Making Sense - Sam Harris - #223 — A Conversation with Andrew Sullivan

00:00:00.000 i am back with andrew sullivan andrew thanks for joining me again it's always wonderful

00:00:25.760 to talk to you sam so um first we should just say that this is a simulcast you are a freshly minted

00:00:34.620 podcaster and i'm quite honored to be your first podcast collaborator here at least at me obviously

00:00:40.720 you've done podcasts in the past but this is your new dish podcast what's going on over there tell

00:00:45.400 us your plans well we're i'm incredibly psyched to do this with you as the first one um we're going

00:00:51.200 to do this every week we hope and the idea is to be able to have a conversation which is not

00:00:56.740 constrained by all the pressures that are on us now in the media wherever we are and to talk openly

00:01:03.940 and and reasonably with people of different views believe it or not and to hash things out in a way

00:01:10.000 that you've always been a master of doing and so i couldn't be prouder to be launching this alongside

00:01:16.200 you you know what seems to be now a tradition right every four years we get together and explain why

00:01:21.360 we're both miserable about the coming election but why we're going to vote anyway so thank you it's a

00:01:26.820 big honor and i'm psyched and this is a big new adventure for all of us nice nice well i'm very

00:01:33.340 happy to do this with you i i must say we we have quite a um a checkered past here however because four

00:01:39.300 years ago i think we jinxed the presidential election we had the brilliant idea of doing a podcast

00:01:44.780 wherein we proved that we were as in touch with hillary clinton's flaws as anyone we were not to

00:01:53.180 be outdone by any aspiring trump voter and then in that podcast we quite brilliantly to my ear

00:02:00.560 turned the tables after about an hour of running down hillary to make the case that donald trump was

00:02:06.800 much much worse and uh despite all of our lesser of two evils casuistry we got four years of donald trump

00:02:15.220 so let's not do that again i don't know our influence terrifies me as you know i mean how could

00:02:22.320 one possibly speak without the thought of changing world history but we'll do our best i'm sure

00:02:26.820 so i start with you want to start with why biden is a problem or or do we start with trump this time

00:02:34.200 well i think that's i think some of that's going to come up because i think you and i have have some

00:02:38.440 concerns about what we how tongue-tied everyone is around biden's flaws you know for understandable

00:02:45.860 reasons but i want us to say something useful at this point that i'm just on the odd chance that

00:02:52.720 there are any persuadable people out there but i must say i'm pretty pessimistic about that i suspect

00:02:58.480 that almost anyone who's planning to vote for trump at this point is probably out of reach of our

00:03:05.980 arguments and i mean that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach such people but let me just describe

00:03:11.880 what i think the audience is for whatever we might say here i think anyone who is in the q anon cult

00:03:20.220 or who thinks trump has been put in the white house by jesus to save the world or you know someone who

00:03:26.280 thinks that you know tom hanks and the dalai lama and michelle obama are all cannibal child rapists

00:03:31.960 those people are obviously not within range of us and i don't know how big a group that is but

00:03:39.080 there's an impressively large group of people it seems to me who are in a kind of you know whether

00:03:44.280 they're q anon or not they're in a kind of personality cult and they will be immune to anything i have

00:03:51.480 to say here and i can't imagine you're going to make a dent either but there are a few objections

00:03:56.360 that come from what i consider to be smart otherwise sane people who are planning to vote for trump and

00:04:03.640 and the number one objection i get and if i could distill it down to something this person might say

00:04:10.560 it's something like after hearing me go on a you know a tirade about trump this person will say

00:04:17.460 something like you know i i get that you don't like his personality i don't like his personality

00:04:22.600 either and i get that you find him to be uncouth and offensive and so do i and but none of that

00:04:31.280 really matters what matters is policy and his policies are fine in some cases they're better than

00:04:37.200 fine and they're better than biden's are likely to be because biden is going to be captured by the left

00:04:43.920 socially and economically so i'm wondering what you do with that objection yeah i weirdly i've i have

00:04:53.380 been getting some of that the last week or so for more people in my personal environment people who

00:05:00.620 keep telling me that yes i'm i've lost my mind a little bit because i have become a victim of

00:05:07.560 trump derangement syndrome and that the policy options that are coming before us are so horrifying

00:05:15.660 this i and this i would decide i don't really agree with for several reasons i don't think that

00:05:22.940 the issues that trump really campaigned on he's really done a great deal for i don't think for

00:05:31.520 example that if you if you thought that it might be time because of the impact that free trade has

00:05:37.300 had upon various industries in the u.s and certainly for white non-college educated workers

00:05:44.720 that therefore trump's critique of what had been going on was not without merit and i agree with that

00:05:51.000 but there has been no real success on tariffs for example i mean there's been some minor tinkering but

00:05:59.460 we haven't seen a turnaround in manufacturing we haven't seen a turnaround in things like coal we

00:06:04.740 haven't seen what he promised in 2016 we haven't even seen any serious permanent or rooted policies

00:06:16.880 in controlling or changing the dynamic on immigration which if biden gets in will be back to square one

00:06:24.020 that we haven't actually seen a a war of ideas that has defanged some of the worst elements of the left

00:06:32.700 if anything trump seems to me to preside over enormous strengthening of elements on the extreme

00:06:39.720 left and that he has been their best friend in so many ways by making it almost impossible

00:06:46.120 to counter some of these trends on the far left without seeming to defend the indefensible so on

00:06:53.340 those people who once substantively are sympathetic to a more adjusted as it were conservatism i don't

00:07:01.060 think trump has been competent enough to deliver it and i don't think and i think in many ways he's

00:07:05.980 been extraordinarily counterproductive in that effect and so i wish i could say that you know yes

00:07:12.580 he had a point about immigration he had a point about trade he has had a point about white working

00:07:17.760 class people in the west but failure to deliver failure to prove that he can do anything about these

00:07:25.640 things and in fact when you look at it he's almost not mentioning either of those key issues of

00:07:30.540 immigration and trade this time around which suggests that really his attachment to these

00:07:34.840 causes was entirely instrumental and that really all he's about is his own his own sense of his own

00:07:41.260 power and his own centrality to any conversation about anything so i don't think that the argument

00:07:46.560 that somehow some of the issues he championed illegitimate has been borne out in the last four

00:07:51.880 years i think he's i think for example he's done more to stigmatize and taint the cause of some kind

00:07:58.620 of control of mass immigration than anyone on the left could ever have done and and and i think that's

00:08:04.300 really emboldening the people that he said he was trying to oppose and uh disempower yeah well your

00:08:11.760 point about the way in which he's empowered the far left is is very important because this is a very

00:08:17.420 common claim that this is trump is some kind of bulwark against the craziness on the left but to the

00:08:26.000 contrary trump has empowered the far left and he is he's given his his ugliness has given the far left

00:08:35.680 whatever semblance of justification it's had right i mean his flirtation with racism his his failure to

00:08:42.920 clearly repudiate white supremacy i mean he has he has repudiated white supremacy to a greater degree

00:08:49.440 than people on the left to give him credit for i mean he has actually done it in places but he's done

00:08:54.880 it so badly and so unconvincingly that he is the almost the perfect goblin to merit the counter reaction

00:09:06.040 on the left and so the the all the craziness of the wokeness cult and the overreaching of

00:09:11.080 black lives matter and all of that has happened on trump's watch and you could certainly argue

00:09:17.420 in large measure because of trump and because of how bad he is so it's just the idea that he is

00:09:22.920 somehow a corrective to this seems crazy and what i would expect to have under biden is not you know

00:09:31.800 the full capture of biden by the wokeness i would expect all of us to be able to far more credibly

00:09:38.420 pivot and turn our attention on the wokeness and repudiate it i mean not not to say we haven't been

00:09:46.140 doing that but we now do it under the shadow that the right and the far right under trump has managed to

00:09:54.200 produce whereas under a biden administration the wokeness can be discussed as you know in terms that

00:10:01.780 reveal it to be as unhinged and unpragmatic as it is the manner of his politics which is that the

00:10:10.120 truth is entirely dispensable that narratives are what really matter that he can give a speech and

00:10:17.860 he's been giving these campaign speeches which are essentially built upon a complete fantasy about what

00:10:23.900 is going on as well i mean covid is is the most obvious example in which he's declaring that it's over

00:10:29.980 and we've succeeded at the moment that it's surging even in the places he's visiting and if you could

00:10:34.920 go through his and i listened to the last debate and i try to follow the arguments that he's making

00:10:40.820 because i i want to understand what's happening and they're just impossible to follow because

00:10:45.940 they're built upon complete lies and delusions half the time fake statistics invented scenarios

00:10:53.700 complete hyperboles in ways that completely distort any kind of rational debate so that you're reduced

00:11:01.920 when you absorb the way trump discusses with with a resort to feelings essentially tribal feelings

00:11:09.140 feelings of emotion that he seeks to to evoke and to exploit in a way that are rational

00:11:16.520 functioning is is short-circuited because how can you begin to counter-argue trump when it is simply a

00:11:23.700 stream of inventions that are entirely and always self-serving combined with a constant attempt

00:11:30.980 to trigger and to inflame anybody who might conceivably take an issue with it and there is

00:11:38.740 something about that that creates a political dynamic in which other actors those opposing him

00:11:45.180 because they can't actually engage reasonably with certain arguments with evidence they then are

00:11:51.040 empowered to put forward their own narratives their own delusions their own tribal fantasies

00:11:56.720 to counter what he's doing in a point to the extent at which i really think we're lost we are truly

00:12:05.260 lost when you listen to the debates going on there is not a shared set of facts there isn't a shared

00:12:11.480 understanding that we have to apply reason to these facts there is no deliberation happening at all and

00:12:19.600 when i when i wrote like four or five years ago now that this kind of rhetoric this kind of worldview

