Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #454

so people need to go back and read the history of the first 100 days under FDR the sheer amount of legislation that went through his ability to bring Congress to heal and the Senate he gets all this stuff through but as you and I know legislation takes a long time to put into place right we've had people starving on the streets all throughout 1933 under Hoover the difference was Hoover was seen as this do nothing joke who would dine nine course meals in the white house he's a filthy rich Banker FDR comes in there and

every single day has in fireside chat he's passing l legislation but more importantly so he he tries various different programs then they get ruled unconstitutional he tries even more so what does America take away from that every single time if he gets knocked down he comes back fighting and that was a really part of his character that he developed uh after he got polio and it was uh it gave him the strength to persevere through personally what he could transfer in his calm demeanor and his feeling of fight that America really got that Spirit from

him and was able to climb itself out of the Great Depression he's such an inspirational figure I think of Johnson and of Nixon of Teddy Roosevelt even of FDR I can give you a laundry list of personal problems that all those people had I think they had really really good judgment and uh I'm not sure how intrinsic their own personal character was to their exploration and thinking about the world so JFK is actually JFK might be our best example because he had the best judgment out of anybody in the room as a brand new president

in the Cuban Missile Crisis and he got us out and avoided nuclear war which he deserves Eternal credit for that and I encourage people out there this is this is a brutal text we were forced to read it in Graduate School uh the essence of decision by Graham Alison I'm so thankful we did it's one of the foundations of political science because it lays out theories of how government works people really need to understand Washington Washington is a creature with Traditions with institutions that don't care about you they don't even really care about the president

they have self-perpetuating mechanisms which have been done a certain way and it usually takes a great shocking event like World War II to change really anything beyond the marginal every once in a while you have a figure like Teddy Roosevelt who's actually able to take peacetime presidency and transform the country but it needs an extraordinary individual to get something like that done uh so the question around the essence of decision was the theory behind the Cuban Missile Crisis of how Kennedy arrived at at his decision and uh there are various different schools of thought but

one of the things I love about the book is it presents the case for all three the organizational Theory the bureaucratic politics Theory and then kind of the great man Theory as well so there's a you know you and I could sit here and I could tell you a case about PT 109 and about how John F Kennedy experienced World War II and how he literally swam miles with a wounded man's life jacket strap in his teeth with a broken back and he saved him and he ended up on the cover of Life magazine and

he was a war hero and he was a deeply smart individual who wrote a book in 1939 called why England slept which to this day is considered a a a text which at the moment was able to describe in detail why Neville Chamberlain and the British political system arrived at the policy of appeasement I actually have a original copy it's one of my most prized possessions because and from 1939 because this a 23-year-old kid who the fuck are you John F Kennedy um turns out he's a brilliant man and another just favorite decide is that

at the Potsdam Conference you know where Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody so in the room at the same time Harry S Truman President of the United States Dwight D Eisenhower the general right who will succeed him 26-year-old John F Kennedy as a journalist and all three of those presidents were in the same room with Joseph Stalin and others and that that's the story of America right there it's kind of amazing I'm going to give you one of the most depressing quotes which is deeply true Roger alses who is a genius shout out

to the loudest voice in the room by Gabriel Sherman that book changed my life too um because it really made me understand the media people don't want to be informed they want to feel informed the following is a conversation with Sagar and Jetty his second time in the podcast Sagar is a political commentator journalist co-host of breaking points with crystal ball and of the realignment podcast with Marshall klof Sager is one of the most well- read people of ever ever met his love of history and the wisdom gained from Reading thousands of history books radiates

through every analysis he makes of the world in this podcast we Trace out the history of the various ideological movements that led up to the current political moment in doing so we mention a large number of amazing books we'll put a link to them in the description for those interested to learn more about each topic this is Alex Freedman podcast to supported please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Saga and Jetty so let's start with the obvious big question what do you think Trump won let's break it down before

the election you said that if Trump wins it's going to be because of immigration so aside from immigration what are the maybe less than obvious reasons that Trump won yes we absolutely need to return to immigration but without that multifaceted expl let's start with the easiest one um there has been a wave of anti-incumbent energy around the world financial times chart recently went viral showing for the first time I think since World War II possibly since 1905 I need to look at the data set that all anti-incumbent parties all across the world suffered major defeats

so that's a very very highlevel analysis and we can return to that if we talk about Donald Trump's victory in 2016 because there were similar like Global precursors that individual level in the United States there's a very simple explanation as as well which is that Joe Biden was very old he was very unpopular inflation was high inflation is one of the highest determiners of people switching their votes and of putting their Primacy on that ahead of any other issue at The Ballot Box so that's that but I think it's actually much deeper at a psychological

level for who America is and what it is and fundamentally I think what we're going to spend a lot of time talking about today is uh the evolution of the modern left and its collapse uh in the kamla Harris candidacy and eventually the loss to Donald Trump in the popular vote where really is like an apotheosis of several social forces so we're going to talk about the Great Awakening so-called awokening which is very important to understanding all of this there's also really Donald Trump himself who is really one of the most unique individual American politicians

that we've seen in decades uh at this point Donald Trump's Victory makes him the most important and transformative figure in American politics since FDR and a thought process for the audience is in 2028 there will be an 18-year-old who's eligible to vote who cannot remember a time when Donald J Trump was not the Central American figure and there's stories uh in World War II where troops were on the front line some of 18 19 years old FDR died and they literally said well who's the president and they said Harry Truman you dumbass and they go

who they couldn't conceive of a universe where FDR was not the president of the United States and you know Donald Trump even during the Biden Administration he was the figure Joe Biden defined his entire candidacy and his legacy around defeating this man and obviously he's failed we should talk a lot about Joe Biden as well for his own failed theories of the presidency so I think at a macro level it's easy to understand at a basic level inflation it's easy to understand but what I really hope that a lot of people can take away is

how fundamentally unique Donald Trump is as a political figure and what he was able to do to realign American politics really forever I mean in uh the white working-class realignment originally of 2006 the activation really of a multi-racial kind of workingclass Coalition and of really splitting American lines along a single individual question of did you attend a four-year college degree institution or not and this is a crazy thing to say Donald Trump is one of the most racially depolarizing uh electoral figures in American history we lived in 2016 at a time when racial groups you

know really voted in blocks Latinos blacks whites there was some of course division between the white working class and the uh white white college educated white collar workers U but by and large he could pretty fairly say that Asians were Indians everyone Mo 80 90% were going to vote for the Democratic party Latinos as well uh I'm born you know here in Texas in the state of Texas George W bush shocked people when he won some 40% of the Latino vote Donald Trump just beat K Harris with Latino men and he ran up the table

for young men so really uh fundamentally we have witnessed a full realignment in American politics and that's a really fundamental problem for the modern left is erased a lot of the conversation around Jerry mandering around uh the Electoral College the so-called electoral bi college bias towards Republicans uh really the being able to win the popular vote for the first time since 2004 is a shocking and landmark achievement by a republican uh in 2008 I have a book on my shelf and I never I and I always look at it to remind of how much things

can change James Carville and it says 40 more years how Democrats will never lose an election again 2008 they wrote that book after the Obama Coalition and the landslide and uh something I love so much about this country people change their minds all the time I was born in 1992 I've watched red States go Blue I've seen blue States go red I've seen swing States go red or blue I've seen uh millions of people pick up and move the greatest internal migration in the United States since World War II and it's really inspiring because it's

a really Dynamic interesting place and I love covering it I love thinking about it talking about it talking to people it's awesome one of the reasons I'm a big fan of yours is uh you're a student of history and so you recommended a bunch of books to me and they and others thread the different movements throughout American history some movements take off and do hold power for a long time some don't and some are started by a small number of people and are controlled by a small number of people some are mass movements and it's

it's just fascinating to watch how those movements evolve and then fit themselves maybe into the constraints of a two-party system and I'd love to sort of talk about the various perspectives of that um so would it be fair to say that this election was turned into a kind of class struggle well I won't go that far um because to say it's a class struggle really implies that things fundamentally align on economic lines and I don't think that's necessarily accurate although if if that's your L lens you could get there so there's a a very big

statistic going around right now where kamla Harris increased her vote share and won households over $100,000 or more uh and Donald Trump won households under 00,000 so you could view that in an economic lens the problem again that I have is that that is much more appr proxy for four-year college degree and for education and so one of my favorite books is called coming apart by Charles Murray uh and that book really really underscores how the cultural milu that people swim in uh when they attend a four-year college degree in the trajectory of their life

not only on where they move to who they marry what type of grocery store they go to their cultural uh what television shows that they watch one of my favorite questions from Charles Murray is called a bubble quiz I encourage people to go take it by the way uh which it ask you a question it's like what does the word Branson mean to you and it has a couple of answers one of them them is uh Branson is Richard Branson Sir Richard Branson number two is Branson Missouri which is like a country music tourist style

destination three is it means nothing so you are less in a bubble if you say country music and you're very much in the bubble if you say Richard Branson and uh I remember taking that test for the first time I go obviously Sir Richard Branson Virgin Atlantic like what and then I was like wait I'm like I'm in the bubble and uh there are other things in there like can you name various different military ranks I can because I'm a history nerd but the vast majority of college educated people don't know anybody who served in

the United States military they don't have family members who do uh the most popular shows in America are like the Big Bang Theory and NCIS uh whereas people in our probably cultural milu uh our favorite shows are White Lotus The Last of Us this is prestige Television right with a very small audience but High income high education so the point is is that culture really defines who we are as Americans where we live and uh rural urban is one way to describe it but honestly with the work from home Revolution and more rich people Highly

Educated people moving to more rural suburban or areas they traditionally weren't able to commute in that's changing and so really um in the internet is everything the stuff that you consume on the internet the stuff that you spend your time doing type of books you read whether you read a book at all frankly uh whether you uh travel to Europe whether you have a passport um you know all the things that you value in your life that is the real cultural divide in America and I actually think that's what this revolution of uh Donald Trump

was activating and bringing people to the polls bringing a lot of those traditional workingclass voters of all Races away from the Democratic party along the lines of elitism of sneering and of a general cultural feeling that these people don't understand me and uh my struggles in this life and so of the trivial formulation is that is the the wokeism the anti- wokeism movement yeah so it's not necessarily that uh Trump winning was a statement against wokeism it was the broader anti- elitism it's difficult to say because uh I wouldn't dismiss anti-woke or wokeism as an

explanation um but we need to understand like the Electoral impacts of woke so there's varying degrees of like how you're going to encounter quote unquote wokeism and this is a very difficult thing to Define so let me just try and break it down which is there are the types of things that you're going to interact with on a cultural basis and what I mean by that is uh going to watch a TV show and just for some reason there's like two trans characters and it's never like particular explain why they just are there or watching

a commercial and it's the same thing uh watching I don't know I remember it was watching I think it was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the main it was a terrible movie by the way don't recommend it uh but one of the characters I think is her name was like America and she wore a gay pride flag right look many left-wingers would make fun of me for saying these things but that is obviously a social agenda to the point as in they believe it is like deeply acceptable that is used by Hollywood

and cultural Elites who really value the those uh progress you know in sexual orientation and others and they really believe it's important to quote unquote showcase it for representation so that's like one way that we may encounter quote unquote wokeism but the more important ways frankly are the ways that affirmative action which really has its roots in you know American society all the way going back to the 1960s and how those have manifested in our economy and in our understanding of quote unquote discrimination so two books I can recommend one is called the origins of

woke that's by Richard hanania uh there's another one by the age of entitlement by Christopher Caldwell and they make a very strong case that Caldwell in particular that he calls it like a new founding of America was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it created an entire new legal regime and understanding of race in the American character and how the government was going to enforce that and that really ties in with another one of the books that I recommended to you about the origins of Trump by Jim Web and Senator Jim

Webb uh incredible incredible man he's so underappreciated uh intellectual he was anti-war and uh he was people may remember him from the 2016 primary and uh they asked him uh they asked him a question I don't exactly remember about one of his enemies and he's like well one of them was um guy a shot in Vietnam and he was running against Hillary and uh that guy the he wrote the book born fighting I think it's what history of the Scotts Irish people something like that and that book really opened my eyes to the way that

affirmative action and racial preferences that were playing out you know through the HR managerial Elite really turned a lot of people within the white working class away from the Democratic party and felt fundamentally discriminated against by the professional managerial class and so there's a lot of roots to this the managerial Revolution by James Burnham and in terms of the origin of kind of how we got here but the crystallization of like Dei and or affirmative action I prefer to use the term affirmative action in the higher highest echelons of business and there became this idea

that representation itself was the only thing that mattered and I think that right around 2014 that really went on steroids and that's why it's not an accident that Donald J Trump elected in 2016 at this point do you think this election is a kind of statement that wokeism as a movement is dead I don't know um I mean it's very difficult to say because wokeism itself is not a movement with a party leader it's a amorphous uh belief that has worked its way through institutions now for almost 40 or 50 years I mean it's effectively

a religion um and part of the reason why it's difficult Define is it means done different things to different people so for example there are VAR degrees of how we would Define quote unquote woke do I think that the Democrats will be speaking in so-called academic language yes I do think they will I think that the next Democratic nominee will not do that however kamla Harris actually did move as much as she could away from quote unquote woke but she basically was punished for a lot of the sins of both herself from 2019 but a

general cultural feeling that her and the people around her do not understand me and not only do not understand me but have racial preferences or a regime or an understanding that would lead to a quote unquote Equity mindset you know equal outcomes for everybody as opposed to equality of opportunity which is more of a colorblind philosophy so I can't say I think it's way too early and you know again like you can not use the word latinx but do you still believe in an effective affirmative action regime you know in terms of how you would

run your Department of Justice in terms of how you view the world in terms of what you think the real dividing lines in America are because I would say that's still actually kind of a woke mindset and that's part of the reason why the the term itself doesn't really mean a whole lot and we have to get actually really specific about what it looks like in operations in operation it means affirmative action it means the NASDAQ passing some law that if you want to go public or something that you have to have a woman and

a person of color on your board like this is a blatant and you know extraordinary look racialism that they've enshrined in their bylaws so you can get rid of ESG that's great um but you know you you can get rid of Dei I think that's great but it's really about a mindset and a view of the world and I don't think that's going anywhere and you think the reason it doesn't work well in practice is because it there's a big degree to which it's anti meritocracy it's anti-American really I mean uh you know Dei and

woke and affirmative action make perfect sense in a lot of different countries okay and there are a lot of countries out there that are multiethnic and they're heterogeneous and they were run by basically quasi dictators and the way it works is that you pay off the Christians and they pay off the Muslims and they get this guy and they get that guy and everybody kind of shakes it it's very explicit whether they're like we have 10 spots and they go to the Christians we have 10 spots and they go to the Hindus you know I'm

talking India is a country I know pretty well and this does kind of work like that on state politics level in some respect but in America you know fundamentally we really believe that no matter where you are from that you come here and basically within a generation uh especially if you migrate here legally and you integrate that you leave a lot of that stuff behind and the story the American dream that is ingrained in so many of us is one that really does not mesh well with any sort of racial preference regime or anything that's

not Merit itic and uh I mean I will give the left Wingers some you know Credit in the idea that meritocracy itself you know could have preference for people who have privileged backgrounds I think that's true um and so you know the way I would like to see it is to increase everybody's equality of opportunity to make sure that they all have a chance at quote unquote willing out the American dream but that doesn't erase meritocracy hardw work and uh many of the other things that we associate with the American character with the American frontier

so these are two ideologies which are really at odds like in a lot of ways like wokeism racialism and all this is a third world ideology it's one that's very prevalent in Europe and in uh all across Asia but it doesn't mix well here and and it shouldn't and I'm really glad that the America feels the same way yeah I got to go back to uh Jim Webb in that book what a badass fascinating book my God warn fighting amazing how the Scots Irish Shaped America so I did not realize to the degree first of

all how badass the Scot Irish are and the to the degree many of the things that kind of identifies American and part of the American Spirit were defined by this relatively small group of people as he describes the model could be summarized as fight sing drink and pray so there's the principles of fierce individualism the principles of a deep distrust of government the elites the authorities bottom up governance over 2,000 years of a military tradition they made up 40% of the Revolutionary War army and uh produced numerous military leaders including Stonewall Jackson ulys S Grant

George S Patton and a bunch of presidents yeah some of the more gangster presidents Andrew Jackson Teddy Roosevelt Udo Wilson Ronald Reagan Bill Clinton MH just the the whole cultural Legacy of country music we owe them so much and they really don't get their du unfortunately a lot of for the reasons that I just described around racialism is because post you know Mass immigration from Europe the term white kind of became blanket applied to new Irish to Italians to slovenians and you know as you and I both know if you travel those countries people are

pretty different and it's not not the different here in the United States Scott CIS was some of the original settlers here in America and particularly in Appalachia and their contribution to the fighting spirit and their own culture and like who we are as individualists and uh some of the first people to ever settle the frontier and that Frontier mindset really does come from them we owe them just as much we do the Puritans but they don't ever really get their due and the reason I recommend that book is if you read that book and you

understand then you know how exactly could this group of white workingclass voters for go from 2012 voting for a man named Barack Hussein Obama to Donald J Trump um you really seem to it makes perfect sense if you combine it with a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here about affirmative action about distrust of the elites about feeling as if institutions are not seeing through to you and specifically also not valuing valuing your contribution to American history and in some cases actively looking down you know I'm I'm glad you pointed out not only their

role in the Revolutionary War but in the Civil War as well um and you know just how much of a contribution culturally really that we owe them um for setting the groundwork that so many of us who came later could build upon and adopt some of their own ideas and their culture as our own it's one of the things that makes America great Mark Twain yeah I mean so much of the culture so much of the yeah the American Spirit the the whole idea the whole shape and form and type of populism that represents our

democracy so would you trace the that that Fierce individualism that we think of back to them definitely it's a huge part of them uh about who they were about the screw you attitude um I mean uh that book actually kind of had a Renaissance back in 2016 when Hill bology came out I'm sure you remember this which it's kind of weird to think that it's now this Vice president-elect of the United States it's kind of wild honestly to think about um but JD Vance's book Hill beology I think was really important for a lot of

