The following is a conversation with Sagar Anjati.

He is a DC based political correspondent, host of The Rising with Crystal Ball, and host

of the Realignment podcast with Marshall Kozlov.

He has interviewed Donald Trump four times and has interviewed a lot of major political

figures and human beings who wield power.

He loves policy and loves history, which makes him a great person to sail through the sometimes

stormy waters of political discourse.

He showed up to this conversation with a gift of the second volume of Ian Kershaw's

biography on Hitler, a two volume set that is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest,

if not the greatest, most definitive studies of Hitler.

Nothing wins my heart faster on a first meeting or first date than a great book about the

darkest aspects of human nature and human history.

I think I started saying that as a joke, but actually, there's probably a lot of truth

to it.

I love it when we skip the small talk and go straight to the in depth conversation about

the best and worst of human nature.

Quick mention of our sponsors, Jordan Harbinger Show, Grammarly Grammar Assistant, Aidsleep

Self Cooling Bed, and Magic Spoon Low Carb Serial.

Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that for better or for worse, I would like to avoid the trap

of surface political bickering of the day.

I do find politics fascinating, but not the talking points produced by the industrial

engagement complex of red versus blue division.

Instead, I'm fascinated by human beings who seek power and how power changes them.

I don't have a political affiliation, and my ideas, at least I hope so, are defined

more by curiosity and learning in the face of uncertainty and less by the echo chambers

who tell me what I'm supposed to think.

I'm constantly evolving, learning, and doing my best to do so without ego and with empathy.

Please be patient with me.

As far as I'm aware, I do not have any derangement syndromes, nor do I get a medical prescription

of blue, red, white, or black pills.

If I say something, I say it because I'm genuinely thinking and struggling with the ideas.

I have no agenda, just a bit of a hope to add more love to the world.

If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Freedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Sagar Unjedi.

There's no better gifts in this world than a book about Hitler.

So thank you so much.

I've gotten a gift when I was just talking about the watch from Joe Rogan, and this almost

beats it.

So tell me what this particular book on Hitler is.

So this is volume two.

Yes.

So this is Ian Kershaw.

He wrote the famous Two Volume on Hitler.

I'm a big book nerd, and I spend a lot of time reading biographies in particular.

So this one, if you need a one volume, rise and fall of the Third Reich.

I think you talked about that, William Shire, because that's like Hitler's rise, Nazi Germany,

the war, et cetera.

But I like bios because the good biography is story of the times.

And so this one, the first volume, it does exactly that, which is that it doesn't just

tell the story of Hitler.

It's the context of this kid in Austria, and he's got all these dreams, but then actually

pretty courageous in terms of World War I, right, gets pinned to metal on by the Kaiser.

And then what it's like to have to lose World War I and actually like lose this stain and

then the rise within, everybody knows that story, the Beer Hall Putsch and all of that.

This one I like, and the reason I like Kershaw is obviously number one, it's English, which

is actually hard, right, like in order to write that story, who can do both the primary

source material and then translate it for people like us.

But he tells the dynamic story of Hitler so well in the second volume, just the level

of detail.

You've talked about this, Lex.

What was it like inside that room, inside with Chamberlain?

What was it like in terms of who was this magnetic madman who did convince the smartest

people in the world at the time?

And up until 1940, the Soviet gamble, it took tremendous risks.

But like highly calculated, thinking, no, no, no, I'm not going to pay for this one.

I'm not going to pay for this one.

And it put himself, he had a remarkable ability, not just to put himself in the minds of the

German people, but in terms of his adversaries, like with when he was across from Mussolini.

Calculated, he's like, how exactly did Mussolini, the guy who created fascism, becomes like

second fiddle to Hitler?

Think it's an amazing bio.

And yeah, like Ian Kershaw, along with Richard Evans, two of my favorite authors on the

Third Reich, no question.

You think he was born this way, that charisma, whatever that is, or was it something he developed

strategically?

That's like the question you apply to some of the great leaders.

Was he just a madman who had the instinct to be able to control people in the room together

with them?

Or is this like, he worked at it?

I think he worked at it.

But also, there is an innate quality.

I'm forgetting his name, his lifelong Rudolph, the one who flew to Berlin in like 1940, Afrika.

Anyway, so he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf, and he was like slavishly devoted to him in

prison.

This is 1925 or something like that.

And so you read that, and you're like, well, how does he get this like crank wacko to basically

believe he's like the second coming, help him write this book?

I mean, literally, they lived together in the prison cell, and they would wake up every

day.

And as he was composing Mein Kampf, and because of the Beer Hall Putsch, and all that had

this like absolute ability to gather people around him, I think his greatest skill was

is he was just a very good politician, truly.

I mean, if you look at his ability in order to read coalitional politics, and then convince

exactly the right people in order to follow him, I think I heard you ask this once and

I've thought about it a lot, which is like, who could have stopped Hitler in Germany,

right?

It's always like the ever present question.

Of course, like the whole baby Hitler thing.

Really the answer is Hindenburg.

Like Hindenburg was the person who could have stopped and had the immense standing within

the German public.

The only real like war hero definitely was personally skeptical of fascism and Nazism.

And didn't like Hitler.

And didn't like him.

And he knew he was full of shit.

He was like, yeah, I think this guy is dangerous.

I think this guy could do a lot of damage to the Republic, but he acceded basically to

Hitler at the time.

And I think that he was one of the main people who could have done something about it.

And also he was able to convince the generals and military.

I mean, that was very interesting.

And to convince Chamberlain and the other political leaders, there's something I often

think about, because we're just reading books about these people, I think about with like

Jeffrey Epstein, for example, like evil people, not evil, but people have done evil things.

Let's not go to the Dan Carlin thing of what is evil?

People that do evil things, I wonder what they are like in a room, because I know quite

a lot of intelligent people that were, did not see the evil in Jeffrey Epstein and spent

time with him.

And we're not bothered by in the same sense, Hitler, it seems like he was able to get just

even on a, before he would had power, because people get intoxicated by power and so on.

They want to be close to power, but even before he had power, he was able to convince people.

And it's unclear, like, is there something that's more than words?

It's like the way you, I mean, that people talk, tell stories about like this piercing

look and whatever, all that kind of stuff.

I wonder if that, if that's somehow part of it, like that has to be the base floor of

any of these charismatic leaders.

You have to be able to in a room alone, be able to convince anybody of anything.

So I can tell you, from my personal experience, one of the best educated lessons I got was

when I got to meet Trump.

So I interviewed Trump four different times as a journalist, spent like two and a half

hours with him in the Oval Office, not alone, but like me and one person and like the press

secretary.

And that was it.

So I actually got to observe him.

And as a guy who reads these types of books, right, and you know, you think of Trump, obviously

most people, what they see on television, you know, in articles and more, but being

able to observe it like one on one, I was closer to him than, you know, than I am right

now from you.

That was one of the most educational experiences I got because it's like you just said, the

look, the leaning forward, the way he talks, the way he is a master at taking the question

and answering exactly which party wants.

And then if you try and follow up, he's like, excuse me, you know, he knows.

And then whenever you're talking, it's not that he's annoyed about getting interrupted.

If he realizes he's been Miranda ring and then you interrupt him, all good.

But if he's striving home a point, which he has to make sure appears in your transcript

or whatever, it's like it really was fascinating for me to look at.

And what was also crazy with Trump is I realized how much he was living in the moment.

So like when I went to the oval, you know, I've read all these biographies and like I

walk in, I'm like, holy shit, you're like, I'm in the oval office.

When you interviewed him in the oval, in the oval, every time was in the oval office.

You scare Schillis.

Sorry.

Well, I wasn't scared.

I was just, look, it's the oval office.

Right.

I mean, I'm just nerd.

He was like this kid when I'm so, I will admit this here, like I printed out on my dad's

label maker when I was like seven and I wrote like the oval office on my bedroom.

So I was like, you know, a huge nerd, like obviously you go maniacal, even from seven.

But so like for this, I mean, it was huge, right?

I'm like this 25 year old kid and like I walk in there and like I see the couch, right?

And I'm like, oh man, like that's Kissinger.

Like, you know, like that's where like Kissinger and Nixon got on their knees and you see over

by the door and you're like, are the scuff marks still there from when Eisenhower used

to play golf?

You know, this is all running through my mind with Trump.

None of it was there.

None of it, right?

So on the moment, even the desk, I got put my phone on the desk to record and I'm like,

this is the fucking Resolute Esk, like I shouldn't put my phone on this thing.

And I'm like HMS Resolute, you know, all that, you know, national, even for him, he doesn't

think about any of it.

It was like amazing to me.

Like he had this portrait of Andrew Jackson right next to his, to the, I think from on

the fireplace, like right here on the right.

And the most revealing question was when I was like, Mr. President, what are people

going to remember you for in a hundred years?

And he was like, he had, he was like, I don't know, like veteran's choice.

He like has a list in front of him of like, his accomplishments, which is staff.

Good question, by the way.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's what I wanted to know.

And he's like veteran's choice and I remember looking at him and being like, it's not going

to be better.

I'm like, I'm looking at you, Donald Trump, the harbinger of something new.

