The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 10, 2026


PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ The Right Loses Until Young Men Win

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1545

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

155.35

Word count

3,552

Sentence count

173

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Ahhhhhhh! 0.94
00:00:14.000 So hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now I've pulled out the comfy chair. 0.91
00:00:19.000 I've pulled out the comfiest chair we've got this because I'm feeling a bit tired.
00:00:23.000 and the reason is the midterms and I was very good on the night I did not stay up until like
00:00:31.560 11am the following morning to watch the results come in even though I normally do for election
00:00:36.340 stuff being a bit of a political junkie now I did sensibly go to bed but then ever since then
00:00:41.280 that was three days ago ever since then there's just so much politics going on I can't really
00:00:46.680 can't really resist and I'm dipping into it and I find that I'm mellowing a bit because
00:00:52.540 my first reaction was anger and and it's it's not anger because oh no what a surprising result I
00:01:01.200 mean this result was was incredibly predictable and it's been lumbering towards us like something
00:01:07.920 out of a bad 70s horror movie where the thing just shuffles towards you incredibly slowly
00:01:15.500 and you think oh no that's not going to catch the uh catch the actor or actresses is it because it's
00:01:21.980 just slowly shuffling towards you and then it does um i mean that that was pretty much the
00:01:27.240 result of the election wasn't it just shuffling shuffling oh this is going to be really bad
00:01:32.320 three months later it's like yeah it's still going to be bad and then another three months
00:01:38.340 And then it arrives, right?
00:01:40.780 And so nobody is surprised, but still a bit angry
00:01:45.500 because of what was thrown away.
00:01:48.360 However, what I found is anger was not then followed by despair.
00:01:54.020 It wasn't.
00:01:55.460 And that's where I'm seeing a lot of my US friends at the moment.
00:01:58.640 They're in the despair stage.
00:02:00.420 It's like, well, it's done.
00:02:01.680 Republic is over.
00:02:04.160 Off we go into the sweet night.
00:02:05.840 communists will rule america forever um it's done texas turn blue yeah it's finished
00:02:14.100 i'll let you finish pack it up go home oh no we can't go home um because even for those of you 0.99
00:02:20.040 who are anglo that's going to shit as well back in back in uh back in england as well as i'm only 0.90
00:02:25.520 too painfully aware but but i'm not there i'm looking at this and thinking 0.98
00:02:31.340 actually i think i think there's a there's a bloody big silver lining here
00:02:38.140 i'm seeing something very positive that it that maps quite consistently onto everything i've been
00:02:44.500 talking about in brokonomics so i'm going to take you why um i'm actually optimistic i mean not right
00:02:52.300 now obviously maybe not even for 2028 but uh big picture assuming that the republic can survive
00:03:01.240 a few years which it should be able to I mean it's done whatever it is like 250 now assuming
00:03:06.300 it can get through a couple more I think there's upside coming and so I wanted to give you a bit
00:03:12.900 of hope but let's start off with why am I why did I start off as angry and I did a segment on the
00:03:20.020 podcast but a segment is it's very tight it's half an hour you've got other people talking
00:03:25.380 if you've got you know a number of points to make well you've got to you've got to support a
00:03:31.800 a premies at the end that you want to get to you kind of have to be quite rapid fire and you always
00:03:38.360 get people in the comments who didn't mention the one thing that they were thinking of and therefore
00:03:43.340 they've decided it completely validates the whole thing because you didn't just just didn't have time
00:03:48.540 to start talking about their one bugbear i can go into a bit more detail now but that was where that
00:03:54.540 That was the morning after.
00:03:55.960 That was when I stood in the angry phase.
00:03:57.640 And why was I angry?
00:03:58.900 I mean, it's probably the same reasons that you started off angry
00:04:01.340 if you haven't already gone into despair,
00:04:03.620 which is, you know, Trump had it all on a bloody silver platter, didn't he?
00:04:07.800 I mean, he had the popular vote.
00:04:10.640 He had, what, seven swing states.
00:04:12.940 He had the House.
00:04:13.840 He had the Senate.
00:04:15.520 He had a 6-3 Supreme Court.
00:04:20.020 So, yeah, all served up.
