Making Sense - Sam Harris - #407 — Can We Ever Return to Normal Politics？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

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00:00:45.680 I am here with Jon Favreau. Jon, thanks for joining me.

00:00:48.960 Thanks for having me, Sam.

00:00:49.960 Nice to finally meet you. I've seen you work in your magic in democratic circles for many years,

00:00:55.080 but our paths have never crossed.

00:00:57.020 I know.

00:00:57.780 Can you summarize your background in politics and media at this point?

00:01:02.780 Sure. I started on the Kerry campaign, on John Kerry's campaign in 2004, two weeks after I

00:01:08.620 graduated college. I started as a press assistant there, and then I ended up becoming a speechwriter.

00:01:14.960 And then after Kerry lost, I worked for then-Senator Barack Obama when he got to the Senate in 2005.

00:01:21.200 I was his head speechwriter. And I stayed with him through the Senate, through the 2008 campaign,

00:01:28.260 went on to the White House to be head speechwriter there. And I left the White House in 2013.

00:01:34.080 And then in 2016, started a podcast about the 2016 election with some Obama colleagues as a hobby.

00:01:41.840 And then after Donald Trump won, which we did not expect, like many others, it became a full-blown media company

00:01:50.460 called Crooked Media. And the pod is now Pod Save America. And now we have many podcasts and a big company,

00:01:57.780 and we're all based in Los Angeles.

00:01:59.380 Nice. Nice. And you're on more than one podcast at this point, right?

00:02:02.120 Yeah. I co-host Pod Save America, and I also host Offline, a podcast about how the internet's

00:02:08.860 breaking all of our brains, which I know you'd like to talk about as well.

00:02:12.280 It is doing that.

00:02:12.940 And then I also host a podcast called The Wilderness, where I do sit down and do focus

00:02:17.720 groups with swing voters and talk about what's wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it,

00:02:22.740 which there are lots to talk about there.

00:02:25.080 Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. But your experience as a speechwriter, I'm interested

00:02:30.900 to know what that job, how is it demarcated from actually thinking about weighing in on policy?

00:02:39.800 I mean, are you simply transcribing what the president and other advisors tell you they want

00:02:45.920 to express? Or are you in the weeds and actually trying to think of what they should be saying and

00:02:51.840 doing in the first place?

00:02:53.440 It's a great question. And I think there was a difference between when I was a speechwriter in

00:02:58.260 the Senate and the campaign when I was a speechwriter in the White House, in the campaign and in the

00:03:04.740 Senate. It's less about policy, but obviously there were a lot of policies that I was writing

00:03:09.380 about there. But it's more poetry than prose. In the White House, there was access to every single

00:03:16.120 policy advisor and smart person you could imagine. And we obviously started the presidency

00:03:22.740 in the middle of the financial crisis. I am not an economic expert, but I was able to learn from

00:03:29.920 Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, all the top advisors. And a lot of it is speechwriting is synthesizing

00:03:36.840 policy, figuring out what parts of policy to emphasize that are going to be most politically

00:03:43.600 effective, figuring out a way to communicate complicated policy topics and issues to the public.

00:03:51.000 And I was also lucky to work for a president who very much was involved in the writing and

00:04:00.260 conception of his speeches, especially the big speeches. Obviously, the president speaks many

00:04:04.860 times a day, so sometimes we just wrote him a speech and he made a couple edits and gave the

00:04:08.980 speech. But on the big speeches, the president and I would sit down and he would have many thoughts.

00:04:15.260 We'd sit down with the policy advisors. We'd sit down with the political and communications

00:04:18.300 advisors. And then, you know, I always say that speech writing is a lot of diplomacy as well.

00:04:24.680 So it's figuring out, you know, what to put in the speech, what to cut, who to make happy,

00:04:29.260 whose ego you have to massage, and all that stuff.

00:04:33.220 Hmm. So given your experience in working for one president and knowing how the communication happens,

00:04:42.140 knowing how policy gets translated into action and how it gets sold to the public politically,

00:04:49.680 what's your experience of watching this happen in the Trump administration? I'll add you one other

00:04:54.980 piece of not to lead the witness to fully, but I noticed President Obama the other day making a

00:05:00.460 point that many of us have made on his behalf now for years. I don't know what the venue was,

00:05:05.200 but he was on stage and he was saying, can you imagine if I did any of this? Right. And then

00:05:11.220 he started to list the things and he didn't even list the most egregious, grotesque and unthinkable

00:05:16.220 things. I mean, so we all remember the scandal that absorbed the news for at least 24 hours over

00:05:21.780 his wearing a tan suit. I think there was a bad salute with a, you know, a latte in one hand that

00:05:27.540 also captured us for a full news cycle. I think that there might've been a report that he asked for

00:05:33.980 Dijon mustard somewhere or something like that was the level of scandal. And now we have a president

00:05:41.560 and his family enriching themselves to the tune of presumably billions of dollars with a meme coin

00:05:46.240 that is a mechanism by which they can be bribed in a covert way by anyone on earth. And that's one of

00:05:52.420 maybe 10,000 indiscretions we could list. Give me the veteran of the Obama administration view of

00:05:59.720 the current norm violations and what just passes. What is even beneath comment now in a news cycle?