00:12:27.320 which is entirely narcissistic which is entirely subjective which is entirely about feeling and

00:12:33.500 emotion this is an extinction level event for liberal democracy in as much as liberal democracy

00:12:40.280 requires all of us to engage in a respect for counter argument reasonable counter argument and to and fro and

00:12:50.460 and and trying to accept the result of some kind of deliberation this he has completely subverted in our

00:12:58.000 psyches and in our public debate and therefore empowers irrationality everywhere including on the left so that

00:13:06.280 we we we've we've witnessed people saying things and what he called truthful hyperbole when you think about

00:13:13.140 some of the insane things that he said well i think of describing a multicultural multiracial dynamic

00:13:20.180 america in 2020 as a form of white supremacy is nothing but a mirror image of this truthful hyperbole

00:13:29.940 which makes it almost impossible to engage with reality that's what he's done and he's not solely

00:13:36.860 responsible for it and i i'm not going to say that wokeness or far left or the attack upon liberal

00:13:43.320 democratic values he entirely created he didn't he was partly a product of that but we have a test case of

00:13:51.860 whether he can make it better and in fact he by the very manner of his engagement in the discourse is

00:13:57.580 making it much much worse all the time yeah he has this this almost supernatural ability to make his

00:14:05.860 enemies worse people you know or behave like sociopaths i mean he being this sociopath manages to corrupt

00:14:16.320 even the the well-intentioned reactions to his norm breaking and i mean this is what bothers me so much

00:14:22.420 about this this allegation of trump derangement syndrome or just this claim that yeah we get that

00:14:28.540 you don't like him as a person but that doesn't matter the problem with that is that it doesn't even

00:14:34.600 begin to make contact with the the criticism of him as a person which is actually relevant to his

00:14:42.220 governing and his assuming the responsibility of the presidency because you know as president it really

00:14:48.580 does matter that trump is a terrible human being you know who values nothing beyond his own personal

00:14:56.060 gain and who lies more than any person in human history these are not private flaws these are flaws

00:15:02.980 that have done immense harm to our politics and to our society and i mean you just look at covet i mean

00:15:10.940 covet has just one one phenomenon which is in my mind it's not even the main problem with with his

00:15:17.780 presidency thus far but it's just one case where these flaws you could argue have led to the deaths of

00:15:25.300 some tens of thousands of people who wouldn't be otherwise dead but for what he has done to the messaging

00:15:32.900 around the around you know the public health messaging around the pandemic and you know more broadly than

00:15:38.960 that i think it really matters that we have become the kind of society that could give a person like this

00:15:46.240 so much power and responsibility i mean it's just like when you think about the underlying values

00:15:51.340 here you think about if you're you know if you're a parent and and you could list the virtues that you

00:15:56.600 you hope your kids embody by the time they become adults you want your kids to be intellectually curious

00:16:03.200 and generous and honest and have integrity and have moral courage have empathy compassion wisdom

00:16:12.700 every parent would aspire to this and trump is the living breathing negation of these virtues he not

00:16:20.960 only has none of them he is just bursting with their opposites right he is greedy and malevolent

00:16:28.000 and uncomprehending and is completely unaware of his deficits right i mean he's just this may sound

00:16:34.480 like you know a mere opinion about his personality but it's not i mean these are statements that are

00:16:39.100 every bit as objective about him psychologically as saying that he's you know overweight or that he's

00:16:45.140 taller than average or that he's got you know bronzer on his face or whatever conspires to make him that

00:16:50.240 color and it matters what kind of person you put in this role and whatever you want to say about

00:16:56.240 biden and you know we'll talk about the scandal that no one will talk about i don't know if you have any

00:17:02.580 information or opinions about that but you know whatever you might want to say about biden and

00:17:08.560 whatever you know peripheral corruption he could be found guilty of there is no question that as just

00:17:15.420 as a person as the ethical core of him as a person he is on another planet from trump and that has to matter

00:17:23.180 i think maybe an interesting comparison here is bill clinton who i think characterologically is pretty awful

00:17:31.160 person but nonetheless was capable of operating even if he was let's say economical with the truth at

00:17:39.480 times there was at least some kind of respect he gave to the notion of making rational arguments with

00:17:47.120 evidence and a respect he took even with when he was being persecuted by a special counsel with

00:17:54.480 nonetheless going through the motions of cooperating with it even at some one point being deposed

00:18:01.120 and speaking to something which in contrast with the things that trump was accused of in

00:18:06.880 impeachment completely trivial but clinton was able in some ways but his personal character did

00:18:13.120 i think affect his public but not to the same extent and this is the key thing here it seems to me is a

00:18:18.920 kind of extraordinary and extreme pathological narcissism which prevents trump literally from

00:18:27.380 understanding the experiences of anybody outside of himself and he's an inability to see that he is

00:18:34.620 just one part of a bigger system and that in fact as president he has responsibility for the interests of

00:18:40.720 other people too so that pathological narcissism which is which is really deeper in him than i've ever

00:18:47.920 come across in anybody in public life means that when you come to a situation like suddenly there's a

00:18:54.440 covid crisis what are your instincts your instinct if you were a regular reasonably normal person is

00:19:01.980 blimey we've got to do something about this how do we figure out what the most sensible precautions are

00:19:08.000 let's let's pick up the pandemic playbook that we had inherited and you might even think that some of

00:19:14.900 his instincts politically would be very successful so for example he's kind of the guy that likes to shut

00:19:20.380 borders well he could have shut every border he's kind of the guy that seeks to control the country

00:19:26.420 seeks to put himself at the middle of it well he could have made all sorts of gestures to shutting

00:19:31.260 down the country to imposing masks he had incredible leeway to do whatever he wanted but if especially if

00:19:37.880 your goal is to control the epidemic what did he do he immediately understood this to be a possible

00:19:44.680 threat to the economy which meant to his re-election so his instinct was to deny it to push it out of his mind

00:19:53.660 or if it did happen to try and tell a story that made it not important so he continually and persistently

00:20:01.160 lied in order to push this out of his consciousness because as far as he was concerned it wasn't affecting him

00:20:07.900 even though of course it would personally in the end but that basically incapacitated him from from

00:20:14.120 making any kind of sane judgment about this you know he in some ways you would think this xenophobic

00:20:20.280 germaphobe i mean this is a man that won't let anyone near him what didn't historically wouldn't

00:20:26.200 wouldn't shake anybody's hands if someone coughed near him in the oval office he would ask them to leave

00:20:31.880 he was pathologically hostile to germs that's why he likes fast food we were told i mean he never

00:20:37.620 pressed the lowest button on an elevator because he was terrified of germs why didn't this guy

00:20:42.960 use all those things he had in his armor to launch a real campaign against covid which would have helped

00:20:50.380 him actually politically in the end why because he simply narcissistically couldn't believe that if he

00:20:56.800 were to reduce economic growth it would harm him politically that's all simple short-termism inability

00:21:04.060 to see beyond that and the other thing we learned in the campaign of course is that within his own

00:21:09.920 structure within the republican party within his own administration we saw this as long ago as the

00:21:15.500 first campaign no one no one no one has any authority to stop him doing anything he he's really

00:21:22.600 extraordinary in his ability to persist with his his narcissism through any advice criticism other

00:21:33.900 alternative viewpoints to such an extent that it's it's a kind of blindness that that when the real

00:21:40.720 shit hit the fan when the emergency happened as it always it often does in a presidency he just didn't

00:21:47.800 have the skills to do it his narcissism was so pathological it prevented him from doing even

00:21:52.340 obvious and sensible things yeah he is a kind of moral and psychological paradox in a way because

00:22:00.900 he it's almost like i think of the the fine tuning argument for god you and i have debated religion in

00:22:07.940 the past i don't remember you putting any weight on on the fine tuning of nature's constants as proof

00:22:13.240 of the existence of god but many have done that and you know so they just to remind people that you

00:22:17.440 know if the gravitational constant were slightly different you know there'd be no formation of galaxies

00:22:22.140 and all the rest and if you know the charge on the electron were different well then many things

00:22:27.100 would follow that would be incompatible with life and and it turns out that these constants are tuned

00:22:31.900 within you know the the tiniest fraction of a hair to values that are compatible with the universe as

00:22:38.560 we know it and any change would make things worse and it's almost like he's the virtues i listed a

00:22:47.120 moment ago it's almost like he's got these tuned to their worst possible settings but this doesn't

00:22:53.800 actually make him the worst possible person i mean when there are people who are you know objectively

00:22:58.680 worse than trump you know you just you know compare him to hitler hitler is worse but the things that

00:23:04.360 actually make hitler worse are actually virtues right i mean like courage and a commitment to something

00:23:10.920 beyond yourself right like if you add those you know in generic virtues to an otherwise malevolent

00:23:17.200 asshole well then he becomes a more competent more self-sacrificing malevolent asshole right so evil

00:23:23.720 gets amplified by virtues in certain contexts it's almost like trump has everything dialed to its least

00:23:31.440 respectable level he is not a courageous person he's not a competent person he's not a consistent person

00:23:38.600 he's committed to nothing beyond himself but this makes him again it's it is almost supernatural

00:23:45.480 the degree to which he manages to skate through situations that would would have destroyed

00:23:51.580 any other predecessor politically i mean literally he's guilty of a thousand indiscretions

00:23:58.440 which would have torpedoed the presidency of anyone else so i mean even someone like you know clinton

00:24:03.920 right who i i share your estimation of clinton i'm not at all a fan and i think he's you know

00:24:09.840 there's definitely something sociopathic about him but at least because he was actually quite smart

00:24:15.440 and well-informed and paid lip service if nothing else to the values of being consistent and competent

00:24:21.600 and all the rest you know and even as a liar he felt the burden to lie in a way that his audience

00:24:27.680 would not detect right so you have to be consistent in your line you have to remember what lies you've told

