Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - The Hidden Truth Behind Affirmative Action with Richard Hanania | The TRUTH Podcast #10

00:00:02.000 All right.

00:00:23.000 My good friend, Richard Hanania, I've gotten to know you over the last couple of years.

00:00:29.000 We had a mutual friend, Chris, who I went to law school with, has been a great friend and ally of mine and vice versa, a fellow basketball fan we were in law school.

00:00:38.000 But he told me, he always told me, there's this guy, Richard, you really need to talk to him.

00:00:42.000 You know, Chris is not with us on the right, right?

00:00:46.000 He's somewhere else on the political spectrum, but independent thinker.

00:00:50.000 But he always said, you know, these two guys need to get together.

00:00:53.000 He finally put us together.

00:00:55.000 And I think you got, you were helpful in getting me my first TV hit.

00:01:00.000 I've been now on TV, like literally hundreds of times in the last couple of years.

00:01:05.000 I think one of my first or second TV hits, you connected me with some producer long before I was doing television.

00:01:09.000 So that was cool.

00:01:11.000 But then I wrote Woke Inc., and there's, you know, widely acclaimed book.

00:01:17.000 It was really positively received, number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

00:01:21.000 And then there's just like this really critical review that just throws the water on the spreading fire of Woke Inc.

00:01:29.000 And who do I read?

00:01:30.000 It's none other than Richard Heneno, which I got to say I respected because I get praise from a lot of people.

00:01:36.000 I get thoughtless criticism from a lot of people, but thoughtful criticism.

00:01:42.000 That's worth something, actually.

00:01:43.000 And so, you know what?

00:01:44.000 I learned a couple of things from that piece you wrote.

00:01:47.000 I've actually taken some of the points and run with them.

00:01:50.000 Even since writing Woke Inc.

00:01:51.000 and Nation of Victims, who would have ever thought we're human beings that evolve our thoughts?

00:01:55.000 They're not static over time.

00:01:57.000 And you're one of the people, one of the rare people I have to thank for pushing me beyond where I was Even as recently as two years ago.

00:02:10.000 And, you know, I know you're the same way too.

00:02:12.000 You're one of those rare people who's open to doing this thing that we don't do often enough in our discourse, which is changing our mind.

00:02:20.000 So we're going to get into a, you know, we're going to get into a controversial topic today.

00:02:27.000 But before we do, you know, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:02:32.000 I know about you, but, you know, we've never really had a I think we share that in common.

00:02:47.000 Yeah.

00:02:47.000 Tell me about yours.

00:02:48.000 So, yeah, Vivek, I mean, that was a nice sort of rundown of our history together.

00:02:53.000 Yeah, I was approached by American Affairs to review Woke Inc.

00:02:57.000 And I wasn't thinking, oh, Vivek will like this or maybe Vivek won't like this.

00:03:00.000 I just sort of put out there when I was thinking about this because I had thought about these Woke issues for a while.

00:03:05.000 And you actually – I was impressed because you reached out to me and we actually started talking more after that.

00:03:12.000 I'm like, oh, this guy's not going to want to have anything to do with me again.

00:03:14.000 I thought most people, I think 9 out of 10 people probably would have had that reaction.

00:03:18.000 So the fact that you took something from it, you weren't mad about it, I mean, you just developed your ideas over time.

00:03:25.000 I was really, really impressed with that and we've been, of course, in touch ever since.

00:03:30.000 So my background is I'm sort of a lapsed academic.

00:03:32.000 I thought I'd be going into academia.

00:03:34.000 I got my PhD in political science from UCLA. I had a fellowship for a few years at Columbia.

00:03:41.000 I'm still affiliated with the University of – I got affiliation with the University of Texas right now.

00:03:47.000 But I started writing more for public consumption.

00:03:50.000 I really didn't like academia.

00:03:51.000 I didn't think that – it wasn't just the politics stuff, which most of your listeners will know about.

00:03:56.000 It's more that the sort of the – even if that didn't exist, it's the sort of the narrowness of the topic.

00:04:01.000 They want you to settle in, research one tiny aspect of sort of human experience or human existence.

00:04:09.000 And if you want to say anything that's substantial about the world, you have to draw from a lot of things.

00:04:13.000 You have to draw from anthropology, psychology, politics, economics, right?

00:04:17.000 These things aren't separate.

00:04:19.000 These separations are artificial.

