back to indexSaagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #167
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The following is a conversation with Sagar Anjati.
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He is a DC based political correspondent,
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host of The Rising with Crystal Ball
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and host of the realignment podcast with Marshall Kozloff.
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He has interviewed Donald Trump four times
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and has interviewed a lot of major political figures
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and human beings who wield power.
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He loves policy and loves history,
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which makes him a great person to sail
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through the sometimes stormy waters of political discourse.
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He showed up to this conversation with a gift
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of the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography on Hitler,
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a two volume set that is widely acknowledged
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as one of the greatest, if not the greatest,
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most definitive studies of Hitler.
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Nothing wins my heart faster on a first meeting
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or first date than a great book about the darkest aspects
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of human nature and human history.
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I think I started saying that as a joke,
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but actually there's probably a lot of truth to it.
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I love it when we skip the small talk
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and go straight to the in depth conversation
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about the best and worst of human nature.
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Quick mention of our sponsors, Jordan Harbinger Show,
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Grammarly Grammar Assistant, Eight Sleep Self Cooling Bed
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and Magic Spoon Low Carb Cereal.
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Click the sponsor links to get a discount
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and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that for better or for worse,
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I would like to avoid the trap
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of surface political bickering of the day.
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I do find politics fascinating,
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but not the talking points produced
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by the industrial engagement complex
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of red versus blue division.
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Instead, I'm fascinated by human beings who seek power
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and how power changes them.
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I don't have a political affiliation
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and my ideas, at least I hope so,
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are defined more by curiosity and learning
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in the face of uncertainty
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and less by the echo chambers who tell me
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what I'm supposed to think.
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I'm constantly evolving, learning,
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and doing my best to do so without ego and with empathy.
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Please be patient with me.
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As far as I'm aware,
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I do not have any derangement syndromes,
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nor do I get a medical prescription
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of blue, red, white, or black pills.
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If I say something, I say it because I'm genuinely thinking
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and struggling with the ideas.
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I have no agenda, just a bit of a hope
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to add more love to the world.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
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support it on Patreon, or connect with me
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on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
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And now, here's my conversation with Sagar Anjati.
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There's no better gifts in this world
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than a book about Hitler, so thank you so much.
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I've gotten a gift when we were just talking about flying,
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the watch from Joe Rogan,
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and this almost beats it.
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So tell me what this particular book on Hitler is.
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So this is volume two.
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Yes, so this is Ian Kershaw.
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He wrote the famous two volume on Hitler.
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I'm a big book nerd,
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and I spend a lot of time reading biographies in particular.
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So this one, if you need a one volume,
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"'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,' right?
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I think you talked about that, William Shire,
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because that's like Hitler's rise,
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Nazi Germany, the war, et cetera.
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But I like bios because a good biography
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is story of the times, right?
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And so this one, the first volume, it does exactly that,
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which is that it doesn't just tell the story of Hitler.
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It's the context of this kid in Austria,
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and he's got all these dreams,
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but then actually pretty courageous
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in terms of World War I, right?
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Gets pinned to metal on by the Kaiser.
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And then what it's like to lose World War I,
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and actually lose this stain,
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and then the rise within, everybody knows that story,
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the Beer Hall Putsch and all that.
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This one I like, and the reason I like Kershaw
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is obviously number one, it's English,
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which is actually hard, right?
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Like in order to write that story,
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who can do both the primary source material
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and then translate it for people like us,
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but he tells the dynamic story of Hitler so well
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in the second volume, just like the level of detail.
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You've talked about this, Lex,
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like what was it like inside that room,
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inside with Chamberlain?
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Like what was it like in terms of who was this
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like magnetic madman who did convince
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the smartest people in the world at the time?
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And up until like 1940, the Soviet gamble,
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like it took tremendous risks, but like highly calculated,
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thinking, no, no, no, I'm not gonna pay for this one.
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I'm not gonna pay for this one.
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And it put himself, he had a remarkable ability,
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not just to put himself in the minds of the German people,
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but in terms of his adversaries,
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like with when he was across from Mussolini.
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Calculate, he's like, how exactly did Mussolini,
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the guy who created fascism,
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becomes like second fiddle to Hitler?
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Think it's an amazing bio.
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And yeah, like Ian Kershaw, along with Richard Evans,
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two of my favorite authors on the Third Reich, no question.
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Do you think he was born this way,
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that charisma, whatever that is?
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Or was it something he developed strategically?
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That's like the question you apply
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to some of the great leaders.
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Was he just a madman who had the instinct
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to be able to control people
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in the room together with them?
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Or is this like, he worked at it?
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I think he worked at it.
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But also, there is an innate quality.
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I'm forgetting his name, his lifelong,
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Rudolf, the one who flew to Berlin in like 1940.
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I forget his name, anyway.
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So he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.
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And he was like slavishly devoted to him in prison.
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This is 1925 or something like that.
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And so you read that and you're like,
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well, how does he get this like crank wacko
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to basically believe he's like the second coming,
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help him write this book?
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I mean, literally, they live together in the prison cell
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and they wake up every day.
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And as he was composing Mein Kampf
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and because of the Beer Hall Putsch and all that,
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had this like absolute ability to gather people around him.
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I think his greatest skill was,
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is he was just a very good politician, truly.
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I mean, if you look at his ability
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in order to read coalitional politics
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and then convince exactly the right people
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in order to follow him.
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I think I heard you ask this once
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and I've thought about it a lot,
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which is like, who could have stopped Hitler in Germany?
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It's always like the ever present question.
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Of course, like the whole baby Hitler thing.
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Really the answer is Hindenburg.
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Like Hindenburg was the person who could have stopped
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and had the immense standing within the German public.
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The only real like war hero
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definitely was personally skeptical of fascism and Nazism.
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And didn't like Hitler.
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And didn't like him and he knew he was full of shit.
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He was like, yeah, I think this guy is dangerous.
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I think this guy could do a lot of damage to the Republic.
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But he acceded basically to Hitler at the time.
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And I think that he was one of the main people
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who could have done something about it.
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And also he was able to convince the generals, the military.
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I mean, that was very interesting.
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And to convince Chamberlain and the other political leaders.
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That's something I often think about
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because we're just reading books about these people.
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I think about what like Jeffrey Epstein, for example.
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Like evil people, not evil,
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but people have done evil things.
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Let's not go to the Dan Carlin thing of what is evil.
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People that do evil things,
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I wonder what they are like in a room
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because I know quite a lot of intelligent people
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that did not see the evil in Jeffrey Epstein
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and spend time with them.
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And were not bothered by it.
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In the same sense, Hitler,
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it seems like he was able to get,
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just even before he had power,
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because people get intoxicated by power and so on.
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They want to be close to power.
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But even before he had power,
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he was able to convince people.
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like is there something that's more than words?
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It's like the way you,
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I mean, people talk, tell stories about like this piercing
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look and whatever, all that kind of stuff.
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I wonder if that's somehow a part of it.
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Like that has to be the base floor
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of any of these charismatic leaders.
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You have to be able to, in a room alone,
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be able to convince anybody of anything.
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So I can tell you from my personal experience,
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one of the best educated lessons I got
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was when I got to meet Trump.
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So I interviewed Trump four different times as a journalist,
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spent like two and a half hours with him in the Oval Office,
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not alone, but like me and one person
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and like the press secretary, and that was it.
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So I actually got to observe him.
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And as a guy who reads these types of books,
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and you think of Trump, obviously most people,
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what they see on television, in articles and more,
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but being able to observe it like one on one,
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I was closer to him than I am right now from you.
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That was one of the most educational experiences I got
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because it's like you just said,
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the look, the leaning forward,
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the way he talks, the way he is a master
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at taking the question
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and answering exactly which party wants.
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And then if you try and follow up,
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he's like, excuse me, you know, like he knows.
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And then whenever you're talking,
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it's not that he's annoyed about getting interrupted.
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If he realizes he's been mirandering
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and then you interrupt him, all good.
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But if he's driving home a point,
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which he has to make sure appears in your transcript
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or whatever, it really was fascinating for me to look at.
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And what was also crazy with Trump
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is I realized how much he was living in the moment.
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So when I went to the Oval,
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I've read all these biographies and I walk in,
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I'm like, holy shit, you're like, I'm in the Oval Office.
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Were you interviewing him in the Oval Office?
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In the Oval, every time, I was in the Oval Office.
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You scared shitless?
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Well, I wasn't scared.
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I was just, look, it's the Oval Office, right?
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I mean, I'm this nerd.
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He was like this kid, I'm so, I will admit this here.
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I printed out on my dad's label maker when I was like seven
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and I wrote the Oval Office on my bedroom.
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So I was a huge nerd, obviously egomaniacal, even from seven.
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But so for this, I mean, it was huge, right?
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I'm like this 25 year old kid.
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And I walk in there and I see the couch, right?
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And I'm like, oh man, that's Kissinger.
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That's where Kissinger and Nixon got on their knees.
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And then you see over by the door and you're like,
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are the scuff marks still there
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from when Eisenhower used to play golf?
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You know, this is all running through my mind.
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With Trump, none of it was there, none of it, right?
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So like, even the desk, I put my phone on the desk
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to record and I'm like, this is the fucking Resolute desk.
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Like, I shouldn't put my phone on this thing, right?
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And I'm like HMS Resolute, you know, all the international.
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And even for him, he doesn't think about any of it.
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It was like amazing to me.
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Like he had this portrait of Andrew Jackson
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right next to his, to the, I think from on the fireplace,
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like right here on the right.
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And the most revealing question was when I was like,
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Mr. President, what are people gonna remember you for
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in a hundred years?
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And he was like, I don't know, like veteran's choice.
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He like has a list in front of him of like
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his accomplishments, which is staff.
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Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I wanted to know.
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And he's like, veteran's choice.
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And I remember looking at him being like,
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it's not gonna be veteran's choice.
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I'd be like, I'm like, I'm looking at you, Donald Trump,
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the harbinger of something new.
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We still don't know what the hell it is.
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And so I realized with these guys and their charisma
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and more is that they don't think about themselves
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the way that we think about them.
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And that was actually important to understand
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because a lot of people are like,
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Trump is playing all this chess.
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I'm like, I assure you he's not.
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Like he's truly, one time I was interviewing him
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and he had like a certificate that he had to sign
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or something on his desk.
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He's like, it was like child almost.
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Like he got distracted by, he's like, oh, what's this?
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You know, he's just like picking up and I was like,
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wow, like this, this is the guy.
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Like this is what he is.
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Well, I wonder if there was a different person
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because you were recording then offline at a party.
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Well, here's the thing though,
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because that's another part of it.
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Because that two hours,
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I would say like half of that was not on the record.
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So like, whenever he's off the record,
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he changes completely, right?
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I don't wanna like go into too much of it or whatever,
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but like he, I mean, he is so mindful
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of when that camera is on and when the mic is hot
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in terms of the language that he uses,
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what he's willing to admit,
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what he's willing to talk about,
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how he's willing to even appear in front of his staff.
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I think the most revealing thing Trump ever did
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was there was this press conference,
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like right after he lost the,
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right after the midterm elections in 2018.
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And one of the journalists was like,
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Mr. President, thank you for doing this press conference.
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And he looks at him and he goes,
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it's called earned media, it's worth billions.
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And he just like had so much disdain for him
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because he's like, I'm not doing this for you.
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He's like, I'm doing this for me.
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So he's really aware of the narrative of the story.
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I mean, that the people have talked about
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that all comes from the tabloid media of the,
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from New York and so on.
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He's a master of that.
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But I've also heard stories of just in private,
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he's a really, I don't wanna overuse the word charismatic,
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but just like, he is a really interesting,
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almost like friendly, like a good person.
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Like, that's what I heard.
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I've heard actually surprising the same thing
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about Hillary Clinton.
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That I can't tell you anything about.
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But like the way they present themselves
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is perhaps very different than they are
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as human beings and one on one.
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That's something, maybe that's just like a skill thing.
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Maybe the way they present themselves in public
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is actually their, I mean, almost their real self.
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And they're just really good in private,
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one on one to go into this mode
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of just being really intimate in some kind of human way.
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I think that's part of it.
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Because I noticed that with Trump, you know,
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he's like, it's almost like a tour guide.
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It was very like, it's very crazy, right?
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Cause you're like, you're in the Oval.
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I mean, it's his office.
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And he's like, do you guys want anything?
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And he's like, you want a Diet Coke?
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Cause he drinks like all this Diet Coke.
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And he's just like, you guys want a Diet Coke, right?
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And you're sitting there and you're like,
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the way he's able to like,
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like the last time I interviewed him,
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he wanted to do it outside.
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Because he like, he's studied himself from all angles.
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And he knows exactly how he looks on a camera
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and with which lighting.
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And so we were supposed to interview him on camera
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in the Oval Office, which is actually rare.
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Like you don't usually get that.
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And they ended up moving it outside at the last minute.
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And he came out and he's like,
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I picked this spot for you.
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He's like, great lighting.
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I was like, you are your own like lighting director.
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The president, right?
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But it's like you said, he's very charismatic
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I mean, you wouldn't know.
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I mean, look, this is what I mean
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in terms of the dynamism of these people that gets lost.
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And I think even he knows that.
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Like, I don't think he would want that side of him.
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That I see, you know, that you see in those
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off the record moments and more in order to come out
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because he's very keen about
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how exactly he presents to the public.
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It's like, you know, even his presidential portrait,
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everybody usually smiles and he refused to smile.
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He was like, I want to look like Winston Churchill.
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You know, like even he knew that.
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Do you think he believes that he,
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what he kind of implies that he is one of,
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if not the greatest president in American history?
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Like people kind of laugh at this,
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but there's quite, I mean, there's quite a lot of people,
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first of all, that make the argument
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that he's the greatest president in history.
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Like I've heard this argument being made.
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And I mean, I don't know what the,
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first of all, I don't care.
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Like, you can't make an argument
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that anyone is the greatest.
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That's just, that just, I come from a school
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of like being humble and modest and so on.
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It's like, even Michael, you can't have that conversation.
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Okay, so I like that he's humble enough to say
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like Abraham Lincoln or whatever.
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Like, I don't know.
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He says maybe Lincoln.
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Maybe. Remember that.
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Maybe. He says maybe Lincoln.
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Do you think he actually believes that?
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Or is that something he understands will create news
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and also perhaps more importantly,
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piss off a large number of people?
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Is he almost like a musician masterfully playing
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the emotions of the public?
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Or does he, or, and does he believe
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when he looks in the mirror,
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I'm one of the greatest men in history?
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Combination of all three.
