00:05:33.440The way the system at least has historically worked, according to interpretation of these civil service rules, stop you from firing four million of those federal bureaucrats.
00:05:40.980So you bring up DHS, you know, do we need mass deportations of millions of illegal aliens from this country?
00:05:48.360But my caution would be to don't forget the second mass deportation we also need, which is the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.
00:05:59.420And I think it's going to be the combination of those two mass deportations that help save the country.
00:06:04.380That's, I mean, one of the positions, one of the truths is that there are three branches of government, not four.
00:06:11.520And we've had, you know, a very helpful Supreme Court ruling on Chevron deference saying courts do not have to defer to what these agencies, these bureaucrats say the law is.
00:06:20.360That was a very helpful ruling, but that doesn't do anything about the staffers who continue to rule by fiat over us all.
00:06:27.640Let's talk about some of the other truths in Truths, the Future of America First.
00:06:33.440What's the point of writing this book, Vivek?
00:06:35.080Why are you doing this now, defining the future of America First?
00:06:42.340Look, I think that there are a few different directions that America First can go.
00:06:46.140So one of the things I do expose, particularly in the beginning of the book, is that there are some intellectual rifts in our own movement that I think we're stronger for if we recognize on immigration, on trade.
00:06:58.020Not so much on foreign policy, but immigration and trade in particular, right?
00:07:01.240Is it a protectionist objective or is it more of a libertarian objective?
00:07:05.680We don't touch on that too deeply, but I expose that in the book.
00:07:09.960But the real question is filling a deeper vacuum.
00:07:12.840What does the current conservative movement actually stand for?
00:07:16.400We've gotten very good at criticizing the other side, identifying what we're against, right?0.61
00:07:22.380We're against wokeism and transgenderism and climatism and COVID-ism.0.53
00:07:26.860We're against the race, gender, sexuality, climate agenda.0.77
00:08:26.160I've written, this is my fourth book in the last four years,
00:08:28.380But I did things a little bit differently in this one. This book is not and does not pretend to be an academic exposition. At the end of every chapter, there's five hard truths laying out five key facts out of that chapter that somebody can take with them to the dinner table on debates about the trans ideology to climate ideology to whether nationalism is a bad word to the nuclear family to arm people every day to probably state what their true beliefs really are.
00:08:57.300but with the benefit of what some of the facts are
00:09:23.680on exactly why she's a Kamala Harris voter
00:09:25.800And and Charlie did some rhetorical battle with her.
00:09:29.980And then you did some not battle, but had a back and forth with her.
00:09:33.760That was very interesting when there was an attempt to force her to say, what exactly is it about the Trump agenda that you don't like or the Kamala Harris agenda that you do?
00:09:42.640And here's just a bit of how that went.
00:09:45.500I disagree with some of the laws that are being pushed in Congress
00:09:53.380that are against the LGBTQ community and the trans community.
00:09:58.940My view is that if you're a fully grown adult, 18 or above,
00:10:03.620you're free to live how you want, dress how you want,
00:10:07.460marry who you want if you want, if you're over the age of 18.
00:10:10.900But you are not free to indoctrinate children in schools
00:10:14.460who are not yet of the age of consent you are not free just as you're a 17 year old or 15 year old
00:10:20.500can't get a tattoo on their own i don't think that you should be able to go or until the age of 18
00:10:28.300do we agree on the fact that adults should be able to live freely while still treating children
00:10:32.680differently if so we're on the same side of this issue i agree with the majority of what you said
00:10:38.480However, I don't think that you're understanding the the implications of the laws that are trying to be passed.
00:10:47.900My only ask is forget the personal attacks or the stylistic attacks.
00:10:52.520Focus on substance. The more we debate that, the stronger we're going to be as a country.
00:10:57.800So I don't know what platform it was that that censored your use of the term chemical castration.
00:11:05.900But that's what you had said there, that we shouldn't be doing that to minors.
00:11:10.420This plays right into one of the themes of truths, the future of America first, which is there are two genders.
00:11:18.900Right. And I think that what we see is when we talk about this across the country, most people actually share the same foundational value set on this and comments grounded in hard biological truth.
00:11:29.400So I sort of unpack a couple of the trans dilemmas that the transgender ideology poses, even for people who may have hard convictions in what they think their beliefs are.
00:11:39.760So there's two X chromosomes, you're a woman, X and a Y, you're a man.
00:11:42.680But one of the mysteries here is it is the same LGBTQIA plus ideology that says the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born that now says your own biological sex is totally fluid over the course of your life.0.54
00:11:58.920It's a further paradox that actually there is no gay gene, but there are two sex chromosomes.0.73
00:12:03.440So that's actually particularly an ironic case to say that the one that has no gene is the one that's fixed immutably at birth.0.66
00:12:09.920But the one that has definitive chromosomes is the one that's totally fluid over the course of your life.
00:12:14.460There's other contradictions we explore as well, which is the fact that on one hand, if you say that this is a disability or a mental health disorder, you're considered to be transphobic.
00:12:23.160that if a kid says that their gender doesn't match their biological sex, that that is an
00:12:28.100evidence of a mental health disorder. That's my belief. But to say that many people will label
00:12:31.800that transphobic at the same time that they will say it is transphobic not to have public health0.64
00:12:37.060insurance pay for gender affirming care or actual gender conversion surgery because it qualifies
00:12:43.300under the Americans with Disabilities Act. So I try to go factually through the chapter in
00:12:48.180arming people at home with at least these hard facts to be able to have the open arguments at
00:12:54.200the dinner table that they're not having in public. And one of the things I did in that
00:12:58.160chapter, Megan, is I closed it out with a personal story from the campaign that I hadn't shared
00:13:02.060before, which is actually one instance where there was a one of the embeds, one of the media
00:13:07.680embeds, the press embeds on our following our presidential campaign. She would challenge me
00:13:13.300on this issue repeatedly in front of the camera. But one of the conversations we ended up having
00:14:20.040But that still gives us the opportunity to build relationships with other people by saying that, you know, we're not going to build our relationship based on settling our difference of opinion on this question.
00:14:29.380But we can build a relationship based on still agreeing or even engaging on matters outside of this particular debate, which we otherwise decided was an irreconcilable difference.
00:14:40.860So I was one of my takeaways from the campaign.
00:14:43.420Well, let's get real. The most most of the trans community activists will not even speak to somebody like you because their position is you're trying to eliminate them as humans, that you don't recognize, quote, their right to exist.
00:15:01.860and they don't and that's because you won't stand behind the transing of kids in the medical0.65
00:15:09.600community minors who can't consent to these procedures you won't consent to having this
00:15:14.180ideology thrust upon them in third grade as was done to my two sons uh first the older um at our
00:15:22.340old school like that's where the rubber really hits the road because that's where we're really
00:15:27.260going to have to fight. It does. And I think the reality is that goes for trans activists,
00:15:33.660which is a tiny minority of a tiny overall minority. But what's happening in the country
00:15:38.700is we're not really suffering from a tyranny of the majority in the United States. We are
00:15:43.940suffering from a tyranny of the fringe minority. And the dilemma is our constitution and our0.99
00:15:49.360republic and the safeguards and the guardrails we have built into our legal system are really good
00:15:53.400at protecting against a democratic tyranny of the majority.
00:15:56.800There's nothing really there to safeguard
00:15:58.800against a cultural tyranny of the fringe minority.0.99
00:16:16.100Okay, one is, when I have one country in the end,
00:16:17.900you're either going to compromise on core principle and policy,
00:16:20.560or you can actually take a more compromising approach on style without actually being
00:16:25.520compromising on principle or policy. One of the things I've found is sometimes when we fall into
00:16:30.160the trap of actually going, guns blazing on style, when push comes to shove, look at the
00:16:36.120Republican politicians in the end. Many of them do actually end up compromising on policy or
00:16:41.100principle in the end. One of the things I'm trying to do both with this book and the way in which
00:16:45.640for going to college campuses like the one you aired before across the country is to be able to
00:16:51.080engage in an affable manner with people who deeply disagree with us, but without compromising at all
00:16:58.220on the core principle of standing for objective truth. So my goal here is not to arrive at a
00:17:03.620compromised position that, OK, well, maybe we're going to be OK with chemical intervention by the
00:17:08.360age of 15, but not with surgical intervention at the age of 12. And we call that a day. No,
00:17:13.620I don't think until you're of the full age of consent, I don't think you should be able to undergo genital mutilation or chemical castration.
00:17:22.020Hopefully somebody isn't silencing them out like that other tech platform did as we speak right now.
00:17:26.000So I'm not going to compromise on the core views that I hold.
00:17:29.120And I think part of what I try to do in this book is to arm people with hard facts to be able to stay true to that.
00:17:35.400But at the same time, to remember that we're being strong enough to protect our kindness.
00:17:39.820And we do care about kids who may be confused, who are going through a difficult period in their life, where they may go through all kinds of psychological struggles, including the fact that they lose track of what they believe their gender is.
00:17:53.200That's a symptom of a deeper psychological issue that we have to have the compassion to also address.
00:17:59.520And so one of the things, I just think we're going to be more successful if we're able to show the country that, yes, it is our inner kindness that we're fighting for, but we're not going to give an inch on truth or our core principles in getting there.
00:18:11.640I actually think we're going to have to make fewer compromises if we're able to stylistically reach people in a way that we otherwise aren't maybe doing the best possible job of.
00:18:21.700And that, too, is one of the things that I'm hoping to arm people with through this book is hard facts and arguments, but to be able to deliver them in a way that actually might make somebody take their earplugs out and to be able to just reach not just the people who agree with us, but especially the people who don't or think they don't using our style as a way of opening it up rather than compromising on actual policies.
00:18:45.620That is definitely you these days. But I have to say, I see Trump, Bannon and even myself more as the front line next to Braveheart in that movie, you know, with shields in front and forward because there's really no talking to the people who have changed the laws on this.
00:19:11.700And it's not just the trans activists. It's the lawmakers who bend the knee and people who feel like they're whatever tax situation, their ability to hire illegals, whatever it is, is more important to them than what's happening to our children as a result of an open border.
00:19:28.460Then what's happening to our children as a result of backing this ideology as though it's something. And those people must be defeated, defeated, not reasoned with. Am I wrong?
00:19:38.460yeah of course but i think that's a that is a it's an and and i think the reality is if our
00:19:44.920process of defeating them causes us to actually miss the opportunity of bringing along i think
00:19:50.680the vast legions on the other side who aren't really against us but are lost then i think we
00:19:55.460also still lose the broader war of the country that we actually care to save and revive the
00:20:00.600other thing i have seen megan and i think this is worth calling out is that oftentimes when we
00:20:05.480do show up guns blazing what happens in the end let's play that forward we actually do end up
00:20:10.620compromising quite a bit on policy when push comes to shove and so i i'm proposing a different
00:20:16.100trade-off here what and this also the book is called you know truth the future of america first
00:20:20.180i think this too is part of the importance of the future of america first is i don't care about the
00:20:25.000appearance of appearing pugilistic i care about achieving the actual goal in an uncompromising way
00:20:31.240so you gave me the choice it always has to be this choice yes but i i but i do think there's
00:20:36.620a time to you know there's a time to inspire people on the importance right and on the
00:20:41.880importance of the issues and sometimes expressing your outrage over what's being done to our
00:20:48.800children you know the castration of them and so on also can be effective so i like i think you need
00:20:54.660all different kind of players in the movement and each has their own role i've seen you be the other
00:21:00.560I was there. I mean, the second debate in the Republican primary, you were much more feisty and this one and everybody bought and paid for.