00:04:21.960 There you go.
00:04:22.900 All of that.
00:04:24.540 Now, I know that the Senate was 53, and you need 60 for it to be airtight.
00:04:30.160 And then people will say on top of that, oh, there's like three, four, five wrong-uns on there.
00:04:37.960 Definition of who is a wrong-un and how many there are varies depending on which Republican you're speaking to.
00:04:44.240 But, you know, Collins, obviously.
00:04:46.620 But Rand Paul, I actually like Rand Paul.
00:04:48.820 I actually like, I mean, mostly.
00:04:50.820 I preferred his dad.
00:04:51.700 Anyway, I'm getting off topic.
00:04:53.340 He had everything.
00:04:53.920 And, okay, he didn't have, like, a supermajority in the bloody Senate
00:04:58.900 or anything like that.
00:05:00.900 But he couldn't charge through all the procedural stuff.
00:05:07.420 Okay, fine, I'll give you that.
00:05:10.700 But he had a lot.
00:05:11.860 I mean, he had more than you could reasonably ask for as a president.
00:05:17.220 Or at least everything you could reasonably ask for as a president.
00:05:20.780 On top of that, he had a bunch of new voters.
00:05:23.920 He secured young men.
00:05:26.260 He's lost them decisively now. 0.99
00:05:28.560 He secured the working classes. 0.94
00:05:30.820 I mean, even Latinos and independents.
00:05:33.860 He won the popular vote, like I said.
00:05:35.180 And he had a strong anti-establishment mandate.
00:05:40.700 He could have done a hell of a lot on immigration, accountability reforms.
00:05:47.640 He could have pushed a lot of American first stuff.
00:05:50.060 and you get around in 2026
00:05:54.260 and the Democrats
00:05:56.020 I take Congress
00:05:56.840 I take the Senate
00:05:59.040 and his opportunity
00:06:02.080 for doing anything durable
00:06:03.520 has dropped off a cliff
00:06:06.200 and everybody says it's Iran 1.00
00:06:07.940 and I said it's Iran
00:06:10.240 to be fair I said it was Iran
00:06:12.400 and generational divide
00:06:13.600 and then I thought about it more
00:06:16.180 and I think
00:06:17.060 I think I'm wrong
00:06:19.200 I think this ain't deeper than that.
00:06:20.560 I think there's a common thread that connects both of the two,
00:06:24.300 which, once I thought about it, made me realise that actually,
00:06:27.500 no, there is upside to this.
00:06:29.540 But, I mean, for the sake of completeness, I mean,
00:06:31.420 this is a brokenomics of all.
00:06:32.860 I've got a bit more time.
00:06:33.660 I'm not going to get interrupted by anyone apart from myself.
00:06:36.480 You know, we might as well talk about his other failures as well
00:06:39.100 because there's lots of them.
00:06:40.400 For a start, it was just all executive orders,
00:06:44.680 which is fantastic for the first 100 days.
00:06:46.800 For the first 100 days, absolutely.
00:06:48.240 Get in there, fire out all of these executive orders.
00:06:52.100 None of them are durable.
00:06:53.280 All of them could be overturned with a pen.
00:06:55.900 He didn't like legislating.
00:06:57.120 He didn't like negotiating with the House and Senate,
00:07:00.360 which he could have done.
00:07:03.080 Yes, I understand there's obstacles.
00:07:05.080 Yes, I understand he didn't have 60 senators.
00:07:07.260 All of that, he had as much as a president could reasonably ask for.
00:07:12.680 And it would have taken work to get durable stuff over the line.
00:07:18.240 but he's temperamentally disinclined to do that.
00:07:21.620 So that was my first one.
00:07:23.400 Okay, yes, Thune, fine.
00:07:27.140 And yes, he didn't have 60 senators,
00:07:30.020 but I really think he could have done a deal.
00:07:35.640 He just had to approach Congress
00:07:41.820 as something to be negotiated with.
00:07:45.080 Doge.
00:07:46.740 Can you remember the energy around Doge?
00:07:48.640 It was fantastic, wasn't it?
00:07:51.940 Could have done so much.
00:07:54.080 Could have done so much.
00:07:56.280 Found a few hundred million and then basically packed it in.
00:07:59.760 And it would appear that, you know,
00:08:01.820 a decent amount of that couple of hundred billion
00:08:04.740 is just going to get rolled back.
00:08:07.640 Nothing durable.
00:08:08.820 Again, didn't work with Parliament.
00:08:11.780 to embed a lot of it, make the changes at the level
00:08:16.620 where you could meaningfully make changes.
00:08:19.740 Immigration, he min-maxed, and by that I mean he minimised
00:08:23.720 the effectiveness of deportations while maximising 0.78
00:08:27.860 the pushback that it generated.
00:08:31.860 Could have handled that much more sort of procedurally.
00:08:35.980 Instead, it was kind of very gruff in your face.
00:08:38.340 but yeah lots of sound of fury fairly minimal results i think he deported something like nine