00:24:32.800 i mean you have to insert the lie in the right place in the paragraph so as not to have your

00:24:37.900 dishonesty immediately detected trump feels no burden of any of that he's functioning by a completely

00:24:44.920 different psychophysics and for that it's almost like he's an extraterrestrial that has been put down

00:24:51.620 into the political context of dc and he's managed to train everyone around him through just sheer

00:24:59.380 destruction of their expectations to accept everything and it really is i mean honestly i

00:25:05.880 think he could have had a jeffrey toobin scandal of his own this week you know been caught jacking off

00:25:11.480 on zoom and he would be fine right like literally his defenders would come forward and say things like

00:25:17.400 that's how much he loves america this guy is just so full of passion anything is acceptable from him

00:25:23.160 to his cult and i just have never seen anything like this no and i've never witnessed someone

00:25:29.400 capable of believing their own lies with such aplomb and vigor and energy there's not a single moment

00:25:36.020 in his public life that he has ever seen fit to even qualify even when he said things that are so

00:25:42.940 grotesquely untrue they're obvious he will never concede the slightest scintilla of doubt about it and the

00:25:49.960 huge assertion of a big lie and the self-confidence and the psychological tenacity extraordinary to

00:26:00.240 insist upon this and to sustain it perpetually this is four years of sustaining a series of

00:26:06.920 extraordinary fantasies which started by telling us even when we can see it with our own eyes by

00:26:13.140 telling us that his inauguration crowd was absolutely bigger than obama's whatever your lying eyes are

00:26:19.240 telling you when you look at the that his ability to say that and to insist that it be true and

00:26:24.940 somehow by virtue of his own psyche to force those around him to accept it but even more because

00:26:31.940 they're inconsistent fantasies even within the frame of his own utterances within the span of

00:26:38.800 of a few minutes right like he's he doesn't even have the burden of being consistent with what he said

00:26:45.000 30 seconds ago

00:26:46.000 yes and that is the key to his domination because because the people around him have to agree to both things

00:26:54.740 remember i mean they have to agree to first that black is white and they have to agree to the black is blue

00:26:59.500 and that is the way in which he enforces his domination this is an entirely primitive

00:27:06.900 primal dominance mode of engagement it is utterly it's a warlord mentality it is a mafia boss mentality

00:27:16.980 it is i will say whatever and you will believe it and the honestly i think the capacity to pull that off

00:27:25.260 is a function of some kind of extraordinary mental disability i mean psychological illness that it

00:27:30.760 that there's an energy to this i mean look at the man i mean it's he's 74 right that's one virtue he

00:27:38.640 has he has the virtue of energy that is otherwise incomprehensible i mean the guy is is he's the

00:27:44.360 picture of health i mean it's a perverse kind of health because he's obese and he doesn't exercise

00:27:48.280 and he you can tell he he's you know the rumors about him eating nothing but crap are almost certainly

00:27:53.860 true but it's it's like he is he and this is a unfortunately fairly depressing comparison with

00:28:01.260 biden i mean just the physical presentation i mean biden looks they both stumble over their words

00:28:06.100 but biden's stumbles look like senescence and trump's just looks like more trump yeah there's uh it's in

00:28:14.460 it's it's it's you know when he says maybe i'm immune maybe i'm a superman my genes are like these

00:28:21.500 incredibly powerful things i mean and the truth is i mean i'm just have to sit there and say you know

00:28:26.320 i really don't know anybody with this level of energy sustained this long with this amount of

00:28:32.880 stamina i mean for god's sake the man had covet 19 only a few weeks ago and he's seen his mid 70s

00:28:39.200 and i one thought for a minute that reality would actually impose itself upon him but no

00:28:46.660 no he's even immune to that all right so i take it back he's got he's got one dial that's not tuned

00:28:52.620 to the worst possible position i i envy him his energy that's i mean it's just the idea the way he

00:28:58.480 has always campaigned i mean that is there's something quite amazing there is something there

00:29:03.560 is something about mental illness that can provide that kind of energy that's why it's inexhaustible

00:29:08.720 because it's built upon a a a real psychosis within this real desperate need never to sit still

00:29:16.720 i mean the man has clearly never spent a moment in reflection never spent a moment in silence i doubt

00:29:24.800 you you get no impression this man has an interior life yeah it's entirely out of directed it's an empty

00:29:32.500 void within that is constantly seeking affirmation and in that desperation has a kind of

00:29:38.340 unbelievable energy that also in the past defeated his creditors defeated anyone anybody rival of his

00:29:46.280 in the real estate just in the end even though he crashed his company even though he bank i mean he

00:29:51.320 he gave banks unbelievable headaches in the end his indefatigability required them to finally leave the

00:29:58.880 table forgive the debts cut their losses or his ability to not pay people his ability to sue people

00:30:06.460 into submission this is a very deep and ugly you know i i i do think of the ancients understanding

00:30:14.680 what a tyrant is i think what we've seen is the tyrant is to plato and aristotle out of control

00:30:23.600 personally out of control entirely a function of his appetites which are insatiable

00:30:29.400 and which there is no governing process within his mind there is no ego to control the it it is all it

00:30:37.520 and it's all momentary so and it's that impulse that frightened me and still frightens me

00:30:45.560 given the system that we live in and one of the things i've i've watched is is you know people were

00:30:51.820 worried that he would become a dictator or something and i i looked back and look through what i wrote about

00:30:56.820 him four years ago to see if i you know screwed up if i'd exaggerated and i do think some of us didn't

00:31:04.840 fully assimilate his incompetence or his laziness and and that is a huge relief in a way yeah that's

00:31:14.180 my point about you know the the comparison with with a truly evil dictator is he doesn't have the

00:31:22.000 competence or the commitment that would elevate him to that slot i mean he's he would need more

00:31:27.560 virtues he would need to have a sense of responsibility which is what we understand to

00:31:32.760 be adulthood which is that you understand that your own actions affect others and you are cognizant

00:31:38.280 of that he has never seemingly grown up at all i mean this is a childlike person of extraordinary

00:31:45.980 appetites and impulses and whims and fury the anger the rage that drives him all the time i mean and

00:31:54.240 that has also prevented him for example for in any way reaching out to others or to expanding his base

00:32:00.780 he has not sought to persuade people he's sought to rally them because persuading others has to give

00:32:07.920 them some status some some equality to him these are people who could choose this or no and he has to

00:32:13.700 persuade them that that implies that he's in some way different to them even if it's a minimal form

00:32:18.820 of deference he can't do that so it has to be constant rallying rather than persuasion and that's

00:32:24.680 why he's not expanded his base but has increased its fervency and i don't think that's going to end

00:32:31.220 entirely in fact i think if he were to lose and i'm i'm pretty sure he will but i i'm not i there's still

00:32:37.700 part of me that wonders if these polls have really captured what's going out going on out there

00:32:42.820 yeah well we're uh we're right to be shell-shocked from last time around so

00:32:47.720 we are but he also you know it turns out he kind of wants to be a talk show host sitting in the oval

00:32:53.280 office that he that he's he talks about his own administration as if he were observing it

00:32:59.780 as opposed to directing it and because he lives in this strange world without actual responsibility so

00:33:07.200 hey i just got the biggest platform in the world i will tweet 30 000 times of irrational crazy insults

00:33:15.140 and and and and and and i think that has i mean the impact that that's had on all of our psyches

00:33:22.800 over four years cannot be overstated i i think of him as president is like being in a family where

00:33:31.080 one person is mentally unwell yeah over time every everyone becomes mentally unwell it takes

00:33:37.560 up so much bandwidth i mean that's the i can't imagine even his supporters even people who love

00:33:42.900 him i can't imagine they feel that this change that has come over our society in the last three and a

00:33:49.220 half years is good i mean it's just everyone has to be exhausted by politics taking up this much

00:33:55.800 bandwidth and not just politics but the but tribal politics like intensely emotional psychologically

00:34:03.300 exhausting emotionally draining constant conflict rage emotional outbursts this is all heat there's

00:34:13.820 almost been no light at all and i certainly think that psychologically i've been i mean i'll admit it i

00:34:21.300 think he's gotten into my head and has hannah's created i mean i had a clinical depression just a

00:34:28.440 couple of months after he was elected and i'm not saying that as a joke i'm saying that having to

00:34:33.300 absorb a crazy person every day that you can't really avoid it it reminds me of those people that have to

00:34:40.820 live in totalitarian regimes where the picture and the face of the dear leader is constantly in your

00:34:46.460 you can't you can't get away from it it's on your wall you have to adhere to it you have to you have

00:34:52.900 to acknowledge it every time so that there is no space left for you to have a time without trump

00:34:58.800 and what do you what do you make of the fact though that there are people you know if we haven't already

00:35:04.200 driven them from our audience there are people listening to us who just don't understand this

00:35:11.600 allergy we have to trump it's like so i you know i would just kind of ran through you know all the

00:35:17.380 reasons why i find him to be a despicable person but there are people who just don't see this about

00:35:25.240 him and i and now i honestly i it's so evident to me that it's that i i can't i don't really have

00:35:33.540 even a theory of mind for someone who can't see any of this but i mean it he's a kind of for me he's a

00:35:40.340 kind of and this is you know this just plays into the hand of anyone who would accuse me of trump

00:35:43.960 derangement syndrome because this kind of has a quasi freudian structure but if you told me that i

00:35:50.700 was going to suffer some kind of neurological illness that would make me exactly like trump

00:35:56.280 i would fucking kill myself i mean honestly i think the last the last time we spoke i think this

00:36:04.460 was in one in one of my diatribes about trump years ago i recalled the scene in the exorcist where

00:36:10.040 the you know the the priest is performing the the final ineffectual exorcism of of linda blair

00:36:16.140 and and i think he's strangling her and and the the devil come comes into him you know visibly comes

