Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War

00:00:00.000 | The way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy.

00:00:06.080 | Send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn't exist, rescind every unconstitutional

00:00:11.440 | regulation that Congress never passed.

00:00:14.180 | In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the

00:00:17.560 | laws and the rules, not an unelected bureaucrats.

00:00:21.040 | Merit and equity are actually incompatible.

00:00:25.580 | Merit and group quotas are incompatible.

00:00:27.480 | You can have one or the other, you can't have both.

00:00:30.080 | It's an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself.

00:00:33.460 | And that nanny state presents itself in several forms.

00:00:36.220 | There's the entitlement state, that's the welfare state, presents itself in the form

00:00:39.880 | of the regulatory state, that's what we're talking about.

00:00:42.340 | And then there's the foreign nanny state, where effectively we are subsidizing other

00:00:46.340 | countries that aren't paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide

00:00:50.660 | them.

00:00:51.660 | If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the

00:00:57.100 | United States of America in all of its forms.

00:01:00.120 | The entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state.

00:01:04.640 | Once we've done that, we've revived the republic that I think would make George Washington

00:01:08.260 | proud.

00:01:09.260 | The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy about the future of conservatism

00:01:15.860 | in America.

00:01:17.220 | He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths, the Future of America

00:01:22.260 | First.

00:01:23.460 | He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent

00:01:29.100 | the future of the Republican party.

00:01:32.160 | Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in

00:01:37.380 | biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale.

00:01:41.380 | As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left

00:01:46.980 | and the right with empathy, curiosity, and backbone.

00:01:52.460 | This is the Left Streaming Podcast.

00:01:54.020 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:01:57.340 | And now, dear friends, here's Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:02:02.280 | You are one of the great elucidators of conservative ideas, so you're the perfect person to ask,

00:02:09.040 | what is conservatism?

00:02:10.540 | What's your, let's say, conservative vision for America?

00:02:14.020 | Well, actually, this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican party and direction

00:02:20.780 | of the conservative movement, is that we've gotten so good at describing what we're against.

00:02:27.500 | There's a list of things that we could rail against, wokeism, transgender ideology, climate

00:02:33.620 | ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the

00:02:39.820 | list goes on.

00:02:41.420 | But actually, what's missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand

00:02:45.620 | for.

00:02:47.100 | What is our vision for the future of the country?

00:02:50.180 | And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign.

00:02:53.260 | It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign, because I do feel that that's why we didn't

00:02:57.780 | have the red wave in 2022.

00:03:00.600 | So they tried to blame Donald Trump, they tried to blame abortion, they blamed a bunch

00:03:03.860 | of individual specific issues or factors.

00:03:07.380 | I think the real reason we didn't have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing

00:03:13.340 | Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for.

00:03:17.140 | So what do we stand for as conservatives?

00:03:20.620 | I think we stand for the ideals that we fought the American Revolution for in 1776.

00:03:26.700 | Ideals like merit, right, that the best person gets the job without regard to their genetics,

00:03:32.780 | that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content

00:03:35.840 | of your character.

00:03:37.500 | Free speech and open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any

00:03:42.520 | opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America.

00:03:47.840 | Self-governance.

00:03:48.840 | And this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they're

00:03:53.000 | no longer the ones who actually run the government.

00:03:55.200 | We in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance

00:03:59.200 | where it's not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives.

00:04:03.880 | And then the other, the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need

00:04:07.120 | to revive, and I think is a north star of the conservative movement, is restoring the

00:04:11.460 | rule of law in this country.

00:04:13.680 | You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border.

00:04:17.920 | It's particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country.

00:04:21.480 | You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard.

00:04:26.680 | That also, though, means your first act of entering this country can't break the law.

00:04:30.560 | So there's some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule

00:04:35.960 | of law.

00:04:36.960 | And then I think culturally, what does it mean to be a conservative is it means we believe

00:04:41.040 | in the anchors of our identity in truth, the value of the individual, family, nation, and

00:04:49.200 | God, beat race, gender, sexuality, and climate, if we have the courage to actually stand for

00:04:56.000 | our own vision.

00:04:57.000 | And that's a big part of what's been missing.

00:04:59.280 | And it's a big part of not just through the campaign, but through, you know, a lot of

00:05:03.200 | my future advocacy.

00:05:04.200 | That's the vacuum I'm aiming to fill.

00:05:05.840 | Yeah.

00:05:06.840 | So let's talk about each of those issues, immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government.

00:05:13.600 | Religion is a really interesting topic, something you've spoken about a lot, but you've also

00:05:18.680 | had a lot of really tense debates.

00:05:20.960 | So you're a perfect person to ask to steel man the other side.

00:05:24.720 | Yeah.

00:05:25.720 | So let me ask you about progressivism.

00:05:27.320 | Can you steel man the case for progressivism and left-wing ideas?

00:05:30.720 | Yeah.

00:05:31.720 | So look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left-wing ideas in the United States,

00:05:36.440 | or in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals.

00:05:43.800 | So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty, and the pursuit

00:05:47.240 | of happiness and freedom, they didn't practice those values in terms of many of our founding

00:05:52.220 | fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered groups,

00:05:58.440 | such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to

00:06:02.160 | last to this day.

00:06:03.880 | The vestiges of what happened, even in 1860, in the course of human history isn't that

00:06:08.240 | long ago, and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances

00:06:13.480 | in power in the United States.

00:06:15.680 | That's the core view of the modern left.

00:06:16.800 | I'm not criticizing it right now.

00:06:17.920 | I'm steel manning it.

00:06:18.920 | I'm trying to give you, I think, a good articulation of why the left believes they have a compelling

00:06:24.320 | case for the government stepping in to correct for historical or present inequalities.

00:06:31.720 | I can give you my counter-rebuttal of that, but the best statement of the left, I think

00:06:35.200 | that it's the fact that we've been imperfect in living up to those ideals.

00:06:38.700 | In order to fix that, we're going to have to take steps that are severe steps, if needed,

00:06:43.800 | to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity

00:06:48.400 | in this country.

00:06:49.400 | That's the case for the left-wing view in modern America.

00:06:51.120 | So what's your criticism of that?

00:06:52.800 | So my concern with it is even if that's well-motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same

00:06:58.880 | problems that they were setting out to solve.

00:07:01.680 | I'll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now.

00:07:04.960 | I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now,

00:07:08.840 | but I think it's true, so I'm going to say it.

00:07:11.400 | I'm actually, even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in

00:07:18.160 | anti-Black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious.

00:07:22.960 | Right when, over the last 10 years, we got as close to Martin Luther King's promised

00:07:26.080 | land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their

00:07:30.040 | skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get

00:07:34.320 | the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way.

00:07:38.320 | Why are we seeing that resurgence?

00:07:40.560 | In part, it's because of, I believe, that left-wing obsession with racial equity over

00:07:44.920 | the course of the last 20 years in this country.

00:07:47.880 | And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color, and that's what

00:07:52.560 | correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do, the left-wing views are to correct

00:07:56.280 | for prior injustice by saying that whether you're a white, straight, cis man, you have

00:08:02.040 | certain privileges that you have to actually correct for.

00:08:05.300 | When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster

00:08:10.000 | greater animus towards other groups around you.

00:08:13.640 | And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates, there are several problems

00:08:17.640 | with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to

00:08:21.480 | avoid is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted

00:08:26.960 | to heal.

00:08:27.960 | I see that in a context of our immigration policy as well.

00:08:31.040 | Think about even what's going on in, I'm from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I

00:08:34.920 | live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio.

00:08:38.400 | I personally don't blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the

00:08:42.780 | native people who were born and raised in Springfield, or even the Haitians who have

00:08:46.400 | been moved to Springfield, but it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and

00:08:50.880 | outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where, 50,000 people where the

00:08:56.760 | 20,000 are coming in, don't know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are

00:09:01.760 | unable to assimilate, you know there's going to be a reactionary backlash.

00:09:06.640 | And so even though that began perhaps with some type of charitable instinct, some type

00:09:14.120 | of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary

00:09:18.880 | protective status in the United States, what began with sympathy, what began with earnest

00:09:24.480 | intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we

00:09:30.120 | say we wanted to avoid.

00:09:31.120 | So that's my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview.

00:09:35.040 | Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible.

00:09:42.240 | Merit and group quotas are incompatible.

00:09:44.120 | You can have one or the other, you can't have both.

00:09:47.600 | And the reason why is no two people, and I think it's a beautiful thing, it's true between

00:09:52.080 | you and I, between you and I and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors

00:09:56.640 | or colleagues, no two people have the same skill sets.

00:10:00.600 | We're each endowed by different gifts.

00:10:02.920 | We're each endowed with different talents.

00:10:06.360 | And that's the beauty of human diversity.

00:10:09.040 | And a true meritocracy is a system in which you're able to achieve the maximum of your

00:10:14.080 | God-given potential without anybody standing in your way, but that means necessarily there's

00:10:19.080 | going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not

00:10:23.640 | just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is, there's just gonna be different outcomes

00:10:27.680 | for different people in different spheres of lives.

00:10:30.540 | And that's what meritocracy demands, it's what it requires.

00:10:34.160 | And so the left's vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy.

00:10:40.080 | And so those have been my two reasons for opposing the view is, one is it's not meritocratic,

00:10:44.160 | but number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to

00:10:49.600 | have wanted to help.

00:10:50.600 | And I think that's part of what we're seeing in modern America.

00:10:52.200 | - Yeah, you had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban, a great conversation.

00:10:56.200 | I think it's on your podcast actually.

00:10:58.480 | - Yeah.

00:10:59.480 | - Yes.

00:11:00.480 | Yeah, it was great.

00:11:01.480 | That's great.

00:11:02.560 | He messaged me all the time with beautifully eloquent criticism.

00:11:06.080 | I appreciate that, Mark.

00:11:08.480 | What was one of the more convincing things he said to you?

00:11:12.920 | You're mostly focused on kind of DEI.

00:11:15.120 | - So let's just take a step back and understand, 'cause people use these acronyms and then

00:11:18.400 | they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means.

00:11:23.000 | DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted

00:11:28.360 | by institutions, principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits, and universities

00:11:34.440 | to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender, and sexual orientation

00:11:39.080 | diversity.

00:11:40.080 | And it's not just the D, it's the equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured

00:11:45.400 | by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks.

00:11:51.720 | The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a

00:11:57.240 | vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought.

00:12:00.560 | So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive

00:12:06.800 | to minorities and minority views.

00:12:08.520 | But if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you

00:12:13.840 | have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D, diversity, but that means

00:12:18.520 | that you're necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought.

00:12:21.400 | I can give you a very specific example.

00:12:23.240 | That might sound like, okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn't want

00:12:27.120 | to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day?

00:12:31.120 | We could debate that, but let's get to the tangible world of how that actually plays

00:12:35.000 | out.

00:12:36.000 | I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America, people uttering racial epithets if

00:12:41.160 | you're going to a restaurant or in the grocery store.

00:12:43.360 | It's not something I've encountered, certainly not in the workplace, but that's a theoretical

00:12:46.880 | case.

00:12:47.880 | Let's talk about the real world case of how this plays out.

00:12:50.240 | There was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment

00:12:53.720 | Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda.

00:12:59.360 | And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans

00:13:04.640 | and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the

00:13:07.920 | same thing.

00:13:08.920 | And they had a kind of affinity group.

00:13:09.920 | You could call it that, a veteran type affinity group appreciating those who had served.

00:13:13.760 | Her son had served as well.

00:13:15.840 | There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression.

00:13:21.560 | So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes to the office.

00:13:26.480 | Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate, I think it was Friday was the day of the week

00:13:30.520 | where they did it.

00:13:31.520 | She still wore the red sweater, she didn't wear it, but she would hang it on the back

00:13:34.400 | of her seat, right?

00:13:35.400 | Put it on the back of her seat at the office.

00:13:37.160 | They said, no, no, no, you can't do that either.

00:13:39.960 | So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly

00:13:44.600 | welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called

00:13:50.880 | diversity that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is

00:13:56.040 | what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought.

00:14:01.280 | And I think that's dangerous.

00:14:02.280 | And you're seeing that happen in the last four years across this country.

00:14:05.720 | It's been pretty rampant.

00:14:07.240 | I think it leaves America worse off.

00:14:09.280 | The beauty of America is we're a country where we should be able to have institutions that

00:14:13.000 | are stronger from different points of view being expressed.

00:14:16.320 | But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it's anti meritocratic.

00:14:20.520 | It is anti meritocratic, but my number one criticism is it's actually hostile to the

00:14:25.240 | free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations

00:14:31.440 | that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed.

00:14:34.400 | And I think that's the biggest concern.

00:14:35.400 | I think what Mark would say is that diversity allows you to look for talent in places where

00:14:43.600 | you haven't looked before and therefore find really special talent, special people.

00:14:49.680 | And I think that's the case he made.

00:14:51.000 | He did make that case.

00:14:52.000 | It was a great conversation.

00:14:53.000 | And my response to that is great.

00:14:55.680 | That's a good thing.

00:14:56.680 | We don't need a three letter acronym to do that.

00:14:58.680 | Right.

00:14:59.680 | You don't need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going

00:15:03.800 | to seek in a truly free market, which I think we're missing in the United States today for

00:15:07.280 | a lot of reasons.

00:15:08.640 | But in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest

00:15:14.360 | or else they're going to be less competitive versus other companies.

00:15:16.760 | But you don't need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it today

00:15:23.400 | to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender

00:15:27.700 | representation targets in your workforce.

00:15:30.120 | That's not the free market working.

00:15:31.500 | So I think you can't have it both ways.

00:15:32.640 | Either it's going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what's in their

00:15:34.800 | self-interest.

00:15:35.800 | That's what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe.

00:15:38.600 | But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it

00:15:41.780 | to adopt these top down standards.

00:15:43.960 | That's my issue with it.

00:15:45.640 | I don't know what it is about human psychology, but whenever you have a sort of administration,

00:15:50.600 | a committee that gets together to do a good thing, the committee starts to use the good

00:15:57.480 | thing, the ideology behind which there's a good ideal to bully people and to do bad things.

00:16:05.720 | I don't know what it is.

00:16:07.080 | This has less to do with left wing versus right wing ideology and more the nature of

00:16:11.080 | a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal.

00:16:18.480 | So part of what you've seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life

00:16:23.440 | is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities

00:16:30.800 | for its own failure.

00:16:31.960 | So you've seen that in several different spheres of American life.

00:16:34.640 | You could even talk about in the military, right?

00:16:36.960 | You think about our entry into Iraq after 9/11 had nothing to do with the stated objectives

00:16:43.120 | that we had.

00:16:44.400 | And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret.

00:16:48.880 | Our policy ranks and our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading

00:16:54.480 | a country that really, by all accounts, was not at all responsible for 9/11.

00:16:59.120 | Nonetheless, if you're part of the U.S. military or you're General Mark Milley, you would rather

00:17:03.920 | talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military's

00:17:09.000 | actual substantive failures.

00:17:10.620 | It's what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability.

00:17:14.680 | You can say the same thing with respect to the educational system.

00:17:17.720 | It's a lot easier to claim that, and I'm not the one making this claim, but others have

00:17:22.240 | made this claim, that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective

00:17:27.040 | tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes.

00:17:30.920 | You can claim using that that math is racist.

00:17:32.840 | It's a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing

00:17:37.560 | to teach black kids in the inner city how to actually do math and fix our public school

00:17:42.200 | systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools.

00:17:49.660 | So I think that in many cases what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling

00:17:54.800 | this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power

00:18:00.680 | of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism.

00:18:05.880 | So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think, carves the channels through which much of this woke

00:18:11.440 | ideology has flowed over the last several years, and that's why part of my focus has

00:18:16.120 | shifted away from just combating wokeness, because that's just a symptom, I think, versus

00:18:21.560 | combating actual bureaucracy itself, the rise of this managerial class, the rise of the

00:18:27.920 | deep state.

00:18:28.920 | And we talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn't just exist in the

00:18:31.000 | government.

00:18:32.000 | It exists, I think, in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities.

00:18:38.920 | It's the rise of what we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who

00:18:42.680 | professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual

00:18:48.440 | creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators, and ordinary citizens alike.

00:18:53.680 | Yeah, you need managers, but as few as possible.

00:18:58.120 | It seems like when you have a giant managerial class, the actual doers don't get to do.

00:19:06.720 | But like you said, bureaucracy is a phenomena of both the left and the right.

00:19:12.880 | This is not-

00:19:13.880 | It's not even a left or right, it just transcends that, but it's anti-American at its core.

00:19:18.920 | So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core, actually.

00:19:22.000 | They were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid.

00:19:25.360 | They were the inventors, the creators.

00:19:27.720 | Don't forget this about Benjamin Franklin, who signed the Declaration of Independence,

00:19:31.560 | one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well.

00:19:34.320 | He invented the lightning rod.

00:19:36.080 | He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations in the

00:19:40.160 | field of thermodynamics.

00:19:41.960 | He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use.

00:19:47.480 | That's just Benjamin Franklin.

00:19:48.480 | So you think, "Oh, he's a one-off."

00:19:50.160 | Everybody's like, "Okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific

00:19:54.840 | innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country."

00:19:57.960 | Wrong.

00:19:58.960 | It wasn't unique to him.

00:19:59.960 | You have Thomas Jefferson.

00:20:01.400 | What are you sitting in right now?

00:20:02.840 | You're sitting on a swivel chair.

00:20:06.960 | Who invented the swivel chair?

00:20:07.960 | Thomas Jefferson?

00:20:08.960 | Yes, Thomas Jefferson.

00:20:09.960 | Yeah.

00:20:10.960 | Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence,

00:20:13.920 | which is insane.

00:20:14.920 | You're the one that reminded me that he drafted, he wrote the Declaration of Independence when

00:20:20.200 | he was 33.

00:20:21.200 | And he was 33 when he did it, while inventing the swivel chair.

00:20:24.760 | I like how you're focused on the swivel chair.

00:20:26.960 | Can we just pause on the Declaration of Independence?

00:20:30.060 | It makes me feel horrible.

00:20:32.400 | The Declaration of Independence part, everybody knows.

00:20:35.040 | What people don't know, he was an architect.

00:20:36.960 | So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capitol Dome, so the building that's

00:20:41.860 | in Virginia today, where the State Capitol is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas

00:20:46.480 | Jefferson as well.

00:20:48.120 | So these people weren't people who sat on professional committees.

00:20:50.400 | They weren't bureaucrats.

00:20:51.400 | They hated bureaucracy.

00:20:53.900 | Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy.

00:20:58.160 | Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand.

00:20:59.960 | A monarch can't actually administer or govern directly.

00:21:03.120 | It requires a bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him.

00:21:10.200 | So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that old world

00:21:15.000 | view.

00:21:16.000 | Right?

00:21:17.000 | The old world vision was that we, the people, cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions

00:21:21.820 | for ourselves.

00:21:23.040 | We would burn ourselves off the planet, is the modern version of this.