00:21:08.560And then I've seen you sort of change into somebody who talks more the way you're talking today.
00:21:14.060And I see it. It works for you. I don't think we need it. You need all keys.
00:21:18.340You need the full you need the full. You know, I think we need leaders who can fight.
00:21:22.800We need leaders who can fight hard, unsparingly when necessary.
00:21:26.380One of the things I learned over the course of my campaign,
00:21:28.500a lot of people who even worked for me
00:21:30.620or my companies in the past, colleagues, close friends,
00:21:48.180that's in addition to being a fighter,
00:21:50.280somebody who remembers what I'm actually fighting for
00:21:52.500strong enough to protect your kindness.
00:21:54.120And I think that we need leaders who actually can turn on both modes when the right time calls for it.
00:22:01.240And that's one of the things that I learned from the campaign, but also one of the things that I'm trying to do through this book is you won't see me at the end of a at the end of a hard fight compromise on principle or policy in the end.
00:22:12.420And I think Republicans do it too much. But one of the things I've learned is we actually buy ourselves the latitude to hold the line when we're able to use multiple different modes of persuasion to get there.
00:22:22.000Hi, Steve Ballmer here. You know, people disagree about a lot in this country. Taxes,
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00:22:59.380happening in the country. And whether we think about it or not, we rely on this data every
00:23:03.880single day. That's why supporting public data matters. Not for Democrats, not for Republicans,
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00:23:18.940Join us. Read and sign our open letter at USAFacts.org, the data we depend on.
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00:23:56.260Tech entrepreneur and author of the book, Woke Inc., Vivek Ramaswamy, joins me now to explain how Elon Musk can liberate Twitter successfully.
00:24:07.440Welcome back to the show, Vivek. Great to see you.
00:24:43.080You write, Twitter and others smuggle viewpoint discrimination into supposedly neutral content moderation categories, primarily misinformation, incitement, and hate speech.
00:24:56.520So your point is that all they do is viewpoint discrimination, and there's a reason that it always goes against one side, and they don't want to own up to it.
00:25:05.860So they just label it as, oh, that's pursuant to our policy against hate speech, against
00:25:11.500misinformation, against incitement, so they can still look like the good guys.
00:25:17.560Yeah, I think you've got that right, Megan.
00:25:19.640And it runs just one layer a little bit deeper that allows them to get away with it, which
00:25:24.380is the classic modern problem of taking a political decision, but wrapping it in the
00:25:32.400So much of what they do is viewpoint based discrimination. But some of it is actually the kind of thing that you have to do in order to just operate a functional social media site. So what I wanted to do in the piece along with Jed was to clarify what these different categories are so we could smoke the difference out. What do I mean? Even Elon Musk has said that he wants to remove things like spam that litters his feed. I think that's a good thing. It'll improve the user experience for Twitter users.
00:25:58.220If you didn't have some level of content moderation, all of the feeds would be filled by porn, by just unpleasant content, commercial spam, the kinds of bot-driven content.
00:26:08.580So you need to be able to clean that up even though that's constitutionally protected while still operating as a free speech platform.
00:26:15.200So that's the conundrum that Elon Musk faces.
00:26:16.860So what Twitter has been doing for a long time is that they have been wrapping in viewpoint-based discrimination by smuggling it into the categories of the supposedly neutral content moderation.
00:26:28.220And so my first suggestion, Elon Musk, is to make sure that he smokes out the different categories and becomes really clear about what's what, because there's a very clear answer about what to do with each of them.
00:26:37.400OK, first is genuinely false speech, like commercially fraudulent advertising.
00:26:43.080Well, there's an answer for false speech.
00:26:48.040But you shouldn't be able to take it down without actually proof of falsity.
00:26:51.180With respect to incitement, it's a private company, but actually the legal precedents give us a good standard that Elon Musk can use.
00:26:56.960If there's really going to be an imminent risk of, say, bodily harm or unlawful activity and it meets a Brandenburg versus Ohio test, this is time-tested stuff.
00:27:08.060If it meets that test of imminent harm, take it down.
00:27:11.000But it can't just meet the test of what a given Twitter employee thinks on a given day could theoretically lead to violence in the future because that includes everything.
00:27:18.540And then there's that third category of hate speech.
00:27:20.700And I think this is the category that Elon Musk has to get rid of altogether, where any society that permits free speech has to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a false opinion and there's no such thing as an opinion that isn't allowed in the marketplace of ideas.
00:27:34.520Even if that's an odious opinion, even if that's an opinion that hurts some people, that's part of what it means to live in a society that protects free speech.
00:27:42.300That's the principle that Elon Musk should bring to running Twitter in recognizing that hate speech is in a different category.
00:27:47.420And then Megan, like, look, I mean, do a lot of people want to see racial epithets online? No. Are racial epithets a form of hate speech that express an opinion? Absolutely. So how do you resolve that conundrum? Are you just going to drive all of your users away? And this is where I come up with a really simple solution, along with Jed that we printed in the pages of the journal today, which was that actually the thing that you got to be able to do is give users the choice.
00:33:25.700They let everybody go for it. Right. No problem. They had no problem with that. So I don't I have very mixed feelings about this content moderation thing, because I think it's just going to be employed against one side if we try to say, oh, the balance of decency would would prevent this.
00:33:40.540Well, yeah, it hasn't. Let's let's go to the harder question. The easier question is, is Twitter hypocritical in the way they apply those standards in a partisan way?
00:34:11.200Conservative views on COVID are flagged as misinformation.
00:34:13.440In May 2020, Twitter censored as a, quote, glorification of violence.
00:34:17.600President Trump's, quote, when the looting starts, the shooting starts tweet, while leaving untouched Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's tweets calling for the destruction of Israel and Colin Kaepernick's tweets supporting the burning of police precinct houses, claims that the Democrats stole the presidency in 2020 are censored, while claims that Russia did the same in 2016 go untouched.
00:34:42.400And of course, the truthful Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed as misinformation.
00:34:46.420So it's such a good point about the Russians versus the Democrats, right?
00:39:02.840But starting in 1787 and by my book, Every Bit Holding True in 2022, those are the tradeoffs
00:39:09.040we accept in return for having an open marketplace of ideas that allows the best ideas to win
00:39:14.920that allows a democracy to thrive, that allows the pursuit of truth to actually achieve its goal
00:39:20.340of adjudicating truth. Because the thing is, if we have a policy that says you can't say the
00:39:24.460thing about Jane Doe, like, and, you know, we should be bashing in the faces of her friends
00:39:29.060and relatives or of her. If we ban that, then you're going to open the door to, you know,
00:39:35.540the trans people saying, I, you put me at risk and my family at risk when you say I'm actually
00:39:41.280not a woman, right? Like that's what they claim now. This is harm. You do violence to me. You0.76
00:39:46.160threaten me. You're challenging my very right to exist. And that's how they get these sweeping
00:39:52.440bands. They take something that seems objectively reasonable, like you shouldn't be calling for the
00:39:56.300bashing in of somebody's face and say, that's exactly the same as you saying, I don't accept
00:40:02.920your claim that you can change biological sexes or you can change genders. So it does become a0.53
00:40:09.020slippery slope, you almost want to kind of just go with what's what it wouldn't be OK for the
00:40:13.660federal government to ban. Twitter can't ban. You know, I liked your original piece with Jed,
00:40:18.400you know, a year plus ago that we talked about on our show, which is just treat them like they're
00:40:21.720like they're essentially government agencies and they have to follow the same rules. And then we
00:40:26.420have jurisprudence that we can just follow to figure out what's OK and what's not.
00:40:30.020Yeah. And that was an assumption baked into this piece that Elon would not be a steward for the
00:40:34.240government, because historically what's been happening with these platforms is that they're
00:40:37.660absolutely deputized by the party in power in the United States, now the Democratic Party,
00:40:41.780to do through the back door what government could not do through the front door. And since nowadays
00:40:46.200we have to describe everything through a rhyme, the way I describe this one is, you know, if the,
00:40:51.420what do you say, if it's state action in disguise, the Constitution still applies.
00:40:56.120That's the principle there. Actually, if you're really acting on behalf of the state,
00:40:59.320then you're bound by the Constitution. That was what we published in January 2021.
00:41:02.920Now, this piece was based on the assumption that Elon Musk is not going to be acting as
00:41:07.380a pawn for the ruling Democratic Party in the United States. But he still has some irreducible
00:41:11.980challenges for how you make it a user friendly platform that people want to use while still
00:41:16.120protecting free speech. This was sort of a how to guide to accomplish that goal. But but exactly
00:41:21.280the more fundamental first principle, it should go without saying, but maybe it's worth saying
00:41:25.540nonetheless, is that the first principle is that Elon Musk should be crystal clear that he will not
00:41:30.400be censoring content on behalf of the state. And Megan, it's worth remembering. I mean, just think
00:41:34.620about the context of what's going on in the world right now look what's happening in russia okay
00:41:37.760this is in the news there's a major war playing out in in europe a whole separate topic we could
00:41:42.220we could talk about another day but let's think about what vladimir putin is doing in russia he
00:41:46.840has banned the bbc he has banned all kinds of misinformation and as the state the party in
00:41:53.120power transparently saying that there's misinformation about the war in russia coming
00:41:57.660from the toxic western media his people aren't allowed to see it that is what an autocrat does
00:42:02.760That is what gives us the moral standing to be on the other side of that geopolitical struggle.
00:42:08.320But I worry about living in a society where actually what we're doing here in the name of taking down hate speech and misinformation as decided or at least influenced by the party in power isn't that much better.
00:42:19.520In some ways, it might even be worse because at least Vladimir Putin bans it directly, whereas what we have here in the United States is a government that pretends not to do that but actually influences private parties through a combination of threats and inducements and joint coordination behind closed doors to effectuate a really similar outcome.
00:42:38.200And I hope if there's one outcome of this war in Ukraine on the other side of the on the other side of the world, it is that we still look ourselves in the mirror to ask ourselves what it is that gives us the moral authority to stand up to autocratic regimes like Russia and China.
00:42:52.740And if we go through this war ending without us having gone through that cycle of introspection, I think it will be a lost opportunity for the rediscovery of the few strands of national identity that still define who it is that we are as a people.
00:43:06.080It's not the color of our skin or even our shared heritage, because guess what?
00:43:52.680It was repeated by John Brennan, then head of the CIA, to Barack Obama while he was the sitting president.0.83
00:43:58.800Hey, Hillary's come up with this plan.0.99
00:44:01.220It's a distraction from her email scandal.
00:44:03.620She's going to say that he has some ties to Russia to try to undermine the guy's candidacy.
00:44:09.740She and Barack Obama separately now speaking out about disinformation online, pushing for the Europeans to crack down on it with their big tech, which they are.