American Elites who were like how do these support people support Trump where does this shit come from that they really I mean that if you really think back to that time it was shocking to the elite character that any person in the world could ever vote for Donald Trump and not just vote he won the election how does that happen and that's hillbilly elogy guided people in an understanding of what that's like on a lived day-to-day basis and JD to his credit talks about Scots Irish heritage about Appalachia and the legacy of what that culture

looks like today and how a lot of these people voted for Donald Trump but we got to give credit to Jim Webb who wrote the history of these people and taught me and you about you know their their original fight against the uh the oppressors in Scotland and in Ireland and their militant spirit and how they were able to bring that over here um and you know they got their due in Andrew Jackson and some of our other populist presidents who set us up on the road to Donald Trump to where we are today dude

it got me excited to be an American me too I love that book it's crazy that JD the same guy because that's uh hillbilly El is what I kind of thought of him as yeah yeah I mean I'll tell you for me it's actually pretty surreal I met JD Vance in like 2017 I didn't in like a bar I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States I mean just kind of wild uh one of my friends went back and dug up the email that we originally sent him just like

hey do you want to meet up or he's like sure you know okay I was watching on television um I mean the first time that it really hit me I was like whoo it like name in a history book is whenever he became the Vice Presidential nominee I was watching him on TV and the confetti was falling and he was waving with his wife and I was like wow like that's it you're you're in the history books now forever especially now so uh as the literal Vice president-elect of the US but his own evolution is

actually a fascinating uh a fascinating story for us too because I think a lot of the time I've spent right now is kind of this a lot of what I'm giving right now like 2016 kind of takes about like why Trump won that time but we should spent a lot of time on how Donald Trump won this election and like how what happened some of the failures of the Biden Administration some of the payback for the great awokening but also if you look at the evolution of JD Vance this is a person who wrote hillbilly

elogy and not a lot of people pay attention to this but if you read hillbilly elgy uh JD was much more of a traditional conservative at that time uh he was citing you know report I think the famous passage is about like payday loans and why they're good or something like that I don't know his position today but I would just assume that he's probably changed that but the point is is that his ideological Evolution from watching somebody who uh really was more of a traditional Republican with a deep empathy for the white working class

then eventually become a champion and a disciple of Donald Trump and to believe that he himself was the vehicle for accomplishing and bettering the United States was specifically for workingclass Americans really of all stripes and that's story is really one one of the rise of the modern left as it exists as a political project as an ideology it's also one of the Republican party which coales now with Donald Trump as a legitimate figure and as the single bullwark against cultural leftism and elitism that eventually was normalized to the point that majority of Americans decided to

vote for him in 2024 so let's talk about 2024 what what happened with uh with the left what happened with Biden what's your take on on Biden Biden is um I try to remove myself from it and I try not to give like hit big history takes while you're in the moment but it's really hard not to say that he's one of the worst Presidents in modern history and uh I think the reason why I'm going to go with it is because I want to judge him by the things that he set out to do

so Joe Biden um has been the same person for his entire political career he is a basically C student who thinks he's an a student the chip on his shoulder against the elites has played to his benefit in his original election to the United States Senate through his entire career as United States Senator where he always wanted to be the star and the center of attention and to his 1988 presidential campaign and uh one of the most fascinating things about Biden and watching him age is watching him become even more of what he already was

and so a book recommendation it's called what it takes and uh It Was Written in 1988 and there's actually a long chapter on Joe Biden and about the plagiarism scandal and one of the things that comes across is his sheer arrogance and belief in himself as to why he should be the center of attention now the reason I'm laying all this out is the arrogance of Joe Biden the individual and his character is fundamentally the reason his presidency went arai this is a person who was elected in 2020 really because of a feeling of chaos

of Donald Trump of we need normaly decides to come into the office portrays himself as a quote unquote transitional president slowly you know begins to lose a lot of his faculties and then surrounds himself with sycophants the same ones who have been around him for so long that he had no single input into his life to tell him that he needed to stop and he needed to drop out of the race until it became truly undeniable to the vast majority of the American people um and that's why I'm trying to keep it as like him

as an individual as a president because we could separate him from some of his accomplishments and the things that happen on some I support some I don't uh but generally a lot of people are not going to look back and think about Joe Biden and the chips sack a lot of people are not going to look back and think about Joe Biden and the bill back better bill or whatever his Lena Khan Anti-Trust policy they're going to look back on him and they're going to remember High inflation they're going to remember somebody who fundamentally never

was up to the job in the sense that one again book recommendation Freedom From Fear by David Kennedy is about uh the Roosevelt years and one of the most important things people don't understand is the New Deal didn't really work in the way that a lot of people wanted it to right like there was still high unemployment there was still a lot of suffering um but you know what changed they felt that they had a vigorous commander-in-chief who was doing everything in his power to attack the problems of the everyday American so even though things

didn't even materially change the Vigor that's a term that was often associated with John F Kennedy at Viga you know in the Massachusetts accent we had this young vibrant president in 1960 he was running around and he wanted to convince us that he was working every single day tirelessly and when you have an 80-year-old man who is simply just eating ice cream and going to the beach while people's grocery prices and all this go up by 25% and we don't see the same Vigor we don't see the same action the bias to action which is

so important in the modern presidency that is fundamentally why I think the Democrats uh part of the reason why the Democrats lost the election and also why I think that he missed his moment in such a dramatic way uh and he had the opportunity he could have done it you know if he wanted to but uh maybe 20 years ago but the truth is that his own narcissist ISM his own uh misplaced belief in himself and his own accidental rise to the presidency ended up uh in his downfall and it's kind of amazing because again

if we if we look back to his original campaign speech 2019 why I'm running for president it was Charlottesville and he said I want to defeat Donald Trump forever and I want to make sure that he never gets back in the white house again so by his own metric he did fail that was his it was the only thing he wanted to do and he failed failed from him you said a lot of interesting stuff so one FDR that's really interesting it's not about the specific policy it's about like fighting for the people and doing

that with Charisma and just uniting the entire country for a partic this is the same with Bernie like maybe there's a lot of people that disagree with Bernie that's still support him CU like we just want some authentic yeah that's it we just want somebody to fight authentically for us yes FDR people really need FDR was like a king he was like Jesus Christ okay in in the US and it some of it was because of what did but it was just the fight so people need to go back and read the history of the

first 100 days under FDR the sheer amount of legislation they went through his ability to bring Congress to heal and the Senate he gets all this stuff through but as you and I know legislation takes a long time to put into place right we've had people starving on the streets all throughout 1933 um under uh under Hoover the difference was Hoover was seen as this do nothing joke who had dine nine course meals in the white house he's a filthy rich Banker FDR comes in there and every single day has in fireside chat he's passing

legislation but more importantly so he he tries various different programs then they get ruled unconstitutional he tries even more so what does America take away from that every single time if he gets knocked down he comes back fighting and that was a really part of his character that he developed uh after he got polio and it was uh it gave him the strength to persevere through personally what he could transfer in his calm demeanor and his feeling of fight that Amer America really got that Spirit from him and was able to climb itself out of

the Great Depression he's such an inspirational figure he really is and uh I people think of him for World War II of course you know we can spend forever on that but uh in my opinion the the early years are not studied enough 33 to 37 is one of the most remarkable periods in American history we were not ruled by a President we were ruled by a king by a monarch and people liked it he was he was a dictator and he was a good one yeah so uh to uh sort of push back against

the implied thing that you said so when saying Biden is the worst president no second worst in modern history that's what I said second in modern history who's the worst W with no question I see because of the horrible Wars probably I mean Iraq is just so bad like one of my uh favorite authors is a guy Gene Edward Smith he's Ru a bunch of presidential biographies and in the opening of his but duy biography he's like there's just no question there's a single worst foreign policy mistake in in all of American history and W

is one of our worst Presidents ever he had terrible judgment and it got us into a war of his own choosing it was a disaster and it set us up for failure it by the way we talked a lot about Donald Trump nobody is more uh responsible for the rise of Donald Trump than George W bush but I could I could go off on Bush for a long time oh we will we will return there so as part of the push back I'd like to say cuz I agree with your criticism of arrogance and narcissism

against Joe Biden the same could be said about Donald Trump you're absolutely right of arrogance so I think you've also articulated that a lot of presidents throughout American history have suffered from a bad case of arrogance and narcissism absolutely but sometimes to a benefit you know you have to be a pretty crazy person to be uh to want to be president I you know I had put out a tweet that got some controversy and uh I think it was Joe Rogan uh who I love but he was like I want to find out who KLA

Harris is as a human being and I was like I'm actually not interested in who politicians are as human beings at all um I like I've read too much about them to know uh I know who are um if you spend your life and because I live in Washington and I spend a lot of time around would be politicians I know what it takes to actually become the president it's crazy you have to give up everything everything every night you're not spending it with your wife you're spending it at dinner with potential donors with friends

with people who can connect you every even after you get elected that's even more so now you got to raise money and now you're on to the next thing now you want to get your political thing through you're going to spend all your time on your phone you and your staff are going to be more like this your entire life revolves around around your career it's honestly you need an insane level of narcissism to do it because you have to believe that you are better than everybody else which is already pretty crazy um and not

only that uh your own personal characteristics and foibles lead you to the pursuit of this office and to the pursuit of the idolatry of the self and everything around you there's a famous story of uh Ladybird Johnson after Johnson becomes the president he's talking to the White House Butler and she was like everything in this house revolves around my husband whatever's left goes to the girls her two children and I'll take the scraps so it she everything revolved around Johnson's political career and his daughters when they're honest because they like to paper over some of

the things uh that happened under him but they didn't spend any time with him Saturday Saturday morning was for breakfast with you know Richard Russell I forget these are all in the Robert a Caro books Sunday was for Rayburn there was no time for you know for for his kids that's what it was and and by the way he's one of the greatest policians to ever live but he also died from a massive heart attack and he was a deeply sad and depressed individual yeah I saw that tweet to go back to that and also

I listened to your incredible debate about it with Marshall on the realignment podcast and I have to side with Marshall I think you're just wrong on this right um because I think revealing the character of a person is really important to understand how they will act in a room full of generals and full of uh yeah this gets to the Judgment question the judgment and that's I think of Johnson and and of Nixon of uh Teddy Roosevelt even of FDR I can give you a laundry list of personal problems that all those people had I

think they had really really good judgment and uh I'm not sure how intrinsic their own personal character was to their exploration and thinking about the world so JFK is actually JFK might be our best example because he had the best judgment out of anybody in the room as a brand new president in the Cuban Missile Crisis and he got us out and avoided nuclear war which he deserves Eternal credit for that but uh how did he arrive to good judgment uh some of it certainly was his character and we can go again though into his

laundry list of that but most most of it was around being with his father seeing some of the mistakes that he would make and he was also had a deeply inquisitive mind and he experienced World War II at the personal level uh After PT 109 so it is look I I get it I actually could steal man it I could the response to what I'm saying is judgment is not divisible from personal character but just because I know a lot of politicians and I've read but the really great ones the people who I I Revere

the most um there's really bad personal stuff basically every single time but you're saying the Judgment was good his judgment was great Missile Crisis some of the best uh judgment and decision making in the history of America yes and we should study a lot of it and I encourage people out there this is this is a brutal text we were forced to read it in Graduate School uh the essence of decision by Graham Allison I'm so thankful we did it's one of the foundations of political science because it lays out theories of how government works

this is also a useful transition by the way if we want to talk about Trump and some of his cabinet and how that is shaping up because people really need to understand Washington Washington is a creature with Traditions with institutions that don't care about you they don't even really care about the president they have self-perpetuating mechanisms which have been done a certain way and it usually takes a great shocking event like World War II to change really anything beyond the marginal every once in a while you have a figure like Teddy Roosevelt who's actually able

to take peacetime presidency and transform the country but it needs an extraordinary individual to get something like that done uh so the question around the essence of decision was the theory behind the Cuban Missile Crisis of how Kennedy arrived at at his decision and uh there are various different schools of thought but one of the things I love about the book is it presents the case for all three the organizational Theory the bureaucratic politics Theory and then kind of the great man Theory as well so there's a you know you and I could sit here

and I could tell you a case about PT 109 and about how John F Kennedy experienced World War II as this uh I think it was like a first lieutenant or something like that and how he literally swam miles with a wounded man's life jacket strap in his teeth with a broken back and he saved him and he ended up on the cover of Life magazine and he was a war hero and he was a deeply smart individual who wrote a book in 1939 called why England slept which to this day is considered a a

a text which at the moment was able to describe in detail why uh Neville Neville Chamberlain and the British political system arrived at the policy of appeasement I actually have a original copy it's one of my most prized possessions because and from 1939 because this is a 23y old kid who the fuck are you John F Kennedy um turns out he's a brilliant man and another just favorite aside is that at the pot Stam conference you know where Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody so in the room at the same time Harry S

Truman President of the United States Dwight D Eisenhower the general right who will succeed him 26-year-old John F Kennedy as a journalist some shithead journalist on the side and all three of those presidents were in the same room with Joseph Stalin and others um and that that's the story of America right there it's kind of amazing uh I I love people to say that because you never know um about who will end up rising to power but are you announcing that you're running for oh absolutely not yeah I I don't have what it takes I

don't think so I'm self-aware yeah well maybe humility is necessary for greatness okay so uh yeah actually can we just Linger on that book yeah so the book essence of decision explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by Graham Allison it presents three different models of how government works the rational actor model so seeing government as one entity uh trying to maximize the national interest uh also seeing government as uh through the lens of the momentum of standard operating procedure so this giant uh organization that's just doing things how it's always been done and the government politics

model of there's just these individual internal power struggles within government yes and all of that is like a different way to view and they're probably all true to degree of how decisions are made within this giant Machinery of government that's why it's so important is because you cannot read that book and say one is true and one is not you can say one is May more true than the other but all of them are deeply true and this is one this is probably a good transition to Donald Trump um because uh and I guess for

the people out there who don't think I've been up too obsequious he will be my criticism Trump said something very fundamental and interesting on The Joe Rogan podcast probably the most important thing that he ever said which is he said I like to have people like John Bolton in my Administration well because they scare people and it makes me seem like the most rational individual in the room so at a very intuitive level a lot of people can understand that and then they can rationalize while there are picks that Donald Trump has brought into his

White House people like Mike Waltz and others that have espoused views that are directly at odds with a quote unquote anti- neocon anti- Liz Cheney agenda now Trump's theory of this is that he likes to have quote unquote like Psychopaths like John Bolton uh in the room with him while he's sitting across from Kim Jong-un because it gets scared what I think Trump Trump never understood when he was president and I honestly question if he still does now is those two theories that you laid out which are not about the rational interest as the government

is one model with the bureaucratic Theory and the organizational theory of politics and because what Trump I don't think quite gets is that there are 99% of the decisions that get made in government never reach the president's desk one of the most important Obama quotes ever is by the time it gets to my desk nobody else can solve it all the problems here are hard all the problems here don't have an answer that's why I have to make the call so the theory that Trump has that you can have people in there who are let's

say warmongers neocons or whatever who don't necessarily agree with you is that when push comes to shove at the most important decisions that I'll still be able to Reign those people in as an influence here's the issue uh let's say for Mike Waltz who's going to be the National Security adviser the a lot of people don't really understand you know there's this theory of National Security adviser where you call me into your office and you're the president you're like hey what do we think about Iran I'm like I think you should do X Y andz

no that's not how works the National Security advisor's job is to coordinate the inter agency process so his job is to actually convene meetings him and his staff where in The Situation Room CIA State Department SEF others before the pus even walks in we have options so we're like hey Russia just invaded Ukraine we need a package of options those package of options are conceded of three things we're going to have one group we're going to call it the doish option two we're going to call it the Middle Ground Three the hardcore package Trump walks

in this is how it's supposed to work Trump walks in he goes okay Russian invaded Ukraine what do we do Mr President we prepared three options for you we got one two and three now who has the power is it Trump when he picks one two or three or is the man who decides what even in option one two and three that is the part where Trump needs to really understand how these things happen and I watched this happen to him in his first Administration uh he hired a guy Mike Flynn who was his National

Security adviser you could say a lot about Flynn but him him and Trump were at least like this on foreign policy Flynn gets outed because what I would call an FBI coup whatever 33 days he's out uh as a national security adviser H Arch Master he's got a nice nice shiny uniform forstar all of this master doesn't agree with Donald Trump at all and so uh Trump says I ran on pulling out of Afghanistan I want to get out of Afghanistan they're like yeah yeah we'll get out of Afghanistan but uh before we get out

we got to go back in as we need more troops in there and he's like oh okay um you know it's like all this and uh he approves a plan and effectively gives a speech in 2017 where he ends up escalating and increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan and it's only till February 2020 that he gets to sign a deal the Taliban peace deal which in my opinion he should have done in 2017 but the reason why that happened was because of that organizational theory of that bureaucratic politics Theory where HR McMaster is able

to guide the inter agency process bring the uniform recommendations of The Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to give Donald Trump no option but to say we must put troops another example of this is a book called Obama's War by Bob Woodward I highly encourage people to read this book because this book talks about how Obama comes into the White House in 2009 and he says I want to get out of Iraq and I don't want to increase I want to fight the good war in Afghanistan right and he's doing Obama's a thoughtful guy too

thoughtful actually uh and so he sits there and he's working out his opinions and uh what he starts to watch is that very slowly his narrow his options begin to narrow because strategic leaks start to come out from the White House Situation Room about what we should do in Afghanistan and pretty soon David Petraeus and Stan mccristal and the entire National Security apparatus has obam pegged where he basically politically at the time decides to take the advantage Advantage possession of increasing troops in Afghanistan but then tries to have it both ways but by saying but

in two years we're going to withdraw that book really demonstrates how the Deep State can completely remove any of your options to be able to move by presenting you with ones which you even want and then making it politically completely infeasible to travel down the extreme Directions That's why when Trump says things like I want to get out of Syria that doesn't compute up here for the Pentagon um because first of all you know if I even asked you how many troops we have in Syria and you could go on the dod website it'll tell

you a number the number's bullshit because the way they do it is if you're only there for 179 days you don't count as active military contractors the real numbers let's say five times um and so Trump would be like hey I want to get out of Sy yeah yeah we'll do it six months right we need six months and after six months go so so are we out of Syria yet and they're like no well we got to wrap this up we got this base we got that and we have this important Mission and you

know next thing you know you're not you're out of office and it's over so that there's there's all these things which I don't think he quite understands I know that some of the people around him who disagree with these picks do is the reason why these picks really matter is not only the voices in The Situation Room for the really really high-profile stuff it's for all the little things that never get to that President's desk of which can shape extraordinary policy and I'll give you uh the uh best example was never a decision by FDR

as president of the United States to Oil Embargo Japan one which he thought about as deeply as you and I would want it was a decision kind of made within the state department it was a decision that was made by some of his advisers I think he eventually signed off on it it was a conscious choice but it was not one which ever was understood the implications that by doing that we invite a potential response like Pearl Harbor so think about you know what the organizational bureaucratic model can tell us about the extraordinary blowback that

we can get and why we want people with great judgment all the way up and down the entire National Security chain in the white house also I just realized I did not talk about immigration which is so insane one of the reasons Donald Trump won in 2024 of course was because of the massive change to the immigration status quo the truth is is that it may actually be second to inflation in terms of the reason that Trump did win the presidency was because Joe Biden fundamentally changed the immigration status quo in this country that was

another thing about the Scots Irish people and others that we need to understand is that when government machinery and elitism and liberalism appears to be more concerned about people who are coming here in a disorderly and illegal process and about their rights and their you know ability to quote unquote pursue the American dream while the American dream is dying for the native born population that is a huge reason why people are turning against Mass immigration historically as well uh my friend rhan Salam wrote a book called Melting Pot or Civil War and one of the

most important parts about that book is the history of mass migration to the United States so if we think about the transition from Scotts Irish America to the opening of the of America to the Irish and to mass European immigration we what a lot of people don't realize is it caused a ton of problems there were mass movements at the time the know nothings and others in the 1860s Who Rose up against Mass European migration they were particularly concerned about Catholicism uh by as the religion of a lot of the new immigrants but really what

it was is about the changing of the American character by people who are not have the same Traditions values and skills as the native born population and their understanding of what their ode and their role in American society is very different from the way that uh people previously had one of the most tumultuous periods of us politics was actually during the resolution of the immigration question where we had massive waves of foreign born population come to the United States uh we had them you know integrated luckily actually at the time with the Industrial Revolution so

we actually did have jobs for them one of the problems is that today in the United States we have one of the highest levels of foreign born population than ever before actually since that time in the early 1900s but we have all of the same attendant problems but even worse is we don't live in an industrial economy anymore we live in a predominantly service-based economy that has long you know moved past manufacturing now I'm not saying we shouldn't bring some of that back but the truth is that manufacturing today is not what it was to

work in a steel mill in 1875 I think we can all be reasonable and we can agree on that and part of the problems with extremely high levels of foreign born population particularly unskilled and the vast majority of the people who are coming here and who are claiming Asylum are doing so under fraudulent purposes they're doing so because they are economic migrants and they're abusing you know Asylum law to basically gain entrance to the United States without going through a process of application or of Merit and this has it all of its traces back to

