Making Sense - Sam Harris - #416 — “More From Sam”： Biden's Big Lie, Review of Tapper Interview, Trump, & a Case Against Israel's Actions in Gaza

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

00:00:11.740 hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing

00:00:15.720 the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

00:00:20.060 Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore

00:00:26.240 it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're

00:00:30.200 doing here, please consider becoming one.

00:00:36.640 Okay, we're back, Sam. Good to see you, my friend.

00:00:39.680 Good to see you. Yeah.

00:00:41.200 Yeah.

00:00:41.840 What's going on?

00:00:42.320 Okay, you ready?

00:00:42.620 Anything happening?

00:00:43.540 Oh, nothing happening in the world, but, you know, maybe there's some topics I can hit you with

00:00:49.560 if you're okay with that.

00:00:51.140 Yeah, let's do it.

00:00:51.860 All right.

00:00:52.480 You've been concerned about Donald Trump due to his refusal of a peaceful transfer of power

00:00:57.340 as a threat to democracy. But now we're beginning to see just how massive this Biden cover-up was.

00:01:03.000 And in the past, we also saw Bernie pushed out by the Democratic elite in 2016. Aren't these also

00:01:08.920 threats to our democracy? And maybe these aren't even threats. Aren't these actual moments where we

00:01:13.900 didn't have democracy?

00:01:15.760 I mean, there's certainly a corruption of our democracy. I mean, they're not ideal. The details of,

00:01:21.640 you know, what went into Biden running for a second term and just the level of delusion and hubris and

00:01:27.700 dishonesty that birthed that project. I think that, you know, that was, reading Jake's book, that was

00:01:33.720 very troubling to discover just how deep that went and how unrepentant they all still are.

00:01:40.200 I mean, we were just, we had an awful choice. We have, and it's a choice that I think explains

00:01:47.520 how corrupt and corruptible the Democrats and the media were from essentially 2016 on. We had a choice

00:01:56.820 between, I think, a genuinely evil candidate, right? I mean, certainly perceived to be evil by half of

00:02:04.040 our society. I mean, I think, you know, this is, he's, he's, it really is the banality of evil because

00:02:08.660 his, his evil is incredibly banal. But nonetheless, I think he's so outside the norm of what should be

00:02:14.820 acceptable to us politically that it's easy to see that everyone perceived this as a five-alarm fire.

00:02:20.820 I mean, and we are now, I'll point out, living in the midst of that fire. We're four months into it.

00:02:26.360 Yeah, but you can't destroy or erode democracy while trying to protect it, right?

00:02:30.020 No, I, but I mean, it's not so clear as all that. It's just that you have to ask the questions.

00:02:34.660 Why would anyone prefer a nearly comatose president to Donald Trump? Well, that's a,

00:02:43.520 that's a measure of how bad people perceive Donald Trump to be. And I, I mean, I can,

00:02:49.460 I can say that I would prefer a comatose president to the president we now have.

00:02:53.560 But that's slightly less than half the country feels that way. What about the other half?

00:02:56.580 Well, the, but the other half is voting for Trump, right? So, and, and for reasons that are

00:03:02.220 in many cases also delusional, right? I mean, you had a QAnon cult behind Trump who, who thought not, 0.66

00:03:10.260 that Biden was not only too old to be president, but that he was a pedophile, you know, and, and 0.98

00:03:14.920 siphoning off the adrenochrome of children in basements. I mean, this is, this is the fever swamp 0.98

00:03:20.240 of right-wing politics that got Biden's infirmity, right? Okay. But look at everything else they

00:03:26.860 threw against the wall, right? It's completely nuts over there. So yes, the, the mainstream media

00:03:33.540 has a lot to atone for in not being more interested in just how far from compos mentis Biden has been

00:03:42.320 at various points, I mean, toward the end of his term and during the campaign. I mean,

00:03:47.160 the, what I take from Jake's book, and I think this is one of the appropriate lessons to take

00:03:52.960 from it is that there was a successful coverup. It's not that, I mean, everyone knew he was too

