Dark Brandon： Can Leaning Into Corruption Be a Winning Move？
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Summary
On today's show, we're joined by writer and editor Simone Polanen ( ) to talk about the dark Brandon meme, and why it's been taken up by supporters of Joe Biden. We also talk about why Biden supporters are spreading the Dark Brandon meme and why they should be worried.
Transcript
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how the investigations into corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family brought in more
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than 20 million for God knows what, I mean, basically purchased influence. That's really
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interesting, is that people are leaning into it that are supporters of Biden. And it's showing up
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as the dark Brandon meme. So Biden supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.
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Mm hmm. Well, what I've noticed about irony today, which I think is really interesting,
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is that irony is both 100 percent ironic and 100 percent earnest. This is this is actually a much
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more powerful thing. We talk about a lot with presidential campaigns is one of the biggest
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mistakes you can make is to try to run without obvious flaws. Then people will make up flaws for
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you. And that was one of Trump's biggest strengths. People knew what his flaws were. And I think
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moments like that, when he's first getting on the wealthiest person's list that he can't even afford
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his own PR agent, and he is pretending to be his own PR agent to talk himself up, I think shows the
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reality of the situation. And if we talk about his finances at the time, you know, the left will
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take this. This is a damning thing. When we were like, dude, this guy has hustle. This guy makes
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things happen. The way Trump actually got rich, because I think a lot of people don't really
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understand what he did. Would you like to know more? Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting
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today. I am really excited for this one. Well, as you know, because we're huge fans of Susie Weiss,
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who writes for the Free Press, I try to follow as many of their publications as I can. And one of my
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favorites that's not by her because I really just go there for her is called TGIF, where they do a news
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roundup. And I was reading in today's TGIF about dark Brandon, this really interesting thing that's
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trending. So let me let me kick this off by describing what's going on here. Because I feel
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like this is just so intriguing. I can't, I can't not dive into it. Brandon. Yeah. So let's let's start
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with some background, right? At one point, there was a baseball game where someone was being interviewed,
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and the audience were chanting in the background while someone was being interviewed.
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You Biden, again and again, so you Biden, and then the, the interviewer, a woman very charitably
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thought that the person that she was interviewing was being cheered on. She says, Oh, they're all saying
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let's go Brandon, which is really sweet. And so moving forward, I really, the phrase let's go Brandon
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became basically shorthand for you Biden, which, you know, has, has been very fun. So obviously,
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this is the reason why is it was seen as the way that the press just distorted anything they saw about
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the world or anything they heard into a positive message for progressives. Exactly. Yeah. And what's
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interesting now is it appears to be that Brandon as a meme is now being appropriated by Biden supporters.
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So basically, what was covered in TGIF by the free press this week was how the investigations into
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corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family, well, President Biden was vice president,
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brought in more than 20 million for God knows what I mean, basically purchased influence. And,
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you know, to your point about the mainstream media, there's very little coverage of this,
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this investigation. But what's going on that's really interesting is that people are leaning into
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it that are supporters of Biden. And it's showing up as the like dark Brandon meme.
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So Biden supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.
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Mm hmm. So what the free press basically said was Biden's campaign has embraced the new YOLO
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middle finger vibe. The top selling products on his campaign website for this week are dark Brandon
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items. The old saying goes never explain it never apologize. And these are literally like,
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so the the dark Brandon meme is sort of like it's it's it's images of Biden, but with like evil
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shining eyes. And literally, you can click over to the Biden campaign website and see,
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like a mugs and t shirts. Like I'm on shop.joebiden.com slash dark dash t shirt.
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I can imagine two reasons for this happening. Okay. And they're both really interesting.