00:36:22.740 into him and you know shines out from his eyes you know the green the green eyes of satan and at that

00:36:28.120 moment you know he has this moment of kind of wrestling with himself and then he hurls himself

00:36:31.660 through that window and down those stone steps and that's exactly what i would do i mean i mean

00:36:38.600 honestly like he he everything i hope to be everything i everything i admire in myself and

00:36:45.420 and want to to increase and everything i'm depressed about myself and want to change everything is

00:36:51.340 pointing in the opposite direction from what trump has fully actualized in himself and it's just so he

00:36:57.880 is a kind of super stimulus to me it's just he's just the most appalling person i can name right and

00:37:04.240 i mean honestly it's like the invidious comparisons to someone like osama bin laden are honest i do not

00:37:10.280 feel the same way about osama bin laden though i recognize the harms that he caused based on his

00:37:16.440 ideology and i've obviously i've said more than my piece against jihadism but osama bin laden is as a

00:37:23.320 person is far more understandable to me and far less reprehensible personally psychologically than trump

00:37:30.880 and i think the way people and this is just a guess because i'm honestly genuinely shocked when

00:37:37.500 i look at polling and find for example that white catholics are 50 50 now i i was you know i brought up

00:37:44.120 a catholic i am a catholic there are certain core i mean we can disagree about religious faith but there

00:37:49.720 are certain values that are taught and he is literally a negation of every single one i mean there it is

00:37:56.940 almost impossible to come up with someone less officially christian in the virtues than trump is

00:38:02.460 and yet half of them think he's okay and look here's one thought is that they're not really

00:38:09.740 thinking about him they're thinking about the people they hate they're thinking about yes he drives the

00:38:16.100 liberals crazy as you can hear and you know on at least from my microphone and they love that about him

00:38:22.000 and i understand that that's the thing i i totally get that they honestly drive me up the wall i i get

00:38:30.900 into irrational states of loathing of yeah of some of these people and they're in my class and they

00:38:37.180 are all around me i live with them and at some point i'm just god damn these people i want and if and he

00:38:43.700 is if you imagine that people are just blinding themselves to who he is and just are so consumed by

00:38:49.740 loathing contempt for the elites then you can see how psychologically you can support him without

00:38:57.180 thinking too much about him and and he is if you think of him as one giant middle finger

00:39:03.320 then it works and i do think there is and i i do think the way in which the media has responded and

00:39:11.720 which other institutions have responded including things like the fbi and cia and the mainstream media

00:39:18.640 in its broad sense and even the judiciary who have gone nuts let's let's that they have overplayed

00:39:25.680 their hands in ways that equally undermine uh confidence in a liberal democracy this seems if

00:39:33.420 it's all just some great tribal struggle and if it is that tribal struggle and you know you hate those

00:39:38.580 people well maybe he's tolerable maybe he's maybe he's just simply a weapon at hand and given the

00:39:45.860 the sort of way in which those elites have never truly copped to their responsibility for some of

00:39:54.360 the worst decisions in the last 30 years in this country especially in so far as they affected regular

00:39:59.860 working class white people i think is integral to understanding his appeal as a concept and i i i i can't

00:40:09.060 i sympathize with that i really do and i and i've tried to learn from it at the same time he is so

00:40:16.380 despicable and so dangerous i mean here the fact that we are sitting here a week before an election and

00:40:23.360 neither you nor i can know for sure that one of the candidates in fact the president will wait patiently for

00:40:30.560 all the votes to be tallied where there will be no question that there will be a clear and obvious

00:40:35.500 transfer of power that we will be resolved we'll have this big conflict but it will be resolved and

00:40:41.840 we will move forward the fact that we don't know that for sure yeah the fact that this man is even

00:40:46.920 holding the stability of our system as a weapon shows an unbelievable level of recklessness and

00:40:53.580 a responsibility and a true danger to everything and i'm you know i'm so tired of being told right

00:41:00.660 now that you overestimated you hyperventilated he hasn't been a dictator he's blah blah blah and this

00:41:05.640 is a very sort of world weary sense yes but what are we supposed to do when a president says i may not

00:41:11.260 abide by the results of election are we supposed to sit there and say oh well we know he doesn't really

00:41:15.840 mean that or we'll be fine no that's not our responsibility why are we being put in this position at all

00:41:22.440 how dare this man yeah come into our democracy and threaten it this way it is unprecedented well

00:41:30.280 well i know i sound passionate about this but at this point like no fuck you that is not tolerable

00:41:35.320 no party should support it no one can tolerate it and yet he does and by doing that for those of us

00:41:42.300 like me who are institutionally very conservative who believe that liberal democracy is is fragile

00:41:47.260 needs to be defended this is this is a this is a crime against our very system of government

00:41:53.420 the fact that this man can sympathize with and openly support people who are engaging in the most

00:42:00.280 hideous repressive measures like putin or she or he could actually we're told tell she don't worry

00:42:06.480 about putting all those uyghurs in concentration camps i'd be with you if i were over there this is

00:42:11.000 sorry but it's just it's it's it's it's not a personality flaw it's a it's a critical undermining

00:42:17.380 argument to everything that we believe in in the west yeah so you've you've just hit upon the the worst

00:42:24.560 current thing about him and it's the one recent fact that i think in isolation i mean forget about

00:42:32.460 everything else we've said about him and it could be said about him that i think should be a deal breaker

00:42:38.040 for somebody the fact that we have a a sitting u.s president who will not commit to the peaceful

00:42:46.440 transfer of power should he lose the election i mean this is just so unbelievable and it is so

00:42:53.480 dangerous and irresponsible that i mean that that should be the only thing you have to know about him

00:43:00.980 to know that you can't vote for him i mean i really do think that there's that that really does supersede

00:43:06.720 any other concern we could have about anything and i mean and there are literally a thousand other

00:43:12.300 things that almost rise to that level i mean the fact that he's a he's someone who repeatedly has asked

00:43:19.880 why we can't just use our nuclear weapons right i mean he's the one person in our society who can

00:43:24.600 launch a nuclear first strike and he seems to be conflicted over the ethics there there are literally

00:43:30.380 hundreds of things like that that we could dredge up to disqualify him or prove his unfitness for

00:43:37.980 office but the fact that he will not commit to a peaceful transfer of power here and and the fact

00:43:43.840 that he's willing to roll the dice with the obvious harm that that is doing to our politics and the risk that

00:43:51.040 is amplifying for political unrest in the aftermath of the election i mean it's just the thing that's

00:43:57.540 amazing to me is that that he has not lost support on the basis of that i mean i would i would think

00:44:03.820 that his support i mean his support should go to zero after saying that i mean the only thing he could

00:44:10.980 say that is equivalently crazy to this um and he almost did it i mean he made a joke about biden

00:44:19.440 getting assassinated at one of his rallies the other day but the only thing that's actually analogous to

00:44:25.180 him not committing to a peaceful transfer of power is for him to actually encourage his supporters to

00:44:31.500 assassinate biden if he stood up at a rally and said listen we'd all be a lot better if one of you

00:44:36.360 put a bullet in this joker right i mean if he did that the truth is i'm not even sure that's worse i think

00:44:43.080 it might be more shocking to some people but the fact that he is willing to roll the dice with endless

00:44:49.860 allegations that the election is rigged there's no way he could lose but for the essentially a democrat

00:44:55.800 run coup and he's not going to commit to the peaceful transfer of power and he's just willing

00:45:01.240 to just let that aftermath play out with 400 million guns in the society it is unbelievable that we're here

00:45:09.220 and it's doubly unbelievable that we haven't seen his the support for him go to zero on the on that basis

00:45:16.060 yes and the truth is that that i am genuinely frightened of a close result which he refuses to

00:45:24.920 acknowledge i'm genuinely frightened of an unbelievably specious attempt to call the election

00:45:30.440 on election night regardless of whether we've completed or voted or have counted all or even

00:45:36.700 a majority of the votes the fact that i'm afraid that he could indeed call for violence in the streets

00:45:44.120 in his defense that he could stoke and would talk about this as if he weren't ultimately responsible

00:45:50.800 for law and order in the united states is simply unique in the history of the united states or unique

00:45:56.480 in the history of western democracy actually and given the passions that he has created and given also

00:46:04.360 the the racial fault line that he has mined and given the radicalization that he has also enabled

00:46:11.880 but not he hasn't created it entirely himself but he has definitely made it worse we're talking about

00:46:17.460 probably the most dangerous period in modern american history in terms of the stability of the actual

00:46:23.400 regime of the stability of the system when the person in charge of the system openly speaks of

00:46:30.700 no responsibility for maintaining it in fact because again i come back to this pathological narcissism

00:46:37.380 he cannot see outside his own personal pride ego and self-interest that we are still in a terribly

00:46:47.720 precarious situation in this country and i i will i will not breathe easily or sleep well until he is removed

00:46:57.980 from office and i felt that way for them because i can't ever see because he's never given us

00:47:02.780 any indication of any limit any limit to what he will and will not do it is a constant process of

00:47:10.900 shock and when you look at classical depictions of crazy tyrants this is their capacity it's part of

00:47:19.580 what maintains their power they never tell you the limits on what they can do they always keep you

00:47:25.340 guessing we'll see what happens is one of his favorite phrases which is a threat it's not an observation

00:47:32.400 and his his refusal to ever put any outer limits on what he can and cannot do in the terms of this

00:47:41.220 culture is is unique and it is terrifying and and i'm sorry but republicans and conservatives who

00:47:49.340 sort of roll their eyes at this as if what they're witnessing is entertainment truth is i don't think i've seen

00:47:56.940 the rank and file republican response to his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power i mean

00:48:05.760 how have you noticed how republicans spin that and bracket it or or otherwise convey their reasons for

00:48:14.160 not taking it seriously i haven't seen a clear absolutely unequivocal except maybe from romney