00:06:07.920 Yeah. I mean, it's, look, it's horrifying. And sometimes I, you know, I've been now talking about

00:06:13.180 Donald Trump almost every day for the last, you know, since 2015. And he never ceases to, you know,

00:06:21.760 it stops being surprising, but it is still shocking. And it's the norm violations, obviously.

00:06:26.600 It's also just this sense of constant chaos that is, it reminds you of the fragility of not just

00:06:35.760 democracy, but you know, the whole country. And he does things and the administration does things.

00:06:41.700 And especially in the second term, I think, where you think, you know, everything could fall apart

00:06:46.020 and it wouldn't take much. And what was different about the Obama administration is,

00:06:51.180 or one of the many differences is like, I knew that there were serious people in charge and people

00:06:59.480 who are trying to do their best. And that did not mean that they didn't make a whole lot of mistakes.

00:07:03.680 It doesn't mean that they made the wrong judgments at some times, that people are human, they do that.

00:07:09.480 It did mean that you could trust that when something happened in the world, when news broke,

00:07:14.620 when there was a crisis, when there was a disaster, that there were going to be civil servants and

00:07:20.260 political appointees who wanted to do their very best and work very hard to solve as many problems

00:07:26.900 as they could and help as many people as they could. And in the Trump administration, and we saw

00:07:31.920 this in the first White House and now in the second White House, you know, it's all about him.

00:07:36.120 And people's views that they have going into the administration doesn't matter if they have

00:07:43.160 their own views or they think a policy is crazy or they think something's bad. Everything is about

00:07:49.780 making sure that Trump is happy. Everything is about trying to retrofit your views to whatever Trump

00:07:57.920 is thinking at the moment. Entire policy processes are processes, sorry, are basically, you know,

00:08:04.660 I don't get the sense that there are many. I get the sense that it's just sitting around and

00:08:09.360 whatever Trump wants, they do. And, you know, I was just like watching Scott Besant on TV this week

00:08:15.420 as we're talking about tariffs. And, you know, you can tell that Scott Besant had a view of tariffs

00:08:20.600 before he came into the Trump administration where he said, yeah, I guess they can be used as a tool for

00:08:25.900 negotiation. And now we're getting reports that, you know, Besant doesn't necessarily agree with how far

00:08:31.360 they've gone on tariffs and wants the president to be making more deals and negotiate. But he can't

00:08:36.700 say any of that because he's probably thinking to himself, all right, I'm an adult. I'm going to try

00:08:42.020 to push policy in the right direction here. But if I go too hard or I make him too angry, then I'm going

00:08:47.900 to get fired and the person who replaces me is going to be worse. And he's right about that. And so this is

00:08:53.840 the dynamic you have, which is it's a cult of personality. And when you have a cult of personality

00:08:58.980 and that's responsible for running the entire country and relations with the entire world,

00:09:04.900 it's pretty scary. What are your biggest concerns for the next few years?

00:09:10.860 I'm, of course, concerned about what's going to happen with the economy here at home and globally

00:09:14.860 with if this trade war continues. What I've been really concerned about over the last several weeks

00:09:20.560 is the fact that they are, the government is disappearing people to this prison in El Salvador

00:09:27.280 with no due process. And I say this as someone who, after the last election, thought, you know what,

00:09:34.700 Democrats from 2020 on, our position on immigration at times was too far to the left. I think Joe Biden

00:09:42.360 made real mistakes on border security. And so, you know, and I spoke out about that after the election

00:09:49.860 and, you know, I got some shit from the left on that. But it is so beyond immigration policy, 0.97

00:09:56.060 what is happening right now. Because if they can, if the government can, as the government thinks it

00:10:01.400 can and is arguing in court that it can, round someone up with no due process, ship them off to

00:10:07.400 El Salvador. And even if they make a mistake, now they're arguing that they can't bring them back.

00:10:13.940 They can't bring the person back from a prison that is known for human rights abuses.

