Making Sense - Sam Harris - #461 — Dictators Always Tell You What They'll Do

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

00:00:11.980 this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part

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00:00:20.860 you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's

00:00:26.400 made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing

00:00:30.400 here, please consider becoming one. I am here with Gary Kasparov. Gary, thanks for joining me again.

00:00:40.200 Thanks for inviting me.

00:00:41.480 It's great to see you. So I think it's been something like five years, four or five years,

00:00:46.280 six years maybe since we've spoken. A lot has happened, but still we were speaking under the

00:00:52.160 shadow of Trump and Trumpism. I think each of the times we spoke, I think our first conversation

00:00:57.300 was in 2016, and then maybe like 2022, I think that's where we are. So it's been about four years.

00:01:05.140 Well, first, just to introduce you properly, many people will know you as one of the greatest

00:01:09.440 chess masters of all time and world champion for many years. And maybe we'll return to the topic

00:01:16.720 of chess at some point. But now you're currently the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative,

00:01:21.660 and also you have a substack, the nextmove.org, which is associated with that foundation and

00:01:30.320 where you write. Tell people, what does the Renew Democracy Initiative do? What are you focused on?

00:01:35.580 I mean, I think we can guess from the title that you care about democracy, but what specific

00:01:39.400 problems are you focused on at the moment?

00:01:40.800 Yeah, I'm also pretty active on the other side of the Atlantic. So in Europe, where there's most of

00:01:47.460 my colleagues in Russian opposition located. And Renew Democracy Initiative was formed in the

00:01:54.200 beginning of 2017, after Trump's first victory in the presidential elections. It was a quite kind

00:02:01.660 of friendly group of individuals, some of them were modern Democrats from New York, some of them were

00:02:08.420 the group I called the refugees from the Wall Street Journal, like Brett Stevens or Max Boot.

00:02:12.900 And I called for them just, you know, trying to figure out what's next, because I could smell

00:02:19.600 the danger. It's probably because I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. I knew what was KGB, 0.52

00:02:25.500 not from the books, but from personal experience. I also fought Vladimir Putin. I saw the second rise

00:02:31.340 of KGB and how it took over my country, Russia, after we had a period of very fragile,

00:02:38.280 so nascent democracy in the 90s. And I could see that there's some very troubling signs in America.

00:02:45.740 So the idea of RDI was to actually point these potential problems, actually challenges to the

00:02:53.240 Americans, because what I didn't like especially was the polarization. It's like, or you might call

00:02:59.340 it tribalization of American politics, the rise of the extremes on both sides. And as a good scholar

00:03:05.000 of history, I knew that, you know, that's how democracy dies, because it's not about attack

00:03:10.340 from one side or another. It's when it's being besieged by extremists. And one day,

00:03:16.460 these people discovered that, you know, they have no choices. What I call the, it's a paradox of the

00:03:21.180 Spanish Civil War, you know, when just you wake up one morning and you see Franco on one side,

00:03:25.520 the fascist, or communists on the other side, and nothing in the middle. Of course, America was not

00:03:29.680 in 2016. Even today, it's not in the same situation, but I could smell, smell the danger.

00:03:35.020 And the idea of RDI was to offer an opportunity for people who were not comfortable with extremes

00:03:40.020 on either side to get together. It's what I call the home for politically homeless.

00:03:45.140 I could never imagine in my, you know, worst nightmare that 10 years later, these threats that I only had in

00:03:52.340 my imaginations could become a mainstream politics in America.

00:03:55.860 Hmm. Yeah. So, uh, I want to talk about where we are at present and maybe what has surprised you

00:04:02.380 in Trump's second term, but, um, let me just kind of set this up in a general frame because I've had

00:04:07.680 many conversations of the sort that, uh, you and I are about to have on this podcast. I mean, many,

00:04:13.400 for, you know, now a decade, many smart people have come on here worrying about the threat of

00:04:18.860 authoritarianism globally, but especially in America under Trump, people like yourself and,

00:04:24.840 and Applebaum and Timothy Snyder. And it's not that everyone agrees, you know, sets their,

00:04:29.680 the weights in precisely the same, the same degree there, but, you know, many, many smart people

