Making Sense - Sam Harris - #438 — "More From Sam"： Israel-Hamas Deal, Qatari Air Force Base, Trump, Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, & Rapid Fire Questions

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

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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. Welcome back to another episode of More From Sam,

00:00:39.360 where we get to hear more from Sam. Hello, Sam. How are you? Hey, how's it going? Going well,

00:00:44.320 going well. Good to see you. Are you ready for the shows coming up next week in New York and Boston?

00:00:49.360 I am. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. As you know, I've been changing the talk incrementally

00:00:53.940 as things happen in the world. So it's kind of a living document at this point, which is fun.

00:00:58.460 I haven't had a... I can't even remember having a project like that where it just keeps changing,

00:01:03.600 and I keep... it keeps maintaining its relevance to me because there's a date on the calendar where

00:01:08.420 I have to deliver it by. So yeah, it's kind of cool. It is enjoyable because I get to hear,

00:01:13.700 you know, obviously read the different drafts, and I feel like I'm going to get to watch a... the first

00:01:18.200 few shows will be probably entirely differently or a lot different from the final shows. Yeah.

00:01:22.880 And speaking of that, I kind of just let people know that we're going to be announcing some new

00:01:27.460 shows coming up next year. So if anybody wants to get notified about those, please head over to

00:01:32.220 samharris.org and join the mailing list because we're going to make that announcement, I think,

00:01:36.360 next week or the week after for 2026. And anybody who wants to come to Boston, I think that show sold

00:01:43.040 out in a day or two. New York has a few tickets, maybe a dozen or so for next week, October 15th,

00:01:48.140 I believe. So come out and join us. All right. On to the first topic. Trump got a deal done. And

00:01:52.960 that's something I don't believe you believe would have happened under a President Harris.

00:01:56.780 It pains me somewhat to admit this, but yes, he's certainly been good for the Middle East and for

00:02:03.020 Israel in a way that I don't think there was any reason to expect Harris to be good. And Biden

00:02:09.080 certainly wasn't good apart from the first few weeks after October 7th or maybe a couple of months

00:02:13.840 after October 7th. He proved quite an unreliable ally there. So yes, I think Trump, for reasons that

00:02:20.500 are still somewhat inscrutable, I think he's also an unreliable ally for Israel. All the Israelis and 1.00

00:02:27.000 the Jews of the world who think that he's just an unalloyed good for their cause, just a clear-eyed

00:02:34.180 defender of Western civilization generally and of the lone democracy and battle democracy in the

00:02:39.420 Middle East in the case of Israel. He certainly is not that. I don't think he understands the issues.

00:02:44.100 I think he's surrounded by various maniacs who are wanting to break trust with Israel. And there

00:02:50.340 are anti-Semites on the right wing who have J.D. Vance's phone number on speed dial, I can imagine.

00:02:56.000 So it's a very muddled picture just how good he is for the Jews. But it's true that the Democrats 0.99

00:03:01.540 can be counted upon to be reliably bad for the issues around domestic anti-Semitism and defense of

00:03:09.040 Israel. So what's inscrutable about Trump's situation is obviously he's got all these

00:03:14.080 entanglements in the Gulf. He's just grifting like a madman. He and his family and their allies 0.98

00:03:19.080 earning billions of dollars cutting deals with the Gulf, cryptocurrency and otherwise. So there's

00:03:24.760 this weird algebra around his short-term and narrowly constructed personal interests and whatever

00:03:33.960 his allegiances to Israel, his hatred of immigration from so-called shithole countries, his animus toward 0.54

00:03:42.840 our European allies and their multiculturalism, which I actually understand, at least that second

00:03:47.840 piece. So all of that summates into him just being able to ride into Qatar and start making demands and

00:03:56.560 offering promises, promises that Israel won't, will never bomb them in Doha again. And so yeah, it seems like

00:04:02.400 he's, at a minimum, it seems like the hostages are going to come home. We're recording this on a

00:04:07.040 Friday. I think they're expected to be released on this coming Sunday. It remains to be seen whether

00:04:13.280 that's going to happen, but I think everyone believes it's going to happen at this point.