00:44:18.420And Barack Obama now making this like the biggest platform of his post-presidency push that we need to crack down on disinformation.
00:44:25.760Look, this is a surprising reversal of what used to be a liberal concern.
00:44:29.980the idea that you might have an Orwellian state that suppressed the free flow of information.
00:44:35.560The idea of fighting against that was a liberal idea. Whether this is a liberal idea or conservative
00:44:41.320idea today, I don't really care about the label, but it is interesting just to see how far these
00:44:46.160so-called progressive movements in this country have come. And I also love the shift and the easy
00:44:52.740sort of, let's just say, conflation of disinformation and misinformation, which is
00:44:57.580Also something that you say the words enough times, people start to view them the exact same way, kind of like equality and equity.
00:45:02.740But that's a that's a game of language jujitsu.
00:45:05.120But, you know, what I would say here is just imagine the narrative without saying that this is in the United States, that you have a party in power in the United States that adopts a false report from one political candidate to attempt to go so far as to plant a mole in the opposition party.
00:45:23.040And then when that opposition party takes over, but then when you regain power four years later, you're also working behind the scenes to threaten private companies to take down information that otherwise could prevent the opposition party from getting elected and to take down misinformation that's defined by the party in power and to take down hate speech that the party in power doesn't like.
00:45:42.840this would be something out of a george orwell novel maybe it will be something out of modern
00:45:46.720day russia or china and yet reveal the curtain and ask which country is actually doing it that's
00:45:51.820a description of modern day reality here in the united states of america that's right that is
00:45:57.280chilling i think it is chilling and it is am i disappointed that it has to come to an actor in
00:46:02.400the private sector or a set of actors in the private sector to be able to stand up to this
00:46:05.840which is fundamentally a problem with our civic culture and even the state itself yeah it's
00:46:09.820disappointing that that's where we are but at the end of the day i think we're getting pretty close
00:46:12.980to the last line of defense on basic principles like free speech and open debate is something
00:46:18.100that we preserve and protect from state intervention or from state corporate intervention
00:46:22.700and there's by the way a word for the merger of state power and corporate power that is the
00:46:27.500definition textbook definition of fascism i think that that's something that we have to worry about
00:46:31.460here on american soil and as i hear these words come out of my mouth you know five years ago i
00:46:35.920would i would have listened to myself and thought this sounds like some kind of conspiracy theorist
00:46:39.660I wish this sort of conspiracy, if it weren't a reality that I'm just describing in plain language, it's not even hiding in plain sight.
00:46:46.880And I think that that's part of what makes a moment like the takeover of Twitter and otherwise, you know, let's just say mundane topic for M&A takeover news to have such political importance in where we are as a culture today.
00:51:27.660And so the idea that this is not political speech is nonsense.
00:51:30.940That is an affront to the Constitution.
00:51:32.800And if we are a country that prizes one thing, it is a country that allows you to criticize the government.
00:51:38.820And if they're saying that this man cannot criticize the government, that would be a First Amendment violation no matter who it is.
00:51:44.060But it's a First Amendment violation on steroids when it is a political candidate who is unable to criticize the government led by the political party that he's actually running against.
00:51:53.880So then the question is, are these entire charges themselves politicized in the first place?
00:51:58.640Or are we talking about this technical legal sphere that's different from the realm of
00:52:58.460If Donald Trump had used campaign funds to make a personal hush money payment, the prosecution
00:53:04.700would arguably have a stronger case to go after him for that, right?
00:53:09.020That would be a misuse of campaign funds.
00:53:10.940People who normally give to political campaigns to advance political causes, well, if you're
00:53:14.780using that to advance personal goals, including making personal hush money payments instead,
00:53:19.540they would be prosecuting him for that.
00:53:21.880So that's a perfect litmus test for whether a prosecution is politicized or not.
00:53:25.360If the defendant had done the exact thing that in this case the prosecutor is saying
00:53:29.540he should have done and could have been prosecuted for it, then that means they were going to
00:53:33.200get him going or get him going coming.
00:53:34.720And it does not matter what the actual underlying behavior was.
00:53:38.320And so that's what we're seeing today.
00:53:39.420That's what this alleged prosecution is about, is really fulfilling, speaking of campaigns,
00:53:44.040a campaign promise. And it was a campaign promise made by Alvin Bragg before he was
00:53:48.960elected to the position that he's in, which is to go after Donald Trump. And so if the
00:53:52.760whole thing's a political exercise, this is just a cherry on top saying that he can't
00:53:56.540even respond to those political attacks at behest of imprisonment. Our founding fathers
00:54:01.700wouldn't be rolling in their graves. They'd be doing backflips. But the ultimate irony
00:54:05.720on all of this, Megan, is if that does happen, I think most Americans are poised to see right
00:54:10.080through it. And this will backfire on steroids as well, just as the prosecutions have in propelling
00:54:15.500Donald Trump to the presidency. I think you're right. I really think you're 100% right. You
00:54:19.840have a great point about criticizing the government and how that in particular should be allowed as,
00:54:25.540you know, it is allowed. And this judge should recognize that it's allowed. But the thing about
00:54:30.240the jury was really galling to me because why can't Trump criticize the jury? He didn't say
00:54:35.540juror number four is a hack. He said, and he got fined for this. He said, and I just pulled it up,
00:54:41.340that jury was picked so fast, 95% Democrats, the area's mostly all Democrat. And the latter0.51
00:54:48.700clause seemed to be a modifier because he realized maybe he shouldn't be technically speaking
00:54:53.100specifically about these jurors. But why shouldn't he? Why can't he say the jury's mostly all
00:54:57.980Democrats? That's his opinion, having sat there day after day through Wadir. And that too is an
00:55:03.100attempt to say, you're not allowed to get the public ready for what's going to be a verdict
00:55:08.900against you in all likelihood because they're partisan opponents of yours. He just got fined
00:55:15.440a thousand dollars for pointing that out. That can't be okay. Yeah. So a lot of people really,
00:55:23.160it becomes difficult when you're sorting out what is the first amendment protect and what doesn't
00:55:27.140it. So I have, I have a simple rule of thumb here, Megan, but let's just take the different
00:55:30.720things that people will say. Well, yes, the First Amendment protects speech, but it does not protect
00:55:34.680incitements to violence. It does not protect fraud. It does not protect making false statements in a
00:55:40.580commercial context. That's fraud. It does not protect interfering in the proceedings of a court.
00:55:45.200So if you're going to distill it down to one thing, what is just from a First Amendment
00:55:48.440perspective, the First Amendment protects all opinions. That's what it protects, right? An
00:55:54.020opinion, no matter how heinous it is, no matter how much you disagree with it, no matter how
00:55:57.660unpleasant it is to hear, no matter the context, the First Amendment protects all opinions. And so
00:56:03.200so long as Donald Trump is actually expressing an opinion grounded in facts that he's also citing
00:56:09.060to bolster his opinions is protected speech as far as I'm concerned. That's true if it's Donald
00:56:13.500Trump or anybody, right? Anybody expressing an opinion about a trial during their own defense.
00:56:18.380Now, against the backdrop of the political context of this trial, it's unambiguous as you're
00:56:23.120expressing an opinion in the context of a political election where that trial would not have happened
00:56:29.140but for that election, that makes this a cut and dry case where he should absolutely be able to say
00:56:34.160anything he absolutely wants about those jurors. And specifically, he was actually talking about
00:56:38.500the selection process of those jurors that makes this unobjectionable. And so in many ways, is
00:56:43.540Donald Trump going to be hurt by that fine? No. I mean, if you think about the amount he's paying
00:56:47.000per second in legal fees, it's probably in excess of those fines. You know what? The judge indirectly
00:56:52.560may have actually done him and done all of us and done this country a favor by exposing how
00:56:57.320rotten this entire process is. If he takes that next step and puts him in jail, I think it would
00:57:02.340be regrettable for this country. I think it would set an awful precedent. I think we should be
00:57:06.780ashamed as American citizens on the global stage, having other countries looking at us,
00:57:11.940throwing a former U.S. president in prison for daring to engage in political speech in the
00:57:16.360middle of an election. If that happened in a different country, we would call that a banana
00:57:19.300Republic or the stuff of autocracy. But happening here as an American citizen, I would be embarrassed
00:57:25.280as others look at our country. But ironically, I think it will continue to have the effect that
00:57:30.140all of these sham prosecutions have had, which is to further put Americans on the side of Donald
00:57:35.300Trump, even the ones who otherwise would not have been. Because it's not that they're on Trump's
00:57:39.340side even, it's that they're on the side of justice in this country, one standard of the rule of law.
00:57:44.480And the idea that you get to speak your mind freely, and if you're going to get put in jail
00:57:47.460for doing that. If they do it to Donald Trump today, they're going to do it to somebody else
00:57:50.740tomorrow. And I think it's disgusting. And I think that most Americans see through that as well.0.96
00:57:55.880Well, I don't think the media finds it disgusting. Here's a little example of how they reacted.
00:58:03.020You're going to be shocked, shocked. Watch it. And the judge threatening the ex-president with
00:58:07.480jail time. It is really clear that the judge is, depending on the seriousness of the next
00:58:12.780violation contemplating putting him in jail. I mean, and frankly, if that happens, it's not
00:58:18.200going to be because of anything Judge Marshawn did. It's going to be Donald Trump's own choice.
00:58:22.820I know from my own reporting, I'm sure you do too, that Trump didn't eat on foreign trips
00:58:27.140because he was so afraid of germs. There's no way Trump himself wants to go to jail.
00:58:32.960Certainly not many black defendants who, if they came this close to the line, would have already
00:58:36.980been held in contempt of court and would have been incarcerated by now. And so he is getting0.80
00:58:41.800the doest of process and the idea that donald trump actually would want to go to jail is
00:58:46.740ridiculous anyone who knows him knows that he doesn't even like to stay in a hotel you know
00:58:50.920he won't eat food when it goes on fair and territory you have to use the bathroom his hair0.97
00:58:56.420his makeup his skin his skin like he will be pulled apart he doesn't have the metal to do it
00:59:03.580so any donald trump is terrified you've got to believe just by his his issues with odors and
00:59:09.860and smells and and you know fear of of disease he threw down the gauntlet if he doesn't throw
00:59:17.240trump in jail he would look entirely like a paper tiger and trump got that message you know how much
00:59:23.760bravado you know this is not somebody who's thinking you know what i'm going to have a really
00:59:28.600great time at rikers can i just make this the point in the program when we say no this is normal
00:59:33.900Oh my God. Honestly, Nicole Wallace is the worst. She's the worst. She barely moves her lips when0.99
00:59:41.000she's speaking. She barely has, it's just like a little hole that words come out of. I can't quite
00:59:46.000get it. And she's so sanctimonious for vacant. She doesn't know anything. She knows nothing0.94
00:59:52.020about what Trump's habits are when he travels overseas. None of them does, but they want to
00:59:56.500pretend like they're in the room with him, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the dining room with
01:00:01.520Trump and they can tell you exactly how he's going to respond if he gets a day in jail.
