um, I think it's real that people really do

03:00:14.200 | form a real connection, a real friendship. It

03:00:17.240 | happens to be one way, but I think it actually

03:00:18.960 | can, um, upgrade to a two way pretty easily. It

03:00:22.560 | happens with me like in a matter of like five

03:00:24.600 | minutes when I meet somebody at an airport or

03:00:26.200 | something like that. Anyway, uh, Sam took a

03:00:29.640 | pretty strong position on Trump and has for a

03:00:32.880 | long time. Yeah. He has been consistent and

03:00:36.920 | unwavering. So he, he thinks that Trump is a

03:00:42.000 | truly dangerous person for democracy, for maybe

03:00:46.400 | for the world. Um, can you still man his

03:00:48.960 | position?

03:00:49.440 | Well, see, I think a lot of this podcast has

03:00:52.600 | been stealing, manning it because Sam is a big

03:00:54.760 | character matters guy. Like he focuses a lot on

03:00:58.080 | Trump's personality. By the way, I'm like you,

03:01:00.240 | I've listened to Sam Harris for years. I bought

03:01:01.920 | his meditation app. So nobody's going to accuse

03:01:04.360 | me of being some Sam Harris hater. I listened

03:01:06.440 | to him for way before, long before even Donald

03:01:09.480 | Trump was elected. That's how far back I go

03:01:11.920 | with the Sam Harris podcast. I have a lot of

03:01:14.520 | respect for the dude. I, I enjoy a lot of his

03:01:16.920 | older interviews. I do think after Trump, he

03:01:19.760 | did succumb a little bit, in my opinion, to the

03:01:22.360 | elite liberalism view, both of the impetus behind

03:01:26.320 | Donald Trump and why he was able to be

03:01:28.880 | successful. So in some ways, very denigrating to

03:01:31.400 | the Trump voter, but also a fundamental

03:01:34.000 | misunderstanding of the American presidency.

03:01:35.920 | Because like I said, he really is the one who

03:01:38.360 | believes that that narcissism, that character

03:01:40.520 | and all of that, that makes Trump tick itself

03:01:42.880 | will eventually override any potential benefit

03:01:45.480 | that he could have in office. And I just think

03:01:47.640 | that's a really wrong way of looking at it. And,

03:01:50.640 | um, I mean, for example, I had this debate with

03:01:53.880 | Crystal and this gets to the whole Trump, you

03:01:57.280 | know, talking about the enemy from within. And

03:01:59.320 | she was like, he wants to prosecute his political

03:02:01.720 | opponents. Do you disagree with that? And I was

03:02:03.600 | like, no, I don't. And she was like, so you're

03:02:05.880 | not worried about it. And I go, no, I'm not. And

03:02:08.480 | she's like, well, how do you square that? And I

03:02:09.760 | was like, well, I actually unironically believe

03:02:12.800 | in the American system of institutional checks

03:02:15.680 | and balances, which kept him quote unquote in

03:02:17.960 | check last time around. I also believe in

03:02:21.120 | democracy where, you know, this is really

03:02:23.920 | interesting, but, you know, in 2022, a lot of the

03:02:26.800 | Republicans who were the most vociferous about

03:02:29.200 | stop the steal, they got their asses kicked at the

03:02:31.240 | ballot box. You know, Americans also then in

03:02:34.640 | 2024 decided to forgive some of that from Donald

03:02:37.600 | Trump. It's definitely didn't help. Right. But

03:02:39.840 | they were able to oversee that for their own

03:02:42.000 | interests. As in democratically, people are

03:02:45.080 | able to weigh in terms of checks and balances,

03:02:47.480 | what they should and should not challenge a

03:02:49.160 | politician by. But also we have the American

03:02:51.800 | legal system. And I also know the way that the

03:02:54.880 | institutions in Washington themselves work, that,

03:02:57.720 | you know, fundamentally, the way that certain

03:03:01.040 | processes and other things could play out will not

03:03:03.640 | play out to some Hitlerian fantasy. And this gets

03:03:07.960 | to the whole like Kamala and them calling him a

03:03:09.880 | fascist and Hitler, you know, you and I probably

03:03:12.880 | spent hours of our lives, maybe more thinking and

03:03:16.480 | reading about Adolf Hitler, Weimar Germany, and I

03:03:19.760 | just find it so insulting, you know, because it

03:03:22.480 | becomes this moniker of like fascism. These terms

03:03:26.200 | have meaning beyond the beyond just the dictionary

03:03:29.680 | definition. The circumstances through which

03:03:32.640 | Hitler is able to rise to power are not the same as

03:03:36.600 | today. It's like stop denigrating America to the

03:03:40.800 | point where you think like really should flip it

03:03:42.880 | around. Why do you think America's Weimar Germany?

03:03:45.240 | That's a ridiculous thing to say. Do you

03:03:47.280 | unironically believe that? No, you don't believe

03:03:49.920 | that. So that is personally what drives me a

03:03:53.400 | little bit crazy. And I think that Sam has found

03:03:56.760 | himself in a mental framework where he is not

03:03:58.960 | willing, he's not able to look past the man and

03:04:02.600 | his quote unquote, danger. And at the end of the

03:04:05.880 | day, his worldview was rejected wholly by the

03:04:08.880 | American people. And that because the character

03:04:11.800 | argument, the fascist argument, the Hitler

03:04:13.520 | argument, the he is uniquely bad argument has been

03:04:16.480 | run twice before 2016. And in 2000, actually, all

03:04:20.320 | three times, I guess it won in 2020. But two out

03:04:23.240 | of the three times Donald Trump has won the

03:04:24.840 | presidency, and his latest one, where that

03:04:27.240 | argument has never been made before, for a longer

03:04:30.160 | period of time, and more in strength by a

03:04:32.680 | political candidate was rejected completely. And I

03:04:35.360 | would ask him to reconcile himself to the America

03:04:38.240 | that he lives in.