We still don't know what the hell it is.

And so I realized with these guys and their charisma and more is that they don't think

about themselves the way that we think about them.

And that was actually important to understand because a lot of people like Trump is playing

all this chess.

I'm like, I assure you, he's not like he's truly one time I was interviewing him and

he had like a certificate that he had to sign or something on his desk.

He's like, it was like child almost like he got distracted by the, he's like, oh, what's

this?

You know, it's just like picking up and I was like, wow, like this, this is the guy.

Like this is what he is.

Well, I wonder if there was a different person because you were recording and then offline

and you can tell you, well, here's the thing though, because that's another part of it

because that two hours, I would say like half of that was not on the record.

So like, whenever he's off the record, he changes completely, right?

I don't want to like go into too much of it or whatever, but like he, I mean, he is so

mindful of when that camera is on and when the mic is hot in terms of the language that

he uses, what he's willing to admit, what he's willing to talk about, how he's willing

to even appear in front of his staff.

I think the most revealing thing Trump ever did was there was this press conference like

right after he lost you, right after the midterm elections of 2018.

And one of the journalists was like, Mr. President, thank you for doing this press conference.

And he looks at him and he goes, it's called earned media.

It's worth billions.

He just had so much disdain for him because he's like, I'm not doing this for you.

He's like, I'm doing this for me.

So he's really aware of the narratives of the story.

I mean, the people have talked about that all comes from the tabloid media of the, from

New York and so on.

He's a master of that.

But I've also heard stories of just in private, he's a really, I don't want to overuse the

word charismatic, but just like, he is a really interesting, almost like friendly, like a

good person.

Like, that's what I heard, I haven't heard actually surprising the same thing about Hillary

Clinton.

That I can't tell you anything about.

But like the way they present themselves is perhaps very different than they are as human

beings.

But that's something, maybe that's just like a skill thing, maybe the way they present

themselves in public is actually, I mean, almost their real self and they're just really

good in private one on one to go into this mode of just being really intimate in some

kind of human way.

I think that's part of it because I noticed that with Trump, he's almost like a tour guide.

It was very like, it's very crazy, right, because you're like, you're in the Oval.

I mean, it's his office.

And he's like, he's like, do you guys want anything?

He's like, you want a Diet Coke?

Because he drinks like all this Diet Coke.

That's awesome.

You know what I mean?

That's great.

I apologize.

I love it.

Yeah, he's just like, he's like, you guys want a Diet Coke, right?

And you're sitting there and you're like, the way he's able to like, like the last time

I interviewed him, he wanted to do it outside because he like, he's studied himself from

all angles and he knows exactly how he looks on a camera and with the which lighting.

And so we were supposed to interview him on camera in the Oval office, which is actually

rare.

Like you don't usually get that.

And they ended up moving it outside at the last minute and he came out and he's like,

I picked this spot for you.

He's like, great lighting.

Yeah.

I was like, you are your own lighting director, you're the president, right?

It's great.

It's so funny.

But it's like you said, he's very charismatic and friendly.

I mean, you wouldn't, I mean, look, this is what I mean in terms of the dynamism of these

people that gets lost.

And I think even he knows that, like, I don't think he would want that side of him.

That I, you know, that you see in those off the record moments and more in order to come

out because he's very keen about how exactly he presents to the public.

It's like, you know, even his presidential portrait, everybody usually smiles and he

refused to smile.

He was like, I want to look like Winston Churchill, you know, like even he knew that.

I think he believes that he, what, what he kind of implies that he is one of, if not

the greatest presidents in American history.

Like people kind of laugh at this, but there's quite, I mean, there's quite a lot of people

first of all that make the argument that he's the greatest president in history.

Like I've heard this argument being made.

And I mean, I don't know what the, first of all, I don't care, like you can't make an

argument that anyone is the greatest.

That's just, that's just, I come from a school of like being humble and modest and so on.

It's like, even Michael, you can't have that conversation.

Okay.

So I like that he's humble enough to say like Abraham Lincoln and whatever, like, he says

maybe Lincoln.

Maybe.

Remember that.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Do you think he actually believes that or is that something he understands will create

news and also perhaps more importantly, piss off a large number of people?

Is he almost like a musician masterfully playing the emotions of the public or does he, or

and does he believe when he looks in the mirror, I'm one of the greatest men in history?

Combination of all three.

I do think he believes it.

And for the reason why is I don't think he knows that much about US history.

I really mean that.

And that's what I meant whenever I was in there and I realized he was just living in

the moment.

I don't think he knew all that much about why, I mean, this is why he was elected in

many ways, right?

So I'm not, I'm not saying this is an orbit, like I'm not making a judgment on this.

I'm just saying, I do think in his mind, he does think he was one of the best presidents

in American history, largely because, and I encountered this with a lot of people work

for him, which is that they didn't really know all that much kind of about what came

before and all that, and it's not necessarily to hold it against them because for in many

ways is what they were elected to do, or elected to be in many ways.

It's an interesting question whether knowing history, being a student of history is productive

or counterproductive.

I tend to assume I really respect people who are deeply well read in history, like presidents

that are almost like nerd, history nerds, I admire that, but maybe that gets in the

way of governance.

I don't know.

It's not, you know, I'm just sort of playing devil's advocate to my own beliefs, but it's

possible that focusing on the moment and the issues and letting history, it's like first

principles thinking, forget the lessons of the past and just focus on common sense reasoning

through the problems of today.

Yeah, it's really hard question.

In terms of the modern era, I mean, Obama was a student of history.

He used to have presidential biographers and people over, I mean, famously, like Robert

Acaro, one of my favorite presidential biographers, he was invited to have dinner with Obama,

and Obama would pepper some of his, it was interesting because he'd try and justify some

of the things he didn't do by being like, well, if you look at what they had to do and

what I have to deal with, mine's much harder, so in that way I was a little pissed off because

I'd be like, no, that actually, like you're comparing Apple store oranges and all that.

But if you look at Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt in particular, this was, I mean, a voracious

reader, not of just American history, all history.

He wrote just such a bad ass, just incredible, the only, the only president who willed himself

to greatness.

That's like the amazing thing about him.

He wasn't tested by a crisis, right?

Like, it wasn't not, he didn't have a civil war, he didn't have a World War two, he didn't

have to found the country literally, or like, didn't have to stave off that, or he didn't

buy Louisiana Purchase, like all that.

He literally came into a pretty static country and he could have just governed with, I mean,

he was, the person who came before him was assassinated, like he easily could have coasted,

but he literally willed the country into something more.

And that is, that's always why I've focused a lot on him too, because I'm like, that,

in many ways, I wouldn't say it's easy to be great during crisis, I mean, like, look

at Trump, right?

But there, it can bring out the best within you, but it's a whole other level to bring

out the best within yourself, just for the sake of doing it, and that's, I think, is

really interesting.

The speeches were amazing.

I'm also a sucker for great speeches, because I tend to see the role of the president as

in part, like, inspirer in chief, sort of, to be able to, I mean, that's what great leaders

do, like CEOs, or companies, and so on, establish a vision, a clear vision, and like, like, hit

that hard.

But the way you establish a vision isn't just like, not to dig at Joe Biden, but like, like

sleepy, boring statements, you have to sell those statements, and you have to, you know,

you have to do it in a way where everybody's paying attention, everybody's excited.

And that, I'll tell you as well, is definitely one of them.

Obama was, I think, at least early on, I don't know, was incredible at that.

It does feel that the modern political landscape makes it more difficult to be inspirational

in a sense, because everything becomes bickering in division.

I do want to ask you about Trump.

So, you're now a successful pivcaster.

I've talked to Joe about Trump, Joe Rogan, and Joe's not interested in talking to Trump.

It's just fascinating.

I try to dig into, like, why?

What would you interview Trump on, like, realignment, for example?

And do you think it's possible to do a two, three hour conversation with him where you

will get at something, like, human, or you get at something, like, we were talking about

the facade he puts forward.

Do you think you could get past that?

No, I don't.

I look, I was a White House correspondent.

I observed this man very closely.

I interviewed him.

I think if that mic is hot, he knows what he's doing.

He just, he's done this too long, Lex.

He just knows.

But do you think he's a different human now after the election?

Do you think that— Not at all.

I think he's been the same person since 1976.

I really do.

Like, basically, 1976, I studied Trump a lot, and I think he's basically been the core

of who he is and elements of that.

Ever since he built that, you know, the ice rink in Central Park and got that media attention,

that was it.

Yeah, he's a fascinating study.

I still, I feel there's a hope in me that there would be a podcast like Joe Rogan, like

a long form podcast, where something could be, you know, and you're actually a really

good person to do that, where you can have a real conversation that looks back at the

election and reveal something on us.

But perhaps he's thinking about running again, and so maybe he'll never let down that guard,

yes.

You know, I just love it when there's this switch in people where you start looking back

at your life and wanting to tell stories, like, you know, trying to extract wisdom and

realizing you're in this new phase of life where, like, the battles have all been fought.

Now you're this old, like, former warrior, and now you can tell the stories of that time.

And it seems like Trump is still at it, like, the young warrior he is.