00:04:21.000 And so I started just writing stuff on the Substack, writing stuff for various publications, and it got a lot of attention.

00:04:28.000 And I said, wow, this writing for a broad audience, saying what I think and being able to take ideas – As they come, change my mind, not being hemmed in by a topic or a method or whatever.

00:04:39.000 This is much better than what I was doing before.

00:04:42.000 As far as what drives me in all this, I'm a big fan of human civilization and human progress.

00:04:50.000 We both share the immigrant background.

00:04:52.000 My parents, they came here as adults from Really, in poverty.

00:04:59.000 And, you know, you see the differences between regions in the U.S. and between populations.

00:05:03.000 And, you know, if you have a historical perspective, you're like, wow, even people who are poor today are infinitely better off than people who were 500 or 1,000 years ago.

00:05:11.000 And the question is, you know, how we got here and sort of how we could maintain what's valuable and how...

00:05:16.000 Can we sort of incorporate new technologies and new challenges that come up?

00:05:22.000 So I've always found these questions sort of fascinating at a very broad sort of meta level, and I feel lucky to be able to write on the topics that I care about.

00:05:32.000 Yeah.

00:05:35.000 I think one of the things I respect about you is you're willing to change your mind.

00:05:40.000 When I look at a lot of my peers in the profession I'm in, very few people have the courage to do that, right?

00:05:47.000 This is something that bothers me about the Republican Party today.

00:05:50.000 Before we get to talking about affirmative action, and that is definitely the theme.

00:05:53.000 I mean, you're the man to talk to about that.

00:05:55.000 It's a core issue for me.

00:05:57.000 We'll get to that.

00:05:58.000 But there's something about even talking about affirmative action that we ought to talk about first, which is this idea of courage.

00:06:04.000 What does it mean to be courageous?

00:06:06.000 Teddy Roosevelt had this expression, right?

00:06:09.000 Speak softly and carry a big stick.

00:06:11.000 To be honest with you, I look at most of the other Republicans today, even the other presidential candidates, and what I see, or would-bes, and what I see is a sad perversion of that.

00:06:20.000 Speak loudly and carry a small stick, which is to say that you become entrenched in a position, speak only to your tribe, speak Puff your chest and say, you know what, if NBC News is mean to me or whatever, I'm not going to talk to them.

00:06:35.000 I'm only going to talk to the people who already agree with me and then boast about free speech without actually living it.

00:06:41.000 I was on CNBC last night.

00:06:43.000 We had a sparring debate with a former Democratic US senator with a host that was, you know, didn't love a lot of what I had to say, but I respected them having me on and I returned that by actually showing up.

00:06:53.000 One of the things I love about you, and I try to embody this as best I can too, is courage isn't acting courageous and puffing your chest after actually having prepped with all of your political consultants to then talk to a bunch of people in a home state that are rallying behind you and standing up and cheering.

00:07:08.000 It's actually engaging with the ideas that you disagree with and even the people who criticize you.

00:07:16.000 And we just don't see that anymore.

00:07:18.000 I mean, I think it's just mostly missing in our politics.

00:07:21.000 I mean, I think one of the would-be entrants to this presidential race, whose actions I love, it disappoints me.

00:07:28.000 And part of me hurts as an American when we say that, oh, I'm not going to engage with somebody who says things that I disagree with.

00:07:34.000 What's your honest take on that?

00:07:36.000 Yeah.

00:07:37.000 So, I mean, the courage thing is interesting.

00:07:39.000 You know, when people say, oh, you know, you're very courageous to say this and that.

00:07:42.000 I say, well, you know, there's men out there who go fight wars, who go die in this or do that.

00:07:46.000 And, you know, I write for a living.

00:07:48.000 I mean, me and you, you know, we're not in the space where we're, you know, losing our lives or, you know, risking our lives on a daily basis or anything like that.

00:07:55.000 So, you know, I think the least we can, you know, the least we can do, the least we owe the world is to actually say what we think.

00:08:00.000 Yeah.

00:08:00.000 And, you know, not be scared.

00:08:02.000 Let the chips fall where they may.

00:08:04.000 You know, I discovered when I started writing things that, you know, there's a market for that.

00:08:07.000 I mean, maybe it's not always the best strategy, but in a world where sort of everyone is just sort of putting their finger up to the wind, being the one person who doesn't do that, I mean, it gives you a little bit of a… I think Trump 2016 really scrambled people's brains for how politics works.

