#438 — “More From Sam”： Israel-Hamas Deal, Qatari Air Force Base, Trump, Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, & Rapid Fire Questions
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Summary
On this week's episode of the Making Sense Podcast, Sam Harris joins me to talk about his new book, "A Two-State Solution," and why he doesn't think a two-state solution is likely to ever come to fruition.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing
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the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
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Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
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it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
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doing here, please consider becoming one. Welcome back to another episode of More From Sam,
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where we get to hear more from Sam. Hello, Sam. How are you? Hey, how's it going? Going well,
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going well. Good to see you. Are you ready for the shows coming up next week in New York and Boston?
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I am. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. As you know, I've been changing the talk incrementally
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as things happen in the world. So it's kind of a living document at this point, which is fun.
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I haven't had a... I can't even remember having a project like that where it just keeps changing,
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and I keep... it keeps maintaining its relevance to me because there's a date on the calendar where
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I have to deliver it by. So yeah, it's kind of cool. It is enjoyable because I get to hear,
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you know, obviously read the different drafts, and I feel like I'm going to get to watch a... the first
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few shows will be probably entirely differently or a lot different from the final shows. Yeah.
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And speaking of that, I kind of just let people know that we're going to be announcing some new
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shows coming up next year. So if anybody wants to get notified about those, please head over to
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samharris.org and join the mailing list because we're going to make that announcement, I think,
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next week or the week after for 2026. And anybody who wants to come to Boston, I think that show sold
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out in a day or two. New York has a few tickets, maybe a dozen or so for next week, October 15th,
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I believe. So come out and join us. All right. On to the first topic. Trump got a deal done. And
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that's something I don't believe you believe would have happened under a President Harris.
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It pains me somewhat to admit this, but yes, he's certainly been good for the Middle East and for
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Israel in a way that I don't think there was any reason to expect Harris to be good. And Biden
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certainly wasn't good apart from the first few weeks after October 7th or maybe a couple of months
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after October 7th. He proved quite an unreliable ally there. So yes, I think Trump, for reasons that
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are still somewhat inscrutable, I think he's also an unreliable ally for Israel. All the Israelis and
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the Jews of the world who think that he's just an unalloyed good for their cause, just a clear-eyed
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defender of Western civilization generally and of the lone democracy and battle democracy in the
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Middle East in the case of Israel. He certainly is not that. I don't think he understands the issues.
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I think he's surrounded by various maniacs who are wanting to break trust with Israel. And there
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are anti-Semites on the right wing who have J.D. Vance's phone number on speed dial, I can imagine.
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So it's a very muddled picture just how good he is for the Jews. But it's true that the Democrats
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can be counted upon to be reliably bad for the issues around domestic anti-Semitism and defense of
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Israel. So what's inscrutable about Trump's situation is obviously he's got all these
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entanglements in the Gulf. He's just grifting like a madman. He and his family and their allies
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earning billions of dollars cutting deals with the Gulf, cryptocurrency and otherwise. So there's
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this weird algebra around his short-term and narrowly constructed personal interests and whatever
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his allegiances to Israel, his hatred of immigration from so-called shithole countries, his animus toward
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our European allies and their multiculturalism, which I actually understand, at least that second
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piece. So all of that summates into him just being able to ride into Qatar and start making demands and
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offering promises, promises that Israel won't, will never bomb them in Doha again. And so yeah, it seems like
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he's, at a minimum, it seems like the hostages are going to come home. We're recording this on a
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Friday. I think they're expected to be released on this coming Sunday. It remains to be seen whether
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that's going to happen, but I think everyone believes it's going to happen at this point.