00:48:22.220 statement from people with power saying this is unacceptable and must be stopped they tell us that

00:48:31.260 it's not going to happen he's just joking this constant he's just joking stuff again it it suggests

00:48:38.600 that we're watching a miniseries rather than living in an actual functioning republic but i mean in this

00:48:43.240 case he's so obviously not joking this ball has been teed up for him you know now at least a dozen

00:48:50.300 times and every time he declines to hit it in the way you would expect a u.s president to i think it's

00:48:59.920 because he sees himself sort of in a lawsuit where you never concede anything and you you you until the

00:49:05.780 very last minute when you if you're forced to settle you may be forced to settle but you certainly

00:49:11.000 never give away any leverage in advance which of course might be a sensible strategy if you are a

00:49:16.600 private actor within a system which is already guaranteed some basic security when you're actually

00:49:21.880 the president of the united states and you're putting the entire system at risk i just think

00:49:27.280 there's an incredible complacency it about the stability of the system which really does help

00:49:33.140 reinforce to me who thinks of himself as a sort of classical conservative just how anti-conservative

00:49:40.220 this republican movement is it is absolutely contemptuous of procedures norms and institutions

00:49:48.000 has absolutely no concern for their preservation does not even see the system that we live in

00:49:56.440 for what it is it is simply a tv show it is simply a talk radio show it is simply a forum for

00:50:04.120 entertainment and yes i can get moved each another way but by the entertainment i can get really pissed

00:50:10.980 off at all these crazy lefties i can i can love listening to joe wrote i can do all that but i'm not

00:50:15.460 i'm not going to keep my eye off the ball of sustaining this system i've read enough history

00:50:21.700 i've seen enough i've i've read enough literature to see what is in front of our noses which is this guy

00:50:29.560 should never have been in there ever yeah there's now this this loss of trust in institutions but

00:50:36.580 the loss of trust is to a shocking degree warranted i mean there has just been a hollowing out of

00:50:44.500 institutions and there's you know there's been a denigration of them to the point where you know

00:50:51.380 you're just not even sure how many competent people are left in positions of responsibility at places

00:50:58.120 like the fda and the cdc and you know the press has based on its own i mean for the the very dynamic

00:51:05.000 you described i mean like so much of the counter reaction to trump the necessary counter reaction

00:51:10.780 has been so deranged by how bad he is that now you have something like the new york times is the worst

00:51:18.900 possible incarnation of itself because it has been so captured by the spirit of the resistance and it's

00:51:26.820 true also for example with some of these courts that struck down his immigration rulings which were

00:51:32.340 self-evidently from the get-go within his purview agree with him or disagree with him that some of

00:51:36.940 these legal and judicial arguments have been thrown up by some of the courts have which have eventually

00:51:40.560 been shot down have nonetheless been discredited the courts i think in a way that was always a danger

00:51:46.800 the overreaction was always going to be as dangerous long term as his his is his excrescence and and that's

00:51:57.880 what the trick is within liberal democracy is to keep try and keep these things at bay because otherwise

00:52:04.180 they cannibalize everything they cannibalize the rule of law i mean what he's done with the justice

00:52:08.940 department for example i mean what he's done to the credibility of the fbi and which is i think

00:52:16.160 terrible and as much as we do have to have trust in neutral institutions that enforce the law and if

00:52:22.700 the fbi doesn't have that trust we're in terrible trouble at the same time he's provoked reactions

00:52:29.240 within those systems that i think have been excessive i i i do think and in the media i mean i think the

00:52:36.520 the russia obsession the notion that we were going to prove that he is a paid agent of the formula from

00:52:44.420 the 1980s onwards i mean this stuff was was a fantasy and it it was even though there are lots

00:52:52.780 of troubling ties between him and the russian but they're trying he doesn't have any qualms or

00:52:58.600 scruples about taking aid from anyone and he naturally sides with dictators because he likes them

00:53:04.700 he thinks they're cool he thinks they're the ones that really know what's going on so his support for

00:53:10.740 russia or he's close to putin were completely overdetermined but the entire establishment had

00:53:16.140 to engage in what turned out to be a three-year-long goose chase to find some obvious smoking gun which

00:53:24.700 was never going to be there in the first place and has thereby helped discredit a great deal of

00:53:31.000 these institutions i mean i think what you read in the new york times today is is is that is that when

00:53:36.700 you read for example ben smith the new york times not to get personal about this but who is who's who's

00:53:41.460 who's defending keeping the hunter biden stuff out of the press when you realize that this is the

00:53:46.360 person who published the steel dossier without any qualms whatsoever or any context or anything other

00:53:52.120 than hey here it is let's have a look at it you begin to realize just how the press has discredited

00:53:57.100 itself and in public opinion also and i must say sam i mean i look at places like cnn and i just i

00:54:03.180 can't believe it anymore yeah oh yeah it's completely broken yeah it is it is broken so badly

00:54:09.480 and and a function of this of course is that it's also incredibly boring you look at what's happened

00:54:15.560 in in mainstream media and it is one endless tedious recitation of the same prejudices and views

00:54:23.380 without any and you've seen them internally being capable of accepting a diversity of opinion within

00:54:30.340 their own ranks it's it's been a terrible period for media even though they have done incredibly well

00:54:38.520 financially by pandering in this way and by becoming essentially abandoning any pretense of

00:54:44.880 neutrality they don't realize that that in itself is also an attack upon liberal democracy and i want

00:54:51.200 there to be a newspaper where i can trust which i can trust and they want to read a newspaper though i

00:54:56.420 don't read every page and feel there is an obvious agenda here that that even i who loathe the man

00:55:02.920 and despise many of his policies i i still find irritating and and crude and just self-discrediting

00:55:11.540 well that's a just a crucial line that can't be crossed i mean there's so many valid honest

00:55:19.040 well calibrated things you can say against trump that you never need to exaggerate you never i mean

00:55:25.940 people i say this knowing that some people having listened to me for the last hour will think i've

00:55:29.900 exaggerated his flaws but i i can assure you i haven't but to take the the one piece of fine print

00:55:37.360 i put out earlier on is that you know you know he has this very frequent attack against him that he

00:55:43.040 didn't condemn white supremacy and that he in the aftermath of charlottesville he said there were good

00:55:47.900 people the fine people on both sides and left it at that right that's simply untrue you can take five

00:55:54.320 minutes to listen to the press conference where you know the the fine people utterance first escaped

00:56:00.100 his mouth and it's within 15 seconds of of saying that he said i'm not talking about the white

00:56:06.780 supremacists you know that we should condemn them utterly he was absolutely clear about that that he was

00:56:11.380 talking about what he imagined to be a different crowd of people who were simply protesting the the removal

00:56:17.780 of monuments that were dear to their heart right and these are these were not the tiki torch

00:56:22.060 carrying anti-semites yeah he made it he did make a distinction that the press simply lied about

00:56:27.380 and biden lies about it and kamala harris lies about it and whether everyone knows their line or not or

00:56:32.840 they just can't be bothered to figure out what's true one wonders whether daniel dale has

00:56:37.980 ruled on this right there are things that have said about him that are not true and that are unfair

00:56:43.700 yeah the point is you never need to do that right you never need to be dishonest with respect to

00:56:51.180 yes but they have a gender in doing that because they want to racialize this the the the left has done

00:56:56.960 a great sterling constant job of saying that what this is really about is not illiberalism it's not the

00:57:05.020 dangers of a person who doesn't who can't be trusted or who is a fantasist or a narcissist or a dangerous

00:57:11.620 person they they want to make this into proof that in fact all of america just voted twice for

00:57:17.800 obama is a is a white not just racist but white supremacist and therefore they have to up the ante

00:57:24.020 all the time what's fascinating to me is after four years of that four years of it it looks as if trump

00:57:31.620 is going to significantly increase even from a very low base but nonetheless increase support among blacks

00:57:36.800 and hispanics and hispanics and if biden wins it's going to be because he won over elderly whites

00:57:40.760 rather than so the actual data that we're seeing does not does not portray this and you also realize

00:57:47.420 that the people who were critical in giving biden the nomination were basically solid black democratic

00:57:55.840 voters who who who have their feet on the ground and their head screwed on right who's understood

00:58:01.160 that it is not in the interest of african americans to have their entire neighborhoods ransacked with with

00:58:06.400 with looting and rioting and and and in flames that people do want to see police misconduct held to

00:58:13.360 account they do want to see real reform and there is a huge i think majority for practical common sense

00:58:19.780 reforms in in restraining police abuse absolutely but that is being blown away by an attempt to create

00:58:26.900 this sort of grand racial tribal narrative that isn't actually borne out in in reality and that's also

00:58:34.760 the case with the question of immigration where where what are completely genuine and completely legitimate

00:58:40.600 democratic arguments about how much immigration should we have how little immigration we should be how should we enforce

00:58:46.960 these are completely legitimate questions for politics and yet we are told that anybody raising these issues or even

00:58:52.900 having anything but a completely permissive view is inherently thereby a white supremacist now of course when people are being told that

00:58:59.920 that that that things that they just wanted to have a voice on that they are bigots for even raising it of course

00:59:06.540 they're going to be more concerned and hate the people calling them bigots than the person they think might actually in the end stand up for them

00:59:13.000 and that helps helps trump do what he he wants to do i don't i think i think trump is yeah i think he's i think in in the sense that he's

00:59:22.620 dismissive of african americans and in contemptuous of and and lacks any empathy or compassion or any sense

00:59:29.820 really of the nuances of history is a racist yes but do i think he's a kind of long-standing

00:59:37.860 white supremacist seeking to oppress no he's desperate for minority votes he champions them he talks

00:59:44.240 about them all the time it's more complicated than that and i think well he's totally without ideology

00:59:50.220 you know he's not committed to anything i do think i i believe you know to a moral certainty that