03:04:39.080 | I think one thing maybe to partially steal me on

03:04:42.800 | his case, but also just a steel man, the way the

03:04:46.000 | world works, is that there is some probability

03:04:49.520 | that Kamala Harris will institute a communist

03:04:55.120 | state. And there is some probability that Donald

03:04:57.840 | Trump will indeed, that like will fly a swastika

03:05:01.800 | with and deport, I don't know, everybody who's

03:05:06.480 | not Scott Irish. Like, I don't know.

03:05:09.120 | Yeah, you and I are screwed then.

03:05:10.160 | Maybe, is there a spirit test? Okay. Like, but

03:05:12.960 | that probability is small. And you have to, if

03:05:15.800 | you allow yourself to focus on a particular

03:05:18.000 | trajectory with a small probability, it can

03:05:23.320 | become all encompassing. Because you could see

03:05:25.440 | it, you could see a path, there are certain

03:05:27.000 | character qualities to Trump.

03:05:28.560 | Yes.

03:05:29.040 | Where he wants to hold on to power. First of

03:05:32.000 | all, every politician wants to hold on to power.

03:05:34.000 | Joe Biden, maybe because he's part of the

03:05:39.120 | machine, can't even conceive of the notion of a

03:05:42.160 | third term. But he has the arrogance to want to

03:05:45.040 | hold on to power, do everything he can.

03:05:46.960 | Absolutely.

03:05:47.800 | And like with Trump, I could see that if it was

03:05:50.080 | very popular for him to have a third term, I

03:05:53.600 | think he would not be the kind of person who

03:05:56.840 | doesn't advocate for a third term.

03:05:59.040 | So what, that would require the Senate and the

03:06:02.400 | House or 70, what is it, 75% of the states to

03:06:05.160 | pass and change the constitution. Do you think

03:06:08.480 | that's going to happen? No, I don't think it's

03:06:09.760 | going to happen. So I'm not that worried about

03:06:11.040 | it. Now you can make a norms argument. Actually,

03:06:13.920 | I think that's kind of fair, is that he's the

03:06:15.720 | norms buster. But, you know, with extraordinary

03:06:18.760 | candidates and people like Trump, you get the

03:06:21.480 | good and the bad. There is a true duality, like

03:06:24.200 | the norms he busts around foreign policy. I

03:06:26.920 | love the norms he busts around the economy. I

03:06:29.680 | love the norms he busts around just so much of

03:06:33.120 | the American political system saying and how it

03:06:34.840 | is, et cetera. I love that. You know what I

03:06:36.920 | hate? This 2020 election bullshit. You know what

03:06:39.720 | else I hate? You know, this, I don't know, just

03:06:42.280 | the, the, the lack of discipline that I would

03:06:45.000 | want to think that a great leader could have,

03:06:47.480 | like when he was president and tweeting about

03:06:49.000 | Mika Brzezinski's facelift, that was objectively

03:06:51.560 | ridiculous. Like it was crazy. Okay. Was it

03:06:53.840 | funny? Yeah, but it was crazy. Like, and it's

03:06:55.840 | not how I would conceive and have conceived of

03:06:59.680 | some of my favorite presidents. I wouldn't

03:07:01.680 | think that they would do that, but that's what

03:07:03.600 | you get. You know, you, everyone should be

03:07:05.520 | clear eyed about who this man is. And that's

03:07:08.520 | another problem. The deification of politicians

03:07:10.640 | is second. It's sickening. Like about Trump

03:07:13.200 | around Obama or like these people are just

03:07:17.000 | people like the idea that they are God-like

03:07:19.880 | creatures with extraordinary judgment. You

03:07:22.320 | know, one of the really cool things about

03:07:23.680 | you and I's job is we actually get to meet,

03:07:25.000 | meet very important people. After you meet a

03:07:27.000 | few billionaires, you're like, yeah, there's

03:07:28.080 | definitely something there, but you know, some

03:07:30.040 | of them get lucky. Um, and like, uh, after you

03:07:32.600 | meet a few politicians, you're like, oh, they're

03:07:35.040 | like, they're not that smart. Uh, that was a

03:07:36.920 | rude awakening for me, by the way, being here

03:07:38.680 | in Texas, reading about these people. And

03:07:40.760 | pretty soon I was on Capitol Hill. I was like

03:07:43.120 | 19 years old. I was an intern. I'm actually

03:07:45.200 | interacting and I see them behave in ridiculous

03:07:47.760 | manners and you know, whatever, just treat

03:07:49.680 | people badly or say something stupid. And I

03:07:51.920 | was like, oh, this is not the West wing. I'm

03:07:54.440 | like, this is not like these people are just,

03:07:56.560 | this is reality. And the weirdest part of my

03:07:58.840 | life is I've now been in Washington long

03:08:00.800 | enough. I know some of the people personally,

03:08:03.920 | the vice president of the United States,

03:08:06.120 | literally the vice president elect, future

03:08:08.920 | cabinet secretaries, future, you know, these

03:08:11.440 | people I literally have met, had dinner with,

03:08:13.520 | had a drink with whatever. Um, that's a wild

03:08:16.160 | thing. And that's even more bringing you down

03:08:18.680 | to earth. You were like, oh shit, you're

03:08:19.840 | actually a lot of power. That's pretty, that's

03:08:21.560 | kind of scary, but you're just a person. And so

03:08:24.080 | even though you don't have to say, I have my

03:08:25.880 | same life experience, take it from me or

03:08:28.520 | anybody else who's ever met really famous

03:08:30.400 | people, rich, successful, powerful people.

03:08:33.760 | They're just people. There's nothing that

03:08:35.400 | there's some things that are unique about

03:08:37.120 | them, but, uh, they have just as many human

03:08:40.040 | qualities as you or anybody else who's

03:08:41.640 | listening to this right now.

03:08:42.560 | Yeah. There's a, for each candidate, Trump is

03:08:45.640 | probably the extreme version of that. There's

03:08:47.920 | a, there's a distribution of the possible

03:08:50.600 | trajectories that administration might result

03:08:52.680 | in. Yes. And like, uh, the range of possible

03:08:55.720 | trajectories is just much wider with Trump.

