Ep 337 ｜ The Threat of the Chinese Communist Party & The Rise of Populism ｜ Guest： Saagar Enjeti
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Summary
Sagar Injeti, host of the shows Rising on the Hill and Crystal Ball, joins me to talk about the threat of China, how and why it has threatened us, and what our politicians in Washington are doing about it. We also discuss the idea of "populism" held by some people on the left and right, and whether or not there is a possibility of it becoming more popular.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I am so excited for you to listen to this episode. I am talking
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to Sagar Injeti. He is a host of a few shows, actually, and he is going to talk to us about
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the threat of China, how and why it has threatened us and what their actual goals are and what
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our politicians in Washington are doing about it. We're also going to talk about this idea of
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populism that is held by some people on the left and some people on the right and what that means
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and whether or not we think that there is a possibility of populism becoming more popular
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and maybe bringing the left and the right together on some issues. Sagar, thank you so much for joining
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me. Hey, thanks for having me, Allie. Can you tell everyone who might not know who you are,
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what you do, the shows you host and all that good stuff? Sure. I host the Realignment podcast with
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my friend Marshall Kosloff. That's available everywhere. We talk a lot about basically
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changing coalitions in American politics. So we've got, you know, working class Republican Party,
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how the Democratic Party largely realigning, becoming the party of upper middle class
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liberals. And I also host Rising on the Hill with Crystal Ball. She's a left wing populist. I
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would consider myself more of a right wing populist. And we kind of analyze the political
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news of the day. And that is available on YouTube. So those are the various things that I do during the
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day. And can you describe what populism is for people who may have heard the term, but they don't
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really know practically what it means? It's a great question. At its most core, it's actually just a
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political vehicle. It's using, you know, misrepresentation of elite opinion relative
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to the general population. So what am I mean by that? Because I think this is a key point, which is
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that, look, what populism really is, is taking an idea which is not represented by in the elite class,
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but which is held by the majority of the public. And I think that that's really key to kind of
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understanding where we are right now in terms of our attitudes towards a whole bunch of different
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things. So, for example, I would say that our attitudes towards China, our attitudes towards
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trade, our attitudes towards how we view tax policy and so much more. I'm talking specifically
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about the right foreign policy is another big one, the war in Iraq and many of these other
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attitudes and how that doesn't line up with how where most Americans are. So that's probably the best
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way to understand it. And can you give a specific policy or even position example where the elites
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are holding one idea and most of the population is totally not on board with that idea?
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I can't think of a better one than Afghanistan, right? I mean, so there is no space in American
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elite culture to question the war in Afghanistan. And yet, I mean, we've had three or four separate
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presidential elections now where people have voted in order to try and get troops out of Afghanistan.
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It's one of the most majoritarian positions you can hold as a US politician. And yet, if you were
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to go to the Pentagon or to talk to any of the think tank class or any of the incoming people,
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unfortunately, that Joe Biden has tapped for his cabinet, they would look at you like you're a
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crazy person. And they say, oh, we have to stay there for various reasons that are unexplainable,
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which is why they don't even try to explain it. You know, we have a lot of politicians who've told
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us now for years, we're going to get out eventually based upon X approach, but then it just never
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happens. And now it's our longest running war in history. And it's been a total and complete failure
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for our soldiers, for the Afghan people, and for, you know, our prestige and our military, really.
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And what is the motivating factor as, you know, a non elite person from your perspective? What is the
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motivating factor behind, you know, a policy like that, that is not supported by the majority of
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the American people, and is nonetheless supported by bureaucrats in Washington? Why?
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I try to be as charitable as I can. But the truth is money. I have tried to say that it was ideology.
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I have tried to say, well, they just didn't know any better. But at this point, I cannot conclude
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it as anything else, but money and the perpetuation of a system through which these people are enriching
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themselves to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, which is that there is just too much
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money on the line. And this is a bipartisan group of elites. I want to make that clear to
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who are just making so much money and perpetuating the system, donating to the think tanks, funding the
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careers of the people who are pushing for war, and making sure that they then get placed in the
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next administrations, that I believe that is the chief and motivating influence behind this.
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Because at this point, there's just been so much contravening evidence about what how exactly we're
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doing things in Afghanistan, or how exactly our relationship has worked out with China, how exactly
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things have worked out in terms of tax policy, and so much more. But I can't help but conclude that
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that is what is just drawing this. I used, like I said, I've tried to be like, maybe they legitimately
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believe this. And maybe that's true. But it's engineered in such a way that financially benefits
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a small but very select group of people. You mentioned tax policy. And I think about something
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that is supported by the elites, that's probably not supported, I would think by most Americans,
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is the continual efforts to give corporations as many breaks as possible, like tax breaks. I mean,
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I think traditionally, conservatives are like, yeah, we should have we should lower the corporate
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tax rate. But that seems like it's been prioritized by Republicans, especially at the expense of breaks
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for the rest of the American people, or just other policies that benefit the rest of the American
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people. I talked to Rachel Bovard, who I know that you've had on your podcast as well. And we talked
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about that, how there has been a priority among Republican Democrats, especially in Washington,
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to make sure that we are in the name of free markets, helping out these big businesses, but it's
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actually hurt the American worker. Do you agree? Is that do you agree with that? And is that also another
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populist position? I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm really glad that you said the word
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priority, because this is the key part that I want people to understand, which is that I'm not
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against big business. I'm not even against making sure that we take care of American corporations and
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ensuring that we have competitive free enterprise. But that is not the only goal to be maximized.