00:21:27.080 | With existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people

00:21:31.380 | and their democratic will, that's why you need professional technocrats, educated elites,

00:21:36.480 | enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set the limits that actually protect people from

00:21:40.640 | their own worst impulses.

00:21:42.040 | That's the old world view.

00:21:43.240 | And most nations in human history have operated this way.

00:21:46.320 | But what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we

00:21:51.720 | have to know what made America itself.

00:21:53.680 | What made America itself is we said hell no to that vision, that we the people, for better

00:21:58.440 | or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do.

00:22:03.280 | And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and I could give you examples of John Adams

00:22:08.040 | or Robert Livingston.

00:22:09.840 | You go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers,

00:22:15.240 | explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence.

00:22:21.040 | And so, yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it

00:22:24.800 | as anti-American, actually.

00:22:27.480 | And I hope that, you know, conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade,

00:22:32.680 | certainly, to get in there and shut most of it down.

00:22:36.080 | Yes.

00:22:37.080 | Speaking of shutting most of it down, how do you propose we do that?

00:22:42.040 | How do we make government more efficient?

00:22:43.600 | How do we make it smaller?

00:22:46.160 | What are the different ideas of how to do that?

00:22:47.760 | Well, the first thing I will say is you're always taking a risk.

00:22:50.440 | Okay, there's no free lunch here, mostly, at least.

00:22:54.320 | You're always taking a risk.

00:22:55.560 | One risk is that you say, "I want to reform it gradually.

00:22:59.000 | I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is, and

00:23:04.680 | then carefully cut with a chisel, like a work of art, to get there."

00:23:09.280 | I don't believe that approach works.

00:23:10.640 | I think that's an approach that conservatives have taken for many years.

00:23:14.080 | I think it hasn't gotten us very far.

00:23:15.740 | And the reason is, if you have like an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it

00:23:20.360 | grows right back.

00:23:22.400 | The other risk you could take, so that's the risk of not cutting enough.

00:23:25.520 | The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much, to say that I'm going

00:23:29.560 | to cut so much that I'm going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also

00:23:32.720 | cutting some muscle along the way, that I'm going to take that risk.

00:23:36.640 | I can't give you option C, which is to say that I'm going to cut exactly the right amount,

00:23:40.040 | I'm going to do it perfectly.

00:23:41.040 | Okay, you don't know ex ante, you don't know beforehand that it's exactly how it's going

00:23:44.920 | to go.

00:23:45.920 | So that's a meaningless claim.

00:23:46.920 | It's only a question of which risk you're going to take.

00:23:50.440 | I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be

00:23:54.400 | willing to take.

00:23:55.400 | And we haven't had a class of politician, and Donald Trump in 2016 was I think the closest

00:24:01.960 | we've gotten.

00:24:02.960 | I think the second term will be even closer to what we need.

00:24:06.520 | But short of that, I don't think we've really had a class of politician who has gotten very

00:24:12.060 | serious about cutting so much that you're also going to cut some fat, but not only some

00:24:17.400 | fat, but also some muscle.

00:24:19.600 | That's the risk we have to take.

00:24:20.600 | So what would the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal

00:24:26.200 | bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn't exist, rescind

00:24:31.440 | every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed.

00:24:35.560 | In a true self governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the

00:24:38.960 | laws and the rules, not an unelected bureaucrats.

00:24:42.260 | And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country.

00:24:46.620 | But it is also the single most effective way to restore self governance in our country

00:24:51.560 | as well.

00:24:53.340 | And it is the blueprint for I think how we save this country.

00:24:57.460 | That's pretty gangster, 75%.

00:25:01.180 | There's this kind of almost meme like video of Argentinian President Javier Mele wearing

00:25:08.620 | a white board.

00:25:09.620 | He has all the, I think 18 ministries lined up and he's like, he's ripping like the Department

00:25:16.740 | of Education gone.

00:25:17.740 | And he's just going like this.

00:25:21.900 | Now the situation in Argentina is pretty dire.

00:25:25.940 | And the situation in the United States is not, despite everybody saying, oh, the empire

00:25:32.040 | is falling, this is still, in my opinion, the greatest nation on earth.

00:25:37.940 | Still the economy is doing very well.

00:25:40.020 | Still there's, this is the hub of culture, the hub of innovation, the hub of so many

00:25:45.940 | amazing things.

00:25:48.660 | Do you think it's possible to do something like firing 75% of people in government when

00:25:56.580 | things are going relatively well?

00:25:58.620 | Yes.

00:25:59.620 | In fact, I think it's necessary and essential.

00:26:02.020 | I think things are depends on, depends on what your level of well really is, what you're

00:26:06.220 | benchmarking against.

00:26:08.100 | America is not built on complacency, right?

00:26:10.100 | We're built on the pursuit of excellence.

00:26:12.420 | And are we still the greatest nation on planet earth?

00:26:15.020 | I believe we are.

00:26:16.020 | I agree with you on that.

00:26:17.860 | But are we great as we could possibly be, or even as we have been in the past measured

00:26:21.860 | against our own standards of excellence?

00:26:24.100 | No, we're not.

00:26:25.100 | I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline.

00:26:27.660 | It doesn't mean it's the end of the empire yet, but we are a nation in decline right

00:26:31.760 | now.

00:26:32.760 | I don't think we have to be, but part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial

00:26:38.580 | class, the bureaucracy sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood

00:26:43.420 | out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance.

00:26:47.460 | So is it possible?

00:26:48.460 | Yeah, it's really possible.

00:26:49.460 | I mean, I'll tell you one easy way to do it.

00:26:50.900 | This is a little bit, I'm being a little bit glib here, but I think it's not crazy, at

00:26:54.940 | least as a thought experiment.

00:26:57.100 | Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who was not elected,

00:27:01.780 | elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but of the people who were

00:27:04.820 | not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you're out.

00:27:10.060 | If it ends in an even number, you're in.

00:27:11.780 | There's a 50% cut right there.

00:27:14.220 | Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you're in,

00:27:19.540 | and if it starts with an odd number, you're out.

00:27:21.580 | Boom.

00:27:22.580 | That's a 75% reduction.

00:27:24.260 | And literally, stochastically, okay?

00:27:27.380 | One of the virtues of that, it's a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but

00:27:31.620 | one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don't have a bunch of lawsuits

00:27:36.540 | you're dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint

00:27:41.340 | discrimination.

00:27:42.340 | Actually, the reality is you've, at mass, you didn't bring the chisel, you brought a

00:27:46.540 | chainsaw.

00:27:47.540 | I guarantee you, do that on day one and do step two on day two.

00:27:52.580 | On day three, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than the size

00:27:57.780 | of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money

00:28:02.120 | to operate it.

00:28:04.060 | And most people who run a company, especially larger companies, know this.

00:28:06.700 | It's 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work.

00:28:10.620 | These government agencies are no different.

00:28:12.700 | So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random,

00:28:16.260 | but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually

00:28:20.820 | had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the

00:28:25.420 | Constitution.

00:28:26.420 | That, I think, would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States.

00:28:32.860 | Now we feel, OK, the people we elect to run the government, they've got the power back.

00:28:35.660 | They're running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the

00:28:38.740 | power today.

00:28:40.220 | It would also stimulate the economy.

00:28:41.220 | I mean, the regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy.

00:28:45.820 | Most of it's unconstitutional.

00:28:47.620 | All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative

00:28:53.620 | presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about but have not really effectuated

00:28:59.300 | ever in modern history.

00:29:01.020 | And by the way, that kind of thing would attract the ultra-competent that actually want to

00:29:05.060 | work in government.

00:29:06.060 | Exactly.

00:29:07.060 | Which you're missing today.

00:29:08.060 | Because right now, the government would swallow them up.

00:29:09.380 | Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole.

00:29:14.220 | You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.

00:29:17.860 | Yeah, you know, there's kind of this cynical view of capitalism where people think that

00:29:23.340 | the only reason you do anything is to earn more money.

00:29:27.060 | But I think a lot of people would want to work in government to build something that's

00:29:30.060 | helpful to a huge number of people.

00:29:32.020 | Yeah, well, look, I think there's opportunities for the very best to have large-scale impact

00:29:40.460 | in all kinds of different institutions, in our universities, to K-12 education, through

00:29:45.780 | entrepreneurship.

00:29:46.780 | I'm obviously very biased in that regard.

00:29:48.260 | I think there's a lot you're able to create that you couldn't create through government.

00:29:52.740 | But I do think in the moment that we live in, where our government is as broken as it

00:29:57.100 | is and is as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing

00:30:03.140 | in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference.

00:30:09.820 | And I agree with you, I don't think actually most people, even most people who say they're

00:30:13.500 | motivated by money, I don't think they're actually motivated by money.

00:30:17.140 | I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they're being permitted

00:30:25.220 | to do right now with their skill sets.

00:30:27.700 | See, I've never, I'll tell you that, so I've run a number of companies and one of the things

00:30:32.440 | that I used to ask when I was, you know, I'm not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but

00:30:37.460 | as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews and the first company I started at Roivent,

00:30:42.260 | like for four years in, I mean, we're, you know, company was pretty big by that point.

00:30:46.540 | I would still intend on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for

00:30:52.300 | the culture of that person.

00:30:54.060 | I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture, but one of the questions

00:30:58.380 | I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it's a pretty basic

00:31:01.380 | question is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job?

00:31:07.420 | I'll tell you what I didn't hear very often is that I wasn't paid enough, right?

00:31:11.900 | Maybe they'd be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there's indirect ways to

00:31:14.300 | signal that, that really wasn't at all, like even a top 10 reason why people were leaving

00:31:20.220 | their job.

00:31:21.220 | I'll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to

00:31:26.220 | do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role.

00:31:31.820 | That's the number one reason people leave their job.

00:31:34.640 | And you know, I think by the way, that's, I would say that as I'm saying that in a self

00:31:38.740 | boastful way that we would attract these people.

00:31:41.340 | I think that's also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivent, right?

00:31:45.580 | And it's, and that was true at Roivent, it's true at other companies I've started.

00:31:49.720 | I think the number one reason people join companies and the number one reason people

00:31:51.860 | leave companies, whether they've been to join mine or to leave mine in the past have been

00:31:56.060 | that they feel like they're able to do more than they're able to with their skillset than

00:32:00.420 | that environment permits them to actually achieve.

00:32:05.140 | And so I think that's what people hung for.

00:32:06.860 | When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier

00:32:10.360 | like meritocracy, it's about building a system, whether it's in a nation or whether it's even

00:32:15.120 | within an organization that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their

00:32:20.580 | potential.

00:32:21.580 | And sometimes it just doesn't match for an organization where let's say the mission is

00:32:23.980 | here and somebody's skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then

00:32:28.740 | the right answer is, it's not a negative thing.

00:32:31.100 | It's just that that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else.

00:32:35.380 | But to bring that back to government, I think part of what's happened right now is that

00:32:38.500 | the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated

00:32:44.220 | the mission of these agencies.

00:32:46.180 | I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them, like, what's the mission?

00:32:50.900 | I'm just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human

00:32:53.660 | Services.

00:32:54.820 | What is the mission of HHS in the United States of America?

00:33:00.700 | I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it could give you a coherent

00:33:04.320 | answer to that question.

00:33:06.140 | I just I just heavily doubt it.

00:33:07.780 | And you could fill in the blank for, you know, over any range of the Department of Commerce.

00:33:12.140 | I mean, I could go straight down the list of each of these other ones.

00:33:14.900 | What is the mission of this organization?

00:33:15.980 | You could even say for the US military, what's the purpose of the US military, the Department

00:33:20.260 | of Defense?

00:33:21.260 | I can give you one.

00:33:22.260 | The purpose is to win wars and more importantly, through its strength to avoid wars.

00:33:27.060 | That's it.

00:33:28.060 | Well, OK, if that's the mission, then, you know, OK, it's not tinkering around and messing

00:33:31.940 | around in some foreign conflict where we kind of feel like it sometimes and other ones where

00:33:34.900 | we don't.

00:33:35.900 | And who decides that?

00:33:36.900 | I don't really know.

00:33:37.900 | But whoever the people are that decide that we follow those orders.

00:33:40.900 | No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars and to avoid wars.

00:33:46.460 | Boom.

00:33:47.460 | Those three things.

00:33:48.460 | What does protecting the United States of America mean?

00:33:49.460 | The first one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside

00:33:52.340 | there.

00:33:53.340 | OK, that's a clear mission.

00:33:54.980 | I mean, the Department of Health and Human Services maybe could be a reasonable mission

00:33:58.940 | to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on planet Earth and we will develop

00:34:03.500 | the metrics and meet those metrics.

00:34:04.900 | And that's the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies or at least to implement policies

00:34:09.980 | that best achieve that goal.

00:34:11.780 | But you can't.

00:34:12.780 | And maybe that's the right statement of the mission.

00:34:14.180 | Maybe it's not.

00:34:15.180 | But one of the things that happens is when you're governed by the committee class, it

00:34:18.740 | dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it's a company or a government agency

00:34:23.900 | or bureaucracy.

00:34:25.220 | And once you've done that, then you lose the ability to attract the best and the brightest,

00:34:28.700 | because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know

00:34:31.740 | what it's towards.

00:34:32.740 | There has to be a mission in the first place.

00:34:34.180 | Then you're not getting the best and brightest.

00:34:35.700 | You get more from the committee class.

00:34:37.060 | And that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral.

00:34:40.760 | And that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.

00:34:44.900 | Yeah.

00:34:45.900 | You said something really profound.

00:34:46.980 | At the individual scale of the individual contributor, doer, creator, what happens is

00:34:51.660 | you have a certain capacity to do awesome shit.

00:34:54.660 | And then there's barriers that come up where you have to wait a little bit.

00:34:58.140 | This happens, there's friction always.

00:35:00.620 | When humans together are working on something, there's friction.

00:35:03.200 | And so the goal of a great company is to minimize that friction, minimize the number of barriers.

00:35:09.340 | And what happens is the managerial class, the incentive is for it to create barriers.

00:35:14.900 | That's what it does.

00:35:15.900 | I mean, that's just by the nature of a bureaucracy, it creates sand in the gears to slow down

00:35:21.700 | whatever the other process was.

00:35:23.420 | Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts?

00:35:25.500 | Sure.

00:35:26.500 | It's like a defensive mechanism that's designed to reduce dynamism.

00:35:30.660 | But I think when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host

00:35:38.340 | itself, whether that's a school, whether that's a company, whether that's a government.

00:35:42.540 | And so the way I think about it, Lex, is there's sort of a balance of distributed power, and

00:35:49.380 | I don't mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just sort of power

00:35:54.380 | in the sense of the ability to effect relevant change in any organization between what you

00:35:59.860 | could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder

00:36:04.740 | class, and then the managerial class.

00:36:08.220 | And there's a role for all three of them, right?

00:36:10.020 | You could have the constituents of an organization, say, in a constitutional republic, that's

00:36:13.500 | the citizen.

00:36:14.660 | You could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that

00:36:18.340 | polity.

00:36:19.820 | And then you have the bureaucratic class that's designed to administer and serve as a liaison

00:36:23.860 | between the two.

00:36:25.220 | I'm not denying that there's some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class.

00:36:30.940 | But right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it's been more or less

00:36:35.060 | true for the last century, but it's grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson's advent of the

00:36:39.660 | modern administrative state, metastasizing through FDR's New Deal and what was required

00:36:44.180 | to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ's Great Society, and everything

00:36:51.100 | that's happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way, like

00:36:54.780 | Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both

00:37:01.740 | in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative

00:37:07.620 | to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators who are, in many ways, constrained,

00:37:13.340 | hamstrung, shackled in a straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential

00:37:18.780 | contributions.

00:37:19.780 | And, you know, I certainly feel that myself.

00:37:23.900 | You know, I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely.

00:37:27.380 | It's just what I've done.

00:37:28.380 | I create things.

00:37:30.100 | And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we're still

00:37:32.940 | probably the best country on Earth, where that creator has that shot, so that's the

00:37:36.380 | positive side of it, but one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class

00:37:41.900 | than we have been when we've been at our best.

00:37:44.820 | And that's where I want to see change.

00:37:45.820 | Can you sort of steel man the perspective of somebody that looks at a particular department,

00:37:50.740 | Department of Education, and are saying that the amount of pain that would be caused by

00:37:57.560 | closing it and firing 75% of people will be too much?

00:38:02.260 | Yeah, so I go back to this question of mission, right?

00:38:05.980 | A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education aren't aware why the

00:38:12.180 | Department of Education was created in the first place, actually, so that might be a

00:38:15.260 | useful place to start, is that this thing was created.

00:38:18.020 | It had a purpose, presumably.

00:38:21.560 | What was that purpose?

00:38:22.560 | It might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decide what are we doing with

00:38:26.140 | it or not.

00:38:27.140 | What was the purpose of this thing that we created?

00:38:28.620 | It's not a...

00:38:29.620 | To me, it seems like a highly relevant question, yet in this discussion about government reform,

00:38:35.220 | it's interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about,

00:38:38.260 | "Okay, but we got the status quo and it's just going to be disruptive," versus asking

00:38:42.100 | the question of, "Okay, this institution was created.

00:38:43.900 | It had an original purpose.

00:38:46.260 | Is that purpose still relevant?

00:38:48.000 | Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today?"

00:38:51.620 | To me, those are some relevant questions to ask, so let's talk about that for the Department

00:38:54.360 | of Education.

00:38:55.900 | Its purpose was relevant at that time, which was to make sure that localities and particularly

00:39:03.120 | states were not siphoning dollars, taxpayer dollars, away from predominantly black school

00:39:10.740 | districts to predominantly white ones.

00:39:14.060 | That was not a theoretical concern at the time.

00:39:16.100 | It was happening, or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain

00:39:18.620 | states in the South.

00:39:20.940 | You may say you don't like the federal solution.

00:39:22.380 | You may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original

00:39:25.540 | purpose of the U.S. Department of Education to make sure that from a federal perspective,

00:39:30.700 | states were not systematically disadvantaging black school districts over predominantly

00:39:34.700 | white ones.

00:39:36.560 | However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it's not a relevant

00:39:42.340 | purpose today.

00:39:43.340 | There's no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the black versus white

00:39:47.820 | school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another.

00:39:51.620 | To the contrary, one of the things we've learned is that the school districts in the inner

00:39:55.580 | city, many of which are predominantly black, actually spend more money per student than

00:40:02.100 | other school districts for a worse result as measured by test scores and other performance

00:40:07.460 | on a per student basis, suggesting that there are other factors than the dollar expenditures

00:40:11.580 | per school determining student success, and actually suggesting that even the overfunding

00:40:17.180 | of some of those already poorly run schools rewards them for their actual bureaucratic

00:40:21.700 | failures.

00:40:23.240 | So against that backdrop, the Department of Education has instead extrapolated that original

00:40:28.220 | purpose of what was a racial equality purpose to instead implement a different vision of

00:40:32.740 | racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum

00:40:37.460 | that these public schools actually teach.

00:40:39.620 | So Department of Education funding, so federal funding accounts for about, you know, giving

00:40:43.380 | you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across

00:40:49.100 | the country.