00:08:43.880 percent of the illegal population i mean don't get me wrong it's not nothing or was it six
00:08:48.860 i'll have to check that whatever it is let's say it's nine percent of the illegal population
00:08:53.440 it's not nothing that is important but biden held the bloody door open for four years and
00:09:01.620 was it 10 20 million that came across guess we never know and then a few decades will roll by
00:09:08.760 and then they get a deal won't they they'll be um uh there'll be some relief and they're um
00:09:15.040 they'll end up getting their citizenship because they've been there long enough
00:09:17.740 you had to go harder um you had to be serious you had to never quit um probably a little bit
00:09:24.620 more procedural actually the thing that you should have done the thing that you should have done is
00:09:29.540 is made it about um the employer because if if employers know that they're getting crippling
00:09:35.520 fines for every illegal worker that they have the system polices itself and you remove the
00:09:40.540 pull factor and then they go home but no no couldn't do that couldn't do that epstein is a
00:09:46.680 big one um i mean that that i mean that showed up uh but there was a difference between
00:09:52.860 you know the rhetoric beforehand we're going to get this sorted we're going to expose it
00:09:57.200 um few token efforts disclose a whole bunch of pages which were interesting
00:10:04.340 number of arrests again all all the all the focus and fury that went into the epstein stuff
00:10:13.980 and then when it came time to apply effort all of that effort seemed to go towards
00:10:20.200 telling people i don't know why you're interested in this this is boring forget it
00:10:27.200 We're not actually going to, where's the accountability?
00:10:31.620 The other thing that confused me, I mean, I'm not so much angry about this one
00:10:34.560 because quite frankly, I wasn't the one being shot at,
00:10:37.200 but the assassination attempts.
00:10:39.280 If somebody shot me in the head, I think I'd put a bit more effort
00:10:42.480 into exposing that afterwards.
00:10:46.020 You know, you've got, was it Butler in Florida?
00:10:50.780 The Florida guy, the guy on the golf course, he's been arrested.
00:10:54.480 I think he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus seven years.
00:10:58.800 And, of course, the Butler kid is dead.
00:11:02.380 But there was a lot of weird stuff around there,
00:11:04.360 very weird failings for the Secret Service.
00:11:08.960 And then there was all that weird stuff about the phone data
00:11:11.720 for somebody working out of an FBI office
00:11:14.840 who was visiting that kid a number of times,
00:11:19.820 the only 19-year-old in the world
00:11:21.960 who doesn't have a social media profile.
00:11:24.480 and Trump didn't really seem that bothered about it,
00:11:28.220 and that just kind of went away, which is odd.
00:11:30.220 The corruption, that isn't fun.
00:11:33.260 There are these people who,
00:11:35.920 every time the administration does something that moves markets,
00:11:41.300 there's always someone who jumps in half an hour early,
00:11:46.160 makes an enormous amount of money on something
00:11:48.320 that they could only know if they were inside the administration,
00:11:50.880 and that just happens every time unshamedly this time.
00:11:56.980 Plus the crypto interests.
00:12:01.200 I mean, I like Bitcoin.
00:12:02.360 I don't like crypto scams.
00:12:06.020 And was it Trumpcoin or some nonsense like that?
00:12:09.100 You remember I defended tariffs.
00:12:11.800 Me and AA had that debate where he was saying it was going to move the midterms.
00:12:14.900 I don't think it moved the midterms.
00:12:16.200 I don't think it was a factor in the midterms.
00:12:18.500 But, I mean, the midterms are so bad,
00:12:20.100 I suppose you could make an argument that they moved it at that point.
00:12:23.140 But no, I don't think it's that.
00:12:25.040 I think it was part of the right thinking, nowhere near enough follow-through.
00:12:30.360 Because if you're going to have proper economic strategy and tariffs are the first step of that,
00:12:36.420 you then need to do investment into energy manufacturing, your own supply side stuff in the US domestically.
00:12:44.460 And then it comes together as a proper trade strategy or economic strategy.
00:12:50.100 um it didn't really come together did it at all so so there's i mean that that that one i think
00:12:59.000 is a more minor one or maybe that's just coke because i supported it so maybe it's a bloody
00:13:02.220 disaster who knows fiscal policy massive deficits are continuing enormous interest costs