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I think I'm more skeptical than many are about the durable peace that this is promising. I'm not
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expecting that, but, and I will be genuinely surprised if this really does offer in a new dawn and a
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two-state solution and the lions lay down with the lambs. I think that's all to be bracketed with
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serious doubts, no matter what happens in the next 48 hours. But this is definitely better than we
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could have expected under Harris. I freely admit that. Is that why you think that the entire world
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is not cheering about this? All those that thought this was a genocide, well, why aren't you coming
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forth to say, all right, well, that's whatever that was, it's now over. Do you think it's because
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it's not durable peace and they're not making it? No, no, no, no. I mean, the Mark Ruffalo's of the
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world who are not cheering this, it has nothing to do with their circumspection around thinking that
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the ceasefire can become a durable peace. No, they're just, they just don't really care about
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what they say they care about in the end. I mean, there's a very cynical and delusional mixture of
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kind of moral emotions and moral illusions here that is causing everyone to celebrate the wrong
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thing, not celebrate when they get precisely what they said they wanted, etc. I mean, if you
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really thought there was a genocide in Gaza and this is ending it decisively, where are the
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celebrations? Where is Greta Thunberg and Mark Ruffalo and the rest of the celebrity brigade who
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doubled down on so-called Palestinian rights, which was really just, you know, useful idiots
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supporting Hamas in the end? Where are their appeals to Hamas to accept this deal immediately?
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Every hour they delay is costing more lives. Where's the pressure applied to Hamas by the people who
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pretend to support the Palestinian cause? I mean, maybe it exists somewhere, but I haven't seen,
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I certainly haven't seen it and they should be celebrating more than anyone. They should be
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celebrating as much as the families of the hostages. I mean, they should be an unalloyed good
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from their point of view. What's happening here? Given that they should have been pushing Hamas a
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long time ago to return the hostages. Of course. Yeah. But so maybe they, from their perspective,
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maybe they're thinking that this is just not a good deal and they're going to, the Palestinians are
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going to find themselves yet again under the Israeli thumb of power and to have lost their rights in
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whatever position they take. And that this deal, they just don't have a lot of faith in Netanyahu and
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Trump that they're going to do what they say and they're going to lose all their leverage giving the
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hostages back and we'll be right back where we were before, you know, again, in 10, 15 years.
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So again, I'm just trying to paint their position as best I can. I obviously understand the cynical
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take that they just hate the Jews, but there may be other reasons. Maybe they want to wait a few
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weeks. Maybe they want to see how things play out before they begin to celebrate.
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Well, above all, they claim to want a ceasefire, right? Just stop the killing. That's just the master
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value, right? That they're expressing. And this does that and then stands a chance of making that
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ceasefire a durable peace if the other parties in the region, the other Gulf states, take an interest
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in helping restore order and rebuild Gaza, right? This whole plan to rebuild Gaza. I mean, of course,
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you know, Trump, to some degree, you know, what's worked for him is this kind of madman theory of
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diplomacy, right? I mean, he came in there and basically said, we're going to ethnically cleanse
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the region and erect gold statues to me and open casinos, right? I mean, that was basically the
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vision. I mean, he literally shared an AI animation of that, you know, just pimping the ride of the
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Middle East, you know, Trump style. And, you know, he got behind that. And it's just, it was a morally
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obscene declaration of an intention, which just rattled the brains of every party to this conversation.
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It clearly affected the thinking in Qatar. The other crucial piece, though, is not just Trump's
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weird contribution to it. It's the fact that all the while, Israel was decisively winning the war
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against her myriad enemies, right? So it was the destruction, the apparent, you know, virtually
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complete destruction of Hezbollah, not totally complete, but decisive. The bombing of Iran,
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you know, along with what the U.S. did there, the complete defeat of Hamas. I mean, Hamas,
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by all accounts, scarcely exists anymore. I mean, there's a few people who are going to stand up and
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declare victory, no doubt, after Sunday. But if Israel hadn't accomplished all of that on the
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battlefield, you know, there would be no deal here. It's not just a matter of diplomacy.