1965 where the immigration Naturalization Act of 1965 really reversed and changed the status quo of immigration from the 1920s to 1960 which really shut down uh levels of immigration to the United States in my opinion it was one of the most important things that ever happened and one of the reasons why is it forced and caused integration it also forced by slowing down the increase in the number of foreign born population it redeveloped an American character and an understanding that was more homogenous and was the ability for you and me to understand despite the difference

in our background if you accelerate and you continue this trend of the very high foreign born unskilled population you unfortunately are basically creating a mass you know un it's it's basically it's a non-citizen population of illegal immigrants people who are not a skilled uh you know I think it was I read 27% of the people who have come under Joe Biden illegally don't even have a college degree that means that we're lucky if they're even literate in Spanish let alone English so there are major problems about integrating that type of person you know even in

the past whenever we had a mass industrial economy now imagine today the amount of strain that would put on Social Services if Mass citizenship happened you know to that population would be extraordinary um and even if we were to do I don't think it's a good idea but even if we were to do so we would still need to parir it with a dramatic change and part of the problem right now is I don't think a lot of people understand that immigration system uh the immigration system in the United States effectively uh they call it

family based migration uh I call it chain migration um chain migration is the term which implies that uh let's say you come over here um and you get your green card you can use sponsorship and others by Gaming the quota system to get your cousin or whatever to be able to come the problem with that is who is your cousin like is he a plumber is he you know does he have is he a coder you know that doesn't actually matter cuz he's your cousin so he actually has preference uh the way that it should

work is it should be nobody cares if he's your cousin what's what does he do you know what does she do what is she going to bring to this country all immigration in the United States in my opinion should be net positive without doing fake statistics about oh they actually increased the GDP or whatever it's like we need a merit-based immigration system we are the largest country in the world uh and one of the only non-western or one of the only Western countries in the world that does not have a merab based points-based immigration system

like Australia and or Canada and I mean I get it because a lot of people did come to this country under non-m merit-based purposes so they're really reluctant to let that go but I do think that Biden by changing the immigration status quo and by basically just allowing you know tens of millions uh potentially tens of millions at the very least 12 million new entrance to come to the US uh under these pretenses of complete disorder and of no conduct really broke a lot of people's understanding and even like Mercy in that regard and so

that was obviously a massive part of Trump's Victory speaking of illegal immigration what do you think about the borders are Tom homman Tom Homan is a very legit dude uh got to know him a little bit in Trump uh 1.0 he is an original like True Believer on enforcing immigration law as it is uh now notice how I just said it that that's a politically correct way of saying Mass deportation um and I I I will point out for my leftwing critics in that yeah he really believes in the ability uh the in the ability

in the necessity of mass deportation and he has the background to be able to carry that out I will give some warnings um and this will apply to Doge too Zar has no statutory or constitutional Authority uh Zar has as much Authority as the President of the United States gives him Donald Trump uh I think it's fair to say even his critics or even the people who love him could say he can be capricious at times um and uh he can strip you or not strip you or give you the ability to compel so Zar

in and of itself is frankly a very flawed position in the white house and it's one that I really wish we would move away from I understand why we do it it's basically to do a national security adviser inter agency convenor to accomplish certain goals uh that said there is a person Steven Miller who will be in the White House the deputy White house chief of staff who has well-founded beliefs experience in government and uh Rock Solid ideology on this which I think would also give him the ability to work with hman to pull that

off that said a Cory to this and frankly this is the one I am the most mystified yet is Kirsty gnome as the Department of Homeland Security secretary so let me just lay this out for people because people don't know what this is the Department of Homeland Security 90% of the time the way you're going to interact with them is T SAA you don't think about it but people don't know the Department of Homeland Security is one of the largest law enforcement if maybe the largest law enforcement agency in the world it's gigantic you have

extraordinary statutory power to be able to approve investigations you have border patrol ice TSA CBP all these other agencies that report up to you but most importantly for this you will be the public face of mass deportation um so I was there in the White House briefing room last time around when kirston neon who was the DHS secretary under Donald Trump and specifically the one who enforced child separation for a limited uh period of time she was a smart woman she had long experience in government and honestly she melted under the uh criticism kirom is

the governor of South Dakota I mean that's great you have a little bit of executive experience but to be honest I mean you have no law enforcement background uh you have no ability to like you have no frankly with understanding of what it is going to be like to be the Secretary of one of the most controversial programs in modern American history you have to go on television and defend that every single day a literal job requirement under Donald Trump and you will have to have extraordinary command of the facts you have to have a

very high intellect you have to have the ability to really break through and I mean we all watch how she handled that situation with her dog and her interviews and that does not give me confidence that she will be able to do all that well in the position what do you think is behind that so Crystal PA's theory on breaking points is that there's some kind of interpersonal like uh I didn't know I I I should know this but I didn't know any of the there was some cheating or whatever there's a rumor nobody knows

if it's true that Cory leowski and kiry gome had a previous relationship and ongoing Cory lowski is a trump official and that he may be put her in front I don't know is this like The Real Housewives of DC yeah kind of although I mean it was the most Open Secret in the World allegedly I don't know if it's true okay all right Ian I I don't like to traffic too much in personal theories but I mean in this respect it might actually be correct in terms of how it all came down I have no

idea what he's thinking to be I truly don't um I mean maybe it's like he was last time he said I want a woman who's like softer and like emotionally and the ability to be the face of my immigration program I mean again like I said I I don't see it in terms of her experience and her media it's frankly like not very so you think she needs to be able to articulate not just be like the softer face of this radical yeah policy but also be able to articulate the what's happening with the reasoning

behind all yes you need to give justification for everything here's the thing under Mass deportation the media will drag up every Saab story known to planet Earth about this person and that person who came here illegally and why they deserve to stay and really what the Quasi thing is that's why the program itself is bad and we should legalize everybody who's here IL legally okay so the thing is is that you need to be able to have extraordinary oversight you need a great team with you you need to make sure that everything is being done

by the book the way that the media is being handled is that you throw every question back in their face and you say you know you either talk about crime or you talk about the enforceability of the law the necessity I mean I just I think articulated a very coherent case for why we need much less high levels of immigration to the United States um and I am the son of people who immigrated to this country um but one of the favorite phrases I heard from this from a guy named Mark Koran who's a center

for immigration studies is we don't make immigration policy for the benefit of our grandparents we make immigration policy for the benefit of our grandchildren and that is an extraordinary and good way to put it and in fact I would say it's a Triumph of the American system that somebody whose parent family benefited from the immigration regime and was able to come here my parents had phds came here legally applied spent thousands of dollars uh through the process can arrive at the conclusion that actually we need to care about all of our fellow American citizens I'm

not talking about other Indians or you know other whatever I'm talking about all of us I care about everybody who is here in this country but fundamentally that will mean that we are going to have to exclude some people from the US and another thing that the open borders people don't ever really grapple with is that even within their own framework it makes no sense so for example a common leftwing talk point is that it's America's fault that El Salvador and Honduras and Central America is fucked up and so because of that we have a

responsibility to take all those people in because it's our fault or Haiti right but you know if you think about it America is responsible and I'm just being honest for destroying and ruining a lot of countries do they they just don't benefit from the geographic like ability to walk to the United States so I mean if we're doing grievance politics Iraqis have way more of a claim to be able to come here than any body from El Salvador who's talking about something that happened in 1982 uh So within its own logic it doesn't make any

sense uh even under the Asylum process you know people I mean people don't even know this you're literally able to claim Asylum from domestic violence okay uh there I mean imagine that like that's frankly that is a local law enforcement and problem of people who are experiencing that in their home country I know how cold-hearted this sounds but maybe honestly it could be because I'm Indian one of the things that whenever you visit India and you see a country with over a billion people you're like holy shit you know this this is crazy and you

understand both the sheer numbers of the amount of people involved and also there is nothing in the world you could ever do to solve all problems for everybody it's a very complex and dynamic problem and it's really nice to be bleeding heart and to say oh well we have responsibility to this and to all mankind and all that but just it doesn't work it doesn't work with a nation state it doesn't work with a Sovereign Nation we're the luckiest people in the history of the world world to live here in this country and uh it

you need to protect it and protecting it requires really thinking about the fundamentals of immigration itself and not telling us stories like what there's a famous moment from the Trump White House where Jim aosta uh CNN White House correspondent got into it with Steven Miller uh the uh current you know who will be the current Deputy Chief and he was like what do you say something along the lines to people who say you're violating you know that quote on the Statue of Liberty like give me you're tired you're poor you're hungry uh all of that

the Emma lasarus quote and Stephen very logically was like what level of immigration comports with the Emma lasarus quote is it 200,000 people a year is it 300 is it 1 million is it 1.5 million and that's such a great way of putting it because there is no limiting principle on Emma aerus quote there is when you start talking honestly you're like okay we live in X Y and Z Society with X Y andz GDP um people who are coming here should be able to benefit for themselves and us not rely on welfare not you

know be people who we have to take uh take care of after because we have our own problems here right now and who are the population the types of people that we can study and look at who will be able to benefit and based on that yeah immigration is great but there are a lot of economic legal and uh societal reasons for why you you definitely don't want the current level but another thing is even if we turn the switch and we still let in a Million million five people a year under the chain Bas

the chain family based migration I think it would be a colossal mistake because it's not rooted in the idea that people who are coming to America are explicitly doing so at the benefit of America it's doing so based on the familial connections of people who already gained the immigration system to be able to come here I have a lot of family in India um and you know I love them but and some of them are actually very talented and qualified if they wanted to come here I think they should be able to apply on their

own Merit and that should have nothing to do with familial status of the fact that I'm a US citizen like you mentioned the book melting Potter Civil War by ryhan Salam he makes an argument against open borders the thesis there is a simulation should be a big part MH I guess there's some kind of optimal rate of immigration which allows for simulation yeah and there are es and flows that's kind of what I was talking about historically where you know I mean the truth is is you could walk the streets of New York City in

the early 1900s and late 1890s and you're not going to hear any English and I think that's bad I mean really what you had was ethnic enclaves of people who were basically practicing their way of life just like they did previously bringing over a lot of their ethnic problems that they had and even some of their cultural like unique capabilities or whatever bringing it to America and then New York City Police and others are figuring out like what the hell do we do with all this and it literally took shutting down immigration for an entire

generation to do away with that and there's actually still some the point about assimilation is twofold one is that you should have the capacity to inherit the understanding of the American character that has nothing to do with race and that's so unique that I can sit here as a child of people from India and has such a deep appreciation for the Scots Irish um I consider myself you know American first and one of the things that I really love about that is that I have no historical relationship to anybody who fought in the Civil War

but I feel such kinship with a lot of the people people who did and reading the Memoirs and the ideas of those that did because that same mindset of the victors and the values that they were able to instill in the country for 150 years later gives me the ability to connect to them and that's such an incredible Victory on their part and that's such a unique thing in almost every other country in the world in China in India or wherever you're kind of like what you what you are you're a Hindu you're a Jew

you're you know you're Han Chinese you're we you or you're Tibetan something like that it's you're born into it but really here was the only one of the only places in the world where you can really connect to that story and that Spirit and the compounding effect of all of these different people who have come to America and that is a celebration of immigration as an idea but immigration is also a discreet policy and that policy was really screwed up by the Biden Administration and so we can celebrate the idea and also pursue a policy

for all of the people in the US our c citizens to actually be able to benefit and um look it's going to be messy and honestly I still don't know yet if Trump will be able to pursue actual mass deportation just because I think that I'm not sure the public is ready for it I do support Mass deportation I don't know if the public is ready for it um I think I don't know I I'll have to see because there's a lot of different ways that you can do it there's mandatory e verify which requires

businesses to basically verify or a US citizen or here legally whenever they employ you which is not the law of the land currently which is crazy by the way um there's you know you can uh cut off or uh tax remittance payments which are payments that are sent back to other countries like Mexico Honduras and Guatemala again illustrating my economic migrant Point um there are a lot of various different ways where you can just make it more difficult to be illegally here in the US so people will self-deport um but you know if he does

pursue like real Mass deportation that will be a that will be a flas point in America aren't you talking about things like what what uh Tom Holman said that works that raids of increasing the rate of that yeah we used to do that you know but but there's a rate at which you can do that where it would lead to I mean radical social upheaval yeah it will I mean and I think some people need to be honest here and this actually flies in the face of uh I mean one of the most common liberal

critiques is this is going to raise prices and yeah I think it's true um I think it's worth it but that's easy for me to say I'm making a good living um if you care about inflation you voted for Donald Trump and your price of groceries or whatever goes up because of this immigration policy uh I think that needs to be extremely well articulated by the president and of course he needs to think about it um the truth is is America right now is built on cheap labor it's not fair to the consumer it's not

fair to the immigrants the illegal immigrants themselves and it's not fair to the natural born citizen the natural born citizen has his wages suppressed for competition by tens of millions of people who are willing to work at lower wages that compete for housing for social services I mean just even you know like basic stuff at a societal level it's not fair to them it's definitely not fair to the other person because I mean whenever people say like who's going to build your houses or whatever you're endorsing this quasi legal system where you know uninsured laborers

from Mexico they have no guarantee of wages they're getting paid cash under the table they are living you know 10 to room they're sending Mexican remittance payments back just so that their children can eat I mean that's not really fair to that person either uh so that's the point the point is is that it will lead to a lot of social upheaval but this gets to my kiry gnome Point as well is you need to be able to articulate a lot of what I just said here because if you don't it's going to go south

real quick uh the way VC articulates this is that our uh immigration system is deeply dishonest like we don't acknowledge some of the things he just said yeah exactly yeah and he wants to make it honest so if we don't do Mass deportation at least you have to be really honest about the living conditions about of illegal immigrants about uh basically mistreatment of them yes it's true I mean you know if you support Mass illegal migration you're basically supporting a TENS of millions who are living lives as second class citizens that's not fair to them

I also think it's deeply paternalistic so there's this idea that America has so ruined these Central American countries that they have no agency whatsoever and they can never turn things around what does that say about our confidence in them you know one of the things they always say they're oh they're law abiding they're great people and all that I agree okay by by and large I'm not saying these are bad people but I am saying like if they're not bad and they're law-abiding and they're citizens and thoughtful and all that they can fix their own

countries and they did in El Salvador that's the perfect example look at the dramatic drop in their crime rate Buel is one of the most popular leaders in all of South America that that is proof positive that you can change things around despite perhaps the legacy of us intervention so you know to just say this idea that you know because it's America's fault that they're screwed up it takes agency away from then you know another really key part of this dishonesty this really gets to Springfield and the whole Haitian thing because everybody you know beyond

the eating cats and dogs everybody does not even acknowledge cuz when they're like the Haitians are here legally they need to actually think think about the program the program is called TPS so let me explain that TPS is called temporary protected status note what's the first word on that temporary what does that mean TPS was developed under a regime in which let's say that there was a catastrophic I think this is a real example I think there was like a volcano or an earthquake or something uh where people were granted TPS to come to the

United States and the idea was they were going to go back after it was safe they just never went back there are children born in the United States today um who are literally The Descent who are adults who are the descendants of people who are still living in the US under TPS that's a perfect example of what VI says is dishonest you know you can't Mass deao legalize people by saying that they're here temporarily because of a program or because of something uh that happened in their home country when the reality is is that in

for all intents and purposes we are acknowledging them as full legal migrants so you know even the term migrant to these Haitians in Springfield makes no sense cuz they're supposed to be here under TPS that's not migrant implies permanency so the language is all dishonest and people don't want to tell you about the things I just said about chain migration you know the vast majority of Americans don't even know how the immigration system works they don't understand what I just said about TPS they don't really understand the insanity of Asylum law where you can just

literally throw up your hands and say I fear for my life and you get to live here for four five years before your court date even happens and you know by that time get a work permanent or whatever you can uh you know you know get housing like you just said in substandard conditions and you can kind of just play the game and wait before a deportation order comes and even if it does you never have to leave because there's no ice agent or whatever who's going to enforce it so the whole system is nuts

right now we need complete systematic reform that burns it all to the ground that said sort of the image and the reality of uh a child being separated from their parents seems deeply unamerican right well I mean look it gets okay so you know I'm not going to defend it but I'll just put it this way uh nobody do you hate children yeah see this is what I mean do you think twice whenever you see a drug addict who's put in prison and their child is put in uh Protective Services nobody in America thinks twice

about that right right so I mean well that's kind of screwed up well what we should think about why did we come to that conclusion the conclusion was is that these adults willingly broke the law and pursued path of Life which put them on a you know which put them on a trajectory where the state had to come in and determine that you are not allowed to be a parent basically to this child while you serve your debt to society now CH separation was very different CH separation was also a product of extremely strange circumstances

in US immigration law where basically at the time the reason why it was happening was because there was no way to prosecute people for illegal entry without child separation because previous Doctrine I believe it's called the Flores Doctrine uh under it's some Asylum lie people have to go check my work on this but basically the the whole reason this evolved is a legal regime was because people figured out that if you bring a kid with you because of the so-called Flores Doctrine or whatever that you couldn't be prosecuted for illegal entry so it was a

deao way of breaking the law and in fact a lot of people were bringing children here who weren't even theirs who weren't they weren't even related to or couldn't even you know uh prove it were bringing them to get around the prosecution for illegal entry so I'm not defending child separation I think it was horrible or whatever but you know if I give you the context it does seem like a very tricky problem in terms of do we enforce the law or not how are we able to do that and the solution honestly is to

what Donald Trump did was remain in Mexico and then pursue a complete rewrite of the way that we have us Asylum law applied and of Asylum adjudication and really just about enforcing our actual laws so when I try to explain to people is the immigration system right now is a patchwork of this deeply dishonest such a great word uh deeply dishonest system in which you use the system and set it up in such ways that illegal immigration is actually one of the easiest things to do to accomplish immigration to the United States that is wrong

my parents had to apply it wasn't easy do you know in India there's a Temple called the Visa Temple where you walk 108 times around it which is like a lucky number and if you do it when you're applying for a visa to the United States all right it costs a lot of money and it's hard people get rejected all the time there's billions of people across the world who would love to be able to come here um and many of them want to do so legally and they should have to go through a process

the current way it works is it's easier to get here illegally than it is legally I think that's fundamentally right it's also unfair to people like us um whose parents did come here legally Can you steal me on the case against Mass deportation what are the strongest arguments the strongest argument would be that these people contribute to society that these people uh many of whom millions of here have been here for many years who have children natural-born citizens because of Birthright citizenship it would require something that's fundamentally inhumane and unamerican as you said the idea

of separating families you know across different borders simply because of what is a quote unquote like small decision of coming here illegally and the best Beyond any of this moral stuff for no Mass deportation is it's good for business um illegal immigration is great for big business it is great for big agriculture so if you want the lowest prices of all time uh then yeah Mass deportation is a terrible idea but first of all very convincing and second of all uh I you can't just do Mass deportation without also fixing the immigration system right yes

exactly and uh I mean there are there are several pieces of legislation Chart 2 that's something that the Republicans have really coalesced around it's a border bill I encourage people to go read it and see some of the different fixes to the US immigration system I'm curious whether it'll actually pass or not remember there's a very slim majority of the House of Representatives for Republicans this time around and people vote for a lot of things when they're not in power but when it's actually about to become the law we'll see um there's a lot of

swing state people out there who uh may think twice before casting that vote so I'm definitely curious to see how that one plays out the other thing is is that uh like I just said the biggest beneficiary of illegal immigration is big business so if you think they're going to take this one lying down absolutely not um they will fight for everything that they have uh to keep their pool of cheap labor um because it's great for them uh you know I think JD said a story I think it was on Rogan about how he