He's not in the mode of telling stories.

You know what I got from Rogan?

He's the only president who didn't age well in office.

It's true, right?

Like, because, and this is what I mean, because he lives in the moment, like, the job actually

aged Obama.

I mean, I mean, Bush, same thing.

Even Clinton.

Clinton was, like, fat.

Yeah.

It looked miserable by, like, 2000 HW, like, I mean, Reagan, famous, actually, yeah, pretty

much everybody I think about, yeah, including John F. Kennedy, who got much sicker while

in office.

If the job, like, weighs on you and makes you physically ill, Trump was, he's the only

person who just didn't happen to.

That was amazing.

He almost got in the stronger, and he was one of the most, like, the climate, there's

so many people attacking him.

So much hatred, so much love and hatred, and it was just, it was, I mean, it was whatever

it was, it was quite masterful and a fascinating study.

If we, if we stick on Hitler for just a minute, what lessons do you take from that time?

Do you think it's a unique moment in human history, that World War II, I mean, both

Stalin and Hitler, you know, is it something that's just an outlier in all of human history

in terms of the atrocities, or is there the lessons to be learned?

You mentioned offline that you're not just a student of the entirety of the history,

but you're also fascinated by just different, like, policies and stuff, like, what's the

immigration policy?

What's the policy on science?

Well, look, Third Reich and power, let me plug it, by Richard Evans, I think, is what

it was, because that actually will tell you, like, what was it like to live under the Nazi

regime without the war?

Yeah, that's a hard question in terms of the lessons that we can learn, because there's

a lot, and it's actually been over, it's been over indexed almost, everything comes back

to Hitler in conversation.

So I kind of think of it within Mao, Stalin and Hitler as, I don't want to say payments

for, but, like, the end point payment for the sins and the problems of the monarchical

system that evolve within Europe, basically, like, 1400 and more.

I basically think that 1400, the wars between France, England, the balance of power, eventually

World War I, and then Serfdom within Russia, the Russian Revolution, that birthed Stalin,

same thing, the Kaiser and Imperial Germany and this, like, incredibly crazy system of

balance of power in World War I, and then same thing within China in terms of the warring

states and then the disintegration, the European, you know, how this is how they think of it,

you know, which is like the center of humiliation and they had to have something like this.

I think of it, I try to think of it within the context of that.

I don't want to think of, I don't want to sound like an inevitable list, but I think

of it as I like to think about systems, especially here in DC, that's where I got into politics,

which is that you have to understand systems of power and the incentives within systems

and the disincentives and the downside risk of what you're creating, because that is what

leads and creates the behavior within that system.

I was just talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday, it's kind of funny, like,

I read these, I'm obsessed with these books by Robert Caro, the biographies of Lyndon

Johnson, he's written like 5,000 pages so far and it's still not done.

Okay, so like, these are, these are like books I based my life on.

And look, these are Washington and the story of the post New Deal era and forward.

Not much has changed, like the Senate is the still the Senate, so many of the same problems

with the Senate are still there, in some cases, no, not, not anymore, but for a while, some

of the people who were there with Johnson are actually still, one of them is the president

of the United States, just a joke.

And you think about also, same with the media relationship, right?

Like there's this media really, they may have come and gone, like the people who were in

the media and who were cozy with the administration officials, I mean, they just recreated themselves.

It's like this, it's like an ecosystem, which doesn't change.

And the, that's why I'm like, oh, it's not, that was a specific time, that's just DC,

like that is DC because of the way the system is architected.

It's pretty much been that way since like 1908, whenever like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt

was dining with these journalists and he would yell at them and then he would go over to

the society house and like, in many ways that's now instead of going to Henry Adams's house,

like the people are congregating in Calorama, which is the richest neighborhood here at

somebody else's house, like it's the same thing.

So you have to think about the system and then the incentives within that system about

what the outcomes that they're producing.

If you actually want to think about how can I change this from the outside?

That's also why it's very difficult to change because the system is designed in order to

produce actually pretty specific outcomes that can only be changed in extraordinary times.

Yeah, it's sometimes hard to predict what kind of outcomes will result from the incentive,

the system that you create, right?

In the case, because especially when it's novel kind of situations, Trump actually

created a pretty novel situation.

And a lot of the things that we've seen in the 20th century were very novel systems

where people are very optimistic about the outcomes, right?

And then it turned out to not have the results that they predicted.

In terms of like things being unchanged for the past 100 years and so on, can you like

Wikipedia style or maybe like in a musical form, like I'm only a Bill, describe to me

I still sing that to my head sometimes, I'm just a Bill, I don't know what the rest of

the song is.

Let's leave that to people's imagination.

How does this whole thing work?

How does the U.S. political system work, the three branches?

How do you think about the system we have now, if you were to try to describe, if aliens

showed up and asked you like they didn't have time, so this is an elevator thing, should

we destroy you as you plead to avoid destruction?

How would you describe how this thing works?

I would say we come together and we pick the people who make our laws.

Then we pick the guy who executes those laws and they together pick the people who determine

whether they or the president is breaking the law at the most basic level.

That's how I would describe it.

So the people who make the laws are Congress.

The executive is charged with executing the laws as passed by Congress, the branches of

government, and the Supreme Court is picked by the president, confirmed by the Senate,

which then decides whether you or other people are breaking the law in terms of interpretation

of that law.

That's basically it.

They decide whether those laws fall within the restrictions and the want of the founders

as expressed by the Constitution of the United States, which is a set of principles that

we came together in 1787, I want to make sure I get this right, 1787, and decided that we

were going to live the rest of our lives barring a revolution and more.

We've made it 200 and something years in order under that system.

So there's a balance of power because you have multiple branches, there's a tension

and a balance to it as designed by those original documents.

Which is the most dysfunctional, the branches, which is your favorite?

In terms of talking about systems and what's the greatest of concern and what is the greatest

source of benefit in your view?

The presidency is my favorite to study, obviously, because it is the one where there's the most

subjective variable change in terms of the personality involved because of so much power

imbued within the executive.

The Senate is actually pretty much the same.

One of the things I love about reading about the Senate and histories of the Senate is

you're like, oh yeah, there were always assholes in the Senate who were doing their thing and

filibustering constantly based upon this or that.

The personalities involved with the Senate haven't mattered as much since pre Civil War.

Pre Civil War, you had Henry Clay and then Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, who even

in their own way, they represented larger constituencies and they crafted these compromises up until

the outbreak of the Civil War, etc.

But post since then, you don't think about the titans within the Senate.

Most of that is because a lot of the stuff that they had power over has transferred over

to the executive.

So I'm most interested in really in power where it lies.

It's actually pretty throughout American history, much more used to lie with Congress.

Now it's obviously just so imbued within the executive that understanding executive power

is I think the thing I'm probably most interested in here.

Do you think at this point the amount of power that the president has is corrupting to their

ability to lead well?

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

Is there too much power in the presidency?

There definitely is.

Part of the problem and one of the things I try to make come across to people is if you're

the president, unless you have a hyper intentional view of how something must be different in

government, your view doesn't matter.

So for example, like if you were Trump, let's take Trump even and even in with a pretty

intentional view, he was like, I'm going to end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, right?

And he came in and he gets these generals in, he's like, I want to end the war in Afghanistan

and Iraq.

Oh, and I want to withdraw these troops from Syria.

And they're like, okay, well, give us like six months.

He's like, okay.

And this is the thing about Trump.

He doesn't realize that it's bullshit.

So they're like, he's like, six months seems fine, right?

So then six months comes and he's like, he's like, so, and then he'll announce it.

He'd be like, and we're getting out of Syria.

It's great.

And then the generals freak out.

They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't have a plan for that.

He's like, but you guys told me six months.

He's like, I don't know.

Now we need another six months in order to figure this thing out.

So that's, and by that time, now your midterms.

So now what, now you got to run for reelection.

So more what I mean by that is, if you don't have a hyperintentional view about how to

change foreign policy, if you don't have a hyperintentional view about how the Department

of Commerce should do its job, they are just going to go on autopilot.

So there's, this is part of the problem.

When you ask me about the presidency, it's not the presidency itself, like the president

himself, which has become too powerful.

It's that we have less democratic checks on the people and the systems that are on autopilot.

And I would say that basically since 2008, we have voted every single time to disrupt

that system, except in the case of 2020 with Joe Biden, and there are a lot of different

reasons around why that happened.

And in every single one of those cases, Obama and Trump, they all failed in order to, in

order to radically disrupt that.

And that just shows you how titanic the task is.

And I'm using my language precisely because I don't want to be like deep state, but like

obviously there's deep state.

Deep state, I guess, has conspiratorial attention to it.

But so what you're saying is the true power currently lies with the autopilot, okay, deep

state.

Well, but see, it's not, this is the thing too, I want to make it clear because I think

people think conspiratorially that they're all coming together to intentionally do something.

No, no, no, no.

They are doing what they know, believe they are right, and don't have real democratic

checks within that.

And so now they have entire generations of cultures within each of these bureaucracies

where they say, this is the way that we do things around here.