00:13:09.800 debt going through the roof bugger all done about that i don't even see much attempt to do anything
00:13:17.820 about that um then there was the yeah patronage politics you know Massey out I like Massey
00:13:27.280 Massey was good uh but no no we had to put we had to put enormous effort didn't we Trump into
00:13:32.840 into getting rid of Massey to get get him out the door um so that we could get people like I don't
00:13:38.740 know the vague um throw support behind him and it just it just appeared to become personal loyalty
00:13:46.360 over quality that's that's that's what it looked like a lot to me you know weird candidate selection
00:13:52.720 um that paxton guy in texas i mean i'm well uh i i i might struggle to make a case there
00:14:02.260 um okay fine so so weird weird choices over who's going to be selected and who's going to be
00:14:10.840 drummed out um and it just didn't use power effectively you know where was where was the
00:14:19.640 decisive authority why when charlie kirk got shot did the hammer not come down on antifer
00:14:26.880 i don't get it you know that the left if the dems were in power and one of their heroes got taken
00:14:35.740 out, they would go scorched earth. And we know that because of what happened after what
00:14:42.460 they call the coup of January 6th. They went scorched earth. They put people in solitary
00:14:47.620 confinement for four years for just having been near the place. That's what the left
00:14:55.340 does. They will bring lawsuits. They will go scorched earth. They will destroy staffers. 0.98
00:15:06.880 Even relatively minor junior staffers, they will make their life a living hell if they've
00:15:11.880 had anything to do with the GOP. And what did Trump do? Bugger all. Antifa is still
00:15:21.840 running around perfectly happily uh none of the people who prosecuted him got any comeuppance
00:15:27.280 me nothing just nothing i don't understand it i really don't get it i don't get it so anyway i
00:15:32.880 was looking at all of that and and that's why i was a little bit despondent with all of this stuff
00:15:39.520 um i i was looking at a pattern that said to me look winning an election does not mean
00:15:46.400 changing the system didn't look like that at all having executive power is not the same
00:15:52.240 thing as having structural power and you had all these radical promises i mean i've just
00:15:58.880 listed a whole load let me take epstein we take take any one of them you had all these radical
00:16:03.840 promises and you could have established political incentives and institutions that push this stuff
00:16:12.720 But no.
00:16:14.180 No.
00:16:15.800 And it feels like the party won control of the government.
00:16:22.160 But the movement did not win control of the party.
00:16:28.100 Nothing lasted in that.
00:16:30.820 And that's before, all of that is before I get onto Iran.
00:16:36.240 And this is the one that everybody's focused on,
00:16:38.900 including myself initially.
00:16:40.080 you know you got well i mean tucker and megan kelly and bannon and well just i mean all of them
00:16:49.560 all of them are are focusing on that and then on the other side you've got your levins and your
00:16:54.560 shapiro's and your hannity's and you know obviously they don't stand up well they're
00:16:58.640 getting a kicking quite quite well i mean even the vice president even vance has acknowledged that
00:17:03.560 yeah it's Iran
00:17:04.620 it's Iran 0.99
00:17:07.620 it gives them space to 0.96
00:17:09.960 you know
00:17:10.340 the 2024
00:17:11.560 Trump voters
00:17:12.740 being disillusioned
00:17:13.860 and he does
00:17:17.100 distinguish between
00:17:18.760 defections
00:17:20.860 from abstentions
00:17:21.800 because originally
00:17:22.360 I thought like
00:17:23.180 on the original segment
00:17:24.040 I thought that it all
00:17:25.640 came down to
00:17:26.680 Republicans
00:17:28.380 you know
00:17:30.100 young men
00:17:30.700 staying home
00:17:33.980 Because, I mean, of course, why would they vote for the Democrats, 0.99
00:17:36.160 which is literally the kill all white men party? 0.67
00:17:38.920 Young men didn't just stay home. 0.99
00:17:42.880 They actually voted for the kill all white men party. 0.89
00:17:48.620 And, yeah, sure, there is evidence to suggest that of the Republicans 0.91
00:17:53.380 who actually voted, they didn't care much about Iran.
00:17:57.140 i think something like only 35 said it had an influence on their vote iran of the republicans
00:18:05.760 who voted but yeah that's a key thing it's of the republicans who voted what about the republicans
00:18:12.260 who didn't vote that's something else there's there's a real survivorship bias when you look