00:40:50.460 | But that comes with strings attached.

00:40:52.440 | So in today's Department of Education, this didn't happen back in 1970, but it's happening

00:40:55.740 | today.

00:40:56.740 | Ironically, it's funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail, they blow

00:41:00.300 | oak smoke to cover up for their own failures.

00:41:02.860 | What happens with today's Department of Education, they effectively say you don't get that funding

00:41:08.700 | unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals.

00:41:14.580 | And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there's evidence of schools in the Midwest

00:41:18.540 | or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding

00:41:22.740 | so long as they have certain subjects like archery.

00:41:25.860 | There was one instance of a school that had archery in its curriculum.

00:41:30.460 | I find that to be pretty interesting, actually, I think that I think you have different kinds

00:41:34.180 | of physical education.

00:41:35.180 | This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude, but hey, maybe I'm biased,

00:41:39.580 | doesn't matter whether you like archery or not.

00:41:41.700 | I don't think it's the federal government's job to withhold funding from a school because

00:41:45.700 | they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate,

00:41:48.940 | where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education.

00:41:53.700 | So what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose that's long past.

00:41:57.700 | You don't have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve

00:42:01.620 | of siphoning money from black school districts to white school districts and laundering that

00:42:05.860 | effectively in public funds.

00:42:07.740 | That doesn't exist anymore.

00:42:08.920 | So they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way.

00:42:12.900 | So you asked me to steel man it and could I say something constructive rather than just,

00:42:17.060 | you know, pounding down on the other side?

00:42:19.300 | One way to think about this is for a lot of these agencies, were many of them formed with

00:42:25.940 | a positive intention at the outset?

00:42:29.700 | Yes.

00:42:31.580 | Whether that positive intention existed.

00:42:33.380 | I'm still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you're going to create one, at least

00:42:37.500 | make it.

00:42:40.020 | Which we call it a task force, make it a task force.

00:42:45.820 | A task force versus agency means after it's done, you celebrate, you've done your work,

00:42:49.860 | pat yourself on the back and then move on rather than creating a standing bureaucracy, which

00:42:55.300 | actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was

00:43:00.620 | born in the first place.

00:43:01.620 | And I think we don't have enough of that in our culture.

00:43:04.060 | I mean, even if you have a company that's generated tons of cash flow and it's solved

00:43:08.940 | a problem, let's say it's a let's say it's a biopharmaceutical company that developed

00:43:12.460 | a cure to some disease.

00:43:13.740 | And the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease.

00:43:17.820 | And they generated a boatload of cash from doing it.

00:43:19.620 | At a certain point, you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop.

00:43:22.700 | And that's actually a beautiful thing to do.

00:43:23.900 | You don't see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of

00:43:27.740 | when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it and then move on.

00:43:32.500 | And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope

00:43:37.260 | of government rather than today.

00:43:39.140 | It's a one way ratchet.

00:43:40.140 | Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence.

00:43:43.380 | But the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well.

00:43:47.120 | And that's where you get this metastasis over the last century.

00:43:50.900 | So what kind of things do you think government should do that the private sector, the forces

00:43:56.100 | of capitalism would create drastic inequalities or create the kind of pain we don't want to

00:44:00.780 | have in government?

00:44:01.780 | So if the question is what should government do that the private sector cannot, I'll give

00:44:05.060 | you one.

00:44:06.580 | Protect our border.

00:44:07.580 | I mean, capitalism, it's never gonna be the job of capitalists or never gonna be the capability

00:44:12.660 | or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.

00:44:15.780 | And I think a nation is literally, I think one of the chapters of this book, OK, a nation

00:44:20.100 | without borders is not a nation.

00:44:21.740 | It's almost a tautology.

00:44:23.100 | An open border is not a border.

00:44:25.260 | Capitalism is not gonna solve that.

00:44:26.540 | What's gonna solve that is a nation.

00:44:27.980 | Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation.

00:44:32.540 | In this case, the United States of America.

00:44:34.540 | That's an example of a proper function of the federal government to provide physical

00:44:37.700 | security to its citizens.

00:44:40.640 | Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case could be

00:44:45.300 | state government, to make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto

00:44:53.040 | somebody else without their consent.

00:44:55.840 | It's a fancy way economists would use to describe it.

00:44:58.580 | What does that mean?

00:44:59.580 | It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else's river, then you're liable

00:45:02.460 | for that.

00:45:03.460 | It's not that, OK, I'm a capitalist, and so I want to create things, and I'm gonna do

00:45:07.200 | hell or high water, whether or not that harms people around me.

00:45:10.500 | The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those

00:45:13.680 | who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism.

00:45:19.060 | In seeking prosperity, you're free to do it.

00:45:21.260 | But if you're hurting somebody else without their consent in the process, the government

00:45:26.500 | is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property

00:45:30.180 | right.

00:45:31.440 | So I would say that those are two central functions of government, is to preserve national

00:45:35.840 | boundaries and the national security of a homeland, and number two is to protect and

00:45:39.920 | preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights.

00:45:44.800 | And I think at that point, you've described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government.

00:45:50.580 | What about infrastructure?

00:45:51.580 | Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector.

00:45:55.500 | I mean, you can get into specifics, you could have infrastructure that's specific to national

00:45:58.780 | security.

00:45:59.780 | No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security.

00:46:04.140 | That's a form of infrastructure.

00:46:05.420 | I don't think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal

00:46:08.640 | level of that protection to a nation.

00:46:11.220 | But you know, interstate highways, you know, I think you could think about whether or not

00:46:14.920 | that's a common good that everybody benefits from, but nobody has the incentive to create.

00:46:19.740 | I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.

00:46:23.860 | I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that actually, you could have

00:46:26.980 | enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well.

00:46:32.080 | But you know, I'm not gonna be, I'm not dogmatic about this, but broadly speaking, 80 to 90%

00:46:37.660 | of the goal of the federal government, I'm not gonna say 100, 80 to 90% of the goal of

00:46:42.540 | the existence of a federal government should be to, of government period, should be to

00:46:47.980 | protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there, and to protect

00:46:52.380 | the private property rights of the people who reside there.

00:46:55.360 | If we restore that, I think we're well on our way to a revival of what our founding

00:47:00.180 | fathers envisioned.

00:47:01.180 | And I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.

00:47:03.820 | So if we get government out of education, would you be also for reducing this as a government

00:47:09.980 | in the states for something like education?

00:47:13.100 | I think here, if it goes closer to municipalities and the states, I'm fine with that being a

00:47:18.460 | locus for people determining as, for example, let's just say school districts are taxed

00:47:22.340 | at the local level, for that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually

00:47:26.900 | decide democratically how they actually want that governed, whether it's balanced between

00:47:31.340 | a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form

00:47:35.900 | of vouchers or other forms of ability to educational savings accounts or whichever mechanism it

00:47:41.060 | is to opt out of that.

00:47:42.780 | If that's done locally, I'll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction

00:47:47.780 | of true educational choice and diversity of choice.

00:47:51.980 | The implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering

00:47:56.340 | the barriers to granting one, I favor those kinds of policies.

00:47:59.080 | But if we've gotten the federal government out of it, that's achieved 75% of what I think

00:48:03.660 | we need to achieve, that I'm focused on solving other problems and leave that to the states

00:48:07.980 | and municipalities to cover from there.

00:48:10.540 | >> So given this conversation, what do you think of Elon's proposal of the Department

00:48:16.220 | of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration or really any administration?

00:48:21.820 | >> I'm, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of

00:48:26.660 | the last year and a half, and I think it's a great idea.

00:48:29.020 | I had something that's very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy.

00:48:33.420 | I got to know him as I was running for US president in a couple of events that he came

00:48:37.660 | to and then we built a friendship after that.

00:48:39.580 | So obviously, I think it's a great idea.

00:48:42.000 | >> Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon?

00:48:45.860 | >> Well, I think Elon is pretty hardcore.

00:48:49.900 | I said 75% of the federal bureaucrats, and while I was running for president, he said

00:48:55.220 | you need to put at least 75%.

00:48:57.460 | So I agree with him.

00:48:58.820 | I think I would, I think it'd be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore.

00:49:04.180 | I think he and I, I don't think there's someone out there who's going to be more hardcore

00:49:07.820 | than here I would be.

00:49:09.260 | And the reason is, I think we're both, we share in common a willingness to take the

00:49:15.780 | risk and see what happens.

00:49:16.780 | I mean, the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west, that much I guarantee

00:49:20.660 | you.

00:49:21.660 | Is there going to be some broken glass and some damage?

00:49:23.460 | Yes, there is.

00:49:24.460 | There's no way around that.

00:49:26.300 | But once you're willing to take that risk, then it doesn't become so scary anymore.

00:49:30.460 | And here's the thing, Lex, it's easy to say this, let's talk about where the rubber hits

00:49:33.820 | the road here.

00:49:35.100 | Even in a second Trump term, this would be the discussion, President Trump and I've had

00:49:40.260 | this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation, is where does it

00:49:45.060 | rank on our prioritization list?

00:49:48.060 | Because there's always going to be a trade-off.

00:49:50.900 | If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective,

00:49:55.620 | whatever that is, right?

00:49:56.860 | You could talk about immigration policy, you could talk about economic policy, there are

00:50:01.220 | other policy objectives, you're going to trade off a little bit in the short run, the effectiveness

00:50:08.140 | of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you're also committed to actually thinning

00:50:13.020 | out the federal government by 75%, because there's just going to be some clunkiness,

00:50:16.140 | right?

00:50:17.140 | And there's just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut.

00:50:20.220 | So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?

00:50:23.420 | To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government,

00:50:28.620 | the regulatory state and the headcount, I think that only happens if that's your top

00:50:34.060 | priority.

00:50:35.060 | You could do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that's your

00:50:38.580 | top priority, because then as president, you're in a position to say, I know in the super

00:50:42.500 | short run, that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that

00:50:47.340 | I want to do and use the regulatory state to do it, but I'm going to pass on that.

00:50:52.660 | I'm going to pass that up.

00:50:53.660 | I'm going to bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important

00:50:58.180 | on the scale of decades and centuries for the country.

00:51:01.380 | So it's a question of prioritization.

00:51:03.420 | And certainly my own view is that now is a moment where that needs to be a top priority

00:51:10.700 | for saving this country.

00:51:12.500 | And if there's one thing about my campaign, if I was to do it again, I would be even clearer

00:51:19.100 | about, because I talked about a lot of things in the campaign and we can cover a lot of

00:51:22.380 | that too.

00:51:23.380 | But if there's one thing that I care about more than anything else is dismantling that

00:51:26.620 | bureaucracy and more of moreover, it is a, it's an assault and a crusade on the nanny

00:51:33.740 | state itself.

00:51:34.980 | And that nanny state presents itself in several forms.

00:51:37.660 | There's the entitlement state, that's the welfare state presents itself in the form

00:51:41.300 | of the regulatory state.

00:51:42.300 | That's what we're talking about.

00:51:43.780 | And then there's the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries

00:51:48.860 | that aren't paying their fair share of protection or other resources.

00:51:51.640 | We provide them.

00:51:52.640 | If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the

00:51:58.520 | United States of America, in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state

00:52:03.640 | and the foreign policy nanny state.

00:52:06.080 | Once we've done that, we've revived the Republic that I think would make George Washington

00:52:09.680 | proud.

00:52:10.680 | So you mentioned department of education, but there's also the department of defense

00:52:16.240 | and there's a very large number of very powerful people that have gotten used to, and a budget

00:52:25.040 | that's increasing and the number of wars and military conflicts that's increasing.

00:52:29.520 | So if we could just talk about that, so this is the number one priority.

00:52:35.680 | It's like there's difficulty levels here, the DOD would be probably the hardest.

00:52:42.800 | So let's take that on.

00:52:44.920 | What's your view on the military industrial complex, department of defense and wars in

00:52:50.360 | general?

00:52:51.360 | So I think the nanny state, I'm against it overall.

00:52:54.120 | I'm against the foreign policy nanny state as well.

00:52:56.080 | Let's let me start from that as the starting off point, then I'll tell you about my views

00:52:58.760 | on the DOD and our defense.

00:53:02.080 | First of all, I think that, and I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon

00:53:06.720 | school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side.

00:53:10.500 | But actually my own view is if it's in the interest of the United States of America to

00:53:14.720 | provide certain levels of protection to US allies, we can do that as long as those allies

00:53:20.160 | actually pay for it.

00:53:22.240 | And I think that's important for two reasons.

00:53:24.180 | The less important reason, still important reason, the less important reason is it's

00:53:27.960 | still money for us, right?

00:53:29.200 | It's not like we're swimming in a cash surplus right now, we're a $34 trillion national debt

00:53:34.160 | and growing.

00:53:35.160 | And, you know, I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line

00:53:37.960 | item in our own federal budget.

00:53:39.440 | So it's not like we have money willy nilly to just hand over for free.

00:53:43.400 | That's the less important reason though.

00:53:45.280 | The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies have actual skin in the

00:53:53.000 | game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they're not actually

00:53:58.020 | bearing the full cost of those conflicts.

00:54:00.520 | So take NATO, for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today

00:54:07.680 | do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to their own national defense, which is supposedly

00:54:16.840 | a requirement to be in NATO.

00:54:19.320 | So majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO

00:54:23.320 | in the first place.

00:54:24.880 | Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America.

00:54:28.520 | And I don't think that I'm not going to be some sort of, you know, shrill voice here

00:54:33.960 | saying so therefore we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets.

00:54:39.000 | No, I'm not.

00:54:40.000 | I'm not going in that direction.

00:54:41.000 | What I would say is you got to pay for it, right?

00:54:43.320 | Pay for your fissure.

00:54:44.320 | A, because we're not swimming in excess money ourselves.

00:54:46.600 | But B is it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own defense, which

00:54:51.800 | actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not

00:54:56.520 | they enter war versus if somebody else is paying for it and somebody else is providing

00:54:59.640 | our security guarantee, hey, I might as well, you know, take the gamble and see where I

00:55:02.560 | end up at the end of a war versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision making of

00:55:07.200 | those allies.

00:55:09.080 | So now let's bring this bring this home to the Department of Defense.

00:55:12.440 | I think the top goal of the U.S. defense policy establishment should be to provide for the

00:55:20.360 | national defense of the United States of America.

00:55:24.200 | And the irony is that's what we're actually doing most poorly.

00:55:26.680 | We're not really using other than the Coast Guard.

00:55:29.360 | We're not really using the U.S. military to prevent crossings at our own southern border

00:55:33.500 | and crossings at our other borders.

00:55:35.920 | In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe, is less secure today

00:55:39.880 | than it has been in a very long time.

00:55:42.440 | Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles, where China and Russia, Russia certainly has

00:55:47.080 | capabilities in excess of that of the United States missiles.

00:55:50.760 | Hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including

00:55:53.360 | those carrying nuclear warheads.

00:55:55.340 | We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, electromagnetic pulse attacks that could,

00:56:01.080 | you know, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations.

00:56:03.840 | Some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United

00:56:09.340 | States of America.

00:56:10.340 | The electric grid's gone.

00:56:11.340 | It's not an exaggeration to say if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because

00:56:14.740 | our chips really depend on those electromagnetic well, will be affected by those electromagnetic

00:56:19.740 | pulses.

00:56:21.000 | More vulnerable to cyberattacks.

00:56:22.000 | I know this, oh, people start yawning and say, okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber,

00:56:27.480 | whatever.

00:56:28.480 | No, actually it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of

00:56:32.840 | not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn't work anymore or your food can't be

00:56:36.800 | stored or your car or your, or your ability to fly in an airplane is impaired.

00:56:42.400 | Okay.

00:56:43.440 | So I think that these are serious risks where our own national defense spending has been

00:56:48.080 | wholly inadequate.

00:56:49.360 | So I'm not one of these people that says, oh, we decreased versus increased national

00:56:52.420 | defense spending.

00:56:53.420 | We're not spending it in the right places.

00:56:55.160 | The number one place we need to be spending it is actually protecting our national defense.

00:56:58.980 | And I think our protecting our own physical homeland.

00:57:01.920 | And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland.

00:57:06.320 | But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state ism

00:57:11.280 | for its own stake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide

00:57:15.960 | for their own national defense and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies

00:57:20.120 | where that actually advances the interests of the United States of America.

00:57:23.360 | So that's what I believe.

00:57:24.940 | And you know, I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously

00:57:29.220 | in his farewell address called the military industrial complex in the United States.

00:57:33.920 | But I think it's, it's bigger than just the, you know, I think it's easy to tell the tales

00:57:38.120 | of the financial corruption.

00:57:39.880 | It's a kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people

00:57:45.080 | in that expert class have a belief that their belief happens to be the right one because

00:57:50.200 | they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don't follow their advice.

00:57:54.680 | And one of the beauties of the United States is at least in principle, we have civilian

00:57:58.520 | control of the military.

00:57:59.720 | The person who we elect to be the US president is the one that actually is the true commander

00:58:04.940 | in chief.

00:58:05.940 | I have my doubts of whether it operates that way.

00:58:08.000 | I think it's quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning commander in chief of

00:58:11.120 | the United States of America, yet on paper, supposedly, we still are supposed to call

00:58:14.480 | him that.

00:58:16.400 | But at least in theory, we're supposed to have civilian control of the US military.

00:58:22.000 | And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question

00:58:26.240 | of, again, the mission, what's the purpose of this US military in the first place, at

00:58:30.920 | the top of the list should be to protect the homeland, the people who actually live here,

00:58:36.040 | which we're failing to do.

00:58:37.040 | So that's where I land on that question.

00:58:38.360 | Wait, okay, there's a lot of stuff to ask.

00:58:40.480 | First of all, on Joe Biden, you mean he's functionally not in control of the US military

00:58:44.200 | because of the age factor or because of the nature of the presidency?

00:58:48.400 | It's a good question.

00:58:49.600 | I would say in his case, it's particularly accentuated because it's both.

00:58:54.300 | In his case, I don't think anybody in America anymore believes that Joe Biden is the functioning

00:59:00.720 | president of the United States of America.

00:59:02.520 | How could he be?

00:59:03.520 | He wasn't even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held

00:59:06.400 | in June.

00:59:07.520 | There's no way he's going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a

00:59:10.760 | daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world.

00:59:15.640 | Now, more generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem that even when it's not Joe

00:59:19.480 | Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven't really been the

00:59:24.640 | ones running the government.

00:59:26.120 | It's been the unelected bureaucrats and the bureaucratic deep state underneath that's

00:59:29.840 | really been making the decisions.

00:59:31.680 | I've done business in a number of places.

00:59:34.800 | I've traveled to Japan, and there's an interesting corporate analogy.

00:59:37.960 | Sometimes if you get outside of politics, people can, I find, listen and pay attention

00:59:44.520 | a little bit more because politics is so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody

00:59:49.880 | who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you're just butting heads but not really

00:59:53.060 | making progress.

00:59:54.060 | So let's just make the same point but go outside of politics for a second.

00:59:57.900 | So I was traveling to Japan.