And that's the problem, which is that we have a culture of within many of these agencies

and more, I think the best example for this would be during the Ukraine, you know, gate

with Trump and all that with the impeachment.

And I don't want to, I'm not talking about the politics here, but the most revealing

thing that happened was when the whistleblower guy, Alexander Vindman, was like, here you

have the president departing from the policy of the United States.

And I was like, well, let me educate you, Lieutenant Colonel, the president of the United

States makes American foreign policy.

But it was a very revealing comment because he and all the people within national security

bureaucracy do think that they're like, this is the policy of the United States.

We have to do this.

That's where things get screwy.

Well, listen, for me personally, but also from an engineering perspective, I just talked

to Jim Keller, it's just, this is the kind of bullshit that we all hate when you're

trying to innovate and design new products.

So like that's the, that's what first principles thinking requires is like, we don't give a

shit what was done before.

The point is, what is the best way to do it?

And it seems like the current government, government in general, probably bureaucracies

in general are just really good at being lazy about never having those conversations and

just it becomes this momentum thing that nobody has the difficult conversations.

It's become a game within a certain set of constraints and they never kind of do revolutionary

tasks.

But you did say that the presidency is power, but you're saying that more power than the

others, but that power has to be coupled with like focused intentionality, like you have

to keep hammering the thing.

If you want it done, it has to be done.

I mean, and you got to, you got to, this is the other part too, which is that it's not

just that you have to get it done, you have to pick the hundred people who you can trust

to pick 10 people each to actually do what you want.

One of the most revealing quotes is from a guy named Tommy Corcoran.

He was the top aide to FDR, this I'm getting from the Carol books too.

And he said, what is a government?

It's not just one guy or even 10 guys.

Hell, it's a thousand guys.

And what FDR did is he masterfully picked the right people to execute his will through

the federal agencies.

Johnson was the same way.

He played these people like a fiddle.

He knew exactly who to pick, he knew the system and more.

Part of the reason that outsiders who don't have a lot of experience in Washington almost

always fail is they don't know who to pick or they pick people who say one thing to their

face and then when it comes time to carry out the president's policy in terms of the government,

they just don't do it.

And the president's too, think about this, I think some, Rahm Emanuel said this.

He was like, by the time it gets to the president's desk, nobody else can solve it.

It's not easy.

It's not like a yes or no question.

It's every single thing that hits the president's desk is incredibly hard to do.

And Obama actually even said, and this was a very revealing quote about how he thinks

about the presidency.

Which is, he's like, look, the presidency is like one of those super tankers.

He's like, I can come in and I can make it two degrees left and two degrees right.

In a hundred years, two degrees left, that's a whole different trajectory.

Same thing on the right.

And he's like, that ultimately is really all you can do.

I quibble and disagree with that in terms of how he could have changed things in 2008,

but there's a lot of truth to that statement.

Okay.

That's really fascinating.

And I think that actually both Obama and Trump are probably playing victim here to the system.

You're making me think that maybe you can correct me that, because I'm thinking of like

Elon Musk, whose major success despite everything is hiring the right people.

And like creating those thousands, that structure of a thousand people.

So maybe a president has power in that if they were exceptionally good at hiring the

right people.

That's Elon's policy, man.

That's what it comes down to.

But wouldn't you be able to steer the ship way more than two degrees if you hire the

right people?

So like, it's almost like Obama was not good at hiring the right people.

Well, he hired all the Clinton people.

That's what happened.

What happened with Trump?

He hired all the Bush people.

And then you just sit back and say, oh, president can't, but that means you're just suck at

hiring.

Correct.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I know it's funny.

I'm giving you simultaneously the nationalist case against Trump and the progressive case

against Obama.

Yes.

The progressive people are like, why the fuck are you hiring all these Clinton people in

order to run the government and just recreate?

Like, why are you hiring Larry Summers, who was one of the people who worked at all these

banks and didn't believe the bailouts were going to be big enough.

And then to come in in the worst economic crisis in modern American history.

That was 2008.

And Summers actively lobbied against larger bailouts, which had huge implications for

working class people and pretty much hollowed out America since.

Okay, from Trump.

Same thing.

You're like, I'm going to drain the swamp.

And by doing that, I'm going to hire Goldman Sachs's Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin and all

these other absolute Bush clowns in order to run my White House.

Well, yeah, no shit.

The only thing that you accomplished in your four years in office is passing a massive

tax cut for the rich and for corporations.

I wonder how that happened.

What role does money play in all of this?

Is money a huge influence in politics, super PACs, all that kind of stuff?

Or is this more just kind of a narrative that we play with?

Because from the outsider's perspective, it seems to have, that seems to be one of the

fundamental problems with modern politics.

So I was just having this conversation, Marshall and I, Marshall Kossoff, my coast on the realignment.

And it's funny because if you do enough research, we actually live in the least corrupt age

in American campaign finance.

Because it's never been more transparent.

It's never been more up to the FEC and all of that.

If you go back and read, not even 50 years ago, we're talking about Lyndon B. Johnson

handing people, literally as he came up in his youth, paying people for votes.

The boss of the person who had all the Mexican votes, the person who had, and he was giving

out briefcases.

This is within people's lifetimes who are alive in America, so that doesn't happen anymore.

But I don't like to blame everything on money, although I do think money is obviously a huge

part of the problem.

I actually look at it in terms of distribution, which is that how is money distributed within

our society?

Because I firmly believe that politics, this is going to get complicated, but I think politics

is mostly downstream from culture.

And culture, obviously, I'm using economics because there's obviously a huge interplay

there.

In terms of the equitable or lack of equitable distribution of money within our politics,

what we're really pissed off about is we're like, our politics only seems to work for

the people who have money.

I think that's largely true.

I think that the reason why things worked differently in the past is because our economy

was structured in different ways.

And there's a reason that our politics today are very analogous to the last Gilded Age

because we had very similar levels of economic distribution and cultural problems too at

the same time.

I don't want to erase that because I actually think that's what's driving all of our politics

right now.

So that's interesting.

So in that sense, the representative government is doing a pretty good job at representing

the state of culture and the people and so on.

Can I ask you, in terms of the deep state and conspiracy theories, there's a lot of

talk about, again, from an outsider's perspective, if I were just looking at Twitter, it seems

that at least 90% of people in government are pedophiles, 90 to 95%, I'm not sure what

that number is.

Yeah.

If I were to just look at Twitter, honestly, or YouTube, I would think most of the world

is a pedophile.

I would almost feel like...

Right.

And if you don't fully believe that, you're a pedophile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I wonder, like, wait, am I a pedophile too?

I'm either a communist or a pedophile, or both, I guess.

Yeah, that's going to be clipped out.

Thank you, internet.

I look forward to your emails.

But is there any kind of shadow conspiracy theories that give you pause?

Or sort of the flip side, the response to a lot of conspiracy theories is like, no,

the reason this happened is because it's a combination of just incompetence.

So where do you land on some of these conspiracy theories?

I think most conspiracy theories are wrong.

Some are true, and those are spectacularly true.

And if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And we don't know which ones.

I don't know which ones.

That's the problem.

I think, oh, well, I mean, look, man, I listened to your podcast.

I think I was a huge nonbeliever in UFOs, and now I've probably never believed more

in UFOs.

I believe in UFOs.

I'm very comfortable being like, not only do I believe in UFOs, I think we're probably

being visited by an alien civilization.

And if you asked me that three years ago, I would be like, you're out of your fucking

mind.

Like, what are you talking about?

Well, listen to David Fravor.

That's all I have to say.

That's it.

Well, I have the sense that the government has information, it hasn't revealed.

But it's not like they're, I don't think they're holding, there's like a green guy

sitting there in a room.

Right.

Exactly.

They just, they have seen things they don't know what to do with, so it's like, they're

confused.

They're afraid of revealing that they don't know.

That's what I think it is.

They don't know.

Right.

It's revealing exactly that they don't know.

And then in the process, there's a lot of fears tied up in that.

First, looking incompetent in the public eye, nobody wants to be looked at way.

And the other is like, in revealing it, even though they don't know, maybe China will figure

it out.

Exactly.

So like, we don't want China to figure it out first.

And so that, all those kinds of things result in basically secrecy, then that damages the

trust in institutions on one of the most fascinating aspects.

Like one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind of, is there life, intelligent

life out there in the universe?

So that's one of them, but there's other ones.

For me, when I first came across, actually, Alex Jones was 911.

I remember like, because I was in Chicago, I was thinking like, oh, shit, are they gonna

hit Chicago too?

That's right.

Everybody was thinking.

Yeah.

Everybody was thinking like, what does this mean?

What scale?

I mean, trying to interpret it.

And I remember looking for information desperately, like what happened?

And I remember not being satisfied with the quality of reporting and figuring out like

rigorous like, here's exactly what happened.

And so people like Alex Jones stepped up and others that said like, there's some shady

shit going on.

And it sure is how it looked like there's shady shit going on.

So like, and I still stand behind the fact that it seems like there's not, there's not

enough, like it wasn't a good job of being honest and transparent and all those kinds

of things.

Because it would implicate the Saudis.

Let's be honest.

See, that's my conspiracy theories.