03:08:57.840 | Yeah. You're describing like a Bayesian theory,

03:09:00.160 | right? Like, and I think that's actually a

03:09:02.200 | really useful framework for the world is that

03:09:04.320 | people are really too binary. So like you said,

03:09:06.360 | you know, there's a theoretical possibility, I

03:09:08.080 | guess, of a communist takeover of government

03:09:11.160 | and of a fascist takeover of government under

03:09:14.600 | Kamala Harris or, uh, Donald Trump, you know,

03:09:17.200 | their realistic probability, I would give it

03:09:19.080 | 0.05% probably in both directions. Um, but

03:09:22.720 | there are, you know, there are a lot of things

03:09:24.320 | that can happen that are bad, that are not

03:09:26.160 | Hitlerian or fascist. There are a lot of things

03:09:28.160 | that would happen that are really good, that

03:09:29.520 | are not FDR new deal style. Uh, one of the worst

03:09:33.000 | things politicians do is they describe

03:09:35.040 | themselves in false historical ways. So in

03:09:38.440 | Washington, one of the most overused phrases is

03:09:40.840 | made history. And I'm like, you know, if you

03:09:44.680 | actually read history, most of these things are

03:09:47.560 | just, they're not even footnotes. They're the

03:09:49.800 | stuff that the historians flip past. And they're

03:09:52.280 | like, what a stupid bucking thing. I mean, I'm

03:09:55.240 | talking about things that will, that ruled

03:09:57.320 | American politics. Like what if I told you that

03:09:59.440 | the Panama Canal treaty was one of the most

03:10:01.480 | important fights in modern American politics?

03:10:03.760 | Nobody thinks about that today. It ruled

03:10:07.280 | American politics at that time. You know, it

03:10:09.480 | genuinely is a footnote, but that's not how it

03:10:11.560 | felt at the time. So that's another thing I

03:10:13.240 | want people to take away.

03:10:14.040 | You, uh, tragically missed the UFO hearing.

03:10:19.480 | Oh man, my brothers, I'm really sad. Uh, I, let

03:10:23.520 | me tell you, I love them so much. The UFO

03:10:26.920 | community are some of the best people I've ever

03:10:30.240 | met in my life. Shout out to my brother, Jeremy

03:10:32.600 | Corbell, uh, to George Knapp, the OG, to all of

03:10:36.120 | the people who fly from all around the world to

03:10:38.040 | come to these hearings. It was so fun. I got to

03:10:40.680 | meet so many of them last time, just walk the

03:10:42.960 | rope line. Like as people were, uh, coming in

03:10:45.200 | the excitement, the, uh, I, I, I love, I truly

03:10:49.760 | love the UFO community. Shout out to all of them.

03:10:51.880 | This is the second one, I guess.

03:10:53.360 | This is the second one.

03:10:54.160 | Do you hope they continue happening?

03:10:55.640 | It's going to be a slow burn. Uh, so one of the

03:10:57.600 | things I always tell the guys and everybody is

03:11:00.440 | consider how long it took to understand the sheer

03:11:05.400 | insanity of the CIA, the 1950s and sixties. So if

03:11:09.560 | we think back to the church committee, I don't, I

03:11:11.720 | forget the exact year of the church committee. I

03:11:13.200 | think it was in the seventies, uh, the entire

03:11:15.080 | church committee and knowledge of why this, of

03:11:18.320 | how the CIA and the FBI were up to all of this

03:11:21.960 | insane shit throughout the fifties and sixties is

03:11:24.440 | because some people broke into a warehouse,

03:11:26.800 | discovered some documents, got the names of

03:11:29.240 | programs, which were able to be foiled. And we

03:11:32.160 | were able to break open that case. It would never

03:11:34.360 | have happened with real transparency, like in the

03:11:36.760 | official process. So we owe those people a great

03:11:39.360 | debt. I guess I could say, no, the statute of

03:11:41.000 | limitations has passed. Uh, my point about the

03:11:44.520 | UFOs is I don't know what is real or not. I have

03:11:48.000 | absolute confidence, an absolute ton is being

03:11:50.240 | hid from the American people and that all of the

03:11:52.680 | official explanations are bullshit. I have had the

03:11:55.280 | opportunity to interface with some of the

03:11:57.560 | whistleblowers and other, the activists in the

03:11:59.840 | community, people who I trust, people who have

03:12:02.840 | great credentials, who have no reason to lie, who

03:12:05.560 | have assured us that there is a lot going on

03:12:08.160 | behind the scenes. There has been too much

03:12:10.280 | misinformation and effort by the deep state to

03:12:13.040 | cover up this topic. So I would ask people to

03:12:15.920 | keep the faith it's 2024 and we still don't have

03:12:19.120 | all the JFK files. Okay. Everyone involved is

03:12:21.800 | dead. There's no reason to let it go. And even

03:12:24.200 | though we basically know what happened, we don't

03:12:26.240 | know if you read that fantastic book, the Tom

03:12:29.200 | O'Neill book about the Manson murders. I mean,

03:12:31.800 | again, you know, it took him 20 years to write

03:12:34.000 | that book and he still didn't get the full story.

03:12:36.200 | So sometimes it takes an extraordinarily long,

03:12:39.960 | agonizing period of time. And I know how deeply

03:12:42.760 | frustrating that is. But when you think about a

03:12:45.000 | secret, a program and knowledge of this

03:12:48.120 | magnitude, it would only make sense that it would

03:12:50.760 | require a titanic effort to reveal a titanic

03:12:53.880 | secret. You think Trump might be able to push

03:12:56.680 | further, like aggressively break through the

03:12:59.840 | secrecy, let's say even on the JFK files? I hope

03:13:02.960 | so. I have moderate confidence, you know, RFK

03:13:06.120 | Jr has pushed him to do so. I would, I would

03:13:08.440 | like to think so. Uh, at the same time, my son

03:13:10.880 | got rolled last time. So, um, you know, I'll

03:13:12.760 | hold my breath. Why do you think that happens?