00:03:57.740 old. I mean, certainly he was not ideal, an ideal president or much less an ideal candidate. I mean,

00:04:03.220 he was not actually a viable candidate in the end. And many of us saw that with increasing clarity

00:04:09.820 over the years, but something was revealed that night on the debate stage when the wheels completely

00:04:18.320 came off. And to say that we knew it all along is to make the claim that nothing was learned

00:04:23.640 during that debate. And that's just not true, right? I mean, you know, maybe Alex Jones, who also

00:04:29.540 thought Biden was a pedophile, also knew that he wasn't going to be able to complete a sentence during

00:04:34.620 the debate, but most people thought this was, um, this revealed something. 0.62

00:04:39.840 I did reveal something. I don't think people felt like they learned it for the first time. I felt

00:04:43.780 like they were watching that saying, okay, this is impossible to hide now. This is no longer possible.

00:04:48.540 Well, you know, but the magnitude of it, the gravity of it, the fact that it was, that it was non-recoverable,

00:04:54.940 right? That was revealed that night to most people. Now the scandal, the real scandal is that there

00:05:01.160 were undoubtedly, there were people, and we know this from Jake and Alex's reporting in that book,

00:05:07.160 undoubtedly there were people close to the president who saw that sort of thing before

00:05:12.640 and many times before going back years, right? That's the scandal. That's the cover-up. And that

00:05:19.980 is a genuine cover-up because they're hiding that, they're lying about that, they're protecting him

00:05:24.900 from exposure so as to avoid any public viewing of that, right? He's not having cabinet meetings,

00:05:30.980 he didn't have cabinet meetings for nearly a year, and the cabinet meetings he had prior to that were

00:05:35.640 scripted and weird, and the cabinet members are sworn to secrecy on some level to not talk about

00:05:43.180 that. I mean, so that's the cover-up. To say that there was no cover-up and say this was all in plain

00:05:47.400 view is just not true. It's just the fact that right of center, they were whinging about this for

00:05:53.180 years doesn't mean that there wasn't effective cover-up because there obviously was.

00:05:59.540 There was effective cover-up, but I think what happened was I think a lot of people are claiming

00:06:03.100 that they saw this all along. They were being convinced that what they were seeing with their

00:06:06.560 own eyes wasn't the case. And not only that, they were being told they were being assholes for even 0.99

00:06:11.240 pointing something like this out. Yeah. I think all of that's bad. That's obviously bad. But 0.99

00:06:18.180 crucially, it was bad to the point of masochistic self-immolation for the Democrats, right? It's not like

00:06:26.320 it worked out well for the Democrats. It destroyed the Democratic chances for the presidency.

00:06:32.680 And beyond. I mean, the Democrats have a problem for a long time now.

00:06:36.400 So it's like the idea that this is, how much of this is intentional if it's synonymous with

00:06:42.700 hitting a brick wall at 100 miles an hour, right? I mean, it was a disaster for the Democrats.

00:06:48.100 So the Democrats screwed up. And I think the honest accounting of what happened there is that

00:06:54.800 like almost everything else we're complaining about in public these days, it was a coordination

00:07:00.640 problem. I mean, you had all these people who couldn't get on the same page about this obvious

00:07:06.240 slow motion train wreck, right? How could they get Biden to not be a candidate when he was adamant that

00:07:14.940 he was fine to run for a second term? There's no good way to do it. And they're all living in this

00:07:20.080 hall of mirrors where the first person to express doubt about his viability is the first person to

00:07:25.240 show disloyalty and will be fatally compromised in their career prospects thereafter, right? So

00:07:30.720 it's an incentive structure that fucked everyone up. But it was not this calculated and effective

00:07:38.040 deception. It was a pathological process. And everyone left of center should be unhappy about it.

00:07:44.940 But what happens now? What happens to those people, the advisors that were in charge?