01:00:06.280Well, look, she knows nothing about Donald Trump's habits. She probably knows even less
01:00:10.280about the law or an understanding or care about that as well. And I think that manner of speech
01:00:14.880is really funny. I don't like to pick on these minor details, but you actually hit the nail on
01:00:19.060the head there. It's all part of this air of sanctimony, right? The air, the vibe of authority
01:00:25.240without actually having any of the content of that authority. And I think that's what so many
01:00:29.660the modern media have actually become is the air, the genteel sort of atmospherics of having
01:00:35.500authority in the manner that you speak, the sanctimony that drips from it, but without
01:00:40.020having the first basis of an understanding of how the law or the constitution works. And so
01:00:43.600it's completely backwards versus somebody who actually didn't speak with the right mannerism,
01:00:47.460but actually knew what they were talking about. That would be far preferable to me.
01:00:51.380Now, the schadenfreude, the level of rejoicing in somebody else's suffering, this is, I've never
01:00:57.900seen something like this, but we know that's exactly what we're to expect here from the media.
01:01:02.280They've been playing for this for a long time. The entire plot has been to really portray Donald
01:01:07.040Trump as a criminal. That's been, I think, a big part of the Democratic Party's goal in this
01:01:11.240objectionable pursuit of prosecutions against him. So it's no surprise that the media has
01:01:16.200played interference for them on so many other topics is going to run interference here as well.
01:01:21.020I think that's the less interesting part than to examine what is exactly the consequence here.
01:01:25.200Let's say Donald Trump is, God forbid, I think it'd be bad for the country, but thrown in jail.
01:01:30.520I do think that they've kind of put themselves in a box here because Donald Trump believes, I believe correctly, that this is an affront to the Constitution.
01:01:37.060He has a right to speak in the middle of an election.
01:01:39.240He's running to lead this country to be the commander in chief.
01:01:42.640So for him to buckle at behest of what this judge who has no regard for the law or the Constitution on this set of issues, I think would be would be a bad outcome.
01:01:51.300So I think Donald Trump should continue to express his opinions because he's running for U.S. president and both he and the country deserve to hear his opinions on a matter of public importance.
01:02:01.960But the judge has now put himself in a box going out of his way.
01:02:05.100He didn't have to do this, but going out of his way to be able to threaten jail time.
01:02:09.320I think that that is something that unfortunately sets this up as a reasonably likely outcome.
01:02:15.220And you know what? Donald Trump's made a lot of sacrifices for the country, running for president, serving as U.S. president.
01:02:19.640this wouldn't be the biggest of them. And so I think it would set a terrible precedent. I think
01:02:23.800it's going to be bad for the country, but I think it is reasonably likely that it does end up there.
01:02:28.360And as sad as that is, it's exactly what you would predict once you've opened Pandora's box
01:02:34.060with these prosecutions based on really no figment of the legal theory to back it up
01:02:39.140against a former president, a man running for U.S. president in the middle of an election.
01:02:43.300This is just the necessary consequence and all the drama that follows. It's unfortunately what
01:02:48.480they signed up for in the first place. And I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg
01:02:51.680of what we're going to see in the next six months. They're thrilled about it because they
01:02:55.980want his humiliation. That's what you heard them talking about. Well, how, you know, he's not going
01:03:00.640to be able to have his hair the way he wants it. They want his humiliation. That's why they were
01:03:06.500so angry that he leaned into his mugshot and went on the mugs and it went on t-shirts. And so
01:03:11.920they're waiting for him to be humbled, to be humiliated. And they keep waiting for the next
01:03:18.060chapter, maybe Judge Mershon will get him there when he throws him behind jail bars, and we can
01:03:22.940watch that and revel. The media, of course, has been a massive problem. You experienced it when
01:03:27.640you were running and before and after. This is a small ball story, but it's indicative.
01:03:33.520There was a reporter for NBC News, and she moved on to CNN. Her name is Michelle Kaczynski,
01:03:40.100and she posted a thread on X last night. She was very well known at both of those
01:03:45.520outlets, a thread on X last night, revealing her horror at a dinner she recently had with people
01:03:53.520who turned out to be MAGA. At first, she said, they seemed great on the surface for like an hour.
01:04:02.240And then she says the closeted guests over a few drinks began to slip their true MAGA natures.
01:04:10.960And she says, she marvels at how a, quote,
01:04:14.080normal group of people could support a politician like Trump,
01:09:04.940The conspiracy was written out on paper.
01:09:09.460That is rare in criminal prosecutions.
01:09:12.380Prosecutors are usually left explaining to juries that criminal conspirators don't write it all down.
01:09:21.520But that is what they did in the Trump office on Fifth Avenue and in the White House.
01:09:28.220Today, Donald Trump's jury was shown the handwritten conspiracy.
01:09:32.760Donald Trump's financial mastermind, convicted felon Allen Weisselberg, put the conspiracy in his handwriting on Michael Cohen's bank statement.
01:09:44.340And then another financial officer in the Trump shop put the whole thing in his handwriting on Trump company stationery.
01:09:52.880Final handwriting in the conspiracy presented to the jury today were Donald Trump's signatures.
01:16:07.940she just got convicted twice of fraud-related behavior. She was a former Baltimore prosecutor.
01:16:14.100They rise to these positions of power if they happen to be people of color sometimes.
01:16:17.720And when it doesn't work out, Vivek, they use the race thing as both a sword and a shield,0.51
01:16:23.760right? It's something that I'm fine to ride to the top. It's fine if it's a chip for me.
01:16:28.480It gets me this advanced position. But then if it doesn't work out, I get to play the race card
01:16:33.340again, you see. And my termination is 100% because of my skin color or your negative reports in the
01:16:39.840case of the NABJ are because of skin color. Meanwhile, as I point out in my case, someone
01:16:46.540who happens to be black behind the scenes is using skin color as a weapon again. It's just,
01:16:51.600it's everywhere. It's why it's so pernicious. And these promotions based on race don't work out.
01:16:57.380And then when things settle down, the natural consequences get ignored by the same cast of
01:17:03.220actors. What do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think
01:17:07.820it's starting to get a little bit old and I think it is fostering, unfortunately, Megan, a new wave
01:17:12.420of quiet frustration that manifests as anti-black racism in this country that would not have
01:17:17.640existed, but for this actual kind of racialized behavior. There was an article, it's a different
01:17:23.600type of media, but it's the same type of media treatment of, it's a scientific media. This is
01:17:27.480back when I was still in the biotech industry that examined this detailed investigative piece.
01:17:33.140It was sort of in the health care press. It was like, I mean, detailed investigative reporting, bombshell reporting that found that black residents, so people in medical residency, those who are black, were systematically more likely to be fired than their white counterparts and didn't finish their residency programs at the same rate, revealing a layer of systemic racism in the field of medicine that had not previously been exposed.
01:17:56.520And it goes through all of the explanations of the data points of how consistently, no matter what geography, no matter what institution, it was black people who were more likely to be fired from their competitive residency programs midway through.
01:18:09.240I read the whole article. The journalist, she must have been, I don't know if she was in early stages of her career. I assume she's a young journalist making a big bombshell story here.
01:18:16.680I just emailed her afterwards and asked her, had you considered the possibility that systematically
01:18:22.800the people allowed into med school and the system, the system, the people who are allowed
01:18:26.500into residency programs have lower scores when they're a particular race, in this case,
01:18:31.180black residents and black med students are admitted systematically at lower scores.
01:18:36.540Is it surprising then that the people who actually tended on average to have lower scores
01:18:41.980are the ones that aren't thriving in residency programs?
01:18:45.420and might that play some role, some impact on actually seeing a disparity in the races of people
01:18:51.320who end up getting fired during residency? And her response was, I think it was genuine.
01:18:55.420She was just saying, I hadn't considered that. Thank you for pointing that out to me.
01:18:58.820And I think it shows, I mean, this must be people who are younger in this profession of reporting on
01:19:03.120this have become so inculcated by the narrative that I think it just takes basic analysis. Somebody
01:19:09.800who points a basic obvious fact that her own editors, her own publisher, her own supervisors
01:19:15.460should have, for any base level of reporting for a journalist, at least called out one
01:19:20.320contrarian hypothesis that didn't have a single mention, a 2,000-word investigative bombshell
01:20:05.440you got your job because of race, but then you're measured based on performance. Yes,
01:20:09.460I think it is likely that people of certain demographic attributes may be more likely to
01:20:14.320get fired from those positions. I think the right answer across the board is forget the attribute
01:20:19.440of race or gender or sexual orientation in the first place and just hire the best person for
01:20:23.580the job. If it's in journalism, who's actually going to do the best journalistic work and report
01:20:27.240that to their audiences? If it's in medicine or in science or engineering or whatever it is.
01:20:31.440And I think that ironically, then you're going to see less of those disparities and firings on the back end. Most people know this intuitively, but when you force them to bottle it up, I think they start to harbor animus, even racial animus. And the very people who are supposedly fighting racism through these anti-racist efforts are the ones actually throwing the kerosene, throwing the fuel on the final burning embers of racism in the first place, starting the whole cycle all over again. And sadly, Megan, I think that's where we are.
01:21:27.140maybe not qualified were elevated based on skin color or their lady parts or their heritage.
01:21:34.280And maybe some of them make it because they have the merit and many won't. And then, and so this
01:21:40.340is the beginning wave of let's see how they do. And if they don't do well, they're going to blame
01:21:44.320that too on race. And what's the end result of that going to be? A hesitancy to hire these people.
01:21:49.880So this whole game, it does not in order to the benefit of the very people they hope to elevate.
01:21:56.140Oh, it's self-defeating, of course, Megan, but I think that that's why they're codifying a lot of
01:22:00.140those on the front end as well. It's an interesting jujitsu move that you described. You now are
01:22:04.600going to see a retreat in the use of the word DEI, different word, same concept. You actually see
01:22:09.700that in the corporate sphere as well. ESG has earned itself a negative valence, a negative
01:22:14.380connotation as well. I founded a firm called Strive that competes against BlackRock. We pushed
01:22:19.480hard on this. Now what are we seeing is a retreat from the use of that term, but they call it
01:22:24.460sustainable investing or whatever it is instead, adopting the same sort of social criteria.
01:22:29.600But they know this is going to have a discursive effect on stopping the hiring of those people
01:22:34.020on the front end on the basis of demographic attributes. And so that's why those are codified
01:22:38.940in some senses of quota systems. But where that then goes upstream, because it still hurts the
01:22:43.220very people it was supposed to help, not because they're less likely to be hired necessarily,
01:22:47.560because there are still effective hard quota systems to make sure that they're filled.