00:08:28.000 They said, oh, you know, Republicans believe X, Y, and Z, and this guy is saying, you know, the opposite of that.

00:08:33.000 Oh, they're not going to like him, and it was – It was more, I think, a lot of the – they just liked the attitude.

00:08:37.000 They liked someone who said stuff who – no matter how the Trump movement and how the presidency turned out, they just liked someone who said stuff who got attacked for it and just stuck to his guns.

00:08:47.000 And so, yeah, there's something about courage and just sort of – I think we've gotten away from that.

00:08:52.000 I think maybe 100 years ago, maybe you'd read the great books.

00:08:56.000 Maybe you'd read about Greek tragedy.

00:08:58.000 You'd read about the Bible.

00:08:59.000 You'd have this sort of moral instruction.

00:09:01.000 I think we've gotten away from that.

00:09:03.000 I think there's a big mental health crisis that I was recently writing about.

00:09:09.000 It's not just a social good.

00:09:11.000 It's good on the individual level.

00:09:13.000 Honesty is just good for the soul.

00:09:15.000 Not everyone can be 100% on us all the time.

00:09:17.000 You're running for office.

00:09:17.000 I don't think you're going to say every single thought that pops into your head.

00:09:20.000 But look, on the spectrum from complete honesty to just sort of being a sniveling politician and just going with the wind, I think we need more people to just go more towards honesty.

00:09:30.000 I think for an individual level and a societal level.

00:09:33.000 I'm going to get pretty close to sharing what goes through my head, actually.

00:09:39.000 And I reserve the right to – Correct for things that I think are wrong because part of the way you explore your own understanding is to get your ideas on the table, hear the best arguments and response.

00:09:49.000 And I just think we have this stultified culture of fear that stops us from doing that.

00:09:56.000 You know, you did talk about the mental health crisis too.

00:09:59.000 So many side eddies here, but...

00:10:02.000 You see it especially among young Americans, right?

00:10:05.000 And I think that one of the things that is causing it, I think, is – one of the things I said when we launched the campaign was we have this hunger for purpose and meaning and identity at a moment when patriotism, faith, family, hard work, the things that used to fill that void have disappeared.

00:10:22.000 But I think it's like two rivers that collide.

00:10:25.000 Okay, that's one of the rivers.

00:10:26.000 The other river that's colliding is this culture that makes young people in particular afraid of expressing themselves.

00:10:33.000 It's like a whitewater rafting analogy.

00:10:35.000 When two rivers collide, you have a rapid that's not twice as powerful, but ten times as powerful as either of them alone.

00:10:41.000 And I think that that's part of what's fueling this so-called mental health crisis.

00:10:50.000 I think it's fueled by this sense of lost sense of purpose with a suppression of your ability to express yourself.

00:11:00.000 Those two are on a collision course.

00:11:02.000 It's no surprise that depression and anxiety and even addiction are on the rise, especially amongst young Americans who suffer that.

00:11:08.000 What do you think?

00:11:09.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, Jonathan Haidt's, you know, Substack has a lot of good recent stuff on this.

00:11:14.000 Yeah, I mean, if you look at the sort of depression, what's happening, you might notice people who are our age or older, even a little bit younger, might not notice it.

00:11:21.000 But if you look at what's happening to like, you know, people 12 to 20, they are in bad shape.

00:11:27.000 I mean, really, any poll question you want to check, you know, you want to check suicide numbers, you want to check rates of depression.

00:11:32.000 The last 10, 15 years have been really bad.

00:11:35.000 Part of it is probably social media.

00:11:37.000 I recently came to the conclusion in a piece.

00:11:39.000 But part of it is also these ideas that have sort of, I think, taken hold of the last 15 years.

00:11:46.000 I mean a lot of the evidence points in that direction.

00:11:48.000 It's hit young girls the worst.

00:11:50.000 It's hit people who identify – young people who identify as liberal the most and – And a lot of the stuff they believe, I mean, it's just – they believe the life is as bad as it's ever going to be.

00:12:00.000 I mean, their belief about inequality is worse than ever.

00:12:05.000 The climate crisis is going to – maybe there's something – there's environmental issues.

00:12:10.000 But just the catastrophizing of the media of the last 10, 15 years driven by algorithms, driven by social media, driven by general hysteria in the culture, it has not been good – it's not good for people.

00:12:21.000 And I think politicians, political leaders, they have a role to play.

00:12:24.000 I mean they can go along with this wave.