00:59:58.900 | I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

01:00:05.040 | And it takes a while to really get them to open up, culturally speaking in Japan, a couple

01:00:09.900 | nights of karaoke and whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is.

01:00:17.580 | We built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me.

01:00:20.660 | He said, "I'm the CEO of the company.

01:00:24.060 | I could go and find the head of a research unit and tell him, 'Okay, this is a project

01:00:28.740 | we're no longer working on as a company.

01:00:30.520 | We don't want to spend money on it.

01:00:31.620 | We're going to spend money somewhere else.'"

01:00:33.620 | And he'll look me in the eye and he'll say, "Yes, sir.

01:00:36.140 | Yes, sir."

01:00:37.140 | I'll come back six months later and find that they're spending exactly the same amount of

01:00:40.580 | money on those exact same projects, and I'll tell him, "No, we agreed.

01:00:44.220 | I told you that you're not going to spend money on this project, and we have to stop

01:00:48.340 | now.

01:00:49.340 | It should have stopped six months ago.

01:00:50.340 | Get a slap on the wrist for it."

01:00:51.340 | He says, "Yes, sir.

01:00:52.340 | I'm sorry.

01:00:53.340 | Yes.

01:00:54.340 | No, no, no.

01:00:55.340 | Of course, that's correct."

01:00:56.340 | The same person is spending the same money on the same project, and here's why.

01:01:01.820 | Historically in Japan, and I should say in Japan, this is changing now.

01:01:04.880 | It's changing now, but historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now,

01:01:10.540 | it's near impossible to fire people.

01:01:13.580 | So if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't actually

01:01:18.540 | work for you.

01:01:20.020 | It means in some deeper, perverse sense, you work for them because you're responsible for

01:01:25.220 | what they do without any authority to actually change it.

01:01:29.920 | So I think most people who've traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through

01:01:33.220 | the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s, and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s, wouldn't really

01:01:38.880 | dispute what I just told you.

01:01:41.300 | Now we're bringing it back to the more contentious terrain.

01:01:44.220 | I think that's basically how things have worked in the executive branch of the federal government

01:01:48.300 | of the United States of America.

01:01:50.060 | You have these so-called civil service protections on the books.

01:01:52.860 | Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight

01:01:57.660 | for a truly constitutionally well-trained president to act.

01:02:02.860 | But apart from those, that's a contrarian view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom,

01:02:08.060 | but apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been the US president

01:02:12.520 | can't fire these people.

01:02:14.380 | There's 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can't be touched by the person who

01:02:18.860 | the people who elected to run the executive branch can't even fire those people.

01:02:23.500 | It's like the equivalent of that Japanese CEO.

01:02:25.820 | And so that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States

01:02:31.120 | of America as they did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.

01:02:34.900 | And that's a lot of what's wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense

01:02:38.860 | is run and our foreign policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of

01:02:42.340 | the domestic policy establishment as well.

01:02:46.180 | And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic?

01:02:49.740 | This is the debate in the conservative movement right now.

01:02:51.460 | So this is a little bit, maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to sort of swallow

01:02:56.460 | right now.

01:02:57.460 | And, you know, my top focus is making sure that we win the election, but let's just move

01:03:03.060 | the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here.

01:03:05.780 | Okay.

01:03:06.780 | Yes, let's say we win the election all as well and dandy.

01:03:09.220 | Okay.

01:03:10.220 | What's the philosophy that determines how we govern?

01:03:11.220 | There's a little bit of a fork in the road amongst conservatives where there are those

01:03:15.360 | who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers

01:03:21.160 | of power to advance our own pro conservative, pro American, pro worker goals.

01:03:29.460 | And I'm sympathetic to all of those goals, but I don't think that the right way to do

01:03:33.180 | it is to create a conservative regulatory state that replaces a liberal regulatory state.

01:03:39.500 | I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down.

01:03:42.700 | I don't want to replace the left wing nanny state with a right wing nanny state.

01:03:46.260 | I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.

01:03:49.740 | And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history

01:03:54.940 | that we've had a conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal

01:04:01.860 | objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the

01:04:08.060 | regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state.

01:04:12.600 | That was a core focus of my candidacy.

01:04:18.400 | One of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have

01:04:22.580 | done better was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted

01:04:27.880 | by a lot of the shenanigans, let's just say, that happen as sideshows during a presidential

01:04:33.980 | campaign.

01:04:34.980 | But call that a lesson learned because I do think it's what the country needs now more

01:04:38.600 | than ever.

01:04:39.600 | Yeah, it's a really, really powerful idea.

01:04:42.720 | It's actually something that Donald Trump ran on in 2016.

01:04:48.620 | Drain the swamp.

01:04:49.620 | Drain the swamp.

01:04:50.620 | I think by most accounts, maybe you can disagree with me, he did not successfully do so.

01:04:56.020 | He did fire a bunch of people, more than usual.

01:04:58.460 | Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in?

01:05:01.020 | Because I think that's why I'm far more excited for this time around, is that a lot has changed

01:05:06.020 | in the legal landscape.

01:05:07.720 | So Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today.

01:05:14.560 | So there's some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court.

01:05:17.420 | One is West Virginia versus EPA.

01:05:19.860 | I think it's probably the most important case of our generation.

01:05:23.160 | In 2022, that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through

01:05:29.520 | the halls of Congress, and it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy

01:05:34.100 | or economic question, it can't be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected

01:05:39.300 | bureaucrat either.

01:05:41.540 | That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional.

01:05:45.280 | Then this year comes down a different, a big one, another big one from the Supreme Court

01:05:49.160 | in the Loper-Bright case, which held that historically, for the last 50 years in this

01:05:54.200 | country, the doctrine has been, it's called Chevron deference.

01:05:58.960 | It's a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency's interpretation

01:06:04.800 | of the law.

01:06:06.940 | They now toss that out the window and said, no, no, no, the federal courts no longer have

01:06:09.800 | to defer to an agency's interpretation of what the law actually is.

01:06:13.500 | The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state.

01:06:18.380 | There's also another great case that came down was SEC versus JARCSE, and the SEC is

01:06:23.820 | one of these agencies that embodies everything we're talking about here.

01:06:27.320 | The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules,

01:06:33.740 | not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that

01:06:38.480 | also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments.

01:06:42.480 | That doesn't make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States,

01:06:45.460 | so the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional.

01:06:48.940 | Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written

01:06:53.900 | by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years were outright unconstitutional.

01:06:59.040 | Think about what that means for a constitutional republic, that supposedly these law enforcement

01:07:03.980 | agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, the courts have now said that their

01:07:10.800 | own behaviors actually break the law.

01:07:13.360 | So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with

01:07:18.560 | utter blatant disregard for the law itself.

01:07:24.320 | That's un-American.

01:07:25.320 | It's not tenable in the United States of America, but thankfully we now have a Supreme Court

01:07:29.880 | that recognizes that.

01:07:31.680 | So whether or not we have a second Trump term, that's up to the voters, but even whether

01:07:38.880 | or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually

01:07:44.520 | gut the regulatory state, we'll find out.

01:07:48.520 | I am optimistic.

01:07:49.520 | I certainly think it's the best chance that we've had in a generation in this country.

01:07:53.000 | That's a big part of why I'm supporting Donald Trump and why I'm going to do everything in

01:07:56.360 | my power to help him.

01:07:58.720 | But I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through.

01:08:03.520 | And then after we've taken on the regulatory state, I think that's the next step.

01:08:07.500 | But I do think there's this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its

01:08:12.680 | forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in any state.

01:08:18.240 | Three word answer, if I was to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in

01:08:23.560 | three words, shut it down.

01:08:26.000 | Shut it down.

01:08:27.000 | Okay.

01:08:28.000 | So the Supreme Court cases you mentioned, there's a lot of nuance there.

01:08:32.160 | I guess it's weakening the immune system of the different departments.

01:08:35.480 | Yeah.

01:08:36.480 | It's a good way of putting it.

01:08:38.080 | Okay.

01:08:39.080 | On the human psychology level, so you basically kind of implied that for Donald Trump or for

01:08:44.480 | any president, the legal situation was difficult.

01:08:50.440 | Is that the only thing really operating?

01:08:52.400 | Like isn't it also just on a psychological level just hard to fire a very large number

01:09:00.040 | of people?

01:09:01.040 | Is that what it is?

01:09:02.040 | Like why?

01:09:03.040 | Is there a basic civility and momentum going on?

01:09:04.760 | Well, I think there's one other factor.

01:09:05.760 | So you're right to point.

01:09:06.880 | I mean, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason.

01:09:13.000 | I think there are other factors at play too.

01:09:15.400 | So I think there's something to be said for never having been in government, showing up

01:09:21.080 | there the first time and you're having to understand the rules of the road as you're

01:09:26.160 | operating within them and also having to depend on people who actually aren't aligned with

01:09:33.360 | your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.

01:09:36.860 | And so I think that's one of the things that I've admired about president Trump is he's

01:09:39.880 | actually been very open about that, very humble about that, to say that there's a million

01:09:44.000 | learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second

01:09:47.720 | term.

01:09:48.720 | But everything I'm talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country.

01:09:50.920 | It's not specific to Donald Trump, it lays out what needs to be done in the country.

01:09:55.840 | There's the next four years, Donald Trump is our last, best hope and chance for moving

01:09:59.600 | that ball forward.

01:10:01.280 | But I think that the vision I'm laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond

01:10:06.520 | just the next two or four years of really fixing a century's worth of mistakes.

01:10:12.040 | I think we're gonna fix a lot of them in the next four years of Donald Trump's president.

01:10:15.600 | But if you have a century's worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth

01:10:18.920 | of the entitlement state in the US, I think it's going to take, you know, probably the

01:10:22.700 | better part of a decade at least to actually fix them.

01:10:25.360 | I disagree with you on both the last and the best hope.

01:10:31.560 | Donald Trump is more likely to fire a lot of people, but is he the best person to do

01:10:37.040 | so?

01:10:38.040 | We've got two candidates, right?

01:10:39.040 | People face a choice.

01:10:40.040 | This is a relevant election.

01:10:41.040 | One of my goals is to speak to people who may not agree with 100% of what Donald, who

01:10:47.600 | do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says.

01:10:49.760 | And I can tell them, you know what, I don't agree with 100% of what he says.

01:10:53.160 | And I can tell you, as somebody who ran against him for US president, that right now he is,

01:10:58.360 | when I say the last best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last best hope that we have for

01:11:02.720 | dismantling that bureaucratic class.

01:11:06.120 | And you know, I think that I'm also open about the fact that it's going to take, this is

01:11:10.320 | a long run project, but we have the next step to actually, the next step to actually take

01:11:14.680 | over the next few years.

01:11:15.720 | That's kind of where I land on it.

01:11:16.720 | I mean, you talked to him, I guess a few weeks ago, I saw you had a podcast with him, right?

01:11:20.520 | What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?

01:11:24.220 | My impression is his priority allocation was different than yours.

01:11:27.400 | I think he's more focused on some of the other topics that you are also focused on.

01:11:32.700 | And there is a tension there, just as you've clearly highlighted.

01:11:37.320 | We share the same priority with respect to the Southern border and those are near term

01:11:40.560 | fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year.

01:11:43.920 | But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon.

01:11:47.760 | So my own view is, I think that he, it is my conviction and belief that he does care

01:11:54.040 | about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee

01:11:59.220 | we have had in, certainly in my lifetime.

01:12:03.120 | But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will

01:12:07.160 | say, okay, well, we want to create a right wing entitlement state, right?

01:12:11.440 | Do a shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries

01:12:16.840 | and new bureaucracies to administer them.

01:12:18.840 | And, you know, I don't come from that school of thought.

01:12:20.920 | I don't want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction.

01:12:25.440 | I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction.

01:12:28.720 | And you know, I do think that from my conversation with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well

01:12:33.260 | aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy, but that's a longer term project.

01:12:38.240 | There's so many priorities at play here, though.

01:12:40.480 | I mean, you really do have to do the Elon thing of walking into Twitter headquarters,

01:12:44.520 | shut it down with a sink, right?

01:12:46.760 | Let that sink in, that basically firing a very large number of people.

01:12:51.760 | And it's not just about the firing, it's about setting clear missions for the different departments

01:12:57.720 | that remain, hiring back because you overfire, hiring back based on meritocracy.

01:13:05.560 | And it's a full-time, and it's not only full-time in terms of actual time, it's full-time psychologically

01:13:12.640 | because you're walking into a place, unlike a company like Twitter, an already successful

01:13:19.680 | company, in government, I mean, everybody around you, all the experts and the advisors

01:13:26.440 | are going to tell you you're wrong.

01:13:29.680 | And like, it's a very difficult psychological place to operate in because like you're constantly

01:13:36.120 | the asshole, and I mean, the certainty you have to have about what you're doing is just

01:13:44.280 | like nearly infinite because everybody, all the really smart people are telling you, "No,

01:13:49.040 | this is a terrible idea.

01:13:50.520 | Sir, this is a terrible idea."

01:13:52.120 | No, you have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short-term advice is

01:13:57.480 | you're getting.

01:13:58.680 | And I'll tell you, certainly I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the

01:14:04.520 | next four years and beyond, but my voice on this will be crystal clear, and President

01:14:09.920 | Trump knows that's my view on it, and I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal,

01:14:15.640 | get in there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can, do it as quickly

01:14:21.360 | as possible, and that's a big part of how we save our country.

01:14:23.960 | Okay, I'll give you an example that's really difficult tension given your priorities, immigration.

01:14:30.120 | There's an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

01:14:35.240 | You've spoken about mass deportation.

01:14:38.760 | Yes.

01:14:39.760 | That requires a lot of effort, money, I mean, how do you do it, and how does that conflict

01:14:47.240 | with the shutting it down?

01:14:48.520 | Sure, and so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper

01:14:53.040 | roles of the federal government?

01:14:54.600 | I gave you two.

01:14:56.400 | One is of the government period.

01:14:58.640 | One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two

01:15:02.800 | is to protect private property rights.

01:15:05.080 | There's a lot else.

01:15:06.080 | Most of what the government's doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something

01:15:08.880 | other than those two things, but in my book, those are the two things that are the proper

01:15:12.840 | function of government.

01:15:14.420 | So for everything else the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should

01:15:17.920 | be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty

01:15:21.160 | and sanctity of our national borders.

01:15:23.220 | So in that domain, that's mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government.

01:15:27.680 | I think we're a nation founded on the rule of law.

01:15:30.680 | I say this as the kid of legal immigrants.

01:15:32.880 | That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law, and in some

01:15:36.440 | ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years,

01:15:40.040 | it would be a tale of two mass deportations, the mass deportations of millions of illegals

01:15:46.080 | who are in this country and should not be, and then the mass deportation of millions

01:15:50.240 | of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.

01:15:53.240 | Now all of a sudden, you could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality

01:15:57.920 | is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which

01:16:02.280 | is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that's really where I think

01:16:06.680 | the predominant cuts need to be, and if you look at the number of people who are looking

01:16:11.000 | after the border, it's not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today.

01:16:15.600 | So 75% isn't 99.99%, it's 75%, which still leaves that it would still be a tiny fraction

01:16:22.480 | of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less.

01:16:25.800 | So it's a good question, but that's sort of where I land on.

01:16:28.600 | When it's a proper role of the federal government, great, act and actually do your job.

01:16:33.000 | The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection

01:16:38.200 | of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.

01:16:43.120 | There is a lot of criticism of the idea of mass deportation, though.

01:16:46.840 | One, it will cause a large amount of economic harm, at least in the short term.

01:16:54.200 | The other is there would be potentially violations of our kind of higher ideals of how we like

01:17:00.320 | to treat human beings, in particular separation of families, for example, tearing families

01:17:06.400 | apart.

01:17:08.480 | And the other is just like the logistical complexity of doing something like this.

01:17:13.160 | How do you answer some of those criticisms?

01:17:14.720 | Fair enough.

01:17:15.720 | And I would call those even not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions, right?

01:17:19.320 | Even if somebody who's really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions

01:17:21.720 | to ask.

01:17:23.080 | So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the

01:17:27.760 | rule of law in other contexts.

01:17:30.280 | There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes

01:17:36.160 | and were convicted of them.

01:17:37.780 | They didn't take their kids with them to those prisons either, right?

01:17:39.940 | So we face difficult trade-offs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement

01:17:45.160 | of law.

01:17:46.160 | And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we're a nation

01:17:50.100 | founded on the rule of law, that we acknowledge that there are trade-offs to enforcing the

01:17:54.980 | law.

01:17:55.980 | And we've acknowledged that in other contexts, I don't think that we should have a special

01:17:59.780 | exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of

01:18:03.900 | the border.

01:18:04.900 | We're a nation founded on the rule of law, we enforce laws that has costs, that has trade-offs,

01:18:08.740 | but it's who we are.

01:18:10.220 | So that backdrop is, and the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are

01:18:15.820 | in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them.

01:18:19.380 | Is that bad?

01:18:20.380 | Is it undesirable for kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers?

01:18:24.500 | It is.

01:18:26.140 | But it's a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the

01:18:31.140 | consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country.

01:18:34.420 | So that's in the domestic context.

01:18:36.680 | As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let's just get very practical because all

01:18:41.080 | that was theoretical.

01:18:43.120 | Very practically, there's ways to do this, starting with people who have already broken

01:18:46.880 | the law, people who have not just broken the law of entering, but are committing other

01:18:49.880 | crimes while already here in the United States.

01:18:52.500 | That's a clear case for an instant mass deportation.

01:18:54.320 | You have a lot of people who haven't integrated into their communities.

01:18:56.920 | You think about the economic impact of this, a lot of people are in detention already.

01:19:00.600 | A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin, or at

01:19:04.840 | least what is called a safe third country.

01:19:07.600 | So safe third country means even if somebody is claiming to seek asylum from political

01:19:11.260 | persecution, we'll move them to another country that doesn't have to be the United States

01:19:14.900 | of America that they passed through, say Mexico, before actually coming here.

01:19:19.200 | Other countries around the world are doing this.

01:19:21.240 | Australia is detaining people.

01:19:22.480 | They don't let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country.

01:19:26.560 | They detain them until their case is adjudicated.

01:19:28.680 | Well, the rates of fraud in Australia of what people lie about what their conditions are

01:19:32.960 | is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.

01:19:37.760 | So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it

01:19:41.240 | needs to be.

01:19:42.240 | I've never taken a deeply pragmatic approach, and the North Star for me is I want the policy

01:19:46.980 | that helps the United States citizens who are already here.

01:19:50.360 | What's that policy?

01:19:51.360 | Clearly, that's going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations.

01:19:55.320 | I think by definition, it's going to be the largest mass deportation in American history.

01:19:59.920 | Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually, it's just a factual statement

01:20:03.660 | that says if we've had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history,

01:20:08.860 | it just stands to reason.

01:20:09.860 | It's logic that, okay, if we're going to fix that, we're going to have the largest mass

01:20:12.000 | deportation in American history.

01:20:13.400 | And we can be rational.

01:20:15.120 | Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States.