00:04:16.700 I think I'm more skeptical than many are about the durable peace that this is promising. I'm not

00:04:22.620 expecting that, but, and I will be genuinely surprised if this really does offer in a new dawn and a

00:04:28.800 two-state solution and the lions lay down with the lambs. I think that's all to be bracketed with

00:04:34.300 serious doubts, no matter what happens in the next 48 hours. But this is definitely better than we

00:04:40.820 could have expected under Harris. I freely admit that. Is that why you think that the entire world

00:04:46.880 is not cheering about this? All those that thought this was a genocide, well, why aren't you coming

00:04:51.460 forth to say, all right, well, that's whatever that was, it's now over. Do you think it's because

00:04:55.940 it's not durable peace and they're not making it? No, no, no, no. I mean, the Mark Ruffalo's of the

00:05:00.660 world who are not cheering this, it has nothing to do with their circumspection around thinking that

00:05:06.380 the ceasefire can become a durable peace. No, they're just, they just don't really care about

00:05:12.940 what they say they care about in the end. I mean, there's a very cynical and delusional mixture of

00:05:19.840 kind of moral emotions and moral illusions here that is causing everyone to celebrate the wrong

00:05:25.460 thing, not celebrate when they get precisely what they said they wanted, etc. I mean, if you

00:05:30.220 really thought there was a genocide in Gaza and this is ending it decisively, where are the

00:05:36.160 celebrations? Where is Greta Thunberg and Mark Ruffalo and the rest of the celebrity brigade who

00:05:42.820 doubled down on so-called Palestinian rights, which was really just, you know, useful idiots 0.99

00:05:48.720 supporting Hamas in the end? Where are their appeals to Hamas to accept this deal immediately? 0.99

00:05:55.880 Every hour they delay is costing more lives. Where's the pressure applied to Hamas by the people who 0.84

00:06:01.520 pretend to support the Palestinian cause? I mean, maybe it exists somewhere, but I haven't seen,

00:06:06.220 I certainly haven't seen it and they should be celebrating more than anyone. They should be

00:06:09.900 celebrating as much as the families of the hostages. I mean, they should be an unalloyed good

00:06:15.400 from their point of view. What's happening here? Given that they should have been pushing Hamas a 0.98

00:06:19.200 long time ago to return the hostages. Of course. Yeah. But so maybe they, from their perspective,

00:06:24.600 maybe they're thinking that this is just not a good deal and they're going to, the Palestinians are 1.00

00:06:28.780 going to find themselves yet again under the Israeli thumb of power and to have lost their rights in

00:06:34.920 whatever position they take. And that this deal, they just don't have a lot of faith in Netanyahu and

00:06:39.820 Trump that they're going to do what they say and they're going to lose all their leverage giving the

00:06:43.380 hostages back and we'll be right back where we were before, you know, again, in 10, 15 years.

00:06:47.620 So again, I'm just trying to paint their position as best I can. I obviously understand the cynical

00:06:51.100 take that they just hate the Jews, but there may be other reasons. Maybe they want to wait a few 0.98

00:06:54.940 weeks. Maybe they want to see how things play out before they begin to celebrate.

00:06:59.120 Well, above all, they claim to want a ceasefire, right? Just stop the killing. That's just the master

00:07:06.020 value, right? That they're expressing. And this does that and then stands a chance of making that

00:07:13.760 ceasefire a durable peace if the other parties in the region, the other Gulf states, take an interest

00:07:20.120 in helping restore order and rebuild Gaza, right? This whole plan to rebuild Gaza. I mean, of course,

00:07:27.720 you know, Trump, to some degree, you know, what's worked for him is this kind of madman theory of

00:07:32.720 diplomacy, right? I mean, he came in there and basically said, we're going to ethnically cleanse

00:07:37.660 the region and erect gold statues to me and open casinos, right? I mean, that was basically the

00:07:43.480 vision. I mean, he literally shared an AI animation of that, you know, just pimping the ride of the

00:07:49.180 Middle East, you know, Trump style. And, you know, he got behind that. And it's just, it was a morally

00:07:55.700 obscene declaration of an intention, which just rattled the brains of every party to this conversation.