00:04:35.760 who are, who are students of history and who have a, a spidey sense for the erosion of democratic norms

00:04:43.760 of a sort that you do based on your, your personal history, but they can wind up sounding fairly

00:04:50.500 paranoid to normal, uh, normal people who aren't tracking these things so closely. And I mean,

00:04:57.100 it's true. I think that in the last year, in the second Trump term, reality has caught up to the

00:05:02.480 paranoia to some considerable degree. And many people have noticed that things are on several

00:05:08.240 fronts, surprisingly bad, but many people still don't. And so I guess I, I would ask you, what would

00:05:14.200 you say to someone who even this far into Trump's second term, doesn't really feel that much out of

00:05:21.220 the ordinary has happened? I mean, there's been a bunch of tariffs coming on and off and on again.

00:05:25.760 There's been, um, I mean, Trump has obviously said some, uh, uncouth things, you know, he, he'll,

00:05:31.220 he'll share tweets and memes that no president should ever touch. Right. I mean, all of that is

00:05:36.340 deplorable, but what would you say to someone who just thinks that, yeah, sure. He's enriched himself

00:05:41.740 and what's a few billion dollars here and there. And there's the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, right?

00:05:46.540 So both sides are, are a little sleazy and corrupt, but nothing really is at stake here. Give me just

00:05:52.760 kind of your big picture sense of, of, you know, how far America has slipped in your view toward

00:05:57.960 authoritarianism. Thank you very much for this question. I'm used to be called paranoid,

00:06:01.760 kind of crazy angle that is spoiling everybody's celebration. My first article, by the way, just,

00:06:07.460 you know, talking about Vladimir Putin, my first article warning about threat coming from

00:06:11.140 Vladimir Putin dated back 25 years, January 4th, 2001, the Wall Street Journal. Yeah.

00:06:16.760 And people often ask me, how did I know? And my answer was very simple. I was listening

00:06:21.300 to what Vladimir Putin had been saying, because there's a paradox. A lot of people just don't

00:06:26.280 know it. Again, I, I was born in the Soviet Union, raised in the Soviet Union. I learned

00:06:31.540 a lot about history, just not from the books, but from just real life. I saw the rise of Vladimir

00:06:36.760 Putin and the, the collapse of the, of the very fragile Russian democracy. So the rule

00:06:41.800 is dictators always lie about what they have done, but very often they tell you exactly

00:06:47.880 what they're going to do. So you'd better believe them. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf was published 0.98

00:06:52.600 back in 19, 1925. And you, you can't blame him for being secretive about the plan. It was

00:06:58.600 a blueprint, but he was nobody in 1925. Vladimir Putin, by the way, you know, laid down his program

00:07:05.240 of recovering the greatness of Russian empire in 2005, in his speech, before the joint session

00:07:11.240 of Russian parliament and Russian Senate, when he talked about the collapse of the Soviet Union

00:07:15.480 being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of 20th century. I'm just mentioning this, you know,

00:07:20.040 just to give you a better understanding of why Trump should be taken seriously before it's too late.

00:07:25.880 And I've been talking about Putin's threat, you know, just year after year, months after months.

00:07:31.720 Unfortunately, even after Putin bluntly told the leaders of the free world in 2007 and the Munich

00:07:37.720 security conference about NATO being pushed back to 1997 borders, which meant Soviet Russia recovering

00:07:44.520 the control of the Eastern Europe as Soviet Union had. Again, no, nobody took him seriously. Then there was 0.90

00:07:51.400 an attack on the Republic of Georgia. Again, so nobody wanted to feel that the state, that the

00:07:57.080 temperature was rising and it was really political heat. I wrote another article, I remember in August

00:08:03.800 2008 saying next up the Republic of Georgia would be Ukraine. People asked me, how did I know? I said,

00:08:09.560 because I looked at the map and Vladimir Putin did it. Because again, dictator, you know, just,

00:08:14.760 it's not just moving all, you know, just its own way forward. It's step-by-step. It's not a question

00:08:21.480 why, it's why not. And in 2014, Putin basically broke all the international rules. The international

00:08:29.560 law that people so often appeal now ceased to exist in 2014. He violated every treaty Russia signed,