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One could be that what they actually see as one of Biden's biggest weaknesses going into this next
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campaign cycle is that he's just a pussy. And it's not terribly interesting. And this is a way to
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imbue him with power, mystery and danger in the same way that I think drove many people to Trump
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and that he actually embodies those things for a lot of people. But then the other way to look at it
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is it's just a middle finger to, you know, within their cultural group, things like Let's Go Brandon
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have become such a sign of people who aren't in their cultural group and people who they detest
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that they are embracing this completely ironically. Which of those do you think is is more what's
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happening? Well, what I've noticed about irony today, which I think is really interesting is
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that irony is both 100% ironic and 100% earnest. So I think people who are buying dark Brandon
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merchandise, 100% are like, Oh, yeah, snub it to the people, you know, I'm appropriating your
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appropriation, I'm gonna take your meme and throw it back at you. But at the same time,
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they're kind of like, Yeah, I have a badass, dark leader, he's playing 40 chess, he'll take, you
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know, you know, payments under the table, it doesn't matter. That's how badass he is. And I
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think part of us, maybe we want a strongman kind of leader. I mean, there's that old research that
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found that people who look presidential get elected for president. Maybe this is people wanting
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their president to be a strongman. And frankly, because right now people are concerned about
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President Biden being senile, being out of it, not actually being in control. This is this is
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actually a much more powerful thing. We talk about a lot with presidential campaigns, is one of the
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biggest mistakes you can make is to try to run without obvious flaws. Then people will make up
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flaws for you. And that was one of Trump's biggest strengths. People knew what his flaws were.
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Meanwhile, she was trying to be little miss perfect.
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Yeah, she was trying to be everything to everyone in a big way. And what that meant is everybody who
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didn't like her, one, it makes you suspicious of someone when they don't show obvious character
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But then two, it allows you to impose character flaws. Oh, they're out there murdering people or
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Yeah, as we would put it, if you asked, you know, 100 people, what's wrong with Trump, you're going
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to get 10 answers. If you ask 100 people what's wrong with Hillary Clinton, you're going to get 50 to
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75 answers. And that's a problem. You ask 100 people what's wrong with Trump, you'll get two
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or three answers. And that's the great thing is, is when you choose your vices and you have them so
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public and consistent, you can make sure that your public vices are not deal breakers for your
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position. And none of, you know, like misogyny or like huge ego, like all the Trump problems do not
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make him incapable of being president, where, you know, if you have a vice like senility, that could
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actually, you know, be a deal breaker for presidency. So is this actually a super freaking
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brilliant move where they're like, we're going to take a vice, we're going to own it, we are corrupt,
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we have a corrupt family, but we are dark Brandon, like we we are we are embracing it. And is that
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really appealing to you? These these are this isn't just like a thing that that like literal White
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House operatives are starting to adopt, which we can historically, and you compare the way people
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viewed Bill Clinton versus the way they view Hillary Clinton. This, I think highlights one
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of Bill's greatest strengths is he leaned into, you know, his vice was, and when he did that,
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his poll numbers went up, the amount that he had cheated on his wife and lied about it and stuff
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like that. People were like, Oh, now I know what's wrong with you. And I can sort of mentally contain
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that keep in mind, all we're talking about here was all this stuff is perception. Yeah, right. We are
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not saying that this is actually what's wrong with these political candidates are actually
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what's not wrong. Most of these political candidates have many bigger things that are
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wrong with them than these public perceptions. What we're talking here is this game of public
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perception. But public perception is what gets you elected or not elected. So in the end, that's
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what matters, right? Well, and they may be leaning into it because they feel that they can't avoid it
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anymore. They can't avoid the public perception of corruption. So you might as well just completely
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rolling it so that that is the negative that everyone assumes to the extent of, you know,
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Biden's, you know, in his speech and he does like a Trumpism. He's like, well, I got away
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with it, didn't I? You know? Yeah. Well, at one point he even put on sunglasses and kind
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of like a hat tip to the dark Biden campaign, like the crowd cheered. I really think like this
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could be the thing that makes his reelection possible because I do, I do feel like going into
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things before, even though it was, you know, he's coming in from an incumbent position. He's coming
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in strong. This reelection is completely dependent on whether the Republican party fractures between
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two candidates or stays. I don't think it will because DeSantis is currently performing pretty
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poorly, although he did hire a new campaign manager recently. But I think what I think DeSantis
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is the one who's really like messing up right here. So Trump is, I'm just one more indictment away from
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presidency, right? Trump is leaning in. He's like his great old self. Biden is now going dark Biden.
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We've got two very good caricatures going. And I think caricatures are golden in elections.
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No, but the point I'm making is this election actually isn't decided by the strengths of the
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candidates. It's decided by internal Republican party politics. Yeah. I just, I think the Republican
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party is pragmatic enough to not try to push DeSantis if DeSantis isn't, you know, isn't kind
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of like. Really? I'm not saying that it will be DeSantis. You don't know who else is going
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to come up. Yeah. Yeah. Anything can happen at this point.