00:08:02.460 It clearly affected the thinking in Qatar. The other crucial piece, though, is not just Trump's

00:08:08.280 weird contribution to it. It's the fact that all the while, Israel was decisively winning the war 0.86

00:08:15.300 against her myriad enemies, right? So it was the destruction, the apparent, you know, virtually

00:08:21.940 complete destruction of Hezbollah, not totally complete, but decisive. The bombing of Iran, 0.61

00:08:28.540 you know, along with what the U.S. did there, the complete defeat of Hamas. I mean, Hamas, 0.84

00:08:34.040 by all accounts, scarcely exists anymore. I mean, there's a few people who are going to stand up and

00:08:38.020 declare victory, no doubt, after Sunday. But if Israel hadn't accomplished all of that on the

00:08:43.320 battlefield, you know, there would be no deal here. It's not just a matter of diplomacy.

00:08:49.000 So you said you're not optimistic that there's going to be a durable peace. Why is that? And

00:08:52.880 is there anything that could happen that you would think, you know, would make for a lasting peace in

00:08:58.520 the Middle East? Why don't you see Qatari partnership there and with, along with Saudis and

00:09:05.660 see Turkey coming in? Why don't you see a future for the Middle East where there is some form of 0.94

00:09:12.920 lasting peace? Well, so the Qataris are a unique case because they're playing a double game of funding 0.99

00:09:18.260 terrorism and funding Islamist and jihadist memes worldwide. I mean, they're destabilizing much of

00:09:26.140 the Western world with their funding of, you know, Islamist lies and stealth theocracy, right? I mean, 1.00

00:09:31.200 they're basically an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Muslim Brotherhood has, you

00:09:35.880 know, command of their theology. So they're, you know, state funders of terrorism and any, you know,

00:09:41.620 negotiation with them or alliance with them on any topic should be clear-eyed about that. Now,

00:09:45.800 let's say they had a sea change from the top in their attitude toward Islamism and jihadism of the 0.85

00:09:52.460 sort that someone like MBS seems to have had, right? So MBS is seemingly reigning in the fundamentalist

00:09:59.820 clerics in his own society and giving a lot of scope to the more secular, modern aspirations of

00:10:06.380 Saudis and other Gulf states have that, have a kind of secular leaning there too. And that's all to the

00:10:12.120 good. I mean, you know, you sort of have to get the help from wherever it's coming. I mean, MBS is a

00:10:16.460 very mixed figure ethically, right? He kills journalists and he imprisons people for having 1.00

00:10:22.300 advocated the very things that he's now implementing in society. If I'm not mistaken, some of the women 1.00

00:10:27.700 who protested, you know, for the rights of women to drive are still in prison, even though he's

00:10:32.260 kind of rolled out the rights of women to drive in Saudi. So, you know, it's not a, this is not a

00:10:37.840 bastion of freedom. This is an intolerant despotism still. But if he's reigning in religious fanaticism

00:10:45.800 in the Gulf, and if the other states begin to do that, that's all good and we have to work with

00:10:52.200 that. But the reality is there's going to be, there is, and there will continue to be a tension

00:10:56.560 between what these rulers want and the so-called Arab street, right? And from the point of view of

00:11:02.500 the real religious fanatics, these look like apostate regimes now, right? And they always 1.00

00:11:08.160 have, and that was always Al-Qaeda's view of the Saudis. And, you know, so that's the view of the

00:11:13.840 Muslim Brotherhood, and so it's, there's this tension there that still exists, and there's the

00:11:18.500 source code of Islam that's there to be rediscovered at every point along the way. And even if everyone

00:11:25.260 got on the same page and accepted Israel in the Middle East, it doesn't change the fact that,

00:11:31.140 you know, you have 50,000 people on the terror watch list in the UK alone, right? I mean,

00:11:35.700 you've got the problem of jihadism and Islamism in Western Europe that is continuing to seethe. 0.95

00:11:42.440 These ideas aren't going away. These ideas have to be combated. And again, it is a good thing. I'm