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And there are times when that goal becomes in direct conflict with taking care of our actual
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populace and of our workers. So whenever you can see in our tax policy, if the chief and only aim of
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getting something is a corporate tax rate cut, but not making sure, for example, the child tax credit
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is higher. Well, I would say then that our priorities as a conservative, or even just as people
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are out of whack. Because to me, the chief aim to be maximized in America is the amount of kids that
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we're having. So we have more kids, so we can be a more competitive country, so that we can be a more
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dynamic country, a more resilient country. And I think that that is, if there's any chief and
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driving force behind my politics, that's what it is. You've talked about on your show how you don't,
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you're not, you don't consider yourself a culture warrior. That's not necessarily where you focus.
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And yet, one of the priorities that you just mentioned is very much a cultural issue. Yes,
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it's a political economic issue, the formation and the strength of the family, but it's also a
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cultural issue. And you've also talked about how you believe that a large portion of the population
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actually votes based on these cultural issues. That in a lot of ways, speaking of dissonance
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between the elites and most of the population, most of our cultural views, especially the working
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class, are not shared by the elites, are not shared by these major corporations. So does populism
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also include positions on these cultural issues, which I think you would agree with,
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are very important for the well-being of the country? You are 100% correct. I actually think
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a lot of what is driving populism today, especially right-wing populism, is culture. When I say I'm not
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a culture warrior, what I'm more saying is that I am trying to find select groups and areas where I
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actually think we might be able to make some progress. That does not mean, though, that I don't find
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these things incredibly important, because you're correct. There is probably no greater disconnect
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in America between the cultural positions held by the general population and those held by the elite
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class. And I think that those held by the elite class are incredibly pernicious, if you look at some
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of those forces, like critical race theory, which is now being shoved down all of our throats through
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major corporations, Fortune 500 companies, and more. I mean, I've even declared it a top-down
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revolution from the elite class upon the working class. And this is also why I consider myself
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conservative, right? I'm not openly being like, I'm some centrist. No. Look, when push comes to shove,
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I know who I'm with and who's with me. And because these are positions that I hold, which are also very
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dear to me, and I think dear to a lot of people. So I want to be very clear that I do believe that the
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greatest disconnect in America right there is the cultural positions of the American working class,
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and not even just working class, of conservative Americans and their representation in elite
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culture. You can't have a country where 75 million people vote for Trump. I mean, how many people voted
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for Trump in elite institutions, right? Zero to maybe one, maybe 0.05%, something like that. How are
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they supposed to represent the rest of us? Because that disconnect has implications across a whole wide
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variety of things, culture, economics. I mean, how we even think about the country at large. It's just
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so profoundly important. So politicians like AOC and Bernie Sanders, they campaign on this idea of
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being representative of the working class, of working for the working class. AOC says that, you know,
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uses the language working people a lot or workers a lot. And she does not represent, I would think,
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the cultural, social values of the majority of the working class. So do you see that kind of,
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I don't even know if it's called left-wing populism, but whatever it is that AOC and Bernie
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Sanders represent, do you see that ever taking hold in the United States in at least anytime soon,
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knowing that they are not culturally aligned with most of the working class that they say that they
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represent? No, you're 100% correct. Something I point out that they get very angry about,
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because they think they have a monopoly whenever it comes to talking about these economic issues.
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You're 100% right, which is that, look, I mean, Bernie Sanders and AOC, what I've always said is
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that the beating heart of the American left, and I truly believe this, is the culture war. And how you
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found that out was during the Black Lives Matter protests recently with George Floyd, which is that
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when AOC and Amazon are adopting the exact same positions on critical race theory, I think it tells you
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pretty much everything you need to know about where they actually stand together. And when push comes
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to shove, here's another good example. Right now they're campaigning against Rahm Emanuel and his
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inclusion in Biden's cabinet, right? They have nothing to say about his tax positions. They have nothing
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to say about any of the free trade policies that he pushed for decades while he was in the Clinton
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administration. They're talking about a police shooting that he helped cover up. And I'm not saying
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that isn't objectionable, but that's the only thing that they're going with. Do you see what I mean?
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So like what their core objection is based upon identitarianism, which means, and I love saying
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this, there is just no real space between AOC and your average Brown University Ivy League educated
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liberal. There really isn't. I mean, they use the same language. If you go back and you look at that
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speech that she gave at the DNC, it was filled with every buzzword you can think of, colonization.
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And I mean, it was, it was, it was a ludicrous, you know, a seminar type language, which doesn't
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connect whatsoever with the actual working voters, um, that they purport to represent. And I think
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that Bernie Sanders, Bernie's a little bit better, you know, I think than AOC, but you know, he's,
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he's come along this way. I always say this, there's only three positions that Bernie's ever changed
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positions on ever, right? Which are guns, abortion and immigration. Yeah. And they're all cultural
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values. And he's become a cultural leftist, um, which is very much in contrast to the economic
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And I think Bernie Sanders at least understands that his economic positions and his stance on say
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immigration are at odds. You can't simultaneously say you want even just any degree of open borders
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borders or loose borders and say that you want, uh, you know, the kind of social programs that both
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he and AOC advocate for. I don't know if AOC sees that incongruency or if she does and she just, um,
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doesn't care. But I do think that the average American sees that, uh, those two goals are,
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are just not aligned. I think the existence of Appalachia, Appalachian, Appalachian working class
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people are very inconvenient to people like AOC who in her head has constructed this idea of a
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coalition of left-wing culture warriors that represent the working class when that's not
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actually representative of the working class. And I just think that the existence of the white
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working class that's represented in something like hillbilly elegy, um, is an obstacle to her
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accomplishing her agenda and in a lot of ways to her political success. Do you agree with that?