00:10:17.560 Yeah. That's an astonishing detail. I mean, and I haven't frankly followed it to its source,

00:10:22.780 but they've admitted that they got the wrong guy. They've sent an innocent person into a gulag,

00:10:29.240 essentially. And that, why, how, why are they saying they can't bring this person back?

00:10:34.580 Like, they're saying they don't want to. They're also saying they have, well, so we're paying,

00:10:39.040 we, the United States government is paying $6 million a year to El Salvador, to the government.

00:10:43.940 And this is, you know, Bukele runs El Salvador. He's a dictator, calls himself a dictator.

00:10:48.600 And so we're paying $6 million to this dictator a year to house these detainees under what authority?

00:10:55.420 I don't know what authority the United States has to not, of course, the president has wide

00:10:59.540 authority to deport people who aren't here legally. Even people, even legal residents and green card

00:11:04.380 holders, if they really want, they can figure out a way to deport with due process. But under what law

00:11:09.680 can they just lock someone away in a prison who hasn't been convicted of anything? We don't know.

00:11:14.840 That issue remains to be adjudicated. But this, this man from Maryland, he had legal protections

00:11:21.640 from being deported back to El Salvador because there was a credible threat to his life. And so a judge

00:11:27.300 gave him legal protections. There was, um, uh, years before in 2019, he was caught up with police

00:11:35.180 and because he had a, was wearing a bull's hoodie. And because some informant thought that he was part

00:11:41.540 of a chapter of MS-13 in a state where he never lived in Western New York. And that based on one

00:11:48.360 anonymous informant that never came forward, they decided that he was MS-13. And that is now what the

00:11:53.340 government is arguing, that that is all the evidence they need, that this man who has committed

00:11:58.100 no crimes and has been in no trouble since he got here in 2011, father of three has a job protections

00:12:04.860 from being deported back to El Salvador is now in prison in El Salvador indefinitely, no access to a

00:12:11.600 lawyer, nothing else. And that's, and they admitted in court that they, that they sent him there in

00:12:16.860 error because of, he had this legal protection, but they're saying, well, we can't order a foreign

00:12:22.960 government to do anything. And the courts, by the way, shouldn't get involved in what is a national

00:12:27.160 security foreign policy matter. And the courts have asked, okay, we'll provide some evidence

00:12:30.880 and they won't do it. Okay. So I, again, I mean, this is, it's a, um, it's one of those stories where

00:12:36.620 it's the details are so awful. It convinces you that it's a kind of moral emergency and yet it's just

00:12:42.660 one story. And, and I think it's appearing against a background of so many indiscretions and norm

00:12:49.960 violations and accruals of risk of a sort that we find very difficult to price into our vision of the

00:12:56.880 future that it's, it's very hard to focus on, right? It's like, it's, this is the problem we

00:13:00.940 started with, with Trump. I mean, if all he did was wear a tan suit, well, then maybe we could talk

00:13:05.500 about that. Right. But he's, since he's done 10,000 things, there's no, no thing really survives the,

00:13:11.900 the contest with all the other things to, to sustain our attention. Again, like the,

00:13:17.340 the meme coin, I just can't believe the world didn't stop spinning when they launched the meme

00:13:22.540 coin, right? Like that's like, we should have been talking about nothing else for the last

00:13:25.880 60 days or whenever that. And look, and that, and that is still very much relevant and it could be

00:13:30.380 even more relevant now that the president has decided he's going to negotiate one-off deals with

00:13:38.320 every country over these tariffs, right? So you can imagine any one of these countries trying to

00:13:43.880 curry favor with Donald Trump in multiple ways. The government itself has put, the White House put out

00:13:48.660 a policy sheet that said, yeah, you can reduce tariffs as part of a deal. You can reduce non-tariff

00:13:54.880 barriers. And also the last, last option they gave other countries is you can just cut a check to the

00:14:01.860 United States government that we can spend on the public good. That's, that was actually in a White 1.00

00:14:07.200 House, a White House fact sheet. So it's, it, you know, the, the, the whole tariff regime, who knows

00:14:12.740 exactly why he's doing it? Cause it's hard to get inside his head. But one consequence of that is he

00:14:17.480 is going to be able to, you know, scam people, you know, scheme like he always does. He's just do

00:14:24.500 the mob boss thing and he can, you know, if someone wants to invest in his meme coin, uh, as some

00:14:30.940 foreign leader in some country, they'll be able to do that. Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know what to 0.98

00:14:35.700 think about the people who see all this and find these details totally uninteresting. I mean, did you,

00:14:43.300 do you have any friends who voted for Trump? My close friends? Not cool. Yeah. I have some family