00:08:36.360 all the guarantees given to Ukraine. And the problem is the other side, Americans, Brits, Europeans,

00:08:42.600 they did nothing. Despite the fact that in 1994, there was a guarantee to Ukraine for its sovereignty

00:08:49.240 and borders by United States and Great Britain, and of course, Russia, in exchange for Ukraine giving

00:08:54.280 up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Now, back to Trump. Donald Trump is not making secret

00:09:01.400 of his plans. He views himself as a king. He acts as a king. And with Congress being totally impotent

00:09:09.080 and just not acting, there's nothing to stop him. And it's not just sanctions here or tariffs here or

00:09:15.160 tariffs there, just back and forth or few deplorable statements in the tweets. And you just mentioned

00:09:21.720 corruption. Yes, I'm not here to excuse, you know, the previous administration. Yes, Hunter Biden was

00:09:27.000 corrupt. But with Trump, corruption is not a problem. Corruption is the system. The way Donald Trump is

00:09:33.400 making himself rich is just using the United States resources, United States policies, I mean,

00:09:39.800 United States agencies. It's quite systematic. And Trump believes in it. Again, it's not that he is

00:09:46.280 trying to make a secret. It's everything he says. And day by day, you know, he's raising the stake.

00:09:53.000 Donald Trump was very successful even back in 2016, 17. That's when I warned Americans. He would try to

00:09:59.400 normalize things that were abnormal. I mean, so many things that are happening now, 10 years ago,

00:10:04.120 if you say, oh, the president could do this. Oh, no, come on. That's not going to happen.

00:10:07.880 I remember just, you know, a year ago, I've just, it was the end of 2000, just more than a year ago,

00:10:12.840 2024, after Trump won elections, I was on the podcast. I was a guest of Preet Bharara. And I asked Preet

00:10:19.480 about, okay, prominent lawyer. So what about the third term? He said, no, come on. It's not going to happen.

00:10:25.320 I said, yes, I hope it's not going to happen, but I think Trump will try it. He said, no, it's ironclad.

00:10:30.840 I said, are you sure? Absolutely sure. I still think, you know, it will stand, but it's not

00:10:35.480 going to stand because Trump will not try. He will try. Trump is going to try every trick in the book

00:10:40.840 because, you know, that's the way he sees the world. We know Donald Trump doesn't lose elections.

00:10:45.720 That's the way he sees it. And how can you not believe him when he's now mobilizing resources of

00:10:54.440 American, of the state, of federal, federal state, of agencies like FBI, DOJ, Interior,

00:11:01.960 to prepare, openly preparing to steal elections in November, the midterm elections. Again, it's not

00:11:07.640 a secret. You just listen to what he's saying, listen to what is being said by his cronies,

00:11:13.880 and look at their actions and believe them. Okay. I wish I'm paranoid, but so many things I said,

00:11:20.520 you know, that were considered paranoid now did happen. Ukraine now is just, it's four years at

00:11:25.720 war, four years, full-scale war. If you start counting from full-scale invasion and not counting,

00:11:31.480 of course, 12 years from the beginning of annexation of Crimea, it's a four years of war that Europe

00:11:36.760 hadn't seen since the end of the World War II, probably the largest war. I don't know whether you

00:11:42.120 can compare Vietnam or Korea, but it's a massive war. And there's no end in sight. And the United

00:11:47.880 States, this great country, this is the country that I used to see back then in the Soviet Union,

00:11:54.120 on the other side of Iron Curtain, with millions of my competitors, as the beacon of freedom,

00:11:58.840 the guardian of global democracy, is openly siding with forces of tyranny, with authoritarian regimes.

00:12:06.760 Yeah. It's siding with Putin. It's openly supporting Viktor Orban. I mean, the man who is

00:12:12.120 the prime minister of Hungary, just before his elections, where he's supposed to lose because

00:12:16.520 we see the opposition now is gaining momentum there. So the United States Secretary of State

00:12:21.160 is flying to Hungary to support the man who is opposing the entire, you know, European Union

00:12:26.920 and preventing them to helping Ukraine and also corrupt like hell. He's just, 0.72

00:12:31.240 nobody just doubts that he's on the payroll of Vladimir Putin.