03:13:14.480 | Why do you think it gets, remember that whole

03:13:15.880 | interagency thing I told you about? That's how

03:13:17.560 | it happens. Uh, that's another thing. You're

03:13:19.160 | presuming that the president has the power to

03:13:20.840 | declassify this stuff. I'm, I'm saying that I'm

03:13:23.240 | not even sure we're there, like in terms of, uh,

03:13:25.480 | so it's basically like stability. He basically

03:13:27.880 | says, like, I would like to declassify JFK files.

03:13:31.080 | And they say, yes, sir, we'll get that to you in

03:13:33.120 | three months and three months comes by. And then

03:13:35.720 | they're like, well, there's these, uh, hurdles.

03:13:38.080 | Well, the way you get around it is go, let's

03:13:39.840 | release some, but these in particular, there's

03:13:41.840 | national security secrets is a good case for not

03:13:43.880 | releasing them X, Y, and Z. You know, it's like

03:13:45.720 | you get around that. Oh, okay. You know, that

03:13:47.680 | makes sense. You know, again, he's a busy guy.

03:13:49.680 | He's the president. He got way bigger shit to

03:13:51.040 | worry about. So this is the, that's the problem

03:13:53.040 | is that unless you have that true urgency, I mean,

03:13:55.960 | look, people of immense power have tried. Everyone

03:13:58.680 | forgets this. John Podesta was the white house

03:14:01.040 | chief of staff. He is a UFO true believer in his

03:14:03.720 | heart. He tried, he's talked about it. He tried

03:14:06.960 | at the top level, the number two to the white

03:14:09.640 | house to get the Pentagon and others to tell him

03:14:12.240 | what was going on and they stonewalled him. So

03:14:14.040 | people need to understand what you're up against.

03:14:16.400 | And you know, I would, and people are like, how

03:14:19.040 | is that even possible? It's like, well, go read

03:14:21.200 | about the terror that LBJ and the Kennedys and

03:14:25.080 | others had in confronting J Edgar Hoover, go and

03:14:28.520 | read how terrified, you know, Eisenhower and some

03:14:32.440 | of them were, were of the Dulles brothers. They

03:14:34.280 | were scared. Like they, they knew where the power

03:14:36.560 | lies. So, you know, the presidency, um, look,

03:14:40.640 | government, deep state, et cetera. They've been

03:14:43.520 | there a long time and they know what's happening.

03:14:45.640 | And presidents come and go, but they stay forever.

03:14:48.680 | And so, uh, that's, that's the paradigm that

03:14:52.360 | you're going to have to fight against.

03:14:53.320 | Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a bit of a meme,

03:14:56.360 | but I wonder how deep the deep state is, um, much

03:15:00.720 | deeper than anyone can even imagine. And the

03:15:02.800 | worst part is, but the deep state is, it's not

03:15:05.160 | even individuals. It's actually an ideology and

03:15:07.640 | ideology is the most powerful, you know, people

03:15:09.880 | often think that if we took money out of politics,

03:15:12.960 | that it would change everything. I'm not saying

03:15:14.120 | it wouldn't change everything, but it wouldn't

03:15:16.520 | change a lot, but people are like, Oh, so-and-so

03:15:19.520 | is only against universal healthcare. Cause

03:15:21.000 | they're getting paid. I'm like, no, no, no, no.

03:15:22.320 | That's not why they actually believe it. Or it's

03:15:24.040 | like, Oh, so-and-so is only, Oh, wants to

03:15:26.280 | advocate for war with Iran because they're on

03:15:28.440 | the payroll of AIPAC. And it's like, well, yeah,

03:15:30.440 | the AIPAC trips and the money helps, but they

03:15:32.760 | think that actually the system itself, this is a

03:15:35.280 | very Chomsky ass systemic critique is that any

03:15:39.080 | journalist worth their salt would never have the

03:15:41.560 | ability to get hired in a mainstream. So he's

03:15:43.960 | like, it's not that you're bad in the mainstream

03:15:45.960 | media. It's that anyone good is not allowed to be

03:15:49.400 | elevated to your position because they have an

03:15:52.240 | ideology. And so, you know, that is the most

03:15:55.400 | self-reinforcing pernicious mechanism of them

03:15:58.440 | all. And that's really Washington in a nutshell.