01:22:51.160but in the attitudes that people have towards them. And I think that's the most unfortunate
01:22:55.800aspect of it at all. I mean, it's really, it's really sad. Actually, I've been in environments
01:23:02.300that built companies, built organizations where I don't look at, I could care less about what
01:23:06.580somebody's demographic attributes are. I care how good they're going to be at doing the job,
01:23:09.460which happens to have resulted in hiring multiple black women in positions of executive power. I1.00
01:23:15.100didn't hire them for that reason. I hired them because I thought they'd be the best person for
01:23:18.560the job. But one of the things that happened was you saw a lot of frustration from people around
01:23:22.980them and would say, you know, and it was, it made me sad. In one of those settings, she happened to
01:23:27.220be a very highly paid person, high ranking in the organization. And you'd have people scuttlebutt0.72
01:23:32.080around the people who couldn't make it in the same way that she did saying, oh, she only got1.00
01:23:35.220her job because of her race and gender. When in fact, in the context that I was operating the
01:23:40.000company, that was flatly false. And I think that's the sad consequence of this is it does hurt the
01:23:45.120very people it was supposed to help. Not necessarily because they're not going to get
01:23:47.920the jobs or whatever, but because they're going to be viewed differently. I mean, somebody like
01:23:51.700Ben Carson has been through this his entire career, ended up graduating at the top of his class,
01:23:56.020but wasn't regarded in the same way because many of the people who look like him are known to have
01:24:00.660gotten that position in the field of medicine or whatever else because of these racial quota
01:24:05.860systems. And I think that in that sense, it leaves us worse off, literally creating a form of racism.
01:24:12.680I'm not just talking about the anti-white and anti-Asian racism that's embedded into the entire program of affirmative action and the DEI agenda.
01:24:21.140There's a lot of that anti-white and anti-Asian racism.
01:24:24.020And, you know, a lot of people will say there's no such thing as anti-white racism.
01:24:26.680I disagree. Any disagreement, any discrimination on the basis of race is definitionally racism and it's problematic.
01:24:33.840But it's not just illegal. The law recognizes it as illegal. Keep going. Sorry.
01:24:38.480Yes, it does. It's a good reminder to people. It is illegal.
01:24:41.160But even worse than that, the net consequence of that is it actually throws, fans the flames of even an anti-Black racism that otherwise would have retreated to irrelevance.
01:24:53.560Once you reach the promised land that the civil rights activists wanted in the 1960s, it's precisely that you have this sort of masochistic desire to restart the whole cycle.
01:25:04.380And that's exactly what's happening, hiding in plain sight before us today.
01:25:08.000Yeah, I'm going to take a break, but I will say we're on the tail end now of a four-year period where the country lost its mind post-George Floyd and got rid of SAT scores, started to discount actual grades, then went full DEI in terms of its admissions to all these Ivies, and now they've inflated the grades.0.69
01:25:32.440So now these same folks who got into Harvard and Yale, who otherwise would not have been admitted, are just getting A's and A-minuses as a gift.
01:26:02.440you cannot tell me in the united states in 20240.99
01:26:09.180shut up you cannot tell me where i can or can't walk these are terrorist supporters0.90
01:26:15.700and they are supporting hamas what is worse me saying the effort or them praising hamas0.99
01:26:21.640i'm not the problem you know i'm not the problem i'm a law-abiding citizen these people support
01:26:28.420terrorists. Why are you pushing me? Can we get some space please? Can we just... Okay, I'm not going to raise my voice. Okay. I'm not raising my voice. Excuse me. Excuse me. So I can't stop you from coming. Okay. I cannot. And I'm not going to try. Okay. But I don't understand what your purpose would be because I think you know where we're putting money out there. And do we want that? Respectfully, I am not the problem. Please, if you need to cover up your face, cover up now.
01:26:58.420I want to let all of you know you are not going to intimidate Jewish people.0.86
01:27:02.780You can hide behind your masks as long as you want.
01:27:53.120Second thing is, I think what we're seeing is if you look at I think it was Michigan's graduation where you saw just the raucous cheer at the commencement, 90 plus percent of people in the audience cheering as a few of the disruptors to the proceedings were removed.
01:28:06.220I think the reality is most people on the college campuses do not agree with the use of these disruptive tactics to destroy their universities.
01:28:17.000So I personally think this actually presents a not to take it to the realm of politics for a second, but a political opportunity for Republicans.
01:28:23.440If they just have the courage to show up this year on college campuses this fall.
01:28:27.120I mean, you look at swing states. Most of them have great college football teams.
01:28:30.280People are going to be tinged by what ended up happening this spring.
01:28:32.820there's an opening to say you know what you might not have thought of yourself as a patriotic pro
01:28:37.080american conservative or whatever but many people on those college campuses are hungry for the
01:28:41.420alternative to what they're seeing set up in these artificially set up encampments and artificially
01:28:46.500constructed building takeovers on their campuses and so i think that's the first learning is this
01:28:52.260is not just a supposedly a tyranny of the majority that these people are standing up against
01:28:57.420chanting intifada when in fact if you listen to the audio many of them are chanting
01:29:01.460infitada, they don't even know the word they're supposed to be chanting. But the majority of
01:29:06.640people on the campus don't agree with that. This is a tyranny of the fringe minority. And that0.86
01:29:11.320presents an opportunity for conservatives, for Republicans this year, if they're willing to step
01:29:15.400up and seize it. The other thing I would say, though, is Megan, is even many of those protesters
01:29:19.320who are supposedly protesting, they don't really know what they're protesting for, especially those
01:29:25.300who are students, right? That example of people chanting infitada, when in fact, they're trying
01:29:29.860to say intifada, they don't even know what they're saying. Right, exactly. It could be
01:29:35.920go tostada for all we know. And so I think it's just another symptom of, you know, I think that
01:29:42.840there's a, it's so, it's understandable that there's the debate about antisemitism, but I
01:29:46.620think it's a symptom of something deeper that's going on, which is a generation that is truly
01:29:52.680lost for purpose. Not the whole generation, but a fringe minority still. Even that fringe minority
01:30:28.140there's nothing wrong with that in that context. But that's what it reminds me of here, where the
01:30:32.160same people who are marching for one cause in the aftermath of George Floyd's death are the same
01:30:37.000people setting up encampments and quasi-violent riots in a different context. They are starving,
01:30:43.000just as other people are doing it for money in the context of commercial parades. In this case,
01:30:47.400they're doing it in a perpetual search for satisfying their own hunger for purpose and
01:30:53.080meaning. And I think that in response to it, we have to, if we really want to fix the problem
01:30:58.300as a conservative movement here, I'll say, we got to do better than just pointing out their0.83
01:31:03.780endless hypocrisies because they'll keep giving us endless hypocrisies. And I think we're going0.64
01:31:07.320to be in this constant cycling churn unless we offer an alternative vision to say, hey,
01:31:12.660you're actually hungering for a purpose. There's one of them represented in that flag right behind
01:31:16.820me, the American flag. If you have a hunger to be part of something bigger than yourself,
01:31:21.140That's what America actually offers. If you don't pledge allegiance to that flag, you're going to pledge allegiance to quite a different flag instead. I think that's the genesis of the transgender flag, why you'd see more transgender flags on the streets of Washington, D.C. in the month of June than you do see American flags.
01:31:38.200And so if we want to get out of this sort of cycle of psychologically deranged people latching on to causes, showing up to protest when it's one cause today and a different one tomorrow, and the irony of standing for the transgender cause and standing for the Hamas cause is they're fundamentally incompatible with one another either.0.81
01:31:54.960You know that if you want to try to go to most of the Middle East and hold up an actual transgender flag, see how you're treated. It doesn't even make any sense that you're espousing the same kinds of people espousing fundamentally incompatible causes on different days of the week. It's a deeper hunger for purpose and meaning.0.54
01:32:11.560And in that sense, I think it's actually a reflection of a failure of the patriotic pro-American pro-conservative movement to offer an alternative vision that's actually able to satisfy these people's search for purpose and meaning.
01:32:26.980And so I think it's not so much that most of them are anti-Semitic as it is that they're
01:32:30.980psychiatrically deranged, that they're lost.0.91
01:32:34.140I don't say that in a disparaging way.
01:32:36.120I say it in a way that reflects a deep-seated kind of mental illness that has really taken
01:32:41.240a foot of a generation in America that if we're serious about fixing it, we're not going
01:32:45.420to do it by scolding it out of existence.
01:32:47.360We'd have to call out these hypocrisies as they occur, but we got to do the harder work
01:32:51.700of actually addressing the root cause of that mental ailment.
01:35:41.280It's disgusting, but it is an opinion.0.57
01:35:43.880And what makes America great, what makes America itself is that you get to express those opinions.0.59
01:35:49.680And so in many ways, what the conservative movement should be doing is standing for the ideals that this country was founded on and use that to lead the lost, deranged, mentally ill, Gen Z and generationally lost members of the other side to say, hey, here's what it means to be an American.0.57
01:36:05.480Instead, what we're actually doing in response, many of us, I mean, not us, but many people who have a little R after their name and serve in the House of Representatives, is to adopt the same methods of the left in a way that actually erodes our own moral authority to talk about things like free speech, to be able to say there are certain opinions that legally cannot be expressed.
01:36:25.260And Megan, this is not a bill that was proposed. This is a bill that has passed Congress, the larger of the two chambers of the Congress, now awaiting passage into law in the United States Senate. I think it completely erodes any moral authority that we have to ever preach about free speech if we are literally restricting the content of speech or opinions that can be expressed and codifying that in a federal statute. It's disgusting.
01:36:51.780maybe it's just a phase you're going through you'll get over it i can't help you with that
01:36:58.220the next appointment is in six months you're not alone finding mental health support shouldn't
01:37:05.280leave you feeling more lost at camh we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care
01:37:10.640we're working to build a future where the path to support is clear and every step forward feels
01:37:15.840like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health
01:37:22.900care. It's not that you need the money. It's that the viewers need to listen to the message. That's
01:37:31.080what's important because you outline the problem brilliantly, brilliantly calling people out on
01:37:37.220their nonsense and sort of diagnosing how we got here and how it needs to stop. How it needs to
01:37:44.240stop. Give us an overview. So my basic thesis in the book is I actually pick up where I left off
01:37:49.560my last book, Woke Inc., which was about the curious merger of political and social agendas
01:37:55.020with corporate America's interests. But the conclusion I came to at the end of the book is
01:37:59.180it takes two to tango, right? Companies cannot get away with politicizing their agendas if their
01:38:04.400customer bases don't ultimately want to go along with them. And so what I do in the new book is I
01:38:09.160ask the question of what's actually going on in our culture. And I think where I left Woke Inc.
01:38:13.580off was with the idea that there is a vacuum of national identity in America. There is a hunger
01:38:19.340for purpose and meaning and identity that isn't filled by the cheap fast food that corporations
01:38:25.600feed us. But what can we fill that void with instead? Well, right now, the case I make in
01:38:30.940the book is victimhood narratives. One's identity as a victim has become America's new national
01:38:36.480identity. Black victims, white victims, liberal victims, conservative victims. As a first0.84
01:38:42.760generation American, I see it in second generation Asian Americans and Indian Americans too.
01:38:47.260Victimhood has become America's new national identity. It's a currency. It's like a currency
01:38:52.020that's trading at a bubble and people are cashing in while the bubble is trading at an all time high.