00:11:46.880 not saying it's a bad thing that MBS is reigning in his own jihadists and Islamists. I mean, that is 0.90

00:11:52.280 good. But there's a war of ideas that has to be waged and won within Islam. I mean, there's a civil 0.66

00:11:59.580 war that, I mean, there's no way it's going to be just a matter of ideas. Muslims have to be willing

00:12:05.100 to fight jihadists, right, you know, across the board and purge that whole orientation from their 0.99

00:12:12.240 faith. That's going to be very hard to do, and I think the willingness to do that in 100 countries

00:12:18.420 is going to be very hard to kindle. So it's, I mean, it's a huge project. I don't expect,

00:12:23.940 I don't expect our children to live to see the end of this project. That's my sense of what has

00:12:30.120 to happen. I'm a little bit more optimistic, but let's move on to, I really do think that we're

00:12:36.540 going to see some, see change there. And I really do, I hope in our lifetime that we do find that,

00:12:42.440 as I've said, that, you know, Beirut and other wonderful places return to be glorious and with

00:12:48.440 prosperity comes. Well, again, well, the change will have to be, there's a Potemkin view of

00:12:54.980 secularism and tolerance that you see in some of these Gulf states, but these are totally

00:13:00.800 authoritarian regimes, right? I mean, so they're going to, so the question is, how are they going

00:13:04.940 to lock all this down? How are they going to change minds? How are they going to establish

00:13:07.900 peace in the region? How is Gaza going to be a vacation place when you still have jihadists who want 0.99

00:13:13.200 to spread the faith to the ends of the earth and establish a caliphate, right? There's going to be 1.00

00:13:18.420 a lot of violence keeping a lid on all of that. I just, I don't see how that happens otherwise.

00:13:23.340 It's not going to be a democracy. The idea that you could spread democracy to these societies and

00:13:28.360 have everyone just normalize and secularize. And I do not see that happening in the lifetime of

00:13:35.320 anyone listening to us. Maybe just a handful of benevolent dictatorships. Maybe that'll work.

00:13:40.680 Who knows? Yeah. Or just dictatorships. Yeah. They get what they need. Moving over. Did you,

00:13:47.000 did you see the announcement today about the Qatari Air Force facility base in Idaho?

00:13:52.880 No, I just heard a rumor of it, which, yeah, my jaw is still somewhere on the floor.

00:13:58.080 A little bit like a Borat skit. But apparently these are similar arrangements we've had with

00:14:02.040 Singapore, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, as well as NATO allies, other ones, including Italy,

00:14:08.060 Netherlands, as well as Turkey. So I wonder just the timing of the announcement of this. Again,

00:14:13.060 I don't, I just saw this. I don't know that much about any of this. I'm wondering if maybe it's

00:14:18.060 a distraction or it's part of the deal. Well, it came over with the plane,

00:14:22.260 the gift of the $400 million plane. It should be of concern to people that Qatar is literally the 1.00

00:14:28.420 largest state funder of US academic institutions, right? A foreign funder of US academic institutions

00:14:35.140 to the tune of billions of dollars. What's that for? Well, it's just a sane watching of their

00:14:40.300 theocratic agenda. Al Jazeera is not a journalistic organization. It's a psyop

00:14:46.860 that's been performed on the West for however many years. You know, these are not good faith

00:14:52.820 actors at all. So the question is, you know, what happens over the course of, you know, some years of

00:14:58.520 engagement with them, that remains to be seen. But I think the only thing that really mattered

00:15:04.420 so far is Israel winning the real wars on the ground and showing that if Qatar doesn't get on 0.92

00:15:15.000 the right side here, you know, Doha itself is part of the field of battle, right? I mean, that I think

00:15:20.500 got their attention. What do you say to those who might say Qatar's giving billions of dollars to

00:15:25.580 Harvard and Northwestern and all these institutions? So why can't Trump get a plane? Why aren't they

00:15:31.480 both wrong? They are both wrong. I mean, they're both wrong. Harvard shouldn't be taking funding

00:15:36.260 from a Mideast theocracy that is now creating a Mideast studies program that is indoctrinating a 0.79