03:16:00.440 | It's a, it's again, a bubble, but a bubble that

03:16:04.480 | has a lot of power. Yes. Who do you think is the

03:16:07.440 | future of the Republican party after Trump? What

03:16:10.280 | happens to Trumpism after Trump? Like you just

03:16:13.240 | said, Bayesian let's take various theories. Uh,

03:16:16.120 | right. So let's say it's Oh four, uh, it's Bush

03:16:19.360 | Cheney in 2004, the day after the election, I

03:16:23.200 | would have told you this, we live in a Bible

03:16:24.800 | belt, Jesus land, America, this America wants to

03:16:27.520 | protect America, a war on terror against Iraq. Um,

03:16:32.200 | and uh, the axis of evil and American people just

03:16:36.000 | voted for George W. Bush. And so I would have

03:16:38.040 | predicted that it would have been somebody in

03:16:40.760 | that vein. And they tried that his name was John

03:16:42.520 | McCain. He got blown the fuck out by Barack

03:16:44.160 | Obama. So I cannot sit here and confidently say

03:16:47.200 | what year would you be able to predict Obama was

03:16:49.240 | just his first time he gave the speech, the 2004

03:16:52.080 | speech at the DNC. That was his, we don't live in

03:16:54.120 | a black America, white America, the John Kerry

03:16:56.520 | DNC speech. You honestly could not have predicted

03:16:59.840 | it until Oh seven, whenever he actually announced

03:17:02.080 | his campaign and activated a lot of anti-war

03:17:04.840 | energy. I mean, maybe Oh six, actually I could

03:17:07.360 | have said in Oh six, if I was, you know, kind of

03:17:09.880 | the contrarian man now, and I'm like, yeah,

03:17:11.640 | there's a lot of anti-war energy. I think the

03:17:13.240 | next president will be somebody who's able to

03:17:15.320 | vote, you know, the explosion of Keith Olbermann

03:17:17.560 | and MSNBC that it makes logical sense in

03:17:20.360 | hindsight. But you know, at the same time, you're

03:17:22.600 | going up against the Clinton machine who's never

03:17:24.760 | lost an election. So I would have been afraid. Um,

03:17:28.160 | I cannot confidently say, so I will say if things

03:17:31.080 | go in different directions, if Trump is a net

03:17:33.600 | positive president, then I think it will be JD

03:17:35.680 | Vance, his vice president, um, who believes in

03:17:39.280 | the, uh, a lot of the things that I've talked

03:17:41.240 | about here today about foreign policy restraint,

03:17:43.280 | about the working class, about changing

03:17:46.040 | Republican attitudes to the economy. Um, and he

03:17:49.720 | would be able to build upon that legacy in the

03:17:51.920 | way that George W. H. W. Bush was able to get

03:17:54.120 | elected off the back of Reagan. But H. W. Bush

03:17:56.520 | was fundamentally his own man. He's a very

03:17:58.480 | misunderstood figure, very different than Ronald

03:18:00.520 | Reagan. Um, didn't end up working out for him,

03:18:02.840 | but you know, he did get himself elected once.

03:18:04.960 | So that's one path. That's if you have a net

03:18:07.000 | positive Trump presidency. The other path is the

03:18:09.960 | oh four path that I just laid out. Uh, if George

03:18:13.080 | W. Bush, if Trump does what Bush does,

03:18:15.400 | misinterprets his mandate, screws things up,

03:18:17.920 | creates chaos, um, and it makes it just generally

03:18:21.440 | annoying to live in American society, then you

03:18:24.440 | will see somebody in the Republican party. I

03:18:27.400 | mean, still, it could even be JD Vance cause he

03:18:29.560 | could say JD is my natural and my chosen

03:18:31.880 | successor, but then he would lose an election

03:18:34.720 | and then he would no longer be the so-called

03:18:36.520 | leader of the Republican party. So, uh, I could

03:18:39.840 | see it swing in the other direction. I could see,

03:18:42.160 | uh, you know, Republicans or others, let's say

03:18:44.880 | if it's a total disaster and we get down to like

03:18:47.240 | 20% approval ratings and the economy is bad and

03:18:50.240 | stuff like that, Glenn Yunkin or, uh, somebody

03:18:54.160 | like that, who's very diametrically opposed to

03:18:57.240 | Donald Trump, uh, or at least, you know,

03:18:59.680 | aesthetically is somebody like that who could

03:19:01.680 | rise from the ashes. And I'm just saying like,

03:19:03.880 | in terms of his aesthetic, not him per se. So

03:19:06.600 | there's a variety of different directions. Um,

03:19:08.920 | it's a big question about the Republican base. I

03:19:11.120 | mean, a shit ton of people voted Republican now

03:19:13.480 | for the first time ever. So are they going to

03:19:16.120 | vote in party primaries? I don't know. You know,

03:19:18.000 | the traditional party primary voter is like a

03:19:20.720 | white boomer. It's like 58, 59. Uh, is the Latino

03:19:24.960 | guy in California who turned out to vote for

03:19:27.160 | Trump with a MAGA hat and rolling around, you

03:19:29.880 | know, suburban Los Angeles with that, is he going

03:19:32.640 | to vote in the Republican party that could change?

03:19:34.600 | So the type of candidate themselves could come.

03:19:36.880 | So this just, it's way too early to say, you

03:19:38.840 | know, we have so many variety of paths that we

03:19:41.240 | go down.

03:19:41.920 | Yeah. I think, I think Trump is a singular figure

03:19:45.240 | in terms of like, if you support Trump there, I

03:19:51.480 | just, there's a vibe. I know Kamala has a vibe,

03:19:55.720 | but there's definitely a vibe to Trump and MAGA.

03:19:58.960 | And I just, I think even with JD that that's no

03:20:03.680 | longer going to be there. So if JD runs and wins,

03:20:06.800 | that would be on principles and it's a very

03:20:09.880 | different human being.

03:20:10.760 | He is so different than Trump, right? You can see

03:20:13.720 | his empathy, right? Remember in the VP debate,

03:20:16.200 | when he was like, Christ have mercy, when Tim

03:20:18.040 | Wallace was talking about his son. I mean, that's

03:20:19.320 | not something Donald Trump would say. Okay. It's

03:20:20.840 | just not like, uh, in terms of, I mean, you know,

03:20:24.920 | and this, by the way, this is my own bubble test.

03:20:26.920 | I have no idea how somebody listens to Trump and

03:20:29.160 | JD Vance is like, Trump is the guy who should be

03:20:30.880 | the president over him. I honestly, I don't get

03:20:33.400 | it. That's my own cards on the table. I am in too

03:20:36.360 | much of a bubble where I'm, my bias is to, you

03:20:40.480 | know, being well-spoken and being empathetic, or

03:20:44.680 | at least being able to play empathetic and being

03:20:46.640 | extremely well read about the world and thoughtful

03:20:49.360 | and, uh, somebody who's, you know, somebody like

03:20:51.280 | him, who's engaged in the political process, but

03:20:53.280 | also has been able to retain his values and be

03:20:55.400 | extremely well articulate his worldview. That's my

03:20:58.000 | bias. That's who I would want to be the president.

03:21:00.920 | But you know, you know, it's a big country. People

03:21:03.240 | think differently.

03:21:03.680 | By the way, I share your bias. And I sometimes

03:21:06.280 | try to take myself out of that bubble. Like it's

03:21:08.600 | maybe it's not important to have read a book or

03:21:11.480 | multiples of books on history.

03:21:15.000 | I'm not saying everybody should be like me, but

03:21:17.360 | that's my point. I'm checking myself by being

03:21:19.200 | like, because of who I am, that's how I see the

03:21:21.680 | world. And that's how I would choose a leader.

03:21:23.640 | But that is not how people vote, period. Nothing

03:21:27.520 | has taught me that more than this election.