I'm like, yeah, I think they covered up a lot of stuff because they wanted to cover

up for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Like, I mean, that was a conspiracy theory not that long ago.

I think it's true.

I mean, I think it's 100% true.

Yeah.

So those kinds of conspiracy theories are interesting.

I mean, there's other ones for me personally that touched the institution that means a

lot to me is MIT and, you know, Jeffrey Epstein.

I want to hear a lot more.

I want to hear about that.

I talk about Epstein a lot.

So I'm like...

Oh, you do.

Yeah.

And he, I was going to say in terms of conspiracy theory, that one changed my outlook because

I was like, I was like, whoa, like you have this dude who convinced some of the most successful

people on earth that he was like some money manager and it looks like it was totally fake.

Like Leon Black.

I mean, this is one of the richest men on Wall Street, $9 billion net worth.

Why has he given him over a hundred million dollars between 2015 and 2019?

What's going on here?

Lex Wexner.

So yeah, I want to hear because you know people who met him and the only person I know who

met him was Eric Weinstein.

I've heard his.

Right.

Oh boy.

So I...

Listen, I'm still in and Eric is fascinating and like Eric is full on saying that...

Right.

He was a Mossad or whatever.

Yeah.

He was in front for something, something much, much bigger.

And there's whatever his name, Robert Maxwell, all the, all those stories, like you could

dig deeper and deeper that Jeff is just like the tip of the iceberg.

I just think he's an exceptionally charismatic, listen, this isn't speaking from confidence

or like deep understanding of the situation, but from my speaking with people, he just

seems like, at least from the side of his influence and interaction with researchers,

he just seems like somebody that was exceptionally charismatic and actually took interest.

He was unable to speak about interesting scientific things, but he took interest in them.

So he knew how to stroke the egos of a lot of powerful people like well, like in different

kinds of ways.

I suppose I don't know about this because I don't have, like if a really, okay, this

is, this is weird to say, but I have an ability, okay, I think women are beautiful.

I like women, but like if, if like a supermodel came to me or something, like, like I'm able

to reason.

It seems like some people are not able to think clearly when there's like an attractive

woman in the room.

And I think that was one of the tools he used to manipulate people.

Interesting.

I don't know.

Listen, it's like the pedophile thing.

I don't know how many people are complete sex addicts, but like it seems like, like

looking out into the world, like there's a, well, like the Me Too movement have revealed

that there's a lot of like weird, like creepy people out there.

I don't know, but I think it was just one of the many tools that he used to convince

people and manipulate people, but not in some like evil way, but more just really good at

the art of conversation and just winning people over on the side.

And then by building, through that process, building a network of other really powerful

people and not explicitly, but implicitly having done shady shit with powerful people

like building up a kind of implied power of like, like we did some shady shit together.

So we're not like, you're going to help me out on this extra thing I need to do now.

And that builds and builds and builds to where you're able to actually control, like have

quite a lot of power without explicitly having like a strategy meeting.

And I think a single person or yeah, I think a single person can do that, can start that

ball rolling.

And over time, it becomes a group thing, like, I don't know if Jillian Maxwell was involved

or others.

And yeah, over time, it becomes almost like a really powerful organization that wasn't,

that's not a front for something much deeper and bigger, but it's almost like, maybe it's

because I love cellular automata, man.

A system that starts out as a simple thing with simple rules can create incredible complexity.

Yes.

And so I just think that we're now looking in retrospect, it looks like an incredibly

complex system that's operating.

But like, that's just because it's, you know, there could be a lot of other Jeffrey Epstein's

in my perspective, that the simple thing just was successful early on and builds and builds

and builds and builds.

And then there's creepy shit that like a lot of aspects of the system helped it get bigger

and bigger and more powerful and so on.

So the final result is, I mean, listen, I have a pretty optimistic, I tend to see the

good in people.

And so it's been heartbreaking to me in general, just to see, you know, people I look up to

not have the level of integrity I thought they would, or like the strength of character,

all those kinds of things.

And it seems like you should be able to see the bullshit that is Jeffrey Epstein, like

when you meet him.

We're not talking about like Eric Weinstein, like one or two or three or five interactions.

But like there's people that had like years of relationship with him.

And I don't know.

I'm not sure.

Even after he was convicted.

After he was convicted.

That's the thing that always gets me.

Yeah.

There's stories.

There's stories to sort of, I honestly believe, okay, here's the open question I have.

I don't know how many creepy sexual people are out there.

Like, I don't know if there is like, like the people I know, the faculty and so on.

I don't know if they have like a kink that I'm just not aware of that was being leveraged.

Because to me, it seems like if people aren't, if not everybody's a pedophile, then it's

just the art of conversation.

That is just like the art of just like manipulating people by making them feel good about like

the exciting stuff they're doing.

Listen, man, academics, people talk about money.

I don't think academics care about money as much as people think.

What they care about is like somebody, they want to be, it's the same thing that Instagram

models post in their butt pictures is they want to be loved.

They want attention.

My parents are professors.

Yeah.

I get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They, and Jeff Epstein, like the money is another way to show attention.

Right.

It's a proxy.

It's, mind work matters.

And he for some of, he did that for some of the weirdest, most brilliant people.

I don't want to sort of drop names, but everybody knows them.

It's like people that are the most interesting academics is the one he cared about.

Yeah.

Like people that are thinking about the most difficult questions in all of science and

all of engineering.

So those people were kind of outcasts in academia a little bit because they're doing the weird

shit.

They were the weirdos.

And he cared about the weirdos and he gave them money and that, you know, that's, I don't

know if there's something more nefarious than that.

I, I hope not, but maybe I'm surprised and in fact, half the population of the world

is pedophiles.

No, I think it's what you were talking about, which is that it's the, it's the implication

after the initial, right?

Like you do some shady things together or you do something that you want out of the

public eye and you're a public person and look, we probably even experience this to

a limited extent, right?

You're like, ah, you know, like, I don't want to, I don't know, I almost lost my temper,

you know, one time whenever a car hit me and I'm like, I can't freak out in public anymore.

Like that, you know, like, what if somebody takes a photo or something?

And so I think that there's an extent to that times a billion, literally when you have a

billion dollars or more and you take that all together and you stack it up on itself.

I saw a story about like Bill Clinton, like Bill Clinton was with Epstein or with Ghislaine

Maxwell in a private air terminal or something.

And she had one of their like sex, you know, one of those girls who was underage had her

dressed up in a literal like pilot uniform and she was underage in order to, you know,

and she was just being disguised for being older and she was a masseuse, right?

Because that was one of the guises which they got in order to sexually traffic these women.

And she was like, Bill was like complaining about his neck and she's like, give Bill Clinton

a massage, right?

So now there's a photo of an underage girl giving a massage to the former president of

the United States.

I don't think he knew, right?

But like, that looks bad.

And so this is kind of what we're getting at, which is that you're setting it all up

and creating those preconditions.

Or like Prince Andrew, do I think Prince Andrew knew that Virginia Gouffre was underage?

I don't know.

Probably knew she was pretty young, which I think is, you know, skeevy enough where

you're a fucking prince, you probably know better.

But I don't think he knew she was underage.

Or maybe he did.

And if he did, then he's even more of a piece of shit than I thought.

But when we look at these things, the stuff I'm more interested in is like what you were

talking about.

I'm like, Bill Gates, how do you get the richest man in the world in your house?

Under what?

Gates is like, he was talking about financing and all this.

I'm like, you don't have access to money or bankers?

Like you're the richest man in the world.

You can call Goldman Sachs anytime you want on a hotline.

Like why do you need, that's where I start again to get more conspiratorial because I'm

like, Bill, dude, you have the gold credit, right?

Like you don't need Epstein to create some complicated financing structure.

Or Leon Black, like what is 2015, 2009, I mean, this is very recent stuff.

Or and this is the part that really got me is I read the department, I think it's called

the department of financial service report around Deutsche Bank with Epstein.

They knew he was a criminal, they solicited his business, explicitly knew that his business

meant access to other high net worth individuals, just consistently doled money out from his

account for hush payments to women in Europe and prostitution rings.

They knew all of this within the bank.

It was elevated multiple times.

Here's the other one, one of Epstein's associates was like, hey, how much money can we take

out before we hit the automatic sensor before you have to tell the IRS?

And that question, by their own standards, is supposed to result in a notification to

the feds and they never did it.

And he was withdrawing like $2 million of cash in five years for tips to, okay, something's

going on here.

You see what I'm saying?

There's a lot of signs that make you think that there is a bigger thing at play than

just a man, that there is some, it does look like a larger organization is using this front.

It's, again, I don't know.

I truly don't know.

And I'm not willing to use the certainty, which I think a lot of people online are to

say like, it wants 100%.

Yes.

The certainty is always the problem because that's probably why I hesitate to touch conspiracy

theories is because I'm allergic to certainty in all forms, in politics, any kind of discourse.

And people are so sure in both directions, actually, it's kind of hilarious.

And they're sure that the conspiracy theory, particularly whatever the conspiracy theory

is, is false.

Like, they almost dismiss it like, they don't even want to talk about it.