talked to a hotel chain guy and he was just he was like yeah it's just terrible you know it's like they would take away our whole Workforce and he was like do you hear yourself you know in terms of what you're talking you're bragging about but that's real that's a real thing um and that you know Tyson's foods and all these other people like you know that's another really sad part is what what I mean by second class citizenship is this presumption first of all that Americans think it's too disgusting to process meat or to

work in a field I think anybody will do anything for the right wage first of all um but second is you know the conditions in a lot of those facilities are horrible and they're covered up for a reason not only in terms of the way that businesses you like they actually conduct themselves but also to cover up their illegal immigrant Workforce so honestly I think it can make things better for everything you have studied how government works what are the chances Mass deportation happens well it depends how you define it so I mean Mass deportation

could mean 1 million I mean nobody even knows how many people are here illegally it could be 20 million it could be 30 million uh I've seen estimates of up to 30 million which is crazy that's almost oneth of the entire US population what number do you think we feel like Mass deportation 1 million people a million people is a lot I mean a lot it's a lot I mean but the crazy part is that's only 11 12th of what Joe Biden let in the country so it's one of those that just to give people

the scale of what it will all look like do I think Mass deportation will happen it depends on the definition will 1 million over four years yeah I feel relatively confident in that um anything over that it's going to be tough to say like I said probably the most efficient way to do it is to have mandatory e verify and to have process in place where it becomes very difficult to live in the United States illegally and then you will have mass self deportation and they will take the Victory lap on that but actual like

rounding millions of people up and putting them in deportation facilities and then arranging flights to God knows all across the globe uh that's a logistical nightmare it would also cost a lot of money and don't forget Congress has to pay for all of this so you know we can have Doge or we can have you know Mass deportation so those two things are kind of irreconcilable actually there's a lot of competing influences at play that people are not being real about at all yeah that was one of the tensions I had talking to a is

he's big on mass deportation and big on making uh government more efficient and it really feels like there's a tension between those two in the short term well yes absolutely also I mean this is a good segue I've been wanting to talk about this I am sympathetic to Doge to the whole department of government efficiency how unreal is it that it's called Doge actually with Elon it's quite real I guess I've just you know I've uh accepted Elon as a major political figure in the US but the Doge committee the department of government efficiency is

a nonstatutory agency that has zero funding that Donald Trump says will advise om the Office of Management and budget now two things number one is as I predicted uh Doge would become quote unquote Blue Ribbon commission so this is a non-statutory blue ribbon commission that has been given authority to VI ramaswami and to Elon Musk secondary their recommendations to government should be complete by July of 2026 according to the press release released by Trump first of all what that will mean is they're probably going to need private funding to even set all this up that's

great not a problem for Elon but you're basically going to be able to have to commission GAO reports government accountability office and other reports and fact-f finding missions across the government which which is fantastic Trump can even Empower you to go through to every agency and to collect figures none of it matters one iota if Republican appropriators in the House of Representatives care what you have to say historically they don't give a shit what the executive office has to say so every year the president releases his own budget um it used to mean something but

in the last decade or so it's become completely meaningless the house Ways and Means Committee and the people's house are the ones who originate all Appropriations and set up spending so that's one is that Doge in and of itself has no power it has no ability uh to compel or force people to do anything its entire case for being really if you think about it mechanically is to try and convince and provide a report to Republican legislators to be able to cut spending so that's that now we all know what how Congress takes to government

reports and whether they get acted on or not so that's number one number two is the figures that Elon is throwing out there I again I want to give them some advice because people do not understand federal government spending the absolute vast majority of of government spending is entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare which are Untouchable under Donald Trump and their most politically popular programs in the world and military spending discretionary non-military spending I don't have the exact figure in front of me is a very very small part of the federal budget now within

that small slic about 90% of that eight is bipartisan and is supported by like everybody Noah the you know the hurricane guys like people like that you know people who are flying into the eye of the hurricane people who are government inspectors of X Y and Z the parts that are controversial that you're actually able to touch things like welfare programs like food stamps is an extraordinary small slice so there what what's the number you put out there 5 trillion something like that there is only one way to do that um and it realistically under

the current thing you have to radically change the entire way that the Pentagon buys everything um and I I support that but I just want to be very very clear but I haven't seen enough uh energy around that there's a there's this real belief in the US that we spend billions on all of these programs they're doing complete bullshit but like the truth the absolute vast majority of it is military spending and entitlements Trump has made clear entitlements off the table it's not going to happen so the way that you're going to be able to

cut realistically military spending over a decade long period is to really change the way that the United States procures you know procures military equipment hands out government contracts Elon actually does have the background to be able to accomplish this because he has had to Wrangle with SpaceX and the bullshit that Boeing has been pulling for over a decade but I really want everybody's expectations to be very set around this just remember nonstatutory Blue Ribbon so if he's serious about it I just laid out all of these hurdles that he's going to have to overcome and

I'm not saying him and Viv aren't serious dudes but you got to really know the system to be able to accomplish this so you just laid out the reality of how Washington Works to uh give the Counterpoint that I think you're probably also rooting for is that one is a statement like Peter teal said don't bet against El sure uh one of the things that you you don't usually have with blue ribbon is the kind of megaphone that Elon has true and I I would even set the financial aspects aside just the the influence he

has with the with the megaphone but also just uh with other people who are also really influential MH I think that can have real power when backed by sort of a populist movement I don't disagree with you but let me give you a case where this just failed so Elon endorsed who for Senate Majority Leader Rick Scott right who got the least amount of votes in the US Senate for GOP leader Rick Scott uh John th is the person who got it now the reason I'm bringing that up one of my favorite books Master of

the Senate uh by Robert Caro part of the LBJ series the Senate as an institution it reveres Independence it rever I mean the entire theory of the Senate is to cool down the mob that is in the House of Representatives and to deliberate that's its entire body they are set up to be immune from from public pressure now I'm not saying they can't be pressured but that example I just gave on Rick Scott is a very important one of you he literally endorsed somebody for leader so did Tucker Carlson so did a lot of people

online and only 13 Senators voted for Rick Scott the truth is is that they don't care like they're set up where they're marginally popular in their own home States um they'll be able to win their primaries and that's all they really need to do to get elected and they have six-year terms not even up for four years so will Elon still be interested in politics 6 years from now that's a legitimate question for Republican senator so maybe he could get the House of Representatives to sign off maybe on some of his things but there's no

guarantee that the Senate is going to agree with any of that there's a a story that Kos tells in the master of the Senate book which I love where Thomas Jefferson was in Paris during the writing of the Constitution and he asked Washington he said why did you put in a senate a by Camal legislature and Washington said why did you pour your tea into a saucer and Jefferson goes to cool it and Washington says just so that's to explain it he was a man of very few words he was a brilliant man okay so

you actually outlined the most likely thing that's going to happen with Doge as it hits the wall of Washington what is the sort of the most successful thing that can be pulled off the most successful thing they could do is right now I think they're really obsessed with designing uh Cuts right and identifying Cuts I would redesign systems systems of procurement I would redesign the way that we have processes in place to dispense taxpayer dollars because the truth is is that Appropriations itself again are set by the United States Congress but the way that those

Appropriations are spent by the government the executive has some discretionary Authority so your ability as the executive to be a good Steward of the taxpayer money and to redesign a system which actually thinkon could be good at this and VI too in terms of their entrepreneurial spirit is the entire Pentagon procurement thing it needs to be burned to the ground number one it's bad for the Pentagon it does it gives them substandard equipment it uh rewards very old weapon systems and programs and thinking that can be easily defeated by people who are studying that for

vulnerabilities the perfect example is all of this drone Warfare in Ukraine and in Russia I mean drone Warfare uh costs almost nothing and yet drone swarms and Hypersonic missiles pose huge dangers to us systems which cost hundreds of more than hundreds of billions of dollars so my point is that giving Nimble procurement and systemic change in the way that we think about executing the mission that Congress does give you actually could save the most amount of money in the long run that's where I would really focus in on uh the other one is you know

counter to everything I just said uh is maybe they listen maybe the Republicans are like yeah okay let's do it um the problem again though is swing state people who need to get reelected they need to do one thing they need to deliver for their District they need to run on stuff and nobody has ever run on cutting money for your state they have run on bringing money to your state um and that's why earmarks and a lot of these other things are extraordinarily popular in Congress is because it's such an easy way to show

constituents how you're working for them whenever it does come reelection time so it's a very difficult system and I also want to tell people who are frustrated by this I share your frustration but the system is designed to work this way and for two centuries the Senate has stood as a bullwark against literally every popular change and because of that it's designed to make sure that it's so popular for long enough that it has to become inevitable before the status quo can change that's really really frustrating but you should take comfort in that it's always

been that way so it's been okay well as I've as I've learned from one of the recommendations of uh the age of acrimony as I feel embarrassed that I didn't know that Senators used to not be elected what a crazy system huh yeah I mean many of the things we take for granted now as defining our democracy was was kind of invented developed after the Civil War in the in the sort of 50 years after the Civil War absolutely correct age of acrimony oh my God I love that book I cannot recommend it enough it

is so important and one of the biggest mistakes that Americans make is that we study periods where greatness happened but we don't often study periods where nothing happened or where really bad shit happened uh you know we don't spend nearly enough Americans know about FDR they don't really know anything about the depression or how we got there um how what was it like to be alive in the United States in 1840 right nobody thinks about that uh really because it's kind of an in between time and history there are people who lived their entire lives

were born who had to live through those times who were just as conscientious and intelligent as you and I are and were just trying to figure shit out and things felt really big so the age of acrimony is a time where it's is almost completely ignored outside of the guilded age aspect but like you just said it was a time where Progressive reform of government and of the tension between civil rights extraordinary wealth um and uh democracy and really the reigning in of big business so many of our foundations happened exactly in that time and

I take a lot of comfort from that book because one of the things I learned from the book is that voter participation is highest when people are pissed off not they're happy and that's such a counterintuitive thing but voter participation goes down when the system is working so 2020 right I think we can all agree it was a very tense election um that's also why it had the highest voter participation ever 2024 very high rates of participation same thing people are pissed off and that's actually what drives them to the vote but something I take

comfort in that is that people being pissed off and people going out to vote it actually does have major impact on the system because otherwise the status quo is basically allowed to continue and so yeah like you just said I mean direct election of senators was I mean there are probably people alive today who are like who could who were born when there was no direct election of senators which is an insane thing to think about I mean there'd be almost 100 or so but the point is is that that time it was so deeply

corrupt and it was one where the Quasi arist Ry from the early days leading into the guilded age were able to enforce their will upon the people but you can take comfort in that that was one of those areas where Americans were so fed up with it they changed the Constitution and actually forced the aristocrats in power to give their own power yeah it's like our version of when they flipped power and took away uh the legislative power of the House of Lords in the UK I just think that's amazing and it's such a cool

thing about our country and the UK too it's the continued battle between uh the people and the elite right and we should mention not just the uh direct election of senators but the election of uh candidates for a party yes that was also invented it used to be that the quote unquote party bosses I say that with a half a chuckle uh uh chose the candidate yeah the whole system is nuts the way that we currently experience politics is such a modern invention with a little asteris with KL Harris but yeah good Point um but

uh well that was actually more of a mean reversion right we're living in an extraordinarily New Era where we actually have more input than ever on who our candidates are it used to be uh this is crazy so the conventions have always taken place two months before right imagine a world where you did not know who the pr nominee was going to be before that convention and the nominee literally was decided at that convention by those party bosses even crazier there used to be a standard in American politics where presidents did not directly campaign they

in fact did not even comment about the news or mention their opponents names they were they give speeches from their doorstep but they it was unseemly for them to engage in direct politics you would not get a Bernie Sanders you would not get a Donald Trump Obama Bill Clinton I mean basically every president from John F Kennedy onwards has been a product of the new system every president prior to that has been much more of the older system there was a in between period post FDR where things were really changing but the primary system itself

had its first true Big Win under John F Kennedy I think the lesson from that is there's a collective wisdom to the people right I think so I think it works yeah I I mean well okay I'll steal man it um we had some great presidents in the party of B era FDR was a great president um FDR was the master of coalitional politics of his ability in fact what really made him a genius was his ability to get this overthrow the support of uh a lot of the corruption and the elite Democrats to take

part to take control in there at the convention and then combine his personal popularity to fuse all systems of power where he had the he had the he had the elites basically under his boot because he was the king and he used his popular power and his support from the people to be able to enforce things up and down um I mean you know even in the party boss era uh we would have no uh a lot of the a lot of the people we rever really came out of that people like Abraham Lincoln I

mean I don't think Abraham Lincoln would have won a party Primary in 1860 there's no chance he won he he won look thank god um from an insane process in the 1860 Republican convention people should go read about that because that was wild I think we were this close to not having Lincoln as president and yeah I mean there Teddy Roosevelt there's so many that I could point to who made great impacts on history so the system does find a way to still produce good stuff that was a kind of beautiful diversion from the Doge

discussion if you're turn briefly to Doge sure um so we kind of talked about cost cutting but there's also increasing the efficiency of government which you also kind of talked about with procurement so and maybe we can throw into the pile the 400 plus federal agencies so let's take another perspective on what success might look like so like radically successful Doge would it basically cut a lot of federal agencies probably combin combine okay so I can give great examples of this cuz I have a great Insight like for each agency will often use different like

payroll systems they'll have different internal processes right that makes no sense and it's all because it's Antiquated now everybody always talks about changing it but there are a lot of like party interests about why certain people get certain things the real problem with government that people like us who are private and like for example when you want to do something you can just do it um so I was listening to a really interesting analysis about law enforcement and the military so I think the story was that the military was assign some National Guard guys were

assigned to like help with the border and they were trying to provide I think it was translation services to people at border patrol but somebody had to come down and be like hey this has got to stop according to us code X Y and Z the United States military cannot help with law enforcement you know abilities here and so even though that makes absolutely no sense because they're all work there are literal legal statutes in place that prevent you from doing the most efficient thing possible so for some reason we have to have a ton

of Spanish speakers in southcom you know in the uh the US command that is responsible for South America who literally cannot help with a crisis at the border now maybe you can find some legal chicanery to make that work but man you got to have an attorney general who knows what he's doing you need a White House coun you need to make sure that shit stands up in a court of law I mean it's not so simple whereas let's say you know you have a software right here and you want to get a new software

you can just do it you can you hire whoever you want when you're the government there's a whole process you got to go through about bidding and it just takes for ever and it is so inefficient but unfortunately the inefficiency is really derivative of a lot of legal statutes and that is something that yeah again actually you know radically successful do quote unquote would be study the law and then change it like figure instead of cost cutting like cut this program or whatever like I just said about why do different systems use payroll just say

that you can change the statute under which new software can be updated let's say after 90 days you know I've heard stories of people who work for the government who still have like IBM Mainframe that they're still in 2024 that they're still working CU those systems have never been updated um there's also a big problem with a lot of this clearance stuff that's where a lot of inefficiency happens because a lot of contractors can only work based upon previous clearance that they already got achieving a clearance is very expensive it's a very lengthy process I'm

not saying it shouldn't be uh talking about security clearance but it does naturally you know create a very small pool that you can draw some contracts fund and I I even mean stuff like like the janitor at the Pentagon needs a security service right so clearance so there's only like five people who are or can even apply for that contract well naturally in an internal Monopoly like that he's going to jack his price up because he literally has a moat around his product whereas if you or I are hiring a jant whatever anybody uh for

anything that type of credentialism and legal regime it doesn't matter at all so there are a million problems like this that people in government uh run into and that is what I would see is the most successful you know paperwork slows everything down and it feels impossible to break through that in a sort of incremental way it's so hard it feels like the only way to do it is literally shut down agencies in some kind of radical way and then build up from from scratch of course as you highlight that's going to be opposed by

a lot of people within government yeah well historically there's only one way to do it and it's a really bad answer War yeah so I was going to say basically you have the kind of consensus where okay all this stupid bureaucratic bullshit we've been doing we need to like put that shit aside get the fuck out of here we need to win a war so like all the paperwork you don't all the lawyers go go leave yeah yeah exact no but I want people to really understand that you know up until 1865 or 1860 what

I forget the exact year we didn't even have National currency and then we were like well we need a green back and prior to that people would freak out if we were talking about having National currency green back backed by the you know the US government and all that not even a question passed in like two weeks in the US Congress uh an income tax eventually went away but not even in the realm of possibility and they decide to pass it same thing after World War I uh and and you think about how World War

II I mean World War II just fundamentally changed the entire way the United States government works um even the DHS which I mentioned earlier the department of homand security it didn't even exist prior to 911 it was done his response to 9/11 to coales all of those agencies under one branch to make sure that nothing like that could ever happen again um and so historically unfortunately absolute shit show disaster war is the only thing that moves the and throws the paperwork off the table and I I wish I wasn't such a downer but I've just