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So you said you're not optimistic that there's going to be a durable peace. Why is that? And
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is there anything that could happen that you would think, you know, would make for a lasting peace in
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the Middle East? Why don't you see Qatari partnership there and with, along with Saudis and
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see Turkey coming in? Why don't you see a future for the Middle East where there is some form of
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lasting peace? Well, so the Qataris are a unique case because they're playing a double game of funding
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terrorism and funding Islamist and jihadist memes worldwide. I mean, they're destabilizing much of
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the Western world with their funding of, you know, Islamist lies and stealth theocracy, right? I mean,
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they're basically an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Muslim Brotherhood has, you
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know, command of their theology. So they're, you know, state funders of terrorism and any, you know,
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negotiation with them or alliance with them on any topic should be clear-eyed about that. Now,
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let's say they had a sea change from the top in their attitude toward Islamism and jihadism of the
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sort that someone like MBS seems to have had, right? So MBS is seemingly reigning in the fundamentalist
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clerics in his own society and giving a lot of scope to the more secular, modern aspirations of
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Saudis and other Gulf states have that, have a kind of secular leaning there too. And that's all to the
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good. I mean, you know, you sort of have to get the help from wherever it's coming. I mean, MBS is a
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very mixed figure ethically, right? He kills journalists and he imprisons people for having
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advocated the very things that he's now implementing in society. If I'm not mistaken, some of the women
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who protested, you know, for the rights of women to drive are still in prison, even though he's
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kind of rolled out the rights of women to drive in Saudi. So, you know, it's not a, this is not a
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bastion of freedom. This is an intolerant despotism still. But if he's reigning in religious fanaticism
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in the Gulf, and if the other states begin to do that, that's all good and we have to work with
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that. But the reality is there's going to be, there is, and there will continue to be a tension
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between what these rulers want and the so-called Arab street, right? And from the point of view of
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the real religious fanatics, these look like apostate regimes now, right? And they always
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have, and that was always Al-Qaeda's view of the Saudis. And, you know, so that's the view of the
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Muslim Brotherhood, and so it's, there's this tension there that still exists, and there's the
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source code of Islam that's there to be rediscovered at every point along the way. And even if everyone
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got on the same page and accepted Israel in the Middle East, it doesn't change the fact that,
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you know, you have 50,000 people on the terror watch list in the UK alone, right? I mean,
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you've got the problem of jihadism and Islamism in Western Europe that is continuing to seethe.
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These ideas aren't going away. These ideas have to be combated. And again, it is a good thing. I'm
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not saying it's a bad thing that MBS is reigning in his own jihadists and Islamists. I mean, that is
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good. But there's a war of ideas that has to be waged and won within Islam. I mean, there's a civil
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war that, I mean, there's no way it's going to be just a matter of ideas. Muslims have to be willing
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to fight jihadists, right, you know, across the board and purge that whole orientation from their
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faith. That's going to be very hard to do, and I think the willingness to do that in 100 countries
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is going to be very hard to kindle. So it's, I mean, it's a huge project. I don't expect,
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I don't expect our children to live to see the end of this project. That's my sense of what has
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to happen. I'm a little bit more optimistic, but let's move on to, I really do think that we're
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going to see some, see change there. And I really do, I hope in our lifetime that we do find that,
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as I've said, that, you know, Beirut and other wonderful places return to be glorious and with
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prosperity comes. Well, again, well, the change will have to be, there's a Potemkin view of
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secularism and tolerance that you see in some of these Gulf states, but these are totally
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authoritarian regimes, right? I mean, so they're going to, so the question is, how are they going
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to lock all this down? How are they going to change minds? How are they going to establish
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peace in the region? How is Gaza going to be a vacation place when you still have jihadists who want
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to spread the faith to the ends of the earth and establish a caliphate, right? There's going to be
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a lot of violence keeping a lid on all of that. I just, I don't see how that happens otherwise.
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It's not going to be a democracy. The idea that you could spread democracy to these societies and
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have everyone just normalize and secularize. And I do not see that happening in the lifetime of
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anyone listening to us. Maybe just a handful of benevolent dictatorships. Maybe that'll work.
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Who knows? Yeah. Or just dictatorships. Yeah. They get what they need. Moving over. Did you,
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did you see the announcement today about the Qatari Air Force facility base in Idaho?