It's like the people, like the way they dismiss that the earth is flat.

Most scientists are like, they don't even want to hear what the flat earthers are saying.

They don't have zero patience for it, which is like, maybe in that case, is deserved.

But everything else, you really, like, have empathy, like, consider the, you have, okay,

this is weird to say, but I feel like you have to consider that the earth might be flat

for like, one minute, like, you have to be empathetic, you have to be open minded.

I don't see a lot of that through our cultural taste makers and more.

And that's, that really is what concerns me the most because it's just another manifestation

of all of our problems is that we have this completely bifurcating economy, bifurcating

culture literally in terms of, we have the middle of the country and then we have the

coast.

And in terms of the population, it's almost 50 50.

And with, you know, increasing mega cities and urban culture, like urban monoculture

of LA, New York and Chicago and DC and Boston and Austin, relative to how an entire other

group of Americans live their lives, or even the people within them who aren't rich and

upwardly mobile, how they live their lives is just completely separating.

And all of our language and communication in mass media and more is to the top.

And then everybody else is forgotten.

Do you think when you go, when you dig to the core, there is a big, there's a big gap

between left and right.

Is there, is that division that, that's perceived currently real?

Or are most people like center left and center right?

That's so interesting because that's such a loaded term.

Center left.

What does that mean?

Like, to you, I think the way you're thinking of it is, I'm not like a, well, even this,

like I'm not a radical socialist, but I'm, I'm marginally left on cultural issues and

economic issues.

This is how we've traditionally understood things.

And then when, when in popular discourse, like center right, like, what does it mean

to be center right?

Like, I am marginally right on social, on concern, on social issues and marginally right

on economic issues.

But that's just not, like, if you look at survey data, for example, like stimulus checks,

people who are against stimulus checks are conservative, right?

Well, 80% of the population is for a stimulus check.

So that means a sizable number of Republicans are for stimulus checks.

Same thing happens on like a wealth tax.

Same thing happens on, okay, Florida voted for Trump 3.1%.

More than Barack Obama 2008, on the same day passes a $15 minimum wage at 67%.

So what's going on?

So that's why I...

What is going on?

Well, that's my entire career.

But it seems like, so that's, that's fascinating, conversation is different than the policies.

Well, it's different than reality.

That's what I would say, which is that the way we have to understand American politics

today, it didn't always used to be this way, is it's almost entirely along basic, I would

say the main divider is, because even when you talk about class, this misses it in terms

of socioeconomics, it's around culture, which is that it's basically, if you went to a four

year degree granting institution, you are part of one culture.

If you didn't, you're part of another.

I don't want to erase the 20% or whatever of people who did go to a college degree who

were Republicans or vice versa, et cetera, but I'm saying on average, in terms of the

median way that you feel, we're basically bifurcating along those lines.

And because people get upset, be like, oh, well, you know, there are rich people who

voted for Trump.

And I'm like, yeah, but you know who they are?

They're like plumbers or something.

Like they're people who make $100,000 a year, but they didn't go to a four year college

degree and they might live in a place which is not an urban metro area.

And then at the same time, you have a Vox writer who makes like $30,000, but they have

a lot more cultural power than the plumber.

So you have to think about where exactly that line is.

And I think in general, that's the way that we're trending.

So that's why when I say what's going on, are we divided?

Yeah.

But it's not left and right.

And that's why I hate these labels.

So it's more just red and blue like teams.

They're arbitrary teams.

So how arbitrary are these teams, I guess, is another completely arbitrary.

So what you kind of implied that there's, I don't know if you're sort of in post analyzing

the patterns, because it seems like there's a network effects of like, you just pick the

team red or blue.

And it might have to do with college, you might have to do all of those things, but like,

it seems like it's more about just the people around you.

So less than whether you went to college or not, I mean, it's almost like seems like it's

almost like a weird like network effects that are hard.

There's certain strong patterns that you're identifying, but I don't know.

It's sad to think that it might be just teams that have nothing to do with what you actually

believe.

Well, it is like, I look, I mean, I don't want to believe that.

But the data points me to this, which especially 2020, I'm one of the people, chief among them,

I will own up to it here.

I was totally wrong about why Trump was elected in 2016.

I believed and based a lot of my public commentary belief on this, Trump was elected because

of a rejection of Hillary Clinton neoliberalism on the back of a pro worker message, which

was anti immigration, it was its pillar.

But alongside of it was a rejection of free trade with China and generally of the political

correctness and globalism, which has been come in through the Uniparty and same thing

here with the military industrial complex and endless war.

He rejected all of that.

What's wrong with that prediction?

It's wrong, man.

And the reason I know this is that it sounds right.

I wish it, I honestly wish it was true.

But here's the truth.

Trump actually governed largely as a neoliberal Republican who was meaner online and who departed

from orthodoxy in some very important ways.

Don't get me wrong.

I will always support the trade war with China.

I will always support not expanding the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

I will support him moving the Overton window on a million different things and revealing

once and for all that GOP voters don't care about economic orthodoxy necessarily.

But here's what they do care about.

Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 despite not delivering largely, largely

for all the Trump people out there on that agenda.

He wasn't more pro union, but he won more union votes.

He wasn't necessarily more pro worker, but he actually won more votes in Ohio than he

did in 2016.

And he won more Hispanic votes than despite being all the immigration rhetoric, et cetera.

Here's why.

It's about the culture, which is that the culture war is so hot that negative partisanship

is at such high levels, all of the vote is geared upon what the other guy might do in

office.

And there's a poll actually just came out by Eshalon Insights, Crystal and I were talking

about it on Rising, that number one concern amongst Democratic voters is Trump voters.

Number one concern, not issues like Trump voters.

And number two is white supremacy.

And so, like, which is basically code for Trump voters.

And is the same rule for the other side?

Well, so on the right, number one concern is illegal immigration.

And number, I think, three or four, whatever is Antifa, which is code for Democrats.

It's nice.

At least on the right, there's a policy kind of thing.

Well, yeah, it's funny.

I saw Ben Shapiro was talking about this.

But the reason why I would functionally say it's the same is because, I mean, you can

believe whether it's true or not.

I think it actually largely is true, but a lot of GOP voters feel like a lot of illegal

immigration is code for people who are coming in, who are going to be legalized and are

going to go vote Democrat.

I can just explain it from their point of view.

So what does that actually mean?

Each other, which is that the number one concern is the other person.

So negative partisanship has never been higher.

And I think people who had my thesis in terms of why Trump was elected in 2016, you have

to grapple with this.

How did he win 10 million more votes?

He came 44,000 votes away from winning the presidency across three states.

None of our popular discourse reflects that very stark reality.

And I think so much of it is people really hate liberals.

They just really hate them.

And I was driving through rural Nevada before the election, and I was literally in the middle

of nowhere.

And there was this massive sign this guy had out in front of his house, and it just said,

Trump, colon, fuck your feelings.

And I was like, that's it.

That is why people voted for Trump.

And I don't want to denigrate it because they truly feel they have no cultural power in

America except to raise the middle finger to the elite class by pressing the button

for Trump.

I get that.

That's actually a totally rational way to vote.

That's not the way I wish we did vote, but that's not my place to say.

So this is interesting.

If you could just psychoanalyze, again, I'm probably naive about this, but I'm really

bothered by the hatred of liberals.

It's a amorphous monster that's mocked.

It's like the Shapiro liberal tears.

And I'm also really bothered by probably more of my colleagues and friends, the hatred

of Trump, the Trump and white supremacists.

So apparently there's 70 million white supremacists, 75 million, sorry.

There's millions of white supremacists.

And apparently whatever liberal is, literally liberal has become equivalent to white supremacists

in the power of negativity it arouses.

I don't even know what those, I mean, honestly, I just don't, they've become swears essentially.

Is that, I mean, how do we get out of this?

Because that's why I just don't even say anything about politics online because it's like, really?

You can't, here's what happens.

Anything you say that's like thoughtful, like, hmm, I wonder immigration, something.

I wonder why we allow these many immigrants in or some version of thinking through these

difficult policies and so on, they immediately try to find like a single word in something

you say that can put you in a bin of liberal or white supremacists and hammer you to death

by saying you're one of the two.

And then everybody just piles on happily that we finally nailed this white supremacist or

liberal.

And that, is this some kind of weird like feature of online communication that we've

just stumbled upon?

Is there a way or is it possible to argue that this is like a feature, not a bug?

Like this is a good thing?

Yeah.

Well, look, I just think it's a reflection of who we are.

People like to blame social media.

I think we're just incredibly divided right now.

I think we've been divided like this for the last 20 years.

And I think that the reason I focus almost 99% of my public commentary on economics is

because you asked an important question at the top.

How do we fix this?

What did I say about the stimulus checks?

Stimulus checks have 80% approval rating.

So that's the type of thing.

If I was Joe Biden and I wanted to actually heal this country, that's the very first thing

I would have done when I came into office.

Same thing on when you look at anything that's going to increase wages.

I said on the show, I was like, look, I think Joe Biden will have an 80% approval rating

if he does two things.

If he gives every American a $2,000 stimulus check and gives everybody who wants a vaccine

a vaccine.