I've both I've read too much and I've had enough experience now in Washington to just see how these dreams get crushed instantly and uh I wish it wasn't that way I mean it's it's a cool idea and I want people who are inspired who are getting into politics to think that they can do something but I want them to be realistic too and I want them to know what they're signing up for whenever they do something like that and the Titanic amount of work it is going to take for you to be able to accomplish

something yeah but I've also heard a lot of people in Silicon Valley laughing when uh Elon rolled in and fired 90% of Twitter here's this guy Elon Musk absolutely correct knows nothing about running a social media company of course you need all these servers of course need all these employees right and nevertheless the service keeps running he figured it out and you have to give him Eternal credit for that I guess the difference is no there was no law that he could fire him you know there was no there was no um like like at

the end of day he owned the company you know he had total discretion of his ability to move so I'm not even saying his ideas are bad I'm saying that the ability that's that what makes him such an incredible Visionary entrepreneur it's movement it's deference at times to the right people but also the knowledge of every individual piece of the machine and his ability to come in and to execute his full vision at any time and override any of the managers so I talked previously about the professional managerial class and the managerial Revolution Elan is

one of the few people who's ever built a multi-billion dollar company who has not actually Fallen victim to the manag euro Revolution and against entrepreneurship and Innovation that happens there there are very few people who can do it Elon Steve Jobs but you know what are we learn is that unfortunately after Steve died Apple basically did succumb to the manag euro Revolution and has become like the product you know they make all their money by printing services and making it impossible to leave this ecosystem as opposed to building the most cool product ever as much

as I love my Vision Pro don't get me wrong I think you just admitted that you're part of a cult uh I know I literally am I am I'm fully admit it yeah yeah I miss Steve the grass is green on the other side come come join us okay whether it's on or somebody else what what gives you hope about something like a radical transformation of government towards efficiency towards being more slim uh what gives you hope that that's that would be possible well I wouldn't put it that way I don't think slimness in and

of itself is a good thing what I care about is the relationship to people and its government so the biggest problem that we have is that we have a complete loss of faith in all of our institutions um and uh I really enourage people I don't think people can quite understand what the relationship between America and its government was like after World War II and after FDR like 90% of the people trusted the government that's crazy um like when the president said something they were like okay he's not lying uh think about our cynical attitude

towards politicians today that is largely the fault of Lyndon Johnson and of Richard Nixon um and that entire Fallout period of Vietnam Vietnam in particular really broke the American character and its ability and its relationship with government and we've never recovered faith in institutions ever since that and it's really unfortunate so what makes me hopeful at least this time is anytime a president wins a popular vote and an election is they have the ability to reset and to actually try and build something that is new and so what I would hope is that this is

different from the first Trump Administration in which the Mandate for Donald Trump is actually carried out competently yes he can do his Antics which got him elected you know at this point we can't deny it McDonald's thing is hilarious it's funny know it is uh people love it uh people like the podcasting people like garbage truck the garbage truck yeah exactly they like the stunts and he he will always Excel and he will continue to do that there are policy and other things that he can and should do like the pursuit of no war like

uh solving the immigration question and also really figuring out our economy uh the way that it currently runs and changing it so that the actual American dream is more uh achievable and housing is one of the chief problems that we have right now the real thing is Donald Trump was elected on the backs of The Working Man I mean it's just true households under $100,000 voted for Donald Trump maybe they didn't do so for economic reasons I think a lot of them did for E for economic but a lot of them did for immigration for

cultural but you still owe them something and there is uh I would hope that they could carry something out in that respect that is not a similar continuation and chaotic Vibe of the first time where everything felt like it' explode at any time um with Staffing with even his policy or what he cared about or his ability to pursue and a lot of that does come back to Personnel so I'm concerned in some respects I'm like you know not thrilled in some respects I'm happy in some respects but uh it remains to be seen how

he's going to do it to the degree it's possible to see trumpism and Maga as a coherent ideology what do you think are the central pill pillars of it Maga is a rejection of cultural elitism that's what I would say cultural elitism though has many different categories immigration is one right is that cultural elitism and cultural liberalism has a fundamental belief that immigration in and of itself is a natural good at any and all levels that all immigrants are like replacement level that there is no difference between them uh cultural elitism in a foreign policy

context uh comes back to a lot of that human rights democracy stuff that I was talking about earlier which divorces American values from American interests and says that actually American values are American interests uh cultural elitism and liberalism leads to the worship of the post Civil Rights era burocracy that I talked about from those two books of Dei of quote unquote woke and of progressive social ideology so it I would put all those together as ultimately what Maga is it is a screw you uh I once drove past it was in rural Nevada and I

was driving and I I drove P the biggest sign I've ever seen political sign to this Jay and it's just it was in 2020 it just said Trump fuck your feelings and I still believe that is the most coherent Maga thing I've ever seen because everyone's always like how can a neocon and Tulsi gabard and RFK and all these other people how can they all exist under the same umbrella and I'm like it's very simple all of them have rejected the cultural Elite in their own way certainly but they've arrived at the same place it's

an umbrella and it's an umbrella fundamentally which has nothing to do with the status quo and with the you know currently established cultural Elite that doesn't mean they're not Elite and they're not rich in their own regards that doesn't mean they don't disagree but that's the one thing that unites the entire party and so that's the way I would put it anti-cultural Elite is that synonymous with anti-establishment so basic Trust of all institutions is elitism connected to institutions yes absolutely because Elites are the ones who runs our institutions um that said anti-establishment is really not

the right word because there are a lot of left wiers who are anti-establishment right they are against that but they're not anticult sural leftism and that's the key distinction between Maga and like left populism left populism basically does agree they agree with like basic conceits like racism is one of the biggest problem facing America they're like one of the ways that we would fix that is through class oriented economic programs in order to address that but we believe in I don't know like reparations as a concept it's just more about how we arrive there whereas

in Maga we would say no we actually don't think that at all we think we've evolved past that and we think that the best way to fix it is actually similar policy prescription but the mindset matters a lot um so the real distinction between Maga and like left populism really is on culture Trans in particular um orientation about actually immigration may be the biggest one because if you look at the history of Bernie Sanders you know Bernie Sanders was a person who railed against open borders and against Mass migration for years there are famous interviews

of him on YouTube with Lou dos who's one of the most hardcore immigration guys and they agree with each other and Lou is like Bernie's one of the only guys out there Bernie at the end of the day he had to succumb to the cultural left and it changing attitudes on mass immigration um there's some famous clips from 2015 in a Vox interview that he gave where he started I think he started talking about how the open borders is a coch Brothers libertarian concept right because Bernie is a basically of a European welfare state tradition

European welfare states are very simply understood we have high taxes High Services low rates of immigration because we have high taxes and high Services we have a limited pool of people who can experience and take those Services he used to understand understand that he changed a lot of his attitude um Bernie also I will say look he's a courageous man and a courageous politician you know as late as 2017 he actually endorsed a pro-life candidate because he said that that pro-life candidate was you know Pro worker and he's like at the end of the day

I care about pro-worker policy he took a ton of shit for it and I don't think he's done it since so the sad part that's really happened is that a lot of left populist you know uh agenda and other has become subsumed you know in the h ARA around cultural leftism wokeism whatever the hell you want to call it and that ultimately that cultural leftism was the thing that really United you know the two wings of that party and that's really why Maga is very opposed to that they're really not the same but the left

populace can still be anti-establishment that's the key it's interesting to think of the left cultural Elite subsuming consuming Bernie Sanders the left populace so you think that's what happened that's what I would say what do you think happened 2016 with Bernie is there a possible future where he would have won you and Chrystal wrote a book on populism in 2020 so from that perspective just looking at 2016 if he rejected wokeism at that time by the way that would be pretty gangster during 2016 would he have because I think Hillary went towards the left more

right am I remember that correctly it was a very weird time so uh yes and no it wasn't full-on BLM Mania like it was in 2020 but the signs were all there uh so the great awokening was in 2014 I know it's a ridiculous term I'm I love it please keep saying just to give the origin the Great Awakening is about the great religious revival in the United States so people had you know because wokeism is a religion you know that's a common refrain they were like the great awokening is a really good term so

thank you for explaining the joke yeah yeah so the great awokening is basically when racial attitudes amongst college educated whites basically flipped on its head there are a variety of reasons why this happened um I really believe that tanesi coats's case for reparations in the Atlantic is one of those it radicalized an entire generation of uh basically like white college educated women to think completely differently on race it was during Ferguson and then it also happened immediately after the Trayvon Martin case those two things really set the stage for the eventual BLM takeover of 2020

but fun Al what they did is they changed racial attitudes amongst college educated Elites to really think in a race first construct and worse is that they were rejected in 2016 at The Ballot Box by the election of Donald Trump and in response they ramped it up because they believed that that was the framework to view the world that people voted for Trump because he was racist and not for a variety of other reasons that they eventually did and so the point around this on question of whether Bernie could have won in 2016 I don't

know Crystal seems to think so I'm skeptical uh I'm skeptical for a variety of reasons I think the culture is honestly one of them one of Trump's core issues in 2016 was immigration and Bernie and him did not agree on immigration and if immigration you know even if people did you know support Bernie Sanders and his vision for workingclass people like the debates and the understanding about what it would look like like a Health Care system which literally would pay for illegal immigrants I think he would have gotten killed on that um but I could

be wrong I honestly I will never know you know what that looked like let me uh reference you from earlier in the conversation with FDR it's not the policy I think if he went more anti-establishment and more populist as opposed to trying to court trying to be friendly with the DNC yeah I mean that's a good counterfactual nobody will really know look I I have a lot of love for the Bernie 2016 campaign uh he has a great ad from 2016 called America you should watch it it's a great ad it's that's another very interesting

thing it's unapologetically patriotic and that is not something that you see um in a lot of left-wing circles these days so he understood politics at a base level that a lot of people did not um but you know Bernie himself and then a lot of the Bernie movement was basically crushed uh by the elite Democratic party for a variety of reasons they hated them you know they basically they attacked Joe Rogan for even having him on um and for uh giving him a platform that was ridiculous obviously backfired in their face which is really funny

there is uh but there were a lot of million examples like that you know when they attacked Bernie for uh endorsing a pro-life politician he never did it again they attacked Bernie for run for having Bernie Bros you know people online the Bros who were super bro Bernie and it was his fault his supporters would say nasty things about Elizabeth Warren and he would like defend straight himself and be like yes I'm sorry you know please my Bros like stop that I think that his biggest problem is he never went full Trump that he didn't

go like he kept saying sorry yeah I agree I totally agree actually in 2020 I did a ton of analysis on this at the time he would always do stuff like Joe Biden my friend and it's like no he's not your friend he stands for everything that you disagree with everything he'd be like yeah he's a nice guy but he's not my friend but he would always be like Joe and I are great friends but you know you we have a small disagreement on this but you know like you just said in terms of going

Trump they wanted to see Trump up there humiliating all of the GOP politicians that they didn't trust anymore that's what people really wanted but the other side of this is that the Democratic base in 2020 was very different than 2016 because by 2020 they full-on had TDS and they were basically like we need to defeat Trump at all costs we don't give a shit what your name is Bernie Biden whatever whichever of you is going to be best defeat Trump you get Nam 2016 is different because they didn't fullon have that like love and necessity

of winning by the way this is a strategic advantage that the Democrats have Democrats just care about winning the current base of the party all they want to do is win Republican base they don't give a shit about winning they just love Trump so it's it's nice to win uh but one of those where they will Express their ID for what they really want now it's worked out for them because it turns out that's a very palpable political force but one of the reason reasons why you know you won't see me up here doing James

Carville 40 more years is there is a law of something called thermostatic public opinion where you know the thermostat it changes a lot uh whenever you actually so when you have a left-wing president in power the country goes right when you have a rightwing president in power country goes left amazing right uh you can actually look at a graph of economic attitudes from the two months where Joe Biden became president after Donald Trump so Republicans Trump was President the last you're in office economy is great 2 months later the economy is horrible that is a

perfect example of thermostatic opinion and I'm not counting these Democrats out 2004 George W bush wins the popular vote he has a historic mandate to continue in Iraq by 06 he's toasted we have a massive midterm election and by 08 we're writing books about 40 more years and how there's never going to be Republican and office ever again so things can change a lot in a very short period of time I think also for me personally maybe I'm deluded sort of the great man view of History I think some of it it's in the programming

circles the term skills issue I think some just has to do how good you are how charismatic you are how good you are as a politician I maybe you disagree with this I'd love to see what you think I think if Obama if you were allowed to run for many terms I think Obama would just keep winning he would win 2016 he would win 2020 he would win this year 2024 it's possible but I would flip it on you and I would say Obama would never be elected if there were no term limits because Bill

Clinton would have still been president yeah so well those two right that's two examples of exactly they extremely skilled politicians and somehow can appear like populists man Bill Bill Clinton was a force in his time and it's honestly sad what's happened to him uh I was actually just talking with a friend the other day I'm like I kind of don't think that President should become president when they're young because they live to see themselves become and that must be really painful because I know what it takes to get there imagine being Clinton I mean your

entire Legacy was destroyed with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then imagine being Obama who in 2016 You could argue it's a one-off and say that Trump is just oh Hillary was a bad candidate but Michelle and Barack Obama went so hard for kamla Harris and they just got blown out in the popular vote I mean the Obama era officially ended with Donald Trump's reelection to the presidency in 24 and that was a 20year period where Obama was one of the most popular Central figures in American politics but I want to return to what you're saying

because it is important and by the way I do not support term limits on American presidents are you a fascist well that would imply uh that would imply that I don't believe in democracy I actually do believe in democracy because I think the people if they love their President should be able to reelect him I think FDR was amazing I think that the term limit change was a basically what happened is is that Republicans and a lot of elite Democrats always wanted to speak against FDR but he was a God so they couldn't so they

waited until he died and then after he died they were like yeah this whole third fourth term that can never happen again and America didn't really think that hard about it they were yeah okay whatever but I mean it had immense consequences for American history Clinton is the perfect example I mean just IM Bill Clinton left office even despite the Lewinsky bullshit he had a 60% appr Ral writing okay no way George W bush gets elected impossible Clinton would have blown his ass out and imagine the consequences of that we would have no Iraq I

mean I'm not saying he was a great man like he we probably still would had the financial crisis and there's still a lot of bad stuff that would have happened but he was a popular dude and you know I wouldn't say had the best Judgment at at at times presidentially not person definitely not personally uh but you know presidentially but I'm pretty confident we would have not gone into the Iraq War and so that's where it really cost us if you're left wi and you're talking about Obama yeah I think Obama probably would have won

in 2016 although it's a counterfactual because Obama was never challenged in the same way that Maga was able to to the liberal consensus like Romney really ran this like awful campaign honestly about cutting spending it was very traditional Republican was deeply unpopular the autopsy uh of that election was we actually need to be more pro-immigration that literally was the autopsy um but Trump understood the assignment uh there are two people who I so deeply respect for their political bets Peter teal and Donald Trump so one of the books that I recommended called the unwinding by

George Packer he actually talks about Peter teal there this is in 2013 and teal talks about he was like you know whoever runs for office next they don't need to run on an optimistic message they need to run on a message that everything is fucked up and that we need to and if you think about that's why Teal's endorsement of trump with the American Carnage message is I mean it took it was shocking right at the time but he had that fundamental Insight that that's what the American people wanted Trump too comes out of an

election in 2012 where the literal GOP autopsy the report produced by the party says we need to be Pro Mass immigration what happens immediately after 2012 they start to go for Mass IM basically they go for like these amnesty plans the so-called gang of eight plan Marco Rubio and all of this in 2013 it falls apart but Republicans get punished by their base in 2014 so Eric caner who was the House Majority Leader the number two Republican spent more on stake in his campaign than his primary opponent who successfully defeated him a guy named Dave

brat Dave brat kicked his ass on the issue of immigration and said that Eric hter is pro amnesty all of the forces were there and then in 2015 Trump comes down the escalator and he gives the message on immigration that the GOP base has been roaring and wanting to hear now but that nobody wanted to listen to them and that was his fundamental Insight that bet was a colossal and a Titanic political bet at a time when all political ideology and thought process would have said that you should come out on the other side which

is where Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and all these other guys were effectively there you know in varying different ways like they were hawkish or whatever but Trump was just so had such a monopoly on that as an idea that's why he wins a 2016 primary and then paired with immigration a Hardline position on immigration is this American Carnage idea that actually everything is wrong the American dream is is has gone you know we will we will stop this American Carnage and I think American Carnage is one of the most important inaugural speeches ever given

in American history it's put it up against every single other speech there's nothing else like it but that was what the country wanted at the time and uh that's what great politicians are able to do is they're able to sus something out that's also why Peter teal is who he is um because he saw that in 20 imagine you know what it takes to come out of the 2012 election to be and to be honestly totally contrarian to the entire National mood and this entire theory of Obama esque star politics and say no you need

somebody who runs on the opposite of that to win well we'll never know and I love this kind of Mike Tyson versus Muhammad Ali I still think I would have loved to see Obama versus Trump me too I agree and first of all Obama versus Trump in 2008 Obama wins hands down well yes definitely so this is I love how this is a boxing talk yeah now when 2016 Obama has a bunch of you know he Iraq and Afghanistan he's vulnerable though I'll tell you why DACA that's what nobody ever talks about in the Obama

Trump thing don't forget Obama takes his 2012 victory basically says oh the GOP even now agrees with me on immigration and then he does DACA and he legalizes you know x million in a number of illegal immigrants who are here who are brought here as children that also fundamentally changed the immigration consensus on the Republican side because they were like wait holy shit you can just do that because we don't agree with that at all and that really ignited the base as well so I'm not sure I mean a moment I think about a lot

uh with Trump and just like being able to un leashed The Rage of the Republican bases uh in the 2012 debate Candy Crowley was the moderator with Mitt Romney and she fact checked him famously uh this was when factchecking was shocking in a pres and uh she said something about Benghazi and she was like no he did say that she like corrected Romney on behalf of Obama to this day it's questionable whether she was even right but and Romney was just like oh he did okay Trump would have been like excuse me excuse me be

like look at this woman in you know he would have gone off and I was like like and I think about that moment because that's what the Republican base wanted to hear but also it turns out America had a lot of fering feelings about the mainstream media that it needed Unleashed and Trump was just this incredible Vector to just blow up this system which I mean if you ask me about optimism that's the thing I'm most optim yeah but don't you think Obama had a good sense in how to turn it on how to BN

establishment correctly I will not deny that he's one of the most talented politicians literally to ever play the game um and he is I mean just unbelievable rhetorical Talent it it look is a counterfactual would he been more talented than Hillary yeah okay no question in terms of uh in terms of anybody would have been uh for that one but at the same time all the signs were there all the signs for the Trump Victory and for the backlash against Obama ISM kind of as a political project it all existed you know the T if

you like I just laid the te leaves out there from 2012 to 2015 in retrospect it's the most predictable thing in the world that Donald Trump will get elected but it was crazy in the moment I got to live through that which was really fun like professionally I think uh it's unfortunate that he kind of uh let K Harris borrow his reputation oh it's it's I mean it's like you know better dude you know you defeated these people this the Clinton machine you destroyed them and it was awesome in ' 08 what what is that

why do you what why did he like he's so much bigger and better than the machine I don't get it's interesting right yeah it's so weird the I I just think I think this was a wakeup call 2024 was a wakeup call like the the DNC machine doesn't work absolutely I mean there needs to be new blood new new candid new Obama likee candidates well I'm glad you brought that up because that's important too in terms of the process and the way that things uh currently stand the DNC actually rigged its entire primary system under