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I do think he believes it.
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And for the reason why is I don't think he knows
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that much about US history.
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I really mean that.
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Like, and that's what I meant whenever I was in there
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and I realized he was just living in the moment.
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I don't think he knew all that much about why.
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I mean, this is why he was elected in many ways, right?
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So I'm not saying this is an orbit,
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like I'm not making a judgment on this.
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I'm just saying, I do think in his mind,
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he does think he was one of the best presidents
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in American history largely because,
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and I encountered this with a lot of people who work for him,
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which is that they didn't really know all that much
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kind of about what came before and all that.
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And it's not necessarily to hold it against them
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because for in many ways,
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that's what they were elected to do
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or elected to be in many ways.
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It's an interesting question whether knowing history,
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being a student of history is productive
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or counterproductive.
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I tend to assume I really respect people
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who are deeply like well read in history,
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like presidents that are almost like history nerds.
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But maybe that gets in the way of governance.
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It's not, I'm just sort of playing devil's advocate
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to my own beliefs,
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but it's possible that focusing on the moment
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and the issues and letting history,
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it's like first principles thinking,
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forget the lessons of the past
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and just focus on common sense reasoning
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through the problems of today.
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Yeah, it's really hard question.
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In terms of the modern era,
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I mean, Obama was a student of history.
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Like he used to have presidential biographers
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and people over and I mean, famously,
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like Robert de Caro,
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one of my favorite presidential biographers,
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he was invited to have dinner with Obama
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and Obama would like pepper some of his,
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it was interesting because he'd try and justify
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some of the things he didn't do by being like,
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well, if you look at what they had to do
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and what I have to deal with,
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mine's much harder.
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So in that way, I was a little pissed off
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because I'd be like, no, that actually like,
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you're comparing apples to oranges and all that.
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But if you look at Roosevelt,
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Teddy Roosevelt in particular,
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this was, I mean, a voracious reader,
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not of just American history, all history.
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That guy's just such a badass.
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The only president who willed himself to greatness.
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That's like the amazing thing about him.
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He wasn't tested by a crisis, right?
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Like it wasn't, no, he didn't have a civil war.
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He didn't have World War II.
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He didn't have to found the country, literally,
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or like, didn't have to stave off that,
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or he didn't buy Louisiana Purchase, like all that.
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He literally came into a pretty static country
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and he could have just governed with,
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I mean, he was, the person who came before him
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was assassinated, like he easily could have coasted,
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but he literally willed the country into something more.
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And that's always why I've focused a lot on him too,
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because I'm like, that, in many ways,
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I wouldn't say it's easy to be great during crisis.
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I mean, like look at Trump, right?
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But it can bring out the best within you,
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but it's a whole other level
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to bring out the best within yourself
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just for the sake of doing it.
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That's, I think is really interesting.
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The speeches were amazing.
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I'm also a sucker for great speeches
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because I tend to see the role of the president
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as in part like inspirer in chief,
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sort of to be able to, I mean,
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that's what great leaders do,
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like CEOs of companies and so on,
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establish a vision, a clear vision,
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and like hit that hard.
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But the way you establish the vision isn't just like,
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not to dig at Joe Biden,
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but like sleepy, boring statements.
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You have to sell those statements
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and you have to do it in a way
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where everybody's paying attention.
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Everybody's excited.
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And that, Teddy Roosevelt was definitely one of them.
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Obama was, I think, at least early on,
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I don't know, was incredible at that.
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It does feel that the modern political landscape
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makes it more difficult to be inspirational in a sense
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because everything becomes bickering and division.
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I do want to ask you about Trump.
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So you're now a successful podcaster.
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I've talked to Joe about Trump, Joe Rogan,
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and Joe's not interested in talking to Trump.
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It's just fascinating.
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I try to dig into like why.
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What would you interview Trump on like realignment,
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for example, and do you think it's possible
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to do a two, three hour conversation with him
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where you will get at something like human
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or you get at something, like when we're talking
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about the facade he puts forward,
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do you think you could get past that?
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I look, I was a White House correspondent.
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I observed this man very closely.
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I interviewed him.
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I think if that mic is hot, he knows what he's doing.
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He just, he's done this too long, Lex.
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But do you think he's a different human now
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after the election?
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Do you think that?
link |
I think he's been the same person since 1976.
link |
Like basically, 1976, I studied Trump a lot
link |
and I think he's basically been the core
link |
of who he is and elements of that.
link |
Ever since he built that, you know,
link |
the ice rink in Central Park and got that media attention,
link |
Yeah, he's a fascinating study.
link |
Still, I feel there's a hope in me
link |
that there would be a podcast like a Joe Rogan,
link |
like a long form podcast where it's something could be,
link |
you know, and you're actually a really good person
link |
to do that, where you can have a real conversation
link |
that looks back at the election and reveal something on us.
link |
But perhaps he's thinking about running again
link |
and so maybe he'll never let down that guard.
link |
But like, you know, I just love it when
link |
there's this switch in people where you start looking back
link |
at your life and wanting to tell stories.
link |
Like, you know, trying to extract wisdom
link |
and like realizing you're in this new phase of life
link |
where like the battles have all been fought,
link |
now you're this old, like former warrior
link |
and now you can tell the stories of that time.
link |
And it seems like Trump is still at it,
link |
like the young warrior he is,
link |
he's not in the mode of telling stories.
link |
You know what I got from Rogan?
link |
He's the only president who didn't age well in office.
link |
Like, and this is what I mean,
link |
because he lives in the moment, like the job actually
link |
aged Obama, I mean, Bush, same thing, even Clinton.
link |
Clinton was like fat, it looked miserable by like 2000.
link |
HW, like, I mean, Reagan, famous, actually, yeah,
link |
pretty much everybody I think about,
link |
including John F. Kennedy,
link |
who got much sicker while in office.
link |
The job like weighs on you and makes you physically ill.
link |
Trump was, he's the only person who just didn't happen to.
link |
He almost gotten stronger and he was one of the most,
link |
like the climate, there's so many people attacking him,
link |
so much hatred, so much love and hatred.
link |
And it was just, I mean, it was whatever it was,
link |
it was quite masterful and a fascinating study.
link |
If we stick on Hitler for just a minute,
link |
what lessons do you take from that time?
link |
Do you think it's a unique moment in human history,
link |
that World War II, I mean, both Stalin and Hitler,
link |
you know, is it something that's just an outlier
link |
in all of human history in terms of the atrocities,
link |
or is there lessons to be learned?
link |
You mentioned offline that you're not just a student
link |
of the entirety of the history, but you also are fascinated
link |
by just different like policies and stuff.
link |
Like, what's the immigration policy?
link |
What's the policy on science?
link |
Third Reich in power, let me plug it,
link |
by Richard Evans, I think is what it was.
link |
Cause that actually will tell you,
link |
like what was it like to live under the Nazi regime
link |
Yeah, it's a hard question in terms of the lessons
link |
that we can learn.
link |
Cause there's a lot, and it's actually been over,
link |
it's been over indexed almost.
link |
Everything comes back to Hitler in a conversation.
link |
So I kind of think of it within Mao, Stalin, and Hitler
link |
as, I don't wanna say payments for,
link |
but like the end point payment for the sins
link |
and the problems of the monarchical system
link |
that evolve within Europe.
link |
Basically like 1400 and more.
link |
I basically think that 1400,
link |
the wars between France, England, the balance of power,
link |
eventually World War I, and then serfdom within Russia,
link |
the Russian revolution that birthed Stalin.
link |
Same thing, the Kaiser and Imperial Germany
link |
and this like incredibly crazy system of balance of power
link |
And then same thing within China
link |
in terms of the warring states and then the disintegration,
link |
the European, you know, this is how they think of it.
link |
Which is like the century of humiliation
link |
and they had to have something like this.
link |
I think of it, I try to think of it
link |
within the context of that.
link |
I don't wanna sound like an inevitablist,
link |
but I think of it as, I like to think about systems,
link |
especially here in DC, that's where I got into politics,
link |
which is that you have to understand systems of power
link |
and the incentives within systems and the disincentives,
link |
the downside risk of what you're creating
link |
because that is what leads and creates the behavior
link |
within that system.
link |
I was just talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday.
link |
It's kind of funny, like I read these,
link |
I'm obsessed with these books by Robert Caro,
link |
the biographies of Lyndon Johnson.
link |
He's written like 5,000 pages so far
link |
and it's still not done.
link |
Okay, so like these are like books I base my life on.
link |
And look, these are Washington
link |
and the story of the post New Deal era and forward.
link |
Not much has changed.
link |
Like the Senate is still the Senate.
link |
So many of the same problems with the Senate
link |
are still there in some cases.
link |
But for a while, some of the people who were there
link |
with Johnson are actually still,
link |
one of them is the president of the United States,
link |
And you think about also,
link |
same with the media relationship, right?
link |
Like there's this media really,
link |
they may have come and gone.
link |
Like the people who were in the media
link |
and who were cozy with the administration officials,
link |
I mean, they just recreated themselves.
link |
It's like an ecosystem which doesn't change.
link |
And that's why I'm like,
link |
oh, it's not that was a specific time.
link |
Like that is DC because of the way
link |
the system is architected.
link |
It's pretty much been that way since like 1908,
link |
whenever like Teddy Roosevelt was dining
link |
with these journalists and he would yell at them.
link |
And then he would go over to the society house.
link |
And like in many ways,
link |
that's now instead of going to Henry Adams's house,
link |
like the people are congregating in Calorama,
link |
which is the richest neighborhood here
link |
at somebody else's house.
link |
Like it's the same thing.
link |
So you have to think about the system
link |
and then the incentives within that system
link |
about what the outcomes that they're producing.
link |
If you actually wanna think about
link |
how can I change this from the outside?
link |
That's also why it's very difficult to change
link |
because the system is designed
link |
in order to produce actually pretty specific outcomes
link |
that can only be changed in extraordinary times.
link |
Yeah, and sometimes it's hard to predict
link |
what kind of outcomes will result from the incentive,
link |
the system that you create, right?
link |
In the case, because especially
link |
when it's novel kind of situations.
link |
With Trump, he actually created a pretty novel situation.
link |
And a lot of the things that we've seen
link |
in the 20th century were very novel systems
link |
where people were very optimistic about the outcomes, right?
link |
And then it turned out to not have the results
link |
that they predicted.
link |
In terms of things being unchanged
link |
for the past 100 years and so on,
link |
can you like Wikipedia style
link |
or maybe like in a musical form,
link |
like I'm only a bill, describe to me.
link |
I still sing that to my head sometimes.
link |
I don't know what the rest of the song is,
link |
but let's leave that to people's imagination.
link |
How does this whole thing work?
link |
How does the US political system work?
link |
The three branches is how do you think
link |
about the system we have now?
link |
If you were to try to describe,
link |
if aliens showed up and asked you like,
link |
they didn't have time, so this is an elevator thing.
link |
Should we destroy you as you plead to avoid destruction?
link |
Well, how would you describe how this thing works?
link |
I would say we come together and we pick the people
link |
who make our laws.
link |
Then we pick the guy who executes those laws
link |
and they together pick the people who determine
link |
whether they or the president is breaking the law
link |
at the most basic level.
link |
That's how I would describe it.
link |
So the people who make the laws are Congress.
link |
The executive is charged with executing the laws
link |
as passed by Congress, the system,
link |
the branches of government,
link |
and the Supreme Court is picked by the president,
link |
confirmed by the Senate,
link |
which then decides whether you or other people
link |
are breaking the law in terms of interpretation of that law.
link |
That's basically it.
link |
Oh, and they decide whether those laws are in,
link |
they fall within the restrictions
link |
and the want of the founders as expressed
link |
by the Constitution of the United States,
link |
which is a set of principles that we came together in 1787.
link |
I want to make sure I get this right, 1787,
link |
and decided that we were going to live the rest of our lives
link |
barring a revolution and more.
link |
And we've made it 200 and something years
link |
in order on under that system.
link |
So there's a balance of power
link |
that's because it's multiple branches.
link |
There's a tension and a balance to it
link |
as designed by those original documents.
link |
What, which is the most dysfunctional,
link |
the branches, which is your favorite?
link |
Like in terms of talking about systems
link |
and like what's the greatest of concern
link |
and what is the greatest source of benefit in your view?
link |
The presidency, obviously,
link |
well, the presidency is my favorite to study, obviously,
link |
because it is the one
link |
where there's the most subjective variable change
link |
in terms of the personality involved
link |
because of so much power imbued within the executive.
link |
The Senate is actually pretty much the same.
link |
That's one of the things I love
link |
about reading about the Senate and histories of the Senate
link |
is you're like, oh yeah,
link |
there were always like assholes in the Senate
link |
who were doing their thing
link |
and filibustering constantly based upon this or that.
link |
And then the personalities involved with the Senate
link |
haven't mattered as much since like pre civil war, right?
link |
Like pre civil war, you had like Henry Clay
link |
and then Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun,
link |
who even in their own way,
link |
they represented like larger constituencies
link |
and they crafted these like compromises
link |
up until the outbreak of the civil war, et cetera.
link |
But like post since then,
link |
you don't think about like the Titans within the Senate.
link |
Most of that is because a lot of the stuff
link |
that they had power over
link |
has transferred over to the executive.
link |
So I'm most interested in really in like power,
link |
like where it lies.
link |
It's actually pretty, you know,
link |
throughout American history,
link |
much more used to lie with Congress.
link |
Now it's obviously just so imbued within the executive
link |
that understanding executive power
link |
is I think the thing I'm probably most interested in here.
link |
Do you think at this point,
link |
the amount of power that the president has is corrupting
link |
to their ability to lead well?
link |
Is this, you know, power corrupts,
link |
absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
link |
Are we, is there too much power in the presidency?
link |
There definitely is.
link |
And part of the problem,
link |
one of the things I try to make come across to people is
link |
if you're the president,
link |
unless you have a hyper intentional view
link |
of how something must be different in government,
link |
your view doesn't matter.
link |
So for example, like if you were Trump,
link |
let's take Trump even,
link |
and even in with a pretty intentional view,
link |
he was like, I'm gonna end the war in Afghanistan
link |
And he came in and he gets these generals in.
link |
He's like, I wanna end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
link |
Oh, and I wanna withdraw these troops from Syria.
link |
And they're like, okay, we'll give you,
link |
give us like six months.
link |
And this is the thing about Trump.
link |
He doesn't realize that it's bullshit.
link |
So they're like, he's like,
link |
oh, six months seems fun, right?
link |
So then six months comes and he's like,
link |
he's like, so, and then he'll announce it.