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No, I just heard a rumor of it, which, yeah, my jaw is still somewhere on the floor.
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A little bit like a Borat skit. But apparently these are similar arrangements we've had with
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Singapore, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, as well as NATO allies, other ones, including Italy,
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Netherlands, as well as Turkey. So I wonder just the timing of the announcement of this. Again,
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I don't, I just saw this. I don't know that much about any of this. I'm wondering if maybe it's
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a distraction or it's part of the deal. Well, it came over with the plane,
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the gift of the $400 million plane. It should be of concern to people that Qatar is literally the
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largest state funder of US academic institutions, right? A foreign funder of US academic institutions
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to the tune of billions of dollars. What's that for? Well, it's just a sane watching of their
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theocratic agenda. Al Jazeera is not a journalistic organization. It's a psyop
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that's been performed on the West for however many years. You know, these are not good faith
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actors at all. So the question is, you know, what happens over the course of, you know, some years of
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engagement with them, that remains to be seen. But I think the only thing that really mattered
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so far is Israel winning the real wars on the ground and showing that if Qatar doesn't get on
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the right side here, you know, Doha itself is part of the field of battle, right? I mean, that I think
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got their attention. What do you say to those who might say Qatar's giving billions of dollars to
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Harvard and Northwestern and all these institutions? So why can't Trump get a plane? Why aren't they
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both wrong? They are both wrong. I mean, they're both wrong. Harvard shouldn't be taking funding
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from a Mideast theocracy that is now creating a Mideast studies program that is indoctrinating a
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generation of credulous students into a distorted view of the history of the region or the ease with
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which open societies can integrate greater numbers of Muslim citizens. Again, this is, it's a purely
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propagandistic and sinister operation. But we have, so in America, the Council on Islamic, American
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Islamic Relations, CARE, is imagined to be the Muslim equivalent of the ACLU or the NAACP. It's nothing of the
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sort, right? It is a Islamist front group. It is a stealth theocracy group of bullies. And yet it is the
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mouthpiece for the Muslim community that people listen to. So when something happens in the news of relevance
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to the Muslim community in America, it's someone from CARE who gets on CNN to tell the rest of the country
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what, you know, what Muslims think, right? Now, this is a totally sinister arrangement. I mean, these are
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not, again, they're not good faith actors. There's, there are direct ties between CARE and the Muslim
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Brotherhood. And that's the theology in the background that is guiding everyone's actions here. If you think
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of it in terms of communism, I mean, think of a set of ideas, you know, the fundamentalist Islam is a set of
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ideas. And it has its adherence in every Western country, and they have an agenda. And if you switched
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it out from being a religion to a political religion like communism, everyone would suddenly
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understand, okay, there's something to pay attention to here. This could be an instance in which the
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value, the master value of tolerance in an open society is being used to subvert the society itself
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and to evaporate the very reality of tolerance, right? And this is the paradox of tolerance that Karl
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Popper described. You can't be endlessly tolerant of intolerance and survive as an open society. And what we
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have here in an organization like CARE and in the seemingly generous, you know, benefaction of a state like
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Qatar, again, a state that openly funds terrorism, we have people who are deeply illiberal and committed to an
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illiberal worldview using our own liberal values as a shield to protect their project inside our
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societies, right? And so they'll be the first to cry intolerance. I mean, just everything I'm saying
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now is going to be, if any of them listen, this will be derided as Islamophobia and bigotry and racism,
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as though that made any sense. And they will be championing our virtues of tolerance and
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non-discrimination, right? Whereas the actual worldview that they want to implement in their
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own lives and in the lives of others is deeply intolerant. Open societies have to find some way
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of playing this game successfully so as to defend their own values without tipping over into proper
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closure or, you know, or xenophobia or bigotry or jingoism. I mean, all of that, you know,
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all of those looming problems on the right are worth worrying about. I mean, this is back to David
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Frum's great line that, you know, if liberals can't figure out how to police borders, fascists will.