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I completely agree with that. And, and look, I actually think right and left do this because
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I think when the right talks about the work class, what they're talking about is a white working
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class. And I think when the left talks about the working class, what they're talking about are like
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the urban working class. Right. And, and I, and I think that's a fair critique that both sides
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level against each other. So one of the things that I've tried to do is come up with a
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more useful definition instead of race. Cause I truly believe that that is not the dividing line
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in America today. And thank God for that. What I think it is, is education, which is that one of
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the more clearest determinate, one of the most clear determining factors, whether you voted for
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Trump or not is whether you had a four year college degree. It's the greatest split. But if you go and
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you look at the county by county data about who's most represented on four year college degree and who's
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not, and how they both donated to either Biden or Trump and how they voted. So that tells me,
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and I, this is a good thing. I think if you're a Republican, 60% of this country did not go to
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college, right? I mean, does not hold a four year college degree. So the dividing line is again,
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actually cultural because the cultural values, which economics is largely downstream from culture
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for most people become ingrained into you through the university educated system. That's how we're
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talking about, you know, critical, critical race theory to anybody who has not even come into contact
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with it. Sounds completely insane. It takes years of indoctrination of the university system of being
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around like-minded folks in order to start believing some of the crazy things that they are putting forward.
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And so where I see the future going is the educated class versus the uneducated. Now, you know,
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the leftists love to be like, well, you know, we're the ones who are actually educated. I'm like,
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okay, well, you know, you don't actually know how to actually build anything, which seems like kind
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of a problem whenever it comes to running a country. You don't actually know how the rest of your entire
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population actually votes. And that is how I see things trending. So instead of trying to think
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things along race lines and more, I like to use education and education also shows them for what
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a farce that they actually are. I mean, look, you can't even understand the things that she and
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Bernie and many of the people, the way that they speak, if you haven't been through this like
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propagandist four-year university system. So the longer that those things trend,
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then I think it will be more obvious to all of us.
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I want to talk about China and the threat that it poses in a lot of different ways. But since
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we're talking about the working class, that in some ways, like you pointed out, both Republicans
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and Democrats say that they represent, but actually sometimes mean two different things. But no matter
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who they mean, the working class, people who maybe don't have a four-year degree, which I would think
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there's a big overlap there, they have been in a lot of ways, they've gotten the short end of the
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stick when it comes to our relationship with China and the effects that has had on our manufacturing and
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our jobs here. And it doesn't seem like very many Republicans or Democrats really care about that
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or interested in reversing course. Can you talk about what all that means, how we got there,
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if there is any hope in changing course when it comes to our relationship with China?
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Yeah, it's a really, there is no more instructive example than China and with NAFTA. These are two
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things that were pushed by economic elites of both parties, which said would benefit working class
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Americans and ended up completely screwing them over. We have to be totally honest about how we look at
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this. You can see very clearly in manufacturing data, the decline in manufacturing jobs right after
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the permanent normalization of trade relations with China. And this hurt people both across the
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industrial Midwest, but really everywhere in terms of competition with cheap labor. It's the same thing
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with NAFTA. I mean, Joe Biden, I remember he gave a, I went and looked and pulled the transcript
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of a speech that he gave on the Senate floor when he was voting for NAFTA, talking about a Chrysler factory
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in his own home state of Delaware, which was going to be supposedly benefited. And it closed in 2007.
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Why? Because of NAFTA. And this is amazing. I mean, you can see this with so many different
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politicians. I've even had like Newt Gingrich on my show where he was like, yeah, we made a huge
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mistake. I should never have voted for this. I never should have pushed this. Our idea was that
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what we could do is have better economic ties between us and China. And then China would become more
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like a democracy. And the opposite happened, which is that they became more autocratic.
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And we actually started importing Chinese autocracy to our country. When you see people
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like LeBron James and our economic elites and our cultural elites were wholly sold out to the
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Chinese Communist Party. Right. And how is it that those priorities have shifted so much that an
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American organization like the NBA is more afraid of China than they then they're afraid of or care
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about their American consumers? I know that China is giving them a lot of money, but America is, too.
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So why is there a priority in acquiescing to China rather than to Americans?
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Easy word. It's one word growth. They need to grow. They need a customer base. They've got a billion
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customers. We've only got 300 million. And they think that we have a saturated market here and a
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growth opportunity in China. So they're just willing to debase themselves completely. And, you know,
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on an economic front, they're right. I mean, when James Harden and LeBron James, two people who
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denounced Daryl Morey whenever he was talking about Hong Kong, both went on sneaker tours in China.
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They both go over there in order to hawk and sell their products. It's a very simple answer here.