03:21:29.200 | I wish they did. I mean, I don't know if that, I

03:21:31.440 | don't know if that's a lesson to take away. I

03:21:32.800 | think.

03:21:33.080 | Yeah, but who are we to say? People are allowed

03:21:34.720 | to do what they want. And I'm not going to tell

03:21:36.040 | somebody how to vote.

03:21:36.760 | No, what I'm saying is you take everything Trump.

03:21:39.320 | Everything Trump is doing, everything, the whole

03:21:43.560 | the dance, all of it, and add occasional saga

03:21:48.000 | like references to history books. I think that's

03:21:51.320 | just a better candidate.

03:21:52.440 | I agree with you. I mean, listen, you know, it's

03:21:54.800 | my bias.

03:21:55.680 | Yeah, I don't know. I don't think that's bias. I

03:21:58.160 | think I think that's not a bubble thinking. I

03:22:00.920 | think it's amazing to me. Right. Like, listen to

03:22:02.960 | the J.D. interview with Rogan. I mean, J.D., I

03:22:06.280 | mean, he'll drop obscure references to studies, to

03:22:11.040 | like papers that have come out, essays, books

03:22:15.320 | like this is a very well read, high IQ, well

03:22:19.240 | thought out individual who also, you know, has

03:22:22.920 | given his life to the political process and

03:22:25.440 | decided to like deal with all the bullshit that

03:22:28.640 | this entire system is going to throw at you

03:22:30.600 | whenever you start to engage. That's who I would

03:22:33.400 | want to be president. But, you know, I'm biased.

03:22:35.240 | So what can I say?

03:22:36.000 | I like how you keep saying you're biased, as if

03:22:38.560 | there's some percent of the population doesn't

03:22:40.240 | like people to read at all. Okay. What about the

03:22:44.280 | future? You kind of hinted at it, the future of

03:22:46.120 | the Democratic Party. Do you see any talent out

03:22:49.320 | there that's promising? Is it going to be Obama

03:22:51.120 | like figure that just rolls out of nowhere?

03:22:52.920 | Clinton is the better example, because the

03:22:55.440 | Democratic Party was destroyed for 12 years.

03:22:58.080 | From 1980, the 1980 election to 1992, they're 12

03:23:02.240 | years out of power. In periods of that long of an

03:23:06.520 | era, it takes somebody literally brand new who is

03:23:09.640 | not tainted by the previous to convince the base

03:23:12.400 | that you can want and convince the country that

03:23:13.960 | you're going in a new direction. So I would not

03:23:16.960 | put my money on anybody tainted by the Great

03:23:19.480 | Awakening, by TDS, by the insanity of the Trump

03:23:23.160 | era, that has to be somebody post that and or

03:23:26.240 | somebody who is able to reform themselves. It

03:23:28.880 | will, it will, in my opinion, it will likely not

03:23:32.040 | be any establishment politician of today, who

03:23:35.880 | will emerge for the future. Like I said, my dark

03:23:38.840 | horse is Dean. I think that the I think the

03:23:41.160 | Democratic base is going to give Dean a shit ton

03:23:43.080 | of credit, and they should for him being out.

03:23:45.560 | Look, let's be honest, he's a no name congressman

03:23:48.200 | from Minnesota. Nobody cared who Dean Phillips

03:23:50.600 | was. But just like Obama, he had courage, and he

03:23:53.560 | came out and spoke early when it mattered. And by

03:23:56.040 | doing that, he showed good judgment, and he

03:23:58.120 | showed that he's willing to take risks. So I

03:24:00.600 | would hope in America's political system that we

03:24:02.320 | award something like that. And I do think the

03:24:04.280 | Democrats will reward him, but I'm not saying it

03:24:06.600 | will be him per se. But it will be a figure like

03:24:09.480 | that, who is not nationally known, who has read

03:24:13.360 | the tea leaves correctly, who took guesses and

03:24:15.760 | did things differently than everybody else. And

03:24:18.240 | most of all, I'm hoping that heterodox attitudes,

03:24:22.160 | ideas, behaviors, by definition, after a blowout,

03:24:26.080 | those will likely be the ones that are rewarded.

03:24:28.160 | So I cannot give a name, but I can just describe

03:24:29.960 | the circumstances for what it will look like.

03:24:31.320 | Can you imagine an amorphous figure that's a

03:24:33.680 | progressive populist?

03:24:35.640 | It would be very difficult at this point, just

03:24:38.360 | because a huge portion of the multiracial working

03:24:41.440 | class has shifted to the right. But I could see

03:24:45.440 | it. I mean, look, people change their minds all

03:24:47.320 | the time. Like there are people out there who

03:24:49.680 | voted for Barack Obama, who've now voted for

03:24:51.840 | Donald Trump three times. So, you know, a lot can

03:24:54.480 | change in this country. If you make a credible

03:24:56.760 | case, you've got a track record, speak

03:24:58.680 | authentically, and you can try to divide the

03:25:02.200 | country along class lines and be authentic and

03:25:05.680 | real about it. Maybe, I think you have a shot. I

03:25:08.280 | still think you're probably gonna get dinged on

03:25:10.240 | culture, just because I think this election has

03:25:12.520 | really showed us how important immigration and

03:25:14.200 | culture is. But you know, actually, what the left

03:25:18.000 | populace should pray for, and they won't admit

03:25:20.120 | this, is that Trump actually solves immigration,

03:25:22.360 | like in terms of changing the status quo. You know

03:25:24.960 | how in the way that the Supreme Court just ended

03:25:28.000 | the conversation around gay marriage? So

03:25:29.800 | Republicans were like, "Yeah, whatever. We

03:25:31.200 | support gay marriage." Because like, that's the

03:25:33.040 | law of the land. It is what it is. They should

03:25:35.400 | just hope that their unpopular issue is resolved

03:25:38.960 | by the president. And thus, they just don't have

03:25:41.160 | to talk about it anymore. And now the

03:25:42.960 | battleground is actually favorable for them. They

03:25:45.080 | get to talk about the economy and abortion. So

03:25:47.240 | their most, their least popular issue gets

03:25:49.680 | solved by the president by consensus from his

03:25:52.320 | mandate, and then they can run on a brand new

03:25:54.520 | platform for the new issues that are facing

03:25:56.240 | America.