00:07:50.540 Well, I mean, as I wrote after the debate, when he was being slow to drop out of the race,

00:07:56.980 I wrote this in one of those articles on Substack that were increasingly shrill. I said,

00:08:01.480 you know, but if he's not out of the race by Monday, I forget, I think it was the day I called,

00:08:07.020 all we're going to want to know are the names of the people who have enabled this atrocity so that

00:08:12.420 they'll never work in politics again, right? I don't think these people should ever work in

00:08:17.560 politics again. I mean, it's a disaster. The people who covered for Biden, the people who thought he

00:08:22.560 should run even after that debate, should never work in politics again. They have discredited

00:08:27.780 themselves fatally. That's absolutely the case. And you read about them in Jake's book. It's mind-boggling,

00:08:35.200 the level of self-deception that's expressed in that book.

00:08:37.800 Yeah. I mean, I just, I find it, I'm embarrassed. I'm humiliated by it. I mean,

00:08:42.420 the amount of times I've had to, you know, lean on CNN to explain something that, you know,

00:08:48.060 where they helped me, I obviously see with my own eyes and being told, guys, it's, you know,

00:08:52.660 there are people that are talking. And I guess my point with Jake is that he could have been a

00:08:57.240 little bit more of an intrepid journalist and asked more of the questions. I know he said,

00:09:00.500 I wish I would have done that more, but I just, I feel betrayed. I feel like I relied on many of

00:09:06.660 those sources to get this information and get it right. And again, when I saw it in my own eyes.

00:09:12.420 But you have to, I mean, I, I, it's true. I mean, I think there's, there's enough embarrassment to go

00:09:17.340 around in the mainstream media, but it is also true that Biden was effectively hidden to a degree

00:09:24.520 that is unprecedented.

00:09:26.360 But why aren't you asking every single day, where is he? Where is he? Where's his cognitive test?

00:09:30.180 Where is the man? If that were Trump, they would have done that every single day.

00:09:33.180 I think some of that was happening. I mean, you know, the fact, you know, I remember whenever

00:09:38.400 there was something important for the president to communicate about, and he wasn't communicating

00:09:43.180 about it. I mean, post October 7th, there were many moments when we needed a president who could

00:09:49.340 come forward and make the case for why the U.S. was standing with Israel in the, in the conflict

00:09:54.840 with Hamas. And we did not have, I mean, he, I think he made some attempts at communicating

00:10:00.100 about that. But it was clear that his deficits as a communicator were actually causing problems

00:10:06.320 for society at that point. And I think I said as much in some context, probably on my own podcast.

00:10:12.440 I mean, yes, it's, you know, the separation between the two parts of the job, you know,

00:10:16.940 the decision-making component of the job and the communication slash persuasion component

00:10:21.880 of the job. Yes, the decision-making component of the job is important. And I think, as I said,

00:10:27.740 when I was talking to Jake, and as I said, you know, I think some years before when we were all

00:10:31.580 talking about Biden being compromised, it's at least intelligible to say, okay, he, he's not a

00:10:37.020 good communicator. He was never a good communicator. He's only getting worse, right? You can't reliably

00:10:41.860 stick him in front of a microphone and trust that something good is going to come out of his mouth.

00:10:46.680 But the truth is, is that when you sit with him and deliberate about the war in Ukraine

00:10:52.000 or anything else, he is compos mentis. He is, he, he clearly understands the issue as well as he ever

00:10:59.880 did. He just doesn't, he's just not a fluid speaker, right? And he's, and less and less fluid by the

00:11:04.480 hour, right? That is a, neurologically speaking, that is an intelligible claim to make about a person.

00:11:10.220 That's what I assumed was true. That because of how effective this cover-up was, I no longer

00:11:16.420 believe that to have been true, right? I think it's quite possible that he was just checked out

00:11:21.920 to a degree that, that I did not suspect at the time. But to close the loop on this whole scandal,

00:11:27.780 even that is preferable to me and to, I think, many Democrats than having someone who we consider to be

00:11:36.080 genuinely evil, genuinely 100% purposed to serving himself in the office of the presidency. I would

00:11:44.720 rather have a president in a coma where the duties of the presidency are executed by a committee of

00:11:51.060 just normal people, right? Okay, but that would be different if they communicated. People picked at

00:11:55.160 random out of a Starbucks. I would prefer to an evil president. And that's the choice that many of us 0.97

00:12:02.100 believe was before us. And so therefore, not much materially changes once you reveal just how

00:12:09.800 insane and despicable this cover-up of Biden's infirmities actually was.