00:59:57.220 i have evidence that he's racist just but it's not especially public evidence and i've talked about

01:00:03.240 this before but i know at least two people who have it directly from mark burnett that he buried

01:00:09.400 the apprentice tapes and that that on those tapes you've got trump using the n-word in earnest not

01:00:17.060 talking about it as a as a word but just taught you just using it because that's what he calls these

01:00:22.420 people we also know that he's a rapist i mean this is not this is not up for dispute so you just struck

01:00:29.920 a point of contact to the the hunter biden yeah scandal that no one will talk about the truth is i

01:00:35.500 haven't looked into this enough to have formed an opinion about it i just know how inconsequential and

01:00:41.660 exercise that would be because the truth is there's basically nothing that could be there

01:00:47.840 that would swamp the invidious comparisons i've made between biden and trump thus far it's like you

01:00:54.780 know even if you could prove to me that i mean to take a another scandal that no one wanted to talk

01:00:59.180 about the allegation that biden had you know sexually assaulted somebody who was working for his campaign

01:01:05.600 whatever it was 20 years ago at a certain point the new york times talked about that but only

01:01:11.020 to sort of put it back in in the closet um it didn't seem especially credible i think in the

01:01:16.280 end to people but even if it had been every bit as credible as the allegations against trump

01:01:22.180 well it's one allegation against what 20 well in trump's case i mean so it's like there's nothing

01:01:27.900 you're going to find in the hunter biden story that is going to rise to the level of the corruption i

01:01:36.500 already know trump is guilty of and that's why it's deeply uninteresting to me but i share people's

01:01:43.960 concern that we are now in a place in our democracy where we feel like we can't even report stories

01:01:51.820 because they could so destabilize our politics so that we would wind up with four more years of trump i

01:02:00.240 i think it is in fact true as a matter of just the changes you know hourly changes in public opinion

01:02:06.660 that comey's reactivation of the of the hillary clinton investigation in the last week of the of

01:02:14.160 the campaign is why trump became president i mean it was that you know obviously it was there are many

01:02:19.920 other variables here but that was the thing that changed the polling decisively i mean you can just

01:02:25.800 essentially time it to the hour but we're here so i don't know what what should we be doing with

01:02:30.620 hunter biden and and joe biden at the moment i i've thought about this too i think the reason why

01:02:36.460 that did have an impact is because it it played right in 2016 is it played right into the existing

01:02:40.960 narrative of clinton as a as a crook basically and as a and as a very deceptive and self-interested

01:02:48.060 old-fashioned corrupt politician and so it it hit that way although the truth is it even then it

01:02:54.140 we're talking about a massive double standard because whatever you could convict anyone else of

01:03:00.260 in that regard trump has that in triplicate yeah i have i have done my best to read these stories

01:03:07.120 about hunter biden's laptop and when i think it through rather like you rather uncannily like you

01:03:12.140 i think well compared to ivanka compared to don june compared to the unbelievable open proud corruption of

01:03:20.580 this obviously corrupt family in the white house this is trivial and and i think and i do but i do

01:03:27.420 think that carefully engineered last minute part partisan oriented sudden revelations should be met

01:03:36.140 with skepticism and restraint for the media and i think that's perfectly sensible what the wall street

01:03:43.300 journal did in reporting this out and telling us what wasn't there actually that there wasn't anything

01:03:50.340 there was the right thing to do the extraordinary attempt to forbid any discussion of this in any other

01:03:59.380 media source the the way in which bringing this up is regarded as some sort of horrifying thing whereas in fact

01:04:06.360 obviously it seems to me hunter biden is a corrupt individual the way in a legal way most of the time

01:04:14.900 there's nothing illegal about the way he parlayed and peddled his connection to his father and this is a

01:04:21.480 problem it is it pales in insignificance compared to what trump is doing and has done and it doesn't

01:04:26.840 implicate joe himself but the the way in which the mainstream media has responded instinctively to suppress

01:04:34.520 this story and the way in which social media then reacted also by suppressing this story i cannot but unnerve us

01:04:43.080 yeah this is this is a media that is not in is more interested at this point in controlling the news then then then

01:04:51.960 then airing it and i don't think the giuliani's slightly nutball interviews about this or the some

01:05:00.520 of the details of this i don't think they're that persuasive i don't think it would dramatically shift but

01:05:05.800 i don't like the idea that we have a media interested in keeping from the public stuff that might change

01:05:13.880 their minds about a political debate with at this point in a in a campaign i just don't like it it's

01:05:20.920 it's not what our instincts should be as journalists our core instinct should be what's here what's in it

01:05:26.200 it shouldn't be to push it out there like ben smith did with the steel dossier it should be however not to say

01:05:32.780 this must never be talked about and what i've seen i mean the the refusal to air this except on fox

01:05:40.360 and then there are some lonely people like like matt taibbi who is interested in in writing about this

01:05:47.160 and glenn greenwald who is i think trying to write about this in intercept but that you won't find it

01:05:52.680 anywhere is troubling to me and especially troubling because if we do get a change of regime if we do get

01:05:58.360 biden in then all these people are going to be involved not just in suppressing information but

01:06:04.040 suppressing information on behalf of those in power and i seen i i see the mindset among my peers in

01:06:12.200 journalism and it it chills me they really do believe that their job is to advance quote unquote

01:06:19.080 social justice is not to get as much information out to people as possible and let them decide for

01:06:24.120 themselves and that's a that's a it's a really disturbing thing and i've seen it up close and i've

01:06:30.440 seen the pressure socially on people not to do this and being a journalist is to be an

01:06:38.760 asshole in so many respects it is it is to embrace your position as the skunk at the party the person

01:06:44.920 bringing up the unpopular stuff the the stuff now you you can do it responsibly irresponsibly and i'm

01:06:50.680 not i'm not saying that this stuff should have been spread all over the place immediately but i am

01:06:55.400 saying the way the media has responded this seems to me deeply unhealthy it speaks to a rot in in

01:07:02.040 mainstream media and its understanding of what journalism is and it concerns me it really does

01:07:08.840 i don't i i understand why people don't want to last minute comey or some bullshit distorting

01:07:14.200 everybody's views at the last minute yeah but and i do think this was cynically done by partisan

01:07:18.760 people for partisan purposes but hunter biden is almost certainly a shady individual and joe biden's

01:07:25.960 refusal refusal even to address the question simply to dismiss it out of hand as a smear job as opposed

01:07:34.440 to engage in it similarly his refusal his absolute refusal to say where he stands on the question of

01:07:39.960 court packing which is an incredibly important topic and to have been supported by the mainstream

01:07:44.920 media in in not answering these questions in fact cheering him for not answering them

01:07:49.960 is troubling and certainly troubling for the future it reveals that the media is disposed to treat and

01:07:57.960 social media are disposed to treat much of american society as dangerous children but i mean the truth

01:08:06.280 is that given what has happened and given that the dangerous child half of our society voted for last

01:08:11.960 time around that's not totally unwarranted i mean there really is this concern that even with however

01:08:18.280 scrupulous you are to deal with the information it is a kind of informationally it is a kind of toxic

01:08:24.920 waste that will get spread around and given the asymmetries here i mean what's so amazing is the

01:08:32.120 new york times gets one thing wrong to its everlasting discredit whereas you know fox need not get anything

01:08:38.520 right you know and they're both considered news organizations and trump can lie and lie and lie and lie

01:08:43.960 and no one cares and it can be as obvious as the sun is in the sky and you catch joe biden lying

01:08:51.720 clearly and that could completely derail his campaign but for good reason i mean those those are the norms

01:08:57.720 we want we want to get back to a world where to catch someone lying in public life dictates a real

01:09:03.960 reputational cost you know how did we get so far from that again in trumpistan everything functions

01:09:10.840 by a different physics and awareness of that is is just paralyzed us in trying to deal with it i i get it

01:09:19.400 i think you're absolutely right i i think social media can do things that are really destructive and i do

01:09:25.160 think some level of responsibility from those who control that social media and is important

01:09:31.240 i'm just concerned that it gets to a slightly pathological and a rather knee-jerk attempt

01:09:37.080 to suppress information rather than to get it all out yeah and well it's also the streisand effect i

01:09:42.120 mean it's by trying to suppress it you're now calling attention to it and it's although it seems like

01:09:47.320 they have managed to squash this i'm i think the fact that there isn't really anything really damning in

01:09:52.680 this about joe biden himself has helped keep this thing from not being the central and of course it

01:09:58.680 shouldn't be a central issue in the campaign and of course tucker carlson sitting down for

01:10:02.760 an hour to spread this stuff is is clearly not really a function of journalism it's a function

01:10:07.560 of partisan warfare at the same time again i'm being squishy here but i i i i do think you have to as a

01:10:14.840 journalist if this stuff comes out you have to for example ask biden is this untrue do you do you

01:10:21.640 are you telling us that this is a complete fraud that this laptop is not hunter biden's that nothing in

01:10:26.520 this is true about hunter biden is is this a is this an entirely false flag operation and and the

01:10:33.240 fact is he hasn't been forced to say yes or no to that right and and he should be forced to say yes

01:10:39.080 or no to that we should know if he thinks this is an entire fabrication or if he thinks it's a real

01:10:45.320 thing that somehow they got hold of this laptop it really is hunter biden and but but it's being distorted

01:10:50.520 or manipulated or those are two options he he hasn't been the press has let him get away with that

01:10:56.520 so let's say we escape the worst possible outcomes here and arrive at something like

01:11:02.760 the best possible from our point of view which is that you know biden wins in a landslide

01:11:07.960 and there is a peaceful transfer of power and trump tries to um i mean it's interesting to consider what

01:11:15.160 he will will attempt to do as an ex-president i guess i'm just wondering what what what aftermath can

01:11:21.480 you imagine for republicans just imagine the republicans who will at that point try to