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It's not. I mean, yeah, we'll see. But I think to a large extent, the strength of the Republican
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position in this next election is actually Biden's messaging and everything like that is largely going
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to be irrelevant. I think it would be pretty hard for him to beat a united Trump front or a united
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somebody else front. But I think it'd be fairly trivial for him to be any sort of divided front.
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I do think though, I actually, I personally find the concept of dark Brandon much more appealing.
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I feel better about having a dark Brandon president than I did about Sleepy Joe, if you know what
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Well, and I think that shows the strengths of Trump's branding in terms of the way he paints
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negatives for people as he created simple, easy to understand negatives, which could be
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paired with video and stuff like that and build this into your brain. And so the question is,
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why is Sleepy Joe such an effective attack? Because it's not a particularly damning attack.
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It implies low energy and it implies more than I think senility. It implies personal weakness of
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Well, actually, you know, it's really funny, the Sleepy Joe moniker. There's this one episode of
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Doctor Who, where Doctor Who decides he's going to destroy the prime minister of the United Kingdom.
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And he says something like, I will destroy you with three little words. And he turns to a press
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agent and he says, she looks tired. And supposedly, this just like completely destroys her, I think.
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But you know, like they really present it with a lot of gravitas.
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Oh, that's why we're going to be great presidential candidates, all energy, all the time.
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People will be like, yeah, I'm actually surprised we don't get more you look like you're on drugs.
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You got that a lot with the Chris Williamson appearance.
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A lot of people were like, you're definitely on amphetamines. Everyone was sure you were on amphetamines.
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No, guys, this is like literally him at five in the morning. I'm not kidding. You're like,
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I have to tell him to not get close to our kids.
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Yeah, he said to be really quick with that interview because I didn't know how long it was going to last.
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I thought it was going to be 30 minutes and I was trying to get everything in as quickly as possible.
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Whereas in our own podcast, I can afford to be much, much more relaxed in my timing.
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Actually, I wonder though, if in the future, when we have a greater understanding of the way that our genetics function,
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and we have a greater understanding of the way, like of the various chemicals in your body,
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if like literally you are experiencing like your default state is what many people experience when they're on amphetamines.
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I really wonder that because like you are high energy.
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I suspect it might be why I drink so much is to get myself into a normal state, you know?
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Yeah, just to bring, yeah, just to bring yourself back down to slow your mind down.
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So one thing I'm curious about is, okay, so we're seeing like with dark, Brandon,
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I want to see where it goes with the selection.
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When you run for office, what are your clear vices going to be?
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Yeah, I want people to know that I think I'm better than them.
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Not that you think that you're better than them, Malcolm, that you know that you're better than them.
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No, I mean, I think that it's natural to who I am.
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I am, it's something that I have trouble suppressing is arrogance.
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I think a good vice, and I think why dark, Brandon works, is that it's true.
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Is it like, it is incontroverted, like when you look at the reports, the investigation into what's going on with Hunter Biden, like it's bad.
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And I think the other thing is nerdy weirdness is the other thing I'm going to really.
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No, sorry, that's a, my weakness is an employee candidate and then I just work too hard.
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That is not, that is a humble brag and that is not advice.
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The real key to advice, okay, in, in the political sphere is can you get your opponent's press to bite it?
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Well, and Ben Shapiro did call you like a big fat nerd, didn't he?
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But no, there was this Yahoo News piece about us that just basically went through our Reddit history.
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Did you know they follow like Tumblr in action and, and fat logic and all of these meanish right leaning stuff.
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So when I say nerdy weirdness, I don't mean like general nerdy weirdness.
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I mean, like, I mean, like he's a internet freak.
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And, and also keep in mind, you know, I have looked at the way people attack us on the Reddit threads that have done really well.
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You know, we, we typically, we have a few Reddit threads that are over like 50,000 upvotes on us.
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And, you know, very common stuff is, do you know he had a body pillow made of an anime version of his wife?
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I mean, clearly I did this for fun, but like they really wanted to lean into how disgusting and terrible this was that I had done this.
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I, I think that, or that when I proposed to you, one of the images we used was like an MLP fandom, My Little Pony fandom image.
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I think that you may underestimate how much, and, and this is one thing that Trump did that was really, really smart.
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He would bait reporters with lines that given their ideological perspective, they thought were things that they could use against him, but the majority of the population actually agreed with.