00:18:17.620 at it like that and of course massey who already talked about i mean he got binned um for i mean
00:18:26.100 a big part was opposing the Iran war um well before the election you know all of that all of
00:18:33.360 that is is is baked in and and you know I make the argument some people say oh now it's the economy
00:18:39.480 Iran is the economy is downstream in a lot of ways of Iran and and people think you know um
00:18:47.580 you know the only way that Iran can show up is higher gas prices I mean no no it doesn't
00:18:52.700 If you get an energy disruption, it reprices the entire stack.
00:18:56.280 I mean, yes, a major influence is going to be, you know, your gas prices, as you call them, your petrol and your diesel prices.
00:19:04.700 But then that filters through to all the transport, all business costs, well, almost all business costs, industry.
00:19:13.360 It just takes capacity out of the whole system.
00:19:15.640 Energy is the multiplier at the start of the system of which all downstream stuff the economy is then affected by.
00:19:22.120 When you say, oh, no, it's got nothing to do with the Iran war,
00:19:24.720 it's just because the economy is poor. 0.75
00:19:26.140 Well, yeah, but that's what tipped the economy
00:19:30.720 from a level that you were happy with
00:19:32.140 to a level that you weren't happy with.
00:19:35.400 Take farmers.
00:19:36.240 90% of US farmers are losing money now.
00:19:39.280 And a big part of that is because the first thing
00:19:42.480 that oil had to knock out from the demand destruction
00:19:48.780 was petrochemical feedstocks.
00:19:51.660 So, yeah, no wonder farmers are getting an absolute kicking.
00:19:56.080 So, I mean, it aggravated a developing affordability problem,
00:19:59.940 essentially, is what I'm saying.
00:20:02.080 And then beyond that, beyond the downstream consequences
00:20:06.240 on the economy, you've got this growing, you know,
00:20:11.400 foreign policy divide.
00:20:14.500 I don't think a lot of Americans like it when they saw that image
00:20:17.300 of Trump.
00:20:19.980 I mean, he's the president of the United States, for God's sake, 0.80
00:20:22.160 pulling out the chair for Netanyahu,
00:20:23.860 Netanyahu sitting down and Trump sliding it back in.
00:20:26.420 I mean, can't Trump find somebody to do that for him?
00:20:29.540 Why is the US president acting as a butler, Netanyahu? 0.58
00:20:35.980 And that's old, of course.
00:20:37.600 That's long before this.
00:20:39.780 And then you get this happening as well.
00:20:42.760 You had Rubio coming out and saying,
00:20:44.900 well, you know, they were going to go anyway,
00:20:46.800 so of course we had to go because...
00:20:49.520 You know, we can't stand alone for whatever reason.
00:20:52.900 We couldn't just say, well, off you go.
00:20:54.360 Then best of luck.
00:20:56.280 You know, Rubio said, well, they were going to go,
00:20:58.040 so therefore we had to go.
00:21:00.120 We could ask them not to.
00:21:01.520 We could plead with them not to.
00:21:03.920 But once they've decided, well, that's it,
00:21:05.640 the U.S. military is committed.
00:21:08.540 And younger Americans in particular really question this.
00:21:11.420 If you're over 50, you're broadly in line with the Iran war.
00:21:14.840 If you're under 35, you are not. 0.93
00:21:17.580 Not at all. 1.00
00:21:19.520 because for older Americans, they've got this sort of mythos continuum
00:21:28.240 that they've been a part of, and it's all one glorious chain
00:21:33.180 going from World War I, sorry, World War II, the founding mythos.
00:21:38.760 I'm not saying that World War II is a myth.
00:21:41.660 I'm saying that mythos.
00:21:43.600 the world war ii mythos is is the great shining example of excellence is is world war ii the most
00:21:53.020 noble time of all times where we strode forth and made a foreign intervention and everything was
00:21:59.780 great and noble and perfect and that and then that then kicked off a whole chain of interventions
00:22:06.200 forever. From then on, every single military intervention was justified
00:22:12.060 because it all comes from the founding mythos, which is the post-war liberal consensus.
00:22:22.620 Foreign interventions are always justified because it goes back to the most glorious moment,
00:22:27.720 which is our founding, our modern founding. And everything before that gets rather forgotten.
00:22:34.240 them. If you enjoyed that content and of course you did because you are a smart
00:22:38.860 person then why don't you go over to lotuseaters.com where you can watch the
00:22:43.280 whole episode for a little as five pounds a month which really is not much
00:22:48.220 money at all and you get loads of really good content.