01:38:56.820But the case I make in the book is that what we really need is to fill that void with a different
01:39:01.960national identity instead, a national identity based on the shared pursuit of excellence. It is
01:39:07.400the reason why most immigrants come to this country. It is the reason why my parents came to
01:39:11.240this country. But the path from one to the other is a complicated one. And it runs through some
01:39:16.940uncomfortable places. And that's a big part of what I what it took a book to explore. And that's
01:39:21.820why I chose to write it. I didn't think I was gonna write a second book this soon. But I think
01:39:25.740of it as a sort of sequel to woke ink, asking ourselves how we can fill that vacuum of national
01:39:30.620identity with something more meaningful that doesn't just criticize the poison, but hopefully
01:39:35.420dilutes it to irrelevance by filling it with something I think far more rich and meaningful
01:39:39.900instead, which is this shared national identity that I propose built on the shared pursuit of
01:39:44.840excellence. I'm thinking about Sheryl Sandberg and her book, Lean In, which encouraged people
01:39:49.220to work hard and go for it and hand and make sure you have a seat at the table. And don't just say
01:39:53.460like, oh, I can't or, you know, force yourself to raise your hand and be the one. And then Michelle
01:39:58.120Obama coming out and saying, you know, basically, you know, that shouldn't that doesn't work.
01:40:01.920Like sort of speaking that pushing back on behalf of people of color, like, OK, rich white lady,
01:40:07.660You don't understand that that doesn't work. Meanwhile, Cheryl, I think her dad was an orthodontist. It wasn't like she was she couldn't pay her family bills when she was growing up.
01:40:14.680But she's gone on to become one of the richest women in the world, thanks for her own hard work.
01:40:20.100All right. And with all due respect to Michelle Obama, she wound up at Harvard Law School.
01:40:24.760She was Princeton undergrad. She was at a white shoe firm in Chicago.
01:40:28.480she did pretty well for herself in america too um but you know she sort of tried to push back on0.84
01:40:34.780the push for excellence being like it's harder if your skin is a certain color well well the
01:40:40.940problem is it's what i call kind of the heisenberg principle in in quantum physics it's the social
01:40:46.220equivalent of that so what does the heisenberg principle in quantum physics say it says that
01:40:50.220you can't measure a phenomenon like the spin of an electron while also actually not changing the
01:40:56.720way the electron itself spins. So the two are inextricably linked to one another. This is what
01:41:01.160we learned from in quantum mechanics. The principle in the social world is effectively, you cannot at
01:41:06.440once describe the social world without actually affecting the way that social reality works.
01:41:12.440And so that's a long way of saying that when we describe ourselves as victims, victims defined
01:41:17.280in the form of racial identity politics, or gender identity politics, or even partisan politics,
01:41:22.080that actually contributes to the world you create.
01:41:25.640And so in some ways, what Michelle Obama says may become true
01:41:29.720because the people who listen to her and she herself think of herself that way.
01:41:33.120And they are a victim of their own self-conception,
01:41:36.480of their own vision, of their own identity.
01:41:38.640And I think if you deny yourself human agency,
01:41:50.520So one way or another, as I say in the book, we see ourselves as victims of one another, but the reality is we're victims of ourselves.
01:41:57.620And I think it's the question of human agency that's at the heart of the book, at the heart of identity, is to say that either you are an immutable agent on a tectonic plate of group identity, a prisoner of whatever direction that tectonic plate moves, or you're an agent that can define for yourself your destiny in the world through your own hard work, your own commitment, your own dedication.
01:42:18.620That's the path, right? That's that's the case for identity I make in the book. It's the case for American identity I make in the book. I think that's actually the vision that unites us or once united us as Americans. I think it can be so again, but the path to get there isn't going to be easy from where we're starting today.
01:42:33.040Well, while I'm on Michelle Obama, she's kind of a good example of all this because she so she claimed that she was the victim of racism sort of infamously while she was first lady.
01:42:44.160She said that she was in a store and that somebody didn't recognize that she was the first lady and thinking she was a staffer at what was like a Walmart or something like that, asked her to get the person something off the top shelf.
01:42:57.440Meanwhile, it's Michelle Obama is tall and she described this woman as short.
01:43:02.200And it was completely reasonable that the person saw a taller person and said, hey, would you help me out?
01:43:09.560And Michelle Obama had already told that story in a funny, lighthearted way and apparently forgotten, not claiming to be the victim of racism on a late night show.
01:43:18.360But she got in front of one of the historically black college audience for graduation speech and told it like, I, too, am a victim.
01:43:25.100I have been the victim of racism. And the media on the right wing start, you know, are like who had
01:43:29.940long memories were like, no, you can't get away with that. And honestly, remember, she she had
01:43:36.180some negative pushback because she said when her husband got nominated or when he won, it was the
01:43:41.260first time in her adult life she was truly proud of her country. And even on Friday, Vivek, even on
01:43:46.800Friday, Thursday or Friday, whichever it was, when they unveiled the Obama's official portraits,
01:43:51.220you know, his painting and hers. Even in that setting, she's been first lady twice. Her husband
01:43:57.860was reelected. He was elected. He was reelected. People want her to be the next president in large
01:44:03.260numbers. She had to go there about herself and our country. Here she is. This is SOT 13.0.99
01:44:10.560So for me, this day is not just about what has happened. It's also about what could happen.
01:44:17.760because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and
01:44:26.100Dolly Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn't supposed
01:44:31.920to serve as first lady. To me, it felt unseemly to go. It's an America bash. That's what it is.
01:44:40.060It was on Wednesday. Well, the thing that she misses is that the woman that looks like her
01:44:45.160did live in the White House for eight years. And at some point, there may have been a point in our
01:44:49.960history, somewhere measured in centuries plus decades ago, where that may have been an appropriate
01:44:55.320conversation to reckon with the past. But at some point, we ultimately have to engage in mutual
01:45:01.400forgiveness and decide that we are going to move on. That's actually the heart of the case I make
01:45:04.820in the book. The path from victimhood to excellence runs through forgiveness. And that's uncomfortable
01:45:10.580terrain for a lot of people, but it's very difficult to give up your status as a victim.
01:45:16.000So there's a game theory problem here, even. I don't mean to be too philosophical about this,
01:45:20.040but one of the cases I make in the book is Immanuel Kant actually talked about a paradox
01:45:25.140of fishermen, where at the end of the day, if you want to fish, if you have a community of
01:45:29.820fishermen, if you overfish, everyone ends up with less fish. But every fisherman still has
01:45:35.340an incentive to be able to overfish himself, but his reason for not doing it is that ultimately
01:45:41.540the whole community would suffer if he took advantage of that for himself. I draw an analogy
01:45:46.340to the tales of victimhood that we now tell, because when somebody gets a competitive advantage
01:45:51.440from seeing themselves or describing themselves and hoarding themselves out as a victim through
01:45:55.680an affirmative action program to get into college, whatever the case may be, everyone loses out. Our
01:46:00.240national identity is, is the air is sucked out of it. The economic size of our economic pie is
01:46:04.960reduced. So everyone is, is left as a net loser in the collective when we each individually
01:46:10.360describe ourselves as a victim. But when you have the incentive structure culturally, that's been
01:46:14.000set up that at the end of the day, victimhood is what gives you cultural power. It is what gives
01:46:18.220you cultural relevance. Sometimes it actually pays literally, quite literally financially to
01:46:22.380be a victim. Then it's, it's, it's a collective action problem where everyone has an incentive
01:51:32.000We'll see if that's successful or not.
01:51:33.320Well, I think the discussion of Rome in the book is very interesting. And I definitely want to get to that. Just to touch on two things before we leave them. The BYU-Duke investigation. Now, I mentioned the aunt, the godmother, Richardson's godmother, Lisa Pamplin. She refuses to accept BYU's finding. So now they've done a comprehensive investigation. And again, BYU's initial instinct was to apologize. They felt awful. They believed her. But they said, we're going to investigate, to be fair.
01:52:00.860and this comprehensive investigation has found that it didn't happen.
01:52:05.100There's absolutely no evidence of it, to the contrary.
01:52:27.880the burden of proof in instances like these involving people of color, as well as marginalized
01:52:33.420people, economically disadvantaged people and disempowered people, is shifted unfairly and
01:52:40.260without hesitation. She feels the burden of proof was shifted upon her goddaughter, who, so far as
01:52:48.120I can tell, wasn't required to do much, if anything, in this investigation. They just sat and reviewed
01:52:54.120hours and hours of videotapes, talk to everybody who is nearby. Maybe they took her testimonial
01:52:58.380as well. But the point is, she crosses her arms and says, no, no. And if it comes out against me,
01:53:05.680you've unfairly shifted the burden of proof on me. So one of the things that I reject wholesale
01:53:12.500is this post Foucault worldview of defining all human relations in terms of power structures.
01:53:18.660She used the word disempower. So I reject that worldview. But in this situation,
01:53:23.300If you're going to embrace a power structure based description of what happened there, the disempowered person was actually the person who was accused.
01:53:31.840There's no doubt about it. And that might be different. 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, a century ago, the tables may have been turned in a very different direction.
01:53:38.620But today in the year 2022, there's a little doubt in my mind that the person who was in the disempowered position was no doubt the accused.
01:53:45.600And even still, with the with the tilt of that investigation and BYU's initial posture going into it, already ruining that person's life in many measures, still could not find a shred of evidence to support it.
01:53:56.600What does it remind me of? It reminds me of at the end of the Jussie Smollett case.
01:54:00.340OK, so this is a guy who faked a hate crime hoax. The prosecutors initially actually closed off the case because it looked like it smelled really rotten, but actually had to be reopened by federal prosecutors.
01:54:11.940Speaking of Michelle Obama, by the way, I can't resist bringing this back in.
01:54:15.360She was a friend of J.C. Smollett's, and it was an acquaintance, a chief of staff, I believe, of Michelle Obama who contacted the initial prosecutors in the case to get them to drop charges.
01:54:24.780It was only after President Trump then directed federal officials to reopen the investigation that any of this even came to bear, came to light.
01:54:31.400We found a guy who literally was paying two other black men, with one of whom he had a homosexual intimate relationship, to pose as white supremacists.
01:54:42.540That is how hard it is to find a white supremacist to beat up a famous Hollywood actor, is to have to pay them to be able to have an intimate relationship with one of them.
01:54:49.740But the funny thing, the cherry on top is, I don't know if that's the full extent of what happened here in the BYU case or not, but the part that reminded me of it is the godmother's quote you described reminds me of the defense attorney in the Smollett case, who at the end of the case, she was losing really badly.
01:55:04.580I mean, the trial was embarrassing, right?
01:55:06.560If you're in the defense side here, this is Jussie Smollett is defendant for faking the
01:55:11.300hate crime hoax, that she then claims racism on the part of the judge who she claimed began
01:55:17.540to lunge at her because she was a woman of color in the courtroom.
01:55:34.160This is part of a pattern that repeats itself. And I think it's more interesting if we bring this up, not to embarrass or call out any particular individual from a partisan perspective, from Michelle Obama to Kamala Harris, to this attorney, to this godmother.
01:55:49.140It's more interesting if we're just curious about what is the psychological, pathological state of mind of an entire country that produces this same narrative time and again.
01:56:02.380And one of the things that's uncomfortable for some of us on the right, I don't know how you feel about this, Megan, is that I actually see that pathology spreading to the right, actually, through the narratives of white victimhood identity or conservative victimhood identity.
01:56:17.580And I think that's how the woke left wins, is not with a bang, but with a whimper, where I think conservatives fall into the narrative of saying, well, you're a victim.