01:11:30.280 diminish their culpability for having enabled trump for four years just culturally politically what is

01:11:38.840 this the process of of resetting going to look like it's almost like you need truth and reconciliation

01:11:46.920 commissions to give people the space in which to offer the appropriate mea culpas and to get you

01:11:53.000 know a reboot i'm not sure it's that hard because i think you can make an argument and i'm looking at

01:11:59.960 sort of center-right parties in europe on this this there are things that trump identified and elevated

01:12:06.920 that are real there is a real worry about large swaths of the working and middle classes in the west

01:12:15.720 being completely left behind by globalization and the power of unrestrained global capitalism

01:12:22.680 and there is also a genuine question of how fast a population can change demographically without

01:12:30.040 being counterproductive in terms of it provoking racist xenophobic or nativist responses when it is

01:12:38.200 what is a historic peak i mean not seen for another over a century of something like 14 of the entire

01:12:47.480 population of the united states not having been born in the united states which is as high as it's it's

01:12:52.280 been since since the early 20th century after which there was a very draconian immigration law i think

01:12:57.960 there's those issues can be integrated into a more sensible and liberal democratic conservatism

01:13:07.160 that that you can harness patriotism you can harness traditional values with skepticism towards completely

01:13:15.480 free trade and with some more control and enforcement of immigration laws in a way that is a completely

01:13:22.120 plausible and probably quite popular position and it's something that for example in the uk the tories

01:13:29.400 were able to do quite successfully and win an 80 seat majority the biggest majority in in decades in the uk

01:13:39.640 parliament and even though they're struggling with covet obviously that's that's quite an achievement i i

01:13:45.400 don't i i'm i'm quite optimistic about the possibility of a kind of adjusted conservative it's not going to

01:13:51.880 be a return to neoconservatism in foreign policy it's not going to be a return to neoclassical economics it

01:13:58.520 can't be because they have become i think a victim of their own success so i do think there's a possibility

01:14:05.480 for a a figure to emerge to say we get what you were saying we realize this guy was out of his mind

01:14:11.560 i mean they're not going to say it quite that boldly but they will emphasize things like the rule of law

01:14:18.360 given taken a democracy those kind of values but what i to be honest what i really hope is that biden

01:14:26.520 biden will be and present himself as being a unifying president and that means really first of all finding a

01:14:35.480 way to to to to keep us and keep this economy alive during covid which is going to be brutal in the next six to nine

01:14:44.440 months but i do think there is a real opening for a major stimulus i think there's a real opening for major

01:14:51.640 infrastructure investment for green energy investment i do think there is an appetite for repairing our

01:14:59.480 our traditional alliances which could be very popular and i do think there's an appetite for

01:15:05.720 police reform which is not framed in the terms of some sort of great reckoning with institutionalized

01:15:12.760 racism or white supremacy but which is geared towards bringing the races together around

01:15:20.680 law and order and protecting everyone i i think there is a real opening for that kind of center centrist

01:15:29.160 democratic position which is going to actually in policy terms be a shift economically to the left and i

01:15:35.640 think if biden is able to do that without caving to some of the more extreme cultural and social elements

01:15:42.120 in his coalition he could be extremely successful and so i my hope is that we might

01:15:49.880 move away from tribalism i'm encouraged by biden's quixotic but enduring belief that he can talk to a

01:15:57.960 few republican senators and get some kind of support i do also think that biden uniquely does not

01:16:05.000 trigger white voters in the way that another democrat might i do think that that there will be a big fight

01:16:14.040 within within within the democrats over who's going to win and in my darker moments i think biden is just

01:16:20.040 out of it and will cave and will will bring in so many crazy ass wokies into the situation that it will

01:16:26.680 all become terrible but i don't want to give up on that possibility it's not like biden biden has run a

01:16:34.280 campaign for the center he has not even though he has endorsed big infrastructure spending and debt which

01:16:42.200 i think is probably necessary given the extraordinary crisis of the global economy in this epidemic but

01:16:49.400 i think in general he's he's quite appealing to lots of people as we've seen and i think he's also

01:16:55.800 a decent person in this in as much as he won't outrageously lie he won't stir up racial animosities

01:17:05.400 i was just today for example he just came out very simply and said the the riots and looting in

01:17:10.520 philadelphia last night are just unacceptable and wrong period right and that's important it's

01:17:16.200 important that the cops understand that the president is not going to sell them out at every opportunity

01:17:20.840 even though he's going to be tough in making sure that the injustices that are there are are examined and

01:17:26.600 rooted out you know i i just wonder whether biden isn't actually a better spokesman for obamaism

01:17:32.520 than obama was even though obama was incredibly eloquent there was there was just something

01:17:37.400 culturally that didn't that clearly it didn't i mean i found him unbelievably inspiring and culturally

01:17:43.880 ennobling and and wonderfully uh but clearly that didn't work for large numbers of people they felt

01:17:50.360 alienated to some extent and biden is not that the fact that the democrat democratic

01:17:56.600 base picked this guy the fact that black voters disproportionately picked this guy is encouraging

01:18:04.280 to me and it's it's it's it's an opportunity for us to revive a certain liberal democratic by i mean

01:18:11.240 those in two small l small d yeah terms around this rather conventional figure of biden i i can't wait

01:18:18.680 for that and i can't i want i so desperately want the temperature to go down i want i want some of the

01:18:25.640 tension to be released i want i want a president i don't have to think about for a few weeks i i i i

01:18:32.040 want i want someone whose core psyche i'm pretty comfortable with even though biden over the years

01:18:38.840 has driven me nuts and he's irritating in some ways and he's he's he's he's confusing and and he can be

01:18:45.160 and he has been a blowhard what's interesting to me is the biden they've given us in this campaign

01:18:50.600 is not that biden he is more the elder statesman come together let's all get along figure elderly

01:18:59.480 figure someone who represents a past understanding for example of bipartisanship and these are things

01:19:04.760 that they have advertised they put them front and forward that matters in terms of how the

01:19:11.400 administration will evolve he's going to have enormous pressure on him from the left

01:19:15.800 but i think i mean my hope again i can't guarantee this and part of me is pessimistic but my hope is

01:19:23.480 that he can really do that he can put together a civilized civil coalition around the center and and

01:19:31.000 i think that and i i actually think and this is another debate if he gets a really big win i think

01:19:37.560 that helps him against the left right because he's going to bring in a whole bunch of democrats into the

01:19:43.560 senate and the house who are going to be answerable to swing voters in marginal seats and and if you

01:19:50.680 look at the way the democrats responded on the way they campaigned in 2018 if that is where biden goes

01:19:57.320 then i think it's quite possible he'll he'll he'll he'll do very well and but as you point out he is the

01:20:04.280 elder biden and uh you know to the point of where it does not seem irrational to imagine that um

01:20:13.560 he's a one-term president and he's he may well be uh succeeded at some point in the middle of his

01:20:20.600 term by kamala harris i mean actuarially it would not be a terrible surprise so how do you view the

01:20:27.880 prospect of a harris presidency why do you ask me that question is this the part we cut out so as not to

01:20:37.720 give energy to trump voters yes i i'm not that i wasn't that to be honest with you there's an element

01:20:46.680 of her that that obviously seems to be tough-minded and i'm certainly in favor of women in in high office

01:20:55.880 and that's a plus as far as i'm concerned there's an element to her that has seemed a little unserious

01:21:01.800 to be honest with you i mean i remember her in one of those debates where she said that within a

01:21:07.640 hundred days if they didn't pass gun control legislation i can't remember exactly what she

01:21:11.880 said she would make she would do something she would enforce it herself and i'm like what and

01:21:17.960 bryden actually in that debate said well you know constitutionally you can't do that you know that's

01:21:21.960 not within the powers of the president and i was like well that's an obviously good point and i

01:21:27.720 waited for her to respond she's a she's a prosecutor she knows the law she knows the constitution

01:21:32.120 and she just kind of giggled and laughed and said oh come on joe we can do it if we try yes we can

01:21:38.840 and i was like that is not a serious person right but in terms of fears that she is is a full uh you

01:21:45.320 know avatar of the wokeness i think i mean her history as a prosecutor would suggest that she's not

01:21:51.080 among the the defund the police crowd whatever lip service she's paid to wokeness

01:21:56.120 no but she's she's also seems to have a finger in the wind as and is is a somewhat canny

01:22:03.640 politician and we'll see he would have to die for her to succeed i i think there's still quite

01:22:09.880 a chance he'll be hanging on for four more years i don't think he's going to run again

01:22:13.960 but and i do think therefore after the midterms there's going to be a real fight

01:22:17.400 for the future of the party i can't imagine him running for a second term

01:22:21.000 and i do think that also gives biden an opportunity you know if you are trying to be

01:22:26.280 the unifier if you're trying to be the person who settles things down and attempts to put us back

01:22:32.440 together in some way then not having an interest in your own perpetuation for second term yeah gives

01:22:39.320 you a kind of platform to do that more in a bipartisan way and i do think that's biden's

01:22:45.560 instinct i do think he misses the old politics now there are many who say don't be an idiot the

01:22:53.720 republicans are evil that they will they won't compromise they can't deal they will probably

01:22:59.240 oppose for example an unbelievably necessary stimulus during covet they will probably do what

01:23:04.680 they attempted to do with biden with obama which is you know basically try and cripple his ability

01:23:11.000 to repair the damage that depends how badly they're defeated i think and who's left and it

01:23:16.280 also depends on whether they take the same attitude to biden that they did to obama and i think biden does

01:23:20.920 have some serious relationships in the senate particularly that helps him i do think he's better

01:23:28.600 at congressional engagement and management than obama was for for psychological reasons and i do think

01:23:35.720 biden is capable of of reminding many people in the middle and what i'm thinking particularly white

01:23:42.440 people say in the middle midwest so the democrats aren't viscerally and characterologically hostile