00:12:34.200 All right. So I want to get back there. I want to talk about the loss of American leadership and

00:12:39.240 moral stature and the implications for world order there. But I want to focus on the domestic

00:12:46.120 problem of Trumpism in America and on landmarks of the sort that you just mentioned, like the upcoming

00:12:53.000 elections and Trump's obvious interest in declaring them fraudulent, should he lose or should the

00:12:58.520 Republicans lose in the midterms and the prospect of, you know, his nefarious work to actually steal an

00:13:05.400 election? He, uh, that, you know, the, uh, obviously that we know he tried to steal the 2020 election all

00:13:10.280 the while claiming that it was being stolen from him. So yeah, I w I don't, I don't think there's any

00:13:14.280 limit to what he would attempt there. The question is what could he actually accomplish with, um, you know,

00:13:21.400 his various enablers and sycophants and concubines and, uh, you know, his, his retinue of enablers

00:13:27.480 in power the second time around. But before we jump into all of that, is there anything that has

00:13:33.000 surprised you about Trump's second term? I mean, I, you know, you, I, you've been actively worrying

00:13:39.080 about kind of this ratchet of authoritarianism and norm busting, you know, turning in one direction

00:13:44.920 only month by month and year by year in America. But looking back over the last year, was there

00:13:51.000 anything that was surprising for good or for ill? No, for me, the greatest surprise was the total

00:13:56.680 capitulation. It's moral collapse of GOP. I could not imagine just that they would, they were not

00:14:03.720 enough. There would not be enough senators and members of the house to oppose the most aggressive

00:14:10.360 steps of Donald Trump, like appointing unqualified people just based on their loyalty and sometimes

00:14:17.000 craziness. And we're not talking about mass defection. It's not about dozens, you know, members of the

00:14:22.680 house or, or senators. It's, you know, a few votes here and there. And, uh, and the Donald Trump,

00:14:29.240 I think he just, he just measures, you know, that's this, oh, I can do this. So that's just,

00:14:33.560 there's no resistance next step. So it's, it's like a slow motion. It's death in thousand cuts,

00:14:39.320 but it's, it's, it's all goes, the, the, the, the train goes in one direction. And I hope,

00:14:43.720 I just only hope that the, uh, uh, facing the midterm disaster, the GOP might act differently.

00:14:50.360 But what is, what is the, the first, it's, it's, it's, that's again, it's the negative outcome of

00:14:55.240 first year is that Donald Trump has already collected the, the retinue, it's maybe not an army

00:15:01.080 of his cronies that would do whatever. So we really have a critical mass of top advisors, top

00:15:09.320 members of Trump administration who are willing to go beyond existing law to violate the constitution

00:15:16.680 because losing power for them could be even worse. Question is whether there is a critical mass,

00:15:22.040 I don't think yet, but it might, you know, just go in this direction, critical mass of the second

00:15:27.400 and third tier of, of officers of the law and, and, and bureaucrats in the agencies that would

00:15:34.440 join this sinking ship. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I want to keep talking about the sinking ship and

00:15:41.720 just how far it's sunk so far, but for a second, I just want to jump ahead to a possible future where

00:15:47.640 we clean up this mess. So just imagine in 2028, we have a democratic presidential candidate who comes in,

00:15:54.520 you know, with the best of intentions to reset all of the norms of our liberal democracy and improve

00:16:01.480 them and shore up the places that Trump has revealed to be weak spots. Right. So just imagine a democratic

00:16:07.720 president who was actually committed to minimizing his or her own power. Right. So to bring the

00:16:13.640 executive branch back into some line of a sane constitutional order where Congress can't be

00:16:19.320 sidelined to the degree that it has, et cetera. It seems to me that given how Trump has staffed his

00:16:25.320 government with loyalists and psychopaths and grifters and liars and, you know, confabulists

00:16:31.400 of various sorts, you'd name some people like Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, et cetera, for someone to come

00:16:37.560 in and clean house with, again, with the best of intentions, just trying to get back to some basic

00:16:43.480 norm of professionalism and non-partisanship. I mean, just to get a, a department of justice that is

00:16:49.640 fundamentally non-partisan in how it works. Right. Wouldn't that be nice? All of these efforts will be

00:16:55.080 perceived by the right, certainly the, the, whatever, whatever's left of the, the MAGA right

00:17:00.840 in the aftermath of Trump to be nothing more than a pendulum swing back into hyper-partisanship

00:17:08.200 of the left-leaning sort. And so I guess, so my question to you is how do we, how do we fix this

00:17:13.960 without seeming to be just yet another iteration of, of hyper-partisan politics that is part of this

00:17:21.720 race to the bottom? Because it will be cast that way by what remains of the Republican party.