01:59:59.900This is about Ohio State and what it's doing now to address racism and racial inequality.
02:00:05.740Let's just give an example of what we're dealing with here.
02:00:09.800This is a guy named John Saylor, who is a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, who had a whole thread on what Ohio State's doing.
02:00:15.720Okay. They recently released the report from their task force on racism and racial inequities, which recommends far reaching changes throughout the university. They'll likely be adopted. The first step is to create a university wide DEI plan. Okay, of course, they want increased mandatory DEI diversity, equity and inclusion training throughout the university. Also, they want added DEI metrics to promotion and tenure evaluations.
02:00:42.980So I don't know how you're supposed to get into the DEI group if you're not already for your tenure application, but okay, good luck.
02:00:50.560They are doing things like at the College of Engineering, they've already added a DEI assessment to annual reviews and removed mandatory ACT and SAT math scores.
02:01:00.660College of Education and Human Ecology has issued a racial justice and equity action plan promising a curriculum overhaul and department level DEI plans.
02:01:09.660The university began a massive hiring initiative aimed almost exclusively at faculty whose
02:01:14.220research addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion.
02:01:18.080Every faculty job listed by the College of Arts and Sciences includes this statement.
02:01:22.540Over the next few years, the Ohio State University is committed to welcoming 350 new faculty
02:01:37.040It's exhausting, but it's required now to be an independent school, to be a public school, to be a university, to get anybody to apply to you.
02:01:49.740It's the source of our national decline.0.94
02:01:51.700I mean, that's that's ultimately the case I make in the book is that, look, at the end of the day, China actually believes in hiring based on merit.0.87
02:01:59.800So the American culture of meritocracy has left oceans to lift up places like China, while it's their Maoist victimhood complexes that have in turn come back and left oceans to depress the United States.0.77
02:02:11.920And you take I mean, this is a very pragmatic effect. And in some sense, Megan, I'm actually weirdly optimistic that it will be the rise of China that forces a reckoning here in the United States to revive the pursuit of excellence, not because we wanted to, but because it was necessary for our very self-preservation, because that's what's going to come back down to.0.69
02:02:32.280when we ask ourselves 20 years from now, what were we doing when we were selecting our engineers0.86
02:02:37.720and our doctors based on DEI quota systems rather than based on SAT scores or MCAT scores or ACT
02:02:44.880scores or based on their competence? And if you want any further evidence for this, not a lot of
02:02:49.380people talk about this, Megan, but let's talk about, let's just take one of these stories all
02:02:53.480the way through of a student, okay, who then to get into college did not have to take the SAT or
02:02:57.940ACT math, that was forgiven, and you're filling a quota system into college. Then that person goes
02:03:02.900to law school where they have the same systems again. Now, or let's take medical school,
02:03:07.320an example, where the MCAT may be evaluated differently on the basis of race. So now you
02:03:11.860have already twice selected, okay? You already have a 400-point differential. That's a lot on
02:03:17.200the SATs for people who aren't familiar with it, between the average Asian score required to enter
02:03:20.920top school versus the average Black student's score required to enter top school. You already
02:03:24.400have gotten in college once, double count number one is then you do the same thing in medical
02:03:29.280school. Double count becomes a triple count when you do the same thing with USMLE step one, which
02:03:34.540is the test required to get your medical certification, the first of three steps required
02:03:39.040to get your medical certification, which just switched to pass fail recently, again, on accounts
02:03:42.980of racial equity. So you now count it thrice over. So there's a really interesting story that I saw
02:03:50.860published recently, which found that among residency programs, there was rampant racism,
02:03:57.740supposedly, amongst engineering, amongst the fellows and amongst the attending physicians
02:04:04.880who are cutting the black residents at a higher rate than white residents. So I wrote a note to
02:04:12.620the author of the story. It relates exactly to the kinds of themes I talk about in my book. I
02:04:16.040thought it was fitting to ask the author, have you considered the possibility that perhaps what's
02:04:20.600happening when these residents are actually responsible for treating patients in the hospital
02:04:24.920that the thing that might be happening is that they're cutting out the residents who are
02:04:28.820underperforming who correlate with the very residents who scored most poorly starting with
02:04:34.260their sat to their mcat to their usmle that were underprepared for their jobs might that be a
02:04:39.860different explanation for what's happening rather than systemic racism which suddenly popped up
02:04:44.600only in the residency part of the system when when black residents were being systematically cut
02:04:48.680at a higher rate than white residents.
02:04:50.640I kid you not, she hadn't thought of that possibility.
02:04:53.260So this is somebody who was earnestly curious.
02:04:55.160She's like, I'm going to have to study that.
02:05:46.440You know, I think the optimistic silver lining here is actually that's a false narrative of history. There were many rises and many falls of Rome. And I think for the folks who say that we're now at the fall of the American experiment, I would say not so fast. I hope that there will be many rises and many falls before our experiment is done.
02:06:02.460But we're going to have to we're going to have to have something that wakes us up.
02:06:05.920And usually it's either a war, the rise of a rival and economic calamity or collapse.
02:06:10.960But whatever that shock to the system may be, I hope it doesn't come to it, but I predict
02:06:15.520it might before we have that kind of wake up call that revives our defining culture of
02:06:57.120shouldn't leave you feeling more lost.
02:06:58.780At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care.
02:07:03.400We're working to build a future where the path to support is clear, and every step forward feels like progress, not another wrong turn.
02:07:10.940Visit CAMH.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care.
02:07:19.000So let's spend a moment on Republican victimhood, which we touched on a minute ago.
02:07:23.560I try to stay objective on these things, but, you know, maybe I'm not. You'll tell me. I actually see a lot of these Republicans, forget election deniers, that's a thing in and of itself, okay? But, like, I see them as, like, actual victims.
02:07:41.480I really do think that the Republicans have been wrongly silenced and excluded from the public square, whether it's media or, you know, having their voices silenced or social media.
02:07:51.140Hollywood, they can't get any sort of, you know, purchase whatsoever.
02:07:54.800Corporate America now doesn't like their worldview.
02:07:57.720You're considered a bigot if you're pro-life.
02:07:59.980You know, it could go down the list.1.00
02:08:01.380And it's not to say that there's no racism on the side of the wokesters or sexism and all that stuff.1.00
02:08:06.380I acknowledge that that still exists in the country.1.00
02:08:08.160It's just nowhere near as massive and widespread as they claim.
02:08:11.480So I won't say that they're fakers when they when they have their claims of victimhood.
02:08:15.440I just think there are a lot of fakers who are sort of glomming on to a dark past history to try to make the problem seem much worse than it is.
02:08:24.440But I know. So so where am I going wrong?
02:08:26.580Because I know you have an issue with Republicans.
02:08:27.980I don't think you're going wrong, Megan. There's 11 chapters in the book.
02:08:30.920One of them is dedicated to conservative victimhood.
02:08:34.040I think that, you know, the ratio is it is it asymmetric in the world the way that you that the way that exactly that you describe?
02:08:40.100I think absolutely it is. I mean, I've been a vocal critic of woke culture through woke ink and my other work over the course of the last year.
02:08:46.200But if I'm writing a book about victimhood culture, it was going to be incomplete without putting a finger on, I think, a rising tide of, you know, if you want to frame it in a racial lens, which I prefer not to.0.72
02:08:56.040But the counterpart to black victimhood is, I think, a rising narrative of white victimhood.0.62
02:09:00.500And I think a conservative victimhood response to to liberal victimhood as well.0.82
02:09:04.540I think it would have been incomplete without staring at that problem with clear eyes.
02:09:08.420And I think that there's two ways to take this discussion. One is a relative case for justification for victimhood, which is, I think, an interesting place to go. I think where I prefer to go with the discussion is where we move from here, whether or not you have a legitimate grievance.
02:09:24.220What does one do when everyone has a grievance emanating in 360 degrees, in a 360 degree direction? I think that that puts us in a permanently, it's an ossified place. We're effectively flash frozen in a tangled web of victimhood.
02:09:40.720And the case I make in the heart of the book is a case for forgiveness. The path from victimhood to excellence runs through forgiveness. And at the end of the day, I see a greater opportunity.
02:09:53.560I see a greater opportunity for the Republican Party, for conservatives to be the party, the only one of the two major parties that defines itself based on the unapologetic pursuit of excellence, based on the rejection of victimhood identities, based on the revival of meritocracy.
02:10:10.040And I trace in that chapter many of the ways in which, look, I think a lot of the industrial victimhood narratives, white victimhood narratives, populist conservative victimhood narratives are grounded in some real economic realities.
02:10:23.980Look, there are some policy choices we have made in this country over the course of the last couple of decades that Donald Trump had his finger out correctly on the finger on the pulse of.
02:10:32.980Look, did free trade grow the size of the overall economic pie globally? It did.
02:10:37.660Was it arguably the right policy course for the United States to have taken at a certain point in time?
02:10:43.480But it also contributed to a world in which the dollar was the reserve currency of the world.
02:10:48.460That's a good thing for many, in many cases, for the United States, for reasons I can get into.
02:10:52.240But one effect of the dollar being the reserve currency of the world is that that makes United States exports incrementally higher than the actual market clearing price would have made them if you didn't have the dollar as the reserve currency of the world,
02:11:03.800Where there's a certain base, including manufacturers in the United States, who are left holding the bag. You layer on subsidies to knowledge-based industries through intellectual property in my former industry, in biotech, for that matter. That's, again, a subsidy from manufacturing industries to knowledge-based industries. And then you look at disproportionate representation in the military, whatever.
02:11:21.360There are strong facts to justify a strong case for conservative victimhood, even in the dimensions that I just described economically that go beyond the elitist discrimination that you laid out.
02:11:35.040But where from here is the question that I ultimately come to, Megan, is do we want to prove a point or do we actually have a nation left at the end of it?
02:11:43.540And I make a case for the revival of a shared national identity, because without that, we're just a bunch of, you know, we're just a bunch of a bunch of human automatons, pounds of flesh roaming the plains of America.
02:11:56.220I get it. But we're talking about tactics right now. We're talking about tactics.
02:12:00.920OK, so why like we've been having this debate at nation and nationwide and on the show as well about, for example, in cancel culture, which I know you're 100 percent against and you've defended a lot of people who have been swept up in it.
02:12:15.140Why not fight fire with fire? Why not go after the cancelers?
02:12:19.040Why not celebrate when Chrissy Teigen gets canceled?1.00
02:12:21.460Because she celebrated the downfall of everybody on the right who went down like here's a taste of your own medicine.
02:12:26.720How do you like it when one of yours goes down? Who's Chrissy Teigen going to try to cancel now?