01:20:18.300 | Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now.

01:20:22.160 | That comes at no cost and strict benefit.

01:20:25.040 | There isn't even a little bit of an economic trade-off.

01:20:27.680 | Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh

01:20:30.240 | the benefits, and that's exactly the way our policy should be guided here.

01:20:34.520 | I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible.

01:20:40.560 | I mean, the reality is I think one of the things we got to remember, I'll give you the

01:20:45.080 | example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, a town that I spent a lot of time in growing

01:20:50.000 | up in Ohio.

01:20:51.000 | I live about an hour from there today.

01:20:53.480 | I don't blame the individual Haitians who came here.

01:20:55.840 | I'm not saying that they're bad people, because in that particular case, those weren't even

01:20:59.280 | people who broke the law in coming here.

01:21:01.760 | They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status.

01:21:06.440 | Now the operative word there is the first one, temporary.

01:21:10.040 | They have been all kinds of lawsuits, there have been all kinds of lawsuits for people

01:21:13.080 | who even eight, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti, where many of them came,

01:21:18.680 | when they're going to be removed, there are allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.

01:21:22.240 | No, Temporary Protective Status means it's temporary, and we're not abandoning the rule

01:21:26.480 | of law when we send them back, we're abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay.

01:21:32.200 | Now if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise,

01:21:35.880 | go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons.

01:21:39.960 | But don't do it through asylum-based claims or Temporary Protective Status.

01:21:43.320 | I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie,

01:21:49.680 | and it incentivizes lying.

01:21:52.040 | The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons,

01:21:57.440 | but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things

01:22:02.240 | don't match up.

01:22:03.920 | So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is.

01:22:06.040 | I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely

01:22:12.120 | for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America.

01:22:16.100 | I think there are many people, I know some of them, right?

01:22:18.440 | I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among

01:22:23.720 | our best universities.

01:22:24.720 | He went to Princeton, he went to Harvard Business School, he has a great job in the investment

01:22:28.320 | community, he was a professional tennis player, he was a concert pianist, he could do a Rubik's

01:22:32.320 | Cube in less than a minute.

01:22:34.000 | I'm not making this stuff up.

01:22:35.120 | These are hard facts.

01:22:36.440 | He can't get a green card in the United States.

01:22:37.960 | He's been here for 10 years or something like this.

01:22:40.280 | He asked me for the best advice I could give him.

01:22:42.280 | I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a

01:22:46.000 | flight to Mexico and cross the border and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum

01:22:50.440 | in the United States.

01:22:52.400 | That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn't give it to him.

01:22:55.360 | But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually

01:22:58.440 | could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides.

01:23:02.000 | People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance

01:23:05.500 | to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for

01:23:09.080 | them to be able to add value to the United States, yet they're not the ones who are getting

01:23:12.760 | in.

01:23:13.760 | Our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie.

01:23:17.080 | That's what it does.

01:23:18.080 | It selects for people who are willing to say they're seeking refugee status or seeking

01:23:21.240 | asylum when in fact they're not, and then we have policymakers who lie after the fact

01:23:25.600 | using economic justifications to keep them here.

01:23:28.240 | But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria you used to

01:23:30.740 | bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status.

01:23:34.960 | There was a case, actually even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not,

01:23:38.720 | of a woman who came from Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin's intolerant anti-LGBTQ regime.

01:23:49.600 | She was fleeing persecution by the evil man, Putin.

01:23:53.640 | She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out

01:23:57.440 | that — and she was crying finally when she broke down and admitted this — she was like,

01:24:00.720 | "I'm not even gay.

01:24:02.320 | I don't even like gay people."

01:24:04.160 | That's what she said, and yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was

01:24:09.260 | persecuted in Russia when in fact it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions

01:24:13.440 | in the United States.

01:24:14.440 | I'm not saying you're wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States,

01:24:17.360 | but you are wrong to lie about it, and that's what you're seeing a lot of people even in

01:24:20.680 | this industry of sort of "tourism" to the United States.

01:24:26.400 | They're having their kids in the United States.

01:24:28.080 | They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship.

01:24:30.800 | That's built on a lie.

01:24:31.800 | You have people claiming to suffer from persecution.

01:24:34.640 | In fact, they're just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions

01:24:38.440 | in parts of Mexico or Central America after they've spent four or five years making money

01:24:42.800 | here.

01:24:43.800 | Just abandon the lie.

01:24:44.800 | Let's just have an immigration system built on honesty.

01:24:46.480 | Just tell the truth.

01:24:47.640 | If the argument is that we need more people here for economically fulfilling jobs, I'm

01:24:51.600 | skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true, but

01:24:54.240 | let's have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying

01:24:57.440 | that it's refugee and asylum status when we know it's a lie, and then we justify it after

01:25:01.120 | the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States.

01:25:03.880 | Cut the dishonesty.

01:25:04.880 | And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to expand every sphere.

01:25:09.480 | We talk about from the military-industrial complex to the rise of the managerial class

01:25:14.360 | to a lot of what our government's covered up about our own history to even this question

01:25:18.400 | of immigration today.

01:25:19.920 | Just tell the people the truth, and I think our government would be better serving our

01:25:23.040 | people if it did.

01:25:24.040 | Yeah, in the way you describe eloquently, the immigration system is broken in that way

01:25:29.040 | that it's built fundamentally on lies, but there's the other side of it.

01:25:35.760 | Illegal immigrants are used in political campaigns for fear-mongering, for example.

01:25:40.960 | So what I would like to understand is what is the actual harm that illegal immigrants

01:25:48.560 | are causing?

01:25:49.560 | So one of the more intense claims is of crime, and I haven't studied this rigorously, but

01:26:00.520 | sort of the surface-level studies all show that legal and illegal immigrants commit less

01:26:06.320 | crime than U.S. citizens.

01:26:08.440 | I think that is true for legal immigrants.

01:26:10.400 | I think it's not true for illegal immigrants.

01:26:12.400 | That's not what I saw.

01:26:13.400 | And sort of in this part of why I wrote this book, OK, and I mean, the book is called Truths,

01:26:20.280 | so I better darn well have well-sourced facts in here, right?

01:26:23.280 | Can't be made-up hypotheses, hard truths.

01:26:26.400 | And there's a chapter where even in my own research on it, Lex, I mean, I know a lot

01:26:31.000 | about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate, but even in writing the chapter

01:26:34.460 | on the border here, I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions, and some of which

01:26:39.880 | even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, OK?

01:26:45.800 | My main thesis in that chapter is forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants

01:26:50.760 | or whatever, as you put it, right, fearmongering, just put all that to one side.

01:26:55.940 | I want an immigration system that is built on honesty.

01:27:02.520 | Identify what the objective is.

01:27:04.220 | We could debate the objectives.

01:27:05.220 | We might have different opinions on the objectives.

01:27:07.540 | Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States.

01:27:10.480 | I make that, I air that argument in this book.

01:27:13.780 | And I think that that's insufficient, personally.

01:27:16.600 | Personally, I think you need, the United States is more than just an economic zone.

01:27:20.900 | It is a country, it is a nation bound together by civic ideals.

01:27:24.880 | I think we need to screen not just for immigrants who are going to make economic contributions,

01:27:28.480 | but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate, and those who share

01:27:32.280 | those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who's

01:27:36.200 | here.

01:27:37.200 | That's what I believe.

01:27:38.240 | But even if you disagree with me and say, no, no, no, the sole goal is economic production

01:27:42.040 | in the United States, then at least have an immigration system that's honest about that

01:27:47.360 | rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded

01:27:53.120 | for being a refugee.

01:27:54.440 | We should reward the people in that model, which is, I don't even think should be the

01:27:57.320 | whole model, but even if that were your model, reward the people who are demonstrated, have

01:28:01.520 | demonstrably proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the

01:28:07.180 | people who have demonstrated that they're willing to lie to achieve a goal.

01:28:11.200 | And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, there's

01:28:15.800 | one parameter that it rewards over any other.

01:28:18.360 | It isn't civic allegiance to the United States.

01:28:20.400 | It isn't fluency in English.

01:28:21.880 | It isn't the ability to make an economic contribution to this country.

01:28:24.820 | The number one attribute, human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether

01:28:30.360 | or not you are willing to lie.

01:28:32.760 | And the people who are telling those lies about whether they're seeking asylum or not

01:28:37.340 | are the ones who are most likely to get in, and the people who are most unwilling to tell

01:28:41.340 | those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.

01:28:43.960 | That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system.

01:28:49.780 | And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you're going to face bodily

01:28:54.900 | harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain

01:29:00.140 | other factors.

01:29:01.500 | And so when you come into the country, you're asked, "Do you fulfill that criteria or not?"

01:29:05.280 | And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes.

01:29:09.360 | So that means just systematically, imagine if you're a university, Harvard or Yale or

01:29:12.920 | whatever, you're running your admissions process.

01:29:15.480 | The number one attribute you're selecting for isn't your SAT score, isn't your GPA,

01:29:19.360 | isn't your athletic accomplishments, it's whether or not you're willing to lie on the

01:29:22.960 | application.

01:29:23.960 | You're going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds.

01:29:29.200 | That's exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America,

01:29:32.680 | is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie.

01:29:35.420 | Let's say you have somebody who's a person of integrity, says, "Okay, I want a better

01:29:37.760 | life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I'm not going to lie or break the

01:29:40.780 | law to do it."

01:29:42.200 | That person is infinitely less likely to get into the United States.

01:29:48.260 | I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion.

01:29:53.760 | It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system

01:29:57.800 | is selecting for.

01:29:59.520 | I want an immigration system centered on honesty.

01:30:01.760 | In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are

01:30:05.840 | in the first place.

01:30:07.200 | And there we have competing visions on the right.

01:30:09.680 | Amongst conservatives, there's a rift.

01:30:11.080 | Some conservatives believe, I respect them for their honesty, I disagree with them, believe

01:30:15.440 | that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from

01:30:20.560 | the effects of foreign wage competition.

01:30:22.480 | That if we have immigrants, it's going to bring down prices, and we need to protect

01:30:25.800 | American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages.

01:30:30.520 | It's a goal.

01:30:31.520 | It's a coherent goal.

01:30:32.520 | I don't think it's the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that's

01:30:35.280 | a goal.

01:30:36.280 | But at least it's honest, and then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve

01:30:39.000 | that goal if that's their goal.

01:30:40.840 | I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth.

01:30:45.120 | Nothing else matters.

01:30:46.120 | I disagree with that as well.

01:30:47.460 | My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of

01:30:52.880 | America.

01:30:53.880 | And that includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those

01:30:57.600 | ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one

01:31:01.680 | of our ideals as well.

01:31:03.440 | But whatever it is, we can have that debate.

01:31:06.000 | I have a very different view.

01:31:07.000 | I don't think it's a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy,

01:31:10.480 | because the United States of America is founded on excellence.

01:31:12.680 | We should be able to compete.

01:31:14.060 | But that's a policy debate we can have.

01:31:15.600 | But right now, we're not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration

01:31:18.800 | policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie, and that's what

01:31:24.200 | I want to see change.

01:31:25.200 | - Just to linger a little bit on the demonization and to bring Ann Coulter into the picture,

01:31:32.880 | which I recommend people should listen to your conversation with her.

01:31:38.800 | I haven't listened to her much, but she had this thing where she clearly admires and respects

01:31:44.520 | you as a human being, and she's basically saying you're one of the good ones.

01:31:50.280 | And this idea that you had this brilliant question of what does it mean to be an American.

01:31:56.240 | And she basically said, "Not you, Vivek."

01:32:01.160 | But she said, "Well, maybe you, but not people like you."

01:32:05.920 | So that whole kind of approach to immigration, I think, is really anti-meritocratic, fundamental.

01:32:12.640 | - And maybe even anti-American.

01:32:14.840 | - Anti-American, yeah.

01:32:15.840 | - So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right.

01:32:20.360 | The reason I'm not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it's a much

01:32:23.480 | more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate

01:32:27.760 | it, a view that the blood and soil is what makes for your American identity, your genetic

01:32:34.280 | lineage.

01:32:35.280 | And I just reject that view.

01:32:36.280 | I think it's anti-American.

01:32:37.280 | I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your unabiding allegiance

01:32:44.020 | to the founding ideals of this country, and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those

01:32:48.200 | ideals.

01:32:49.480 | So those are two different views.

01:32:50.560 | I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we're not a

01:32:55.560 | creedal nation, that our nation is not about a creed.

01:32:59.460 | It's about a physical place and a physical homeland.

01:33:03.680 | I think that view fails on several accounts.

01:33:07.600 | Obviously we're a nation, every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines

01:33:11.240 | as its own.

01:33:12.240 | So obviously we are, among other things, a geographic space.

01:33:14.680 | But the essence of the United States of America I think is the common creed, the ideals that

01:33:19.920 | hold that common nation together.

01:33:23.240 | Without that, a few things happen.

01:33:25.100 | First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible, and I'll tell you why.

01:33:31.120 | Every other nation is also built on the same idea.

01:33:34.120 | Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments, genetic stock of Italy

01:33:39.080 | or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case, because

01:33:43.080 | they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was.

01:33:47.440 | The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States.

01:33:52.240 | So that's the first reason, American exceptionalism becomes impossible.

01:33:55.480 | The second is there's all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge.

01:33:58.960 | If your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you've been here, well then

01:34:04.320 | the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who

01:34:09.920 | came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards.

01:34:14.280 | Now maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, no, it's not quite the Native Americans,

01:34:17.360 | you only have to start at this point and end at this point.

01:34:20.040 | So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be, okay, you couldn't have come

01:34:23.100 | before a certain year, then it doesn't count.

01:34:25.680 | But if you came after a certain year, it doesn't count either.

01:34:27.800 | It just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually

01:34:31.720 | is versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance

01:34:37.320 | to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the US constitution.

01:34:43.560 | And it's been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, "People will

01:34:47.240 | not die for a set of ideals.

01:34:51.440 | People won't fight for abstractions or abstract ideals."

01:34:54.440 | I actually disagree with that.

01:34:56.520 | The American revolution basically disproves that.

01:34:58.680 | The American revolution was fought for anything over abstract ideals that said that, you know

01:35:04.480 | what, we believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion.

01:35:08.680 | That's what we believe in the United States, which was different from old world England.

01:35:11.400 | So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right.

01:35:14.640 | And do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this?

01:35:18.160 | Absolutely.

01:35:19.160 | And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me?

01:35:21.720 | Absolutely.

01:35:22.720 | I believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that

01:35:28.480 | many on the right believe, but haven't quite articulated in the way that she has.

01:35:33.280 | And I think we need to have that debate in the open.

01:35:35.080 | Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this, but

01:35:38.920 | I think it's become a very popular counter narrative in the other direction to say that,

01:35:43.600 | you know, your vision of American identity is tied, is far more physical in nature.

01:35:47.720 | And to me, I think it is still ideals based in nature.

01:35:50.920 | And I think that that's a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative

01:35:54.980 | movement.

01:35:55.980 | And I think it's going to be a defining feature of, you know, what direction the conservative

01:36:00.560 | movement goes in the future.

01:36:02.520 | Quick pause.

01:36:03.520 | Bathroom break.

01:36:04.520 | Yeah.

01:36:05.520 | Let me ask you to, again, steel man the case for and against Trump.

01:36:10.120 | So my biggest criticism for him is the fake election scheme, the 2020 election, and actually

01:36:16.960 | the 2020 election in the way you formulated in the nation of victims, is just the entirety

01:36:22.480 | of that process instead of focusing on winning, doing a lot of whining.

01:36:29.200 | I like people that win, not whine, even when the refs are biased in whatever direction.

01:36:36.240 | So look, I think the United States of America, I preach this to the left, I preach it to

01:36:40.240 | my kids.

01:36:41.240 | We got to accept it on our own side too.

01:36:44.560 | We're not going to save this country by being victims.

01:36:46.200 | We're going to save this country by being victorious.

01:36:48.320 | Okay.

01:36:49.320 | And I don't care whether it's left-wing victimhood, right-wing victimhood.

01:36:51.360 | I'm against victimhood culture.

01:36:53.440 | The number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life is you.

01:36:59.120 | I believe that's not the only factor that matters.

01:37:01.260 | There's a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed.

01:37:03.440 | Life is not fair, but I tell my kids the same thing.

01:37:06.200 | The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal

01:37:09.360 | is you.

01:37:10.360 | If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I'm going to preach that to our

01:37:13.040 | own side as well.

01:37:15.040 | Now that being said, that's just a philosophy, okay?

01:37:17.440 | That's a personal philosophy.

01:37:19.160 | You asked me to do something different and I'm always a fan.

01:37:22.080 | One of the things, the standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book

01:37:25.400 | as well as I try to do that in this book is to give the best possible argument for the

01:37:28.920 | other side.

01:37:29.920 | You don't want to give some rinky-dink argument for the other side and knock it down.

01:37:32.480 | You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own

01:37:37.640 | view or else you don't understand your own.

01:37:39.280 | So you asked me, what's the strongest case against Donald Trump?

01:37:43.880 | Well, I ran for US president against Donald Trump.

01:37:47.200 | So I'm going to give you what my perspective is.

01:37:49.280 | I think it's nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat

01:37:54.160 | to democracy.

01:37:55.160 | I think all of that's actually nonsense.

01:37:56.720 | I actually think it is if you were making that case, you know, and I'm here's my full

01:38:03.320 | support as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are

01:38:07.880 | of the next generation, they're asking a question about how are you going to understand the

01:38:13.240 | position that I'm in as a member of a new generation, the same criticism they had of

01:38:16.680 | Biden, they could say, oh, well, are you too old?

01:38:19.680 | Are you from a different generation that's too far removed from my generation's concerns?

01:38:23.960 | And I think that that's in many ways a factor that weighs on that was weighing on both Trump

01:38:28.720 | and Biden.

01:38:29.720 | But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more

01:38:34.200 | on the table for Donald Trump.

01:38:36.160 | So you're asking me to steel man it.

01:38:37.440 | That's what I would say is that when I look at what's the number one issue that I would

01:38:41.360 | need to persuade independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right

01:38:44.980 | choices, even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership.

01:38:49.960 | Here is somebody who is, you know, one of the older presidents we will have had who

01:38:53.520 | was elected.

01:38:54.520 | How do we convince those people to vote for him?

01:38:56.160 | That's what I would give you in that category.

01:38:57.560 | Right.

01:38:58.560 | But I get it.

01:39:00.040 | And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump.

01:39:02.520 | So I get when you're running for president that you would say that kind of thing.

01:39:06.640 | But there's, you know, there's other criticism you could provide.

01:39:09.840 | And again, in the 2020 election, let me ask you, I mean, you spoke to Donald Trump recently.

01:39:14.720 | What's your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump?

01:39:19.120 | And let me see if I can address that 2020 election and not in the.

01:39:25.240 | What is it?

01:39:26.240 | It's a yes kind of objection.

01:39:28.280 | It's just I don't think there's clear, definitive evidence that there was voter fraud.

01:39:37.200 | Let me ask you about it.

01:39:38.200 | Hold on a second.

01:39:39.200 | Hold on a second.

01:39:40.200 | Hold on a second.

01:39:41.200 | I think there's a lot of interesting topics about the influence of media, of tech and

01:39:45.840 | so on.

01:39:46.840 | But I want a president that has a good, clear relationship with the truth and knows what

01:39:52.960 | truth is, what is true and what is not true.

01:39:56.640 | And moreover, I want a person who doesn't play victim, like you said, who focuses on

01:40:03.800 | winning and winning big.

01:40:05.840 | And if they lose, like walk away with honor and win bigger next time, or like channel

01:40:12.880 | that into growth and winning, winning in some other direction.

01:40:18.120 | So just like the strength of being able to give everything you got to win and walk away

01:40:23.320 | with honor if you lose.

01:40:25.000 | And everything that happened around 2020 election, it just goes against that to me.

01:40:31.640 | So I'll respond to that.

01:40:33.000 | Sure.

01:40:34.000 | Obviously, I'm not the candidate, but I'm going to give you my perspective nonetheless.

01:40:38.240 | I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience

01:40:44.280 | of the 2020 election.

01:40:45.280 | And you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail.

01:40:46.920 | I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you.

01:40:49.720 | I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term.

01:40:55.240 | So I thought that was the most interesting part of what you just said is you're looking

01:40:58.680 | for somebody who has growth from their own experiences.

01:41:03.120 | Say what you will.

01:41:04.120 | I have seen personally, I believe some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for

01:41:09.880 | what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn't

01:41:14.080 | able to, for one reason or another, you know, covid, you could put a lot of different things

01:41:18.160 | on it.

01:41:19.160 | But in that first term.

01:41:20.160 | Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually, like, really do

01:41:25.400 | matter.

01:41:26.400 | I don't think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without

01:41:31.120 | looking at it holistically.

01:41:34.240 | On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic, bureaucratically and

01:41:41.280 | government aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information

01:41:46.560 | released on the eve of that election, the Hunter Biden laptop story revealing potentially

01:41:51.520 | a compromised U.S. presidential candidate.

01:41:53.960 | His family was compromised by foreign interests and it was suppressed as misinformation by

01:42:00.260 | every major tech company.

01:42:02.080 | The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time.

01:42:06.360 | And we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually

01:42:10.640 | made at behest of U.S. bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies

01:42:16.520 | to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence.

01:42:19.040 | I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that's happened in the history of our

01:42:22.680 | country, actually, is the way in which government actors who were never elected to the government

01:42:29.440 | used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that based on polling

01:42:36.340 | afterwards likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

01:42:41.560 | That was election interference of the highest order.

01:42:44.460 | So I think that that's just a hard fact that we have to contend with.

01:42:46.600 | And I think a lot of what you've heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election,

01:42:50.960 | whatever those complaints have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology

01:42:55.640 | companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the

01:43:00.200 | outcome.

01:43:01.200 | I personally believe the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored.

01:43:05.160 | I think Donald Trump would have been unambiguous.

01:43:07.040 | I think the president is right now would be Donald Trump, no doubt about it.

01:43:10.560 | In my mind, if you look at polling before and after the impact that would have had on

01:43:13.820 | the independent voter.

01:43:16.080 | Now you look at, OK, let's talk about constructive solutions, because I care about moving the

01:43:20.300 | country forward.

01:43:21.300 | What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity?

01:43:26.560 | Here's one single day voting on Election Day as a national holiday with paper ballots and

01:43:34.480 | government issued voter ID to match the voter file.

01:43:37.920 | I favor that we do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States.

01:43:42.640 | Why not do that everywhere in the United States?

01:43:44.240 | And I'll make a pledge.

01:43:45.240 | I'll do it right here.

01:43:46.240 | Right.

01:43:47.240 | My pledge is.

01:43:48.680 | As a leader in our movement, I will do.

01:43:53.760 | Everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections.

01:43:59.240 | If we get to that simple place of basic election security measures, I think it'd be unifying

01:44:05.480 | to make Election Day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose.

01:44:08.840 | One day, single day voting on Election Day as a national holiday with paper ballots and

01:44:13.400 | government issued voter ID to match the voter file.

01:44:16.680 | Let's get there as a country and you have my word.

01:44:19.260 | I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about

01:44:24.840 | stolen elections and fake ballots.

01:44:28.280 | And I think that fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very

01:44:33.280 | practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal.

01:44:37.000 | I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism,

01:44:44.440 | understandable skepticism of what else is actually going on, if not if not that, what

01:44:51.120 | exactly is going on here?

01:44:52.640 | Well, I think I agree with a lot of things you said.

01:44:57.200 | Obviously disagree, but it's hard to disagree with a Hunter Biden laptop story, whether

01:45:02.840 | that would have changed the results of the election.

01:45:05.280 | We can't know, obviously.

01:45:06.280 | I looked at some post-election polling about the views that that would have had and I can't

01:45:10.520 | prove that to you, but that's my instinct.

01:45:11.920 | It's my opinion.

01:45:12.920 | I think there's probably, that's just one example, maybe a sexy example of a bias in

01:45:20.920 | the complex of the media, and there's bias in the other direction too, but probably there's

01:45:26.600 | bias.

01:45:27.960 | It's hard to characterize.

01:45:28.960 | Let me ask you one question about because there's bias is one thing, bias in reporting.

01:45:33.040 | Censorship is another.

01:45:34.680 | So I would, I would be open-minded to hearing an instance of, and if I did hear it, I would

01:45:40.080 | condemn it, of the government systematically ordering tech companies to suppress information

01:45:51.240 | that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans.

01:45:55.760 | If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology

01:46:00.600 | companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would have had to advantage

01:46:07.120 | Republicans at the ballot box, to censor it, I would be against that.

01:46:11.080 | And I will condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden

01:46:15.000 | laptop story, suppression and censorship of the origin of COVID-19.

01:46:19.600 | All happened in 2020.

01:46:20.600 | These are hard facts.

01:46:22.680 | I'm not aware of one instance.

01:46:23.840 | If you are aware of one, let me know, cause I would condemn it.

01:46:27.840 | Most people in tech companies are privately, their political persuasion is on the left

01:46:33.840 | and most journalists, majority of journalists are on the left.

01:46:39.640 | But to characterize the actual reporting and the impact of the reporting in the media and

01:46:46.160 | the impact of the censorship is difficult to do.

01:46:50.080 | But that's a real problem, just like we talked about a real problem in immigration, but there's

01:46:54.440 | two different problems.

01:46:55.440 | I just want to sort them out.

01:46:56.440 | Right.

01:46:57.440 | Cause I have a problem with both.

01:46:58.440 | You talked about two issues.

01:46:59.440 | I think both are important, but they're different issues.

01:47:01.320 | One is bias in reporting.

01:47:04.080 | One is censorship of information.

01:47:07.200 | So bias in reporting.

01:47:08.200 | I felt certainly the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that

01:47:13.480 | it was conducted, but that's a different issue from saying that voters don't get access to

01:47:21.560 | information through any source.

01:47:23.760 | So this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign

01:47:27.640 | interference in potentially the Biden administration, their families, incentive structure.

01:47:34.440 | That story was systematically suppressed.

01:47:37.840 | So in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through

01:47:41.120 | any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed

01:47:48.200 | or downplayed algorithmically, that you couldn't see it even on Twitter.

01:47:52.860 | If you tried to send it via direct message, that's the equivalent of email, right?

01:47:57.040 | Sending a peer to peer message.

01:47:59.000 | They blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages.

01:48:03.600 | That I think is a different level of concern.

01:48:05.880 | That's not bias at that point.

01:48:08.320 | That's outright interference in whether or not, you know, that's outright interference

01:48:12.400 | in the election.

01:48:13.400 | Let's do a thought experiment here.

01:48:15.120 | Let's suppose that Russia orchestrated that.

01:48:18.800 | What would the backlash be?

01:48:19.800 | Let's say the Russian government orchestrated the U.S. election was they interfered in it

01:48:25.320 | by saying that tech companies, they worked with them covertly to stop U.S. citizens from

01:48:29.960 | being able to see information on the eve of an election.

01:48:32.600 | There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that.

01:48:37.320 | Well, if actors in the U.S. government bureaucracy or the U.S. technology industry bureaucracy

01:48:42.480 | orchestrated the same thing, then we can't apply a different standard to say that if

01:48:46.560 | Russia did it, it's really bad and interfered in our election.

01:48:50.260 | But if it happened right here in the United States of America, and by the way, they blame

01:48:52.840 | Russia for it falsely on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story, that was

01:48:57.240 | false claim.

01:48:58.740 | We have to apply the same standard in both cases.

01:49:01.160 | And so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would have been an outcry,

01:49:04.640 | but now it happened domestically, and we just call that, hey, it's a little bit of bias

01:49:07.200 | ahead of an election.

01:49:08.400 | I don't think that that's a fair characterization of how important that event was.

01:49:12.040 | Okay.

01:49:13.040 | So the connection of government to platform is a real that should not exist.

01:49:19.720 | Government FBI or anybody else should not be able to pressure platforms to censor information.

01:49:24.760 | Yes.

01:49:25.760 | We could talk about Paula Durov and the censorship there.

01:49:28.840 | There should not be any censorship and there's not should not be media bias.

01:49:33.840 | And you're right to complain if there is media bias and we can lay it out in the open and

01:49:39.040 | try to fix that system.

01:49:40.760 | That said, the voter fraud thing, you can't right a wrong by doing another wrong.

01:49:47.640 | You can't just, if there's some shitty, shady stuff going on in the media and the censorship

01:49:52.120 | complex, you can't just make shit up.

01:49:54.880 | You can't do the fake, fake elector scheme and then do a lot of shady, crappy behavior

01:50:00.800 | during January 6th and try to like shortcut your way just because your friend is cheating

01:50:06.600 | a monopoly when you're playing Monopoly.

01:50:09.160 | You can't cheat.

01:50:10.160 | You shouldn't cheat yourself.

01:50:11.160 | You should be honest and like with honor and use your platform to help fix the system versus

01:50:19.240 | like cheat your way.

01:50:21.360 | So here's my view is, has any US politician ever been perfect throughout the course of

01:50:27.000 | American history?

01:50:28.000 | No.

01:50:29.000 | But do you want to, if we want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020,

01:50:33.760 | the mindset of the country, we had a year where people in this country were systematically

01:50:38.080 | locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they're told, unless they're BLM or Antifa

01:50:43.080 | rioters, in which case it's perfectly fine for them to burn cities down.

01:50:46.200 | We were told that we're going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were

01:50:49.760 | denied information systematically heading into that election, which is really important.

01:50:54.880 | And in this case, damning information about one of the parties.

01:50:57.960 | And then you tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply.

01:51:03.400 | That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America.

01:51:08.680 | And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good.

01:51:13.680 | History teaches us that.

01:51:14.680 | It's not good in the United States.

01:51:16.280 | It's not good at other points in the history of the United States.

01:51:18.820 | The reaction to systematic coordinated censorship and restraints on the freedom of a free people

01:51:24.260 | is never good.

01:51:25.600 | And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom

01:51:29.760 | of it rather than, you know, figuring out who to point fingers at.

01:51:33.080 | That really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020, is it was a year

01:51:40.240 | of unjust policies, including covid-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election

01:51:47.600 | that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable.

01:51:52.520 | Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible?

01:51:59.780 | And to your question, you know, to the independent voter out there evaluating, as you are, do

01:52:04.960 | I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his

01:52:09.640 | first term and what he hopes to achieve in a second term?

01:52:11.960 | I think the answer is absolutely yes.

01:52:14.000 | And so even if you don't agree with everything that he's said or done in the choice ahead

01:52:18.920 | of us in this election, I still believe he's unambiguously the best choice to revive that

01:52:24.160 | sense of national pride and also prosperity in our country.

01:52:29.740 | So people aren't in the condition where they're suffering at behest of government policies

01:52:33.960 | that leave them angry and channel that anger in other unproductive ways.

01:52:37.880 | No, the best way to do it is actually actions do speak louder than words, implement the

01:52:42.460 | policies that make people's lives better.

01:52:44.720 | And I do think that that's the next step of how we best save the country.

01:52:47.440 | Are you worried if in this election, it's a close election and Donald Trump loses by

01:52:54.960 | a whisker, that there's chaos that's unleashed and how do we minimize the chance of that?

01:53:02.000 | I mean, I don't think that that's a concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald

01:53:07.400 | Trump winning it or losing it by a whisker.

01:53:10.860 | I think this is a man who in the last couple of months, in a span of two months, has faced

01:53:18.460 | two assassination attempts.

01:53:19.460 | And we're not talking about theoretical attempts, we're talking about like gunshots fired.

01:53:24.900 | That is history changing in the context of American history.

01:53:28.220 | We haven't seen that in a generation.

01:53:30.460 | And yet now that has become normalized in the US.

01:53:32.800 | So do I worry we're skating on thin ice as a country?

01:53:35.580 | I do.

01:53:36.580 | I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over our concerns or national or media concerns

01:53:44.520 | over Donald Trump, when in fact, he's the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants

01:53:51.580 | who reportedly are saying exactly the kinds of things about him that you hear from the

01:53:56.580 | Democratic machine.

01:53:58.660 | And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their

01:54:05.180 | core case against Donald Trump.

01:54:06.700 | It was Joe Biden's entire message for years that he's a threat to democracy and to the

01:54:11.140 | existence of America.

01:54:12.380 | Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live

01:54:16.620 | in as a country, I don't think that's good for a nation.

01:54:19.820 | And so do I have concerns about the future of the country?

01:54:23.020 | Do I think we're skating on thin ice?

01:54:25.020 | Absolutely.

01:54:26.020 | And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election win

01:54:30.980 | by a landslide.

01:54:31.980 | I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country,

01:54:36.180 | like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984.

01:54:40.460 | And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans is still going to be

01:54:43.620 | a victory.

01:54:44.980 | That I think is how we unite this country.

01:54:46.620 | And so I don't think, you know, 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six

01:54:54.460 | days after the election, I don't think that's going to be good for the country.

01:54:57.140 | I think a decisive victory that unites the country, turns the page on a lot of the challenges

01:55:02.820 | of the last four years and says, OK, this is where we're going.

01:55:05.700 | This is who we are and what we stand for.

01:55:07.820 | This is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the United States,

01:55:12.500 | regardless of whether you're a Democrat or Republican.

01:55:14.720 | That I think is achievable in this election, too.

01:55:17.500 | And that's what the outcome I'm rooting for.

01:55:19.780 | So just to pile on, since we're steelmanning the criticism against Trump is the rhetoric.

01:55:27.380 | I wish there was less of, although at times it is so ridiculous, it is entertaining.

01:55:34.640 | The I hate Taylor Swift type of tweets or truths or whatever, I.

01:55:41.380 | I don't think that he's a funny guy.

01:55:42.960 | I mean, the reality is different people have different attributes.

01:55:46.300 | One of the attributes for Donald Trump is he's one of the funnier presidents we've had

01:55:51.420 | in a long time.

01:55:52.420 | That might not be everybody's cup of tea.

01:55:53.420 | Maybe it's different.

01:55:54.420 | People don't want that's not a quality they value in their president.

01:55:57.000 | I think at a moment where you're also able to make it, I will say this much is everybody's

01:56:02.400 | got different styles.

01:56:03.400 | Donald Trump's style is different from mine.

01:56:05.860 | But I do think that if we're able to use levity in a moment of national division in some ways,

01:56:11.620 | I think right now is probably a role where really good standup comedians could probably

01:56:15.580 | do a big service to the country if they're able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees.

01:56:19.860 | So they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted

01:56:23.540 | and manner that loves the country.

01:56:25.460 | Do the same thing to Kamala Harris and with an equal standard.

01:56:28.020 | I think that's actually good for the country.

01:56:30.300 | But you know, I think I'm I'm more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future

01:56:33.980 | direction of the country.

01:56:35.200 | My own views.

01:56:36.200 | I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting

01:56:39.700 | him now.

01:56:40.700 | But I I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate is going to

01:56:47.220 | achieve for the country rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either

01:56:51.380 | one.

01:56:52.380 | Right.

01:56:53.380 | I'm not criticizing Kamala Harris's manner of laugh or whatever, you know, one might

01:56:56.020 | criticize as like a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere.

01:57:00.180 | And I just think our country is better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but

01:57:05.980 | also who's going to be more likely to revive the country.

01:57:08.400 | That I think is a healthy debate headed to an election.

01:57:10.720 | I think everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable

01:57:16.180 | to some people makes them irritating to others.

01:57:18.640 | I think that that matters less heading into an election.

01:57:22.300 | I love that you do that.

01:57:24.080 | I love the focus on policy and can speak for hours on policy.

01:57:28.140 | Let's look at foreign policy.

01:57:29.720 | Sure.

01:57:30.720 | What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine?

01:57:37.160 | If you sat down, you became president.

01:57:42.160 | If you sat down with Zelensky and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible

01:57:45.520 | to talk to them about?

01:57:46.840 | One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates

01:57:52.800 | in the primary, but anyway, is how you grilled the other candidates that didn't know any

01:57:58.920 | regions.

01:57:59.920 | They wanted to send money and troops and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of

01:58:07.080 | people and they didn't know any of the regions in Ukraine.

01:58:09.800 | Yeah.

01:58:10.800 | You had a lot of zingers in that one, but anyway, how do you think about negotiating

01:58:15.480 | with world leaders about what's going on there?

01:58:17.520 | Yeah.

01:58:18.520 | So look, I think that let's just get the self-interest of each party on the table and to be very

01:58:23.000 | transparent about it.

01:58:24.360 | From everyone's perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor or whatever.

01:58:29.040 | Just get it on the table.

01:58:31.640 | Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western

01:58:39.480 | Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to.

01:58:43.400 | And frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand, it's an uncomfortable

01:58:47.720 | fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in

01:58:52.160 | the early '90s where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany.

01:58:55.560 | Well, NATO's expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence

01:58:59.360 | of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with.

01:59:03.800 | That's the Russian perspective.

01:59:05.780 | From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict

01:59:09.840 | crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms,

01:59:15.920 | and it's a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders

01:59:19.280 | are not a nation.

01:59:20.280 | And so against that backdrop, what's the actual interest of each country here?

01:59:24.420 | I think if we're able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs

01:59:30.880 | about what they might allege is NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified

01:59:37.020 | commitments for Russia that we're not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly

01:59:41.180 | deciding they're going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances

01:59:45.580 | and consequences for that, that's the beginnings of a deal.

01:59:49.100 | But then I want to be ambitious for the United States.

01:59:51.800 | I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires,

01:59:56.800 | that gives some real gives to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military

02:00:04.680 | alliance with China.

02:00:06.780 | And this could be good for Russia too in the long run, because right now Vladimir Putin

02:00:09.900 | does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little brother in that relationship.

02:00:13.860 | But Russia's military combined with China's naval capacity and Russia's hypersonic missiles

02:00:19.400 | and China's economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat

02:00:23.860 | to the United States.

02:00:25.380 | But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given

02:00:30.500 | what's occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from

02:00:36.020 | the Western hemisphere, people forget this.

02:00:38.620 | Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don't want a Russian military presence in the Western

02:00:42.860 | hemisphere.

02:00:43.860 | That too would be a win for the United States.

02:00:45.540 | No more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.

02:00:50.160 | The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West's security, get Russia

02:00:54.160 | out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then

02:00:58.400 | also make sure that Russia's no longer in that military alliance with China.

02:01:02.880 | In return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia,

02:01:06.640 | we'd have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would

02:01:10.680 | be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution, and what the guarantees are

02:01:14.460 | to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States

02:01:18.080 | has at least historically guaranteed.

02:01:20.880 | That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they're looking

02:01:26.520 | for that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability.

02:01:30.960 | And most importantly, weakening the Russia China alliance, which I think is the actual

02:01:35.160 | threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding

02:01:40.240 | has really failed to confront.

02:01:42.880 | That I think is the way we deescalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats

02:01:48.020 | to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.

02:01:50.860 | So from an American perspective, the main interest is weakening the alliance between

02:01:56.900 | Russia and China.

02:01:57.900 | Yes.

02:01:58.900 | I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat

02:02:02.460 | we face.

02:02:03.460 | So do a deal that's very reasonable across the board.

02:02:08.020 | But one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance so no joint military

02:02:12.580 | exercises, no military collaborations, these are monitorable.

02:02:16.260 | These are monitorable attributes.

02:02:17.460 | If there's cheating on that, we're going to immediately have consequences as a consequence

02:02:21.340 | of their cheating.

02:02:22.980 | But we can't cheat on our own obligations that we would make in the context of that

02:02:26.920 | deal as well.

02:02:27.920 | There might be some extremely painful things for Ukraine here.

02:02:32.300 | So Ukraine currently captured a small region in Russia, the Kursk region, but Russia has

02:02:37.340 | captured giant chunks, Donetsk, Luhansk, Siberian, Kherson regions.

02:02:42.940 | So it seems given what you're laying out, it's very unlikely for Russia to give up any

02:02:47.620 | of the regions that's already captured.

02:02:49.180 | I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation.

02:02:53.540 | But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China

02:02:57.280 | alliance.

02:02:58.280 | And for Russia, what did they get out of it?

02:02:59.620 | Part of this is here's something that's not negative for Ukraine, but that could be positive

02:03:03.420 | for Russia as part of that deal, right?

02:03:05.220 | Because it's not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this.

02:03:09.340 | I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but

02:03:14.100 | also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China.

02:03:18.500 | So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been at the very least unimaginative

02:03:24.620 | about the levers that we're able to use.

02:03:26.700 | Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution

02:03:31.980 | to the overgrowth of the US entitlement state and regulatory state.

02:03:35.340 | But I'll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of

02:03:39.180 | being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR.

02:03:44.940 | He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to

02:03:48.820 | the near end of the Cold War.

02:03:50.020 | So I think there's an opportunity for a similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater

02:03:55.260 | reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today.

02:04:00.500 | There's no skin off Ukraine's back for that, and I do think that's a big carrot for Russia

02:04:03.900 | in this direction.

02:04:05.100 | I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well, that out

02:04:10.580 | of any good deal, not everyone's going to like 100% of what comes out of it.

02:04:14.300 | But that's part of the cost of securing peace, is that not everyone's going to be happy about

02:04:17.820 | every attribute.

02:04:18.820 | But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interests

02:04:23.740 | of Ukraine.

02:04:24.740 | Let's just rewind the clock.

02:04:26.780 | We're looking at now, let's just say we're early 2022, maybe June of 2022.

02:04:31.660 | Zelensky was ready to come to the table for a deal back then, until Boris Johnson traveled

02:04:37.280 | when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelensky to continue to fight.

02:04:42.020 | And that goes to the point where when nations aren't asked to pay for their own national

02:04:45.300 | security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard of taking risks that really are

02:04:50.660 | suboptimal risks for them to take, because they're not bearing the consequences of taking

02:04:54.500 | those risks, not fully in the cost.

02:04:57.680 | If Ukraine had done a deal back then, I think it is unambiguous that they would have done

02:05:03.020 | a better deal for themselves than they're doing now after having spent hundreds of billions

02:05:08.940 | of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.

02:05:14.580 | So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before

02:05:19.160 | is a lie.

02:05:20.420 | And if we're not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we're doomed

02:05:23.620 | to repeat them again.

02:05:25.480 | So this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know, it's been painful.

02:05:30.020 | Tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage

02:05:34.880 | in actually getting the outcome that they want.

02:05:36.900 | So I think there's an opportunity for a win-win-win, a win for the United States and the West more

02:05:41.180 | broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance, a win for Ukraine in having an agreement that

02:05:46.420 | is backstopped by the United States of America's interests that provides a greater degree of

02:05:51.180 | long run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping

02:05:56.020 | the bloodshed today.

02:05:57.620 | And I think a win for Russia, which is to reopen economic relations with the West and

02:06:01.840 | have certain guarantees about what the mission creep or scope creep of NATO will be.

02:06:07.700 | There's no rule that says that when one party before before a full outright world war starts,

02:06:12.860 | at least there's an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the

02:06:17.020 | table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia or that anything positive

02:06:22.140 | that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.

02:06:25.500 | Just to add to the table, some things that Putin won't like, but I think are possible

02:06:29.060 | to negotiate, which is Ukraine joining the European Union and not NATO.

02:06:36.700 | So establishing some kind of economic relationships there and also splitting the bill, sort of

02:06:43.700 | guaranteeing some amount of money from both Russia and the United States for rebuilding

02:06:48.580 | Ukraine is one of the challenges in Ukraine, a war torn country, is how do you guarantee

02:06:57.400 | the flourishing of this particular nation?

02:06:59.340 | Right.

02:07:00.340 | So you want to not just stop the death of people and the destruction, but also provide

02:07:06.820 | a foundation on which you can rebuild the country and build a flourishing future country.

02:07:11.460 | I think out of this conversation alone.

02:07:14.620 | There are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions.

02:07:20.220 | And that's where you want to be.

02:07:21.220 | Right.

02:07:22.220 | If there's only one factor that matters to each of the two parties and those are their

02:07:26.100 | red line factors, then there's no room for negotiation.

02:07:29.780 | This is a this is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia

02:07:39.700 | and between NATO and the United States and the Russia, China alliance and economic interests

02:07:46.740 | that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors.

02:07:49.740 | There are a lot of levers for negotiation and the more levers there are, the more likely

02:07:53.460 | there is to be a win, win, win deal that gets done for everybody.

02:07:56.700 | So I think it should be encouraging the fact that there are as many different possible

02:08:00.120 | levers here almost make certain that a reasonable, practicable peace deal is possible.

02:08:06.840 | In contrast to a situation where there's only one thing that matters for each side, then

02:08:09.760 | I can't tell you that there's a deal to be done.

02:08:11.840 | There's definitely a deal to be done here.

02:08:13.560 | And I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not

02:08:17.160 | just with one side of this, not just with Zelensky or with Putin, but across the board,

02:08:21.720 | hardball for our own interests, which are the interests of stability here.

02:08:25.720 | And I think that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process.

02:08:30.040 | If you were president, would you call Putin?

02:08:31.800 | Absolutely.

02:08:32.800 | I mean, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you're calling somebody and when you're

02:08:35.520 | not.

02:08:36.520 | But I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever

02:08:40.560 | in the negotiation is totally fair game.

02:08:42.840 | Okay.

02:08:43.840 | Let's go to the China side of this.

02:08:47.440 | The big concern here is that the brewing, colder, God forbid, hot war between the United

02:08:55.800 | States and China in the 21st century.

02:08:58.100 | How do we avoid that?

02:08:59.100 | So a few things.

02:09:00.580 | One is, I do think the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the

02:09:07.980 | United States in the event of that type of conflict.

02:09:11.940 | Because at that point, what you're setting up for, if the consequences are existential

02:09:15.820 | for the United States, then what you're buying yourself in the context of what could be a

02:09:19.980 | small conflict is an all out great war.

02:09:22.740 | So the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United

02:09:26.760 | States and China, like a world war level conflict.

02:09:30.420 | And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the U.S. and the way

02:09:33.780 | we bring down the existential stakes for the U.S. is make sure that the United States does

02:09:38.340 | not depend on China for our modern way of life.

02:09:41.980 | Right now we do.

02:09:42.980 | Okay.

02:09:43.980 | So right now we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet,

02:09:47.340 | 95 percent of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends

02:09:51.540 | on China for its supply chain.

02:09:53.660 | We depend on China, ironically, for our own military industrial base.

02:09:59.020 | Think about how little sense that makes actually.

02:10:02.020 | Our own military, which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries,

02:10:07.260 | depends for its own supplies, semiconductors and otherwise, on our top adversary.

02:10:11.540 | That doesn't make sense.

02:10:12.900 | Even if you're a libertarian in the school of Friedrich Von Hayek, somebody I admire

02:10:16.860 | as well, even then you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your

02:10:23.380 | military.

02:10:24.380 | So I think that's the next step we need to take is at least reduce U.S. dependence on

02:10:28.060 | China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America,

02:10:34.740 | including our own military.

02:10:35.740 | As a side note, I believe that means not just onshoring to the United States, it does.

02:10:41.380 | But if we're really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with

02:10:44.820 | allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines.

02:10:48.820 | And that's an interesting debate to have because some on the right would say, okay, I want

02:10:52.420 | to decouple from China, but I also want less trade with all these other places.

02:10:55.720 | You can't have both those things at the same time.

02:10:57.260 | You can have one or the other.

02:10:58.260 | You can't have both.

02:10:59.460 | And so we have to acknowledge and be honest with ourselves that there are tradeoffs to

02:11:02.740 | declaring independence from China.

02:11:04.780 | But the question is, what are the long run benefits?

02:11:06.820 | Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity.

02:11:11.380 | I think the way that you see world wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries

02:11:18.940 | who don't really know what the other side's red line is or isn't and accidentally crosses

02:11:22.680 | those red lines.

02:11:23.680 | And so I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what

02:11:28.240 | aren't they.

02:11:29.240 | And I think that's the single most effective way to make sure this doesn't spiral into

02:11:33.080 | major world war.

02:11:34.080 | And then let's talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed

02:11:38.160 | with you before.

02:11:39.280 | I think weakening the Russia-China alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes

02:11:43.400 | an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate

02:11:47.840 | us to World War III as well.

02:11:50.080 | So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically.

02:11:53.880 | That end of the Russia-Ukraine war and that peace deal deescalates not only the Russia-Ukraine

02:11:58.320 | conflict, but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening

02:12:03.600 | China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of

02:12:07.600 | that of China's.

02:12:08.760 | If Russia's no longer in a military alliance with China, that changes China's calculus

02:12:11.840 | as well.

02:12:13.120 | So that's kind of, I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than

02:12:19.640 | we've had since certainly, you know, the Nixon era.

02:12:23.720 | I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question

02:12:28.080 | the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that

02:12:32.880 | otherwise wouldn't have gotten done.

02:12:35.440 | And that's what I do think.

02:12:36.800 | Someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider

02:12:40.280 | and a businessman as well.

02:12:41.960 | I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having

02:12:46.160 | business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional

02:12:51.840 | political manner of thinking.

02:12:53.560 | I think the thing you didn't quite make clear, but I think implied, is that we have to accept

02:12:58.320 | the red line that China provides of the one-China policy.

02:13:02.840 | Both sides need to have their red lines.

02:13:04.560 | Both sides need to have their red lines.

02:13:05.680 | So, you know, we can get into specifics, but it's going to vary depending on the circumstances.

02:13:09.840 | But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that's

02:13:14.640 | clear.

02:13:15.640 | And I think that that hard red line, I was clear during my campaign on this, I'll say

02:13:18.280 | it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should

02:13:22.240 | not for any time in the foreseeable future annex Taiwan.

02:13:26.280 | I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly

02:13:31.680 | upend the diplomatic policy we've adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one-China

02:13:38.400 | policy and our position of quiet deference to that.

02:13:42.120 | And understand that that may be their red line, is the national recognition of Taiwan

02:13:45.800 | as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have, but we would have a

02:13:49.640 | red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation by physical force

02:13:56.680 | in any time in the foreseeable future when that's against the interests of the United

02:13:59.560 | States of America.

02:14:00.560 | So, those are examples.

02:14:02.120 | But the principle here is you asked how do we avoid major conflict with China?

02:14:06.000 | I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides.

02:14:08.400 | I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we're

02:14:12.400 | not dependent on China for our modern way of life.

02:14:15.280 | And I think it also starts with, ironically, using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine

02:14:19.400 | war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of

02:14:24.280 | weakening China has significant benefits to us as well.

02:14:27.200 | But what do you do when China says very politely, "We're going to annex Taiwan whether you like

02:14:34.520 | it or not"?

02:14:35.520 | Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that's not going to happen.

02:14:38.520 | That wouldn't happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red

02:14:42.060 | lines and priorities are.

02:14:43.400 | We're also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain.

02:14:47.520 | So, China knows that's going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance.

02:14:52.000 | So, against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines, against the backdrop of Russia

02:14:56.280 | no longer automatically being in China's camp, that's a big lever.

02:14:59.880 | I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen

02:15:03.720 | those relationships like India.

02:15:05.720 | And I'm not just saying that because my name is Vivek Ramaswamy, right?

02:15:09.440 | I'm saying it because it's strategically important to the United States to understand that, God

02:15:13.400 | forbid, in a conflict scenario, China would perceive some risk to the Indian Ocean or

02:15:17.000 | the Andaman Sea, no longer being reliable for getting Middle Eastern oil supplies.

02:15:21.840 | There's a lot of levers here.

02:15:23.180 | But I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries

02:15:28.000 | about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out

02:15:32.200 | of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China

02:15:36.520 | to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies

02:15:40.080 | as it does today, and then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely

02:15:44.920 | aren't okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines too.

02:15:49.240 | That allows us, I think, to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict,

02:15:54.600 | the Thucydides trap against the circumstance of when there's a rising power against the

02:15:59.360 | backdrop of a declining power, conflict always becomes inevitable.

02:16:04.040 | That's a theory.

02:16:05.040 | It's not a law of physics.

02:16:06.040 | And I don't think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don't think that

02:16:09.760 | that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here.

02:16:13.480 | It's going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine.

02:16:17.400 | And you don't have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this.

02:16:21.960 | Four years under Trump, we didn't have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like

02:16:25.880 | Russia, Ukraine, we were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and

02:16:31.560 | Trump took over.

02:16:33.240 | Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have?

02:16:36.400 | Major conflicts in the Middle East, major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the

02:16:40.800 | results.

02:16:41.800 | And, you know, I mean, I would say that even if you're somebody who disagrees with a lot

02:16:45.260 | of Donald Trump and you don't like his style, if your single issue is you want to stay out

02:16:48.960 | of World War III, I think there's a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this

02:16:53.240 | election.

02:16:55.520 | So Prime Minister Modi, I think you've complimented him in a bunch of different directions, one

02:17:00.280 | of which is when you're discussing nationalism.

02:17:02.360 | Yeah.

02:17:03.360 | I think I believe that, you know, somebody I've gotten to know actually reasonably well,

02:17:08.240 | for example, recently is Giorgia Maloney, who is a leader of Italy, told her the same

02:17:11.320 | thing.

02:17:12.320 | One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for

02:17:17.760 | the national identity of the country and that she stands for certain values uncompromisingly.

02:17:23.080 | And she doesn't give a second care about what the media has to say about it.

02:17:26.440 | One of things I love last time I spoke to her when she was in the U.S. when we sat down

02:17:30.120 | was she talked about she doesn't even read the newspaper.

02:17:32.600 | She doesn't read and watch the media and allows her to make decisions that are best for the

02:17:36.120 | people.

02:17:37.120 | And there are elements of that in Modi's approach as well, which I respect about him is he doesn't

02:17:41.460 | apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud

02:17:46.000 | of it.

02:17:47.000 | But I'm not saying that because I'm proud of Maloney or Modi for their own countries.

02:17:52.000 | I'm American.

02:17:53.120 | I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation's identity

02:17:56.880 | rather than apologizing for it.

02:17:58.880 | And I think it's a big part of, you know, it's why I ran for president on a campaign

02:18:03.200 | centered on national pride.

02:18:04.360 | It's also why I'm not only voting for, but actively supporting Donald Trump, because

02:18:08.840 | I do think he is going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the

02:18:12.280 | United States.

02:18:13.280 | And, you know, I touch on this as well in the in the book.

02:18:16.840 | There's a chapter here.

02:18:17.880 | It says nationalism isn't a bad word.

02:18:20.720 | I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it's grounded in the actual true

02:18:26.120 | attributes of a nation.

02:18:27.520 | And in the United States, that doesn't mean ethno nationalism, because that was not what

02:18:31.800 | the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place.

02:18:35.720 | But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are.

02:18:41.240 | And I think that that is something that we've gotten uncomfortable with in the countries

02:18:46.000 | to say that, oh, I'm proud of being American and I believe in American exceptionalism.

02:18:49.120 | How that's looking down on others.

02:18:50.480 | No, not looking down on anybody, but I'm proud of my own country.

02:18:54.000 | And I think Modi's revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long

02:18:57.160 | time.

02:18:58.160 | Right.

02:18:59.160 | India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex.

02:19:01.720 | But now to be proud of its national heritage and its national myth making and its national

02:19:06.840 | legacy and history and to say that, you know, every nation does have to have a kind of myth

02:19:11.440 | making about its past and to be proud of that.

02:19:15.280 | It's like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States, he said, a nation without

02:19:20.480 | an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots.

02:19:27.040 | It's dead.

02:19:29.440 | And I think that that's true, not just for the United States, I think it's true for every

02:19:31.960 | other nation.

02:19:32.960 | I think leaders like Maloney in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that

02:19:38.320 | I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States.

02:19:42.640 | And whatever I do next, Lex, I'll tell you, this is I think reviving that sense of identity

02:19:47.880 | and pride, especially in the next generation, is one of the most important things we can

02:19:52.240 | do for this country.

02:19:54.280 | Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028?

02:19:59.240 | Well, I'm not going to rule it out.

02:20:01.120 | I mean, that's a long time from now.

02:20:02.760 | And I'm most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country.

02:20:07.160 | I ran for president.

02:20:08.560 | Million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it.

02:20:12.600 | It was very much a, you know, fire first, aim later.

02:20:16.560 | When getting into the race, there was no way I could have planned and plotted this out

02:20:19.240 | as somebody who was coming from the outside.

02:20:21.400 | I was 37 years old, came from the business world.

02:20:24.920 | So there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it.

02:20:28.200 | And I did.

02:20:30.200 | But I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race.

02:20:33.600 | And I don't think the issues have been solved.

02:20:35.600 | I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country.

02:20:39.920 | It's not just young people.

02:20:41.080 | I think it's all of us, in some ways, are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in

02:20:46.960 | our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they're missing.

02:20:52.960 | And I think we need a president who both has the right policies for the country, you know,

02:20:56.960 | seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III, end rampant crime.

02:21:01.640 | Yes, we need the right policies.

02:21:04.920 | But we also need leaders who, in a sustained way, revive our national character, revive

02:21:10.140 | our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans.

02:21:15.240 | And you know, I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for

02:21:20.520 | president.

02:21:21.520 | I don't think it's going to be automatically solved in just a few years.

02:21:23.600 | I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four

02:21:27.600 | years.

02:21:28.740 | But after that, we'll see where the country is headed into 2028.

02:21:31.960 | And whatever I do, it'll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country.

02:21:37.600 | I'll also tell you that my laser focus, maybe as distinct from other politicians on both

02:21:42.660 | sides, is to take America to the next level to move beyond our victimhood culture to restore

02:21:48.280 | our culture of excellence.

02:21:50.360 | We got to shut down that nanny state, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, the

02:21:55.120 | foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans.

02:22:00.080 | And I'm as passionate about that as ever.

02:22:02.660 | But the next step is not running for president.

02:22:05.100 | The next step is what happens in the next next four years.

02:22:09.340 | And that's why over the next four weeks, I'm focused on doing whatever I can to make sure

02:22:13.440 | we succeed in this election.

02:22:14.580 | Well, I hope you run because this was made clear on the stage in the primary debates.

02:22:22.380 | You have a unique clarity and honesty in expressing the ideas you stand for.

02:22:28.960 | And it would be nice to see that.

02:22:32.040 | I would also like to see the same thing on the other side, which would make for some

02:22:36.240 | bad ass interesting debates.

02:22:38.480 | I would love nothing more than a kick ass set of top tier Democrat candidates.

02:22:45.600 | After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who

02:22:49.920 | have real visions for the country on both sides.

02:22:53.280 | And the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult

02:22:59.200 | or injury being the way we.

02:23:00.480 | I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.

02:23:03.320 | Who do you think?

02:23:04.320 | So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it's you versus somebody like

02:23:09.640 | Tim Walz.

02:23:10.640 | So to Tim Walz, maybe I'm lacking in knowledge as a first of all, like a good dude has similar

02:23:18.240 | to you, strongly held, if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country.

02:23:27.600 | So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there are like very, there's

02:23:33.580 | a tension between those ideas.

02:23:36.400 | Is there other people?

02:23:37.400 | Shapiro is interesting also.

02:23:38.840 | I would like to take on in an earnest, in civil, but contested context, right, of a

02:23:48.920 | debate.

02:23:49.920 | Who do you want to take on?

02:23:50.920 | You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you, but still has deep ideology of their

02:23:53.720 | own.

02:23:54.720 | I think John Fetterman's pretty interesting, right?

02:23:56.440 | He's demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on

02:24:01.040 | positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way, but in a thoughtful

02:24:05.960 | evolution.

02:24:06.960 | Somebody who's been through personal struggles, somebody I deeply disagree with on a lot of

02:24:10.040 | his, on a lot of his views, most of his views, but who I can at least say comes across at

02:24:14.800 | least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your

02:24:20.040 | beliefs and convictions and has, when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where

02:24:25.800 | he thinks they're wrong.

02:24:26.800 | I think it's interesting.

02:24:27.800 | I think that you have, you know, a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower

02:24:32.880 | levels.

02:24:33.880 | On the left, not everybody's going to necessarily come from Washington, D.C.

02:24:36.520 | In fact, the longer they're there, the more they, in some ways, get polluted by it.

02:24:40.960 | Yeah, I think the governor of Colorado, he's an interesting guy.

02:24:44.280 | He's got a more libertarian tendency.

02:24:46.320 | You know, I don't know as much about his views from a national perspective, but it's intriguing

02:24:52.040 | to see somebody who has at least libertarian, freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic

02:24:57.480 | Party.

02:24:58.480 | I think that there are a number of, you know, I mean, I don't, you know, foresee him running

02:25:02.440 | for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna,

02:25:06.320 | who, say what you will about him, he's a highly intelligent person and is somebody who is

02:25:10.680 | at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary.

02:25:13.960 | I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized

02:25:19.400 | Kamala Harris' proposed tax on unrealized capital gains.

02:25:23.360 | So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because

02:25:27.680 | it says they actually have convictions.

02:25:29.880 | And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it's someone like that.

02:25:32.120 | And for my part, I will, I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans,

02:25:41.840 | that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you're

02:25:46.400 | supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn't just tell

02:25:51.400 | people what they want to hear.

02:25:53.400 | You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions

02:25:56.600 | are.

02:25:57.600 | And this idea that I don't want to create a right wing entitlement state or a nanny state,

02:26:01.360 | I want to shut it down.

02:26:02.360 | That challenges the presuppositions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right

02:26:05.560 | now.

02:26:06.560 | I don't think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that's

02:26:10.400 | a price control just like Kamala Harris' price controls and will reduce access to credit.

02:26:14.560 | I don't think that we want a crony capitalist state showering private benefits on selected

02:26:20.080 | industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC's remit.

02:26:26.200 | And somehow we're going to trust it because it's under our watch.

02:26:28.440 | No, I believe in shutting it down.

02:26:29.480 | That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement.

02:26:33.440 | You know, I believe in certain issues that, you know, maybe even outside the scope of

02:26:37.640 | what Republicans currently care about right now.

02:26:41.400 | One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics,

02:26:45.200 | but just to give you a sense for, you know, how I think and view the world.

02:26:48.040 | I'm against factory farming of a large scale of, you know, you could sort of say putting

02:26:53.960 | a, you know, the mistreatment of, it's one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance

02:26:59.760 | and that's great.

02:27:00.760 | But it's another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives

02:27:04.360 | special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony

02:27:09.000 | capitalism.

02:27:10.000 | I'm against crony capitalism in all its forms.

02:27:11.740 | I'm against the influence of mega money in politics.

02:27:14.680 | I don't think that's been good either for Democrats or Republicans.

02:27:17.920 | Some of those views, I think, are not necessarily the traditional Republican, right?

02:27:22.080 | You know, orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has

02:27:26.160 | been.

02:27:27.160 | It's not against the Republican Party platform, but it's asking what the future of our movement

02:27:31.760 | is.

02:27:32.840 | Some of these things are hard, like getting money out of politics.

02:27:36.160 | Getting mega money, getting mega money.

02:27:37.640 | The mega money.

02:27:38.640 | Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:27:39.640 | As long as it exists, you've got to play the game if you're going to play to win.

02:27:42.240 | I think it's one of the things I realized is that you just can't compete without it,

02:27:46.840 | but you want to win the game in order to change the game.

02:27:49.840 | I think that that's something that I keep in mind as well.

02:27:55.160 | You have written a lot.

02:27:57.200 | You're exceptionally productive, but even just looking book-wise, you've written basically

02:28:00.960 | a book a year for the last four years.

02:28:04.480 | When you're writing, when you're thinking about how to solve the problems of the world,

02:28:08.760 | how to develop your policy, how do you think?

02:28:14.240 | I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day-to-day

02:28:21.040 | or the travel.

02:28:22.280 | I actually think a lot better when I'm working out and physically active, so if I'm running,

02:28:27.280 | playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind.

02:28:31.320 | Then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook, because I carry around

02:28:35.400 | a notebook everywhere I go and write it down in there.

02:28:39.040 | Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured?

02:28:42.960 | Sometimes it's chaotic.

02:28:43.960 | Sometimes it's structured.

02:28:44.960 | It's a little bit of both.

02:28:45.960 | Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don't want to forget later, I'll immediately jot

02:28:49.280 | it down.

02:28:50.280 | Other times, in the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of I got a lot

02:28:54.160 | of different projects in the air, for example, and I cross-pollinate.

02:28:57.360 | I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride

02:29:01.200 | over here.

02:29:03.320 | I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me.

02:29:07.960 | It's one of the things that actually helped me this year was actually writing this book.

02:29:12.440 | You're going through a presidential campaign, you're going at super speed.

02:29:15.940 | If I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more

02:29:20.000 | structured breaks.

02:29:21.240 | I don't mean breaks isn't just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what's actually

02:29:26.680 | happening.

02:29:28.760 | Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around, heading into the first debate,

02:29:32.520 | I was in nine different states over seven days.

02:29:36.080 | I would have just taken that as a pause, where halfway through, you've established relevance.

02:29:42.200 | Now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum

02:29:47.720 | competitive-driven version of you.

02:29:50.480 | I just think that that's taking those moments to just take stock of where you are.

02:29:55.000 | Do some writing.

02:29:56.000 | I didn't do much writing during the presidential campaign.

02:29:58.040 | I enjoy writing.

02:29:59.800 | It's part of how I center myself.

02:30:02.480 | It's part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign.

02:30:06.080 | The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the

02:30:10.340 | pen and start writing.

02:30:12.560 | I was committed to writing that book, whether or not anybody read it.

02:30:15.440 | I was just writing it for myself.

02:30:17.240 | Actually, it started in a very different form.

02:30:19.400 | It was very personal, reflection-oriented.

02:30:21.840 | Most of that, funny enough, I've learned about writing the books, Lex has-

02:30:24.320 | Edited it out.

02:30:25.320 | It just didn't end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what's

02:30:28.920 | interesting for a publisher to publish.

02:30:31.360 | For each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway

02:30:35.400 | just because the topic ended up morphing, but the journey that led me to write this

02:30:39.960 | book.

02:30:40.960 | A lot of it in this book is still in there.

02:30:41.960 | This is my fourth book in four years, you're right.

02:30:45.280 | I hope it's the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection

02:30:49.440 | that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.

02:30:54.640 | I think that's one of the things that I learned from this campaign was not just all the policy

02:30:58.360 | lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time

02:31:05.720 | to not only physically challenge yourself, work out, et cetera, but to give yourself

02:31:10.720 | the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why.

02:31:15.600 | Had I done that, I think I would have been even more centered on the mission the whole

02:31:20.560 | time rather than you get attacked on the way you're thrown off your tilt or thrown off

02:31:25.400 | your balance.

02:31:26.400 | Sometimes it's a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you've really centered

02:31:29.640 | yourself on your own purpose.

02:31:30.640 | It's probably one of my biggest learnings.

02:31:33.320 | You've mentioned the first primary debate.

02:31:36.520 | More than almost basically anybody I've ever seen, you stepped into some really intense

02:31:41.220 | debates on your own podcast, but in general, in all kinds of walks of life, whether it's

02:31:48.760 | debates with protesters or debates with people that really disagree with you, like the radical

02:31:55.400 | opposite of you, what's the philosophy behind that and what's the psychology of being able

02:32:02.560 | to be calm through all of that, which you seem to be able to do?

02:32:05.880 | I enjoy debate.

02:32:07.480 | For me, I think, just in ordinary life, forget about a formal debate setting, whenever I've

02:32:14.080 | received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, "Are they right?"

02:32:21.600 | It's always a possibility, right?

02:32:24.400 | Most of the time, what happens is you understand the other side's argument, but you emerge

02:32:28.840 | with a stronger conviction in your own belief, right?

02:32:31.800 | You know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side,

02:32:36.360 | but sometimes you do change your mind, and I think that that's happened over the course

02:32:38.920 | of my life as well.

02:32:39.920 | I think no one's a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too, and so just

02:32:44.560 | the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that's always just been

02:32:49.160 | part of my identity, part of who I am.

02:32:50.880 | I'm wired that way.

02:32:51.880 | I thrive on it.

02:32:53.080 | I enjoy it.

02:32:54.480 | Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated

02:32:59.640 | agreement, disagreements, and I just think that's beautiful, not just about human relationships,

02:33:05.520 | but it's particularly beautiful about America, right?

02:33:07.600 | Because it's part of the culture of this country more so than other countries, China, India,

02:33:14.520 | Asian cultures, even a lot of European cultures are very different where that's considered

02:33:20.520 | not genteel behavior.

02:33:21.520 | It's not the respectful behavior, whereas for us, part of what makes this country great

02:33:26.600 | is you could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end

02:33:30.200 | of it.

02:33:31.800 | I think we've lost some of that, but I'm on a bit of a mission to bring that back, and

02:33:36.640 | so I don't know whether it's in politics or not, I'm committed in that next step, whatever

02:33:41.680 | the path is over the next four years.

02:33:43.720 | One of the things I'm committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk

02:33:50.320 | to people who actually disagree with me, and I think it's a big part of how we're gonna

02:33:53.840 | save our country.

02:33:55.260 | Are they right is a thing I actually literally see you do, so you are listening to the other

02:34:00.000 | person.

02:34:01.000 | It's for my own benefit, to be honest, selfish.

02:34:03.560 | You also don't lose your shit, so you don't take it personally, you don't get emotional,

02:34:07.720 | but you get emotional sort of in a positive way, you get passionate, but you don't get,

02:34:11.760 | it doesn't, I've never seen you broken, like to where they, do they get you like outraged?

02:34:19.560 | It's always, probably because you just love the heat.

02:34:22.640 | I love the heat and I'm a curious person, so I'm kind of, I'm always curious about what's

02:34:27.400 | actually getting the other, what's motivating the person on the other side.

02:34:31.240 | That curiosity I think is actually the best antidote, right, because if you just try to

02:34:34.600 | stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that's kind of fake, but if you're kind

02:34:39.260 | of curious about them, right, genuinely just wondering, I think most people are good people

02:34:45.200 | inherently, we all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what's actually, what is

02:34:50.640 | it that's moving that person to go in such a different direction than you?

02:34:53.960 | I think as long as you're curious about that, you know, I mean, the climate change protesters

02:34:57.960 | that have interrupted my events, I'm as fascinated by the psychology of what's moving them and

02:35:04.020 | what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they're

02:35:08.880 | saying to me, and I think that that's certainly something I care to revive.

02:35:14.160 | We don't talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity I think

02:35:18.640 | is in a certain way, one of the ways we're going to be able to disagree, but still remain

02:35:24.980 | friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.

02:35:27.400 | I agree with you.

02:35:28.400 | I think fundamentally most people are good, and one of the things I love most about humans

02:35:33.840 | is the very thing you said, which is curiosity.

02:35:36.880 | I think we should lean into that.

02:35:38.680 | You're a curious person.

02:35:39.680 | You know, this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I'm sure, and so I just think

02:35:45.360 | we need more of that in America, that kind of, you know, remember when I talked about

02:35:48.720 | our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers,

02:35:52.280 | they were political theorists, they were founders of a nation.

02:35:56.160 | They kind of had that boundless curiosity too, and I think part of what's happened culturally

02:36:01.000 | in the country is we've gotten to this place where, you know, we've been told that stay

02:36:06.160 | in your lane, you know, you don't have an expert degree in that, therefore you can't

02:36:09.980 | have an opinion about it.

02:36:11.520 | I don't know.

02:36:12.520 | I think that's not, it's a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it, and yeah, it's

02:36:16.320 | one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation

02:36:19.440 | too is it's cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture, to politics,

02:36:26.760 | to philosophy, and it's not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those

02:36:30.880 | things to be able to engage in it, but actually maybe, just maybe, you might even be better

02:36:36.000 | at each of those things because you're curious about the other.

02:36:39.640 | The renaissance man, if you will.

02:36:40.960 | I think we've lost a little bit of that, that concept in America, but it's certainly something

02:36:46.440 | that is important to me.

02:36:49.160 | And this year it's been kind of cool after leaving the campaign, I've been doing a wide

02:36:52.960 | range of things, right?

02:36:53.960 | I've been picking up my tennis game again, I've practiced at the Ohio State.

02:36:57.880 | You're damn good at tennis.

02:36:59.240 | I used to be better, but I'm picking it up again.

02:37:02.320 | Somebody online was trying to, correctly, I think you shot a very particular angle of

02:37:08.360 | that video.

02:37:09.360 | I think they were criticizing your backhand was weak, potentially, because you're-

02:37:13.040 | That would be a fair criticism, but it's gotten better again, it's gotten better recently.

02:37:17.600 | I've been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning, they're like number one in

02:37:22.560 | the country or close to it.

02:37:23.840 | Now, the guys on the team play, but there's a couple of coaches who were recently on the

02:37:27.160 | team, one of whom used to be a guy who used to play with the juniors who invited me out,

02:37:31.360 | so I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team.

02:37:34.900 | My goal, I should be careful here.

02:37:42.020 | My hips are telling me this, so I've been playing so many days a week that I set a goal

02:37:46.700 | for myself by the end of it to play in a particular tournament, but we'll see if that happens

02:37:50.720 | or not.

02:37:51.720 | But regardless, it's been fun to get back into tennis.

02:37:55.300 | I was an executive producer on a movie, something I've never done before, it's called City of

02:37:59.520 | Dreams.

02:38:00.520 | It's about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States.

02:38:04.280 | It's a thriller, so it's a very cool movie to be a part of.

02:38:08.080 | I have actually started a couple of companies, one company in particular that I think is

02:38:11.840 | going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I've gotten

02:38:17.960 | off the ground in the past.

02:38:19.960 | So for me, I'm re-energized now, where I was in the thick of politics for a full year there

02:38:26.520 | and getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private

02:38:30.640 | sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change

02:38:37.080 | through public service.

02:38:38.080 | - Well, it's been fun watching you do all these fascinating things, but I do hope that

02:38:44.920 | you have a future in politics as well, 'cause it's nice to have somebody that has rigorously

02:38:52.240 | developed their ideas and is honest about presenting them and is willing to debate

02:38:57.680 | those ideas out in public space.

02:38:59.560 | So I would love for you and people like you to represent the future of American politics.

02:39:04.960 | So Vivek, thank you so much for every time I'm swiveling in this chair, I'm thinking

02:39:10.380 | of Thomas Jefferson.

02:39:11.380 | - It's good.

02:39:12.380 | That was my goal.

02:39:13.380 | - So big shout out to Thomas Jefferson for the swivel chair, and thank you so much for

02:39:17.280 | talking to me, Vivek.

02:39:18.280 | This was fun.

02:39:19.280 | - Thank you, man.

02:39:20.280 | - I love your curiosity about Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not.

02:39:22.800 | Of course, he wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right?

02:39:28.180 | So he said, "I've written four books in four years."

02:39:30.440 | That is nothing compared to how prolific this guy was.

02:39:35.480 | Anyway, good stuff, man.

02:39:37.160 | Thanks for having me.

02:39:38.160 | - Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson.

02:39:41.560 | - I love your curiosity, man.

02:39:42.840 | Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well, and hopefully

02:39:47.000 | we'll do this again sometime.

02:39:48.000 | - Yep.

02:39:49.000 | Thank you, brother.

02:39:50.000 | - Thanks, dude.

02:39:50.480 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy.

02:39:53.920 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:39:57.680 | And now, let me leave you with some words from George Orwell, "Political language is

02:40:03.060 | designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of

02:40:09.840 | solidity to pure wind."

02:40:13.760 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:40:16.360 | - Thank you.

02:40:17.360 | - Thank you.

02:40:18.360 | - Thank you.

02:40:23.360 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #445

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