00:12:15.260 But Sam, but how you get there matters. And it would be one thing if those people told the American

00:12:21.180 people, hey, he's not compost mentis. We're going to take it from here. We know what we're doing.

00:12:25.960 We're fine. But that didn't happen. And I mean, just the scale of things, Trump's out there making

00:12:32.400 hotel deals. And I know that's embarrassing. And this is a bit of a Sophie's choice, but you really would

00:12:37.100 rather not have been betrayed by your own president than have somebody out in the open just with his

00:12:44.180 kleptocracy getting he and his friends rich? No, but the problem with Trump runs much deeper than

00:12:48.660 that. I mean, that is totally disqualifying in a president. It's illegal. I mean, I think it is

00:12:54.700 the very definition of unconstitutional given the emoluments clause. I think he should be impeached for

00:13:00.340 it, right? I mean, I don't have any expectation that he will be. But the liability of having Trump in

00:13:05.720 the White House, in my view, runs much, much deeper than that. And I've spoken, there's probably a

00:13:10.800 hundred hours of me talking about this on my podcast and others. I just, I think to have an

00:13:16.360 empty Oval Office would be better. I mean, that's to say that there's lots of other normal career

00:13:22.540 politicians who have been deputized in the State Department and other parts of the executive

00:13:28.780 branch to make normal decisions that are not thinking about their hotel deals and their meme coin.

00:13:35.720 I mean, that it's normal politics, the swamp. I would return to the so-called swamp over what

00:13:43.160 we have now, and for good reason, right? And that was always, that's been obvious for now 10 years,

00:13:49.200 right? So all the problems with Hillary Clinton, all the problems with Kamala Harris, you know, 0.61

00:13:54.860 I've never been shy to acknowledge those, right? All the problems with the democratic machine as it is,

00:14:00.540 yes, it screwed Bernie Sanders, all of that, price all of that in. I think it is worse to have a

00:14:06.200 president who values nothing but loyalty in the people he appoints to run our government. I mean,

00:14:12.260 the fact that we've got Kash Patel running the FBI and the FBI is now weaponized against private

00:14:17.940 citizens who are being, quote, investigated and thereby bankrupted simply because they were against

00:14:24.820 President Trump at some point in the past. You know, that's the road to fascism, right? That's

00:14:29.720 much worse than having normal people pulled out of a Starbucks who would be appropriately awed by the

00:14:36.900 responsibility given to them run the country. Yeah. I just want to take a quick comedy break

00:14:41.960 when you said Kash Patel. Did you see that video with he and Dan Bongino having to defend that Epstein

00:14:46.260 himself? No. No. You didn't see it? No, no. Oh, you got to see it.

00:14:50.860 I will watch it with pleasure and horror, no doubt. Well, they're now on the other side having to

00:14:55.040 defend themselves from the conspiracy theories. They're literally saying things like, look,

00:14:59.120 I know a suicide when I see one. Oh, really? That's delicious. Both he and Dan Bongino. Oh,

00:15:04.840 it's, it's, it's, it's, it's happy watching. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry I derailed this,

00:15:10.040 but I want to get back to it because there's just something we talked about last time where

00:15:13.020 I just, I said this last time, there's something more off-putting and gross to me about lying

00:15:20.220 and in secrecy than there is out in the open. And I know that's probably more of an irrational,

00:15:25.180 an emotional thought than irrational. But, but it's not all out in the open. There's a lot out

00:15:29.520 in the open and there's, and you, you have to imagine that that's the tip of the iceberg

00:15:33.880 of corruption, right? To grade Trump on a curve so fully that the visibility of his sins

00:15:42.860 are exculpatory, right? It's just pure delusion, right? You have no idea what you don't know