link |
He'll be like, and we're getting out of Syria.
link |
And then the generals freak out.
link |
They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
link |
We don't have a plan for that.
link |
He's like, but you guys told me six months.
link |
He's like, I don't know, now we need another six months
link |
in order to figure this thing out.
link |
And by that time, now you're midterms.
link |
Now you gotta run for reelection.
link |
So more what I mean by that is,
link |
if you don't have a hyperintentional view
link |
about how to change foreign policy,
link |
if you don't have a hyperintentional view
link |
about how the Department of Commerce should do its job,
link |
they are just gonna go on autopilot.
link |
So this is part of the problem.
link |
When you asked me about the presidency,
link |
it's not the presidency itself,
link |
like the president himself, which has become too powerful.
link |
It's that we have less democratic checks
link |
on the people and the systems that are on autopilot.
link |
And I would say that basically since 2008,
link |
we have voted every single time to disrupt that system,
link |
except in the case of 2020 with Joe Biden,
link |
and there are a lot of different reasons
link |
around why that happened.
link |
And in every single one of those cases,
link |
Obama and Trump, they all failed
link |
in order to radically disrupt that.
link |
And that just shows you how titanic the task is.
link |
And I'm using my language precisely
link |
because I don't wanna be like deep state,
link |
but obviously there's deep state.
link |
Deep state, I guess, has conspiratorial intentions to it.
link |
But so what you're saying is the true power
link |
currently lies with the autopilot, AKA deep state.
link |
Well, but see, this is the thing too I wanna make clear,
link |
because I think people think conspiratorially
link |
that they're all coming together
link |
to intentionally do something.
link |
They are doing what they know, believe they are right,
link |
and don't have real democratic checks within that.
link |
And so now they have entire generations of cultures
link |
within each of these bureaucracies where they say,
link |
this is the way that we do things around here.
link |
And that's the problem, which is that we have a culture
link |
of within many of these agencies and more.
link |
I think the best example for this
link |
would be during the Ukraine gate with Trump and all that,
link |
with the impeachment.
link |
I'm not talking about the politics here,
link |
but the most revealing thing that happened
link |
was when the whistleblower guy, Alexander Vindman,
link |
was like, here you have the president
link |
departing from the policy of the United States.
link |
And I was like, well, let me educate you, Lieutenant Colonel.
link |
The president of the United States
link |
makes American foreign policy.
link |
But it was a very revealing comment
link |
because he and all the people
link |
within national security bureaucracy do think that.
link |
They're like, this is the policy of the United States.
link |
We have to do this.
link |
That's where things get screwy.
link |
Well, listen, for me personally,
link |
but also from an engineering perspective,
link |
I just talked to Jim Keller.
link |
It's just, this is the kind of bullshit that we all hate
link |
when you're trying to innovate and design new products.
link |
So that's what first principles thinking requires.
link |
It's like, we don't give a shit what was done before.
link |
The point is, what is the best way to do it?
link |
And it seems like the current government,
link |
government in general, probably,
link |
bureaucracies in general,
link |
are just really good at being lazy
link |
without never having those conversations.
link |
And just, it becomes this momentum thing
link |
that nobody has the difficult conversations.
link |
It's become a game within a certain set of constraints
link |
and they never kind of do revolutionary tasks.
link |
But you did say that the presidency is power,
link |
but you're saying that more power than the others,
link |
but that power has to be coupled
link |
with focused intentionality.
link |
You have to keep hammering the thing.
link |
If you want it done, it has to be done.
link |
I mean, and you gotta, this is the other part too,
link |
which is that it's not just that you have to get it done.
link |
You have to pick the 100 people who you can trust
link |
to pick 10 people each to actually do what you want.
link |
One of the most revealing quotes
link |
is from a guy named Tommy Corcoran.
link |
He was the top aide to FDR.
link |
This I'm getting from the Kara books too.
link |
And he said, what is a government?
link |
It's not just one guy or even 10 guys.
link |
Hell, it's a thousand guys.
link |
And what FDR did is he masterfully picked the right people
link |
to execute his will through the federal agencies.
link |
Johnson was the same way.
link |
He played these people like a fiddle.
link |
He knew exactly who to pick.
link |
He knew the system and more.
link |
Part of the reason that outsiders
link |
who don't have a lot of experience in Washington
link |
almost always fail is they don't know who to pick
link |
or they pick people who say one thing to their face.
link |
And then when it comes time
link |
to carry out the president's policy
link |
in terms of the government, they just don't do it.
link |
And the president's too, think about this.
link |
I think some Rahm Emanuel said this.
link |
He was like, by the time it gets to the president's desk,
link |
nobody else can solve it.
link |
It's not like a yes or no question.
link |
It's every single thing that hits the president's desk
link |
is incredibly hard to do.
link |
And Obama actually even said,
link |
and this was a very revealing quote
link |
about how he thinks about the presidency,
link |
which is he's like, look, the presidency
link |
is like one of those super tankers.
link |
He's like, I can come in and I can take it two degrees left
link |
and two degrees right.
link |
In a hundred years, two degrees left,
link |
that's a whole different trajectory.
link |
Same thing on the right.
link |
And he's like, that ultimately is really all you can do.
link |
I quibble and disagree with that
link |
in terms of how he could have changed things in 2008,
link |
but there's a lot of truth to that statement.
link |
Okay, that's really fascinating.
link |
You make me realize that actually both Obama and Trump
link |
are probably playing victim here to the system.
link |
You're making me think that maybe you can correct me
link |
that, cause I'm thinking of like Elon Musk,
link |
whose major success despite everything
link |
is hiring the right people.
link |
And like creating those thousands,
link |
that structure of a thousand people.
link |
So maybe a president has power in that
link |
if they were exceptionally good
link |
at hiring the right people.
link |
Personnel is policy, man.
link |
That's what it comes down to.
link |
But wouldn't you be able to steer the ship
link |
way more than two degrees if you hire the right people?
link |
So like, it's almost like Obama was not good
link |
at hiring the right people.
link |
Well, he hired all the Clinton people.
link |
That's what happened.
link |
What happened with Trump?
link |
He hired all the Bush people.
link |
And then you just sit back and say,
link |
oh, president can't,
link |
but that means you're just suck at hiring.
link |
Yeah, I mean, look, I know it's funny.
link |
I'm giving you simultaneously
link |
the nationalist case against Trump
link |
and the progressive case against Obama.
link |
The progressive people are like,
link |
why the fuck are you hiring all these Clinton people
link |
in order to run the government and just recreate,
link |
like why are you hiring Larry Summers,
link |
who was one of the people who worked at all these banks
link |
and didn't believe that bailouts were gonna be big enough,
link |
and then to come in in the worst economic crisis
link |
in modern American history.
link |
And Summers actively lobbied against larger bailouts,
link |
which had huge implications for working class people
link |
and pretty much hollowed out America since.
link |
Okay, from Trump, same thing.
link |
You're like, I'm gonna drain the swamp.
link |
And by doing that,
link |
I'm gonna hire Goldman Sachs's Gary Cohn
link |
and Steve Mnuchin and all these other absolute bush clowns
link |
in order to run my White House.
link |
Well, yeah, no shit.
link |
The only thing that you accomplished
link |
in your four years in office
link |
is passing a massive tax cut for the rich
link |
and for corporations.
link |
I wonder how that happened.
link |
What role does money play in all of this?
link |
Is money a huge influence in politics,
link |
super PACs, all that kind of stuff?
link |
Or is this more just kind of a narrative that we play with
link |
because from the outsider's perspective,
link |
that seems to be one of the fundamental problems
link |
with modern politics.
link |
So I was just having this conversation,
link |
Marshall Kosloff, my cohost on The Realignment.
link |
And it's funny because if you do enough research,
link |
we actually live in the least corrupt age
link |
in American campaign finance,
link |
as in it's never been more transparent.
link |
It's never been more up to the FEC and all of that.
link |
If you go back and read not even 50 years ago,
link |
we're talking about Lyndon B. Johnson,
link |
handing people like literally as he came up in his youth,
link |
paying people for votes,
link |
like the boss of the person who like had
link |
all the Mexican votes,
link |
like the person who had,
link |
and he was like giving out briefcases.
link |
This is like within people's lifetimes
link |
who are alive in America.
link |
So that doesn't happen anymore.
link |
But I don't like to blame everything on money.
link |
Although I do think money is obviously
link |
a huge part of the problem.
link |
I actually look at it in terms of distribution,
link |
which is that how is money distributed within our society?
link |
Because I firmly believe that politics,
link |
this is gonna get complicated,
link |
but I think politics is mostly downstream from culture.
link |
And culture, obviously I'm using economics
link |
because there's obviously a huge interplay there,
link |
but like in terms of the equitable
link |
or lack of equitable distribution of money
link |
within our politics,
link |
what we're really pissed off about is we're like,
link |
our politics only seems to work
link |
for the people who have money.
link |
I think that's largely true.
link |
I think that the reason why things worked differently
link |
in the past is because our economy was structured
link |
in different ways.
link |
And there's a reason that our politics today
link |
are very analogous to the last Gilded Age
link |
because we had very similar levels
link |
of economic distribution and cultural problems too
link |
I don't wanna erase that.
link |
Cause I actually think that's what's driving
link |
all of our politics right now.
link |
So that's interesting.
link |
the representative government is doing a pretty good job
link |
of representing the state of culture
link |
and the people and so on.
link |
Can I ask you in terms of the deep state
link |
and conspiracy theories,
link |
there's a lot of talk about,
link |
again, from an outsider's perspective,
link |
if I were just looking at Twitter,
link |
it seems that at least 90% of people
link |
in government are pedophiles.
link |
90 to 95%, I'm not sure what that number is.
link |
If I were to just look at Twitter, honestly, or YouTube,
link |
I would think most of the world is a pedophile.
link |
I would almost feel like.
link |
And if you don't fully believe that, you're a pedophile.
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
I would start to wonder like, wait,
link |
like what, am I a pedophile too?
link |
I'm either a communist or a pedophile or both, I guess.
link |
Yeah, that's gonna be clipped out.
link |
Thank you, internet.
link |
I look forward to your emails.
link |
But is there any kind of shadow conspiracy theories
link |
that give you pause or,
link |
the response to a lot of conspiracy theories is like,
link |
no, the reason this happened
link |
is because it's a combination of just incompetence.
link |
So where do you land on some of these conspiracy theories?
link |
I think most conspiracy theories are wrong.
link |
Some are true and those are spectacularly true.
link |
And if that makes sense.
link |
And we don't know which ones.
link |
I don't know which ones.
link |
That's the problem.
link |
I think, well, I mean, look, man, I listened to your podcast.
link |
I think I was a huge nonbeliever in UFOs
link |
and now I've probably never believed more in UFOs.
link |
Like I believe in UFOs.
link |
Like I'm very comfortable being like,
link |
not only do I believe in UFOs,
link |
like I think we're probably being visited
link |
by an alien civilization.
link |
And if you asked me that three years ago,
link |
I would have been like, you're out of your fucking mind.
link |
Like, what are you talking about?
link |
Well, listen to David Fravor.
link |
That's all I have to say.
link |
I have the sense that the government has information
link |
that hasn't revealed,
link |
but it's not like they're,
link |
I don't think they're holding,
link |
there's like a green guy sitting there in a room.
link |
They have seen things they don't know what to do with.
link |
So it's like, they're confused.
link |
They're afraid of revealing that they don't know.
link |
That's what I think it is, right?
link |
It's revealing, yeah, exactly, that they don't know.
link |
And then in the process,
link |
there's a lot of fears tied up in that.
link |
First, looking incompetent in the public eye.
link |
Nobody wants to be looked that way.
link |
And the other is like, in revealing it,
link |
even though they don't know,
link |
maybe China will figure it out.
link |
So like, we don't want China to figure it out first.
link |
And so all those kinds of things
link |
result in basically secrecy.
link |
Then that damages the trust in institutions
link |
on one of the most fascinating aspects,
link |
like one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind
link |
of is there life, intelligent life,
link |
out there in the universe?
link |
So that's one of them.
link |
But there's other ones, like for me,
link |
when I first came across actually Alex Jones was 9 11.
link |
I remember like, cause I was in Chicago.
link |
I was thinking like, oh shit,
link |
are they gonna hit Chicago too?
link |
That's what everybody was thinking.
link |
Everybody was thinking like, what does this mean?
link |
What, I mean, trying to interpret it.
link |
And I remember like looking for information desperately,
link |
like what happened?
link |
And I remember not being satisfied
link |
with the quality of reporting
link |
and figuring out like rigorous,
link |
like here's exactly what happened.
link |
And so people like Alex Jones stepped up
link |
and others that said like,
link |
there's some shady shit going on.
link |
And it sure as hell looked like
link |
there's shady shit going on.
link |
So like, and I still stand behind the fact
link |
that it seems like there's not,
link |
there's not enough, like it wasn't a good job
link |
of being honest and transparent
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Cause it would implicate the Saudis.
link |
And see, that's my conspiracy theories.
link |
I'm like, yeah, I think they covered up a lot of stuff
link |
because they wanted to cover up
link |
for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
link |
Like, I mean, that was a conspiracy theory
link |
not that long ago.
link |
I think it's true.
link |
I mean, I think it's a hundred percent true.
link |
Yeah, so those kinds of conspiracy theories are interesting.
link |
I mean, there's other ones for me personally
link |
that touched the institution that means a lot to me
link |
is the MIT and, you know, Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
Yeah, I wanna hear a lot more.
link |
I wanna hear about, I talk about Epstein a lot.
link |
So I'm like. Oh, you do?
link |
Yeah, and he, I was gonna say,
link |
in terms of conspiracy theory,
link |
that one changed my outlook.
link |
Cause I was like, I was like, whoa,
link |
like you have this dude who convinced
link |
some of the most successful people on earth
link |
that he was like some money manager.
link |
And it looks like it was totally fake.
link |
I mean, this is one of the richest men on wall street,
link |
$9 billion net worth.
link |
Why is he giving him over a hundred million dollars
link |
between 2015 and 2019?
link |
What's going on here?
link |
Lex Wexner, same thing.
link |
So yeah, I wanna hear,
link |
because you know people who met him.
link |
And the only person I know who met him was Eric Weinstein.
link |
I've heard his, right.
link |
So I, listen, I'm still in and Eric is fascinating
link |
and like Eric is full on saying that.
link |
He was a Mossad or whatever.
link |
Yeah, there's a front for something,
link |
something much, much bigger.
link |
And there's a, whatever his name, Robert Maxwell,
link |
all the, all those stories,
link |
like you could dig deeper and deeper
link |
that Jeffrey's just like the tip of the iceberg.
link |
I just think he's an exceptionally charismatic,
link |
listen, this isn't speaking from confidence
link |
or like deep understanding of the situation,
link |
but from my speaking with people,
link |
he just seems like, at least from the side of his influence
link |
and interaction with researchers,
link |
he just seems like somebody
link |
that was exceptionally charismatic
link |
and actually took interest.
link |
He was unable to speak about interesting scientific things,
link |
but he took interest in them.
link |
So he knew how to stroke the egos
link |
of a lot of powerful people, like well,
link |
like in different kinds of ways,
link |
I suppose I don't know about this
link |
because I don't have, like if a really,
link |
okay, this is weird to say,
link |
but I have an ability,
link |
okay, I think women are beautiful, I like women,
link |
but like if like a supermodel came to me or something,
link |
like I'm able to reason.
link |
It seems like some people are not able to think clearly
link |
when there's like an attractive woman in the room.
link |
And I think that was one of the tools he used
link |
to manipulate people.
link |
I don't know, listen, it's like the pedophile thing.
link |
I don't know how many people are complete sex addicts,
link |
but like, it seems like looking out into the world,
link |
like the Me Too movement have revealed
link |
that there's a lot of like weird,
link |
like creepy people out there.
link |
I don't know, but I think it was just one of the many tools
link |
that he used to convince people and manipulate people,
link |
but not in some like evil way,
link |
but more just really good at the art of conversation
link |
and just winning people over on the side.
link |
And then by building through that process,
link |
building a network of other really powerful people
link |
and not explicitly, but implicitly having done shady shit
link |
with powerful people, like building up
link |
a kind of implied power of like,
link |
like we did some shady shit together.
link |
So we're not like, you're gonna help me out
link |
on this extra thing I need to do now.
link |
And that builds and builds and builds
link |
to where you're able to actually control,
link |
like have quite a lot of power without explicitly having
link |
like a strategy meeting.
link |
And I think a single person or yeah,
link |
I think a single person can do that,
link |
can start that ball rolling.
link |
And over time it becomes a group thing,
link |
like I don't know if Jillian Maxwell was involved
link |
or others and yeah, over time that becomes almost
link |
like a really powerful organization
link |
that wasn't, that's not a front for something much deeper
link |
and bigger, but it's almost like maybe it's
link |
cause I love cellular automata, man.
link |
A system that starts out as a simple thing
link |
with simple rules can create incredible complexity.
link |
And so I just think that we're now looking in retrospect,
link |
it looks like an incredibly complex system
link |
that's operating, but like, that's just because it's,
link |
there could be a lot of other Jeffrey Epstein's
link |
in my perspective that the simple thing just was successful
link |
early on and builds and builds and builds and builds
link |
and then there's a creepy shit that like a lot of aspects
link |
of the system helped it get bigger and bigger
link |
and more powerful and so on.
link |
So the final result is, I mean, listen,
link |
I have a pretty optimistic, I tend to see the good
link |
in people and so it's been heartbreaking to me in general
link |
just to see people I look up to not have the level
link |
of integrity I thought they would
link |
or like the strength of character, all those kinds of things.
link |
And it seems like you should be able to see the bullshit
link |
that is Jeffrey Epstein, like when you meet him.
link |
We're not talking about like Eric Weinstein,
link |
like one or two or three or five interactions,
link |
but like there's people that had like years
link |
of relationship with him.
link |
And I don't know, I'm not sure.
link |
Even after he was convicted.
link |
After he was convicted.
link |
That guy always gets me.
link |
Yeah, there's stories, I mean, I don't need to sort of,
link |
I honestly believe, okay, here's the open question I have.
link |
I don't know how many creepy sexual people
link |
that are out there.
link |
Like, I don't know if there is like,
link |
like the people I know, the faculty and so on,
link |
I don't know if they have like a kink
link |
that I'm just not aware of that was being leveraged
link |
because to me, it seems like if not everybody's a pedophile,
link |
then it's just the art of conversation.
link |
That is just like the art of just like manipulating people
link |
by making them feel good
link |
about like the exciting stuff they're doing.
link |
Listen, man, academics, people talk about money.
link |
I don't think academics care about money
link |
as much as people think.
link |
What they care about is like somebody,
link |
they want to be, it's the same thing
link |
that Instagram models posting their butt pictures,
link |
is they want to be loved.
link |
They want attention.
link |
My parents are professors.
link |
They, and Jeff Epstein,
link |
like the money is another way to show attention.
link |
Right, it's a proxy.
link |
And he did that for some of the weirdest,
link |
most brilliant people.
link |
I don't want to sort of drop names, but everybody knows them.
link |
It's like people that are the most interesting academics
link |
is the one he cared about.
link |
Like people are thinking about the most difficult questions
link |
in all of science and all of engineering.
link |
So those people are, were kind of outcasts in academia
link |
a little bit because they're doing the weird shit.
link |
They're the weirdos.
link |
And he cared about the weirdos and he gave them money.
link |
And that, you know, that's,
link |
I don't know if there's something more nefarious than that.
link |
I hope not, but maybe I'm surprised.
link |
And in fact, half the population of the world is pedophiles.
link |
No, I think it's what you were talking about,
link |
which is that it's the,
link |
it's the implication after the initial, right?
link |
Like you do some shady things together
link |
or you do something that you want out of the public eye
link |
and you're a public person.
link |
And look, we probably even experienced this
link |
to a limited extent, right?
link |
You're like, ah, you know, like, I don't want to,
link |
I don't know, I almost lost my temper, you know,
link |
one time whenever a car hit me and I'm like,
link |
I can't freak out in public anymore.
link |
Like, you know, like what if somebody takes a photo
link |
And so I think that there's an extent to that
link |
times a billion, literally,
link |
when you have a billion dollars or more.
link |
And you take that all together
link |
and you stack it up on itself.
link |
I saw a story about like Bill Clinton.
link |
Like Bill Clinton was with Epstein or with Ghislaine Maxwell
link |
in a private air terminal or something.
link |
And she had one of their like sex, you know,
link |
one of those girls who was underage,
link |
had her dressed up in a literal like pilot uniform.
link |
And she was underage in order to, you know,
link |
and she was being disguised for being older.
link |
And she was a masseuse, right?
link |
Because that was one of the guises which they got
link |
in order to sexually traffic these women.
link |
And she was like, Bill was like complaining about his neck.
link |
And she's like, give Bill Clinton a massage, right?
link |
So now there's a photo of an underage girl
link |
giving a massage to the former president
link |
of the United States.
link |
I don't think he knew, right?
link |
But like, that looks bad.
link |
And so this is kind of what we're getting at,
link |
which is that you're setting it all up
link |
and creating those preconditions or like Prince Andrew.
link |
Do I think Prince Andrew knew
link |
that Virginia Gouffre was underage?
link |
Probably knew she was pretty young,
link |
which I think is, you know, skeevy enough
link |
where you're a fucking Prince, you probably know better.
link |
But I don't think he knew she was underage
link |
And if he did, then he's even more of a piece of shit
link |
But when we look at these things,
link |
the stuff I'm more interested in is like
link |
what you were talking about.
link |
I'm like, Bill Gates, how do you get the richest man
link |
in the world in your house?
link |
Like under what, and Gates is like,
link |
he was talking about financing and all this.
link |
I'm like, you don't have access to money or bankers?
link |
Like you're the richest man in the world.
link |
You can call Goldman Sachs anytime you want on a hotline.
link |
Like, why do you need, that's where I start again
link |
to get more conspiratorial because I'm like,
link |
Bill, dude, you have the gold credit, right?
link |
Like you don't need Epstein to create
link |
some complicated financing structure.
link |
Or Leon Black, like what is 2015, 2009?
link |
I mean, this is very recent stuff.
link |
Or, and this is the part that really got me
link |
as I read the department,
link |
I think it's called the Department of Financial Service
link |
report around Deutsche Bank with Epstein.
link |
They knew he was a criminal.
link |
They solicited his business,
link |
explicitly knew that his business meant access
link |
to other high net worth individuals,
link |
consistently doled money out from his account
link |
for hush payments to women in Europe and prostitution rings.
link |
They knew all of this within the bank.
link |
It was elevated multiple times.
link |
Here was the other one.
link |
One of Epstein's associates was like,
link |
hey, how much money can we take out
link |
before we hit the automatic sensor
link |
before you have to tell the IRS?
link |
And that question by their own standards
link |
is supposed to result in a notification to the feds
link |
and they never did it.
link |
And he was withdrawing like $2 million of cash
link |
in five years for tips to, I'm like, okay,
link |
like something's going on here.
link |
Like, you see what I'm saying?
link |
There's a lot of signs that make you think
link |
that there's a bigger thing at play than just the man,
link |
that there's some, it does look like a larger organization
link |
is using this front, right?
link |
Again, I don't know.
link |
I truly don't know.
link |
And I'm not willing to use the certainty,
link |
which I think a lot of people online are,
link |
to say like, it wants 100%.
link |
The certainty is always the problem
link |
because that's probably why I hesitate
link |
to touch conspiracy theories
link |
is because I'm allergic to certainty in all forms.
link |
In politics, any kind of discourse.
link |
And people are so sure, in both directions, actually,
link |
it's kind of hilarious.
link |
Either they're sure that the conspiracy theory,
link |
particularly whatever the conspiracy theory is, is false.
link |
Like they almost dismiss it like,
link |
like they don't even want to talk about it.
link |
It's like the people,
link |
like the way they dismiss that the earth is flat.
link |
Most scientists are like,
link |
they don't even want to like hear
link |
what the flat earthers are saying.
link |
They don't have like zero patience for it,
link |
which is like, maybe in that case is deserved.
link |
But everything else, you really like have empathy.
link |
Like consider the fact, you have,
link |
okay, this is weird to say,
link |
but I feel like you have to consider
link |
that the earth may be flat for like one minute.
link |
Like you have to be empathetic.
link |
You have to be open minded.
link |
I don't see a lot of that
link |
through our cultural taste makers and more.
link |
And that really is what concerns me the most.
link |
Cause it's just another manifestation
link |
of all of our problems.
link |
Is that we have this completely bifurcating economy,
link |
bifurcating culture, literally,
link |
in terms of we have the middle of the country
link |
and then we have the coast.
link |
And in terms of the population, it's almost 50, 50.
link |
And with increasing mega cities and urban culture,
link |
like urban monoculture of LA, New York and Chicago
link |
and DC and Boston and Austin,
link |
relative to how an entire other group
link |
of Americans live their lives,
link |
or even the people within them
link |
who aren't rich and upwardly mobile,
link |
how they live their lives is just completely separating.
link |
And all of our language and communication
link |
in mass media and more is to the top.
link |
And then everybody else is forgotten.
link |
Do you think when you dig to the core,
link |
there is a big gap between left and right?
link |
Is that division that's perceived currently real
link |
or are most people center left and center right?
link |
It's so interesting
link |
because that's such a loaded term, center left.
link |
What does that mean?
link |
Like to you, I think the way you're thinking of it is,
link |
I'm not like a, well, even this,
link |
like I'm not a radical socialist,
link |
but I'm marginally left on cultural issues
link |
and economic issues.
link |
This is how we've traditionally understood things.
link |
And then in popular discourse, like center right,
link |
like what does it mean to be center right?
link |
Like I am marginally right on social issues
link |
and marginally right on economic issues.
link |
But that's just not, like if you look at survey data,
link |
for example, like stimulus checks,
link |
people who are against stimulus checks are conservative.
link |
Well, 80% of the population is for a stimulus check.
link |
So that means a sizable number of Republicans
link |
are for stimulus checks.
link |
Same thing happens on like a wealth tax.
link |
The same thing happens on, okay, Florida voted for Trump,
link |
3.1%, more than Barack Obama, 2008,
link |
on the same day passes a $15 minimum wage at 67%.
link |
So what's going on?
link |
Oh, that's my entire career.
link |
But it seems like, so that's fascinating.
link |
Conversation is different than the policies.
link |
Well, it's different than reality.
link |
That's what I would say,
link |
which is that the way we have to understand
link |
American politics today, it didn't always
link |
used to be this way, is it's almost entirely long.
link |
Basic, I would say the main divider is,
link |
because even when you talk about class,
link |
this misses it in terms of socioeconomics,
link |
it's around culture, which is that it's basically,
link |
if you went to a four year degree granting institution,
link |
you are part of one culture.
link |
If you didn't, you're part of another.
link |
I don't wanna erase the 20% or whatever of people
link |
who did go to a college degree who are Republicans
link |
or vice versa, et cetera, but I'm saying on average,
link |
in terms of the median way that you feel,
link |
we're basically bifurcating along those lines.
link |
And because people get upset, be like,
link |
oh, well, there are rich people who vote for Trump.
link |
And I'm like, yeah, but you know who they are?
link |
They're like plumbers or something.
link |
They're people who make $100,000 a year,
link |
but they didn't go to a four year college degree
link |
and they might live who are in a place
link |
which is not an urban metro area.
link |
And then at the same time, you have like a Vox writer
link |
who makes like 30 grand,
link |
but they have a lot more cultural power
link |
than like the plumber.
link |
So you have to think about where exactly that line is.
link |
And I think in general, that's the way that we're trending.
link |
So that's why when I say like, what's going on,
link |
Yeah, like, but it's not left and right.
link |
I mean, like, and that's why I hate these labels.
link |
So it's more just red and blue like teams.
link |
They're arbitrary teams.
link |
So how arbitrary are these teams,
link |
I guess is another.
link |
Completely arbitrary.
link |
So, well, you kind of imply that there's,
link |
I don't know if you're sort of in post analyzing the patterns
link |
because it seems like there's a network effects
link |
of like, you just pick the team red or blue
link |
and it might have to do with college.
link |
You might have to do all of those things,
link |
but like, it seems like it's more about
link |
just the people around you.
link |
So less than whether you went to college or not.
link |
I mean, it's almost like, seems like,
link |
it's almost like a weird, like network effects that are hard.
link |
There's certain strong patterns you're identifying,
link |
It's sad to think that it might be just teams
link |
that have nothing to do with what you actually believe.
link |
Look, I mean, I don't want to believe that,
link |
but the data points me to this, which especially 2020,
link |
I'm one of the people chief among them.
link |
I will own up to it here.
link |
I was totally wrong about why Trump was elected in 2016.
link |
I believed and based a lot of my public commentary beliefs
link |
on this, Trump was elected because of a rejection
link |
of Hillary Clinton neoliberalism on the back
link |
of a pro worker message, which was anti immigration.