03:25:56.760 | All right, let's put our historian hat back on.

03:25:59.440 | Okay.

03:25:59.920 | Will the American Empire collapse one day? And if

03:26:03.120 | it does, when it does, what will be the reason?

03:26:06.880 | Statistically, likely. Statistically, yes. You

03:26:14.120 | know, it's the famous Fight Club quote, it's like

03:26:15.840 | on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for

03:26:17.720 | everything drops to zero. And you know...

03:26:21.560 | I like for all the books you've quoted, you went

03:26:24.320 | to Fight Club. I guess the movie, right?

03:26:26.080 | The book is good, though. People should read that

03:26:27.520 | too. In terms of why, again, statistically, the

03:26:32.360 | answer is quite simple. It usually comes back to

03:26:35.120 | a series of unpopular wars, which are pursued

03:26:40.320 | because of the elites' interests. Then it usually

03:26:45.520 | leads to a miscalculation and not a catastrophic

03:26:49.640 | defeat. Normally, it comes gradually. And most of

03:26:55.320 | the times when these things end, the crazy part is

03:26:58.040 | most people who are living through end of empire

03:26:59.840 | have no idea that they're living through the end

03:27:01.480 | of the empire. And I actually think about that a

03:27:03.240 | lot from, you know, Decline and Fall of the Roman

03:27:05.560 | Empire by Edward Gibbon. Actually, your episode

03:27:08.400 | on Rome was fantastic. People should go listen

03:27:09.920 | to that. So there you go. Another really good

03:27:12.720 | one, I like to think a lot about the British

03:27:14.120 | Empire and what eventually led to that collapse.

03:27:17.480 | And nobody in 1919 said the British Empire has

03:27:21.520 | just collapsed. Basically, nobody thought that.

03:27:24.200 | They were like, yeah, the First World War is

03:27:25.920 | horrible, but actually we came out of this OK. We

03:27:28.760 | still have India. You know, we still have all

03:27:30.120 | these African colonies and all that. But, you

03:27:32.760 | know, long periods of servitude, of debt to the

03:27:35.720 | United States, of degradation, of social

03:27:38.640 | upheaval, of Bolshevism, of American industrial

03:27:42.080 | might. And next thing you know, you find

03:27:45.120 | yourself at Potsdam and Churchill's like, holy

03:27:47.880 | shit, I have barely any power in this room. Right.

03:27:50.880 | So it revolutions happen slowly and then all at

03:27:53.200 | once. And so could you really put a, you know, a

03:27:57.120 | real like pain in the end of the British Empire?

03:27:59.360 | It took almost 40 years for for it to end. So

03:28:02.120 | America's empire will eventually end either from

03:28:06.160 | rising geopolitical competition. Likely China

03:28:09.000 | could be India. Nobody knows. It will likely be

03:28:12.040 | because of being overstretched of an elite

03:28:16.000 | capture is usually the reason why. And a

03:28:20.280 | misreading of what made your original society

03:28:23.680 | work, you know, in the first place. And that is

03:28:26.360 | one where I honestly like all three of those

03:28:29.080 | things will happen all at once and it will happen

03:28:31.280 | over an extremely long period of time. And it's

03:28:34.360 | very difficult to predict. I would not bet

03:28:36.040 | against America right now. I think we have a lot

03:28:37.680 | of fundamental strengths. It's a unique and

03:28:39.520 | dynamic country. It really is fucking crazy. Every

03:28:42.280 | time I travel the world, as much as I love all

03:28:44.880 | these different places, I go, man, I just I love

03:28:47.080 | the United States so much. You will love it more

03:28:49.840 | when you leave. I really believe that. So yeah.

03:28:52.040 | And it's nice to remember how quickly the public

03:28:56.560 | opinion shifts, like we're very dynamic and

03:28:58.720 | adaptable, which annoys me. I understand that's

03:29:01.560 | part of the political discourse saying, like, if

03:29:03.480 | Trump wins, it's the end of America. If Kamala

03:29:06.320 | wins, it's the end of America. So stupid. Yeah.

03:29:09.000 | But I understand that the radical nature of that

03:29:11.600 | discourse is necessary to like you mentioned.

03:29:14.840 | Yeah. To drive out votes. To drive out votes.

03:29:17.160 | I like to think about Americans in 1866. I

03:29:19.800 | cannot imagine going through a war where some

03:29:22.000 | X percent, I think it's like two or three percent

03:29:23.720 | or whatever, the entire population was just

03:29:25.400 | killed. Our president, who was this visionary

03:29:28.440 | genius who we're blessed to have, is assassinated

03:29:31.640 | in Forks Theater immediately after the surrender

03:29:34.280 | of Lee. Andrew Johnson, who's a bumbling like

03:29:36.960 | fucked hard is the one who is in charge. And, you

03:29:40.440 | know, we're having all these insane crises over

03:29:43.120 | like internal management while we're also trying

03:29:46.480 | to decide like this new order in the South and

03:29:48.880 | whether to bring these people how to bring these

03:29:50.560 | people back into the union. I mean, I would have

03:29:53.200 | despaired. Yeah, I was like, it's over. This is

03:29:56.560 | it. You know, the war. I'm like, was it worth

03:29:58.800 | anything? You know, if Andrew Johnson is going

03:30:00.760 | to be doing this or even in the South, I mean, I

03:30:02.880 | can't even imagine for what they were going

03:30:05.200 | through to, you know, they have to go home and

03:30:07.240 | their entire cities are burned to the ground and

03:30:09.040 | they're trying to readjust. And, you know, their

03:30:10.720 | entire economy and way of life is overthrown in

03:30:13.560 | five years. I mean, that's an insane time to be

03:30:16.360 | alive. And what do we know? It worked out, you

03:30:19.000 | know, by 1890s or so there were people shaking

03:30:23.600 | hands, you know, union. And there's a there's a

03:30:26.200 | cool video on YouTube actually of FDR who is

03:30:30.000 | addressing some of the last Gettysburg veterans.