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They want to make more money. And so there's only really one mediating force which can stop you from
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doing that. And this is where I think some conservatives need to wake up. And that's
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the government. Like, I know it's uncomfortable. I want the government to be a tool of last resort
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whenever we're talking about this. But there's only one way to make sure that we don't get into these
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economic entanglements. And that's how we have to say, hey, culturally important institutions are not
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allowed to take money from China. And yes, it will hurt you economically. But as a country,
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this is the way that things have to be. The way I kind of look at it is China is like Nazi Germany in
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the 1930s. Right. And actually now, given what they're doing with Uyghur Muslims, maybe a little
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bit longer ahead on that path, maybe something like 1936, 1937. And imagine, though, if Nazi Germany had
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been a massive economic powerhouse, the number two economy in the world, and that you had major
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institutions here in the United States actively taking their money and working on their behalf and
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Wall Street banks who are you who are essentially lobbyists for that regime. That's the moral
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equivalence that we have to be kind of begin being more comfortable talking about. And a lot of people
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are uncomfortable with it. I was encouraged to see, though, that there was a bill. I don't have
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it in front of me that just said, hey, if you're an American company, you can't be taking products
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from China that are made by Uyghur slave labor. And the people who voted against it, there were very
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few. I think there were only maybe three or four in the House who voted against it. But they were all
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Republicans. They were libertarians. And I just I wonder, though, if that form of so-called
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conservatism or libertarianism is finally dying out and realizing that, OK, in the name of the free
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market, we can't sacrifice all of our morals and all of our values. Do you think that that the
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popularity of that kind of ideology is waning? Well, I really hope so. But I don't want to kid
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myself either, because, look, I mean, anybody can be against slave labor from China. And that's not a
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morally courageous position. What if I told you this is one of those moments where I'm like,
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if I were to go to the average Republican and say, what if I told you that everything you buy in
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China feeds and kicks up to the Chinese Communist Party, which is actively complicit in using slave
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labor and a whole host of other morally abhorrent crimes, then would you be against it? Like then
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they'll be like, oh, well, you know, there's still some benefit to trading with them. And that's when
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things become more ambiguous and they become more complicated. So I don't want people to take away
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that there has been a total ideological victory here. Yes, it is a good thing that we have formally
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banned slave labor goods from China. But that's the tip of the iceberg. You know, I mean, and again,
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to use the Nazi analogy, that's like saying that we banned products that were just made in the
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concentration camp. And I would say, yeah, OK, like that's great. But the regime itself is also bad.
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And like we should have conversations here about how exactly we have a relationship here with that
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regime. It seems like there are people in the media who carry water for the CCP, maybe not explicitly,
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but they're afraid to criticize them. I think some of it in the most superficial sense and maybe even
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the most generous sense. Some journalists didn't want to criticize China, at least for the past year,
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because that meant agreeing with Donald Trump in some way. And so they always, you know,
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they held to their obligation to oppose Donald Trump. But there seems to be probably a deeper
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and more sinister thing going on there in American media in their refusal to criticize China in a way
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that they, of course, in their heads, they would have never given a pass to Nazi Germany.
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What is causing that hypocrisy there within the American media, do you think?
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Stupidity and being brainwashed by identity politics. They think that any criticism of China
00:24:20.860
whatsoever is equivalent to racism against Asian Americans, which is obviously insane,
00:24:26.860
an incredibly stupid and reductive way to look at it. But that's how these people think. I mean,
00:24:32.440
look, look back at the coronavirus. I was one of the early people back in February talking,
00:24:37.080
warning about coronavirus. And I will never forget Vox and many of these other outlets,
00:24:43.060
Nancy Pelosi even, you know, turning concern about coronavirus and travel from China into a race
00:24:50.660
issue. I mean, it's completely crazy. I don't you know, it could have come from anywhere could have
00:24:56.000
come from Poland. And I would have been like ban Polish people from the United States. You know,
00:25:00.840
obviously, we should not allow these people to enter the country. It's the same thing with
00:25:06.860
China. But they're just because it's a minority group. That's the way that they have to look at
00:25:12.340
it. And they still continue to this day. But the Trump part is also key, what you said. They just
00:25:18.000
can't do anything which is seemingly agreeing with Trump like they are literally willing to side with
00:25:23.880
a communist authoritarian dictatorship if it means opposing Trump. And that's where the stupidity comes
00:25:30.660
in. I mean, I want like I was in the White House press corps. I know these people. Most of them are
00:25:36.560
not very smart. Like they don't really know anything about American history, American policy.
00:25:42.200
It's stunning. The vapidity of these of and the lack of depth, the lack of education, the lack of
00:25:48.780
familiarity with American policy that many of the people who cover the White House and politics day in
00:25:54.580
day in and day out have. It's really depressing. And even just the lack of curiosity. And I think
00:26:00.740
that lack of intellectual and journalistic curiosity creates a vacuum for not just alternative
00:26:08.220
viewpoints, but in some cases, conspiracy theories to come in because people are seeking truth. People
00:26:13.100
are seeking the people in power to be held accountable. And they're looking for some kind of counter
00:26:19.000
narrative to the mainstream narrative, which they know is tinged by partisanship, which they know is
00:26:25.740
being delivered by people who are not very smart. And unfortunately, that can lead people into these
00:26:31.500
rabbit holes of conspiracy theories that aren't actually offering them a truthful alternative viewpoint,
00:26:36.440
but are, you know, they're sucking them into this black hole of of untruth, basically,
00:26:46.700
about what's really going on in the world. And that does create a lot of chaos. And then
00:26:50.520
all you get from journalists is that, you know, you people are crazy for thinking about China or
00:26:56.880
for questioning China when it comes to this virus or you people are crazy for questioning the integrity
00:27:01.820
of our election. But people are looking for different sources of information to try to
00:27:06.580
understand what's really going on. And it has real effects in people's lives when they can't look to
00:27:11.700
the media to give them that kind of truthful information. Would you agree?
00:27:14.940
It's it's such a damaging phenomena in American politics in the way that the media has covered
00:27:21.500
this stuff is just they've lost so much credibility. And that does a real damage to American society.
00:27:28.020
Whenever you have people who are saying, I do not believe what people are putting in front of me
00:27:32.980
and on China, it's again, it's look, Americans are not stupid. They can see LeBron James and most
00:27:40.420
people sit and say, you know what? That's shameful. That is shameful. And they know that whenever it
00:27:45.680
comes to James Harden, when they see the NBA issue statements, this is America. The NBA is American
00:27:51.660
and they better stay that way. And I think there's nothing wrong with saying that. I think we can see
00:27:56.940
that, too, with our institutions, our Wall Street banks. One of the memes, so to speak, that I see
00:28:03.600
liberals often put out there is they're like, when are Trump supporters or conservatives going to come
00:28:09.300
up to New York City and try and understand us? Right. They're like, when are they going to do
00:28:14.720
these profile? And what they don't get is we understand them well. Yeah. You know, you can't
00:28:20.460
watch a movie. Right. You can't turn on the news. You can't live in American society without being
00:28:26.520
dominated by left wing culture. We know who you are. We see you every day. Yeah. We just don't like
00:28:33.380
you. And that's the part that I think they really can't get their heads around. Yeah. OK, explain to
00:28:40.320
us if you could just if you had a minute to tell someone who has no idea what the threat of China is
00:28:49.540
militarily, when it comes to our intelligence, when it comes to economically,
00:28:53.700
all the threats that China poses to this country. And then I have another question to follow up on
00:29:01.500
that. But if you just had a minute to explain why China really is the biggest threat that America
00:29:06.320
faces, what would you tell that person? America is founded upon freedom. Being free requires America,
00:29:13.940
which is a country which has ideals and leadership aspirations and more in order to have its ability
00:29:20.780
to be free to conduct its trade, to be free to have its own culture, free of molestation and to
00:29:27.320
be free in order to do what it believes it is best for its people across the world. And China
00:29:33.380
threatens American freedom on all three of those vital, important ways to American life. That's the
00:29:40.080
easiest, most based way I would explain it. And how exactly are they doing that in ways that we
00:29:44.360
probably can't see? I think most people probably don't even know that a lot of our manufacturing jobs have
00:29:48.980
been outsourced. Right. And so manufacturing jobs is one of they, you know, destroy the livelihood of
00:29:55.280
American citizens with the complicity of the American elite on culture. Look, I mean, I don't want to see
00:30:00.680
a Mr. Roger movies, Mr. Rogers movie, which is funded by Tencent Pictures, which is a Chinese government
00:30:06.520
controlled entity. I think that's wrong. I think it's wrong when Tom Cruise's jacket in Top Gun 2 has to be
00:30:13.000
changed. And maybe you think I'm stupid for thinking that. But you know what? That's Tom Cruise. He's an
00:30:18.040
American and Top Gun is an American film. And we need to make movies for our audience. I'm so sick
00:30:23.860
of going and watching these stupid superhero remakes over and over again because Hollywood just wants to
00:30:29.540
make more money in China. Or, for example, whenever they change a character in a movie from Tibetan to
00:30:36.820
like a black woman. And the reason they did that was in order for identity purposes. But they also did it
00:30:42.020
because they know that that way the movie won't get banned in China. That's our culture. And on the
00:30:47.240
economy, I mean, the way that they have infiltrated our largest financial institutions,
00:30:52.560
they have bought minority stakes in critical industries, they have put millions of Americans
00:30:58.500
out of work. And on the global front, when I talk about American freedom, look, the American-led
00:31:05.200
world order is basically what protects us and our ability to live our lives as we see fit.
00:31:12.560
With China and their expansion across the world, their use of hundreds of billions of dollars in
00:31:18.940
capital in order to sway different nations to their side, they threaten our ability to have
00:31:24.500
unfettered access to the seas, to markets, and to more. And so if you care about being able to live
00:31:31.440
your life unmolested by any larger force, then you have to care about China because that's what its
00:31:37.040
global aspiration is. And by the way, it shouldn't just be conservatives who care about those things,
00:31:42.440
but it also shouldn't just be conservatives. And I don't think it necessarily is, but it does seem like
00:31:47.880
conservatives are the loudest when it comes to China. But all of the things that the new cultural
00:31:55.600
left says that they care about, colonization, imperialism, slavery, which is something that we all care
00:32:02.760
about, racism, xenophobia, exploitation, classism, elitism, all of these things that the cultural
00:32:11.360
left cares about and says that they prioritize when it comes to criticizing the United States,
00:32:16.960
they are pretty quiet about it when it comes to the biggest perpetrator of these things or
00:32:21.500
the contributing to pollution and the environment, all of these things that they care about.
00:32:27.680
China is the greatest perpetrator of that, and yet they're quiet on it. Do you think that that is
00:32:32.380
just for the average leftist American, do you think it's just ignorance? Do you think maybe
00:32:37.440
they've been indoctrinated by academia to say, you know, it's actually very sophisticated and
00:32:43.380
intellectual to just criticize the United States in the West? And we don't even look at the sins of
00:32:50.280
the non-white world because it's not posh to do so.
00:32:54.140
It's academia. There is a deep strain of the academic left, which just loves to self-flagellate on
00:33:00.480
America. And it's like you said, look, if they claim to care about the environment, we could go
00:33:05.400
to zero carbon emissions tomorrow. And it wouldn't matter because China and India are producing the
00:33:11.280
vast majority of CO2 emissions across the globe. So unless you have a plan in order to get China to
00:33:17.960
actually reduce its emissions, then you are not a serious person whenever it comes to caring about
00:33:23.660
the environment. And it's the same thing across the board. But this is, again, where their moral
00:33:29.580
relativism is so insulting to the United States. And I talked a lot about this during the Black Lives
00:33:35.680
Matter protests. People would get angry for me when I would be like, there is no country on earth which
00:33:40.660
has done more to atone for its racial sins than the United States of America. That's an empirically
00:33:46.040
true fact. I mean, my family moved here, lived here. I have lived a prosperous life. And I'm not saying
00:33:52.320
things are perfect, but we fought an entire war in order to free slaves. I mean, I don't see a lot
00:33:58.440
of other countries doing that. I'm sorry. Yeah. And I go and I look at China. And this is this is
00:34:04.100
where, again, they're so imbued with an ideology in which America is like a patriarchal, horrific,
00:34:11.620
white, identitarian nation that they think we have to fix, quote unquote, those problems before we can
00:34:18.840
even begin to talk about China. And so it leads to this ridiculous moral relativism where you would
00:34:25.520
compare the United States of America, which is the greatest country on earth to China. And you would
00:34:33.040
say, oh, well, there's somehow moral equivalence between like caring about whether you have a hard
00:34:39.100
border between the US and Mexico and three million people locked in camps in Xinjiang. And it's just this
00:34:47.780
is they have no even language in order to tell you why that isn't ridiculous.
00:34:54.060
And you see how critical race theory kind of helps sanction their moral relativism. They don't see it
00:34:59.060
as moral relativism because critical race theory tells you white people, bad, non-white people,
00:35:04.760
good. And your innocence is in guilt is ascribed to you according to these racial identity groups.
00:35:12.160
And if that is the lens through which you see the world, you feel totally righteous and justified in
00:35:17.200
saying America and the West and the white world are bad because they're either active in racism or
00:35:23.780
they're complicit in racism. But the non-white world isn't because you can't actually be given any guilt
00:35:30.040
unless you are white. That is why also critical race theory leads to the kind of absurdity that it does,
00:35:36.760
that it doesn't allow us to view people as individuals. It doesn't allow us to view regimes rightly
00:35:44.120
and through an actual moral lens of what is right and wrong, no matter what your skin color is,
00:35:49.280
because right and wrong is actually defined by what your skin color is, which is the exact opposite
00:35:54.880
of what something like Martin Luther King wanted. And so I've also been trying to explain to people
00:36:00.000
that the current identitarian movement that we're seeing from the left in the form of things like
00:36:04.640
Black Lives Matter is not the same as the civil rights movement that we saw in the 1960s.
00:36:09.680
They actually share common cause with leftists across the world, no matter how terrible their
00:36:14.680
regime is because of some of the goals that they have. China is also very ethnocentric and
00:36:20.820
identitarian in their views as well, which is why people in Black Lives Matter have nothing bad to say
00:36:28.180
about the regime that is actually colonizing, that is actually imperialistic, that is actually enslaving
00:36:33.500
people and kicking out Africans, by the way, in the name of public health. I would say that's probably
00:36:39.300
where the hypocrisy comes from in a lot of ways. Would you agree?
00:36:43.840
I completely agree. I mean, I try to talk about this in a way that really can people can understand,
00:36:49.480
which is that one of the things critical race theorists love to talk about is like the racial
00:36:53.380
wealth gap, right? Well, I looked at it. The racial wealth gap in America between white and blacks,
00:36:58.700
if you look at it and the pure dollar figure, it looks immense. What it really is, is there's a
00:37:04.720
huge wealth gap between the top 10% of wealthiest white Americans and the top 10% of wealthiest black
00:37:10.680
Americans, but both of those groups are in the top 1%, right? And so you're like, wait a second.
00:37:16.120
So the bottom 75% of whites and blacks actually make the exact same income in America. So any sort of
00:37:24.300
policy which were to address income distribution would naturally be better for black Americans and
00:37:31.280
for white Americans. The trend that I want people to understand is that if you really want to help
00:37:37.120
black Americans and you really want to help white Americans and you really want to help Latino
00:37:41.700
Americans, then going and looking at the structural inequities in our economic system and in our class
00:37:47.900
system that we have deeply embedded in America is the best way to do that. The most quote unquote
00:37:53.620
anti-racist work that you can do is to alleviate poverty in the United States. That is the easiest way
00:38:00.720
to address racial and structural inequities in America, but they don't want to talk about that
00:38:06.500
because that would require actually doing something that challenges power. That's why Amazon and the
00:38:14.580
largest corporations in America are all in on Black Lives Matter. Because as long as we are divided by
00:38:20.240
race, then we are not going to ask different and tough questions about class in America, which would
00:38:26.400
directly target the bottom line of somebody like Jeff Bezos and of Amazon Corporation.
00:38:32.860
Do you see a shift optimistically if you were to put your most optimistic glasses on and look at the
00:38:39.320
future? Do you see there becoming a common cause between the right and the left in the form of some
00:38:46.280
sort of populism that says, hang on, we are being put upon by these elites who don't share a lot of the
00:38:52.780
same goals as we do. Let's come together and try to change things. Or do you think that our cultural
00:38:59.600
values between the right and the left, even if we are both populist in, say, economics, that is going
00:39:06.660
to drive us apart so much to where the right and the left can't come together in common cause against
00:39:12.200
the Jeff Bezos's and the Washington bureaucrats of the world?
00:39:17.180
I thought about this question a lot. And I can give you an optimistic view and I can give you the
00:39:23.880
pessimistic view. OK, the optimistic view were to be to point to where we are right now in the
00:39:28.540
stimulus negotiations on Capitol Hill. Josh Hawley and Bernie Sanders are working together in order
00:39:34.040
to try to get Americans twelve hundred dollar stimulus checks. That is an example of left right wing
00:39:40.260
populace coming together on an empirical, I think, good. I will argue very strongly in favor of those
00:39:46.000
stimulus checks for American families and American workers. But in the long run, there is no substantive
00:39:52.940
strategy which is going to bring either side together, because as you point out, look, when the
00:39:58.220
left talks about like, let's say health care, right, that's always one that they like to they like to
00:40:03.220
discuss. There is no world where Bernie Sanders or AOC or any of them are willing to compromise and say
00:40:10.200
we're only going to give Medicare for all to American citizens. For them, it has to include
00:40:15.340
illegal immigrants and it would have to cover abortion. Right. Right. Because that they think
00:40:20.120
abortion is health care. And there's no right winger on the in the world who even if, let's say,
00:40:25.200
universal health care was a good idea. And, you know, that's something we can argue about a lot,
00:40:29.980
which is that even if you would, they're like, no, like, I'm not going to cover, you know, like the
00:40:34.780
murdering of children in my health care policy. So that's where things began to diverge. Same thing
00:40:41.740
whenever we come to stimulus checks. I think it tells you everything back in. What was it in March
00:40:46.580
after we passed the CARES Act? The first thing that AOC and Rashida Tlaib and all those people
00:40:52.080
were arguing for is, oh, we got to get checks out to illegal immigrants. And I'm like, really,
00:40:57.060
like this is what you're worried about right now, like your own countrymen and citizens are being left
00:41:02.740
in the dust and you want to help out people who are here illegally. That's their like I said,
00:41:08.260
the beating heart of the left is cultural liberalism. All of their economic populist
00:41:13.480
ends go towards helping, you know, you know, even non-citizens and covering cultural leftist
00:41:20.280
causes like abortion. That's never going to fly for people who are conservatives. And I would say
00:41:25.780
on the conservative side, we probably hold a more structural advantage because I think there are a
00:41:31.140
lot of conservatives who are like, yeah, I could see the merits and, you know, in checks, but like
00:41:36.720
sending something to illegal immigrants is obviously completely insane or using taxpayer
00:41:41.780
dollars in order to cover. You know, I mean, I can't believe that it's a controversial position
00:41:46.240
to say that taxpayer dollars shouldn't cover abortion. I mean, if the country is split 50 50
00:41:51.260
on something, you can't just unilaterally endorse it through government policy. But that's what they
00:41:56.800
want to do through a lot of their ends. Yeah. I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking that even if,
00:42:01.720
you know, exactly what you just said, if AOC and I could agree on a certain economic policy,
00:42:06.940
I'm never going to waver on abortion. I'm never going to waver on that. And I'm never going to
00:42:11.860
waver on like you talked about, you know, single payer health care covering abortion. I also don't
00:42:17.880
want it to cover, you know, gender reassignment for kids. Like, I'm never going to change on that
00:42:23.820
because that value is never going to change. And they probably aren't going to change on that
00:42:28.620
either. If you believe, as some people do on the left, that abortion is a moral good,
00:42:33.820
that it's actually, you know, it's good for the woman to have that, you know, so-called bodily
00:42:37.860
autonomy, then I don't really see how we are ever going to come together on economic issues. And I
00:42:44.120
think some people wrongly believe that people only vote with their pocketbooks. I can't, even if I was
00:42:51.500
destitute, I could not vote for funding abortion. And I think there are a lot of people that are exactly
00:42:56.780
like that. And so I'm not sure if we- And there's nothing wrong with that,
00:43:00.440
Allie. I want people to understand that. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong
00:43:04.500
with voting your conscience on an issue. And, but that's just why I don't think it's ever going to
00:43:09.880
happen. And I don't think it should happen. I don't think people should compromise on these
00:43:13.500
things, left or right, if you really believe in them. And so that's why I just think one side has
00:43:18.800
to win. And that's just how it goes. I was about to say, I don't think we ever got to the
00:43:22.240
optimistic view of it. I think it's just going to be, it's going to be a power structure, a power
00:43:27.640
struggle. Now, I do think that some of these cultural issues that are being pushed, like, for
00:43:32.100
example, that kids can transition without really any consent of their parents, which I think a lot
00:43:38.520
of some people on the left would like, that has real life implications and consequences that only
00:43:46.080
time will tell. And if we are allowed access to the information of the consequences of that,
00:43:50.480
the consequences that that has on a person's body and a person's mental health, then I do think that
00:43:56.620
at some point they're going to have to backtrack. I mean, we've seen cultural issues kind of like that
00:44:01.360
throughout, throughout history that, okay, we thought that that was true, or we thought that that was
00:44:06.280
good, but it actually really wasn't. And we had to go back on it. So maybe there's a little bit of
00:44:10.800
optimism there that the most ridiculous and unscientific positions of the left will just because of human
00:44:17.380
nature have to be reversed upon. But I guess that's the only bit of optimism I have when it comes to
00:44:24.560
when it comes to unity. Can you leave people with any bit of encouragement or optimism?
00:44:31.360
What I would say is this, look, the last four years have shown us that the elites have no clothes.
00:44:38.340
Somebody told me today that they believe that Trump was like an earthquake and that he just knocked
00:44:42.480
everything down. And as somebody who's been wanting to knock that stuff down, that's amazing.
00:44:46.660
We have the greatest opportunity in a century in America to remake American life and we cannot
00:44:53.540
waste it. You know, there is a crisis going on in this country and it is a time and a final
00:44:59.420
opportunity in order to redress some of the problems with China, some of the problems with
00:45:04.300
our American families, some of the problems with so much of the way that we run this country on a
00:45:09.380
day to day basis and quote unquote normal times that there's never been a better time. If you're
00:45:14.160
somebody like me who wants to see something really good happen in America, that this is the time to do
00:45:18.900
it. Oh, you know, I meant to ask you two questions and I was about to end this, but I just quickly
00:45:24.460
want to hear you rant and rave about Pete Buttigieg being floated about the being floated as the
00:45:32.420
potential ambassador to China. You just talked about addressing our issues to China. It seems like this
00:45:37.520
administration and the people they are putting in place are the worst possible picks that we could
00:45:43.560
select if we're talking about taking a strong stance against China.
00:45:47.800
Buttigieg is a complete and total joke. I mean, this is a guy who is the former South Bend mayor who
00:45:53.440
we're about to send over to China. Look, our last two U.S. ambassadors to China, Terry Branstad was
00:45:59.000
Trump's ambassador to China. He knew Xi Jinping for 30 years. He was governor of Iowa because Iowa and
00:46:05.780
Xi Jinping's province, he's the president of China, had like a sister relationship. That seems like
00:46:11.640
somebody you want negotiating with Xi Jinping. And the one before that, I'll even give Obama credit,
00:46:17.020
was John Huntsman. I don't really like John Huntsman in a lot of his politics, but he spoke
00:46:21.420
fluent Mandarin. That seems like somebody that you would probably want in China. This man has had no
00:46:27.100
diplomatic experience whatsoever to the extent that he has any thoughts on China. It is largely the
00:46:34.100
ideology of the people who sold us out to that country in the first place. And the most important
00:46:39.720
diplomatic position in the world in terms of ambassadorship should not be going to the former
00:46:45.600
mayor of a small town in Indiana. No offense to South Bend. It's a great town, but I'm sorry. This is
00:46:52.460
not something where literally the course of the free world can be left up to somebody like him.
00:46:57.460
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And it seems also that the Biden administration,
00:47:01.220
I think you agree. Like there is some people that despite their flaws, they're just the person for
00:47:07.260
the moment. I mean, conservatives and liberals all have problems with someone like George W. Bush.
00:47:12.000
But I think a lot of us would agree that I'm so glad that he was there on 9-11 and not Al Gore.
00:47:16.280
And obviously some mistakes were made after that. But you kind of feel like, OK, he was the person for
00:47:20.640
that specific moment, despite some flaws. Same thing with Trump. He was the man for specific
00:47:25.460
challenges in America over the past four years, despite some of his flaws. FDR was the man for
00:47:31.820
some specific moments then, despite some of his policy flaws. The exact opposite of that is Joe
00:47:37.160
Biden when we're looking at some of the challenges that we face, especially in relation to China.
00:47:41.920
Like I couldn't think of a worse man for the moment, a swampier man for the moment when we're looking
00:47:47.420
at, OK, prioritizing the American worker and not to these international elites. It seems like,
00:47:55.580
I mean, that Joe Biden's going to take us in the exact opposite direction. What do you think?
00:48:00.760
I agree with you. And proud of the problem in America is we only like to talk about our wins.
00:48:04.960
We don't like to think about our losses. Well, we've had plenty of presidents which were needed in
00:48:09.380
the moment and they did not show up. People like Buchanan, people like Andrew Johnson after
00:48:15.720
Abraham Lincoln. We just won the Civil War and then we completely bungled Reconstruction,
00:48:19.320
right? I mean, I can point Rutherford B. Hayes. There are a lot of different times
00:48:23.260
in American history or Calvin. I would say Calvin Coolidge. That one makes the conservatives upset
00:48:28.120
with me, but that's OK. Yeah. There are a lot of people who needed to show up in a very specific
00:48:33.700
moment and could have prevented the crises which forged great presidents. And I believe that Joe Biden
00:48:39.540
is going to be in the category of that man. Yeah, I agree with you. OK, can you tell everyone
00:48:44.600
where they can find you again, where they can listen to you and watch you?
00:48:49.100
Well, I'm at eSager on Twitter and you can check me out on the Realignment podcast,
00:48:54.300
which is available wherever you get your podcast and The Hill Rising Show. It's on YouTube every
00:48:59.300
morning, posted 1030 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So I'll be there.
00:49:02.760
Awesome. Thank you so much, Sager. Thanks, Ali. Appreciate it.