01:23:47.560 to their interests and ideas and i think his religious faith plays a part in credentializing him in that

01:23:54.680 way his background does and i think especially in a health crisis i think there's something about his

01:24:03.080 ability to empathize with people who have been stricken with grief and illness and struggle

01:24:10.360 is is actually important we need it i mean there's there is nothing feigned about that i mean whatever

01:24:16.920 you know whatever you do or don't know about him as a person his backstory as someone who has suffered

01:24:23.800 bereavement upon bereavement and you know in the first case just the most shocking kind i mean the idea

01:24:31.880 that someone with it with these reserves of compassion and just empathy for human suffering

01:24:38.440 i mean that that alone would be such a change in the office of the presidency i'm from a sort of

01:24:45.000 traditional irish catholic family it's in england and everything but we're all i know that guy i know

01:24:49.400 that guy and i and i know he's he's he's a good guy i just i just know that and i can't tell you how deep

01:24:57.800 one's yearning for just some human decency in that office yeah and i do think they've been very effective

01:25:04.680 at putting that across i do think that some kind of the presidency is a weird thing it's not a prime

01:25:11.080 minister and there is a role in which the president does as it were bind bind the nation in a series in

01:25:19.000 in a matter of grief and and what we have been going through requires some kind of ability to

01:25:27.400 understand that i think for example the way trump dismissed drug abuse hunter biden taught him a

01:25:35.400 coke addict in in crackhead a crackhead or whatever he calls him such a fucking despicable human being

01:25:41.480 that guy i mean i i just just that detail alone the idea that in a presidential debate one of the

01:25:47.880 candidates would attack the other one as the father of a crackhead i mean that's where we are

01:25:55.080 but when you're also dealing in the context of this awful epidemic which has been socially and

01:26:01.400 personally isolating has been incredibly i mean we've not only lost people we've lost people we

01:26:07.160 couldn't visit we couldn't see we couldn't help i mean i lost my dad and couldn't even go to a burial

01:26:14.040 you know and it's there is an open wound in this country that trump does nothing but pour salt into

01:26:20.680 and and we also have a crisis of addiction which this epidemic has made even worse that we're seeing

01:26:27.720 the numbers of opioid addiction go up again and fentanyl is spreading again we we really do have

01:26:36.200 a spiritual crisis i'm down i'm going to trigger you but i i've reclaimed i've reclaimed that word

01:26:42.680 for my own purposes okay i can let's let's say translate appropriately on my side okay we're all dealing

01:26:49.640 with existential questions of life and death and of and it does matter that someone is at the top that

01:26:56.520 feels like is not seeing you entirely as instrumental to his political fortune that might actually take a moment

01:27:02.360 to be with you and to acknowledge we have never for example in this country we've never really

01:27:07.000 acknowledged the deaths that we have we could have half a million by the spring and you know

01:27:12.440 other countries have had moments where they've stopped to universally celebrate health care workers

01:27:17.640 or those people there have also been moments in which people have stopped for a moment of of silence

01:27:23.080 in memory of those we've lost i mean this is this is the other context that we're in right now of this

01:27:28.840 extraordinary dislocation in which we're all living in this uncanny valley of our previous lives

01:27:35.640 in which nothing everything seems similar but it's just awfully off key and and and the other thing we

01:27:43.400 learn about these experiences these human experience i i wrote an essay earlier this year about plagues

01:27:49.400 in history is that what they do to societies is they suspend you in mid-air for a minute

01:27:55.240 and they are moments in which you can actually socially really reorganize and restructure in

01:28:01.640 ways that otherwise might not happen and i do think that we're going to see and i and and as someone who

01:28:09.000 was you know a supporter of thatcher reagan and a lot of neoliberal economics for a while i do think

01:28:14.280 that it's a and it's quite plausible argument if you shift from race and identity to class

01:28:19.800 as a democrat you you actually have a unique opportunity to build a consensus around more support

01:28:26.360 for working people more support for people with addiction more compassion in in in that context without

01:28:34.120 dividing us by race and massive inequality that absolutely needs to be addressed structurally with

01:28:41.480 with some redistribution so there's a there's a moment here a a an opportunity that again you

01:28:48.760 don't see this old dude is necessarily harnessing but i think he might be in a paradoxical way a man

01:28:54.920 for the moment in as much as that yes he could preside over this without making people afraid of a

01:29:02.120 sort of leftist takeover because joe old uncle joe's in there also could be quite structurally important in

01:29:08.440 terms of the economy but also i think we want a defense of the west we want someone to stand up

01:29:15.960 and defend our way of life against the emerging powers of east asia and russia in ways that our

01:29:22.920 current president has absolutely undermined from the get-go and i do think that's a great opportunity

01:29:29.720 for this dude and i think he should by the way i think he should appoint obama as secretary of state

01:29:34.520 hmm and send him around the world again i i yeah on an apology tour another apology tour yes

01:29:43.320 second but this time with real feeling please um but but so i'm i'm i i i'm i also think by the way

01:29:53.080 we're also going to have this like this unbelievably riotously debauched oh when we get past kobe when

01:29:59.320 we get past this people are going to get the roaring 20s we're going to be 100 years later

01:30:03.800 site we're going to be drinking everything site we'll be doing every single of of uh drug and so

01:30:09.800 on and anyway so biden is a transitional figure but it but primarily a sort of binding up the wounds

01:30:16.680 kind of guy now i may be being naive here i'm not saying that these forces of of polarization of

01:30:23.400 tribalism can disappear they're gonna they're gonna in here if we get through this period peacefully

01:30:30.840 and if the decision to vote biden and is is a big one so that it can't really be psychologically

01:30:37.560 reversed if it's a kind of lbj goldwater thing then you can i think fix the thing what i fear most

01:30:46.920 is a narrow win that is brutally contested that leads to unbelievable dissension and violence

01:30:54.760 and the interregnum i i i mean those are the nightmare scenarios that are in front of me

01:31:00.520 i'm just praying they don't happen i think there's a chance with a landslide that we can get past

01:31:05.160 but of course you know we don't know we live in history i think we've discovered that it isn't over

01:31:09.880 yeah well um fingers crossed andrew i think that this is a great place to leave it i just want to

01:31:16.440 before we sign off i just want to say something to your audience i mean we're on both of our

01:31:22.600 podcasts now but you're talking to the dish audience i mean you and i have just spoken about

01:31:28.760 all the ways in which bad incentives and pressure have corrupted the media and how difficult it has

01:31:36.840 become to have a sane and intellectually honest conversation about difficult topics and i really

01:31:43.240 hold you to be one among a handful of people who can be relied upon to take intellectual and reputational

01:31:52.280 risks to advance that honest conversation and and it's getting harder to do that and the business

01:31:59.480 model of journalism has been inimical to you know ordinary people doing that and it's been taking you

01:32:05.240 know extraordinary people or extraordinarily lucky people to do it and you know you and i don't

01:32:10.040 agree about everything you and i certainly started out debating things and and debating one if

01:32:15.720 it's been a few years since i looked back at our first debate about religious belief but you know

01:32:20.600 it was surprisingly hard-hitting if memory serves and the fact that we have arrived in a place where

01:32:27.560 we're friends and we're this copacetic it just speaks to something about you that i

01:32:34.040 have not discovered in you know everyone i've disagreed with in in quite the same way and so

01:32:39.560 you know i just urge your audience to support your current endeavor because the only thing that will

01:32:45.960 allow you to be the voice we need on all the topics you will touch is a secure business model and so i mean

01:32:53.640 they should support your podcast they should support your your newsletter as i am and i'm loving your

01:32:59.800 newsletter by the way so i know it's uncomfortable to ask an audience for support and you know but

01:33:05.480 it's not uncomfortable at all for me to ask your audience to support you and and so i just really

01:33:10.040 urge people to thank you do that so much i mean one thing we do every week is that i'll write my piece

01:33:17.000 but we really will publish the strongest dissents and arguments against it and force me

01:33:22.760 to engage them in a reasonable way and no one else is doing that it's not a comment section where

01:33:29.400 people yell at you it is it is an attempt to put me on the spot every week to make sure that i'm

01:33:33.720 kept honest by my own readership and and and yes i mean we've we've proven that that this can't happen

01:33:41.720 anymore in so many media institutions that have been that have been captured and so supporting us

01:33:49.080 really really matters and i'm really grateful you've been an absolute role model in pursuing this

01:33:56.680 kind of intellectual inquiry and you've helped me calm down and think seriously and be a better writer

01:34:05.880 and thinker and my readers do the same thing and if you want to encourage that kind of discourse

01:34:11.880 please support us our paywall goes up this week and and so lots of you will will will be in that

01:34:20.520 position of choosing whether to actually back us with your dollars or not it doesn't matter you know

01:34:25.720 you're welcome whatever but please help us please please support it's the weekly dish it's it's out there

01:34:32.200 on substack and i'm so grateful sam for you to support that and i'm also thrilled that our this

01:34:38.360 conversation is the first of a series of conversations i'm having with some i hope

01:34:42.840 some really interesting people in which we will be having the same kind of conversation which is not

01:34:48.840 which is an attempt to get to the truth that's all i just want to figure out what's true and if you

01:34:54.280 if that's your goal then then please be with us and help me do it nice well i i certainly hope that

01:35:00.680 politics becomes so boring that our next conversation it has nothing to do with it that we won't even be

01:35:06.440 tempted to talk about politics that's the world i want to live in andrew and amen that is what that

01:35:11.880 is the ultimate achievement of a liberal society is to is to have moments where we can leave politics

01:35:17.160 entirely behind nice well to be continued brother absolutely thanks so much sam god bless i mean i

01:35:23.160 didn't mean that in a true way it just came out it just came out

01:35:27.160 may the force be with you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 30, 2020

#223 — A Conversation with Andrew Sullivan

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