03:30:32.480 | I think it was like the 75th anniversary or

03:30:34.360 | whatever. And you can literally see these old

03:30:36.280 | men shaking hands across the stone wall. It gives

03:30:40.360 | me hope. Yeah, let's linger on that hope. What is

03:30:44.200 | the source of optimism you have for the 21st

03:30:48.120 | century for the century beyond that for human

03:30:51.880 | civilization in general is, you know, it's easy

03:30:55.440 | to learn cynical lessons from history, right? The

03:30:59.840 | shit eventually goes wrong, but sometimes it

03:31:02.960 | doesn't. So what gives you hope? I think that the

03:31:06.960 | the fundamentals of what makes humanity great and

03:31:12.720 | has for a long time are best expressed in the

03:31:15.520 | American character. And that despite all of our

03:31:18.800 | problems, that as a country with our ethos, a lot

03:31:23.160 | of stuff we talked about today, individualism,

03:31:25.480 | the frontier mindset, the blessings of geography,

03:31:27.920 | the blessings of our economy, of the way that

03:31:31.120 | we're able to just incorporate different cultures

03:31:33.080 | and the best of each and put them all together,

03:31:35.680 | give us the best opportunity to succeed and to

03:31:38.880 | accomplish awesome things. We're the country

03:31:41.440 | that put a man on the moon, which is the epitome

03:31:44.000 | of human spirit. I hope to see more of that. And

03:31:48.320 | you know, I think last time I was here, I

03:31:49.800 | shouted out and I love Antarctic exploration.

03:31:52.080 | I've read basically every book that there is on

03:31:53.920 | the exploration of Antarctica. And one of the

03:31:56.200 | reasons I love to do so is because there is no

03:31:59.120 | reason to care about Antarctica. None. There's

03:32:01.520 | nothing down there. Zero. Going to the South Pole

03:32:04.280 | is a truly useless exercise. And yet we went, we

03:32:09.840 | went twice. Actually, two people went there within

03:32:11.920 | the span of five weeks and they competed to do

03:32:13.880 | so. And the spirit that propelled Amundsen and

03:32:18.840 | Scott's expedition and people like Shackleton,

03:32:21.280 | who is like, if you were to ask me, my hero of

03:32:23.920 | all heroes, it's Ernest Shackleton, is because

03:32:26.600 | his spirit, I think, lives on in the United

03:32:29.760 | States. It unfortunately died in Great Britain.

03:32:31.880 | And interestingly enough, the Brits even

03:32:34.840 | understand that. They're like, it's very

03:32:36.080 | interesting how popular Shackleton is in

03:32:37.920 | America. And even though he was Irish and he was

03:32:41.800 | a British subject, to me, he's a spiritual

03:32:44.000 | American. And I think that his his spirit lives

03:32:46.160 | on within us and has always been here to a

03:32:49.040 | certain extent. And everywhere else, I think

03:32:51.960 | it's dying. But here, I love it here. There's so

03:32:55.760 | many cool things about America. People move

03:32:57.120 | around all the time, they buy new houses, they

03:32:58.960 | start families. They, there's no other place

03:33:01.240 | you can just reset your whole life. In the same

03:33:02.800 | country, it's wild. You can reinvent yourself,

03:33:05.680 | you can go broke, you can get rich, you can go

03:33:07.720 | back and forth multiple times. And there's

03:33:10.440 | nobody there, there's nowhere else where you

03:33:12.000 | have enough freedom and opportunity to pursue

03:33:14.680 | that. I definitely have a lot of problems, but

03:33:16.960 | I've traveled enough of the world now to know

03:33:19.280 | that it's a special place. And that gives me a

03:33:22.080 | lot of hope.

03:33:22.480 | I wish I could do a Bostonian accent of

03:33:25.640 | "We do these things, not because they're easy,

03:33:27.880 | but because they're hard."

03:33:28.680 | Because they're hard.

03:33:29.560 | Thank you.

03:33:30.280 | That's so true. The Scott Irish got us. Well,

03:33:36.680 | listen, I'm a huge fan of your saga. I hope to

03:33:40.120 | see you in the White House interviewing the

03:33:43.240 | president.

03:33:43.680 | There you go. That's the only situation you're

03:33:45.880 | gonna see me in the White House.

03:33:46.840 | Front row and just talking free. I would just, I

03:33:54.320 | would love to live in a country and in a world

03:33:57.520 | where it's you who gets to talk to the press

03:34:01.800 | secretary, to the president. Because I think

03:34:05.400 | you're a real, you're one of the good ones, as

03:34:08.080 | far as journalists go, as far as human beings.

03:34:09.880 | So I hope to see you in there. And I hope you

03:34:12.280 | get to ask a question that-

03:34:14.680 | That ends up in a book.

03:34:16.400 | That ends up in a good history book.

03:34:18.120 | Absolutely. Well, likewise, I'm a huge fan of

03:34:20.360 | yours. For anybody out there who's interested, I

03:34:22.760 | compiled a list and I will go and retroactively

03:34:25.240 | edit it. Just go to sagaandjetty.io. I created a

03:34:28.880 | newsletter with a website that has all the links

03:34:31.160 | to all the books I'm gonna talk about here.

03:34:32.480 | Beautiful. The hundreds of books that were

03:34:34.160 | mentioned here. All right, brother, thank you so

03:34:36.200 | much for talking to me.

03:34:36.840 | Thank you.

03:34:37.280 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with

03:34:40.040 | Saga and Jetty. To support this podcast, please

03:34:42.760 | check out our sponsors in the description. And

03:34:45.400 | now, let me leave you with some words from

03:34:47.360 | Voltaire. "History is the study of all the world's

03:34:51.880 | crime." Thank you for listening, and hope to see

03:34:56.440 | you next time.

03:34:57.680 | [END]

Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #454

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