00:14:48.820 members who did. And I do have some really close friends who didn't vote for Trump, but couldn't

00:14:54.740 bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris and, and thought that was okay. Cause they're in blue

00:14:58.860 States. And it's interesting. Cause you know, one of my close friends did this and lately he's been

00:15:04.180 like, this is crazy. Donald Trump is crazy. I can't believe this. He's like, but you know what? 1.00

00:15:08.800 I just can't, I can't pay attention to it. I can't get myself worried about it. I followed it for so

00:15:13.980 many years in the first term and I can't get exercised about this. I got to just focus on my job

00:15:18.740 in my family and not pay attention to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's more verbose than, uh, I get

00:15:24.560 from my Trump voting friends. I mean, on this point alone, like the, the corruption thing is just,

00:15:29.680 is so obvious. It's such an obvious liability. It's such a, it's just an X-ray into the character

00:15:35.220 of the president and the prospect of the, the unraveling of democracy. And it's, you know,

00:15:41.320 started immediately. I mean, it started before the meme coin or before the, actually the, I guess the

00:15:45.820 meme coin happened right before inauguration, but the, um, right in that week, I think Amazon paid,

00:15:52.280 uh, Melania $40 million for the film rights to her, uh, presumably unreadable memoir. I mean,

00:15:58.580 just, you know, that's totally legal. It's totally like, I'm sure there's someone at Amazon who can

00:16:04.020 defend that with a, with a straight face, but it's so obviously box sheesh to a, uh, you know,

00:16:11.480 the, the Trump crime family. And it's, it's, it's now it's one of hundreds of things. I mean,

00:16:16.760 it's just the, the spend that is happening at his golf courses by the, you know, the Saudi funded

00:16:21.940 golf association. It's just, you know, we should be able to dimly remember a time where presidents

00:16:28.860 and other politicians were expected to have no conflicts of interest financially. Right. And this

00:16:34.940 is just like, like there's only conflicts of interest. I think a challenge is, and, and this is

00:16:40.000 what may make this ultimately quite politically damaging for Trump is when you talk to voters,

00:16:46.100 voters have, most voters have for some time believed that all politicians are corrupt and

00:16:51.600 that both parties are corrupt. And even when you had a very ethical administration that wasn't

00:16:58.220 corrupt, I think like, as you pointed out the Obama administration, we didn't have, we didn't

00:17:02.360 have corruption scandals, uh, in our administration. And the, that was because the president worked very

00:17:08.480 hard to make sure that we had no corruption scandals and that people would be fired if

00:17:13.740 there were, and had all the right ethics lawyers in place and all that. But regardless, because of

00:17:19.280 the media environment, because of politics, because of a loss of faith in institutions, that is a much

00:17:24.180 bigger issue that we've been dealing with for the last several decades. People think that everyone's

00:17:28.680 corrupt. So if you ask people, is, is Trump corrupt? Is Trump making himself money on the job? You

00:17:33.580 probably get a lot of people, including people who voted for Trump say, yeah, I think that's true,

00:17:37.060 but it's okay if he's going to make himself rich as long as he makes me rich too, or as long as he,

00:17:42.580 he, he, I'm making money, you know? And I think if that's sort of like the, the corrupt bargain

00:17:48.880 that Trump, that some Trump voters have struck. And I think that if the economy goes south and if

00:17:56.860 this trade war continues and we have a recession or worse, then people are going to start looking at

00:18:04.620 all of the corruption and all of like the Trump family enriching themselves over and over again

00:18:11.940 at every chance they get. I mean, as the markets were wiping away trillions of dollars of wealth

00:18:17.040 over the weekend, you know, he's hosting the Saudi backed golf tournament in his, in his beach club,

00:18:22.980 making a bunch of money on that while the markets are tanking. I do think that has the potential to be

00:18:29.320 quite damaging because then people say, all right, you're getting rich, but I'm getting poorer and

00:18:34.760 that's not the deal. Do we know how much exposure he and his family have to the stock market? Is

00:18:40.260 that something that is journalistically findable? I mean, I think they, they had to put everything

00:18:44.540 into blind trust when he took office, but I don't know how much exposure they actually have.

00:18:50.460 Right. Right. That would be interesting to know. Well, so what should the Democrats do at this

00:18:56.220 point? Yeah. I mean, this is, I think this is probably the most difficult spot that the Democratic

00:19:01.100 Party has been in as long as I can remember, because the last time we had this little power,

00:19:06.740 it was when I started working for Obama in 2005.

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00:19:39.840 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 09, 2025

#407 — Can We Ever Return to Normal Politics？

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