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A great example here is when he's like, oh, we don't want to be like one of those, you know, I think it was like shitty countries in Africa or something like that.
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He said, no, I think there's something about accepting immigrants from shitty countries in Africa or something, but it was very offensive to people that he said.
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And they just went off on this where the majority of America was like, oh, that's pretty based.
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Even Dems were like, yeah, they're pretty shitty.
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You're actually reminding me though, of a really, an amazing, I would say vice leveraging tactic or vice Aikido tactic that Trump uses that has been underutilized in the world of the political sphere.
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So right now, what most politicians do when they're presented with a question that they don't want to answer or an accusation that they don't want to address, they immediately change the subject.
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Like they asked as though they were asked an entirely different question.
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If someone's, oh, you know, what about this woman who accused you of sexual assault?
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And he'll be like, well, first, she's not my type.
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But like the fact that he says stuff like that and one shows he's, he's taking one accused vice.
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And then he like switches it to another vice of, oh, yes, I am misogynistic.
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If somebody accuses you of a vice you don't want to have publicly, transform it into another vice through the way you answer.
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But meet vice accusations that are not on brand for you with your own vice.
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And I don't know how Trump does it so naturally, but he does.
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So you're going to be a nerd and you are going to be.
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No, that's, I think that's the problem is, is my vice is I am oppressively boring.
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So within conservative spheres, your big vice and people say this is that you look like a progressive.
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But we might be growing out our hair because Brian Kaplan thought it would be a good idea.
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So we'll say, yeah, we were told that she should grow out her hair and we're like.
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I can't pull it off as well, but he's, he's right.
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So maybe, maybe I won't look like a, so what, but that's not a vice.
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That's not a good vice that she looks like a progressive that I don't know.
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But it has to be like, and there's tons of things wrong.
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I think you could lean into the whole autistic thing.
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Just not liking to talk to people, like turning away from people, trying to give you their baby.
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Your mom, before she passed away, was convinced that DeSantis was autistic.
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And she, I mean, she called our son well before he was diagnosed.
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So she's, you know, she, she knows what she's doing.
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But yeah, maybe what he should be doing in terms of pivoting in this campaign.
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And one reason why he's failing is one, he doesn't have any clear vices.
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He's trying to be like Mr. Perfect with his wife, being all beautiful and nonsense and
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But he, I think he's missing that strong character with the dark side and the light side.
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That's why he, I think he fired his campaign manager.
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Cause he's not, he's not getting traction, but I think the bigger problem is he doesn't
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My read, and I'm not really following this too much.
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So, so if, if this video does well, if people want like campaign talk, I'll start following
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campaign politics again and do more on it because I, it's something that I can get addicted
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I've gotten really addicted to political news in previous cycles, just like a constant
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So I'm happy if this does well, I'm happy to do more on this, but my read is somebody who's
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Is he just, he comes across as trying really hard to make this work and it's just not working.
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Well, I think the bigger problem is that his original campaign strategy was I'm going to,
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He kept pivoting answers back to, oh, and I'm going to make this about, you know, gender
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When that's, I think surprisingly not really what people care about that much.
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No, people care about their kids being like brainwashed and stuff.
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And this is, I think, a mistake that the Republican upper breath is just really slow on right
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They, they dislike the way that the trans people are getting special privileges within
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They dislike the way that this stuff is taking over our school system, but they have no actual
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animosity to the gay community other than where they vote different from them.
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I mean, Milo Yiannopoulos, you know, back when he was gay, I don't know what's going on
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He presented with, with all of the stereotypes and stuff like that.
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And he was generally really well liked in the conservative sphere.
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And, and, and this comes to something that we might do a full video on later is progressives
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And unfortunately I think the upper brass of the Republican party, and this has been one
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of the mistakes that DeSantis has fallen into, who created a narrative where conservatives
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are like actually racist or actually homophobic.
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They're like, no, like being, having a lot of gay friends, that doesn't make you not homophobic
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or, you know, and it's like, no, it, it actually does.
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What you mean when you say that is the only way to not be homophobic is to agree with you.
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That is not, you know, as, as I said in a tweet I wrote recently, I signed up to be an
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And you don't get to call me homophobic when I'm not a minion.
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I don't, I don't have any animosity towards gay people.