00:15:45.760 generation of credulous students into a distorted view of the history of the region or the ease with

00:15:52.600 which open societies can integrate greater numbers of Muslim citizens. Again, this is, it's a purely 1.00

00:16:00.160 propagandistic and sinister operation. But we have, so in America, the Council on Islamic, American

00:16:07.260 Islamic Relations, CARE, is imagined to be the Muslim equivalent of the ACLU or the NAACP. It's nothing of the

00:16:16.920 sort, right? It is a Islamist front group. It is a stealth theocracy group of bullies. And yet it is the 0.84

00:16:25.080 mouthpiece for the Muslim community that people listen to. So when something happens in the news of relevance

00:16:32.840 to the Muslim community in America, it's someone from CARE who gets on CNN to tell the rest of the country

00:16:39.480 what, you know, what Muslims think, right? Now, this is a totally sinister arrangement. I mean, these are 1.00

00:16:45.760 not, again, they're not good faith actors. There's, there are direct ties between CARE and the Muslim

00:16:50.940 Brotherhood. And that's the theology in the background that is guiding everyone's actions here. If you think

00:16:58.400 of it in terms of communism, I mean, think of a set of ideas, you know, the fundamentalist Islam is a set of

00:17:03.700 ideas. And it has its adherence in every Western country, and they have an agenda. And if you switched

00:17:12.800 it out from being a religion to a political religion like communism, everyone would suddenly

00:17:18.120 understand, okay, there's something to pay attention to here. This could be an instance in which the

00:17:23.720 value, the master value of tolerance in an open society is being used to subvert the society itself

00:17:30.680 and to evaporate the very reality of tolerance, right? And this is the paradox of tolerance that Karl

00:17:36.040 Popper described. You can't be endlessly tolerant of intolerance and survive as an open society. And what we

00:17:42.920 have here in an organization like CARE and in the seemingly generous, you know, benefaction of a state like

00:17:51.160 Qatar, again, a state that openly funds terrorism, we have people who are deeply illiberal and committed to an 1.00

00:17:58.660 illiberal worldview using our own liberal values as a shield to protect their project inside our

00:18:09.240 societies, right? And so they'll be the first to cry intolerance. I mean, just everything I'm saying

00:18:15.060 now is going to be, if any of them listen, this will be derided as Islamophobia and bigotry and racism,

00:18:21.920 as though that made any sense. And they will be championing our virtues of tolerance and

00:18:28.520 non-discrimination, right? Whereas the actual worldview that they want to implement in their

00:18:33.580 own lives and in the lives of others is deeply intolerant. Open societies have to find some way

00:18:40.700 of playing this game successfully so as to defend their own values without tipping over into proper

00:18:47.180 closure or, you know, or xenophobia or bigotry or jingoism. I mean, all of that, you know,

00:18:53.760 all of those looming problems on the right are worth worrying about. I mean, this is back to David

00:18:59.300 Frum's great line that, you know, if liberals can't figure out how to police borders, fascists will.

00:19:04.060 That's the problem. We're between, you know, useful idiots on the left just letting the barbarians in 1.00

00:19:09.920 the gate and fascists on the right showing you how to close a gate properly. We don't want to be 1.00

00:19:16.040 at either extreme. Yeah. But can you see the argument from the right that says, okay, now when

00:19:21.040 Trump does it, it's a problem and everybody's screaming, but for years, if not decades, the

00:19:26.540 Qatari money has come in and you could argue it's been damaging to society in a major way. 1.00

00:19:32.640 I think we should scream about both, but no, the one difference, and it's an important difference,

00:19:37.660 is Trump is president of the United States. He's monetizing the role of president in the most

00:19:43.520 corrupt way. I mean, it's so corrupt that it's just clear that Republicans no longer have an idea

00:19:49.400 of corruption in their minds. I mean, it's like they've just torched the very distinction between

00:19:54.500 being corrupt and non-corrupt, right? No one is even paying attention to any of this, apparently.