Biden way to the uh not to the benefit of Obama so for example you know how they moved away from the Iowa caucuses and they actually moved some other primaries and move the calendar to reward traditional states that vote much more in line with the Democratic establishment so the story of Barack Obama is one that not many actually probably a lot of young people today don't even remember how it happened in 2008 Obama was the underdog right and actually here's the critical thing Obama was losing with black people why black Democrats simply did not believe

that white people would vote for a black guy so Barack Obama goes to this white State Iowa Allin on the Iowa caucuses and shocks the World by winning the Iowa caucuses overnight there is a shift in public opinion amongst the black population in South Carolina that says oh shit he actually could win and he comes out and he wins South Carolina and that's basically was near the death Nowell for the Hillary Clinton campaign the problem is by moving South Carolina up and by making it first along with other more pro-establishment friendly places what do we

do we make it so that Barack Obama can never happen again we make it so that an older you know base of democratic party voters who listens to the elites can never have their assumptions challenged and that's one of the worst things Joe Biden did you know I talked about his arrogance he was so arrogant he changed the freaking primary system he was so arrogant he refused to do a debate I mean imagine history how lucky are we honestly that Joe Biden agreed to do that debate with Donald Trump early and again that was his

arrogance um I think we're so lucky for it because if we hadn't got we got to understand as a country how cooked he was and how fake everything was behind the scenes in front of all of our eyes and they tried for three straight years to make sure that that would never happen so I mean it's still such a crime honestly against the American people I've been thinking about who I want to talk to for three hours and that's why I bring up Obama cuz he's probably the number one person on the left I would

like to he analyze what happened in this election and what happened to the United States of America over the past 20 plus years I can't imagine anybody else look if anybody could do it it be you but there are layers but upon layers with that man I would love to actually sit with talk with him for real I think it's fair to say that we talked about the great man view of History I think you have a psychopath view of History where all great leaders are for sure Psychopaths not for sure there are many who

are good people Harry Trum you're like some of my best friend Harry Trum TR I assume are good people uh to be fair though most of the good ones are accidents like Harry Truman He never would have got himself elected he was a great dude how do you know he's a great dude uh David McCulla book I highly recommend it everybody should read it Truman Truman loved his wife I think that's really awesome I love when politicians love their wife it's so rare um he adored his wife he adored his daughter spent time with them

he made Family Life a priority he had really good small town judgment that he would apply to Foreign Affairs he was just a very well-considered uh very standup man uh and I I so appreciate that about him uh another one is John Adams I love and rever John Adams he's my favorite Founding Father him and John Quincy they don't get nearly enough of their due they were some of the most intelligent well-considered they were family men he you know the the love the love the relationship between joh and Abigail Adams is literally legendary and I

think it's amazing you know especially in the context of the 1700s the way that he would take her counsel and into uh conversations and her own ability and she she would sit there and go toe-to-toe as much with Thomas Jefferson there are some who are great who are really really good presidents who have good judgment and who are really good people and really think deeply about the world and have really cool personal lives but there's also the vast majority of them especially in the I would say espe especially in the modern era and where the

price of the presidency extracts everything that you have you have to be able to you have to be willing to give everything and it's just that's not a price that most people want to pay is it possible that some of the people who you think are sociopaths in politics are in fact really good people and some of the people you think are good like Truman yeah and Adams are actually sociopath definitely I mean I could just be reading the wrong books right yeah that's right sounds like you're uh you just read some really compelling biographies

well I okay to be fair I don't base this on one book I read a lot of them um and I'll get like a for example I've read books about LBJ you wouldn't know any of his foibles but then you find out that they're written by his friend or you know it was written by and read the I I really worry about this kind of General especially now the the sense of the the anti-establishment sense that every politician must be a sociopath now while could the reason I worry about that is it feels true yeah

so it's uh you can fall into this uh bubble of beliefs where every politician is a sociopath and because of that it can be a self- reinforcement self I understand what you're saying I agree by the way we do need to dramatically change it but the problem is is that you know people vote with their eyeballs and with their interest and people love like to you know dissect people's personal lives uh and one of the reasons why you were probably more likely in the pre-modern era to get a quote unquote good people is they were

not subject to the level of scrutiny and to the insanity of the process that you are currently like I just said about you I mean theoretically you could run for president and you would just get your nomination at the convention it's only two months to election day that's not so bad but you know you run for president today you got your ass on the road for two years and then two years before that and then you have to run the damn government so the price is so extraordinarily High I also think that oh God and

just Washington is a system it will burn you it will just it will extract absolutely everything that you can give it and at the end of the day you know I mean everyone always talks about this it's hilarious uh how Trump is the only President not to age in office I think I actually think it's crazy like when you look at the photos of how he actually looks better today than he did whenever he went into the office uh that's amazing and it actually says a lot about how his mind works I think Trump is

pure ID like I think he's having observed him a little bit and you know both at the White House and having interview with him it's pure just like it's calculating but it's also pure ID which is very interesting the ones who are the thinkers guys like Obama and others who are really in their heads it's a nightmare it's a nightmare it will they will they I mean I mean apparently Obama would only sleep four hours a night you know yeah add like some empathy on top of that it's going to destroy you it will it

will kill you man all right speaking about about the dirty game of politics several people different people told me uh that of everyone they have ever met in politics Nancy Pelosi is the uh the best at attaining and wielding political power is there any truth to that in the modern era yeah I think that's fair in the last 25 years definitely uh let's think about it number one is longevity so she's had the ability to control the caucus for a long period of time so that's impressive because as I just laid out with Clinton Obama

these figures come and they go but over 25 almost year period you've been at the very top and the center of American politics the other case I would be is that in this modern era has been defined by access to money she's one of the greatest fundraisers in Democratic party history and again consistently Obama kamla all those people come and go but she's always had a very Central understanding of the ability to fund raise to cultivate good relationships with Democratic party Elites all across the country use that money and Dole it out to her caucus

she's also was really good at making sure that legislation that came to the floor actually had the votes to do so she ran an extremely well-ordered process in the House of Representatives one in which you were able to reconcile like problems within her office it didn't usually go public and then it would make it to the floor and it would pass so that there would be no General like media frenzy uh and you know Democrats in disarray or any of that put that on display with the Republicans and we've had multiple speakers all resign or

get fired in a 16-year per period that's pretty remarkable basically ever since John Boehner decided to leave in what was it 2012 I forget the exact Year my point is that if you compare her record to the longevity on the Republican side it is astounding the other interesting thing is that she also has pulled off one of the real tests of political power is can you rule even when you don't have the title anymore so she gave up the leader position to hakeim Jeff but everybody knows she pulled Joe Biden out of the race that's

pretty interesting right so she's a technically Just a backbencher Nobody member of Congress but we all know that's bullshit uh so that's that's actually a very important case of political power is can you rule without the title and if you can then you truly are powerful so I would make a good case for her yeah she's uh she's done a lot of remarkable stuff for for her party I will say they played Trump like a Fiddle Man last time around they were able to I mean they really got him uh one of the craziest elements

that I covered was during the Trump basically threatened to shut down the government and actually did shut down the government for a period of time over a dispute over border wall funding and Pelosi and Schumer despite like genuine Mass hysteria in the Democratic party with even some people who are willing to try and to strike a deal never wavered uh and actually uh basically won and forced Trump to back down uh not a lot of Maga people want to admit it but that was honestly really embarrassing for the Trump administration at the time and yeah

I mean the amount of discipline that it took for her and Chuck to a lesser extent but for the two of them to pull that off it it was honestly impressive that they were able to do that even when the president has so much political power and it literally shut down the government over it speaking of fundraising uh KLA raised $1 billion insane but I guess the conclusion is she spent it poorly how would you uh spend it I don't think money matters that much I think Donald Trump has proven to us twice that you

can win an underdog campaign through earned media and I don't think that paid advertisement uh moves the needle that much now don't notice I didn't say it doesn't matter but am I buying $425,000 a day spots on the Vegas sphere no we're not doing that are we building can okay as people who do this for a living how do you even spend $100,000 to build a set for one interview this is the call her daddy the call her daddy thing okay how is that possible so think about the dollar per hour cost that's like running

a jet airplane in terms of what they did you know what I want to know behind the scenes haven't got and I'm not good with this I get really frustrated and I shouldn't but dealing with PR and comms people can sometimes break my soul it's maddening can we not talk about this we need to pull them at 22 p.m. and you're like but that's only 30 minutes you know it's like yeah that but there's stuff like like where to put the camera it's not that I don't it's not actually hypothetically I don't even disagree with

any of the suggestions or this but it's like the micromanagement just the micromanagement and your and the politeness but the fake politeness and it just makes me feel like I think like what would kurick do would he murder all of them right now he would just ban them after he became Stanley cubric but he dealt with it for a while by way I just went on a cubric uh binge man he was awesome I watched that World War I movie of his the one from the 50s that such an underrated film I I feel like

people don't app whatever we'll get past yeah but she yeah I guess she paid for 100 grand bro 100 and the Oprah thing she paid for the interviews so you know that's another one I do this for a living and as you can tell I'm a very cynical person I did not even know that celebrities got paid for their endorsements I could never have imagined a universe where Oprah Winfrey has paid $1 million to endorse K Harr I'm like you're first of all you're a billionaire um second I thought you do this CU you believe

no I I think to be fair I think the million just helps do the thing you you would like to do it's like a it's a nudge because I don't think any celebrity would endorse like yeah they're not doing it because of the money but you should just do it for free I I can't even believe that you're doing this for money I mean and the fact what was it Alanis moriset you know how they were able they had to cut her because they didn't have the funds to pay her I'm like first of all

if you believe you should just play for free but second again as a person who is deeply cynical I still am genuinely shook that we are paying celebrities for their endorsement yeah it's really fucked up that's insane why do you think people on the left who are actually in the political Arena are afraid of doing anything longer than an hour that is a great question so so let me just say probably most of the people I've talked to on this podcast are leftwing mhm or have been for a long time uh they just don't sort

of out and say it like most scientists are left-wing most sort of uh vaguely political people are leftwing that I've talked to yeah but the closer you get to the actual political Arena and I've tried really hard they just is the NOP I had a bunch of people the highest profile people say 15 minutes 20 minutes yeah and I like I'm used to that so welcome yeah I I just can't you know like I can't imagine uh a conversation with KLA or with Joe Biden uh or ALC Obama or Obama That's of any quality at

all of any shows any kind of humanity of the person The Genius of the person the the interesting Nuance of the person in like 30 minutes like I just can't I can't like I don't know maybe there's people that are extremely skilled that can do that you just can't you should be optimistic because a huge narrative out of this election is that the Democrats massively fucked up by not coming on this show or Rogan show so I actually fundamentally number one that's going to change dramatically so be optimistic and keep pushing but two is this

is a good segue actually is I've been thinking a lot about I know a lot of people listen to this show who are in Tech and may have some influence on the admin so this is kind of uh some this is something I want people to take really seriously is I was a White House correspondent for the Daily Caller it's a conservative Outlet in Washington during the Trump years and the most important thing I learned from that was that under the White House correspondence Association the way that the media cartel has everything set up for

Access for press to the president is fundamentally broken anti-American and bad for actual democracy so let me lay this out at a very mechanical level because nobody knows this and I was a former White House correspondent Association member so anybody who says I'm full of shit I was there for example number one all the seats in the briefing room those seats are assigned by the White House Correspondents Association not by the White House itself the White House correspondence Association requires you to apply for a seat right that adjudication process can take literally years for bylaws

elections and all these things to do this means that they can slow roll the entrance of New Media online Outlets who are allowed into the room the reason it really matters not having a seat is if you don't don't have a seat you have to get there early and stand in the wings like I used to and raise your hand like this and just hope and pray that the press secretary can it's extremely inconvenient I'm talking I have to get there hours early at a chance during a 15minute briefing so one of the things is

that Trump has is he owes a huge part of his election to coming on podcasts and to New Media now because of that it's really important that the White House correspondence Association which is a literal Guild cartel that keeps people out of the White House and credentials itself and creates this opaque mechanism through which they control access you know to asking the press secretary questions is destroyed and there are a lot of different ways you can do this because the what nobody gets too is that all of these rules are unofficial so for example they're

just Traditions the White House is like yeah it's our building but you guys figure it out right because that's a longstanding tradition let me give you another insane tradition that currently exists in the White House the Associated Press the why press secretary or the Associated Press correspondent gets to start the briefing traditionally they get the first question they also get to end the briefing when they think it's been enough time they be like okay uh cring joh Pierre thank you right and that calls the briefing over what who you're not even the White House correspondence

Association you literally just happen to work for the Associated Press why like why do we allow that to happen so number one stop doing that uh to their credit the Trump people didn't really do that but it's a long-standing tradition the other thing is that what nobody gets either is that the first row is all television networks for logistical reasons so that they can do their little standups with their mic and say you know I'm reporting Ling for the W well what people don't seem to know is that all the television networks are basically going

to ask some version of the same question the reason they do that is because they need a clip of their correspondent going after the White House Press Secretary all about Robert Mueller like whenever I was there so you get the same godamn version of the stupid political questions over and over again the briefing room is designed for traditional media and they have all the access in the world so in an election where you owe your Victory to at least in part to New Media and recognizing the changing landscape you need to change the conduit of

information to the American people and in an election uh I don't know if you saw this but election night coverage on cable news was down 25% just in 4 years 25% that's that's that's cable news had a monopoly on Election night for my entire lifetime and yet my show had record ratings that night and I'm look I'm small slice of the puzzle here we've got uh uh Candace Owens Patrick B David Tim P David Pacman tyt all these other people every from what I understand all of us blew it out that night because millions of

Americans watch it on YouTube we we even partnered with the some decision desk HQ so we had live data we could make State calls and we're just a silly little YouTube show my point though is that in an election where the vast majority of Americans under the age of 55 are listening to podcast consuming New Media and are not watching cable news where the median age of CNN which is the youngest viewership is 68 68 is the median so statistically what does that tell us right there's there's a uh a decent number of people who

are watching CNN who are in their 80s and in their 90s yeah I'm glad you brought up Alex CU he deserves a tremendous shout out Alex Bruce witz he was the pioneer of the podcast strategy uh for the Donald J Trump campaign he got on your show he was able to get on Andrew Schultz's show Rogan he was the internal force that pushed a lot of this my personal hope is that somebody like Alex is elevated in the traditional White House bureaucracy that the number of credentials that are issued to these mainstream media Outlets is

cut and there's a new Lottery process put in place where people with large audiences are invited and I also want to make a case here for why I think it's really important for people like you and others who don't have as much traditional media experience to come and and practice some capital J journalism because it will sharpen you too giving you access in that pressure cooker environment and having to uh to really like sit there and Spar a little bit with a public official and not have as long necessarily as you're used to it really

hones your news media skills your news Gathering skills and it will make you a better interviewer in the long run because a lot of the things that I have learned have just been through osmosis I've just lived in DC I've been so lucky I've had a lot of cool jobs and I've just been able to experience a lot of this stuff so I'm really hoping that people who are listening to this who may have some influence or even the viewership if you want to you know reach out to them and all them this is a

very easily changeable problem it's a cartel which has no official power it's all power by tradition and it inst simply blown up it has it does not serve America's interest to have 50 48 seats I think in the White House Press briefing room to people who have audiences of like five it's just makes absolutely zero workspace seats access credentials and also credentials that are issued to press uh and to other like New Media journalists at major events should take precedence because it's not even about rewarding the Creator the American people are here you need to

meet them that's your job and I'll just end with a a historic thing Barack Obama shocked the White House Press score in 2009 because he took a question from The Huffington Post a brand new blog but they were stunned because he knew he said these blog people they went all in for me and I got to reward them so there's long-standing precedents of this they'll bitch and they'll moan they'll be upset but it's their fault you know that they don't have as much credibility and it's incumbent upon the White House which serves the public to

actually meet them where they are so I really hope that at least some of this is implemented inside of that yeah if you break apart the cartel I think you can actually enable greater journalism frankly with the capital J because actually in a long form is when you can do better journalism of from even just the politician perspective you can disagree you can get criticized because you can defend yourself I had an idea actually you tell me what you think I think a really cool format would be uh there's a room uh right near the

Press briefing room called the Roosevelt room beautiful room by the way it's awesome um it has the Medal of Honor for Teddy Roosevelt and it has a portrait of him and a portrait of FDR it's one of my favorite rooms in the White House it's so cool and so my idea would be in the Roosevelt room which is traditionally used for press briefings and stuff uh is like you as press secretary sit there I think there's like 12 seats something like that and you set it all up and you have let's say sure microphones like

this and that person that secretary is going to commit to being there for like 2 hours and and New Media people like consider around the room all of this being streamed live by the way just like the White House Press briefing room but the expectation is that the type of questions have to be substantive obviously nothing is off limits you should never ever uh you know accept I'm not going to be ask about this especially as a journalist you can't do that every time they're like hey please don't ask about this it's like actually that's

probably one thing you should ask about um but my point being that the expectation is is that there's no interference on the White House side but that the format itself will lend exactly to what you're saying to allow people to explain and again in a media era where we need to trust the consumer like my show is routinely over 2 hours long on cable television uh on cable television you know the Tucker Carlson program whenever it was on Fox news without commercial breaks was about 42 43 minutes something like that of runtime so I'm speaking

for almost triple what that is on a regular basis the point is is that millions are willing to sit and to listen but you just have to meet them where they are so I would really hope that a format like that uh like a streamer briefing or something like that I think I think it's look I know they would dunk on it endlessly but I think it could work yeah I I think the incentives are different I think it works because you don't have to uh like you Saga don't have to signal to the other

journalists that you're part of the click oh I'm so glad you brought that up because that was another lesson I learned I go oh none of you are asking important questions for the people you're asking questions because you all hang out with each other and you're like oh wait so this entire thing is a self-reinforcing guild to impress each other uh at cocktail parties and not to actually ask anything interesting um I remember people were so mad at me because this was 2018 or maybe 2017 and I said do you think that Kim Jong-un is

sincere in his willingness to meet with you something like that to that effect um they were Furious because I didn't ask about some bullshit political controversy that was happening at the time so in the historical Legacy what was more important the Mueller question or Donald Trump breaking 50 years or whatever of tradition with America's relationship with North Korea and meeting him in Singapore and basically resetting that relationship for all time as you can tell I read a lot of book I like to take the Long View every time I would ask a question I go

okay when I when the future Robert Caro is writing books and he he sees he's reading the transcript of the White House Press briefing he doesn't even know who this kid is he goes that was a prettyy good question right there that's pretty relevant you know you got to think about all the bullshit that gets left on The Cutting Room floor I love that view of Journalism actually the the the goal is to end up as as one line at a history in a history book 50 years from now want a quote of what the

president said to something that I asked in a book that I would be happy I would die happy with that if you told me that when I'm like a 90-year old man I'd like man I that means I succeeded yeah when the AIS write the history of human civilization one of the things I continuously learn from you when looking back their history is how crazy American politics has been throughout history it makes me feel a lot better about the current days it should corruption yes um just the the divisiveness also the stealing elections yes at

all levels of government and direct stealing and indirect stealing all kinds of stuff so uh is there stuff that jumps out to mind throughout history there just like uh um the craziest Corruptions or stealing of Elections that come to mind I'll give the micro and the macro so my favorite example is uh Robert Caro who I obious probably talked about him a lot uh God bless you Robert I hope you live to write your last book because we really need that from you um but Robert uh came to Texas he only intended on writing three

books about lynon Johnson he's currently completed four is on his 5ifth and it's Tak him over 40 years to write those and one of the reasons is he just kept uncovering so much stuff and one of them is book two means of ascent he never intended to write it but as he began to investigate lynen Johnson's 1948 senate election he realizes in real time how rigged and stolen it was and so I often tell people what if I told you that we lived in the most secure election period in modern history they wouldn't believe it

but if you read through that shit I'm talking about bags of cash millions of dollars literal stuffed ballot boxes it's great to be back here in Texas because I always think about that place like down in Zapata and star County I'm talking like basically Mexico um where these Dawn were in power in the 1940s and they would literally stuff the ballot boxes with the rolls and they wouldn't even allow people to come and vote they just check marked it all for you based upon the amount that he paid means of ascent is the painstaking detail

of exactly how Lynden Johnson stole the 1948 senate election and so no nothing like that as far as I know is still happening macro uh we can talk about the 1876 uh election ruford B Hayes one of the closest elections in modern history it was one of those that got kicked with the house of representa that was an insane insane time the corrupt bargain that was struck to basically end reconstruction and federal occupation of the South and of of course the amount of Wheeling and dealing that happened in inside of that was absolutely Bonkers and

nuts that was what an actual stolen election looks like just so people know uh so on a micro and a macro yeah that's what it really looks like uh and so look I understand where people are coming from Also let's do what 1960 that was pretty wild I mean uh in 1960 there was all those allegations about Illinois going for Kennedy um if you look at the actual vote totals of Kennedy Nixon wow I mean it's such an insanely close presidential election and even though the Electoral College Victory looks a little bit differently Nixon would

openly talk about he's like oh old Joe Kennedy uh rigged Illinois for his boy and he be like and we didn't even have a chance in Texas with Lynden pulling you know like lynon lynon stuff in the ballot boxes down there so and this is open on the like they openly admit this stuff they talk about it so uh actually there's a funny story uh LBJ lost is uh I think it's 1941 Senate primary um and it's because the his opponent Papio Daniel actually out stole lynon so they're both corrupt but Papio Daniel stuffed The