02:12:32.000No one. Right. Like, how are we going to get them to see the error of their ways without fighting
02:12:36.820fire with fire? I see the appeal of fighting fire with fire. I just tend to find that water is often
02:12:42.320more effective at fighting fire. And at the end of the day, you know, if we engage in this victimhood
02:12:48.120Olympics that I was referring to earlier, this oppression Olympics, victimhood Olympics,
02:12:51.900there is no gold medalist in the end it is america that loses as a nation and at the end of the day
02:12:58.840it's going to fall on someone we have a vacuum of leadership i think the best fighting chance is for
02:13:03.620conservatives in this country to lead the way to filling that void of national identity with
02:13:08.660something far more meaningful than just an impeachment of the other side by hypocrisy
02:13:13.160because i can tell you from the couple of years of doing that myself i mean i'm i'm talking to
02:13:17.520myself and preaching to myself as much as you're preaching to anyone else if i look at even much
02:13:21.740what I didn't woke in was impeachment by hypocrisy. Where does that leave us? Are we actually that much
02:13:26.420better off as a mission without without laying out a path forward? And so I made some cases for
02:13:31.680some provocative ideas in the book, a revival of civic duty. I think that we talk a lot about
02:13:36.740freedom and liberty. And I talk a lot about reviving the path to excellence through the
02:13:40.720system of free market capitalism, where everyone can be the best version of their individual self.
02:13:45.420But I think we're missing half the discussion. If we don't also talk about the revival of civic
02:13:50.960duty and civic identity and the revival of the idea of what it means to be a citizen and the
02:13:55.340obligations and civic duties that come with that. The title of the book is entitled A Theory of
02:14:00.300Duty. It's a play on John Rawls' famous A Theory of Justice. That was a North Star for much of the
02:14:06.240liberal movement for much of the latter 20th century. I think that A Theory of Duty might be,
02:14:11.720as I call in the book, to borrow from an expression of David Hume, our missing shade of red in the
02:14:17.040conservative movement. It is easy to tear something down. It is a lot harder to fill
02:14:22.380what we've torn down with an affirmative new vision instead. I don't promise to have,
02:14:27.480how could I, to have all the answers in this particular book, but I do think that that's
02:14:32.520at least the conversation we need to start having more on the right, or else the thing that we
02:14:36.900actually care about, preserving and having a nation left at the end of it, we may have won
02:14:40.900the argument on the, what should we say, the fallen shackles of a Pyrrhic victory. And I think
02:14:48.460that at the end of the day, that's not what I think any of us want in our capacity, not as
02:14:52.140conservatives, but as Americans. That's going to have to start at some point. I figured we might
02:14:55.620as well start today. You mentioned forgiveness. You know, how does, you write in the book about
02:15:00.600a young Indian friend of yours who had like the greatest grades and the perfect SATs and got
02:15:06.000rejected from everybody i mean for all the top institutions how does this person forgive how does
02:15:10.980this person become part of the solution like what what is that person supposed elaborate on the
02:15:15.580story if you don't mind and then tell us what plays out he's a he's a young guy entering college
02:15:20.180now so he's a guy who had whatever i forget the exact score 1550 let's call it in the sat and
02:15:25.320above 4.0 gpa call it a 4.5 plus gpa great extracurricular activities appear to be a good
02:15:31.540writer and there's and i'll preface this by saying as best somebody can tell there's nothing wrong
02:15:35.640with this kid, applies to 15 of the top 30 universities in the country, gets rejected from
02:15:40.900every single one of them. Now, put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's getting that rejection
02:15:45.740one after another. I mean, at a certain point, the question is, what's wrong with me? And we've
02:15:50.460set up the system to work that way, because Harvard, for example, my alma mater, and I think
02:15:55.080one of the worst perpetrators of this anti-Asian discrimination, has set itself up to justify and
02:16:00.180meet the standards of historical affirmative action laws to say that they're not discriminating
02:16:03.780based on race. They're just using other attributes like personality score. It's your personality.
02:16:09.420It's amazing. It's actually just codified. You thought you were making the problem better. You
02:16:13.020made it 10 times worse. And it's the same thing they did with respect to the so-called Harvard's
02:16:17.760words, not mine, the Jewish problem that Harvard had only decades ago. And so at the end of the
02:16:23.820day, put yourself in the shoes of this kid. You know, it's not the end of the world. He's going
02:16:26.720to get into a perfectly fine state school. He's going to go on and get a great education and live
02:16:30.400and live a normal life. Well, look, if you're in his shoes, he's still the same talent that
02:16:34.740should have gotten into one of the nation's top schools. Maybe we can even reinvent our
02:16:39.520definition of what it means to be a top school. The top schools are the schools that we call the
02:16:43.620top schools 30 years ago, aren't meritocratic institutions. Why on earth should the places
02:16:47.620that I went, Harvard and Yale be permanently, permanently crowned as the top schools for the
02:16:52.760next century when they're not actually good question. So what do we do from here? Part of
02:16:57.140it's not just forgiveness and some sort of passivity and some sort of, you know, you know,
02:17:00.680I'm not, I don't, I don't aim to be a theological figure here by, by high-mindedness that's beyond
02:17:05.340my pay grade. But I mean, in terms of, I use forgiveness more as a self-interested form of
02:17:10.080that forgiveness. That's the sort of Kantian case, the Immanuel Kant self-interested rationality.
02:17:15.440People miss that Immanuel Kant's version of the golden rule came not from a belief in Christ or
02:17:20.880belief in God, but a belief in cold-hearted rationality, that rationality demanded that
02:17:26.100you treat others as you want to be treated, because that's ultimately what empowers him to
02:17:30.240say that, you know what, I might've gone to that state school, but you know what, the state school
02:17:32.840might actually become what it means to have gone to a good school because they were smart enough
02:17:36.220to accept me. And I was smart enough to be able to work hard and still make my own way in this
02:17:40.260world. And so that story is still yet to be written. So the story isn't over yet, but I would
02:17:44.920prefer to see it go in that direction through the revival of meritocracy, through new structures,
02:17:49.620through new institutions, rather than to wallow in one's own victimhood and expect recompense or
02:18:14.860I heard a great quote in a book I'm reading.
02:18:18.520It was, suffering is universal, victimhood is a choice.
02:18:22.060And so if we decide to choose victimhood more and more and more on both sides, we wind up changing the whole American experiment. We find out very soon we were never Rome. We were something else entirely. We were Carthage, which I didn't go to Harvard. So explain Carthage and how we might be Carthage instead of Rome and China might be Rome.
02:18:47.540Well, so I draw an extended allegory in the book between the Punic Wars, between Rome and Carthage, the two great empires of their day.
02:18:56.420We indulge ourselves by asking ourselves whether we were Rome.
02:19:00.840Greg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs famously said in a way that was supposed to be a critical assessment of America that we might be Rome, referring to the fall.
02:19:08.880The thing I say in the book is the Roman Empire lasted thousands of years.
02:19:13.960We might actually be Carthage, one of the other empires that Rome went on to defeat at many points along the way. This was one of them. And one of the islands that drew them into conflict was Sicily. I worry that Taiwan might be our modern version of Sicily.0.79
02:19:28.620And that if, you know, there's the famous thought experiment of the Thucydides trap, Graham Allison popularized it, which said that effectively when you have an empire in decline and another rising empire, they're inevitably destined to enter into physical conflict.0.52
02:19:42.640Well, that maps on pretty well to where we are, not only with Rome and Carthage a couple thousand years ago, but with America and China today.
02:19:50.640And so I do spend some time going into the book into some detail on what's at stake.
02:19:54.260I mean, why does China care about invading Taiwan?
02:19:58.120It's not just about hubris. People. This is not Putin invading Ukraine. People miss this about Xi Jinping. They're playing a long game. Taiwan is the mothership of the global semiconductor industry. Taiwan Semiconductor Company and many other Taiwan TSMC, as well as many other companies in Taiwan.
02:20:17.460on. These are the world's leaders in producing the semiconductors that power our iPhones,
02:20:22.520that power our computers, that power our refrigerators, that power our modern way of
02:20:26.220life. And the United States is decades behind. China has, for their part, been decades behind
02:20:31.700too. So people forget this. As much as we might worry about the Chinese revival of meritocracy
02:20:36.940and they don't have DEI over there, that's a competitive advantage for them and their
02:20:39.820engineers. They do have a command and control system that doesn't actually work to spawn
02:20:43.700innovation either. But one of the things they do have increasingly is military might. They might
02:20:48.040use that, I predict, starting actually next month starts the clock, Megan. I've long said this.
02:20:53.620Xi Jinping takes his third term, unprecedented third term as leader of the Chinese Communist
02:20:58.400Party. It's a two-term system otherwise. He wasn't going to rock the boat before that. He wasn't
02:21:02.660going to take the risk of going to Taiwan before that. But I think the window between next month
02:21:06.460and say January 2025, when the next US president could take office, that's the window we're talking
02:21:12.180about here when I think China is likely to make a move for Taiwan. And that, I think, may call
02:21:17.720America's bluff over the course of the last several years. Our bluff militarily, I go through some
02:21:23.000naval analysis in terms of comparing the strength of our Navy versus China's and comparing how that
02:21:27.420might come to a head over Taiwan. But even our educational bluff in terms of whether or not we
02:21:32.320were prepared with the technical and technological talent and prowess to be able to compete in a0.67
02:21:36.600world where China has full control of the global sun and conductor supply chain rather than the
02:21:40.640United States. And so what's at stake? What if we don't? What if we remain committed to
02:21:45.480victimhood? That's our path to a millennium from now, being a bunch of maybe five centuries from
02:21:51.800now, maybe two centuries from now, being a bunch of Chinese slaves that look like the ones in1.00
02:21:55.040Shenzhen today. Shenzhen may be a preview of what's to come in the state of Indiana or the1.00
02:21:59.160state of California. I say that to be provocative, but not because it's actually so preposterous.
02:22:04.880And at the end of the day, I said this before, I'll say it again, it may be necessity that
02:22:09.360compels us to actually get our act together, to revive merit, to revive that shared pursuit of
02:22:15.240excellence. I hope that my book or other speakers on this topic, I hope efforts through the private
02:22:20.920sector, like what I'm trying to do through Strive in Our Economy, through others. I hope brave
02:22:24.600leaders who step up in our different institutions can compel a better return to our path towards
02:22:30.020excellence in the meantime. But if it's not going to happen organically, it's going to happen out
02:22:34.540of necessity. And I predict that that biggest catalyst that I can see in the next couple of
02:22:38.780is the rise of China, particularly catalyzed by its intentions coming to a head through its
02:22:44.740invasion or else a blockade of Taiwan, which is going to hit us here at home far harder than
02:22:49.320Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine ever did. I mean, if God forbid we ever find ourselves in
02:22:54.540a military conflict with China, we'll be well served if we can do more than just sit there
02:22:57.940and count the number of diverse members of their Navy. Well, they don't have as many people of0.95
02:23:03.860color or trans soldiers as we do. So we should, well, no. Vivek, you have a way of shining a1.00
02:23:09.500light on all these issues that's unlike anybody else. It's nice and clear. I'm sad we didn't even
02:23:13.900get to the ESG corporate war that Vivek is single-handedly fighting, but buy the book and
02:23:18.820support him for reasons that should be obvious to you having listened to him. Thanks for listening
02:23:23.360to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
02:23:27.240maybe it's just a phase you're going through you'll get over it i can't help you with that
02:23:37.680the next appointment is in six months you're not alone finding mental health support shouldn't
02:23:44.740leave you feeling more lost at cam h we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care
02:23:50.120we're working to build a future where the path to support is clear and every step forward feels
02:23:55.320like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care.