00:19:59.960 But no, he's just, you know, it's a kind of kleptocracy, right? He's using the levers of our state

00:20:06.100 power to enrich himself and his friends very, very directly. He's taking $2 billion directly into the

00:20:15.160 family business from the UAE and then greenlighting the sale of our most advanced AI chips to the UAE,

00:20:23.320 right? And all the while knowing that the UAE does joint military exercises with China and that it's a

00:20:29.460 security concern that our best chips get in China's hands, right? Like it's just pure graft and personal 0.96

00:20:36.360 corruption and we have never seen anything like it. Yeah. Speaking of Trump, you sent me a clip

00:20:42.200 yesterday, I think it was from 2018, about him cheating at golf, where I think he had won the club

00:20:48.820 championship that he actually didn't play. Right. And while that seems like, you know, Kim Jong-un level

00:20:54.800 of insanity, why does Trump cheating at golf bother you? Why is that a big deal? Well, it's a very

00:21:01.080 interesting window onto him as a person and people who don't follow golf have no feel for this,

00:21:08.500 right? I mean, golf is, as far as I know, a total outlier with respect to the norms of the sport. I

00:21:14.520 mean, so you take like one extreme is you've got soccer where people pretend to have been fouled and

00:21:20.360 they fall down, the soccer players fall down on the ground and flop around in agony. And then the

00:21:24.900 moment the foul isn't called, you know, in their favor, they just jump back up and they're fine.

00:21:28.880 Right. And it's just this bizarre, really shameful performance, but the norms of soccer have just,

00:21:34.700 you know, just relaxed and relaxed and relaxed to the point where everyone accepts it. It's just part

00:21:38.480 of the game. Or, you know, in hockey, you know, you can just begin punching somebody in the face, 0.89

00:21:44.060 you know, seemingly violating the rules of the sport, but everyone accepts it as like,

00:21:48.000 this is sort of the sport now. Somebody gets to punch somebody in the face. Golf is in a 0.65

00:21:52.500 different universe. When Tiger Woods won the Masters, which is, you know, the most prestigious

00:21:57.820 event in the U.S. at least, if he had misreported his score or if he had failed to even sign his

00:22:05.100 scorecard, he would have been immediately disqualified. He would have lost the Masters,

00:22:09.060 right? The second place finisher would have won the Masters. I mean, that's analogous. It's just,

00:22:12.920 it's impossible to even understand that in relation to other sports. I mean, it's like Tom Brady,

00:22:17.560 you know, forgetting to sign a piece of paper after winning the Super Bowl and they lose the

00:22:22.980 Super Bowl, right? It's just, how would anyone even think that should be, you know, within the

00:22:27.600 realm of possibility? That is golf. Golf is just a religion of personal integrity, really. I mean,

00:22:33.160 it's just, so two things. One is that it is central to Trump's life. He spends 30% of his time on the

00:22:39.340 golf course, right? As president, he has done that. And he spends more time just hanging out at his own

00:22:43.840 golf courses at great expense to the U.S. taxpayer. I mean, they charge millions of

00:22:49.400 dollars. They go directly into Trump properties for all these trips to his golf courses. But

00:22:54.860 golf is the center of his life and he cheats at it in ways that should be impossible. I mean,

00:23:01.140 he cheats at it in just over the course of play. I mean, you can see this, the footage of his caddy

00:23:05.900 just dropping a ball, you know, where he lost the ball in the water or his ball went into the sand

00:23:10.420 trap and the caddy will just drop a ball, you know, to give him a more favorable lie. But then

00:23:15.060 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 0.98

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 0.98

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,

00:25:28.800 it's insane. Yeah.

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. 0.87

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

00:26:11.080 about how others responded as well.

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 you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length

00:27:23.000 episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on

00:27:28.860 listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 11, 2025

#438 — "More From Sam"： Israel-Hamas Deal, Qatari Air Force Base, Trump, Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, & Rapid Fire Questions

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 11, 2025

#438 &#x2014; &#x22;More From Sam&#x22;： Israel-Hamas Deal, Qatari Air Force Base, Trump, Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, &#x26; Rapid Fire Questions

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

#438 — "More From Sam"： Israel-Hamas Deal, Qatari Air Force Base, Trump, Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, & Rapid Fire Questions