00:12:26.000 I think that's why you do see a lot of negativity.

00:12:28.000 I think that a lot of the negativity on the right and the left is driven by people sort of sensing this in the population and just going along with it.

00:12:36.000 But politicians could – I hope so.

00:12:43.000 I mean, rarer than not, but I hope so.

00:12:49.000 So I'm doing this thing.

00:12:50.000 So on this topic of courage, let's get into the topic we were going to talk about, which is affirmative action today.

00:13:00.000 I think it's a passion of yours and mine to end affirmative action in America for once and for all. 0.75

00:13:09.000 It's weird, though, Richard, I think that most Republicans, like nearly all Republicans I talked to, and actually a good number of people who aren't Republican either, agree with this policy.

00:13:19.000 And yet, I don't think, you can correct me if you have knowledge to the contrary, I don't think there has been, ever, a single Republican candidate for U.S. president that has expressly committed to To ending affirmative action in America, which is weird because it's one of the things a US president can actually play a role in effectuating.

00:13:42.000 Certainly no elected president has done it.

00:13:46.000 What do you think is going on there?

00:13:48.000 And then let's get into the meat and the history and the debate and the thick of the debate around this too.

00:13:54.000 So you're – I mean this is something that I've been thinking and writing a lot about.

00:13:57.000 My book Origins of Woke has actually an entire chapter on Republicans and civil rights law and what's actually happened here.

00:14:03.000 So first of all, the issue of affirmative action, it's sort of – It's a thing where they will – they're afraid to talk about it in any real detail and when you – and they have actually talked about it but at the most abstract level.

00:14:15.000 So like politicians have said like, I'm opposed to quotas.

00:14:19.000 Now even democrats, if you go to liberal democrats, they'll say they oppose quotas too.

00:14:22.000 If you go to Alina Kagan or something, they'll say quotas are illegal.

00:14:26.000 So it's a very – at the very abstract level.

00:14:28.000 Okay, but it's quotas.

00:14:29.000 I mean it's just – Exactly, exactly.

00:14:30.000 There's no doubt about it.

00:14:31.000 This is the – Quotas with window dressing.

00:14:34.000 Literally, I mean, in the executive order 11246 that you talk about in those regulations, they talk about goals and timetables.

00:14:43.000 You have a goal.

00:14:44.000 And a timetable.

00:14:45.000 You have goals and timetables, yes.

00:14:47.000 Not a quota.

00:14:48.000 And it will say in the exact same document, no quotas.

00:14:50.000 You have goals.

00:14:51.000 You have goals and a deadline.

00:14:53.000 Yeah.

00:14:54.000 You have a mandate and a deadline to deliver it by.

00:14:57.000 And it's funny.

00:14:58.000 I mean, you could like – you have to set the – you could set the goals yourself on time fields.

00:15:01.000 But look, if they're not happy with it, they'll come after you.

00:15:03.000 Of course.

00:15:04.000 It's quotas.

00:15:05.000 Exactly.

00:15:05.000 Let's just have – let's talk about the issue.

00:15:07.000 It's a racial quota system.

00:15:08.000 Yeah.

00:15:09.000 And to people who don't know Executive Order 11246 who are new to this.

00:15:14.000 So that's an executive order implemented by Lyndon Johnson.

00:15:18.000 That means it didn't go through the democratic elected process of the lawmakers.

00:15:22.000 Right.

00:15:22.000 Lyndon Johnson, by executive order, said that basically anybody who does business with the federal government, federal government contractors, it's not a small segment, it's about 20% of the U.S. workforce covered by companies that fit this description have to effectively adopt these race-based quota systems in order to be able to do business with the federal government.

00:15:42.000 And every president since Lyndon Johnson Including every Republican president from Nixon to Reagan to Bush 1 to Bush 2 to Trump could have taken a pen and crossed it out, and they didn't.

00:15:59.000 And I think the reason is fear of political backlash, but it's weird to me.

00:16:03.000 I mean, some of them have said as much.

00:16:04.000 The policy advisors, I've pressed them on this as to why not.

00:16:07.000 They said we don't want to die on that political hill.

00:16:09.000 But it's weird because they've died on so many other political hills from controversial failed wars to all kinds of other things.

00:16:15.000 I mean, Trump...

00:16:18.000 I think there's a difference between being unafraid and appearing to be unafraid.

00:16:21.000 But he certainly appeared to be unafraid.