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That's the problem. We're between, you know, useful idiots on the left just letting the barbarians in
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the gate and fascists on the right showing you how to close a gate properly. We don't want to be
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at either extreme. Yeah. But can you see the argument from the right that says, okay, now when
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Trump does it, it's a problem and everybody's screaming, but for years, if not decades, the
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Qatari money has come in and you could argue it's been damaging to society in a major way.
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I think we should scream about both, but no, the one difference, and it's an important difference,
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is Trump is president of the United States. He's monetizing the role of president in the most
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corrupt way. I mean, it's so corrupt that it's just clear that Republicans no longer have an idea
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of corruption in their minds. I mean, it's like they've just torched the very distinction between
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being corrupt and non-corrupt, right? No one is even paying attention to any of this, apparently.
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But no, he's just, you know, it's a kind of kleptocracy, right? He's using the levers of our state
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power to enrich himself and his friends very, very directly. He's taking $2 billion directly into the
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family business from the UAE and then greenlighting the sale of our most advanced AI chips to the UAE,
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right? And all the while knowing that the UAE does joint military exercises with China and that it's a
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security concern that our best chips get in China's hands, right? Like it's just pure graft and personal
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corruption and we have never seen anything like it. Yeah. Speaking of Trump, you sent me a clip
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yesterday, I think it was from 2018, about him cheating at golf, where I think he had won the club
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championship that he actually didn't play. Right. And while that seems like, you know, Kim Jong-un level
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of insanity, why does Trump cheating at golf bother you? Why is that a big deal? Well, it's a very
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interesting window onto him as a person and people who don't follow golf have no feel for this,
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right? I mean, golf is, as far as I know, a total outlier with respect to the norms of the sport. I
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mean, so you take like one extreme is you've got soccer where people pretend to have been fouled and
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they fall down, the soccer players fall down on the ground and flop around in agony. And then the
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moment the foul isn't called, you know, in their favor, they just jump back up and they're fine.
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Right. And it's just this bizarre, really shameful performance, but the norms of soccer have just,
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you know, just relaxed and relaxed and relaxed to the point where everyone accepts it. It's just part
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of the game. Or, you know, in hockey, you know, you can just begin punching somebody in the face,
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you know, seemingly violating the rules of the sport, but everyone accepts it as like,
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this is sort of the sport now. Somebody gets to punch somebody in the face. Golf is in a
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different universe. When Tiger Woods won the Masters, which is, you know, the most prestigious
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event in the U.S. at least, if he had misreported his score or if he had failed to even sign his
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scorecard, he would have been immediately disqualified. He would have lost the Masters,
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right? The second place finisher would have won the Masters. I mean, that's analogous. It's just,
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it's impossible to even understand that in relation to other sports. I mean, it's like Tom Brady,
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you know, forgetting to sign a piece of paper after winning the Super Bowl and they lose the
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Super Bowl, right? It's just, how would anyone even think that should be, you know, within the
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realm of possibility? That is golf. Golf is just a religion of personal integrity, really. I mean,
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it's just, so two things. One is that it is central to Trump's life. He spends 30% of his time on the
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golf course, right? As president, he has done that. And he spends more time just hanging out at his own
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golf courses at great expense to the U.S. taxpayer. I mean, they charge millions of
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dollars. They go directly into Trump properties for all these trips to his golf courses. But
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golf is the center of his life and he cheats at it in ways that should be impossible. I mean,
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he cheats at it in just over the course of play. I mean, you can see this, the footage of his caddy
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just dropping a ball, you know, where he lost the ball in the water or his ball went into the sand
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trap and the caddy will just drop a ball, you know, to give him a more favorable lie. But then
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there are all these other stories of him pretending to have won tournaments that didn't even exist.