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I don't want them to, to suffer, but I also don't think that they, you know, get the right
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to culturally impose this on other groups or other groups, kids.
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And that's how I understand the Republicans anger there.
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Well, any more than like anti-gay groups can impose.
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He's specifically like actually seems to be targeting gay people.
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I just think it's, it's, it's insufficiently culturally compelling.
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Whereas like really weird, dumb stuff like dark Brandon is, you know, and I think people
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are really discounting that, you know, Trump won because people wanted someone to break
00:22:21.680
Like we are not people, you know, get a lot into policy and, you know, all these debates,
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We should do another video on just Trump someday.
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Because I have a lot of problems with his personal character, but he, I think objectively, if you
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just go through it, was a genuinely really good president.
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Especially foreign policy wise, which is my core area of focus.
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He was just phenomenal foreign policy president.
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Whereas right now the Biden administration is apparently releasing about 3 billion in
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frozen assets in North Korea to Iran in exchange for some prisoners, telling Iran that they
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So now they're like really incentivized to kidnap people.
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It's just not a good idea, especially if you matter to the United States government.
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So anyway, yeah, I feel like the Biden foreign policy team, which is really interesting because
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I think a lot of people originally voted for, for Hillary Clinton, for example, and then
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next for Biden, because they were like, well, this is the responsible choice.
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And because yes, it's, it's actually pretty clear.
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Trump's Trump's cabinet and team was pretty chaotic.
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There was a concern that you wouldn't really get the policy support, the foreign network that
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you would need to succeed in the executive office.
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And yet, you know, with Biden in office, we're really not seeing policies that give me a lot
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And I think that a lot of Trump's vices played really well into his ability to be a president.
00:24:01.160
So one of the things that I think a lot of people slept on is, is, is why the economy
00:24:05.400
did so well when Trump was president, you know, until COVID, but not much you can do about
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It was that he was so economically unpredictable.
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And what people don't realize, I think often about the markets is that they are hopelessly
00:24:20.560
They're always looking for some upside they haven't expected yet.
00:24:24.140
So when you look at things like his restrictions on China, what that meant is there was always
00:24:30.100
the potential in the future for some big economic uplift.
00:24:33.600
And as long as the investor class believes there is a near future potential that they
00:24:39.760
can't predict of economic uplift, they are going to continue to invest in the market.
00:24:44.660
So it's Trump's very unpredictability that both from an economic and a foreign policy perspective
00:24:51.880
No, it was that he was doing things that artificially held down the market that he could easily turn
00:24:59.480
off that led to the market almost always rising.
00:25:03.060
When I'm putting money on the market, what I'm doing is I'm saying, how much higher could
00:25:10.740
And the perfect political environment for the market means you have reached the market peak
00:25:17.820
As long as you create the assumption that the market environment is suboptimal, which Trump
00:25:23.960
was constantly doing through often pretty dumb economic policy, well, it wasn't dumb in
00:25:36.700
...policy where he was punishing foreign actors that he should have been punishing and
00:25:40.500
that we now know he should have been publishing because Biden carried on all these policies.
00:25:47.520
The public perception of what's going on in politics, I think, is so different than what's
00:25:53.960
Yeah, Alan, I think there's also the question of what does the executive office really do?
00:25:59.000
And I think the character of a president is underrated in influencing a nation's position
00:26:09.260
Like just narratively, what people think of the president and how they model the president
00:26:13.540
may make just maybe not just as much, maybe just as much of an impact as all of their different
00:26:24.120
I mean, just not to talk foreign policy, I think the reason Putin did not invade Ukraine
00:26:27.120
while Trump was president, despite him being, you know, inclined towards Russia, is I think
00:26:32.800
Putin genuinely believed that Trump might decide to do something like nuke Moscow.
00:26:37.340
He genuinely portrayed this air of mental instability and aggressiveness...
00:26:44.120
...and not understanding the outcomes of his actions.
00:26:47.120
And I think that a lot of dumb people in the public just absolutely believe that he actually
00:26:57.960
I think he was like a dad who knew what was going on.
00:27:00.820
And sometimes he fell into the right circumstances, but he wasn't an absolute genius, but he...
00:27:10.380
He's an absolute genius at hype, at PR, you know, like him being his own press agent when
00:27:22.820
And press, I believe, is press that would make somebody look bad.
00:27:25.540
And there was that case where people released these recordings.