link |
It was its pillar, but alongside of it was a rejection
link |
of free trade with China and generally
link |
of the political correctness and globalism,
link |
which has been come in through the uniparty
link |
and same thing here with the military industrial complex
link |
and endless war, he rejected all of that.
link |
Wait, what's wrong with that prediction?
link |
And the reason I know this is that it sounds right.
link |
I wish it, I honestly wish it was true,
link |
but here's the truth.
link |
Trump actually governed largely as a neoliberal Republican
link |
who was meaner online and who departed from orthodoxy
link |
in some very important ways.
link |
Don't get me wrong.
link |
I will always support the trade war with China.
link |
I will always support not expanding the wars
link |
in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
link |
I will support him moving the Overton window
link |
on a million different things and revealing once
link |
and for all that GOP voters don't care
link |
about economic orthodoxy necessarily.
link |
But here's what they do care about.
link |
Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016,
link |
despite not delivering largely for all the Trump people
link |
out there on that agenda.
link |
He wasn't more pro union, but he won more union votes.
link |
He wasn't necessarily more pro worker,
link |
but he actually won more votes in Ohio than he did in 2016.
link |
And he won more Hispanic votes than despite being
link |
all the immigration rhetoric, et cetera.
link |
Here's why, it's about the culture,
link |
which is that the culture war is so hot
link |
that negative partisanship is at such high levels.
link |
All of the vote is geared upon what the other guy
link |
might do in office.
link |
And there's a poll actually just came out
link |
by Echelon Insights.
link |
Crystal and I were talking about it on Rising,
link |
that number one concern amongst Democratic voters
link |
is Trump voters, number one concern.
link |
Not issues like Trump voters.
link |
And number two is white supremacy.
link |
And so like, which is basically code for Trump voters.
link |
And is the same true for the other side?
link |
Also on the right, the number one concern
link |
is illegal immigration.
link |
And number, I think, three or four or whatever is Antifa,
link |
which is code for Democrats.
link |
At least on the right is a policy kind of thing.
link |
Well, yeah, it's funny.
link |
I saw Ben Shapiro was talking about this.
link |
But the reason why I would functionally say it's the same
link |
is because, I mean, you can believe whether it's true or not.
link |
I think it actually largely is true.
link |
But a lot of GOP voters feel like a lot of illegal
link |
immigration is code for people who are coming in,
link |
who are gonna be legalized and are gonna go vote Democrat.
link |
Like, I can just explain it from their point of view.
link |
So like, what does that actually mean?
link |
Each other, like each other,
link |
which is that the number one concern is the other person.
link |
So negative partisanship has never been higher.
link |
And I think people who had my thesis
link |
in terms of why Trump was elected in 2016,
link |
you have to grapple with this.
link |
Like, how did he win 10 million more votes?
link |
He came 44,000 votes away from winning the presidency
link |
across three states.
link |
Like, I don't, none of our popular discourse reflects
link |
that very stark reality.
link |
And I think so much of it is people really hate liberals.
link |
Like, they just really hate them.
link |
And I was driving through rural Nevada before the election.
link |
And I was like, literally in the middle of nowhere.
link |
And there was this massive sign
link |
this guy had out in front of his house.
link |
And it just said, Trump, colon, fuck your feelings.
link |
And I was like, that's it.
link |
That is why people voted for Trump.
link |
And I don't want to denigrate it because they truly feel
link |
they have no cultural power in America,
link |
except to raise the middle finger to the elite class
link |
by pressing the button for Trump.
link |
That's actually a totally rational way to vote.
link |
It's not the way I wish we did vote,
link |
but like, you know, that's not my place to say.
link |
So this is interesting.
link |
If you could just psychoanalyze,
link |
I'm again, probably naive about this,
link |
but I'm really bothered by the hatred of liberals.
link |
It's this amorphous monster that's mocked.
link |
It's like the Shapiro liberal tears.
link |
And I'm also really bothered by
link |
probably more of my colleagues and friends,
link |
the hatred of Trump.
link |
Yeah, the Trump and white supremacists.
link |
So apparently there's 70 million white supremacists,
link |
75 million, sorry.
link |
There's millions of white supremacists.
link |
And apparently whatever liberal is,
link |
I mean, literally liberal has become
link |
equivalent to white supremacists
link |
in the power of negativity it arouses.
link |
I don't even know what those,
link |
I mean, honestly, they've become swears essentially.
link |
Is that, I mean, how do we get out of this?
link |
Because that's why I just don't even say anything
link |
about politics online.
link |
Cause it's like, really?
link |
Like you can't, here's what happens.
link |
Anything you say that's like thoughtful,
link |
like, hmm, I wonder, immigration, something.
link |
I wonder like why we have these many,
link |
we allow these many immigrants in
link |
or some version of the like thinking through
link |
these difficult policies and so on.
link |
They immediately tried to find like a single word
link |
in something you say that can put you in a bin
link |
of liberal or white supremacists
link |
and then hammer you to death
link |
by saying you're one of the two.
link |
And then everybody just piles on happily
link |
that we finally nailed this white supremacist or liberal.
link |
And that, is this some kind of weird
link |
like feature of online communication
link |
that we've just stumbled upon?
link |
Is there a way or is it possible to argue
link |
that this is like a feature, not a bug?
link |
Like, this is a good thing?
link |
Yeah, well, look, I just think it's a reflection
link |
People like to blame social media.
link |
I think we're just incredibly divided right now.
link |
I think we've been divided like this for the last 20 years.
link |
And I think that, the reason I focus almost 99%
link |
of my public commentary on economics
link |
is because you asked an important question at the top.
link |
How do we fix this?
link |
What did I say about the stimulus checks?
link |
Stimulus checks have 80% approval rating.
link |
So that's the type of thing.
link |
If I was Joe Biden and I wanted to actually
link |
heal this country, that's the very first thing
link |
I would have done when I came into office.
link |
Same thing on when you look at anything
link |
that's gonna increase wages.
link |
I said on the show, I was like, look,
link |
I think Joe Biden will have an 80% approval rating
link |
if he does two things.
link |
If he gives every American a $2,000 stimulus check
link |
and gives everybody who wants a vaccine a vaccine.
link |
It's pretty simple.
link |
Cause here's the thing.
link |
I don't really like Greg Abbott that much.
link |
We have like very different politics.
link |
I'm from Texas, but my parents got vaccinated
link |
That means something to me.
link |
I'm like, listen, I don't really care
link |
about a lot of the other stuff.
link |
He got my family vaccinated.
link |
Like that, well, I will forever remember that.
link |
And that's how we will remember the checks.
link |
This is a part of a reason why Trump
link |
almost won the election and why,
link |
if the Republicans had been smart enough
link |
to give him another round of checks,
link |
100% would have won.
link |
Which is that people were like, look,
link |
I don't really like Trump, but I got a check
link |
with his name on it.
link |
And that meant something to me and my family.
link |
I'm not saying for all the libertarians out there
link |
that they should go and like endlessly spend money
link |
What I am saying is lean into the majoritarian positions
link |
without adding your culture war bullshit on top of it.
link |
So for example, what's the number one concern
link |
that AOC says after the first round of checks got out?
link |
Oh, the checks didn't go to illegal immigrants.
link |
I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind?
link |
Like this is the most popular policy America
link |
has probably done in 50 years,
link |
since like Medicare and you're ruining it.
link |
And then on the right is the same thing,
link |
which is that they'll be like,
link |
these checks are going to like, you know,
link |
low level blah, blah, you know,
link |
people who are lazy and don't work.
link |
I'm like, oh, there you go, you know,
link |
like you're just playing a caricature of what you are.
link |
Like if you lean into those issues
link |
and you got to do it clean,
link |
this is what everybody hates about DC,
link |
which is that Biden right now is doing the $1,400 checks,
link |
but he's looping it in with his COVID relief bill
link |
That's his prerogative, that's the Democrats prerogative.
link |
They won the election, that's fine.
link |
But I'll tell you what I would have done if I was him,
link |
I would have come in and I would have said,
link |
there's five United States senators
link |
who are on the record, Republicans,
link |
who said they'll vote for a $2,000 check.
link |
And I would put that on the floor of the United States Senate
link |
on my, you know, first or the first day possible.
link |
And I would have passed it
link |
and I would have forced those Republican senators
link |
to live up to that, vote for this bill,
link |
come to the Oval Office for a signing
link |
so that the very first thing of my presidency
link |
was to say, I'm giving you all this relief check,
link |
this long national nightmare is over.
link |
Take this money, do with it what you need.
link |
We've all suffered together.
link |
The thing about Biden is he has a portrait of FDR
link |
and is in the Oval, which kind of bothers me
link |
because he thinks of himself as an FDR like figure.
link |
But this is, you have to understand the majesty of FDR.
link |
We're talking about a person
link |
who passed a piece of legislation
link |
five days after he became president.
link |
And he passed 15 transformative pieces of legislation
link |
in the first 100 days.
link |
We're on day like 34, 35, and nothing has passed.
link |
The reconciliation bill will eventually become law,
link |
but it will become law with no Republican votes.
link |
And again, that's fine.
link |
But it's not fulfilling that legacy
link |
and the urgency of the action.
link |
And the mandate, which I believe that history has handed,
link |
it handed it to Trump and he fucked it up, right?
link |
He totally screwed it up.
link |
He could have remade America
link |
and made us into the greatest country ever
link |
coming out on the other side of this.
link |
He decided not to do that.
link |
I think Biden was again handed that like a scepter almost.
link |
It's like all you have to do,
link |
all America wants is for you to raise it up high,
link |
but he's keeping it within the realm of traditional politics.
link |
I think it's a huge mistake.
link |
Why, so this is, everything he's saying
link |
is makes perfect sense, like take, okay.
link |
It's like, it's like, again, if the aliens showed up,
link |
it's like the obvious thing to do is like,
link |
what's the popular thing?
link |
Like 80% of Americans support this.
link |
Like do that clean.
link |
Also do it like with like grace,
link |
where you're able to bring people together,
link |
not like in a political way,
link |
but like obvious common sense way.
link |
Like just people, the Republicans and Democrats
link |
just bring them together on a policy and like bold,
link |
just hammer it without the dirt, without the mess,
link |
whatever, try to compromise.
link |
Just the yellow have a good Twitter account,
link |
like loud, very clear.
link |
We're gonna give a $2,000 or a stimulus check.
link |
Anyone who wants a vaccine gets a vaccine at scale.
link |
What make America, let's make America great again
link |
Like we are manufacturing most of the world's vaccine
link |
because we're bad motherfuckers.
link |
And without maybe with more eloquence than that
link |
Why haven't we seen that for many, for several presidencies?
link |
Because of coalitional politics
link |
and they owe something to somebody else.
link |
For example, Biden has got a lot
link |
of the Democratic constituency has to satisfy
link |
So there's gonna be a lot of shit that goes in there,
link |
state and local aid, all this stuff.
link |
Again, I'm not even saying this is bad,
link |
but he's like, his theory is, and this isn't wrong,
link |
is like we're gonna take the really popular stuff
link |
and use it as cover for the more downwardly less popular.
link |
And so the Dems could face the accusation,
link |
the people who are on this side,
link |
this is their pushback to me.
link |
They're like, why would we give away the most popular thing
link |
in the bill and then we would never be able
link |
to pass state and local aid, right?
link |
Why would we do, and the Republicans do the same thing,
link |
right, like Mitch McConnell, because he's a fucking idiot,
link |
decided to say, we're gonna pair these $2,000 stimulus checks
link |
with like section 230 repeal.
link |
And it was like, oh, it's obviously dead, right?
link |
Like it's not gonna happen together.
link |
That's largely why I believe Trump lost the election
link |
and why those races down in Georgia
link |
went the way that they did.
link |
Obviously Trump had something to do with it,
link |
but the reason why is they have longstanding things
link |
that they've wanted to get done.
link |
And in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis
link |
go to waste and try and get as much as you possibly can done
link |
within a single bill.
link |
My counter would be this,
link |
things have worked this way for too long,
link |
which is that the reconciliation bill
link |
is almost certainly going to be the only large
link |
signature legislative accomplishment
link |
of the Biden presidency.
link |
That's just how American politics works.
link |
Maybe he gets one more, maybe one.
link |
He has a second reconciliation bill,
link |
then you're running for midterms, it's over.
link |
I believe that by trying to change the paradigm
link |
of our politics, leaning into exactly what I'm talking here,
link |
you could possibly transcend that to a new one.
link |
And I'm not naive.
link |
I think people respond to political pressures.
link |
And the way that we found this out was David Perdue,
link |
who was just a total corporate dollar general CEO guy.
link |
He was against the original $1,200 stimulus checks.
link |
But then Trump came out, who's the single most popular
link |
figure in the Republican party.
link |
He's like, I want $2,000 stimulus checks.
link |
And all of a sudden, Perdue running in Georgia is like,
link |
yeah, I'm with President Trump,
link |
I want a $2,000 stimulus check.
link |
That was, if you're an astute observer of politics,
link |
to say, you can see there that you can force people
link |
to do the right thing because it's the popular thing.
link |
And that if it's clean, if you don't give them
link |
any other excuse, they have to do it.
link |
So this is what we've been gaslit into our culture war
link |
framework of politics.
link |
And the reason it feels so broken and awful
link |
is because it is, but there is a way out.
link |
It's just that nobody wants to be, it's a game of chicken,
link |
because maybe it is true.
link |
Maybe we would never be able to get
link |
your other democratic priorities,
link |
your Republican priorities.
link |
But I think that the country understands
link |
that this is fucking terrible and would be willing
link |
to support somebody who does it differently.
link |
There's just a lot of disincentives to not stay without,
link |
there's a lot of incentives to not stray
link |
from the traditional path.
link |
Yeah, is it also possible that the A students
link |
are not participating?
link |
Like we drove all of the superstars away from politics.
link |
So like you just had this argument before.
link |
I mean, everything you're saying sort of rings true.
link |
Like this is the obvious thing to do.
link |
As a student of history, you can almost like tell,
link |
like, if you look at great people in history,
link |
this is what great leaders in history,
link |
this is what they did.
link |
It's like clean, bold action, sometimes facing crisis,
link |
but we're facing a crisis right now.
link |
No, we're in a crisis.
link |
We've been, exactly.
link |
So why don't we see those leaders step up?
link |
I mean, you say that's kind of like, it makes sense.
link |
There's a lot of different interests at play.
link |
You don't wanna risk too many things, so on and so forth.
link |
But that sounds like the C students.