00:17:25.960 I think you made a huge strategic mistake talking about 2028. It is important, but it's not.

00:17:33.640 We're going to, I'm going to go back into the morass with you. I just want to know just in a

00:17:39.680 perfect future, like when we get to 2028 and we get someone in charge who really wants to reset things

00:17:45.280 and can, I think a full third of our society, if not half, will perceive those efforts to be purely

00:17:51.980 corrupt, uh, hyper-partisan, you know, cleaning of, you know, the cleaning of the deep state of the

00:17:58.120 sort that Trump imagined he was doing or claimed to be doing.

00:18:02.080 Yes, but it's, it's 2028 will be two years after the midterm in 2026.

00:18:06.200 And that's, and I don't want now to preempt the political landscape that would surround the

00:18:13.900 elections of 2028. The future of American democracy, the, the fate of this great Republic

00:18:19.600 will be decided this November. And it's, I'm not here to bet my bottom dollar. I think that is if

00:18:26.400 Democrats win, if Trump loses badly and fail to steal the elections, and he will try to steal the

00:18:33.120 elections. If he's losing support, you know, among his base to go as far as he wants, which means,

00:18:39.660 you know, just to control the whole process, what he talks about, federalization of elections,

00:18:44.260 that's, you know, that should, that should sound like anathema to Republicans. This is the,

00:18:48.480 the people who grew up, you know, just preaching the, the state's rights. Right now, they just,

00:18:53.460 you know, they, they don't even sound like Democrats. They sound like, you know, socialists. I mean,

00:18:57.100 it's just, it's sometimes, you know, you can hardly find difference between MAGA rhetoric and

00:19:00.880 some of the far left progressives, which again, proves the horseshoe political theory.

00:19:06.780 So 2026, you know, will be the decisive battle that will, you know, prepare the landscape for

00:19:12.700 2028. And if it goes, as we expect, 2028 will not be a formality, but I think it's, it will offer

00:19:19.020 a democratic contender, an excellent chance to retake power. And I may be, again, it's, there's a good

00:19:25.640 chance. If 2026 goes well, it's probably, you know, I think this, I would, again, I would say

00:19:30.940 there's a big chance that the next democratic challenger will not be facing Donald Trump by

00:19:35.960 J.D. Vance. Okay. But let's say, I just, I want to answer this question. I'm going to come back to

00:19:40.900 the present, but so let's say we, a democratic challenger faces J.D. Vance and wins. And now we

00:19:47.100 have a democratic administration that really wants to clean house. When they start cleaning house at the

00:19:53.080 DOJ, right. And the department of defense, right. And I mean, clean out all the loyalists. It is

00:19:59.420 going to look to the Republicans like a purely cynical, hyper-partisan, a move of the sort that

00:20:05.660 Trump has just made in staffing his second administration.

00:20:09.000 I, I, look, you raised a key issue that's, I believe it is in the heart of the crisis of

00:20:14.340 American democracy. It's a credibility. So when you have two parties, you know, it's, it's a

00:20:19.280 dichotomy. It's a binary choice. And in binary choice, you know, very often you go not for the

00:20:25.140 best, but for the lesser evil. And unfortunately, you know, the last couple of decades, definitely

00:20:30.580 since 2016. So America, Americans have been reduced to the choice of lesser evil and Democrats lost

00:20:37.520 credibility. The Biden administration just, you know, did a huge damage to the credibility of the

00:20:43.720 whole party. And obviously when you look at Trump's campaign in 2024, it aimed at, at, at, at the weak

00:20:49.880 spots. It talked about immigration, about transgender issues, about issues that, that helped Trump to,

00:20:55.600 to drag many, many people in the, in, in the middle to support him. Again, considering him a lesser evil.