That's it.

It's pretty simple.

Because here's the thing.

I don't really like Greg Abbott that much.

We have like very different politics.

I'm from Texas.

My parents got vaccinated really quickly.

That means something to me.

I'm like, listen, I don't really care about a lot of the other stuff.

He got my family vaccinated.

Like that, well, I will forever remember that.

And that's how we will remember the checks.

This is a part of a reason why Trump almost won the election and why if the Republicans

had been smart enough to give him another round of checks, 100% would have won, which

is that people were like, look.

I don't really like Trump, but I got a check with his name on it.

And that meant something to me and my family.

I'm not saying for all the libertarians out there that you should go and endlessly spend

money and buy votes.

What I am saying is lean into the majoritarian positions without adding your culture war

bullshit on top of it.

So for example, what's the number one concern that AOC says after the first round of checks

got out, oh, the checks didn't go to illegal immigrants.

I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind?

This is the most popular policy America has probably done in 50 years since Medicare and

you're inserting it.

You're ruining it.

And then on the right is the same thing, which is that they'll be like, these checks

are going to low level, blah, blah, people who are lazy and don't work.

I'm like, oh, there you go, you're just playing a caricature of what you are like.

If you lean into those issues and you got to do it clean, this is what everybody hates

about DC, which is that Biden right now is doing the $1,400 checks, but he's looping it

in with his COVID relief bill and all that.

That's his prerogative.

That's the Democrats prerogative.

They won the election.

That's fine.

But I'll tell you what I would have done if I was him.

I would have come in and I would have said there's five United States senators who are

on the record, Republicans, who say they'll vote for a $2,000 check, and I would put that

on the floor of the United States Senate on the first day possible.

And I would have passed it and I would have forced those Republican senators to live up

to that, vote for this bill, come to the Oval Office for assigning so that the very first

thing of my presidency was to say, I'm giving you all this relief check, this long national

nightmare is over, take this money, do with it what you need.

We've all suffered together.

The thing about Biden is, he has a portrait of FDR in the Oval, which bothers me because

he thinks of himself as an FDR like figure, but you have to understand the majesty of

FDR.

We're talking about a person who passed a piece of legislation five days after he became

president and he passed 15 transformative pieces of legislation in the first 100 days.

Here on day like 34, 35, and nothing has passed.

The reconciliation bill will eventually become law, but it'll become law with no Republican

votes.

And again, that's fine, but it's not fulfilling that legacy and the urgency of the action.

And the mandate, which I believe that history has handed, it handed it to Trump and he

fucked it up, right?

He totally screwed it up.

He could have remade America and made us into the greatest country ever coming out on the

other side of this.

He decided not to do that.

I think Biden was again handed that like a scepter almost.

It's like, all you have to do, all America wants is for you to raise it up high, but

he's keeping it within the realm of traditional politics.

I think it's a huge mistake.

Why?

So everything he's saying makes perfect sense.

Like, take, it's like, again, if the aliens showed up, it's like the obvious thing to

do is like, what's the popular thing, like 80% of Americans support this?

Do that clean.

Also do it like with like grace, where you're able to bring people together, not like in

a political way, but like obvious, like obvious common sense way, like just people, the Republicans

and Democrats is bringing them together on a policy and like bold, just hammer it without

the dirt, without the mess, whatever, try to compromise, just yell with, have a good

Twitter account, like loud, very clear, we're going to give a $2,000 or a stimulus check.

Anyone who wants a vaccine gets a vaccine at scale, what make America, let's make America

great again by manufacturing, like we are manufacturing most of the world's vaccine because we're

bad motherfuckers and without maybe, with more eloquence than that and just do that.

Why haven't we seen that for many, for several presidencies?

Because of coalitional politics and they owe something to somebody else.

For example, Biden has got a lot of the Democratic constituency has to satisfy within this bill.

So there's going to be a lot of shit that goes in there, state and local aid, all of

a sudden, again, I'm not even saying this is bad, but he's like, his theory is, and

this isn't wrong, is like, we're going to take the really popular stuff and use it as

cover for the more downwardly less popular.

And so the Dems could face the accusation, the people who are on this side, this is their

pushback to me, they're like, why would we give away the most popular thing in the bill?

And then we would never be able to pass state and local aid, right?

Why would we do that?

And the Republicans do the same thing, right?

Like Mitch McConnell, because he's a fucking idiot, decided to say, we're going to pair

these $2,000 stimulus checks with like section 230 repeal.

And it was like, oh, it's obviously dead, right?

Like it's not going to happen together.

That's largely why I believe Trump lost the election and why those races down in Georgia

went the way that they did.

Obviously Trump had something to do with it.

But the reason why is they have longstanding things that they've wanted to get done.

And in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis go to waste and try and get

as much as you possibly can done within a single bill.

My counter would be this, things have worked this way for too long, which is that the reconciliation

bill is almost certainly going to be the only large signature legislative accomplishment

of the Biden presidency.

That's just how American politics works.

Maybe he gets one more, maybe one, he gets a second reconciliation bill, then you're

running for midterms, it's over.

I believe that by trying to change the paradigm of our politics, leaning into exactly what

I'm talking here, you could possibly transcend that to a new one.

And I'm not naive.

I think people respond to political pressures.

And the way that we found this out was David Perdue, who was just a total corporate, you

know, dollar general CEO guy.

He was against the original $1,200 stimulus checks.

But then Trump came out, who's the single most popular figure in the Republican Party,

he's like, I want $2,000 stimulus checks.

And all of a sudden Perdue running in Georgia is like, yeah, I'm with President Trump, I

want a $2,000 stimulus check.

That was, if you're an astute observer of politics to say, you can see there that you

can force people to do the right thing because it's the popular thing.

And that if it's clean, if you don't give them any other excuse, they have to do it.

So this is what we've been gaslit into our culture or framework of politics.

And the reason it feels so broken and awful is because it is, but there is a way out.

It's just that nobody wants to be, it's a game of chicken, right?

Because maybe it is true.

Maybe we would never be able to get your other Democratic priorities or Republican priorities.

But I think that the country understands that this is fucking terrible and would be willing

to support somebody who does it differently.

It's just a lot of disincentives to not stay without, there's a lot of incentives to not

stray from the traditional path.

Yeah.

Is it also possible that the A students are not participating?

Like we drove all of the superstars away from politics.

So like you just had...

I've heard this argument before.

I mean, everything you're saying sort of rings true.

Like this is the obvious thing to do.

As a student of history, you can always tell.

If you look at great people in history, this is with great leaders in history.

This is what they did.

It's like clean, bold action.

Sometimes facing crisis, but we're facing a crisis right now.

No, we're in a crisis.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So why don't we see those leaders step up?

I mean, you say that's kind of like, it makes sense.

There's a lot of different interests to play.

You don't want to risk too many things and so on and so forth.

But that sounds like the C students.

I don't think it's that.

I think it's that the pipeline of politician creation is just totally broken from beginning

to end.

So it's not that A students don't want to be politicians.

It's basically the way that our current primary system is constructed is what is the greatest

threat to you as a member of Congress?

It's not losing your reelection.

It's losing your primary.

So that means especially in a safe district, you're most concerned about being hit if

you're a Republican from the right and if you're a Democrat from the left for not being

a good enough one.

That's actually what stops people, more heterodox people in particular from winning primaries

because the people who vote in our primaries are the party faithful.

That's how you get the production.

It's important to understand the production pipeline, which is that, all right, I'm from

Texas so that's what I know best.

So it's like, if you think in Texas, if you're a more heterodox like state legislature or

something who works with the left on this and does that, you're going to get your ass

beat in a Republican primary because they're going to be like, he worked with the left

to do this, blah, blah, take it out of context and you're screwed.

And then that means you never ascend up the next level of the ladder and then so on and

so forth all the way.

But I do think Trump changed everything.

This is why I have some hope, which is that he showed me that all the people I listened

to were totally wrong about politics.

And that's the most valuable lesson you could ever teach me, which was I was like, wait,

I don't have to listen to these people because they don't know anything actually, you know?

And that's powerful, man.

I'm like, he did it.

That's exceptionally powerful.

This guy.

Even if he didn't do anything with it.

It doesn't matter.

Right.

He showed that it's possible.

Exactly.

And that means a lot.

You're absolutely right.

There's young people right now that kind of look, turn around and like, huh.

You're like, wait, I don't have to comb my hair a certain way and go to law school and

be an asshole who everybody knows is an asshole and then get elected to state legislature.

I mean, look, who's the number one person in the New York City primary right now?

Andrew Yang.

He's polling higher than everybody else in the race.

Look, maybe the polls are totally fucked and maybe he'll lose because of ranked choice

voting and all of that.

But I consider Andrew, I mean, I know him a little bit and I've followed his candidacy

from the very beginning.

I consider him an inspiration.

He's the new generation of politics.

If I see who's going to be president 20 years from now, it's going to be, I'm not saying

it's going to be Andrew Yang.

I think it's going to be somebody like Andrew Yang outside the political system who talks

in a totally different way.

Just completely, one of my favorite things that he said on the debate stage, he's like,

look at us.