00:27:31.480
Basically, I think when Trump was originally running, someone released a recording of him
00:27:36.240
pretending to be his own press agent, trying to promote Trump, I think for, you know, Forbes'
00:27:44.360
And at the time, of course, he was so obscure that people didn't know his voice or his mannerisms.
00:27:48.620
So when he called this person on the phone talking about Trump pretending to be his agent,
00:27:59.640
Every, you know, I can't do Trump, but like he did Trump as Trump's agent.
00:28:04.380
But when we were like, dude, this guy has hustle.
00:28:14.680
Whereas most people would never deign to, first off, even self-promote, like many people
00:28:25.160
Well, yeah, the sad thing is, is Trump has this personal self-image that is he is a wealthy
00:28:32.020
person from a wealthy family and he is high class.
00:28:36.060
And he has this so much that he doesn't portray just how self-made he actually is.
00:28:42.780
And I think moments like that, when he's first getting on the wealthiest person's list, that
00:28:48.340
he can't even afford his own PR agent, and he is pretending to be his own PR agent to
00:28:54.940
talk himself up, I think shows the reality of the situation.
00:28:58.960
And if we talk about his finances at the time, you know, the left will take this.
00:29:04.680
And so the way Trump actually got rich, because I think a lot of people don't really understand
00:29:09.540
So if you're born to a pretty wealthy family, the sane, unambitious thing to do is to take
00:29:15.620
that money, to invest it, and to live a life where you never have to really worry about
00:29:20.180
medical expenses or running out of money or anything like that.
00:29:26.220
He was born to a wealthy enough family that realistically he never had to worry about money.
00:29:31.240
You could also do something stupid, take that money and blow it on drugs, right?
00:29:36.820
That's what many people do as vices in wealthy families.
00:29:42.220
Trump did something actually insane that actually makes me respect him a little less because it
00:29:52.220
Trump, he went around and convinced people who would give him debt that he had more assets
00:30:03.800
So he didn't just take debt out against the assets that he owned so that he would be broke
00:30:12.420
He pretended that he owned things his dad owned and took out debt against that.
00:30:18.860
Then he took all of this debt he accumulated and bet it on New York Real Estate in a way
00:30:27.700
where if the real estate market had gone down, somebody who literally could have lived their
00:30:33.980
entire life without worrying about money would end up, well, he would have gone bankrupt and
00:30:39.860
would have had to give up his assets and stuff like that.
00:30:43.860
Like his dad could have said, these aren't his assets, but then could the bank have put something
00:30:47.900
on him so they could have taken the assets later, but basically live life with nothing
00:30:57.980
Now, now that I'm thinking through this is actually a pretty smart gamble.
00:31:05.040
The worst case scenario is the New York real estate market goes down as it did when he did
00:31:09.700
the, I think the Atlanta deal, because he did this a few times.
00:31:12.580
And one of the times that actually did go bust on him, just not the first time, which provided
00:31:16.400
him was enough money that he didn't have to worry about it, but borrowed money that he
00:31:22.020
He didn't have and made these big sort of economic gambles on real estate.
00:31:26.780
If it had gone tits up, yes, he would have gone broke, but because he hadn't gotten the
00:31:33.300
money from his dad yet, he would have just gone bankrupt.
00:31:36.720
And then later when his dad died, he would have gotten a big inheritance.
00:31:43.480
Actually, a pretty brilliant plan is a moderate cost to him, but actually not a very big cost.
00:31:50.120
The biggest cost associated with this gambit would actually have been the wire fraud charges,
00:31:55.320
which Simone and I had a long discussion offline about how big a cost that actually would be,
00:32:01.100
given that it might not have been in the bank's financial interest to pursue those charges.
00:32:06.360
We've actually had this as a problem with our businesses, where like, we're mad at somebody
00:32:11.380
and we totally want to sue them, but there's just literally no economic upside to suing them as a
00:32:15.760
business. So we just decide not to because lawsuits are expensive. And she was pointing out that even
00:32:20.560
if the charges did go through, people with that in their background, you know, even some people
00:32:24.900
we know still find ways to do business. That's specifically where the wire fraud charges would
00:32:30.180
hurt you so much that it would make you very, very difficult to take out loans and stuff in the future.