00:21:03.220 So restoring credibility is the key issue, but that's, that means that Democrats should not just simply go

00:21:08.320 to the center. Again, that's what we at RDI are saying. So this is, it's very important to fight

00:21:13.160 extremes on both sides, but it's about, you know, just illustrating that it's, it's a healing process.

00:21:19.200 Maybe, you know, they will have to start inviting some people just from the other side of the aisle

00:21:22.940 in the administration. Again, I don't know what, what, what will be the solution, but it's very

00:21:27.400 important to recognize that it's, the country should, should depart from this deadly, you know,

00:21:32.700 deadly cycle of, of tribalization. It's me versus them. So this is, it's recovering the,

00:21:39.480 where are the Americans? So it's, it is, it is very challenging, but I think it's doable.

00:21:44.080 It's doable. So, and, and we can now, for instance, this is the, the latest decision of the Supreme

00:21:49.140 Court. I think it says it was a great opinion just written by, by, by Neil Gorsuch.

00:21:54.540 Basically blasted two, three conservative judges and three liberal judges saying, look guys,

00:21:58.960 so how come that, you know, when Biden was in the office, you, you voted the opposite, you know,

00:22:04.180 just using the same arguments. So restoring credibility and trust in the system, confidence

00:22:09.840 in the system, this is very important. And I think that's, that should be, that should be the

00:22:13.780 core of democratic programs. So they should definitely, you know, eliminate everything that

00:22:18.480 is just, just irritates the public. I understand that there's this ideological differences,

00:22:22.680 you know, and I may even be sympathetic to some of the views of the progressives, but it's very

00:22:27.520 important that, you know, that we'll, we'll make, you know, the core of the campaign in 26 and

00:22:32.880 especially in 2028 is rebuilding the system and trust in the system. Probably, you know,

00:22:37.960 we'll reach a point where people say, look, two party system doesn't work anymore because we don't

00:22:42.200 want us to have a choice of these two, this, and, and both parties have been infected by the virus

00:22:48.120 of radicalism. Maybe we should look for the third party. I don't know. It's unlikely because the

00:22:53.100 system is, you know, has been built over, you know, centuries, but clearly the challenges that

00:22:57.760 go beyond, you know, just our disputes, disputes of first amendment or second amendment, as we could

00:23:02.720 see now, the fight with MAGA is not about second amendment. I mean, MAGA doesn't care. This is,

00:23:07.720 this is the, if the, if, if it doesn't defeat Trump, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's through

00:23:12.380 second amendment, first amendment constitution. So it's Supreme court, but unfortunately this,

00:23:18.400 as you pointed out, it's not just Hunter Biden, we had many excesses on the other side, not as bad

00:23:24.060 as Trump, but they definitely fertilized the ground for somebody like Trump to show up. Trump was not

00:23:29.420 accidental. That's something that just, just, just, many people just is still considered, oh, he's here

00:23:34.760 and he, and he'll be gone. No, Trump is the, embodies the, the, all the, uh, the, the spectrum of all the

00:23:41.700 problems, uh, that American, American democracy had been facing over quite a long period of time.

00:23:46.780 And it's very important to talk about, it's not just reduction of presidential powers, but

00:23:51.320 definitely, you know, building the system of control because it's, you know, we, we have to

00:23:55.860 make sure that we will never again have the same fights about presidential ability to inflict damage

00:24:03.600 to, to order Americans by just, you know, signing just, it's, it's a new law on tariffs and ruining

00:24:09.520 American relations with our allies and openly, you know, enriching himself by making, making

00:24:15.420 both coalitions and financial deals with our enemies.

00:24:19.380 Yeah. All right. So similar question, but now focused on the midterm. So let's say there is

00:24:23.840 success in the fall, right? There's, let's say in the perfect case, we, the Democrats win both houses

00:24:29.640 of Congress and the defeat is just unignorable, uh, right of center. What would you recommend

00:24:37.500 those new members of Congress do at that point? Do you think there should be, uh, impeachment

00:24:44.560 proceedings? Do you think there should be, you know, everything that can be inquired about should

00:24:49.680 be inquired about no matter how provocative those inquiries are into the law breaking of the Trump

00:24:55.640 administration? Or do you think they really have to be careful not to antagonize half the country?