We're all wearing makeup.

It's crazy.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And he brought that.

And he's right.

Yeah.

Why are they all wearing makeup?

He arguably hasn't gone far enough almost because, but he showed that it's possible.

And then you see other like AOC is a good example of somebody, at least in my opinion,

is doing the same kind of thing, but going too far in like, well, I don't know.

She's doing the Trump thing, but on the other side.

So I don't know.

What's too far?

Don't take an normative judgment of it.

I will tell you the future of politics looks like this.

Appreciate the art of it.

No, I do.

Look, I don't, I'm not a big AOC fan, but she's a genius.

She's a genius once in a generation talent.

The way that she uses social media, Instagram, and everybody on the right is like trying

to copy her.

Like Matt Gaetz is like, I want to be the conservative AOC.

I'm like, it's just not going to happen.

Like you just don't have it.

Like what she has, it's like, it's electric.

And Trump had that.

Like I've been to a Trump rally, like to cover as a journalist is nothing like it.

And Yang is similar.

It's the same way where you're like, there is something going on here, which is just

like, I've been to an Obama rally, I've been to a Clinton rally, I've been to several

normal politics.

Yeah, that's fine, you know, with Trump and with Yang, it was, it's another world.

It's another world.

Yeah.

Yang gang.

There's probably thousands of people listening right now who are just like doing a slow clap.

Yes.

I know, I know.

Yang gang forever.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, my worst fear, I prefer Andrew Yang kind of free improvisational idea, exchange

all that versus AOC, who I think no matter what she stands for is a drama machine, creates

dramas just like Trump does.

I would say my worst fear would be in 2024, is AOC old enough?

It'd be AOC versus Trump.

I don't think she's old enough.

I think you'd have to be, I think she's 30, so she needs five more years.

So probably not.

Yeah.

Okay.

But that kind of, that's or Trump Jr.

Well, AOC probably wouldn't win a Democratic primary.

So I mean, look, Joe Biden is, you know, they pretty much showed that.

That's exactly what you're saying.

Yes.

This process grooms you over time.

You see the same thing in academia actually, which is very interesting, is the process

of getting tenure.

Is this, it's like you're being taught without explicitly being taught to behave in the way

that everybody's behaved before.

I've heard this, it was funny, I've had a few conversations that were deeply disappointing,

which involved statements like, this is what's good for your career.

This kind of conversation, almost like mentor to mentee conversation, where it's, you know,

it's like, there's a grooming process in the same way, I guess you're saying the primary

process does the same kind of thing.

So, I mean, that's what people have talked about with Andrew Yang, he was being suppressed

by a bunch of different forces, the mainstream media, you know, just the democratic, just

that whole process didn't like the honesty that he would show, right?

Yeah, but here's my question to you, people got to see, look, Jordan Peterson is one of

the most famous people in America, right, like you have a massive podcast, you're more famous

than half the 99% of the people at MIT.

So like, from that perspective, everything has changed.

And somewhere out there, there's a student who's taking notice.

And I've noticed that with my own career, everybody thought I was crazy for doing this

show with Crystal, the Hill, they thought it was nuts, they're like, what are you doing?

You're a White House correspondent, you've got a job forever.

The other job offer I had was being a White House correspondent.

And people thought I was nuts for not just sticking there and, you know, aging out within

Washington, pining for appearances on Fox News and CNN and MSNBC.

But I hated it.

I just hated doing it.

And I did not want to be a company man, like a Washington man, who's one of those guys

who like brags to his friends about how many times he's been on Fox or whatever, mostly

because I just have a rebellious streak and I hate being at the subject of other people.

I created something new, which a lot of people watch to get their news.

And I noticed that younger people who are almost all my audience, they don't really

look up to any of the people in traditional, right?

They don't go and they're not coming up and being like, how do I be like Jim Acosta?

You know, they're like, hey, how did you do what you do?

And the way you did it is by bucking the system.

So I think that we are at a total split point.

And look, there will always be a path for people, because like, I don't want people

to over learn this lesson.

I have people who are like, I'm not going to go to college.

And I'm like, well, just wait.

Yeah, like, I'm like, I was starting, yeah, like stop, just like, just hold on a second.

But there will always be a path for the institutional that will always be there for you.

But now there's something else.

Now there's another game in town, and that's more appealing to millions and millions and

millions and millions of people who feel unserved by the corporate media, CNN, and these people,

possibly who feel unserved in the, you know, the faculty, like if you are an up and comer

who wants to teach as many young people as possible, I think you should be on YouTube,

right?

Like look at the Khan Academy guy.

That guy created a huge business.

So I just think we can be cynical and like upset about what that system is, but we should

also have hope.

Like I have a lot of hope for what can be in the future.

Yeah, there's a guy, people should check us out.

My story is a little bit different because I basically stepped aside with the dream of

being an entrepreneur earlier in the pipeline than like a legitimate like senior faculty

would.

There's an example of somebody, people should check out Andrew Huberman from Stanford who's

a neuroscientist who's as world class as it gets in terms of like 10 year faculty, just

a really world class researcher.

And now he's doing YouTube.

Yeah, I see him on Instagram.

Yeah.

So he switched.

So he not just does Instagram, he now has a podcast and he's doing, he's changing the

nature of like, I believe that Andrew might be the future of Stanford.

And for a lot, it's funny, like he's basically Joe Rogan is an inspiration to Andrew.

And to me as well, and those ripple effects and Andrew is an inspiration probably just

like you're saying to these young like 25 year olds who are soon to become faculty if

we're just talking about academia.

And the same is probably happening with government is funny enough, Trump probably is inspiring

a huge number of people who are saying, wait a minute.

I don't have to play by the rules.

Exactly.

And I have to, I can think outside the box here and you're right.

And the institutions we're seeing are just probably lagging behind.

So the optimistic view is the future is going to be full of exciting new ideas.

So Andrew Young is just kind of the beginning of this whole thing.

He's typically iceberg.

And I hope that iceberg doesn't, it's not this influencer.

One of the things that really bothers me, I've gotten a chance, I should be careful

here.

I don't want to, I love everybody, but you know, these people who talk about like, you

know, how to make your first million or how to succeed.

And they're so, I mean, yeah, that, that makes me a little bit cynical about, I'm worried

that the people that win the game of politics will be ones that want to win the game of

politics.

They are.

They are, man.

Like we mentioned AOC is, I hope they optimize for the 80% populist thing, right?

Like they optimize for that badass thing that history will remember you as the great man

or woman that did this thing versus how do I maximize engagement today and keep growing

those numbers?

The influencers are so, I'm so allergic to this man.

They keep saying how many followers they have in the different accounts and it's like, I

don't think they understand.

Maybe I don't understand.

I don't really care.

I think it has destructive psychological effects.

One, like thinking about the number, like getting excited, your number went from a hundred

to a hundred and one and being like, and today went out to a hundred and five.

Whoa, that's a big jump.

And maybe thinking in this way like, I wonder what I did.

I'll do that again.

In this way, one, it creates anxiety on those psychological effects, whatever.

The more important thing is it prevents you from truly thinking boldly in the long arc

of history and creatively thinking outside the box, doing huge actions.

And I actually, my optimism is in the sense that that kind of action will beat out all

the influencers.

Well, I don't know, Lex, this is where my cynicism comes in.

So there's a guy, Madison Cawthorne, the youngest member of Congress, and he, I don't want to

say got caught, but there was like an email where he was like, my staff is only oriented

around comms.

Like he was basically saying, he got basically caught saying like, my staff is only centered

on communications.

And that's the right play.

If you do want to get the benefits of our current electoral, political, and engagement

system, which is that what's the best way to be known within the right as a, as a right

wing politician?

It's to be a culture warrior, go on Ben Shapiro's podcast, be one of the people on Fox News,

go on Sean Hannity's show, go on Tucker's show, and all of that, because you become

a mini celebrity within that world.

What's left unsaid is that that world is increasingly shrinking portion of the American population,

and they barely, they can't even win a popular vote election, let alone barely win an eke

out an electoral college victory in 2016.

Well, but the incentives are all aligned within that.

And it's the same thing really on the left.

But you're right, which is that ultimately, look, this is, this is why geniuses are geniuses,

because they buck the short term incentives.

They focus on the long term.

They bet big, and they usually fail.

But then when they get big, they, they succeed spectacularly.

The people I know who have done this the best are like a lot of the crypto folks that I've

spoken to.

Like some of the stuff they say, I'm like, I don't know if that's going to happen.

But look, they're like billionaires, right?

Yeah.

And you're like, so they were right.

So it's, the way I've heard it expressed is you can be wrong a lot, but when you're

right, you get right big.

And I mean, I've seen this thing on my career, I mean, he took spectacular risk, like spectacular

risk and just double down, double down, double down, double down, double down.

And you can kind of tell to him, I mean, you know better than I do.

But like from my observation, I don't think the money matters as right.

I just, like when I see him, I'm like, it's nobody works as hard as you do and builds

the way that you build.

If it's just about the money, it's just, it just doesn't happen.

Like nobody wills SpaceX into existence just for the money.