link |
I don't think it's that.
link |
I think it's that the pipeline of politician creation
link |
is just totally broken from beginning to end.
link |
So it's not that A students don't wanna be politicians.
link |
It's basically the way that our current primary system
link |
is constructed, is what is the greatest threat to you
link |
as a member of Congress?
link |
It's not losing your reelection.
link |
It's losing your primary, right?
link |
So that means, especially in a safe district,
link |
you're most concerned about being hit
link |
if you're a Republican from the right,
link |
and if you're a Democrat from the left
link |
for not being a good enough one.
link |
That's actually what stops people,
link |
heterodox people in particular, from winning primaries
link |
because the people who vote in our primaries
link |
are the party faithful.
link |
That's how you get the production.
link |
It's important to understand the production pipeline,
link |
which is that, all right, I'm from Texas,
link |
so that's what I know best.
link |
So it's like, if you think in Texas,
link |
if you're a more heterodox like state legislature
link |
or something who works with the left on this and does that,
link |
you're gonna get your ass beat in a Republican primary
link |
because they're gonna be like,
link |
he worked with the left to do this, blah, blah,
link |
take it out of context, and you're screwed.
link |
And then that means you never ascend up
link |
the next level of the ladder,
link |
and then so on and so forth all the way.
link |
But I do think Trump changed everything.
link |
This is why I have some hope,
link |
which is that he showed me that all the people I listened to
link |
were totally wrong about politics,
link |
and that's the most valuable lesson you could ever teach me,
link |
which was, I was like, wait,
link |
I don't really have to listen to these people.
link |
I'm like, they don't know anything, actually.
link |
That's powerful, man.
link |
I'm like, he did it.
link |
Even if he didn't do anything with it.
link |
It doesn't matter.
link |
He showed that it's possible.
link |
And that means a lot.
link |
You're absolutely right.
link |
There's young people right now
link |
that kind of look, turn around and like, huh.
link |
You're like, wait, I don't have to comb my hair
link |
a certain way and go to law school and be an asshole
link |
who everybody knows is an asshole.
link |
And then get elected to state legislature.
link |
I mean, look, who's the number one person
link |
in the New York City primary right now?
link |
He's polling higher than everybody else in the race.
link |
Look, maybe the polls are totally fucked
link |
and maybe he'll lose because of ranked choice voting
link |
But I consider Andrew, I mean, I know him a little bit
link |
and I've followed his candidacy from the very beginning.
link |
I consider him an inspiration.
link |
He's the new generation of politics.
link |
Like if I see who's gonna be president 20 years from now,
link |
it's gonna be, I'm not saying it's gonna be Andrew Yang.
link |
I think it's gonna be somebody like Andrew Yang
link |
outside the political system
link |
who talks in a totally different way, right?
link |
Just a completely, one of my favorite things
link |
that he said on the debate stage,
link |
he's like, look at us, we're all wearing makeup.
link |
It's crazy, you know?
link |
And he like, he like brought that, that he brought that.
link |
And he's writing like, yeah, why are they all wearing makeup?
link |
He probably arguably hasn't gone far enough almost.
link |
But he showed that it's possible.
link |
And then you see other, like AOC is a good example
link |
of somebody, at least in my opinion,
link |
is doing the same kind of thing, but going too far in like,
link |
well, I don't know, she's doing the Trump thing,
link |
but on the other side.
link |
So I don't know, what's too far?
link |
Don't take a normative judgment of it.
link |
I will tell you the future of politics
link |
looks like AOC. Appreciate the art of it.
link |
Look, I don't, I'm not a big AOC fan,
link |
but she's a genius, media genius,
link |
once in a generation talent.
link |
The way that she uses social media, Instagram,
link |
and everybody on the right is like trying to copy her.
link |
Like Matt Gaetz is like, I want to be the conservative AOC.
link |
I'm like, it's just not going to happen, dude.
link |
Like you just don't have it.
link |
Like what she has, it's like, it's electric.
link |
And Trump had that.
link |
Like I've been to a Trump rally,
link |
like to cover as a journalist,
link |
and there's nothing like it in America.
link |
And Yang is similar.
link |
It's the same way where you're like,
link |
there is something going on here,
link |
which is just like, I've been doing Obama rally.
link |
I've been to a Clinton rally.
link |
I've been to several normal politics.
link |
It's fine, you know, with Trump and with Yang,
link |
it was, it's another world.
link |
It's another world.
link |
There's probably thousands of people listening right now,
link |
who are just like doing a slow clap.
link |
Yang gang forever.
link |
Okay, but yeah, I mean, my worst fear,
link |
I prefer Andrew Yang kind of free improvisational idea,
link |
exchange, all that versus AOC,
link |
who I think no matter what she stands for
link |
is a drama machine, creates dramas just like Trump does.
link |
I would say my worst fear would be in 2024,
link |
is AOC old enough?
link |
It'd be AOC versus Trump.
link |
I don't think she's old enough.
link |
I think you'd have to be, I don't know.
link |
So she needs five more years.
link |
Okay, but that kind of, that's, or Trump Jr.
link |
Well, AOC probably wouldn't win a Democratic primary.
link |
So, I mean, look, Joe Biden is, you know,
link |
he's pretty much showed that.
link |
That's exactly what you're saying.
link |
This process grooms you over time.
link |
You see the same thing in academia actually,
link |
which is very interesting,
link |
is the process of getting tenure.
link |
There's this, it's like you're being taught
link |
without explicitly being taught
link |
to behave in the way that everybody's behaved before.
link |
I've heard this, it was funny.
link |
I've had a few conversations
link |
that were deeply disappointing,
link |
which involved statements like,
link |
this is what's good for your career.
link |
This kind of conversation,
link |
almost like mentor to mentee conversation,
link |
or it's like, there's a grooming process in the same way.
link |
I guess you're saying the primary process
link |
does the same kind of thing.
link |
So, I mean, that's what people have talked about
link |
He was being suppressed by a bunch of different forces,
link |
the mainstream media and all.
link |
Just the Democratic, just that whole process
link |
didn't like the honesty that he was showing, right?
link |
For now, but here's my question to you.
link |
People gotta see, look, Jordan Peterson
link |
is one of the most famous people in America, right?
link |
Like you have a massive podcast.
link |
You're more famous than half, 99% of the people at MIT.
link |
So like, from that perspective, everything has changed.
link |
And somewhere out there,
link |
there's a student who's taking notice.
link |
And I've noticed that with my own career,
link |
everybody thought I was crazy
link |
for doing this show with Crystal, The Hill.
link |
They thought I was nuts.
link |
They're like, what are you doing?
link |
You're a White House correspondent.
link |
You've got a job forever.
link |
The other job offer I had
link |
was being a White House correspondent.
link |
And people thought I was nuts
link |
for not just sticking there and aging out within Washington,
link |
pining for appearances on Fox News and CNN and MSNBC.
link |
I just hated doing it.
link |
I did not wanna be a company man, like a Washington man,
link |
who's one of those guys who like brags to his friends
link |
about how many times he's been on Fox or whatever,
link |
mostly because I just have a rebellious streak
link |
and I hate being at the subject of other people.
link |
I created something new,
link |
which a lot of people watch to get their news.
link |
And I noticed that younger people
link |
who are almost all my audience,
link |
they don't really look up to any of the people
link |
in traditional, right?
link |
They don't go and they're not coming up and being like,
link |
how do I be like Jim Acosta?
link |
You know, they're like, hey, how did you do what you do?
link |
And the way you did it is by bucking the system.
link |
So I think that we are at a total split point.
link |
And look, there will always be a path for people.
link |
Cause like, I don't want people to over learn this lesson.
link |
I have people who are like, I'm not gonna go to college.
link |
And I'm like, well, just wait.
link |
Yeah, like, I'm like, just like stop,
link |
just like, just hold on a second.
link |
But there will always be a path for the institutional
link |
that will always be there for you.
link |
But now there's something else.
link |
Now there's another game in town.
link |
And that's more appealing to millions and millions
link |
and millions and millions of people
link |
who feel unserved by the corporate media,
link |
CNN and these people,
link |
possibly who feel unserved in the, you know, the faculty.
link |
Like if you are an up and comer
link |
who wants to teach as many young people as possible,
link |
I think you should be on YouTube, right?
link |
Like look at the Khan Academy guy,
link |
that guy created a huge business.
link |
So I just think we can be cynical
link |
and like upset about what that system is,
link |
but we should also have hope.
link |
Like I have a lot of hope for what can be in the future.
link |
Yeah, there's a guy people should check out.
link |
So my story is a little bit different
link |
because I basically stepped aside
link |
with the dream of being an entrepreneur
link |
earlier in the pipeline
link |
than like a legitimate, like senior faculty would.
link |
There's an example of somebody people should check out,
link |
Andrew Huberman from Stanford, who's a neuroscientist,
link |
who's as world class as it gets
link |
in terms of like 10 year faculty,
link |
just a really world class researcher.
link |
And now he's doing YouTube.
link |
Yeah, I see him on Instagram.
link |
So he not just does Instagram, he now has a podcast
link |
and he's changing the nature of like,
link |
I believe that Andrew might be the future of Stanford.
link |
And for a lot, it's funny, like he's basically,
link |
Joe Rogan is an inspiration to Andrew and to me as well.
link |
And those ripple effects and Andrew is an inspiration
link |
probably just like you're saying to these young,
link |
like 25 year olds who are soon to become faculty,
link |
if we're just talking about academia.
link |
And the same is probably happening with government is,
link |
funny enough, Trump probably is inspiring
link |
a huge number of people who are saying, wait a minute,
link |
I don't have to play by the rules.
link |
And I can think outside the box here and you're right.
link |
And the institutions we're seeing
link |
are just probably lagging behind.
link |
So the optimistic view is the future
link |
is going to be full of exciting new ideas.
link |
So Andrew Young is just kind of the beginning
link |
of this whole thing.
link |
He's the tip of the iceberg.
link |
And I hope that iceberg doesn't, it's not this influencer.
link |
One of the things that really bothers me,
link |
I've gotten the chance, I should be careful here.
link |
I don't wanna, I love everybody,
link |
but these people who talk about like,
link |
how to make your first million or how to succeed.
link |
And they're so, I mean, yeah,
link |
that makes me a little bit cynical
link |
about, I'm worried that the people
link |
that win the game of politics will be ones
link |
that want to win the game of politics.
link |
They are, they are, man.
link |
And like we mentioned, AOC,
link |
I hope they optimize for the 80% populist thing, right?
link |
Like they optimize for that bad thing,
link |
that history will remember you as the great man
link |
or woman that did this thing,
link |
versus how do I maximize engagement today
link |
and keep growing those numbers?
link |
The influencers are so, I'm so allergic to this, man.
link |
They keep saying how many followers they have
link |
on the different accounts.
link |
And it's like, I don't think they understand.
link |
Maybe I don't understand.
link |
I don't really care.
link |
I think it has destructive psychological effects.
link |
One, like thinking about the number,
link |
like getting excited, your number went from 100 to 101
link |
and being like, and today went out to 105.
link |
Whoa, that's a big jump.
link |
Then maybe like thinking this way,
link |
like I wonder what I did, I'll do that again.
link |
In this way, one, it creates anxiety
link |
and those psychological effects, whatever.
link |
The more important thing is it prevents you
link |
from truly thinking boldly in the long arc of history
link |
and creatively, thinking outside the box,
link |
doing huge actions.
link |
And I actually, my optimism is in the sense
link |
that that kind of action will beat out all the influencers.
link |
Well, I don't know, Lex, this is where my cynicism comes in.
link |
So there's a guy, Madison Cawthorn,
link |
the youngest member of Congress.
link |
And he, I don't want to say got caught,
link |
but there was like an email where he was like,
link |
my staff is only oriented around comms.
link |
Like he was basically saying,
link |
he got basically caught saying like,
link |
my staff is only centered on communications.
link |
And that's the right play.
link |
If you do want to get the benefits
link |
of our current electoral political and engagement system,
link |
which is that what's the best way to be known
link |
within the right as a right wing politician.
link |
It's to be a culture warrior, go on Ben Shapiro's podcast,
link |
be one of the people on Fox News,
link |
go on Sean Hannity's show, go on Tucker's show
link |
and all of that, because you become a mini celebrity
link |
within that world.
link |
Left unsaid is that that world is increasingly shrinking
link |
portion of the American population.
link |
And they barely, they can't even win a popular vote election,
link |
let alone barely win, eke out an electoral college victory
link |
Well, but the incentives are all aligned within that.
link |
And it's the same thing really on the left,
link |
but you're right, which is that,
link |
ultimately, and look, this is why geniuses are geniuses
link |
because they buck the short term incentives.
link |
They focus on the long term, they bet big
link |
and they usually fail.
link |
But then when they get big, they succeed spectacularly.
link |
The people I know who have done this the best
link |
are like a lot of the crypto folks that I've spoken to.
link |
Like some of the stuff they say, I'm like,
link |
I don't know if that's gonna happen,
link |
but look, they're like billionaires, right?
link |
And you're like, so they were right.
link |
The way I've heard it expressed is you can be wrong a lot,
link |
but when you're right, you get right big.
link |
And I mean, I've seen this in Elon Musk's career.
link |
I mean, he took spectacular risk, like spectacular risk
link |
and just doubled down, doubled down, doubled down,
link |
doubled down, doubled down.
link |
And you can kind of tell to him,
link |
I mean, you know him better than I do,
link |
but like from my observation,
link |
I don't think the money matters, right?
link |
I just, like when I see him, I'm like, I don't,
link |
nobody works as hard as you do
link |
and builds the way that you build
link |
if it's just about the money.
link |
It just doesn't happen.
link |
Like nobody wills SpaceX into existence just for the money.
link |
Like it's not worth it, frankly, right?
link |
Like he probably destroyed years of his life
link |
and like mental sanity.
link |
Money or attention or fame, none of that.
link |
It's not the primary priority.
link |
Well, that's what's so appealing to me,
link |
to me in particular about him, just like in how he built.
link |
Like I read a biography of him
link |
and just like the way that he constructed his life
link |
and like we're able to hyperfocus
link |
in meeting after meeting and drill down
link |
and also hire all the right people
link |
who execute each one of his tasks discreetly
link |
to his perfection is amazing.
link |
Like that's actually the mark of a good leader.
link |
But I mean, if you think about his career,
link |
the reason he's a renegade is cause probably he was told
link |
to like put it in an index fund or whatever.
link |
Like whenever he made his like 29 million
link |
and from PayPal, I don't know how much he made.
link |
And then just go along that road and he's like, no.