00:25:01.240 Again, excellent question is it's, again, it depends, first of all, it depends on whether

00:25:05.700 Democrats win the Senate as well. I think the House is just, it's, it's, everyone knows it's,

00:25:09.880 it's kind of fait accompli. So I think Democrats will gain at least 20 seats. I would not be surprised

00:25:15.140 if we get 30 or even more. So this is every, every indicator shows that the House election will be,

00:25:20.960 will be bloodbast for GOP. They know that. Senate is, is another story. And, uh, again, it depends

00:25:26.900 on whether Democrats can secure, you know, this is the centrist position as, uh, for instance,

00:25:31.680 if Tallarico versus, versus Paxton, I think this Democrats have excellent chance. I mean,

00:25:35.900 but if you just imagine for a moment, it's Corden versus Croquette, it's just, it's, it will be just,

00:25:40.340 you know, exactly the opposite. So it's very important. Democrat will come up with, with people

00:25:44.940 that look reasonable and will not be associated with the, with the far left excesses of Biden

00:25:50.760 administration. So now imagine they win both, you know, Senate and the House is,

00:25:56.900 I think they, they, they, they have to find this as it's, it's, it's the exact balance.

00:26:01.320 I would not say that, oh, stay, stay away from any action. It just says, no, you have to do subpoena.

00:26:07.040 You have to use the power of subpoena. You have to attack, you know, the Republicans,

00:26:11.140 uh, the current administration. So this is, it just was, it's, it was addressing their most

00:26:16.420 excessive acts of corruption and abuse of power. Definitely you have to impeach, you know,

00:26:21.440 this is people who are just in charge of DOJ and FBI, but it's as for impeachment of Donald Trump.

00:26:28.400 I don't know. This is, it's, it's, I think it's very important to understand you have X amount of

00:26:33.200 political capital and you have to spend it wisely. And I think that is Trump is not, you know, just

00:26:39.180 our main target. It sounds a bit odd now. It's about Trumpism. It's about this. That's exactly what

00:26:44.140 you discuss now. We will discuss now. It's this how to restore credibility. So if Democrats control

00:26:49.900 both parts of the call of the Congress. So I think they have to find the right, right approach

00:26:55.100 to obviously to punish those who caused so much, so much damage to American democracy and naturally

00:27:02.060 make sure that the cases of corruption will be highlighted. I don't know whether you can

00:27:06.880 investigate them or not, but that's how be highlighted. And it's not about again, going

00:27:11.180 after Trump is it's limiting the, his, his ability and ability of his cronies to cause further

00:27:17.020 damage, basically to defang the snake. So it's not just about, about going just, you know,

00:27:23.340 after its head. So the 26 will have to secure American democracy. It's quite ironic that 250 0.91

00:27:30.940 years later, you know, Americans will have to fight another mad King, you know, just for, for the,

00:27:35.020 for their freedom. But if 2026 goes well, then 2028 will have in mind. And also very important

00:27:43.100 to start, you know, just sending signals to our allies to make sure that this, these, this,

00:27:48.540 the state department and other agencies will not continue this, this very destructive policy of

00:27:54.940 destroying American alliances. Because this kind of, this kind of relations, it's easy, easy to destroy,

00:28:01.180 easy to harm. It's much more difficult to rebuild. And I, you know, I go back and forth. So for many

00:28:07.100 Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, America today just, you know, is, is viewed as an, almost as an enemy.

00:28:12.780 Yeah. So just building, rebuilding trust.

00:28:16.220 I want to get there. I want to talk about the international scene, but just, I want to linger

00:28:19.740 on the domestic, the immediate domestic problem. What are you worried about happening between now

00:28:25.900 and the midterms? And I guess you could take it beyond the midterms as well, but what, what bright

00:28:31.500 line that if crossed should signal some sort of emergency of a sort that we haven't experienced?

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - February 25, 2026

#461 — Dictators Always Tell You What They'll Do

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