00:15:49.160 about what he's into. And we know, we already know he lies more than any other person that can

00:15:56.900 be named, right? Anywhere in public life. So the idea that he's not covering anything up is,

00:16:03.400 just doesn't fly. Again, I mean, the Trump lies to me. I don't know why. And, and we'll have to

00:16:08.760 understand this or get some psychologist of some, or sociologist or someone to explain this, but

00:16:13.620 it just feels like when he's called, it says he's got a building that's 20 stories tall and it's only

00:16:18.120 10. I just don't really care. Or some of the other lies, they just feel, of course it's corrupt to

00:16:24.480 be both the policymaker and the dealmaker. He deports someone to a torture room in El Salvador

00:16:32.560 and then laughs about it at the Oval Office and says he can't get him back, right?

00:16:38.120 Yeah, I'm not defending that.

00:16:38.920 That's a lie. It's a lie that he can't get him back. He can get him back in an hour,

00:16:43.080 right? It's a, a sociopathic level of detachment from the real suffering he's causing,

00:16:51.060 admitting that this person was sent in error to El Salvador and admitting that the process was so

00:16:56.140 haphazard that we've probably sent, you know, 50 people who we really don't know whether they're

00:17:01.820 innocent or guilty in the first place because there was no due process. I mean, there's just

00:17:06.100 layers of this, the layers of the damage done to our society, to our system, the way we've edged

00:17:11.520 toward fascism just by throwing due process out the window. All of that's an unacknowledged harm.

00:17:17.280 Yeah. Okay. But, but the damage to our system, you're right. The big lie was terrible. The big lie

00:17:21.160 was about one person lying about becoming president versus the Biden lie, which is a person lying about

00:17:27.620 being president. That's a big problem. But again, you have to acknowledge the, the clarity and obvious

00:17:35.220 malice of the first lie and the ambiguity and the, um, kind of the slow rolling nature of the other

00:17:43.920 lie. I mean, okay. Biden is probably not well-placed to understand his deficits because he's the one

00:17:51.900 with the deficits, right? I mean, this is just the classic case of somebody, somebody for obvious

00:17:56.860 reasons, not wanting to admit that they're no longer competent to drive anymore. And now you have to have

00:18:03.480 the conversation with them that they're, you know, it's time to take the keys from them for the rest of

00:18:07.680 their lives, right? That's, you know, famously hard negotiation for most people with their parents.

00:18:14.780 And, you know, it's completely understandable that there's a lot of self-serving bias and delusion

00:18:19.400 creeping into on the side of the person who thinks that, no, no, nothing much has changed and I can

00:18:24.200 still drive. Right. So that's. But Sam, it's the same thing. You're talking about, this is the

00:18:28.560 president of the United States. And I know you're not talking about Biden himself and I know you're going

00:18:31.740 to go into, well, it's the people around him, but this is a, this is a grave sin. This is a big

00:18:36.560 problem that it's not just like grandpa taking away the keys. This is the country.

00:18:41.020 But there's no bright line. It's not a lie that has a bright line because if you see him.

00:18:45.680 You mean a bright line? Everyone could see it. Everyone could see it. Everyone could see it

00:18:49.540 on the debate stage. Okay. But I don't know. But it was enough. What we saw that the excuses we made

00:18:55.380 was enough that we saw that we should have said, okay, this guy's probably not at his best.

00:19:00.740 So it was absolutely obvious to me that after that debate, what should have happened is that

00:19:06.400 he should have resigned and handed the presidency to Kamala Harris, right? And then she should have 1.00

00:19:11.300 campaigned as president for a few months. That would have been. If you'd like to continue listening

00:19:17.200 to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access

00:19:23.100 to all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad free

00:19:28.320 and relies entirely on listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.

00:19:36.400 Thank you.

00:19:38.400 Thank you.

00:19:39.400 Thank you.

00:19:41.400 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 23, 2025

#416 — “More From Sam”： Biden's Big Lie, Review of Tapper Interview, Trump, & a Case Against Israel's Actions in Gaza

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript