The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody. I'm talking again to Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:01:11.980 I started talking to Vivek before he ran for president on the Republican side with regard to his endeavors on the ESG alternative front in the financial domain.

00:01:23.200 Him fighting back against the climate apocalypse mongers in the economic realm.

00:01:29.140 I've been talking to Vivek pretty regularly as he's progressed through the Republican primaries.

00:01:34.600 He's dropped his striving for the presidency, but established himself quite credibly as a candidate and is still active as a political voice.

00:01:43.640 We do a postmortem of his adventure on the political stage, talking about the deep state, talking about his relationship with Donald Trump, talking about his plans for the future,

00:01:55.780 talking about the viability of Trump as a candidate, Trump's divisiveness, Vivek's reasons for trusting Trump and putting some faith in a future that might include a four-year Trump presidency,

00:02:07.880 and walking through the realities of a modern-day presidential campaign, and so join us for that.

00:02:15.820 Hey, Vivek, thanks for coming on again.

00:02:18.980 Some of the people watching and listening will know that we spoke, well, before you made your bid for the Republican leadership in the presidential race,

00:02:30.140 we got to know each other before then, and then you've been kind enough to take us along on your journey, essentially, and we haven't done that for a while.

00:02:39.540 Now, I know that part of your political adventure has come to a conclusion, but I think it would be very useful for everybody who's watching and listening

00:02:48.540 to start from the beginning of your entry into the political domain and then just to tell everybody as clearly as you can what happened to you and what you learned, what you learned, and where you are now.

00:03:02.360 Yeah.

00:03:03.940 I'm still processing that, and that's why I was looking forward to this conversation, because even though it's been a couple months,

00:03:09.520 there's a whole ton of, you know, transitional to normal life phase of this that I haven't had my own chance to process that,

00:03:18.180 and hopefully this conversation is part of that for me.

00:03:21.300 So you and I actually spoke before, and you were one of a small handful of people I actually spoke to as I was contemplating this offline,

00:03:28.840 but we had spoken on there before.

00:03:30.100 I was a businessman, and I consider myself a businessman now, and I'm thinking about what I'm going to do in the future,

00:03:35.940 trying to drive change through the private sector.

00:03:37.660 I founded a biotech company that challenged a lot of the way big pharma did business.

00:03:41.780 I founded Strive to challenge the way BlackRock and the ESG-promoting asset managers were functioning,

00:03:48.000 and those were successes in their own right in different ways.

00:03:51.400 But I realized the mother of the beast in each of those cases, and in so many other cases of problems I hadn't tackled,

00:03:58.600 was the administrative state, was that fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, the technocracy,

00:04:04.240 the people who were never elected to run the government that were actually exercising political power.

00:04:09.220 You could take the FDA as an example, in the shadow of the pharmaceutical industry, which I had seen firsthand.

00:04:14.520 And not only the illogical policies, if illogic were the only part of it, it would have been a technically solvable problem.

00:04:22.860 It was a fundamentally political problem where people were exercising political power that they were never given.

00:04:27.180 Same thing with respect to the EPA and the SEC in the case of the asset management industry.

00:04:32.760 And so I came to the conclusion, look, life is short.

00:04:35.860 One of the best pieces of advice I got as a younger man was it takes about as much effort and difficulty to do something small as it does to do something big.

00:04:46.920 And I've found over the course of my career that that's been about true.

00:04:51.140 I've done some smaller things.

00:04:52.480 I've done some bigger things, both of which are important.

00:04:54.920 But they take about the same effort if you're doing something well, whether it's something really small or something really large.

00:05:00.440 The amount of individual effort you put in is about the same.

00:05:03.560 And so, look, I said, what is the biggest possible impact I can have?

00:05:07.100 If I'm willing to put all my effort into it, it might as well be the biggest possible impact of all.

00:05:11.120 Let me lead the United States of America.

00:05:12.960 Let me lead the United States of America to a rediscovery of our national ideals.

00:05:16.300 Take on that administrative state, that fourth branch of government.

00:05:20.160 Dismantle it to revive, in many ways, the ideals of the American Revolution.

00:05:25.060 I mean, that's what the American Revolution was about.

00:05:26.700 In 1776, we said no to elite technocracy in the form of monarchy.

00:05:31.800 It's a 1776 moment now.

00:05:33.980 Young people did it back then.

00:05:35.880 I was 37 years old when I declared, and most people said that's too young to run for president.

00:05:41.040 The truth is I found that as encouragement because our founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson,

00:05:45.260 were younger than me in many cases at the time they created the entire country.

00:05:50.140 So that's where I was.

00:05:51.180 I jumped off a cliff and didn't know what exactly was going to be my landing pad on the other side.

00:05:57.760 Let's just say I learned a lot over the course of that last year.

00:06:01.080 And, you know, God's plan was revealed.

00:06:03.760 I was not meant to be the next president of the United States, it seems.

00:06:06.600 But it did take me on a journey that at least I learned a lot from, I took a lot away from,

00:06:11.260 and hopefully sets me up to continue to have a big impact in other ways in the future.

00:06:16.420 It just was originally my motivation.

00:06:19.640 Now, a couple things I learned.

00:06:21.400 I assumed that it was going to be a message that people were hungry for.

00:06:25.560 I knew people were hungry for this message.

00:06:27.040 I had written three books.

00:06:28.160 I had traveled the country.

00:06:29.180 I had been to most states in this union as a consequence of my business activities across

00:06:33.540 the books I had written.

00:06:35.460 And so I knew how people were responding to this message.

00:06:37.840 I thought of running for president in part because many people on those book tours,

00:06:41.380 you know, tens, hundreds of people even who I didn't know come and encourage me to run

00:06:45.020 for U.S. president.

00:06:46.020 I didn't have much of a doubt in my mind that that message was going to resonate with a lot

00:06:50.420 of people.

00:06:51.440 But what I naively assumed was that somehow that message was going to land on the ears of

00:06:56.820 the millions of people who needed to hear it and, A, that they were going to hear it

00:07:00.400 at all and, B, that when they did hear it, that was the only thing they were going to

00:07:03.260 hear versus a lot of other messages about me that would permeate the system.

00:07:08.220 And it turned out to be a much more challenging initial incline than I had envisioned.

00:07:14.620 The first thing I noticed was we planned a, you know, a big launch of the presidential

00:07:20.600 campaign, a video, a Wall Street Journal op-ed, probably I'm not saying this to boast,

00:07:26.020 but one of the things that I did was probably one of the most thorough policy vision rollouts

00:07:30.260 of a presidential candidate on day one when they roll out their campaign.

00:07:34.860 Thought I had done it the right way.

00:07:36.320 We went pretty quickly.

00:07:37.560 I only decided in January of 2023 to run.

00:07:40.640 I declared by the end of February 2024.

00:07:43.520 It was February 21st when I declared.

00:07:46.000 And we had a big lead up to it.

00:07:48.520 I think I had done everything exactly as I had planned to do, laid out the message about

00:07:52.980 as well as I wanted to.

00:07:55.060 And then I noticed that the world continued to proceed as though I had never launched my

00:08:00.160 run for U.S. president, including even the political media that was covering the race.

00:08:04.500 Another presidential candidate had declared, Donald Trump had declared, and then Nikki Haley

00:08:08.100 had declared.

00:08:08.760 And then by the time I had declared, it was as though it was a non-event.

00:08:14.620 And so that was, I think, the first thing that I realized was I was prepared to go into

00:08:18.800 this as a battle of ideas, a battle of vision for the country, a battle of who would be the

00:08:24.360 best person to execute against that vision.

00:08:27.120 And I was sleeves rolled up, ready for battle.

00:08:30.060 And then I realized that people didn't even view me as being in that battle, which ended

00:08:34.520 up being the first battle of the campaign itself, the first five months, who was making

00:08:39.540 the case not for my vision, not for my candidacy or my ability to execute, but for my ability

00:08:45.280 to even be relevant in the first place.

00:08:48.560 And that would be rather naive of me, but that was, I think, the first hard learning

00:08:52.840 in declaring as an outsider for the race.

00:08:55.800 Okay, so let me draw an analogy there, and you tell me what you think about this.

00:09:02.120 It's frequently the case that neophyte entrepreneurs who've created a product believe that the

00:09:09.620 fundamental issue at hand is the product, right?

00:09:14.700 When I started selling things into the marketplace, I suffered from the delusion that it was 85%

00:09:21.960 product and, you know, 10% administration and 5% marketing and sales.

00:09:27.120 And that was like exactly backwards.

00:09:30.400 And so it sounds to me like a similar issue here that you presume that, except in the political

00:09:35.940 realm, you presume that if you had your policy prepared, you were already a credible person,

00:09:40.380 that that would be the bulk of the initial battle.

00:09:44.120 But what turned, if I've got you right, what turned out to be the case was a very sudden

00:09:48.320 realization that, well, you had to get in the conversation at all.

00:09:52.560 And that sounds like a sales and marketing problem to some degree.

00:09:56.500 And this is, I think, why so many candidates who are credible turn to political consultants

00:10:02.340 so rapidly, right?

00:10:03.500 And that often sinks them.

00:10:05.520 So, okay, so is that a reasonable analogy?

00:10:08.480 And you've, but you've, you've put products in the marketplace before.

00:10:11.520 And so in principle, you knew that on the commercial side.

00:10:14.420 So, well, I would say something about this is I, I agree with you on your analysis on the

00:10:20.500 commercial side.

00:10:21.540 What I would say is that is on steroids in the political side, right?

00:10:25.600 So even if you transpose the commercial instinct onto politics, you'd be missing it by, by,

00:10:31.940 by a mile.

00:10:33.980 The other thing is I came from industries that were a little bit different.

00:10:36.600 I haven't really been in a consumer products industry or in the media industry.

00:10:40.800 I mean, the industry that I spent the most time in was developing drugs for diseases that

00:10:46.600 pharma had ignored systematically.

00:10:48.360 And that was an area where, look, it's, it's a regulated process.

00:10:51.680 I saw from a front row seat, how broken institutions like the FDA really are, but it's not an area

00:10:57.340 where if you're pre-commercial and everything that I did was in the research and development

00:11:01.200 phase, not in the commercial phase, it actually, it, as entrepreneurs go, I actually did not

00:11:07.900 necessarily have that same experience as many consumer interfacing entrepreneurs.

00:11:12.340 So that may be idiosyncratic to me.

00:11:13.760 And then I would say, even for consumer interfacing entrepreneurs and strive was a little bit

00:11:18.960 closer to that because that's, that's a, that's a, you know, fund management company

00:11:23.000 that competes at BlackRock.

00:11:24.440 I had some of that experience.

00:11:26.360 It was nothing close to what the importance is of that is in politics is it was all about

00:11:31.480 to call it sales and marketing in some ways undersells the problem because sales and marketing

00:11:36.980 is once you're, once you're there, how much do you amplify how many people hear your message?

00:11:41.700 Whereas for me at the early stages of the campaign, and as I think about the last year and even

00:11:46.540 some of the things that later came back to become headwinds for me when I was a, you

00:11:52.040 know, front running or whatever, top four, top five candidate were actually the path to

00:11:57.520 getting there sort of set me up for the difficulties that I had later on.

00:12:01.100 But the first challenge was not even selling or marketing your message more effectively.

00:12:05.380 It was literally like nobody would know that I was running for U.S. president,

00:12:10.540 even though I was running for U.S. president.

00:12:12.380 So it was just getting on the map or being heard in the first place.

00:12:16.820 I just talked to Dean Phillips and his campaign obviously came to an end.

00:12:21.320 For those of you watching and listening, Dean Phillips was until recently running against

00:12:25.860 Biden on the Democrat side.

00:12:27.520 And he faced this problem in spades.

00:12:30.640 I think he probably faced all the problems you faced, plus the additional problem was

00:12:35.580 that he was absolutely 100% shut out of the entire Democrat apparatus.

00:12:41.720 People were literally told that if they worked for him, they would never do anything politically

00:12:46.620 again in their life.

00:12:48.120 And then also he had to face the same reaction from the legacy media.

00:12:51.900 And so he didn't get it.

00:12:54.240 And I don't think that he was attuned well enough to the alternative media, let's say,

00:13:00.580 you know, the podcast crowd and all that, to capitalize on that quickly.

00:13:04.720 Plus, they tend to tilt more in the classic liberal conservative direction anyways.

00:13:10.020 Okay, so you had to face this problem of getting on the map at all.

00:13:14.380 So how did that unfold?

00:13:16.280 So one of the things I did, and this is where, you know, I took good advice.

00:13:19.800 You were one of the early people who offered a reflection on this.

00:13:23.700 And, you know, I said, what's the downside in trying it?

00:13:25.760 Makes a lot of sense to me is if the traditional media is ignoring you, go to the non-traditional

00:13:30.040 media as a way to reach the people.

00:13:31.820 And so I adopted a strategy, let's call it a maxim early in the campaign, which was the

00:13:37.420 talk to everyone and anyone strategy.

00:13:40.120 Okay, left, right, center, cable news, non-cable news, print media, small time media, local

00:13:47.920 media, individuals walking on the street, recording it and putting it on social media.

00:13:52.260 I wore, you know, I'm wearing a little camera or I'm wearing a little, what do you call it,

00:13:55.860 a little microphone right now.

00:13:57.660 I wore a microphone pretty much everywhere I went.

00:13:59.760 We just clipped the conversations and put it out.

00:14:02.300 Now, my social media following was a lot smaller than it ended up being at the end of

00:14:06.120 the campaign.

00:14:06.700 But still, that was just a way of putting out my message into the world.

00:14:10.700 And what we started to notice was, you know, most of those things would get relatively

00:14:14.380 small reach.

00:14:15.540 But in a few instances, there were a lot of interactions where people actually began to

00:14:19.540 take interest to say, wait a minute, that's an interaction of a kind that I haven't seen

00:14:22.940 before.

00:14:23.720 That's interesting to me.

00:14:24.900 Some of them were not necessarily casting me in the most flattering light.

00:14:29.480 I might not have looked good, right?

00:14:31.200 Just even visually, you know, the things that I would have said were sometimes a little bit

00:14:35.400 unscripted, may not have been said as eloquently as I might have prepared for in a speech or

00:14:39.440 a TV interview.

00:14:40.300 But that was actually part of what made it appealing.

00:14:42.500 And so that started to take off, I think, allowed the campaign.

00:14:46.400 There were a couple moments.

00:14:47.200 And then I got called, I happened to be in New York City, and they said, do you want to

00:14:50.420 come on Don Lemon's show, right?

00:14:53.260 Because many Republican candidates aren't going to go on there.

00:14:55.700 So they thought they have a Republican candidate who's running.

00:14:58.200 Why don't you go ahead and go on Don Lemon's show?

00:15:01.080 We had a kind of interaction where this man lost, went haywire.

00:15:04.120 I had just given a speech at the NRA meeting.

00:15:06.620 And he picked on one particular thing that I said, which is a fact of history, that black

00:15:12.840 Americans in the United States did not get to enjoy their civil rights until they actually

00:15:19.260 had their Second Amendment rights.

00:15:20.580 And the first anti-gun laws that were passed in the United States were designed to keep

00:15:25.260 guns out of the hands of black Americans.

00:15:27.800 And that was part of a broader historical trend where even countries like China or Iran or

00:15:33.460 other countries around the world that claim to offer the same bill of rights that the

00:15:37.720 U.S. offers don't have a Second Amendment.

00:15:40.780 And so Don Lemon, and the funny thing happened, actually, I thought this would be a bit of an

00:15:44.600 aside, but I'll offer it.

00:15:46.820 They said there was a list of topics.

00:15:49.500 See, these are some of the tricks that the mainstream media plays.

00:15:51.720 It was really interesting.

00:15:52.820 There was a whole litany of topics.

00:15:54.540 They said, this is what they would like to talk to you about.

00:15:56.440 I forget what it was.

00:15:57.280 It was something related to China policy, which I believe that the U.S. needs to declare

00:16:01.480 independence from China.

00:16:02.720 They gave a couple of others, but I specifically remember that being one of them.

00:16:06.200 And then you go on the set, and what do you know is they've pulled an airlifted quotes

00:16:13.300 from my speech at the NRA meeting with their own commentary as the wraparound as the lead

00:16:19.080 into the interview when they have purposefully given me.

00:16:21.740 It's not like they didn't think about it or they said, we're not going to tell you what

00:16:23.640 we're going to talk about.

00:16:24.140 They said, this is exactly what we're going to talk about.

00:16:25.820 A litany for a relatively new presidential candidate, first time on their show.

00:16:30.420 Here's a litany of what we're going to talk about.

00:16:32.140 And it was not that it was that they decided to change topics in a spontaneous way.

00:16:37.200 It was designed as a trap.

00:16:39.620 And so in that case, anyway, I gave Don Lemon on air a history lesson, which caused him

00:16:44.560 to, it ended up being a big favor for me on the campaign, lose his mind.

00:16:48.920 You know, the earpiece that he had in, he was screaming at the people who were the producers

00:16:52.460 in his ears, saying it was distracting him as he was engaged in this debate with me.

00:16:56.800 It was such an uncomfortable moment for everybody involved, including anybody watching it, that

00:17:01.540 it ended up being, the New York Times reported the next couple of days later, the catalyst

00:17:05.780 for Don Lemon actually getting fired by CNN.

00:17:08.140 And so I had a few interactions like that, that, that started to kind of increase the

00:17:13.280 steam behind people, at least paying attention to my candidacy and, and things went on from

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00:18:57.800 So let me ask you about, well, let me ask you about that.

00:19:00.960 So I want to know what other moments went viral, right?

00:19:04.160 So that's a really interesting one, because one of the, well, there's two things about

00:19:09.340 that that I find particularly interesting.

00:19:11.480 The first is the way that these mainstream legacy media journalists set up the people

00:19:17.540 that they're interviewing.

00:19:18.480 So the game seems to be, and this has happened to me many, many times, the game is very

00:19:22.220 straightforward.

00:19:22.760 The game is, we will poke and prod at you with ill-informed but provocative opinions, hoping

00:19:32.700 that by being as annoying as possible, you will say something fatally stupid, demolish

00:19:39.780 your reputation online, and elevate my reputation, the journalist, as an investigator who can then

00:19:46.840 walk away with, like, your scalp, so to speak, on his belt.

00:19:50.280 Now, that's a, and so that's the kind of interview you face where every single word the interviewer

00:19:58.860 utters is a verbal trap, okay?

00:20:02.360 But my experience has been that if you keep your head during that interchange and you don't

00:20:12.240 play the game, so you don't say anything stupid, you don't apologize, you don't get upset,

00:20:16.860 that that can turn viciously, viciously in your favor.

00:20:21.680 And you said, okay, and so that's interesting.

00:20:24.160 So I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

00:20:25.660 And then I'd also like to know what other things you did in the alternative media and

00:20:30.260 direct-to-consumer, direct-to-voter model that also went viral.

00:20:34.720 You know, some of that's chance, right?

00:20:36.160 If you put out 50 clips, you're going to get a Pareto distribution of effect.

00:20:40.580 But did you start to see a pattern for the clips that you got?

00:20:44.340 Okay, so let's unwrap that.

00:20:46.000 Let's start with the gotcha journalism, first of all.

00:20:48.620 Well, the gotcha journalism, so my strategy ended up being, it wasn't really a strategy.

00:20:52.560 I think it's sort of how I'm wired.

00:20:54.680 First was to do exactly what you said, just rationally process exactly what they're telling

00:20:59.620 you and respond rationally as the person on the other side increasingly loses their mind

00:21:05.680 because you're not doing what they expected or planned or set you up to do, which in turn,

00:21:11.260 I think, makes them look, I think, far more illogical as a consequence when they were actually

00:21:17.080 taking the ruffian populist Republican to try to make fry of them.

00:21:22.060 Even for their own audience, they end up looking like the less reasonable ones.

00:21:24.820 I went to the breakfast club, had a major viral exchange there where a woman, she was pressing

00:21:30.820 me hard on the fact that I had only ever really had major accomplishments in the business world

00:21:36.040 that had never been in public service with utter unawareness that the last, and I believe,

00:21:40.500 successful president of the United States, Donald Trump, came with a very similar background.

00:21:44.660 And I think she was frustrated that I wasn't falling into her traps.

00:21:47.620 And then she ended up giving a soliloquy about her experience in sixth grade where she put

00:21:52.620 together a coalition for lunch money or something like this, which to her own audience, which is

00:21:57.740 a largely left of center audience, broadly panned, saying that we don't want to really hear about

00:22:03.260 your sixth grade experience. We understand that somebody who has accomplished things in the

00:22:07.400 business world can at least have a legitimate case for having his ideas heard. This is coming

00:22:10.780 from the left. Don Lemon's firing. I had an exchange with Chuck Todd where he said,

00:22:15.100 how can you have the level of certainty that there are two genders? And I explained in the manner of

00:22:20.440 somebody who happens to have a biology degree, which I don't usually like using. You don't need

00:22:26.620 a biology degree to know something about biology. You don't need to have a Harvard degree to be able

00:22:30.360 to have standing to speak on a subject of science. But I have those things. And for an audience that

00:22:35.720 particularly wrongfully elevates their attachment of value to those degrees, I decided to use that in

00:22:41.740 my favor and broke down for him. Here's what two X chromosomes mean. Here's what an X and a Y chromosome mean.

00:22:46.540 And that exchange went viral as well. And I think this one is more by chance, but he quickly was

00:22:51.660 no longer on the air at Meet the Press, which is his main show shortly after. I had done the same

00:22:56.080 thing with Don Lemon shortly after we had exchanges like that at the Breakfast Club. And then you think

00:23:00.720 about the exchanges that I had on social media that ended up being the ones that really caught the public

00:23:06.860 imagination were, again, interactions that I had in the field, let's call it, at the Iowa State Fair and

00:23:13.080 other places where we had protesters or people who were purposefully trying to either disrupt my

00:23:19.240 events or others, I got to give them credit, who were respectful but sharply disagreed with what I

00:23:24.360 had to say and approached me in one-off conversations that weren't performative, but they were real

00:23:30.320 conversations, authentic conversations between people who deeply disagreed on subject matter.

00:23:35.060 And so if I'm to put those together, both between the corporate media realm as well as in the,

00:23:39.980 in the, let's just say, real world translated social media digital realm, that's the through

00:23:45.720 line that I would draw, is the thing that really ended up creating not just one-off, but this ended

00:23:51.760 up being a series of probably three, four months in there of repeated virality of interactions that

00:23:58.480 were nothing more than the kind of interactions that I've been having for all of my adult life,

00:24:03.640 which I enjoy, which I thrive on. You know, think about the people I went to school with at places

00:24:07.340 like Harvard or Yale predominantly had political views that were different from mine. I leaned

00:24:10.940 libertarian. Most of them lean liberal. Some of them are even friends of mine and remain friends

00:24:14.840 of mine to this day. Authentic, heated, but earnest exchanges. In some cases, the person on the other

00:24:21.360 side wasn't necessarily authentic in their motives. Take the Don Lemon, but you treat them as though they

00:24:26.060 are, and then they self-immolate in front of you. That ended up really lifting up the campaign,

00:24:31.160 in this case now, far earlier than we expected, okay? Because when we saw me not lifting up off

00:24:38.140 the ground, I think I calibrated myself to saying, okay, this is going to be a long haul. It's going

00:24:42.180 to be only after the debates begin, and let me at least try to qualify for those debates. Let me at

00:24:46.600 least make that table stakes that I would qualify for the debates. And then after that, it would be a

00:24:51.880 steady buildup. Instead, something started happening where when I took the talk to everyone strategy,

00:24:56.640 left-wing media, right-wing media, corporate media, podcasts and interactions, we actually saw a pickup

00:25:03.380 that was then far earlier than I expected after I had recalibrated my own expectations, and that

00:25:09.420 created new problems of its own, actually. So what started happening was, this is in advance of the

00:25:14.660 first Republican debate, I started really surging in the polls in a way that nobody expected. You're

00:25:22.100 talking about just four months before the media would not give me the light of day, and many people

00:25:26.240 had no idea I was running for president when I was running for president in the month of March.

00:25:30.380 Now we're talking about July, early August. I mean, I was probably the Republican candidate who was

00:25:36.880 most talked about, even by the corporate press, even when I'm not on there, because who is this

00:25:41.200 character that nobody's heard of that's now beginning to surge in a lot of these polls, passing up,

00:25:46.440 you know, former vice presidents of the United States, former governors, people who were running that

00:25:50.160 were far more prominent, viewed as real contenders in the race. And then that's where I started

00:25:56.040 to really get a taste of a new kind of issue, where first is, I'll tell you this, is the corporate

00:26:02.720 press, I think, took some umbrage at the fact that they had been one-upped in two ways. They'd been

00:26:10.500 one-upped in two ways. One way they had been one-upped is right on their own home turf, right,

00:26:14.740 the Don Lemon and the Chuck Todd-style interactions. So I think that bothered them. But the second thing

00:26:19.460 that bothered them, and I think this was, I think, the more interesting learning, I think they were

00:26:27.320 bothered by the fact that I had sidestepped them, that many of the interactions that caused me that

00:26:32.820 were most attributable to Americans having a favorable view of me had nothing to do with going

00:26:37.980 through the normal gatekeepers, which are those in corporate media. And this really pissed them off,

00:26:43.080 OK? And so what they started to do was to realize that this was an opportunity to trap me. And I

00:26:50.480 think that this is less about me and more about a defense of their own relevance as the sole

00:26:55.740 gatekeeper in the realm of politics. So this is where I think that if I was to give you feedback from

00:27:02.680 the feedback you gave me, the feedback you gave me is sidestep the corporate media. You said that in

00:27:07.780 one of our earlier podcasts, probably our first podcasts that we had. You were one of the few people

00:27:11.080 was paying attention to me. Here's what I learned as a consequence of that is we're not yet at a

00:27:16.240 future where the corporate media is entirely irrelevant. We're in this liminal state, this

00:27:22.120 intermediate state where the new media is relevant, it's useful, it's necessary, certainly for newcomer

00:27:29.380 break on the scene like me. But it coexists in a landscape where the traditional gatekeepers are still

00:27:36.020 very much present, relevant, and important. And so they realized here's the game they're going to play is

00:27:40.880 take this conversation you and I are having, right? This is going to be a 90-minute conversation.

00:27:45.700 Thing about a conversation is it has context. What we say 40 minutes from now may call back

00:27:52.660 something that you and I just spoke about 10 minutes ago, all right? That's the nature of this

00:27:56.940 format. The corporate media operates, television, let's just take cable television as an example,

00:28:01.880 based on two, three, four-minute segments. And so there started to be a really interesting thing that

00:28:06.640 started to happen in July and August is by then there's a whole body of probably

00:28:10.660 tens, hundreds of podcasts like this that I had done. Well, what they were able to do was to then

00:28:15.540 helicopter, airlift something that came out of a conversation that had context attached to it,

00:28:22.440 right? An hour, sometimes two hours worth of context around a statement. But to airlift that

00:28:28.180 and to put that on air in a way that was cast in a completely different context than

00:28:33.340 what it was intended in the context of a two-hour conversation.

00:28:36.580 And it wasn't that they were just punishing me. What they were doing in the process

00:28:40.060 was creating a disincentive for anybody else to actually participate in those longer-form

00:28:47.720 conversations. Because the message is, if you do that, do it at your own peril because you will

00:28:52.460 be punished. Unless you do it the standard way where you script it, you don't go through exactly

00:28:57.020 what the traditional assembly line is for political communication, and you're going to do it through

00:29:00.800 the format that we have control over or else we will punish the defector. And that's what they

00:29:05.740 began to do. So in August, in the lead up to the first debate, and this was somewhat damaging to

00:29:11.000 me, and it created a bit of a theme that the other candidates pounced on and exploited as a theme.

00:29:17.820 Well, I'll tell you, the surprising thing that happened at the first debate was, remember,

00:29:20.420 my whole thing was in March, make the debate stage. What happened is in the summer, I surged so

00:29:26.460 much so that not only did I make the debate stage, I was at the center of the very first debate stage.

00:29:30.040 Ron DeSantis and I were the two people at the center of that debate stage, one of whom was the guy who was

00:29:34.880 the preordained challenger and replacer of Donald Trump, according to many pundits in the world of

00:29:40.900 conservative media, and then another guy who nobody had heard of. At the center of a debate stage was

00:29:45.120 the former vice president, multiple U.S. senators to governors to other people who were irritated as

00:29:50.640 hell that I was there. And I did not expect this, Dr. Peterson, but the thing that shocked me, I enjoyed

00:29:57.100 it, was at that first debate, I ended up being the target of every person. You were actually,

00:30:03.100 I think, in that room physically even. And that was interesting to me. But in the lead up to that

00:30:08.040 is what really gave them the ammo. And this is where I wasn't strategizing at all. At that point,

00:30:14.280 I was just still continuing my talk to everyone strategy. I'll talk to everybody, I'll talk unfiltered,

00:30:19.320 et cetera. There was a reporter from the Atlantic. This is a funny story. I haven't really gone into

00:30:24.680 depth on this, but I should. There's a reporter from the Atlantic who has been really asking,

00:30:33.420 the Atlantic has been asking to do a detailed, embedded profile of us. My team, and I think

00:30:38.580 maybe they were a little bit shrewder than me on this, said, well, we want to be careful about this.

00:30:41.940 I said, what the hell? Let him in. We'll talk to everybody's strategy. We've committed to something,

00:30:46.900 stick to it, practice what we preach. So he came to Columbus, Ohio, and then he was going to come

00:30:51.580 on a private flight to whatever campaign stops we were making, culminating the lead up to the

00:30:57.940 first debate. And there was something funny about this guy. Forget his name, okay? But the first

00:31:03.660 thing he says, it's weird. It's like bizarre. He has a very mild-mannered affect. And he goes out

00:31:10.560 of his way to say multiple times, I have a stutter. I was like, okay, I don't care if you have a stutter.

00:31:14.780 I mean, it doesn't matter to me. But he went out of his way for me to understand that he had a stutter.

00:31:18.580 And he told my wife and everybody else he met, apologizing profusely, I have a stutter,

00:31:23.440 so don't mind me on this. My wife has a wisdom that I don't, but she said, just be careful about

00:31:31.060 this guy because of that fact, right? It's not that he had a stutter. It's that he went out of

00:31:35.120 his way to point that fact out to us. And she says, I think he's looking to potentially exploit

00:31:41.260 you. Just be careful with him. I didn't take it one way or another. She, you know, ended up being a

00:31:46.740 Kaisar Sose kind of character, for those of you who know the movie reference there.

00:31:52.720 Anyway, he, you know, following me around, builds a lot of sympathetic rapport with me and,

00:31:59.180 you know, ends up really somewhat of an intellectual, smart guy, ended up able to be

00:32:03.660 leveling with the arguments that I was making, demonstrating his sympathy for the essence,

00:32:09.600 not just the superficiality, but the essence of the arguments. So I feel like I'm really

00:32:12.780 leveling with somebody. By this point in the campaign, we had learned a lesson. So my press

00:32:17.120 secretary, she smartly had the habit of anytime a recorder's recording the conversation, she also

00:32:23.980 goes on the record and records the conversation.

00:32:26.060 Yeah, that's a good idea.

00:32:27.940 On the record, let's make it mutually on the record. Now, she's worked, she has worked,

00:32:32.760 had it, you know, 24-7 for a lot of the campaign. One of the weekends she had, she had to go to a

00:32:36.560 wedding, okay? And this was a week, this was during the flight that this gentleman and I were taking to a

00:32:41.820 campaign stop where we were headed. So now he has me without the, without my sort of press person

00:32:49.480 near me. And I think without, without being in recording, he, he's got his recorder on the plane.

00:32:55.100 Okay. So we're talking, and I'm foolishly just, you know, talking away like I'm talking to a friend

00:33:00.000 here, to a guy who's already ingratiated himself a little bit, softened his image with me. I almost

00:33:05.580 felt even, even a little bit, a little bit saddened for the guy that he had this loss of self-confidence

00:33:11.660 based on some attribute that wasn't his own and seemed like a smart guy. And so we're talking and

00:33:17.780 he pulls out. So about two weeks before something had happened where I was on one of these podcasts

00:33:22.640 and a guy by the name of Alex Stein asks me, he's hosting kind of a quasi comedic podcast.

00:33:29.180 And he asked me, do you believe what the government's told you about 9-11? And I said,

00:33:33.460 do I believe everything government's told me about 9-11? Well, the reality is we know the

00:33:38.220 government's lied to us based on declassified documents that came out 20 years after 9-11

00:33:43.460 that Omar al-Bayoumi, who was a individual who was previously deemed to be a 42 year old graduate

00:33:50.360 student that randomly met two of the hijackers. That was the story that the 9-11 commission and the

00:33:54.800 FBI published 20 years ago turned out in the declassified documents 20 years later was a

00:33:59.320 Saudi intelligence operative. So we know the government lied about that. So based on that

00:34:02.320 hard fact, of course, we don't believe everything the government has told us about this. Now,

00:34:07.380 that statement was the fodder. It's the classic move. Take something in the context of a podcast

00:34:12.440 style conversation, airlift that to the conversation about, okay, so here's the conversation we had on

00:34:18.740 the airplane. He says, all right, I believe the government should tell the truth about what we know

00:34:22.100 about what happened on January 6th. And that's something I have been very vocal about during

00:34:25.220 the campaign. I think government should tell us everything. Everything's fair game.

00:34:28.400 Were there FBI agents in the field? Tell us were there FBI agents in the field? Were there FBI

00:34:32.240 informants in the field? Just answer the question transparently. Most of the mainstream media throughout

00:34:36.620 the campaign has said that the FBI director has said there were none. Actually, that's false.

00:34:41.600 Christopher Wray, when he's responding to Congress, refused to answer the question, which the media has

00:34:46.300 then later reported as saying that he said there were none. So I said, whatever is, just tell us the truth.

00:34:51.180 And so we have a detailed, must be a 20 minute conversation easily about my view on the

00:34:57.300 government's obligation to just be transparent, whatever it is. Just let the public tell the

00:35:01.440 truth. Publish all the video footage. Don't disclose some video footage and hide others. Just tell the

00:35:05.620 public the truth. We, the people deserve the truth. So then he asked me, okay, well, were there federal

00:35:09.200 agents in the field on January 6th? You know, do you think it's a fair question to say, were there

00:35:14.140 federal agents on the plane on 9-11? Now this is, I mean, this is a loony idea, right? Nobody,

00:35:20.660 this is not out of shred of evidence for this, but in the context of my principled answer saying that

00:35:25.760 for January 6th or for anything else, the government should just tell the people the truth.

00:35:28.920 I said, look, the government should tell the people the truth, whatever it is. I have no reason to

00:35:32.740 believe that there were federal agents on the plane. It's a ridiculous idea to think there were, but

00:35:36.380 whatever it is, the government should tell the truth to the people. Okay. On that, on that segment.

00:35:41.700 And it was one snippet of a, maybe a 30 minute conversation on this topic, which is a broader

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00:36:57.720 The story comes out, this is right on the eve of the debate, okay? And the story comes out from

00:37:02.940 the Atlantic. It's in a detailed story, goes into a lot of other things. The one thing that the editor-in-chief

00:37:06.980 for whoever the main editor guy is at the Atlantic puts out and highlights is Ramaswamy fuels conspiracy

00:37:11.920 theories asking whether there are federal agents on the planes on 9-11. So this is weeks later after

00:37:20.020 he's come. So I truthfully, like, I remember the January 6th conversation. This was a one-off snippet.

00:37:26.240 I didn't remember saying that. And I just told my team, I was like, I don't, I don't remember saying

00:37:31.380 that. I mean, clearly these people have reporting standards. He was recording a conversation. He's

00:37:35.080 reporting on something. Can you just ask the Atlantic, just share with us the recording where

00:37:41.140 I said it, just for my own knowledge of what I even said. It was a free-flowing conversation. I'm not

00:37:45.420 denying the way I was quoted, but just tell me what I said. They refused to. Now, CNN, this comes full

00:37:52.580 circle from the Don Lemon, has their own vengeance to square, has booked me that night, okay? And boy,

00:37:59.180 are they coming ready. And I'm sure there's coordination. It was done in a level at which it would be hard to

00:38:03.520 believe there's not some level of coordination here. So CNN's booked me that night. And they

00:38:09.300 asked me the question. So I know I'm going to get asked about this. So I'd like to know. So we just

00:38:12.900 respectfully asked the Atlantic, what did I actually say? Just tell me, what do you have? What's the

00:38:18.920 thing that you're quoting here in the article? Because then the article goes on. There's a bunch.

00:38:22.380 I'm being panned across the spectrum, left and right at this point. And they refuse to provide it.

00:38:28.840 So I go on CNN and she says, you know, why did you say, why are you saying that there could have been

00:38:36.820 federal officers on the plane on 9-11? So I've never thought that's a thing. It sounds to me

00:38:43.120 like a ridiculous proposition. So I say, look, I don't think I said that. I think I was misquoted

00:38:49.100 or taken out of context. That's the truth of it. And I think that what I did not realize is that's

00:38:54.400 when they knew they had won. Because she went out of her way to say, oh, I take you at your word

00:38:58.180 there. Okay. What they had then within hours of that interview airing, the Atlantic slices just

00:39:07.280 that portion where he's questioned me after the detailed discussion about January 6th,

00:39:13.120 would it be fair for the government to ask the question of were there agents on the plane on 9-11?

00:39:19.520 Just release that snippet. And then CNN and the entire media has a field day. Because the entire

00:39:26.240 slogan of my campaign is speak the truth, right? Speak the truth when it's easy, when it's hard.

00:39:30.820 Truth is the one word slogan of my campaign. They use this to damage the hell out of me.

00:39:37.780 And so I asked the Atlantic, we said publicly, you release the snippet. Why don't you release

00:39:42.380 the entire conversation? Why don't you? To this day, they haven't done it. And to this day,

00:39:46.540 I will challenge them. If you want to be honest arbiters of it, CNN the whole next day running an entire

00:39:52.280 field day saying that, but he said, I haven't, and if you listen to the exact footage, it's even

00:39:57.340 different than they describe it. The exact footage is, sure, I think the government should tell the

00:40:00.600 truth. I have no reason to believe there were. It seems like a ridiculous idea that there should

00:40:04.320 be, but whatever it is, the government should tell the truth. That's what I said, which they

00:40:07.360 summarize as saying that I'm raising conspiracy theories that there were federal agents on the

00:40:10.500 plane on 9-11. Ridiculous. Now you attribute that to, so let's go into the attribution. So

00:40:16.420 obviously this was somewhat shocking for you. Shocking. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now, but you've

00:40:22.120 already set up some diagnosis of the motivation. You said that as far as you were concerned,

00:40:28.360 the legacy media wasn't very happy with you sidestepping them, let's say, even though at

00:40:32.920 that point you didn't really have an alternative. They also weren't very happy with the fact that

00:40:37.460 their attempts to pigeonhole you, let's say, had backfired quite spectacularly. And then you had this

00:40:44.540 character from the Atlantic who played I'm your friend while you invited him in only to try to

00:40:50.960 find one of these situations where something you said could be taken out of context to savage your

00:40:57.220 reputation. Yes. But there's the rub. Like why exactly? Is it just the additive combination of

00:41:06.020 the reporter wants to make a name for himself, the Atlantic wants to have a story, CNN wants to

00:41:10.980 capitalize on it, along with the fact that, well, it would be lovely to throw some dirt on a Republican

00:41:16.940 because what the hell, why not? And to paint him with this right-wing conspiracy theory. Like,

00:41:23.200 is that sufficient? Is that the causal explanation for the manner in which that laid itself out? And

00:41:28.300 then we'll get back to what effect that had at the debate. Yeah. So I don't think it was sufficient.

00:41:34.040 All those things were definitely factors. But I think this was in the context of something is

00:41:40.000 going as it's not supposed to here. Okay. There's a guy here who is advancing a Trumpian worldview of

00:41:49.640 positive, I think of it as a positive nationalism, but nationalism nonetheless in the United States.

00:41:55.180 And he is defying our expectations for what that's supposed to look like,

00:42:00.180 because he speaks in a manner that is at least as, I'm not saying this about myself, I'm saying this

00:42:06.420 what I think they see in me, as erudite and educated from the halls of the same Ivy League

00:42:11.700 colleges that they, that they deem to be their esteemed institutions and speaking in a manner that

00:42:17.420 goes toe to toe on the facts with debating so-called the science on issues relating to COVID policy or

00:42:23.680 otherwise that we're unable to contend with. This is a real threat. We need to go after this in a

00:42:29.700 deeper way because he's not given us the video clips from speeches that we can caricature or we

00:42:34.080 need to actually set the traps. And this needs to be quashed. It needs to be quashed now. And by the

00:42:39.300 way, this social media thing that's sidestepping us to hell with that, that's creating the disinformation

00:42:44.940 that's creating the alternative, the misinformation that allows candidates like this to rise. It is our

00:42:52.120 job and our social responsibility as a media institution to extinguish that possibility.

00:42:57.200 Let's punish his ability to do that by lifting some of the comments he's made in those lewd

00:43:02.540 settings offline from the traditional media that individual citizens are beginning to access to

00:43:08.360 their own peril and set the record straight for how this is done. We're the people who vet, who actually

00:43:13.780 become serious presidential candidates. When he's a non-serious contender, who cares? But this guy's

00:43:18.480 rising in the polls to become a serious presidential candidate could really have an impact in shaping

00:43:22.820 public opinion. We have an ability and a responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.

00:43:28.500 Cut his legs off, I think was exactly what happened. And then you have the industrialized

00:43:32.880 politics in a Republican primary where that provides the fodder for other candidates who are frustrated

00:43:37.240 by the same thing happening to be able to use that to their advantage. Not even the candidates, but in many

00:43:42.080 cases, even the super PACs supporting them, which is part of this industrialized cesspool of the modern

00:43:47.660 industry of American politics. That's really what happened. Okay, so now I was there, as you said,

00:43:53.640 for that debate. And so let me offer you some observations and then respond to them. And you can

00:44:00.880 tell me, flesh that out. So first of all, I spent a lot of time working with Democrats in the U.S. And

00:44:07.120 I've pulled back on that attempt over the last two years, I would say, because I got tired of having to

00:44:13.940 walk on eggshells with absolutely 100% of everything I said all the time. The idea was to attempt to pull

00:44:22.220 the Democrats on the moderate side away from the radical progressives who they're so foolishly

00:44:27.540 aligned with and against whom they refuse to erect any barriers whatsoever. And so I've spoken to a lot

00:44:34.140 more Republicans more recently, and I've found that a lot more straightforward. Even when we don't see eye

00:44:39.820 eye, I don't have to watch what I say. And there's almost always a genuine exchange of information.

00:44:47.920 Now, when I went down to, where was the debate? Where was it held?

00:44:52.740 The first one was in, I'm losing track here. I know the stage. It was in, of course, in Wisconsin.

00:44:59.940 That was where the RNC convinced me.

00:45:01.100 In Wisconsin, yes. Okay. So I was actually, I was impressed with the field of candidates that the

00:45:06.740 Republicans had offered. I thought that the debate was, the debate was more rigorous and

00:45:14.300 intellectually engaging than I expected it to be. It was a real spectacle in the American sense. And

00:45:19.940 you Americans are unbelievably good at that. And so it also had that. But then it was interesting

00:45:24.840 watching you because what I saw was that, first of all, you were a focus of attention for the rest of

00:45:31.900 the candidates, not the only one, but certainly our focus of attention. I think it does reflect what

00:45:36.880 you just described. And you also elicited more positive and more negative response from the audience

00:45:44.100 than any of the other candidates, right? And so now, and so I'm interested in, in the personal element of

00:45:51.620 that. This was, I'm not exactly sure what it was like for you to be on the stage with these

00:45:58.100 political heavyweights, comparative political heavyweights, let's say, and holding your own.

00:46:03.660 It wasn't much before that where it was not as, not written in stone that you were even going to

00:46:09.800 be part of the debate. So this is very new for you. So what do you, what did you think of the other

00:46:16.540 people who you shared the stage with? What do you think you did well? And, and what do you think

00:46:24.920 you did well? And what would have you liked to have improved with regard to your performance for

00:46:29.800 that particular event? Yeah. So I'm still reflecting on a lot of this and I haven't landed on firm

00:46:36.400 conclusions yet, but I can tell you, you know, some maybe half-baked, you know, or some, some,

00:46:42.980 some inchoate reflections here. Okay. I went into that feeling a great sense of liberation and fun.

00:46:52.160 That was my strategy. Okay. And we even, we even put a fine point on that. You know, I was playing

00:46:57.440 hours of tennis and working out and we put out some videos on social media, you know, almost

00:47:02.800 mocking the process, to be honest with you. It was a little smug of me to do it. I have to admit that,

00:47:08.620 but I had, it was, it was a smugness that I kind of acquired as a little bit of a defense mechanism

00:47:16.180 against what was already a poisonous system by that point, right? You have a media that systematically

00:47:21.240 ignored me. And then finding my way to prominence, nonetheless, with the actual voters sidestepping

00:47:26.320 the media, which was no easy thing to do systematically punished the super PACs of the

00:47:29.700 other candidates in the lead up to that presidential debate. I mean, you had, you know, I mean, I'm not

00:47:34.080 picking on anybody here, but you take Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, all of their political consultants,

00:47:38.820 you know, a lot Ron DeSantis machine, basically every other one, this is all public record were in

00:47:43.360 the lead up to the debate online and otherwise issuing directed criticisms towards me foregrounding what was

00:47:48.080 coming on the debate stage. And so I kind of entered the moment with, and I don't hold that

00:47:52.940 against the other candidates, just how this game is played, but I entered that stage with the feeling

00:47:59.760 of somewhat of a sense of disdain for the process, the industrialization of this. And what I saw were

00:48:09.000 the products of it, which were in many cases, other professional politicians. I had a sense of

00:48:13.420 disdain. I also had a sense of... And you said, you pointed to the fact that some of that might

00:48:18.480 have been defensive, you know, because of... Yeah, I think so. I think so, right? Because I think...

00:48:23.880 Okay. Well, it's very interesting because that's a common defensive reaction, but it definitely has

00:48:31.020 dangers, especially when you're engaged in the process, right? I mean, it's a weird thing because

00:48:36.260 you're part of it, clearly part of it. And then you can see where it goes sideways and you have to

00:48:44.240 criticize where it goes sideways, but you're still in... You're in the game and so you can't be

00:48:49.340 contemptuous of it because what the hell are you doing in the game if you're contemptuous of it?

00:48:53.720 So that's a real... Right. It had layers of paradox to it. So even in the lead up to the debate,

00:48:58.600 as others were attacking me, my mode was, let me not just attack them in the lead up to the debate,

00:49:03.340 but let me in as... You know, I would say it was a pretty condescending manner putting out,

00:49:09.080 here's my debate prep, and I put out a shirtless video of me playing tennis. We're working out,

00:49:14.200 we're doing all kinds of fun things and kind of saying, one of these is not like the others.

00:49:18.340 And it had a certain contempt to it. I'll admit that. It had a contemptuous tenor to that heading

00:49:25.880 into the debate, which of course only threw fuel on the fire and the irritation of the existing system

00:49:31.340 and to some extent the other candidates as well. So let me get out of the debate, Steve.

00:49:34.800 That might have also accounted for the... Of course.

00:49:38.000 ...expanded emotional response, say, because when you said positive things, the crowd was

00:49:42.240 very enthusiastic. But I suspect, now that you've told me this, I suspect that the more exaggerated

00:49:48.220 negative response was probably a crowd reaction to that leaking in of disdain.

00:49:54.920 Yes, absolutely. And I'm, you know, we're being pretty unfiltered here, but I think that

00:50:00.900 it's a good thing for people to be able to see behind the curtain a little bit of what is otherwise

00:50:06.400 a shrouded process. So anyway, we start the debate, and I'm going in that night. I'm not one to be

00:50:13.880 naturally prepped in this setting. And so there was some minimal amount of prep that I did, which felt

00:50:19.600 very unnatural to me. And so the day of, I just made a decision. I'm going to have fun. I'm going

00:50:25.680 to have fun one way or another. It's a hell of an experience, as this is a life experience. And I'm

00:50:30.080 going to just speak in a pretty unfiltered way, and I'm going to be a fighter. Like, it feels like

00:50:35.920 you're going into an arena. You're going to have a fight. Roll up your sleeves in a little bit of a

00:50:40.920 gladiator spirit, having fun when you're going in there. Don't play with kid gloves. Bring your brass

00:50:47.440 knuckles, and let's go have a fight. And I think that that's the tenor I was in going in there.

00:50:52.020 And so I think from that point in the campaign forward, right, that effectively became my modus

00:50:59.700 operandi. First was nobody was relevant. Nobody viewed me as relevant, not even hearing my ideas.

00:51:04.140 Second phase is they're hearing my ideas, but in an actual, I would say, I hope I tried to be

00:51:09.600 respectful manner with the left, right? The people who are actually ideologically on the other side

00:51:14.000 that created this groundswell of virality, which then caught the entire political system,

00:51:19.900 the establishment in the Republican political industry, which is different from actual earnest

00:51:24.200 candidates, and the mainstream media by storm. The arrows then start coming in, somewhat as a

00:51:30.080 defense mechanism, and somewhat because I didn't see a better alternative. I just said, okay, well,

00:51:34.340 I'm just going to fight. I'm going to take the gloves off, and I'm going to be a fighter for the rest of

00:51:39.800 this, and I'm going to have fun while I'm at it, ended up being my attitude going into that first

00:51:44.300 debate. And what we saw, and I think that was basically the tenor from there for the second

00:51:49.960 half of the raise, was me being somebody who was, I didn't proactively hit anybody who hadn't hit me,

00:52:01.080 but my rule from then on was, if you're going to hit me, because it had just begun to, you know,

00:52:06.520 I wasn't relevant. Now it's relevant, but the relevance came in the form of being hit.

00:52:10.440 Whoever it is, Republican, Democrat, media, I don't care. If you hit me, I'm going to hit you

00:52:15.660 back ten times harder, and I'm going to be unsparing about it. And that's what effectively

00:52:20.580 that first debate ended up being. It's what most of the remaining debates ended up being.

00:52:24.960 It won me a lot of fans. I will say the fans who loved me for doing it still ended up voting for

00:52:31.620 who they saw the ultimate fighter of all, which is Donald Trump. But they loved me as their second

00:52:35.780 choice. And I think in many of the polls, what we saw by the end was the second choice ranking to

00:52:41.000 Donald Trump. I'd be number one in the rest of the field, but that still left me with only 8% of the

00:52:45.680 vote in Iowa, 7.8% of the vote in Iowa. But it did actually probably lose me a lot of other supporters

00:52:54.940 from the remainder who actually, once they were finally hearing my ideas, which keep in mind for

00:53:00.940 the first half of the race, they hadn't by definition. Once they really heard my ideas, they were actually

00:53:05.740 prepared to latch onto that, but were put off by the pugnacious way that I handled the way that I was

00:53:13.020 getting hit. And so that's the real story of the reflection. As I said, it's still not, I'm still in the

00:53:19.340 process of reflecting on much of what happened last year. There's the first kind of conversation like this

00:53:23.720 that I've had reflecting on it. But I think that's effectively what happened is I was unconstrained. I was a

00:53:28.440 fighter. And I'm proud of being a fighter. I think we need a fighter who leads for the country. But I think we need

00:53:33.380 more than that too. And I believe I bring more than that. But the formats that I was given in that

00:53:40.320 latter half of the race allowed for people to see that I am a fighter and that I am, and I'm proud

00:53:45.540 of it and I won't apologize for it. But there was no other forum for people to see the other dimensions

00:53:54.160 of my ability to be a leader and, dare I say, a uniter for the country other than in-person settings

00:54:01.660 of 50 to 200 people at a time, which is what I ended up gravitating to in that latter half of the

00:54:07.480 race. In those final months of the race, I ended up doing hundreds of events in Iowa, which was the

00:54:13.360 life experience of a lifetime, by the way. I mean, this was really probably some of the most emotionally

00:54:18.520 challenging and testing period I've been through where I'm not approaching these with canned lines,

00:54:24.220 right? I'm treating each interaction with somebody at a pizza ranch in Iowa as though it's the first

00:54:29.760 time I'm answering that question. That was the standard I held myself to. So every day, you're

00:54:34.120 waking up at 7 a.m., in some cases, 11 events over the course of a day. You'd be going to bed at

00:54:38.760 midnight. The next day, do it again. Did more events in Iowa than the rest of the field combined.

00:54:43.860 I ended up resorting to that because that was a setting in which, for the people who saw me there,

00:54:47.800 which ended up being a tiny portion of the electorate, I think the feedback I would get,

00:54:52.860 right, because we would do photo lines whenever there was an opportunity, I would stay until the

00:54:56.600 very last person had left. The number one piece of feedback I heard, and I didn't know how to take

00:55:01.840 this, was you're really different than what I thought of you coming out of the debates. And not

00:55:09.660 everyone meant it in a bad way or a good way, but it was just genuinely fascinating to people that,

00:55:15.220 okay, like, this is a different side of you that I did not see when I saw you at the debates.

00:55:22.640 And I think most people meant it in the sense that the people who were in those rooms say,

00:55:26.180 I wasn't necessarily thinking about voting for you. I was intrigued based on what I saw in the

00:55:29.980 debates. I wanted to meet you. I didn't think I was going to vote for you, but I'm going to vote

00:55:32.920 for you now. The issue is you're talking about a few thousand people max that you touch that way,

00:55:39.040 right? If you're just talking about individual events of 50 to 100 people at a time. And that

00:55:44.320 just wasn't enough to win an election that's mostly decided by people who are accessing their

00:55:49.800 information in ways other than showing up in the middle of a blizzard or a winter at a pizza ranch

00:55:54.400 in Iowa. And so that was, you know, in a nutshell, I think a summary of the trajectory of the year and

00:56:01.580 some of the things I learned in the process. And, you know, there's a million small things I

00:56:07.240 probably would do differently if given the opportunity again, just the first time, of

00:56:11.160 course I would have expected that. And it is the case that there are a million small things I would

00:56:16.240 have done differently, but in a big picture sense, am I grateful that I ran and took the risk and

00:56:23.280 bore the cost financial and non-financial associated with doing it? Yes, I am. I brought our family closer

00:56:30.420 together. It's probably one of the most important things that I did is, so you were one of the few

00:56:34.680 people I talked to before I ran. One of the people I talked to also before I ran for genuine advice

00:56:39.760 when I was thinking through, I was inclined to do it, but I wasn't certain yet, but I actually talked

00:56:44.260 to Tucker Carlson beforehand. And he gave me probably the two simple best pieces of advice. He didn't have

00:56:50.180 much by way of advice, but he had two pieces of advice that were gold. I think the first he said was

00:56:55.420 whatever your personal bubble is, so your family environment, your closest friends, travel with that

00:57:02.780 and keep them around you. And that will keep you grounded. It was very practical, but that actually

00:57:07.640 was really good advice. We ended up doing it as a family. He said, hold yourself to a standard,

00:57:12.820 right? And for each person, this will be different, what he told me, but here's what he said is,

00:57:19.120 do whatever would make your wife proud of you. Okay. And he said it with a smile on his face,

00:57:23.860 but not as a joke, as a serious matter. So it's a certain sense that assumes that you're with

00:57:29.700 a life partner. And you and I have talked about this before. One of the things I'm blessed with in

00:57:33.860 my life is to actually have found my soulmate and to be married to my soulmate. It's something that

00:57:40.580 is not something that everybody gets to say, but I think Tucker told me, do something that makes

00:57:45.460 sure everything you do makes your wife proud, travel with your friends and family around you so

00:57:49.980 that you don't get sucked into the circumstance of waking up in some sort of muddied haze, wondering

00:57:55.900 where I am on a given day, and then becoming some alternative version of yourself. A lot of people

00:58:01.060 get sucked into doing that. Don't do it. I followed both those pieces of advice. And I think that that

00:58:06.120 made the process one that I'm grateful for, regardless of the fact that it didn't achieve

00:58:11.280 the result that I intended, which is to be the next president of the United States.

00:58:14.500 It brought our family closer together. It brought me in closer touch with my own convictions.

00:58:19.240 I think you're tested on a daily basis. I probably came out of that year with an even greater certainty

00:58:27.420 of my own convictions than I went into it with. I thought I had high conviction going in,

00:58:32.860 but you don't really understand your own convictions until you've been tested. And in a few instances,

00:58:39.720 dare I say it, even had convictions that were slightly different than where I began the campaign

00:58:44.180 with. And for anybody else who didn't go through that experience without having their views modified

00:58:50.840 in some way, it means you're probably not a person who's open to reflection. I mean, you can't be

00:58:58.460 challenged on a daily basis for a year without having your own views sharpened along the way. And so I

00:59:05.800 think our family's stronger for it. My views and my convictions are stronger for it. Didn't achieve the

00:59:10.240 intended result, but it does give me a greater and renewed sense of purpose and mission to still

00:59:18.160 do whatever I can to save this country, even if it's not going to be as the next president. And I'm

00:59:24.580 grateful for that at the end of it. There's lots of places we can go from there, but I want to go,

00:59:30.760 let's try two to begin with. The first I'm curious about, I've been going through the biblical stories

00:59:37.740 on my tour and in this new book I'm writing. And Moses in that book is the archetype of a leader.

00:59:46.440 That's what that story is about. And Moses is seriously punished by God for reverting to power

00:59:54.600 when invitation and explanation would suffice. That's his temptation, right? And you can imagine

01:00:01.440 that that's the temptation of a political leader, especially as your reputation grows. The club that you

01:00:07.500 can wield gets larger and larger gets larger as you're more and more influential. And so I'm

01:00:12.700 wondering if that proclivity that you described for that tilt, that temptation towards disdain and

01:00:23.540 fighting back, I'd like to unpack that a little bit more because you lay out a very clear case for

01:00:33.180 why that all emerged. But then you also said that to some degree that interfered with

01:00:40.960 people's ability to see who you were on the, really on the leader front rather than on the

01:00:47.160 fighter front, let's say. And I'm not saying I know how to negotiate that because I don't. It's

01:00:52.000 obviously an extremely complicated space. But so let's assess that. In reflection, do you think

01:00:59.600 there are ways that you would conduct yourself going forward if you replicated your adventure?

01:01:05.900 And then I'd also like to delve more into your relationship with Trump. Drawing on something that

01:01:11.920 you did say earlier, you said that perhaps part of the reason the legacy media went after you was

01:01:17.740 because they saw you providing the same attractive message to, say, disaffected working class Americans

01:01:28.680 that Trump managed, except you could do it in a manner that was intellectually credible. Now, you

01:01:34.240 were careful during your campaign, in my estimation, to not poke the bear that's Trump or his followers,

01:01:43.560 for that matter. And so I'd like to explore your relationship a bit more with Trump. And I'd also

01:01:49.820 like you to comment a bit more on that contradiction between fighting and pushing and laying out of an

01:02:00.120 attractive invitational vision. Yeah. So I'll start with that latter piece.

01:02:06.680 It's a hard thing to do. And I don't see a particular for myself, at least a point to

01:02:13.640 re-litigate, you know, what I would have done differently. You know, I think the circumstances

01:02:19.620 in some ways,

01:02:21.700 in some ways it's hard to imagine it going any differently because the path that led there was

01:02:27.840 the entire path that I walked through in our conversation.

01:02:30.420 It was almost unavoidable because at that point, if I, if I, it was a sort of damned if you do, damned if you

01:02:39.340 don't situation, because I put myself in a situation, which is the only way to get on the map, that had

01:02:44.980 invited the level of arrows that I was taking from the other candidates in the media and, you know, from the

01:02:50.180 traps that were laid and from the political industrial complex, that if I didn't hit back, I'd be too weak to be

01:02:57.440 the president of the United States and wouldn't deserve that job. And there was no other way other than to

01:03:04.080 hit back and hit back hard. But the window of formats that reaches people is sufficiently narrow that it

01:03:13.520 doesn't allow for multiple aspects of a personality to come through, right? So you're going to, you get,

01:03:20.460 you get one label you're able to get through to the people in the mediums that are available to you

01:03:25.140 in the media. I don't really mean in just the corporate media, but in the collective mediums that are

01:03:30.120 available to you. Fighter was the one that came through. And so could I have done it differently? I don't know.

01:03:37.240 I certainly was, was unable to, because the truth is I am a fighter, but I'm not just a fighter. But that's what came

01:03:42.860 across when people were finally paying attention to the candidacy. And the reality is, and

01:03:47.200 understandably so for many voters, if you want a fighter in the White House, take the one who's proven, who has taken

01:03:53.340 more arrows far more than I have and overcome them, that was Donald Trump, which was many of the people

01:03:58.360 who loved me the most. I mean, like really love me as supporters. Like the people who are guys who

01:04:05.540 were maybe coming to 15, 20 events that I held in Iowa, people who were enthusiastic supporters

01:04:10.340 speaking, still caucus for Donald Trump, right? And I don't blame them for it because if what you see

01:04:16.180 is the value proposition is here's a young fighter who's going to fight for me and fight for this country

01:04:20.600 just as hard as he fights to defend himself against the treacherous media and political industrial

01:04:25.380 complex. I love that. And I'm going to vote for Donald Trump because he has proven at a scale that

01:04:30.580 nobody has that that's a guy who's going to be able to do it. So that's, that's what ended up

01:04:34.620 happening there. But on a go forward basis, I guess the differences, and I don't know what's next for

01:04:41.220 me. The truth is I'm keeping a very open mind. The only criteria is have an impact on the country

01:04:46.180 that's positive and not small. As I said, it takes as much effort to do something small

01:04:51.260 as it does to do something big, large scale, positive impact in saving this country and

01:04:56.940 reviving who we are. Whatever I do next, it's going to fit that description. But let's say,

01:05:02.300 let's say that there was a, you know, a replay of it, but you're starting from where we left off,

01:05:06.500 right? This last time. I'm not starting from the place I did last time.

01:05:10.160 Right. Right. And so you're not, it's one thing to fight for relevance and then fight to be

01:05:15.800 perceived in the right way. If you're starting to already from the place of relevance, but then the

01:05:21.000 question is just making sure people understand who you really are. You know, in some ways you can't,

01:05:25.520 it's like an algebra problem, right? You can, you can only solve for one variable with one equation

01:05:30.720 at a time. And so in some ways I was with one equation, the whole one linear race trying to solve

01:05:37.760 for both two variables, one of relevance and the other one of actually being seen the correct way,

01:05:42.640 you had to kind of pick one. Well, look, you, look, you did, you did put yourself on the map.

01:05:49.360 That was a success and you're not very old and there's no reason from a bird's eye view to assume

01:05:56.040 that this is your kick at the can. I don't feel having watched what you did, that you're exhausted

01:06:03.260 as a political candidate, especially given how young you are. I'm energized. Right. Okay. Okay. So,

01:06:08.940 so, so, so, you know, maybe you, maybe you laid the groundwork for something that could emerge in

01:06:13.640 the future. Now there's a variety of ways that could go. Everyone can see that you've had a fair bit

01:06:20.740 of interaction with Trump after the, after your run for presidency, you know, came to its end.

01:06:30.300 Everyone, of course, is wondering what that might hold in the future.

01:06:37.340 What's your sense of what you could bring and might bring to the table, assuming that a Trump

01:06:44.860 presidency is realized in November? Well, the first thing I would say is I think it would be a mistake

01:06:52.240 to just rest on one's laurels as a candidate and assume that is the outcome. So the first thing I'm

01:06:57.920 focused on is making sure that we do have a Trump presidency in November, doing everything I can,

01:07:03.200 traveling different parts of this country, campaigning for Trump, not just through the primary,

01:07:08.340 which is now, you know, effectively and has been for a while over, but in the general election

01:07:12.920 against Biden, reaching young voters, reaching non-traditional voters. And even if you think

01:07:17.300 about Asian Americans or Indian Americans, I think 70% went the direction of Biden last time around,

01:07:22.780 despite the fact that their values are almost undoubtedly more aligned with the pro-excellence

01:07:27.200 agenda that Trump stands for now. Young people in this country who are starving for purpose and

01:07:32.820 meaning. We've talked about this in our last episode that we did together. Well, the left isn't providing

01:07:38.160 that or they're satisfying it with the equivalent of fast food, with race and gender and sexuality and

01:07:44.340 climate. A positive nationalistic vision that says that, you know what, this is a country that is the

01:07:49.920 greatest country known to mankind and you have an opportunity not only to live here, but to contribute to

01:07:54.520 this country and pass that on to the next generation. That civic sense of duty fills what many young people

01:08:00.760 are starving for. And I think that it's far more aligned with the message Trump is delivering than the

01:08:05.240 nonsense they're hearing from Biden or the other side. And so my focus in the near term is don't take some

01:08:10.800 outcome for granted. Make sure that Trump is elected as the next president. Do everything I can in my power

01:08:16.100 to make that happen. And in the meantime, you know, if there are opportunities to continue to drive positive

01:08:20.760 change through the private sector, as I was doing before I ran for president, let me have at it. It's the

01:08:26.000 perfect opportunity to do it. I mean, Strive is a company I co-founded, as you know, to push back

01:08:31.460 against the ESG movement. I'm incredibly proud of progress. Which is going very well. Yes, I'm very proud of the

01:08:36.580 accomplishments. Yeah, yeah. I'm very proud of Strive's accomplishments and mentoring some of the other

01:08:41.480 businesses that I've co-founded to have positive impact, for-profit, non-profit through the private sector. A lot of

01:08:47.260 ways to drive change and then make sure that that electoral outcome is what it is in November. I think that's

01:08:52.760 actually the top objective. And one of the things I've found in my life, at least, is when you make these

01:08:58.700 elaborate personal plans, right? You know, if this happens, then I'm going to do that thing. And if

01:09:05.880 the other thing happens, then I'm going to do the other thing. And if that doesn't happen, then here's

01:09:09.180 my plan B. At least in my life, I've learned that your plans are stupid. Okay? At least, maybe not yours,

01:09:16.920 but mine. My plans are stupid. And so, I'm guided by my purpose. That's great. The plan will reveal

01:09:23.920 itself. But the purpose is the same one that I entered the race with, which was to revive who we

01:09:29.280 are, revive our missing national identity and self-confidence, pass that on to my kids and their

01:09:34.840 generation. I volunteered to do it as the next president. The people of this country made clear,

01:09:40.420 certainly in the Republican Party, and I think far beyond that, that they want Donald Trump to do

01:09:44.420 that job. Thankfully, his ideology is, you know, very similar to mine in terms of what it means to

01:09:51.680 advance an America First agenda. And so, I've put all my energy into making sure that Donald Trump is

01:09:57.880 elected the next president. The reason I support Trump is because I support America First values,

01:10:02.340 because I support this country. It's not the other way around. But that's, I think, the reason most

01:10:06.380 people who support Trump feel that way. And I view it the same way, is we're going to do whatever we can

01:10:10.680 revive our country. The number one most impactful thing we can do is have a U.S. president that shuts

01:10:15.360 down and eviscerates much of that managerial bureaucracy in the federal government, that

01:10:20.220 revives our sense of national pride, does some basic things that Americans across the political

01:10:24.800 spectrum agree on, from shutting the border to growing the economy. I clearly believe that Donald

01:10:30.320 Trump is the man to get that job done, and I'm going to make sure that he succeeds at it.

01:10:34.080 Okay. So, your next party, your next plan is, okay, is to continue the campaign. And now,

01:10:38.980 you made reference back to the way we started our conversation, and so let's pursue that a little

01:10:43.860 bit. I'd like to know more about what you now know, or believe you know, about the political

01:10:51.840 industrial complex, right? I mean, you said that you got into the race to begin with because you

01:10:57.080 were concerned about the proliferation of something like a mid-level tyranny, right? Which I think is

01:11:03.240 something that we're seeing all around the world. It's a collusion between mid-level state

01:11:08.880 actors. They're usually not elected. They don't have to face the electorate. They're not on the

01:11:13.740 hook for their own economic survival because they're paid bureaucrats. They've extended their

01:11:19.460 domains radically at every level of political organization. And I think part of the reason

01:11:26.780 that the mega types who are firmly behind Trump are behind Trump is because they feel in their bones

01:11:34.260 that Trump is enough of a bull in the China shop to actually pose a challenge to that system.

01:11:42.620 So, I would like, and the example of the Argentinian, current Argentinian president keeps

01:11:48.700 popping into the back of my mind because he's doing the kind of radical cuts in Argentina that

01:11:53.600 Musk did, for example, at Twitter. And so, I would like to know, first of all, do you actually think,

01:12:00.400 now that you've seen this, the system per se operate at close hand, do you think that it's

01:12:07.180 actually possible for a candidate, even Trump, who's only got a four-year mandate, which is not

01:12:13.380 very long, to have the power? No, have the ability to make a difference in this, in relationship to this

01:12:24.480 unbelievably entrenched and widespread system. So, I'd like to know how you feel about the political,

01:12:29.880 industrial complex that you've now come up against and are also now a part of, right,

01:12:35.840 peculiarly enough. Yeah. Peculiarly enough. Isn't that interesting how that works?

01:12:41.460 I would say it's not possible to reform it. It is possible to decimate it, okay? I think,

01:12:48.700 and that's what it's going to require. This rise of this managerial class, you see it in the deep

01:12:53.200 state, in the federal government, or the fourth branch of government, the unelected bureaucrats,

01:12:56.640 who are exercising. Oh, you see it in the universities.

01:12:59.100 But you see, exactly. It's not just in the deep state. It's in the managerial class,

01:13:02.360 the associate dean of God knows what, the ambassador or undersecretary to something or

01:13:06.620 other, the people who are sitting professionally on a board of directors, the people who are the

01:13:11.540 political consultants populating the industrialization of our political politics.

01:13:15.540 It's a horizontal managerial class who are neither ordinary citizens in their own right,

01:13:21.360 nor are they actual purposeful creators who are able to create something of inherent value,

01:13:26.580 but are the intermediating managers, right? That's what's sucking the lifeblood

01:13:30.920 out of our culture and our country. And I would go so far as to say the modern West

01:13:34.760 as we know it. And so is it possible to reform that beast? No. I think you have to slay that beast.

01:13:40.960 And I think it is possible for a chief executive. You could take it of a university. You could take

01:13:46.140 it of the country, of the executive branch of the United States of America, of a company. You could

01:13:51.280 go one by one, but for a strong chief executive who is at least on paper vested with the authority

01:13:58.720 to run an organization, to take what's on that piece of paper and actualize it to actually run

01:14:05.180 that organization. And the system isn't set up for it. It isn't set up for a political candidate to

01:14:09.700 really run their campaign. It's done by the industrialized machine around them. It isn't set up for

01:14:14.800 the chief executive of the executive branch, the president of the United States, to run that

01:14:18.600 executive branch or that bureaucracy. It's not naturally set up that way. And it's not set up

01:14:22.360 for the president of the university to run the endless committees of associate deans. It's the

01:14:28.160 committee class that permeates each of these institutions, even for large Fortune 500 companies.

01:14:33.380 You might have HR heads who are exercising greater hiring policy decisions than the CEO.

01:14:38.580 So that's not the default. But it takes the kind of executive who will overcome that activation

01:14:44.560 energy to say, I'm going to break that system anyway. I'm not going to fall for the siren song

01:14:49.060 of saying that I can reform it. Reform isn't possible, but will I take the risk? And it is a

01:14:56.060 risk, and there will be costs to it, of saying, I'm not bringing some sort of chisel. I'm bringing

01:15:01.260 a chainsaw, a jackhammer to the whole thing, raising it to the ground, burning it, and then burning the

01:15:06.340 ashes. And then start with a blank slate and build anew if I have to. And so the answer to your

01:15:12.680 question is yes, but that's what it'll take. I watched what Musk did with Twitter with great

01:15:18.500 interest. And I've watched a number of leaders at a variety of corporations do something similar

01:15:24.880 and revitalize their respective companies. You know, it's often a lengthy process, and you have to be

01:15:33.300 a very particular sort of person to do it. And I think people hope that Trump can do it. But here's

01:15:41.700 a danger that I see, even in what you just said. I understand your concern, and I'm very sympathetic

01:15:48.460 to it. I know that since time immemorial, the evil brother of the rightful king has posed a

01:15:59.400 archetypal threat to the integrity of the state, abetted by the blindness of the king, right? And that

01:16:05.780 the archetypal story is that that descends into stasis and then chaos. And I feel that everyone

01:16:13.960 feels that that's what's happening. But there's another phenomenon that emerges when all that

01:16:20.960 occurs, and that phenomenon has been symbolized as the dragon that eats its own tail. That's the symbol

01:16:26.820 of chaos that's Ouroboros. And the fervor with which you just described that potentially destructive

01:16:34.420 process, the reason I'm pointing out at that symbol is because there's an element of it that's

01:16:41.380 similar to what the radicals on the left say. You know, that everything has to be burned to the

01:16:46.260 ground, that it has to be decimated, that we have to start anew. And I can see the critical

01:16:52.700 conservatives and libertarians such as yourself inadvertently, accidentally in some ways,

01:17:00.880 and even inevitably adopting the same dire prognosis, right? So what's the difference between

01:17:10.880 your view of creative destruction, let's say? This is a very hard question. What's the difference

01:17:16.260 between your view of creative destruction and the leftist view that our institutions are terminally

01:17:21.680 corrupt that we have to raise them to the ground and start anew? Sure. So I think that there is a

01:17:27.620 different vision of what you create to fill the vacuum. And what you've seen from the modern left is

01:17:33.560 actually the very bureaucracies that they've created, right? This vestige of bureaucracy, the committee

01:17:41.100 class, is indeed the product of what has cannibalized the institutions that once existed. So we're not

01:17:48.640 starting from a neutral starting point. That's what I would say. If we were starting from a neutral

01:17:52.480 starting point, we would start with a blank slate and ask what we need to build anew. We need to get

01:17:57.720 to that blank slate. We're not even at that start line right now. And so in some ways, I think the

01:18:03.120 overgrowth of that managerial class and that bureaucracy has itself been weaponized by the left.

01:18:10.920 Their tactics are no longer ones that say, tear it down. Their tactics are weaponized what's already

01:18:17.060 there to advance your ends, right? They're not tearing down the financial system. The question

01:18:21.560 is, how do you weaponize the financial system to advance your own substantive ends? They're not

01:18:26.440 tearing down the prosecutorial or justice system. The question is, how do you weaponize that justice

01:18:31.140 system to go after your own political opponents and keep them from running against you in elections?

01:18:36.660 They're not tearing down corporate America. They're leveraging corporate America.

01:18:39.420 Okay. So what you're pointing to there is the falseness of that revolutionary claim,

01:18:44.840 that that's window dressing for acquisition of power and the use of the current systems,

01:18:53.000 the systems that they purport to despise.

01:18:55.440 Yes. It's either a falseness, Dr. Peterson, or it is a modern incarnation of the left that's

01:19:02.760 different from the kind that existed when Karl Marx existed.

01:19:07.020 Or even when Bernie Sanders existed, for that matter.

01:19:10.220 Right. Even when Bernie Sanders existed, for that matter. Exactly. It's a particularly new strain

01:19:15.840 of the left that's a little bit different from the Occupy Wall Street, let's tear it down version.

01:19:22.000 This isn't that anymore. They sort of, I think in their view, if you can't beat them, join them,

01:19:27.180 became the mentality. And if you can't really tear it down through, if you can't invade the castle

01:19:32.480 through the front door, you couldn't tear it down through the front door, just invade it and

01:19:36.340 infest it from the back door. And that's actually what's happened.

01:19:40.300 Okay. So you were, you had a clarion call to leadership, as you pointed out at the beginning

01:19:46.540 of this interview, because you believe that the fundamental institutions upon which this country,

01:19:54.400 your country are predicated, are, they're on the money. They're on the money. Right.

01:20:00.760 And so the path forward that I've seen for the conservative types is to see what the leftists

01:20:08.780 want to do. Let's say they, let's talk about the ones who do want to tear it down. They want to tear

01:20:13.160 down the existing system and they want to rebuild it in accordance with the dictates of something

01:20:18.800 approximating the radical left vision of Marx, let's say, radical egalitarianism that could extend

01:20:27.240 even to the notion that something like property is theft. So they're going to tear things down and

01:20:31.680 they're going to rebuild it on, on those principles. Oh, you guys in the United States, you already have

01:20:36.660 a set of principles. And one of them is the principle of distributed responsibility, right? And so, and that's

01:20:42.500 the age old medication that's offered when tyranny looms and chaos beckons. It's that it's, you don't fall

01:20:51.140 prey to either of those and you don't fall prey to the dynamic. You reinvigorate the institutions of

01:20:56.660 distributed responsibility. Now you've been pointing in that direction, right? Because you've taken a

01:21:02.080 pro-family, pro-patriotic, pro-America, pro-West, right? And I don't know what, you know, where it goes

01:21:11.340 beyond that, whether you're an Enlightenment guy and how you view the interaction between all of that and the

01:21:16.880 underlying Judeo-Christian foundation, let's say. But your call, and I'm hoping this is the case for Trump too, is your

01:21:25.020 call isn't merely to decimate, it's to clear the path so that what's true and right can make itself

01:21:32.920 manifest again, which is what, for example, what Musk was trying to do and I think did successfully at

01:21:37.800 Twitter. He got rid of 75% of the employees, right? But he wasn't trying to decimate the company, he was

01:21:44.480 trying to establish it on, he was trying to establish it on fertile ground. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:21:51.560 So the decimate it is the overgrowth. I want to be really clear about this.

01:21:56.280 Right, that's good to be very clear about that. Yeah, is to tear down the cancerous overgrowth

01:22:04.080 itself. So I'm saying we're not trying to treat this tumor with symptomatic therapy, right? We want

01:22:10.220 to decimate the tumor, but the underlying organ is still what we want to save, okay? And I think that

01:22:18.400 that's actually really important. Okay, so let me ask you about this. Tell me what you think

01:22:22.620 about this. Like, look, you were attacked a lot and you said that one of the consequences of that

01:22:29.200 was that, well, it got your back up, let's say, and some of that was contaminated with a certain

01:22:35.100 amount of disdain and we already walked through that. But you also pointed out something that's

01:22:41.120 relevant in this context, which is that the slings and arrows that were directed towards you

01:22:46.140 are relatively trivial in comparison to the continual utter assault on Trump at every level of his life

01:22:56.540 virtually. And so my fear, let's say, is that he's so embattled and so pushed into a corner and so

01:23:07.200 poked and prodded and provoked that he, is he wise enough to separate his desire to clear away the

01:23:18.100 overgrowth and let what's healthy survive? Or is he pushed into a corner enough so that there are

01:23:25.580 enemies everywhere and his wrath will know no bounds, let's say. So what do you think about him?

01:23:31.960 And you've got to know him a bit and like. Yeah. So here's what I will say is, is, is, is the man

01:23:37.960 I've seen is, I'll reveal maybe two insights that are a little bit different from the media portrayals,

01:23:42.980 but true to my understanding of what I see. One is I see a leader who is even more ambitious for the

01:23:52.960 country as a consequence of some of his learnings from the first term. I think the first term was

01:23:58.300 incredibly successful. Look, you got four years of Trump, four years of Biden, compare the results

01:24:02.460 and make your vote accordingly. And if that's the way this election goes, I think Trump will be elected

01:24:06.460 as the next president. But I don't think he views that as sufficient. I think that he believes that

01:24:11.560 there are a lot of lessons learned from that first administration that he is ambitious for our

01:24:17.000 country to want to translate in that second term. I think that's a real positive because that to me

01:24:21.500 signals growth and it signals actual positivity towards the future to say that there's a lot of things

01:24:28.160 that I will still have learned from that first term. And that's an advantage he has relative

01:24:31.520 to anybody else who ran for president is he actually has those learnings from having been

01:24:35.040 in that office, even relative to me with a very similar vision. He's faced down that administrative

01:24:39.340 state in a way that I've studied and have deep intuitions and knowledge about, but haven't faced

01:24:43.540 in the same way that he has. And the second thing that I've noted about him is it is in the last

01:24:49.720 couple of months, but he is very receptive to the best arguments for how to do that. As long as I think

01:24:58.920 they're delivered in the right digestible way, that's efficient and effective and thoughtful around

01:25:05.800 him. I don't think he has patience for long driveling of, of, you know, anyone's oral diarrhea on a given

01:25:12.340 day. But if delivered in a pointed way, I think that he is actually very open-minded to adopting

01:25:19.760 ideas that weren't necessarily part of his agenda previously, but if they're aligned with the actual

01:25:25.860 vision and their ways of specific policies or specific actions to take that help advance the

01:25:31.400 right America first vision for the country, he's actually very receptive to that. And then the media

01:25:35.220 portrays him as some sort of dogmatic single-minded man. That's not what I see. Actually, I see a leader

01:25:40.260 who actually cares about the country, who wants the best and brightest to give him and arm him

01:25:45.400 with the tools he needs to turn that vision into reality. I mean, this is one publicly reported

01:25:51.140 example. So, you know, I'll feel free to talk about it. I want to be respectful of the conversations

01:25:55.280 I've had with him separately, but since this was publicly reported, I can speak to it, is, you know,

01:26:00.960 I was backstage with him in New Hampshire. This is after I dropped out and endorsed him.

01:26:05.380 And we spoke about the perils of a central bank digital currency.

01:26:10.600 And you and I may have talked about this on other occasions. I trust that you're familiar with some

01:26:14.400 of those perils coming from the Canadian side of this. Yeah, yeah. I'm plenty familiar with them

01:26:18.680 already. So what I admired about Donald Trump is he had, on one hand, an intellectual humility about

01:26:24.240 him. He didn't try to pretend to do what I know many politicians would do, would try to recite some

01:26:28.240 talking points they briefly memorized without understanding what the actual thing was. He has the

01:26:32.380 self-confidence to say, well, tell me about what that is and tell me about why it's bad. Well, great.

01:26:36.960 That's actually an honest conversation to get to, here's what it is. Here's why it's bad. And then

01:26:41.640 he also asked the further question of, well, then why are the advocates in favor of it? Right?

01:26:45.220 Understand the best argument for the other side. It's not just, okay, this is what I'm supposed to

01:26:48.500 say. So let me digest it. What is the argument for the other side? So we went through that and he

01:26:52.500 didn't immediately adopt it. Right? He asked a couple of other people for their views, went on stage

01:26:56.820 that night, didn't talk about it that night. But a few nights later, we're in New Hampshire and lo and

01:27:02.180 behold, and he didn't talk to me about this beforehand. He comes out in a speech. He references

01:27:06.540 my conversation with me backstage in his speech to the audience from a few nights before and says,

01:27:12.260 I will tell you tonight that I am against a central bank digital currency. And here's why. And the

01:27:15.560 audience cheered and he had his own conviction in why he was offering it for something that even a

01:27:21.560 matter of days before, and it wasn't flippant. He took a couple of days. He understood the best

01:27:25.820 arguments for the other side. He consulted other people as well in the process and then came to a

01:27:30.700 decisive answer. That to me is a mark of a leader that isn't just behaving in a reactionary

01:27:36.620 response, which is what your concern was as expressed, but somebody who is able to think

01:27:43.100 through the right arguments to make sure the right policies are actually advancing the agenda rather

01:27:48.980 than just reflecting whatever direction the winds of temper are blowing on a given day. And I think

01:27:54.220 that that's really encouraging. It encourages me and I think it should encourage every American and

01:27:59.060 certainly every person who's voting for Donald Trump or every person who's open to voting for

01:28:03.360 Donald Trump to know that that's actually what I think they're going to get. And I do think it's

01:28:07.260 going to take a responsibility of people around him to provide that to him in a way that allows him

01:28:14.800 to lead. But, you know, I think I'm going to do my part and I think the other people around him

01:28:18.220 are going to do theirs to hopefully make that second term far more successful than what was already,

01:28:23.460 I think a very good first term. Okay. So let me close with one final question. So when I was

01:28:30.260 watching the Republican primary, you know, I was hoping initially that public opinion would fall

01:28:38.060 behind DeSantis because I thought DeSantis has a credible pro-American, truly conservative vision,

01:28:45.180 and he has administrative experience. And the reason that I personally, I'm only speaking personally,

01:28:51.420 and as a Canadian, you know, preferred DeSantis to Trump is because the divisiveness that surrounds

01:28:58.380 Trump makes me very apprehensive. And this is independent of his merits as a person and as a

01:29:04.920 businessman, perhaps even as a president. Trump, the phenomenon of Trump polarizes people to a degree

01:29:12.900 that I think is unparalleled. It's unparalleled in my memory and having watched the political scene for

01:29:18.880 like five decades, you know. So I would like you to tell me why you think that polarization is so

01:29:27.700 intense and what you think. See, because the real critical part of me thinks, and I'm not saying I'm

01:29:39.040 right about this, but the Trump presidency, the Trump phenomenon is so divisive that I think the

01:29:45.140 divisiveness itself poses a threat to the integrity of the country. Now, and I thought that's—okay, so—

01:29:53.800 Let's separate two things there. One is, does divisiveness itself, irrespective of Trump,

01:29:59.920 does divisiveness itself represent a threat to this country? Of course it does.

01:30:04.040 I think this country is skating on thin ice. We're at risk of dividing to a breaking point.

01:30:08.960 I put a lot of that in the media. I put a lot of that in the industrialization of politics.

01:30:12.560 I put a lot of that in the super PAC puppet mastery that characterizes modern politics.

01:30:17.200 I think that you shouldn't have congressmen who are—I think you need term limits. I think

01:30:20.500 congressmen should not be able to trade individual stocks. I think that the administrative state needs

01:30:24.820 term limits. I think the people who we elect to run the government should actually run the

01:30:27.940 government. Those are things that left or right people agree on in this country. Policies that you

01:30:32.240 get to speak your mind openly as long as I get to in return. Inherently, most people in their value set

01:30:37.220 are not actually divided. But it is the projection, the artifice of division created much by the

01:30:42.840 projection of the media that creates the appearance of division that then becomes the new reality.

01:30:49.040 So that's where I think it's actually coming from. And then Trump is—the treatment of Trump is really

01:30:52.640 just a symptom of that. The media puts him in such a box to create a caricature of a man that is part of

01:30:58.880 the broader project of division they're creating, irrespective of Trump. They've just used Trump as

01:31:02.860 another vehicle in achieving the divide and conquer strategy of a small group of people who benefit

01:31:07.160 from that division. Okay, so you think, for example—I don't want to put words in your mouth—but

01:31:11.320 your sense would have been, for example, that had DeSantis emerged as the Republican leader instead of

01:31:17.440 Trump, that the same forces would have turned him into another Trump, let's say, in the public

01:31:23.300 imagination, that this is actually a consequence of—I don't think that any other person,

01:31:27.920 you know, you know, DeSantis or anyone else would have been a cure to the problem that you're

01:31:33.000 concerned about. Now, do I see an opportunity to level up as a movement and say we're not just

01:31:41.420 against what the other side puts up, which is a temptation, but to say this is what we're actually

01:31:47.020 running to? These are our affirmative values of what we stand for, right? What is the opposite of the

01:31:53.760 Great Reset? Sovereignty. Sovereignty at the level of the individual and the family and the nation

01:31:59.580 and God. That's what it means to be a conservative. That's what grounds our shared American values.

01:32:05.540 That's what we're running to. That's our identity. Well, that's the identity that can be offered

01:32:08.860 confused young people, right? That's our identity. That's subsidiary identity.

01:32:12.380 And as a leader, I'm leading you there. Yes, I see that opportunity. And, you know, even in the last

01:32:19.140 couple of months, and I want to respect a lot of the conversations we've had, but in the last couple

01:32:25.200 of months, one of the things that Donald Trump has said that I think inspires me and I hope inspires

01:32:31.800 people across this country is, you know what our vengeance will be? Success will be our vengeance.

01:32:38.020 Success is unifying. And so I see the earliest direction of us beginning to go in a direction.

01:32:44.600 And he said that, did he? That's a good line. That's a good line.

01:32:47.940 I agree with you on that. I very much agree with you on that. And I think that that is a unifying

01:32:53.820 message. Success is unifying. And as he said, it's success is our vengeance.

01:32:57.840 Well, that's the vengeance that you Americans took against the Soviet Union.

01:33:02.260 Yes. In many ways, even against the British Empire at the American Revolution in some ways,

01:33:07.940 but very much against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Success was our vengeance against that enemy.

01:33:13.660 And success can be our vengeance even against the enemy that we face of our own division.

01:33:18.940 And so I think that I am cautiously optimistic that we may be stronger on the other side of this

01:33:27.520 division. As a bone heals stronger after it is broken. Yes, the bone of our identity has been broken,

01:33:35.320 but it can emerge stronger on the other side. And for the next four years, this may not just be a

01:33:40.460 four-year project. For the next four years, I believe Donald Trump is the best positioned person

01:33:45.120 to lead us there. I think it is his responsibility and the responsibility of people around him

01:33:50.000 to make sure he's as successful as he can be in getting us there. But it's not just a four-year

01:33:54.220 project. It took us 30 years to get to where we are right now with the assault on our institutions

01:34:01.200 and our national identity and our national division. It could very well take more than four years

01:34:06.460 to find our way out of it, to be stronger on the other side. But for the next four years,

01:34:11.180 I'm optimistic that this can be the beginning of a step in that direction.

01:34:14.900 Well, that's a very good place to stop. Thank you very much for speaking with me again and

01:34:21.000 making your experiences available to everyone who's watching and listening. I wish you the best of

01:34:28.120 luck negotiating these very complex high waters over the next few months. It's going to be

01:34:35.280 fascinating to watch this unfold. I think we decided the last couple of times we spoke to

01:34:43.000 check in every four months or something like that. I think we should keep doing that as this

01:34:47.800 progresses so that everybody can stay in front of what's... Yeah, yeah, and useful.

01:34:52.280 These are fun for me, actually.

01:34:53.640 Good, good, good, good. Well, and good luck helping promote that positive and unifying vision.

01:35:00.560 It would be lovely if Trump's campaign could turn more and more to that as he's

01:35:06.420 simultaneously defending himself from the multidimensional assaults that assail him. But

01:35:12.380 that vision of distributed responsibility, that is the time-tested antidote to tyranny and slavery,

01:35:20.340 right? And it is the fundamental realization of governance that your country is founded on,

01:35:26.900 that principle of subsidiarity. And it's such a great call to adventure for young people. It's like,

01:35:32.660 take your place in a marriage, take your place in a family, take your place in a community,

01:35:37.840 bear a load. You know, all the responsibility you abdicate personally will be taken up and used

01:35:44.320 against you by tyrants. That's the iron law of humanity, right? And so that's a great thing for

01:35:50.860 everyone to understand. And I'm hoping the Conservatives can run with that, you know,

01:35:55.060 because there isn't another pathway forward that isn't chaos and tyranny.

01:35:59.920 I'm hopeful and I promise you I'll do everything in my power to make it so.

01:36:05.400 All right, sir. To everyone watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention

01:36:10.380 to the film crew here in Toronto today. Thank you guys for setting this up. To everybody who's

01:36:17.660 watching and listening, your time and attention is much appreciated. I hope you found the conversation

01:36:21.580 useful and revealing. And Vivek, it's always a pleasure talking to you and, you know, keep the

01:36:27.600 flag flying, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care.

440. Looking Back on the Campaign, and Forward for the Country ｜ Vivek Ramaswamy

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