00:32:33.620
But I think that this is, this is like a microcosm for one of the things that made Trump a really
00:32:38.560
good foreign policy figure for the particular time in which he was in office. He, he's super
00:32:45.140
based macho man, just balls out. What's you going to do? I'm going to bomb you. What do you think?
00:32:51.340
And people are like, legit, I think he's going to bomb you. You probably should.
00:32:54.700
No, it wasn't that they thought he was going to bomb them. It was that they thought there was a
00:33:01.160
Yeah. Well, he was, he was enough of an agent of chaos and he was enough of an ego driven
00:33:06.720
Where he just like randomly, they, they crossed a line for him. And so he was like, okay, well
00:33:12.160
then I'll cross a line. I'll nuke one of your diplomats. Not nuke. What was it? He sent
00:33:15.800
like a guided missile to move up the guy's car.
00:33:18.280
Yeah. I can't remember exactly what happened, but what was really interesting about it. I think
00:33:22.760
it was such a diplomatic, like overreach. It showed such diplomatic overreach that no one would normally
00:33:29.020
do, but it was also so incredibly targeted. It was, I say, you don't do something. I'm going to do
00:33:37.100
something that is an equal offense to what you just did, but the targets top people within your
00:33:44.280
military community. This was Iran. I think actually, what's this Iran? Anyway, I've been
00:33:50.860
forgetting, but yeah. So that you personally and your families personally feel there may be some
00:33:55.880
price to pay that is equivalent to the, to you, to your top brass, but feel like random people
00:34:01.740
you're killing. A lot of people could say that can spiral out of control. I think what we've seen
00:34:07.120
with what's going on with the Ukraine war in Russia, it's actually a lot harder for things to
00:34:11.040
spiral out of control than the public thinks. In fact, it's never really happened except for
00:34:17.000
the Cuban missile crisis, which, okay, there it almost did actually spiral out of control.
00:34:20.000
But I also think that there's a lot of value to like boiling complex issues down to really
00:34:25.120
simplistic actions and narratives. And Trump was very capable of doing that. And I think he also
00:34:31.520
drew other figures into simplistic detents, essentially, that like really worked well in
00:34:37.460
foreign policy. Well, we need to do a whole video just on Trump's Middle Eastern policy,
00:34:41.480
which was really good. Yeah. Well, I mean, we'll see how this video does. This is,
00:34:46.140
this is doing something a little bit, you know, less evergreen. And I didn't prep beforehand. So
00:34:49.840
obviously I'm mentioning a bunch of stuff where I don't, I don't remember all the specifics. So I
00:34:53.200
probably got some stuff wrong. But there, there is something pretty universal and clever here,
00:34:56.860
which is like the, the power of vices and the power of simple characters. And I think it's so,
00:35:04.180
so, so underrated. You know, everyone wants to be perfect. We've even had people who've read our
00:35:08.700
books where we talk about this. We're like, you have to have super simple vices and super simple
00:35:12.840
virtues. And people have been like, okay, well, here are the virtues that I, that I've chosen for
00:35:17.260
myself. And here are the vices. All the vices are just virtues. Like they're just humble brags.
00:35:22.380
You've done the same thing, Simone. I asked you what your vices are and you wouldn't get me.
00:35:27.420
My vices are that I'm bored. Okay. Dear YouTube, please select my vices for me because I just
00:35:33.600
can't figure it. Maybe it's that I hate people and that I'm secretly really evil on the inside
00:35:38.260
because that's probably true. You know, maybe it's that I, I don't know. It's bad. Malcolm,
00:35:44.940
you're good. This is why you're going to run. And I, I, I'm not, I'm not a good person to run.
00:35:48.080
You're running in the first election. The people who want to fund us, they want a woman.
00:35:51.420
Okay. YouTube, please figure out my vices fast because apparently I need them. But Malcolm,
00:35:55.340
I love you. And I especially love your vices. What is it that Churchill said? He said something
00:35:59.880
like he has none of the vices I love and all the virtues I hate. Something like that. The man,
00:36:06.020
that man understood vices. This is, it's a universal thing that has withstood the test of time. So,
00:36:14.320
well, I love this conversation. I think maybe we might have some more of these, but yeah, we'll see.
00:36:19.020
And I'm very excited for the next, next election cycle. I'm sure we'll be doing more politics,
00:36:23.160
even if it doesn't do well. That's too fun. Can't not do it. All right. Have a good one.