00:23:20.360
Like he'll buy a golf course and play around by himself and call that the first club championship
00:23:26.360
that he's now the winner of and put a fucking plaque on the wall, right? Or he'll, in the story
00:23:31.760
you heard, there was a tournament he didn't even enter, right? Where a guy won it. And then he sees
00:23:37.260
the guy on the golf course, you know, after the tournament and says, you know, you didn't really
00:23:40.880
win that tournament because I didn't play in it. So let's do a little playoff right now. And the
00:23:45.460
guy's playing with his son and he doesn't want to, but then Trump says, no, no, we're doing a playoff
00:23:49.020
right now. And he does a playoff with him where, you know, Trump hits a ball into the lake, but,
00:23:54.460
you know, pretends it didn't hit it into the lake, pretends the son hit it into the lake,
00:23:57.620
steals the son's ball on the green. I mean, this has all been reported by a guy who wrote a book.
00:24:01.700
It's worse. It's not that he steals it. His handlers do it. It's the machinery.
00:24:06.140
Like they already know what to do. That's the problem.
00:24:08.760
But the truly egregious thing is he's the sort of person for whom golf really is at the center
00:24:15.320
of his life. I mean, he's, he cares about it. He loves it. I mean, it's clearly what he wants his
00:24:20.200
life to be 30% golf at least. And yet he is violating its norms in a way that not one in a
00:24:28.680
million golfers, if given the chance, would ever do. I mean, it's the most shameful desecration of the
00:24:35.040
actual norms of the sport that you can imagine. I mean, pretending to have won, literally stealing
00:24:40.780
the title of a club championship from its rightful winner by lying, right? And putting your name on
00:24:47.140
the wall, attesting to your victory. I mean, to call it sociopathic doesn't even quite get at it.
00:24:52.040
I mean, there's really, it's so far out on the tail end of aberration of human behavior. Again,
00:24:58.820
given that the relevant, you know, cultural norms surrounding the whole project, it's just,
00:25:04.560
it's almost uninterpretable. I mean, you literally, you have never met anyone who has ever met anyone
00:25:09.320
who would behave this way. And this guy is president of the United States.
00:25:12.920
Right. Plus with golf, as anyone who plays, you know, you're playing the course. So it's really
00:25:17.120
about your own personal best. So when you, when you lie, you're not just, you're not cheating
00:25:21.560
somebody else. You're actually completely missing the entire point of the game.
00:25:24.920
Oh yeah. You know, it's like cheating at prayer or something. I mean, it's just, it's,
00:25:30.900
It's not insane in the sense of being psychotic, delusional, but it is morally insane. Yeah.
00:25:36.480
I mean, this is my point about, it's always been my point about Trump. There are people you can point
00:25:40.780
to who are much worse people. They've created many more overt harms and intended to create those
00:25:47.240
harms. I mean, just like, you know, prototypically evil people, they are easier to understand in some
00:25:52.400
sense than Trump. I mean, his psychology is just frankly bizarre.
00:25:57.020
Yeah. All right. We got to, we got to move on. I want to, I want to talk about, um, we were
00:26:00.880
together last month in Seattle when we heard about Charlie Kirk's assassination. I was pretty shaken
00:26:05.760
up by it. I want to see if you'll share any of your thoughts on that and perhaps your thoughts
00:26:13.880
Well, there's so much is wrong with them. I mean, first it's just a terrible tragedy for
00:26:18.400
the family and friends of Charlie Kirk. And I mean, it's just awful in every respect
00:26:22.580
there. And my immediate reaction to it was just to be purely horrified by it. I mean,
00:26:28.620
just on, on that personal level. Additionally, it's horrible for other reasons that, that affect
00:26:35.600
a much wider set of people and concerns. I mean, so the thing that's horrible about a political
00:26:41.160
assassination is that it's happening, especially in this case, it's happening in an environment
00:26:46.880
where we are combustible as a society. The level of trust in institutions is so low. It's
00:26:53.900
so much lower than it has ever has been really, at least in modern memory, that a political
00:27:00.780
assassination is just much more dangerous now. I mean, there's just so much dry tinder. It's
00:27:05.480
like when JFK was assassinated or MLK or Robert Kennedy, those assassinations happened in a context
00:27:11.960
where there was massive trouble. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,
00:27:17.540
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