Ballot Box in like the fifth day of the seventh days to count the votes and FDR loved LBJ and uh it's interesting right that FDR recognized Johnson's uh his talent and he goes Lyndon you you know in New York we sit on the back boxes till we count them you know cuz he's admitting that he you know you know participated in a lot of this stuff so this highlevel chicanery of stolen elections is actually uh an American Pastime that we luckily have moved on from um and and quite a lot of people do not know

the exact intricate details of how Wild it was back in the day yeah it's actually one of the things it's harder to pull off a bunch of bullshit with all these cameras everywhere now transparency too lack of cash banking regulation there's a variety yeah so that said let's talk about the 2020 election M seems like forever ago do you think it was rigged the way that Trump claimed no and was it rigged in other ways look this is the problem with language like rigged and by the way when I interviewed VI ramaswami he said the

exact same thing so for all the magga people who are going to get mad at me uh Viv agrees all right and if okay I I I have observed and I'm going to put my analyst hat on there are two theories of stop the steel one I call low IQ stop the steel and one I call high IQ stop the steel low IQ stop the steel is basically what Donald Trump has advocated uh where you know Dominion voting machines and bamboo ballots and Venezuela and Sydney Powell and all the people involved basically got indicted by

the state of Georgia I'm not saying that that was correct I'm just like that's what that actually looked like Rudy Giuliani Etc high IQ stop the steal is basically and actually I mean these are not illegitimate arguments the school of thought is it was illegitimate for the state of Pennsylvania and other swing states to change mailin balloting laws as a response to covid which enabled millions of people more to vote that wouldn't have and that those change in regulations became enough to swing the election I actually think that that is true now would you say

that that's rigged that's a very important question because we're talking about a Republican state legislature and Republican state supreme court right the two that actually ruled on this question so could you say that it was rigged by the Democrats to do that another problem with that theory is that while you can say that that's unfair to change the rules last time around you can also understand it to a certain extent and I'm not justifying it I'm just giving you an example so for example after Hur the hurricane hit North Carolina Republican officials were like hey

we need to make sure that these people who in Western North Carolina who were affected by the hurricane could still be able to have access to The Ballot Box and people were like oh so you're saying in an extraordinary circumstance that you should change voting you know access and regularity to make sure that people have access so my point is you can see the logic through which this happened and the high IQ version is basically the one that was adopted by Josh Holly whenever he voted against certification he said that the the state penssylvania particularly

election law and that those changes were unfair and led to the quote unquote rigging the election against Donald Trump now there's an even higher IQ Galaxy brain stop the steel Galaxy brain stop the steel is one that you saw with great love and respect my friend JD Vance uh at his debate with Tim wals when Tim wals asked him what did he say he said he said did Donald Trump win the 2020 election he's like Tim I'm focus on the future and then he started talking about censorship the hunter Biden laptop story uh if you

take a look at the Joe Rogan interview Rogan actually asked JD this he's like what do you mean you in the election some version of that and JD was like well what I get really frustrated by is people will bring up all these insane conspiracy theories but they ignore that the media censored the hunter Biden laptop story and that big Tech had its finger on the thumb for the Democrats now that is empirically true okay that is true right now would you say that that's rigged I'm not going to use that word because that's a

very different word now would you say that it's unfair yeah I think it's unfair um so there's another there's a lot of Maga folks uh picked up on this one there's a Time magazine article in 2020 that's very famous in their crowd called you know the the it was like the fight to fortify the election and it was about all of these institutions that put their fingers on the scale for Joe Biden against Donald Trump so I would put it this way was Donald Trump up against the Titanic forces of billionaires Tech censorship and Elite

institutions who all did a absolute damnest to defeat him in 2020 yes that is true and in a sense the Galaxy brain case is the only one of those which I think is truly legitimate and I'm not going to put it off the table but this is the problem that's not what Trump means you know Trump he Trump by the way will never tell you what I just told you right JD will if you go and you ask any of these Republican politicians when they're Challen on it and they don't want to say that Trump

a lost a 2020 election they'll give the the Galaxy brain case that I just gave and again I don't think it's wrong but it's like guys that's not what he means when he says it and that's the important parsing of the case right so first at a high level Trump or otherwise I don't like anyone who whines when they lose period yeah although he did tell you he lost did you notice that that's the only time he's ever said it ever you're you're famous you're in history for that one lost by a whisker yeah lost

by a whisker uh I mean there there is a case to be made that he was joking I don't know um but there is a kind of weaving that he does with a humor where sometimes it's sarcasm sometimes not much easier to Showcase in a three-hour interview I'll say good call go ahead I couldn't even like play with that when you have 40 minutes I know bro you're like you know I could do just 40 minutes on weaving alone for your style it doesn't work and I can tell you how the way I interview politicians

is I just do pure policy so when I the first time I interviewed Trump I compiled a list of 15 subjects me and my editor uh Vince colier shout out to Vince and the two of us sat in an office and then we had questions by priority in each category and if we felt like we were running short on time we would move around those different ones but that was purely he's the president we're asking him for his opinions on an immigration bill or whatever for what you do it's impossible to do for yeah I

I just want to say that thank you for everybody involved for making my conversation with Donald Trump possible but I've learned a lot from that that I just if if I'm told that all I have is 40 minutes I'm very politely sparing in that case Donald Trump the 40 minutes and just walking away because I don't think I can do a good job I think that is the correct decision on your part yeah um and I also would encourage you to have the confidence at this point that you are in a position of something that

we call in the business the ability to compel the interview and by to compel means to be able to bring somebody else to you and not the other way around and uh I think that you and Rogan and a few others are in that very unique position and I would really encourage you guys to stick to your guns on things that make you feel comfortable um because you know those of us in news we will always negotiate we'll we're willing to do short form because we're asking about policy but for the style that you help

popularize and I think that you're uniquely talented and good at that's very important not to compromise on so thank you for saying those words and that's not just in the interest of Journalism in the interest of conversation it's the interest of the guests as well right absolutely toing out the best in them yeah I mean I would feel really at a disservice uh and I would feel like people would not get a unique uh understanding of like my own thought process and my backstory if I was not able to sit here for literally hours and

to explain in deep detail like how I think about the world not that anyone cares that much but you know it's just like I hope all I can do is I hope it's helpful I want to help people think uh because because when I was growing I was grow up not far from here 90 minutes from here in College Station I felt uh very uniquely closed off from the world and I found the world through books and books saved my life they many so many different times and uh I hope to encourage that in other

people I I really no matter where you are no matter who you are no matter how busy you are you have some time uh to either sit down with a book or put on an audio book and you can transport yourself into a different world it's so important and uh that's something that your your show really helps me with too I love listening to your show whenever sometimes when I'm too into politics and I need to listen to something I'll listen to that Mayan historian guy I love stuff like that absolutely I've been a deep

dive on jenus Khan uh reading jenus Khan and then making uh the modern world yeah Jack Weatherford fantastic he's coming on is he yeah amazing and again shout out to Dan Carlin the goat the OG Dan I've never met you before I would love to correspond at some point I love you so much you changed my life man I met him once before and it felt I mean interview him I was Star Struck very very Star Struck and his mean he just so much painful tainment I've listened to many I think his best series one

of his best series he gets no credit for Ghost of the OS frun nobody gives him credit for that one that's OG this is 2011 series but his uh his ghost of the OS front on the Eastern front of the Nazi war against Russia fundamentally changed my view of warfare forever and also at that time I was very young and to me World War II was Saving Private Ryan I wasn't as well read as I am now and I was like oh shit this entire thing happened which actually decided the second world war and I

don't know anything about this uh so shout out to Dan God bless you man and his quote unquote short episodes uh I think on slavery in general throughout human history that was an awesome episode I actually bought a bunch of Hugh Thomas books because of that episode I'd never really read about African slavery or the slave trade outside of the Civil War context so again shout out to him for that one that was an amazing episode his Japan series too I'm going to Japan in a few days and I keep thinking of what he always

talked about in his Supernova in the East the Japanese are like everyone else but only more so and uh God I love that quote okay he's great and we I ironically arrived at this tangent while talking about the 2020 election yeah that's why podcasting is fun uh cuz you said lost by a whis yeah and now we're dragging us screaming back to the topic uh one of the things I was bothered by is Trump claiming that there's widespread as you're saying low IQ Theory the widespread voter fraud and I saw no evidence of that that

he provided MH and all right well that's let's put that on the table and then the other thing I was troubled by that maybe you can comfort me in the context of History how easily the base ate that up yeah that they were uh able to believe the election was truly rigged based on no clear evidence that I saw and they just love the story and and there is something compelling to the story that you know like this DNC type like with Bernie The Establishment just they they're corrupt and they steal the will of the

people uh and like the uh lack of uh desire from the base or from people to see any evidence of that what really troubled me yeah uh I'm going to give you one of the most depressing quotes which is deeply true Roger alses who is a genius shout out to the loudest voice in the room by Gabriel Sherman that book changed my life too um because it really made me understand media people don't want to be informed they want to feel informed that is one of the most fundamental media insights of all time what a

line Roger alses uh a genius a genius in his own right who you know he changed the world he certainly did he uh you know he's the one who kind of gets credit for one of the greatest debate lines of all time because he was an adviser to President Reagan whenever he broke in he was like Mr President people want to know if you're too damn old for this job or not and he inspired that joke uh that Reagan made where he was like I I will not use age in this campaign I will not

hold my opponent's Youth and inexperience against him that was als's man you got he he did the Nixon Town Halls he did it all he's a fucking genius um and I'm not advocating necessarily for the world he created for us but he did it and uh people should study him more if you're interested in media in particular that book is one of the most important books you'll ever read yeah you know what that that quote just really connected with me because uh you know there's all this talk about truth and I think what people want

to they want to feel like they're in possess posession of the truth correct not actually being the possession of the truth yeah I know it's one of the it hit me too actually Russell Crow does an amazing job of delivering that line in the showtime miniseries so if you have the chance you should watch it and look this is the problem liberals will be like yeah see these idiot Republicans I'm like yeah you guys have bought a lot of crazy stupid shit too okay and if actually I would say liberal misinformation quote unquote is worse

than Republican disinformation because it pervades the entire Elite media like or Cambridge analytica or any of these other hoaxes that have been voed on the American people the people who listen to The Daily and from The New York Times are just as brainwashed lack of informed want to feel informed as people who watch Fox News so let me just say that out there it's an equal opportunity cancer in the American Football actually we started early on in the conversation talking about bubbles M um what's your advice about how to uh figure out if you're in

a bubble and how to get out of it oh that's such a fantastic question unfortunately I think it comes really naturally to someone like me because I'm the child of immigrants and I was raised in col Station Texas so I was always on the outside um and when you're on the outside uh this isn't a Sab story it's a deeply useful skill because when you're on the outside you're forced to kind of observe and you're like oh so like when I was raised was the Bible Belt and people really uh you know people were hardcore

Evangelical Christians and I could tell I'm like oh they really believe this stuff and you know they you always trying to prze and all of that and then the other gift that my parents gave me is I got to travel the entire world I probably visited 25 30 countries by the time I was 18 and one of the things that that gave me was the ability to uh just put yourself in the brain of another person so one of the reasons I'm really excited to go to Japan and I picked it as a spot for

my honeymoon was because Japan is a first world developed country where the vast majority of them don't speak English it's disting distinguished nonwestern and they just do shit their own way so they have a Subway but it's not the same as ours they have restaurants things don't work the same way they have you know I could go a laundry list their entire philosophy of life of the daily Rhythm even though it merges with service-based managerial capitalism and they're fucking good at it too they do it their own way so exposure to other countries in the

world gave me and also just being an outsider myself gave me a more detached view of the world so if you don't have that what I would encourage you is to flex that muscle so go somewhere that makes you uncomfortable um this will be a very Boomer take but I hate the fact that you have 5G everywhere you go in the world because some of the best experiences I've ever had in my life is walking around Warsaw Poland trying to find a bus station to get my ass to Lithuania with a printed out bus ticket

I have no idea where the street is I have I'm in a country where not that many people speak English we're pointing and gesturing right and I figured it out and it was really use I got to meet a lot of cool Polish people uh same in Thailand I've been in rural like bum fuck Thailand Colombia places where people speak zero English and your ability to gesture and use pigeon uh really connects you and gives you like the ability to uh to get an exposure to others and so I know this is a very like

Wanderlust like travel thing but unironically if you're raised in a bubble pierce it like that's the answer is seek something out that makes you uncomfortable so if you're raised Rich you need to go spend some time with poor people and consider that they might actually understand the world better than you well in some respects so I think a lot of rich people have really screwed up personal lives so if you're poor and you really value family you say oh that's interesting there seems to be a fundamental trade-off between extraordinary wealth and something that I value

but what can I take away from that person oh put my money in index funds uh make sure that I am conscientious about my budgeting and common sense shit right and uh uh s vice versa people who are very wealthy get so caught up in the rat race about their kids going to private school and all of this and then you know they very rarely engage with there's that famous study where they ask people on their deathbed like what they valued in life and every single one of them was like I wish I'd spend more

time with my children um I think about that every time that I am thinking about pursuing a new work Endeavor or something that's going to have me spend significant time away from my wife and uh I'm almost always these days now that I've achieved a certain level of success the answer is I'm not doing it unless you can come with me one of the bubbles I'm really concerned about is San Francisco bubble I visit there recently because there's I have so many friends there uh that I respect deeply there so many brilliant people in in

San Francisco AB the Silicon Valley but there's just this um I don't even want to criticize it but there's definitely a bubble yeah of thought I'm with you I'm friends with some SV Silicon Valley people as well I'm similarly struck by that uh every time I go and honestly I do admire them because they what I respect the most amongst entrepreneurs business and political thinkers is systems thinking nobody thinks systems better than people who are in Tech because they deal with global shit right not even just America they have to think about the whole world

about the human being and his relationship technology and coding in some ways is an expression of the human mind and about how that person wants to achieve this thing and how you mechanically can type that into a keyboard or even code something to code for you to be able to achieve that that's a remarkable accomplishment I do think those people and people like that too who think very linearly Through Math and they're the Geniuses are the ones who can take their creativity and merge it with linear thinking but I do think that that actually those

are the people who probably most need to get out of the bubble check themselves a little bit and look it's really hard you know once you achieve a certain level of economic success and others like what do most rich people do they close thems off from the world right that's a the vast majority of the time what do you do economy is annoying flying they fly first class uh living in a small house is annoying they buy a bigger house uh dealing with a of these inconveniences of life is annoying you pay a little bit

more to make sure you don't have to do that there's a deep Insidious thing within that each one of those individual choices uh where the more and more removed that you get from that the more in the bubble that you are so you should actually seek out those experiences or create them in a in a concerted way speaking of bubbles Sam Harris oh uh he has continued to criticize me directly and indirectly I think unfairly but I love Sam I deeply respect him everybody should listen to The Making Sense podcast it always makes me think

uh it's definitely in the rotation for me that's uh that's very admirable of you I mean he's I think one of the sharpest minds of Our Generation and for a long time I looked up to him it was one of the weird moments for me to meet him cuz you listen to somebody for such a long time I feel that way with you I'm serious yeah it it was it's ATI beautiful moment I mean same with Joe and it's it's it is one of the most surreal moments of your life uh to be able to

meet somebody who you spend like hours listening to I actually think about that when people come up to me because I'm like oh they're feeling what I felt whenever I yeah and you have to like you see it you feel it and you have to celebrate that because there is an intimacy to it um it's I think it's real that people really do form a real connection a real friendship it happens to be one way but I think it actually can um upgrade to a two-way pretty easily it happens with me like in in a

matter of like five minutes when I meet somebody at or something like that anyway uh Sam took a pretty strong position on Trump and has for a long time yeah he has been consistent and unwavering so he he thinks that Trump is a truly dangerous person mhm for our democracy for maybe for the world um Can you steal man his position well see I think a lot of this podcast has been steal manting it because Sam is a big Character Matters guy like he focuses a lot on Trump's personality by the way I'm like you

I've listened to samur for years I bought his meditation app so nobody's going to accuse me of being some Sam Harris hater I listened to him for way before long before even Donald Trump was elected that's how far back I go with the Sam Sam Harris podcast I have a lot of respect for the dude I I enjoy a lot of his older interview I do think after Trump he did succumb a little bit in my opinion to the elite liberalism view both of the impetus behind Donald Trump and why he was able to be

successful so in some ways very denigrating to the Trump voter but also a fundamental misunderstanding of the American presidency because like I said he really is the one who believes that that narcissism that character and all of that that makes Trump tick itself will eventually override any potential benefit that he could have in office and I just think that's a really wrong way of looking at it and um I mean for example I I had this debate with Crystal and uh this gets to the whole uh Trump you know talking about the enemy from within

and she was like he wants to prosecute his political opponents do you disagree with that and I was like no I don't and she was like so you're not worried about it and I go no I'm not and she's like well how do you square that and I was like well I actually unironically believe in the American system of institutional checks and balances which kept him quote unquote in check last time around I also believe in democracy where you know this is really interesting but you know in 2022 a lot of the Republicans who were

the most vifer about stop the steel they got their asses kicked at The Ballot Box you know Americans also then in 2024 decided to forgive some of that from Donald Trump it's definitely didn't help right but they were able to oversee that for their own interests as in democratically people are able to weigh in terms of checks and balances what they should and should not challenge a politician by but also we have the American legal system and I also know the way that the uh institutions in Washington themselves work that you know fundamentally the way

that certain processes and other things could play out will not play out to some hitlerian fantasy and this gets to the whole like KLA and them calling him a fascist and Hitler you know you and I probably spent hours of our Liv maybe more uh thinking and reading about Hitler wear Germany and and I just find it so insulting you know because it becomes this moniker of like bash you know like these terms have meaning beyond the Beyond just the dictionary definition the circumstances through which Hitler is able to rise to power are not the

same as today it's like stop denigrating America to the point where you think like really you should flip it around why do you think America's wart Germany that's a ridiculous thing to say do you on ionically believe that no you don't believe that so that is uh personally what drives me a little bit crazy and I think that Sam has found himself in a mental framework where he is not willing he's not able to look past the man and his quote unquote danger and at the end of the day his worldview was rejected wholly by

the American people and that cu the character argument the fascist argument the Hitler argument the he is uniquely bad argument has been run twice before 2016 and in 20 actually all three times I guess it won in 2020 but two out of the three times Donald Trump has won the presidency and in his latest one where that argument has never been made before for a longer period of time and More in strength by a political candidate was rejected completely and I would ask him to reconcile himself to the America that he lives in I I

think one thing maybe to partially Steelman his case but also just uh Steelman the way the world works is that there is some probability that KLA Harris uh will institute a communist state and there is some probability that Donald Trump will indeed that like will fly a swasa with and uh Deport I don't know everybody who's not Scot Irish like I don't know yeah you and Irish grw then maybe is there a spirit test okay like but that probability is small and you have to if you allow yourself to focus on a particular particular uh

trajectory with a small probability it can become all-encompassing cuz you could see it you could see a path there are certain character qualities to Trump yes where he wants to hold on to power first of all every politician wants to hold on to power Joe Biden uh maybe because he's part of the machine can't even conceive of the notion of a third term but he has the arrogance to want to hold on to power do everything he can absolutely and like with Trump I could see that if it was very popular for him to have

a third term I think he would not be the kind of person who doesn't advocate for a third term so what that would require the Senate and the house or 70 what is it 75% of the states to pass and uh change the Constitution do you think that's going to happen no I don't think it's going to happen so I'm not that worried about it now you can make a Norms argument and I actually think that's kind of fair is that he's the Norms Buster but you know with extraordinary candidates and people like Trump you

get the good and the bad there is a true Duality like the Norms he bust around foreign policy I love the Norms he bust around the economy I love the Norms he bust around just so much of the American political system saying it how it is ETC I love that you know what I hate this 2020 election bullshit you know what else I hate you know this I don't know just the the the lack of discipline that I would want to think that a great leader could have like when he was president tweeting about M

brazinsky facelift that was objectively ridiculous like it was crazy okay was it funny yeah but it was crazy like and it's not how I would conceive and have conceived of some of my favorite presidents I wouldn't think that they would do that but that's what you get you know you everyone should be cleare eyed about who this man is and that's another problem the deification of politicians is sick it's sickening like about Trump around Obama around like these people are just people like the idea that they are Godlike creatures with extraordinary judgment you know one

of the really cool things about Ur and I's job is we actually get to me meet very important people after you meet a few billionaires you're like yeah there's definitely something there but you know some of them get lucky um like uh after you meet a few politicians you're like oh they're like they're not that smart uh that was a rude awakening for me by the way being here in Texas reading about these people and pretty soon I was on Capitol Hill I was like 19 years old I was intern I'm actually interacting and I

see them behave and ridiculous manners and you know whatever treat people badly or say something stupid and I was like oh I'm like this is not the westwing I'm like this is not like a these people are just this is just reality and the weirdest part of my life is I've now been in Washington long enough I know some of the people personally the vice president of the United States literally the vice president-elect future cabinet secretaries future you know these people I literally have met at dinner with at a drink with whatever um that's a

wild thing and that's even more more bringing you down to earth who were like oh shit you're actually going to have a lot of power that's that's kind of scary but you're just a person and so even though you don't have to say have my same life experience take it for me or anybody else who's ever met really famous people rich rich successful powerful people they're just people there's nothing that there's some things that are unique about them but uh they have just as many human qualities as you or anybody else is listening to this

right now yeah there's uh for each candidate Trump is probably the extreme version of that there's a there's a distribution of the possible trajectories their Administration might result in yes and like uh the range of possible trajector is just much wider with Trump yeah you're describing like a basian theory right like and I think that's actually a really useful framework for the world is that people are really too binary so like you said you know there's a theoretical possibility I guess of a communist takeover of government and of a fascist takeover of government under Kay

Harris or uh Donald Trump you know the realistic probability I would give it 05% probably in both directions um but there are you know there are a lot of things that can happen that are bad that are not hitlerian or fascist there are a lot of things that happen that are really good that are not FDR New Deal style uh one of the worst things politicians do is they describe themselves in false historical ways so in Washington one of the most overused phrases is made history and I'm like you know if you actually read history

most of these things are just they're not even footnotes they're the stuff that the historians flip past and they're like what a stupid fucking thing I mean and I'm talking about things that will that ruled American politics like what if I told you that the Panama Canal treaty was one of the most important fights in modern American politics nobody thinks about that today it ruled American politics at that time you know it genuinely is a footnote but that's not how it felt at the time so that's another thing I want people to take away you

uh trag IC Al missed the UFO hearings oh man my brothers I'm I'm really sad I I let me tell you I love them so much the UFO Community are some of the best people I've ever met in my life shout out to my brother Jeremy Corbell uh to George knp the OG to all of the people who fly from all around the world to come to these hearings it was so fun I got to meet so many of them last time just walk the Rope line like as people were uh coming in the excitement

the uh it I I I love I truly love the UFO Community shout out to all of them this is the second one I guess this is the second one do hope they continue happening it's going to be a slow burn uh so one of the things I always tell the guys and everybody is consider how long it took to understand the sheer Insanity of the CIA in the 1950s and 60s so if we think back to the church committee I don't I forget the exact year of the church committee I think it was in

the 70s uh the entire church committee and knowledge of why this of how the CIA and the FBI were up to all of this insane shit throughout the 50s and 60s is because some people broke into a warehouse discovered some documents got the names of programs which were able to be foed and we were able to break open that case it would never have happened with real transparency like in the official process so we owe those people a great debt I guess I can say now the statute of limitations has passed uh my point about

the UFOs is I don't know what is real or not I have absolute confidence and absolute ton is being hid from the American people and that all of the official explanations are bullshit I have had the opportunity to interface with some of the whistleblowers and other the activists in the community people who I trust people who have great credentials who have no reason to lie who have assured us that there is a lot going on behind the scenes there has been too much misinformation and effort by the Deep state to cover up this topic so

I would ask people to keep the faith it's 2024 and we still don't have all the JFK files okay everyone involved is dead there's no reason to let it go and even though we basically know what happened we don't know if you read that fantastic book The Tom O'Neal book about the Manson Murders I mean again you know it took him 20 years to write that book and he still didn't get the full story so sometimes it takes an extraordinarily long agonizing period of time and I know how deeply frustrating that is but when you

think about a secret a program and knowledge of this magnitude it would only make sense that it would require a Titanic effort to reveal a Titanic secret you think Trump might be able to push for like aggressively break through the secrecy let's say even on the JFK files I hope so I have moderate confidence you know RFK Jr has pushed him to do so I would I would like to think so uh at the same time I saw him got rolled last time so I'm you know I'll hold my breath why do you think that

happens why do you think it gets remember that whole inter agency thing I told you about that's how it happens uh that's another thing you're presuming that the president has the power to declassify this stuff I'm I'm saying that I'm not even sure where there like in terms of uh so it's basic like civility he basically says like I would like to declassify JFK files and they say yes sir we'll get that to you in three months and three months comes by and then they're like well there's these uh hurdles well the way you get

around it is go let's release some but these in particular there's National Security Secrets is a good case for not releasing them X Y andz you know it's like you get around that okay you know that makes sense you know and again he's a busy guy he's the president you got way bigger shit to worry about so this is the that's the problem is that unless you have the true urgency I mean look people of immense power have tried everyone forgets this John podesta was the white house chief of staff he is a UFO True

Believer in his heart he tried he's talked about it he tried at the top level the number two to the White House to get the Pentagon and others to tell him what was going on and they stonewalled him so people need to understand what you're up against and you know I would and people are like how is that even possible it's like well go read about the terror that LBJ and the kennedies and others had in confronting Jay Edgar Hoover go and read how terrified you know Eisenhower and some of them were were of the

dullish brothers they were scared like they they knew where the power lies so you know the presidency um look government deep State Etc they've been there a long time and they know what's happening and president's come and go but they stay forever and so uh that's that's the Paradigm that you're going to have to fight against yeah I mean it's it's it's a bit of a meme but I wonder how deep the Deep state is um much deeper than anyone can even imagine and the worst part is with the Deep state is it's not even

individuals It's actually an ideology and ideology is the most P you know people often think that if we took money out of politics that it would change everything I'm not saying it wouldn't change everything but or it wouldn't change a lot but people are like oh so and so is only against universal healthcare because they're getting paid I'm like no no no that's not why they actually believe it or it's like oh so and so is only wants to advocate for war with Iran because they're on the payroll of APAC and it's like well yeah

the APAC trips and the money helps but they think that actually the system itself this is a very Chomsky ass systemic critique is that any journalist worth their salt would never have the ability to get hired in a mainstream so he's like it's not that you're bad in the mainstream media it's that any good is not allowed to be elevated to your position because they have an ideology and so you know that is the most self-reinforcing pernicious mechanism of them all and that's really Washington in a nutshell it's uh it's again a bubble but a

bubble that has a lot of power yes who do you think is the future of the Republican party after Trump what happens to trumpism after Trump like you just said basian let's take various theories uh right so let's say it's ' 04 uh it's Bush Cheney in 2004 the day after the election I would have told you this we live in a Bible Bell Jesus land America this America wants to protect America a war on terror against Iraq um and uh the axis of Evil and American people just voted for George W bush and so

I would have predicted that it would have been somebody in that Vain and they tried that his name was John McCain he got blown the fuck out by Barack Obama so I cannot sit here and confidently say what year would you be able to predict Obama just his first time he gave the speech the 2004 speech at the DNC that was his we don't live in Black America White America the John krey DNC speech you honestly could not have predicted it until 07 whenever he actually announced his campaign and and activated a lot of anti-war

energy I mean maybe' 06 actually I could have said in ' 06 if I was you know kind of the contrary am I am now I'm like yeah there's a lot of anti-war energy I think the next president will be somebody who's able to vote you know the explosion of Keith alberman and MSNBC that it it makes logical sense in hindsight but you know at the same time you're going up against the Clinton machine who's never lost an election so I would have been afraid um I cannot confidently say so I will say if things

go in different directions if Trump is a net positive president then I think it will be JD Vance his vice president um who believes in the uh a lot of the things that I've talked about here today about foreign policy restraint about the working class about changing Republican attitudes to the economy um and he would be able to build upon that Legacy in the way that George whw Bush was able to get elected off the back of Reagan but HW Bush was fundamentally his own man he's a very misunderstood figure very different than Ronald Reagan

uh didn't end up working out for him but you know he did get himself elected once so that's one path that's if you have a net positive Trump presidency the other path is the 04 path that I just laid out uh if George W bush if Trump does what Bush does misinterprets his mandate screws things up creates chaos um and makes it just generally annoying to live in American society then you will see somebody in the Republican party I mean still it could even be JD Vance because he could say JD is my natural and

My Chosen successor but then he would lose an election and then he would no longer be the so-called leader of the Republican party so uh I could see it swing in the other direction I could see uh you know Republicans or others let's say if it's a total disaster and we get down to like 20% approval ratings and the economy is bad and stuff like that Glenn yunan or uh somebody like that who's very diametrically opposed to Donald Trump uh or at least you know aesthetically is somebody like that who could Rise From the Ashes

and I'm just saying like in terms of his aesthetic not him per se so there's a variety of different directions um it's a big question about the Republican base I mean a shit ton of people voted Republican now for the first time ever so are they going to vote in party primaries I don't know you know the traditional Party primary voter is like a white Boomer who's like 58 59 uh is the Latino guy in California who turned out to vote for Trump with a Maga hat and rolling around you know Suburban Los Angeles with

that is he going to vote in the Republican party that could change so the type of candidate themselves could come so this just it's way too early to say you know we have so many variety paths that we go down yeah I I think Trump is a singular figure in terms of like if you support Trump there I just there's a Vibe I know K has a Vibe but there's definitely a vibe to Trump and Maga and I just I think even with JD that that's no longer going to be there so if JD runs

and wins that would be on principles and it's a very different human being he is so different than Trump right you can see his empathy right remember in the VP debate when he was like Christ have mercy when Tim Wallace was talking about his son I mean that's not something Donald Trump would say okay it's just not like uh in terms of I mean you know and and this by the way this is my own bubble test I have no idea how somebody listens to Trump and JD Vance is like Trump is the guy who

should be the president over I I honestly I don't get it that's my own cards on the table I am in too much of a bubble where I'm my bias is to you know being well spoken and being empathetic or at least being able to play empathetic and being being extremely well read about the world and thoughtful and uh somebody who's you know somebody like him who's engaged in the political process but also has been able to retain his values and be extremely well articulate his worldview that's my bias that's who I would want to

be the president but you know you that's a big country people think differently by the way I share your bias and I sometimes try to take myself out of that bubble like it's maybe it's not important to to have read a book or multiples of books on history I'm not saying everybody should be like me but that's my I'm checking Myself by being like because of who I am that's how I see the world and that's how I would choose a leader but that is not how people vote period and I've nothing has taught me

that more than this election I wish they did I mean I don't know if that I don't know if that's a lesson to take away I think yeah but who are we to say people are allowed to do what they want you I'm not going to tell somebody how to vote no what I'm saying is you take everything Trump everything Trump is doing everything the whole the dance all of it and add occasional Saga like references to history books I think that's just a better candidate I agree with you I mean I listen you know

it's my bias uh yeah I don't know I don't think that's biased I think I think that's not a bub Bubble thinking I think it's amazing to me right like listen to the JD interview with Rogan um I mean JD I mean he'll drop obscure references to studies to like papers that have come out essays um books like this is a very well read high IQ wellth thought out individual who also you know has given his life to the political process and decided to like deal with all the bullshit that this entire system is going

to throw at you whenever you start to engage uh that's who I would want to be president but you know I'm biased so what can I say I like how you keep saying you're biased as if there's some percent of the population doesn't like people to read at all okay uh what about the future you kind of hinted at it the future of the Dem ratic party do you see any Talent out there that's promising is it going to be Obama likee figure that just rolls out of nowhere Clinton is the better example um because

the Democratic party was destroyed for 12 years uh from 1980 the 1980 election to 1992 they're 12 years out of power uh in periods of that long of an era it takes somebody literally brand new who is not tainted by the previous to convince the base that you can W and convince the country that you're going in a New Direction so I would not put my money on anybody tainted by the great awokening by TDS by the insanity of the Trump era that has to be somebody post that Andor somebody who is able to reform

themselves it will it will in my opinion it will likely not be any establishment politician of today who will emerge for the future like I said my dark horse is Dean I think that the uh I think the Democratic base is going to give Dean a shit ton of credit and they should uh for him being out look let's be honest he's a no-name congressman from Minnesota nobody cared who Dean Phillips was but just like Obama he had courage and he came out and spoke early when it mattered and by doing that he showed good

judgment and he showed that he's willing to take risk so I would hope in America's political system that we award something like that and I do think the Democrats will reward him but I'm not saying it will be him per se but it will be a figure like that who is not nationally known who has read the tea leaves correctly who took guesses and did things differently than everybody else and uh most of all I'm hoping that heterodox attitudes ideas behaviors by definition after a blowout those will likely be the ones that are rewarded so

I cannot give a name but I can just describe the circumstances for what it will look like can you imagine an amorphous figure that's a progressive populist it would be very difficult at this point uh just because a huge portion of the multi-racial working class has shifted to the right but I could see it I mean look people Chang their minds all the time like there are people out there who voted for Barack Obama who've now voted for Donald Trump three times so you know a lot can change in this country uh if you make

a credible case you've got a track record you speak authentically and you can try to divide the country along class lines and be authentic and real about it maybe I think it was shot I still think you're probably going to get dinged on culture just because I think this election has really showed us how important immigration and culture is but you know actually what the left populace should pray for and they won't admit this is that Trump actually solves immigration like in terms of changing the Status Quo you know how in the way that uh

the Supreme Court just ended the conversation around gay marriage so Republicans were like yeah whatever we support gay marriage um because they're like that's the law of the land it is what it is uh they should just hope that their unpopular issue uh is resolved by the president and thus they just don't have to talk about it anymore and now the Battleground is actually favorable for them they get to talk about the economy and portion so their most their least popular issue gets solved by the president by consensus from his mandate and then they can

run on a brand new platform for the new issues that are facing America all right let's put our historian head back on okay will the American Empire collapse one day and if it does when it does what would be the reason statistically likely the uh statistically yes uh uh you know it's the famous Fight Club quote it's like on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everything drops to zero uh and uh you know I like for all the books you've quoted you went to Fight Club I guess the movie right the book is

good though people should read that too um in terms of why uh again statistically uh the answer is quite simple it usually comes back to a uh series of unpopular Wars which are pursued uh because of the Elite's interests then it usually leads to to a miscalculation and a not a catastrophic defeat normally it comes gradually uh and you most of the times when these things end the crazy part is most people who are living through end of Empire have no idea that they're living through the end of the Empire and I actually think about

that a lot from uh you know Decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon actually your episode on Rome was fantastic people should go listen to that so there you go um another really good one I like to think a lot about the British Empire and if what eventually led to that collapse and nobody in 1919 said the British Empire has just collapsed basically nobody thought that they were like yeah the first world war is horrible but actually we came out of this okay we still have India you know we still have all

these African colonies and all that but you know long periods of servitude of debt to the United States of degradation of social upheaval of bolshevism of American industrial might and next thing you know you find yourself at pot Stan and Churchill is like holy shit I have barely any power in this room right so it revolutions happen slowly and then all at once um and so could you really put a you know a a real like pin in the end of the British Empire it took almost 40 years for for it to end so America's

Empire will eventually end either from rising geopolitical competition likely China could be India nobody knows um it will likely be because of being overstretched of uh an elite capture is usually the reason why uh and uh a misreading of what made your original Society work you know in the first place and that is one where honestly like all three of those things will happen all at once and it will happen over extremely long period of time and uh it's very difficult to predict I would not bet against America right now I think we have a

lot of fundamental strengths such a unique and dynamic country it really is fucking crazy uh every time I travel the world as much as I love all these different places I go man I just I love the United States so much you will love it more when you leave I I really believe that so yeah and it's nice to remember how quickly the public opinion shifts like we're very Dynamic and adaptable which and annoys me I understand that's part of the political discourse saying like if Trump wins it's the end of America if K wins

it's the end of America so stupid yeah but I understand the radical nature of that discourse is necessary to uh like who mentioned yeah to drive out Bo right of votes I like to think about Americans in 1866 I canot imagine going through a war where some X I think it was like 2 or 3% or whatever the entire population was just killed our president who was this Visionary genius who we were blessed to have is assassinated at Forks theater immediately after the surrender of Lee Andrew Johnson who's a bumbling like fuck tard is the

one who is in charge and you know we're having all these insane crises over like internal management while we're also trying to decide like this new order in the South and whether to bring these people how to bring these people back into the Union I mean I would have despaired like in that year I like it's over this is it you know the War I like was it worth anything you know if Andrew Johnson is going to be doing this or even in the south I mean I can't even imagine uh for what they were

going through too H you know they have to go home and their entire cities are burned to the ground and they're trying to readjust and you know their entire econom economy and way of life is overthrown in 5 years I mean that's an insane to be alive and what do we know it worked out you know by uh 1890s or so uh there were people shaking hands you know Union and uh there's a there's a cool video on YouTube actually of um FDR who is addressing some of the last Gettysburg veterans I think it was

like the 75th Anniversary or whatever and you can literally see these old men who shaking hands across the stone wall it gives me hope yeah let's Linger on that hope what is the source of optimism you have for the 21st century for the century beyond that for human civilization in general is uh you know it's easy to learn cynical lessons from history right that shit eventually goes wrong but sometimes it doesn't so what gives you hope I think that the the fundamentals of what makes Humanity great and has for a long time are best expressed

in the American character and that despite all of our problems that as a country with our ethos a lot of the stuff we talked about today individualism the frontier mindset the blessings of geography the blessings of our economy of uh the way that we're able to just incorporate different cultures and the best of each and and put them all together give us the best opportunity to succeed and to accomplish awesome things uh we're the country that put a man on the moon which is the epitome of human spirit I hope to see more of that

and uh you know I think last time I was here I shouted out and I love Antarctic exploration I've read basically every book that there is on the exploration of Antarctica and one of the reasons I love to do so is because there is no reason to care about Antarctica none there's nothing down there zero going to the South Pole is a truly useless exercise and yet we went we went twice actually two people went there in the span of five weeks and they competed to do so and uh the spirit that propelled Amenson and

Scott's Expedition and people like Shackleton who is like if you were to ask me my hero of all heroes it's Ernest Shackleton is because his Spirit uh I think lives on in the United States it unfortunately died in Great Britain and um interestingly enough the Brits even understand that they're like it's very interesting how popular Shackleton is in America and uh even though he was Irish and he was a British subject to me he's a spiritual American and I think that his his lives on within us and uh has always been here to a certain

extent and everywhere else I think it's dying but here I love it here uh there's so many cool things about America people move around all the time they buy new houses they start families they uh there's no other place you can just reset your whole life in the same country it's wild uh you can reinvent yourself you can go broke you can get rich you can go back and forth multiple times and uh there's nobody there's nowhere else where you have enough freedom and opportunity to pursue that and definitely have a lot of problems but

I've traveled enough of the world now to know that uh it's a special place and that gives me a lot of hope I wish I could do a Bostonian accent of we do these things not because they're easy but because they're hard because they are hard thank you yeah Ah that's so true the Scott Irish guts uh well listen I'm a huge fan of your Saga I hope to see you in the White House interviewing the president there you go that's right that's the only situation you're going to see me in the White House yeah

uh front row and just talking uh free I would just I would love to live in in a country and in a world where it's you who gets to talk to the press secretary to the president um because I think you're a real you're one of the good ones as far as journalists go as far as human being so I hope to see you in there and I I hope you get to ask a question that uh that end up in a book that ends up in a good history book absolutely well likewise I'm a

huge fan of yours uh for anybody out there who's interested I compiled a list and I will go and retroactively edit it just go to sagur and jet. I created a newsletter with a website that has all the links to all the books I'm going to talk about here beautiful the hundreds of books that were mentioned here all right brother thank you so much for talking today thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with Saga and Jetty to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you

with some words from voler history is the study of all the world's crime thank you for listening and hope to see you next time