link |
So he succeeds spectacularly.
link |
So you have to have somebody who's willing to come in
link |
and buck that system.
link |
So for now, I think our politics are generally frozen.
link |
I think that that model is gonna be most generally appealing
link |
to the mean person, but somebody will come along
link |
and we'll change everything.
link |
Yeah, I'm just surprised there's not more of them.
link |
On that topic, it's now 20, what is it, 21?
link |
Let's make some predictions that you can be wrong about.
link |
What major political people are you thinking will run
link |
in 2024, including Trump, junior, senior, or Ivanka?
link |
And who do you think wins?
link |
I think Joe Biden will run again in 2024.
link |
And I think he will run against someone
link |
with the last name Trump.
link |
I do not know whether that is Trump or Trump junior,
link |
but I think one of those people will probably
link |
be the GOP nominee in 2024.
link |
Some prominent political figure, was it Romney?
link |
Somebody like that said that Trump will win the primary
link |
Of course, that's not even a question.
link |
Trump is the single most popular figure
link |
in the Republican party by orders of magnitude.
link |
Oh, I mean, probably more, honestly.
link |
There was a, actually, I can tell you
link |
because I saw the data, which is that pre January 6th,
link |
it was like 54% of Republicans wanted him to run again.
link |
Then it went down eight points after January 6th,
link |
And then after impeachment, it went right back up to 54%.
link |
So the exact same number is in February,
link |
post impeachment vote, as it was after November.
link |
Now look, yeah, again, surveys, bullshit, et cetera.
link |
But like, that's all the data we have.
link |
That's what I can point you to.
link |
If Trump runs, he will be the nominee
link |
and he will be the 2024 nominee.
link |
I just don't know if he wants to.
link |
It really depends.
link |
Do you think he wins?
link |
After the Trump vaccine heals all of us,
link |
do you think Trump wins?
link |
It depends on how popular culture functions
link |
over the next four years.
link |
And I can tell you that they are,
link |
because I don't think Biden has that much to do with it.
link |
Because again, Trump is not a manifestation
link |
of an affirmative policy action.
link |
It is a defensive bulwark wall against cultural liberalism.
link |
So it's like, this is why it doesn't matter what Biden does.
link |
If there are more riots,
link |
if there is a more sense of persecution
link |
amongst people who are more lean towards conservative
link |
or like, hey, I don't know about that, that's crazy,
link |
then he very well could win.
link |
Okay, let's say Joe Biden doesn't run
link |
and they put up like Kamala Harris,
link |
I think he would beat her.
link |
I don't think there's a question
link |
that Trump would beat Kamala Harris in 2024.
link |
And you don't think anybody else,
link |
I don't know how the process works,
link |
you don't think anybody else on the Democratic side
link |
Well, how could you run against the sitting vice president?
link |
It's like, Joe Biden has a 98% approval rating
link |
in the Democratic Party.
link |
If he says, she is my heir,
link |
I think enough people will listen to him
link |
in a competitive primary or a noncompetitive primary.
link |
And then there's all these things
link |
about how primary systems themselves are rigged,
link |
the DNC could make it known
link |
that they'll blacklist anybody
link |
who does try and primary Kamala Harris.
link |
progressives aren't necessarily all that popular
link |
amongst actual Democrats,
link |
like we found that out during the election.
link |
There's an entire constituency which loves Joe Biden
link |
and Joe Biden level politics.
link |
And so if he tells them to vote for Kamala,
link |
I think she would probably get it.
link |
But again, there's a lot of game theory obviously happening.
link |
Well, see, I think you're talking about
link |
everything you're saying is correct
link |
about mediocre candidates.
link |
It feels like if there's somebody like a really strong,
link |
I don't wanna use this term incorrectly,
link |
but populist, somebody that speaks to the 80%
link |
that is able to provide bold,
link |
eloquently described solutions that are popular.
link |
I think that breaks through all of this nonsense.
link |
How do they break through the primary system?
link |
Cause the problem is the primary system is not populism.
link |
But you don't think they can tweet their way to.
link |
Well, you have to be willing to win a GOP primary.
link |
You basically have to be at,
link |
whoever wins the GOP primary, in my opinion,
link |
will be the person most hated by the left.
link |
One of the people, things that people forget is,
link |
you know who came in second to Trump?
link |
And the reason why is because Ted Cruz
link |
was the second most hated guy by liberals in America.
link |
A second to Trump.
link |
They have nothing in policy in common.
link |
But don't you think this kind of brilliantly described
link |
system of hate being the main mechanism
link |
of our electoral choices,
link |
don't you think that just has to do with mediocre candidates?
link |
Basically the field of candidates, including Trump,
link |
including everybody was just like,
link |
didn't make anyone feel great.
link |
It's like, really?
link |
This is what we have to choose from?
link |
Maybe a Mark Cuban,
link |
or like a Mark Cuban is a Democrat,
link |
or it would have to be somebody like that.
link |
Somebody who, because here's the thing about Trump.
link |
It's not just that it was Trump.
link |
He was so fucking famous.
link |
Like people don't realize he was so famous.
link |
Like I, even when I first met Trump,
link |
I met a couple of other presidents,
link |
but when I met Trump, even I felt like kind of starstruck.
link |
Cause I was like, yo, this is the guy from The Apprentice.
link |
I'm like, this is the dude.
link |
From The Apprentice?
link |
Cause I'm like, my dad and I used to sit
link |
and watch The Apprentice when I was in high school.
link |
And then one of the guys was from College Station
link |
where I grew up and we're like,
link |
oh my God, like that guy's on The Apprentice.
link |
Like it was a phenomenon.
link |
There's like that level.
link |
It's kind of like when I met Joe Rogan,
link |
I'm like, holy shit, that's Joe Rogan.
link |
I don't feel that way when I meet Mitt Romney,
link |
or Tom Cotton, or Josh Hawley, I met all of them.
link |
But there's a lot of celebrities, right?
link |
Do you think there's some celebrities
link |
you were not even thinking about that could step in?
link |
So I was about to say, I think The Rock could do it,
link |
but does he wanna do it?
link |
I mean, it's terrible.
link |
Like it's terrible gig.
link |
It's very hard to do.
link |
I don't know if The Rock necessarily has
link |
like the formed policy agenda.
link |
Cause then here's the other problem.
link |
What if we set ourselves up for a system
link |
where like these people keep winning,
link |
but like with Trump, they have no idea
link |
how to run a government.
link |
It's actually really hard, right?
link |
And you have to have the knowhow and the trust
link |
to find the right people.
link |
This is where the genius element comes in is,
link |
you have to understand that front
link |
and you have to understand how to execute discrete tasks.
link |
Like this is the FDR.
link |
This is why it's so hard, like FDR, Lincoln, TR.
link |
They were who they were and they live in history
link |
and their name rings like for a reason.
link |
And yeah, I mean, one of the most depressing lessons
link |
I got from 2020 is at almost, it seems like in my opinion,
link |
that we over learn the lesson of our success
link |
and not of our failures.
link |
For example, like we have this narrative in our head
link |
that we always have the right person
link |
at the right time during crisis.
link |
And in some cases it was true.
link |
We didn't deserve Lincoln.
link |
We didn't deserve FDR.
link |
We didn't deserve a lot of presidents at times of crisis.
link |
But then you're like, okay, George W. Bush, 9 11,
link |
that was terrible.
link |
Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson, awful, right?
link |
Like we had several periods in our history
link |
where the crisis was there, they were called
link |
and they did not show up.
link |
And I really, it hadn't happened in my lifetime
link |
And even then you could kind of see that as an opportunity
link |
for somebody like Obama to come in and fix it.
link |
But then he didn't do it.
link |
And then Trump didn't do it.
link |
And you realize, I feel like our politics are most analogous
link |
to like the 1910s, like all in terms of the Gilded Age,
link |
in terms of that, remember there's that long period
link |
of presidents between like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
link |
We were like, wait, like who was president?
link |
Like, or even TR was like an exception
link |
where you'll have like Calvin Coolidge who like,
link |
silent cow, Grover Cleveland.
link |
That's kind of how, if I think of us within history,
link |
I feel like we're in one of those times.
link |
We're just waiting.
link |
It feels really important to us right now.
link |
Like this is the most important moment in history,
link |
It could just be a blip, right?
link |
Like when you think about who was president
link |
between 1890 and 19 before, I mean, yeah,
link |
between like 1888 and 1910.
link |
Like nobody really thinks about that period of America,
link |
but like that was an entire lifetime for people, right?
link |
Like what did they, how did they feel
link |
about the country that they were in?
link |
That's how I kind of think about where we are right now.
link |
It's funny to think.
link |
I mean, I don't want to minimize it,
link |
but like we haven't really gone
link |
through a World War II style crisis.
link |
So like, say that there is a crisis
link |
in like several decades of that level, right?
link |
Existential risks to a large portion of the world.
link |
Then what will be remembered is World War II,
link |
maybe a little bit about Vietnam
link |
and then whatever that crisis is.
link |
And this whole period that we see as dramatic,
link |
Even 9 11, it's like, cause you can look
link |
at how many people died and all those kinds of things,
link |
all the drama around the war on terror
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Maybe Obama will be remembered
link |
for being the first African American president,
link |
but then like that's, yeah, that's fascinating
link |
to think about, oh man, even Trump will be like,
link |
Yeah, like maybe he'd be remembered
link |
as the first celebrity.
link |
I mean, Reagan was already a governor, right?
link |
Yeah, so like the first apolitical celebrity that was,
link |
so maybe if there's more celebrities in the future,
link |
they'll say that Trump was the first person
link |
to pave the way for celebrities to win.
link |
And yeah, I still hold that this era
link |
will probably be remembered.
link |
You know, people say I talk about Elon way too much,
link |
but the reality is like, there's not many people
link |
that are doing the kind of things he's doing
link |
is why I talk about it.
link |
I think this era, it's not necessarily Elon and SpaceX,
link |
but this era will be remembered by the new,
link |
the like of the space exploration,
link |
of the commercial of companies getting
link |
into space exploration of space travel.
link |
And perhaps like artificial intelligence
link |
around social media, all those kinds of things,
link |
this might be remembered for that.
link |
But every, all the political bickering,
link |
all that nonsense, that might be very well forgotten.
link |
One way to think about it is that the internet is so young.
link |
I think about it, so Jeff Jarvis,
link |
he's a media scholar I respect.
link |
He's not the only person to say this,
link |
but many others have, which is that, look,
link |
this is kind of like the printing press.
link |
There was a whole 30 years war
link |
because of the printing press.
link |
It took a long time for shit to sort out.
link |
I think that's where we're at with the internet.
link |
Like at a certain level, it disrupts everything.
link |
And that's a good thing.
link |
It can be very tumultuous.
link |
I never felt like I was living through history
link |
until coronavirus.
link |
Like, you know, like until we were all locked down,
link |
I was like, I'm living through history.
link |
Like this, there's this very overused cliche in DC
link |
where every comm staffer wants you to think
link |
that what their boss just did is history.
link |
And I've always been like, this isn't history.
link |
This is some like stupid fucking bill, you know, whatever.
link |
But like, that was the first time I was like,
link |
this is history, like this right here.
link |
Well, I was hoping, tragedy aside,
link |
that this, I wish the primaries happened during coronavirus
link |
so that we, because like, then we can see the,
link |
so, okay, here's a bunch of people facing crisis.
link |
It's an opportunity for a leader to step up.
link |
Like, I still believe the optimistic view
link |
is the game theory of like influencers
link |
will always be defeated by actual great leaders.
link |
So like, maybe the great leaders are rare,
link |
but I think they're sufficiently out there
link |
that they will step up, especially in moments of crisis.
link |
And coronavirus is obviously a crisis
link |
where like, you know, mass manufacture of tests,
link |
all kinds of infrastructure building
link |
that you could have done in 2020,
link |
there's so many possibilities for just like bold action.
link |
And none of that, even just,
link |
forget actually doing the action, advocating for it.
link |
Just saying like this, we need to do this.
link |
And none of that, like the speeches that Biden made,
link |
I don't even remember a single speech that Biden made
link |
because there's zero bold, I mean, their strategy
link |
was to be quiet and let Donald Trump.
link |
Polarize the electorate.
link |
Polarize the electorate and hope that results
link |
in them winning because of the high unemployment numbers
link |
and all those kinds of things,
link |
as opposed to like, let's go big,
link |
let's go with a big speech.
link |
Like, you know, that, yeah,
link |
it's a lost opportunity in some sense.
link |
So we talked a bunch about politics,
link |
but one of the other interesting things
link |
is that you're involved with is,
link |
or involved with defining the future of as journalism.
link |
I suppose you can think of podcasts
link |
as a kind of journalism,
link |
but also just writing in general,
link |
just whatever the hell the future of this thing looks like
link |
is up to be defined by people like you.
link |
So what do you think is broken about journalism
link |
and what do you think is the future of journalism?
link |
I think the future of journalism looks much more like
link |
what we, you and I are doing here right now.
link |
And journalism is gonna be downstream from a culture
link |
that can be a good and a bad thing
link |
depending on how you look at it.
link |
We are gonna look at our media,
link |
our media is gonna look much more like it did
link |
And the way that I mean that is that back in the 18,
link |
in the 1800s in particular,
link |
especially after the invention of the telegraph
link |
when information itself was known.
link |
So for example, like you and I don't need to,
link |
let's say you and I are competing journalists.
link |
You and I are no longer competing quote unquote
link |
to tell the public X event happened.
link |
All journalism today is largely explaining
link |
And part of the problem with that is that
link |
that means that it's all up for partisan interpretation.
link |
Now you can say that that's a bad thing.
link |
I think it's a great thing
link |
because the highest level of literacy
link |
and news viewership in America
link |
was during the time of yellow journalism,
link |
was during the time of partisan journalism.
link |
People like to read the news from people
link |
that they agree with.
link |
You could say that's bad, echo chambers, et cetera.
link |
That's the downside of it.
link |
The upside is more people are more educated.
link |
More people are interested in the news.
link |
So I think the proliferation of mass media,
link |
I mean, sorry, of this format
link |
of niching, of not just long form.
link |
Dude, I do updates on Instagram, which are five minutes.
link |
Are you considered like Instagram, almost even Twitter?
link |
Oh, of course, Twitter.
link |
Twitter is where I get my news from.
link |
I don't read the paper.
link |
I have literally, Twitter is my news aggregator.
link |
It's called my wire where I find out about hard events.
link |
Like the president has departed the White House.
link |
But not only that, I don't know about you,
link |
but I also looked at Twitter
link |
to the exact thing you're saying,
link |
which is the response to the news,
link |
like the thoughtful sounds ridiculous,
link |
but you can be pretty thoughtful in a single tweet.
link |
If you follow the right people, you can get that.
link |
And so that is the future of media,
link |
which is that the future of media
link |
is it will be much larger amounts of people,
link |
which are famous to smaller groups.
link |
So Walter Cronkite's never gonna happen again,
link |
at least probably within our lifetimes,
link |
where everybody in America knows who this guy is.
link |
I think that's a good thing
link |
because now people are gonna get the news
link |
from the people that they trust.
link |
Yes, some of it will be opinionated.
link |
I'm in my program.
link |
Crystal and I are like, she's coming from this view.
link |
I'm coming from this view.
link |
That's our bias when we talk about information
link |
and we're gonna talk about the information
link |
that we think is important.
link |
And it has garnered a large audience.
link |
I think that's very much where the future is gonna be.
link |
And the reason why I think that's a good thing
link |
is because people will be engaged more within it
link |
rather than the current system
link |
where news is highly concentrated, highly consolidated,
link |
has the same elite production pipeline problem
link |
of everybody knows journalists all come
link |
from the same socioeconomic background
link |
and they all party together here in DC or in New York
link |
or in LA or wherever,
link |
and they're part of the same monoculture
link |
and that affects what they report.
link |
This will cause a total dispersion of all of that.
link |
The battle of our age is gonna be the guild
link |
versus the non guild.
link |
So like what we see right now
link |
with the New York Times and Clubhouse,
link |
this is a very, very, very, very, very intentional thing
link |
that is happening,
link |
which is that the Times talking
link |
about unfettered conversations,
link |
that's happening on Clubhouse for people who aren't aware.
link |
This is important because they need
link |
to be the fetters of conversation.
link |
They need to be the inter agent.
link |
That's where they get their power.
link |
They get their power from convincing Facebook
link |
that they are the ones who can fact check stuff.
link |
They are the ones who can tell you
link |
whether something is right or wrong.
link |
That battle over unimpeded conversation
link |
and the explosion of a format
link |
that you and I are doing really well in,
link |
and then this more consolidated one,
link |
which holds cultural power and elite power
link |
and more importantly, money, right?
link |
Over you and I, that's the battle
link |
that we're all gonna play out.
link |
Do you think unfettered conversations
link |
have a chance to win this battle?
link |
Yes, I do in the long run.
link |
In the long run, the internet is simply too powerful.
link |
But here's the mistake everybody makes.
link |
The New York Times will never lose.
link |
It will just become one of us.
link |
They are the largest.
link |
The daily, look at the daily.
link |
Think about it not in podcasting.
link |
The Times is not a mass media product.
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It is a subscription product
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for upper middle class largely white liberals
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who live the same circumstances
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across the United States and in Europe.
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There's nothing wrong with that.
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But here's the thing.
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You can't be the paper of record
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when you're actually the paper
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of upper middle class white America.
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Your job is to report on the news from that angle
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and deliver them the product that they want.
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There's nothing wrong with that.
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Their stock price is higher than ever.
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They're making 10 times more money than they did
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10 years ago, but it comes at the cost
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of not having a mass application audience.
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So like when people, I think people in our space
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are always like, the New York Times is gonna be destroyed.
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No, it's actually even better.
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They will just become one of us.
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They're a subscription platform.
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Well, yes, in terms of the actual mechanism.
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But you know, New York Times is still,
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and I don't think I'm speaking about a particular sector.
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I think it, as a brand, it does have the level
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of credibility assigned to it still.
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There's politicization of it.
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But there's a credibility.
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Like it has much more credibility than,
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forgive me, than I think you and I have.
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In terms of your podcast, like people are not going
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to be like, they're gonna say at the New York Times
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versus what you said on the podcast for an opinion.
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I wonder in the sense of battles,
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whether on Federated Conversations, whether Joe Rogan,
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whether your podcast can become the,
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have the same level of legitimacy or the flip side,
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New York Times loses legitimacy to be at the same level
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of in terms of how we talk about it.
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It's a long battle, right?
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It's gonna take a long time.
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And I'm saying, this is where I think the end state is going
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and look at what the Times is doing.
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They're leaning into podcasting for a reason,
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but not just podcasting as in NPR level,
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like here's what's happening.
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Michael Barbaro is a fucking celebrity, right?
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The guy who does the daily.
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That guy's famous amongst these people
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because they're like, oh my God, I love Michael.
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Like, I love the way he does this stuff.
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Again, that's fine.
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More people are listening to the news.
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I think that's a good thing.
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And then who else do they hire?
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Ezra Klein from Vox, Kara Swisher, also from Vox,
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who does Pivot, which is an amazing podcast.
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Or Jane Coaston, same thing.
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It's personalities who are becoming bundled together
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within this brand, right?
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Here's, okay, maybe I'm just a hater.
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Cause I love podcasting from the beginning.
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I love Green Day before the recall, man.
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But I am bothered by it.
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Like why doesn't Kara Swisher, she's done successfully.
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I think in her own, no, she was always a part
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of some kind of institution.
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But she started her own thing, I think.
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Recode, right, yeah.
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Recode, I don't know if that's her own thing.
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So she was very successful there.
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Why the hell did she join the New York Times
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with the new podcast?
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Why is Michael Barbaro not do his own thing?
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Cause he gets paid and because he has,
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he wants the elite cache that you just referenced
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within his social circle in New York,
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which is that I think the biggest mistake
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that some of the venture people make is
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if we give everybody the tools
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that those people are all gonna leave
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to like go substack and go independent,
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within their social circle,
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sacrificing some money from being independent is worth it
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to be a part of the New York Times.
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That's sad to me because it propagates old thinking,
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like it propagates old institutions.
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And you could say that New York Times
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is going to evolve quickly and so on,
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but I would love it if there was a mechanism
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for reestablishing, like for building new New York Times
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in terms of public legitimacy.
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And I suppose that's a wishful thinking
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cause it takes time to build trust in institutions
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and it takes time to build new institutions.
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My main thing I would say is public legitimacy
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as a concept is not gonna be there in mass media anymore
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because of the balkanization of audiences.
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I mean, think about it, right?
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Like this is like Lesion, the classic stuff
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around a thousand true fans,
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or no, sorry, like a hundred true fans even now.
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Like you can make a living on the internet
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just talking to a hundred people.
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If as long as they're all high frequency traders,
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some of the highest paid people on substack,
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they don't have that many subs.
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It's just that they're Wall Street guys, right?
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So people pay a lot of money.
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Again, that's great.
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So what you will have is an increasing balkanization
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of the internet, of audiences and of niches.
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People will become increasingly famous within us.
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You will become astoundingly famous.
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I'm sure you've noticed this with your fan base.
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I certainly have with mine.
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Like 99% of people have no idea who I am,
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but when somebody meets, they're like,
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oh my God, I watch your show every day, right?
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Like it's the only thing I watch for news, right?
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Like instead of casually famous, if that makes sense,
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but like, oh yeah, it's like Alec Baldwin, you know?
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Whoa, shit, that's Alec Baldwin.
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But you're not like, oh shit, I love you Alec Baldwin.
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This is a Ben Smith of the New York Times,
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actually he wrote this column.
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He's like, the future is everybody will be famous,
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but only to a small group of people.
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And I think that is true.
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But again, I don't decry it.
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I think it's great because I think that the more
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that that happens, the more engaged people will be
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and it empowers different voices to be able to come in
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and then possibly, I wouldn't say destroy,
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but compete against.
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I mean, look at Joe.
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Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox
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That gives me like immense inspiration.
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Like he created the space for me to succeed.
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And I told him that when I met him, I was like,
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dude, like I listened to his podcast when I was like young.
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And like, and I remember like when I got to meet him
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and all that, and I told him this on this pod,
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I was like, I didn't know people were millions
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were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps
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for three straight hours, including me.
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I didn't know that I could be one of those people.
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I learned something about myself from his show, yeah.
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And so by creating that space, I'd be like, wait,
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there's a hunger here.
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Like he showed us all the way
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and none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan
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because he was the first and that's fine
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because he created the umbrella ecosystem
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for us all to thrive.
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That is where I see like a great amount of hope
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within that story.
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Yeah, and the cool thing, he also supports that ecosystem.
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He's such a. He's so generous.
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One of the things he paved the way out for me
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is to show that you can just be honest, publicly honest,
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and not jealous of other people's success,
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but instead be supportive and all those kinds of things,
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just like loving towards others.
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He's been an inspiration.
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I mean, to the comics community,
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I think there are a bunch of, before that,
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I think there were all a bunch of competitive haters
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towards each other.
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Yeah, and now he's like just injected love.
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They're like, they're still like many are still resistant,
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but they're like, they can't help it
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because he's such a huge voice.
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He like forces them to be like loving towards each other.
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And the same, I tried to,
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one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast
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was to try to, I wanted to be like do what Joe Rogan did,
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but for the scientific community,
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like my little circle of scientific community of like,
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like let's support each other.
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Yeah, well, like Avi Loeb,
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I would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you.
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I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe.
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He went on Joe's show.
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I had him on my show.
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Like millions of people would have no idea who he was
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if it wasn't for you.
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Just by the way, in terms of deep state
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and shadow government, Avi Loeb has to do with aliens.
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You better believe Joe.
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Dude, the last thing I sent to him
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was the American Airlines audio.
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The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing.
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So like, this American Airlines flight crew
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was over New Mexico, this happened five or six days ago.
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And the guy comes and he goes,
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hey, do you have any targets up here?
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A large cylindrical object just flew over me.
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Okay, so this happens, so this happens.
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Then a guy or like a radio catcher
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records this and posts it online.
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American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio.
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And they go, all further questions
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should be referred to the FBI.
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So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed
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it's a legitimate transmission.
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FBI, then the FAA comes out and says,
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we were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane
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at the time of the transmission.
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So the only plausible explanation that online sleuths
link |
have been able to say is maybe he saw a Learjet,
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which was, you know, using like open source data.
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FAA rules that out.
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He saw a large cylindrical object.
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While he was mid flight, American Airlines,
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but you can go online, listen to the audio yourself.
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This is a 100% no shit transmission
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confirmed by American Airlines of a commercial pilot
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over New Mexico, seeing a quote unquote,
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large cylindrical object in the air.
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Like I said, when we first started talking,
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I've never believed more in UFOs and aliens.
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Yeah, this is awesome.
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I just wish both American Airlines, FBI,
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and government would be more transparent.
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Like there would be voices, and I know it sounds ridiculous,
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but the kind of transparency that you see,
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maybe not Joe Rogan, he's like overly transparent.
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He's just a comic really, but just the, I don't know,
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like a podcast from the FBI, just like being honest,
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like excited, confused.
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I'm sure that they're being overly cautious
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about their release information.
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I'm sure there's a lot of information
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that would inspire the public,
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that would inspire trust in institutions
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that will not damage national security.
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Like it seems to me obvious,
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and the reason they're not sharing it
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is because of this momentum of bureaucracy,
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of caution and so on.
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But there's probably so much cool information
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that the government has.
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The way I almost, I wouldn't say it confirmed it's real,
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but Trump didn't declassify it.
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Like you know that if there was ever a president
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that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him.
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I mean, he didn't declassify it, man.
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And people begged him to.
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I know for a fact,
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because I pushed to try and make this happen,
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that some people did speak to him about it.
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And he was like, no, I'm not gonna do it.
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He might be afraid.
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That's what I mean, though.
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They were probably all telling him,
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they're like, sir, you can't do this, you know, all this,
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like, wow, and I get that.
link |
And there's this legislation written at COVID
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that like they have six months to release it, man.
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Is that a bunch of bullshit?
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I think it's bullshit.
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There's so many different levels of classification
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that people need to understand.
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I mean, look, I read John Podesta.
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He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
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He's a big UFO guy.
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Like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information
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and they could not get any of it.
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And we're talking about the president
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and the White House chief of staff.
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Well, there's a whole bureaucracy,
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but just like you were saying, with intent.
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You have to be like, that has to be your focus
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because there's a whole bureaucracy built around secrecy
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for probably for a good reason.
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So to get through to the information,
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there's a whole like paperwork process,
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all that kind of stuff.
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You can't just walk in and get the,
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unless again, with intention, that becomes your thing.
link |
Like let's revolutionize this thing.
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And then you get only so many things.
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It's sad that the bureaucracy has gotten so bulky,
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but I think the hopeful messages
link |
from earlier in our conversation,
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it seems like a single person can't fix it,
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but if you hire the right team, it feels like you can.
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Can't fix everything.
link |
I don't wanna give people unrealistic expectations.
link |
You can fix a lot, especially in crisis,
link |
you can remake America.
link |
And the reason I know that
link |
is because it's already happened twice.
link |
FDR, or in modern history, FDR and JFK.
link |
Sorry, FDR and JFK's assassination, LBJ.
link |
Two hyper competent men who understood government,
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who understood personnel,
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and coincidentally were friends.
link |
I don't think actually people understand this.
link |
FDR met Johnson three days after he won his election
link |
to Congress, special election.
link |
He was only 29 years old.
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And he left that meeting and called somebody and said,
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this young man is gonna be president
link |
of the United States someday.
link |
Like even then, like what was within him
link |
to understand and to recognize that.
link |
And sometimes Johnson, as a young member of Congress,
link |
would come and have breakfast with FDR,
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like just to the great political minds of the 20th century,
link |
just sitting there talking.
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Like I would give anything to know what was happening.
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Yeah, I hope they were real with each other.
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And there was like a genuine human connection, right?
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That seems to be the...
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Well, Johnson wasn't a genuine guy,
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so probably certainly not.
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Well, I need to read those thousands of pages.
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I've been way too focused on Hitler.
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I was gonna say, one of my goals in coming to this
link |
is I was like, I gotta get Lex into two things,
link |
because I know he'll love it.
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I know he'll love LBJ,
link |
if he takes the time to read the books.
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Of all the presidents...
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I didn't say you'll love him,
link |
but you'll love the books about him.
link |
Because the books are a story of America,
link |
the story of politics, the story of power.
link |
This is the guy who wrote the Power Broker.
link |
These books are up there with
link |
Decline and Follow the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon,
link |
in terms of how power works.
link |
No, that's why Carroll wrote the books.
link |
And that's why the books are not really about LBJ,
link |
they're about power in Washington,
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and about the consolidation of power post New Deal,
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the consolidation then,
link |
where they're using the levers of power like Johnson knew
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in order to change the House of Representatives,