00:16:24.000 And yet would not touch this.

00:16:25.000 It's a sort of third rail, untouchable issue.

00:16:29.000 Like, what do you just on the psychology of the...

00:16:32.000 Let's get into the substance in a minute.

00:16:33.000 But just on the psychology of the politics of this, like, why is this a sacred cow you're not supposed to touch?

00:16:40.000 Because I'm all over this.

00:16:41.000 And if I'm making a mistake, I'm still going to keep doing it.

00:16:43.000 But I at least would like to know what it is because I can't even figure it out what exactly is stopping a Republican Party from doing what its base wants to do and even what most of these people in private will agree with me on.

00:16:53.000 So I mean the history here is even more interesting than that.

00:16:56.000 So not only – I mean did Nixon not get rid of this executive order.

00:17:01.000 He expanded it.

00:17:01.000 It was actually the modern affirmative action regime came directly.

00:17:04.000 Wait, say more to me about that.

00:17:05.000 I should know this and I don't.

00:17:06.000 So it was the Philadelphia plan.

00:17:08.000 Basically, it's really funny.

00:17:10.000 Oh, okay, okay.

00:17:11.000 I think I've heard of this actually.

00:17:13.000 Okay, what was it?

00:17:14.000 So Nixon had a plan that he's going to split the white construction workers who are excluding black people, the labor unions from the Democratic Party.

00:17:23.000 So it was actually – and then the Democrats actually revolted in Congress.

00:17:27.000 And the Democrats and Republicans were going to actually overrule this by legislation.

00:17:31.000 And Nixon talked the Republicans into not doing it – and he specifically told us, look, this is going to split labor and the civil rights group.

00:17:38.000 It was almost like too clever by half.

00:17:40.000 And so he just went after the construction industry.

00:17:42.000 His labor department under him – apparently, it doesn't appear he knew this, but the labor department extended it from construction to all federal contractors.

00:17:51.000 There's no record that Nixon even knew.

00:17:53.000 So it's funny.

00:17:54.000 It just started as a war against labor unions. 0.79

00:17:56.000 It ended up being extended through the civil rights bureaucracy to everybody.

00:18:00.000 Nixon, a Republican, expanded the Johnson-era executive order-driven racial quota system.

00:18:07.000 Exactly.

00:18:07.000 And the history of this is just so fascinating because it started out as a way to split the labor unions, the construction workers, against the civil rights people.

00:18:19.000 Basically, the labor unions were this closed space where it would be father to son or whatever.

00:18:23.000 And then Nixon came in and basically said, you're going to have to have basically racial quotas because you've been excluding black people for too long.

00:18:30.000 Really?

00:18:31.000 Exactly, yeah.

00:18:31.000 From the unions?

00:18:32.000 Yeah.

00:18:33.000 So it's like a divide and conquer to fight the unions.

00:18:35.000 It was a divide and conquer.

00:18:35.000 The unions versus the civil rights establishment on the Democratic side.

00:18:39.000 The Democrats in Congress pushed back on this.

00:18:41.000 So Democrats and Republicans were actually going to overrule this, and they were going to pass a law saying that Nixon couldn't do this.

00:18:46.000 He talked the Republicans – Couldn't do – and what is the this?

00:18:49.000 Require quotas in the unions.

00:18:50.000 Exactly.

00:18:51.000 Require the goals and timetables.

00:18:53.000 Goals and timetables means quotas, so I'm just going to keep saying quotas, but I'm going to keep saying quotas because I think it's intentional to call it out for what it is, but I got you.

00:19:00.000 Yeah, if someone Googles the Nixon support quotas, you'll find all these quotations.

00:19:04.000 I am against quotas, and everyone else will say it's a lie.

00:19:06.000 Yeah, so these racial quotas.

00:19:09.000 And then...

00:19:10.000 So then that's how he could – he talked the Republicans into this divide and conquer strategy on the left.

00:19:15.000 Then his labor department expanded it from – this was just construction, government-funded construction contracts.

00:19:21.000 They expanded it to all federal contractors and from the historical record – All it says is you must take affirmative action to make sure you do not discriminate race, gender, sexual orientation.

00:19:36.000 So that doesn't actually say quotas or timetables or anything.

00:19:39.000 It could be read as just a non-discrimination, very basic thing.

00:19:43.000 And so this really took off.

00:19:44.000 So the Labor Department under Nixon is the one that actually implemented the goals and timetables for the private sector.

00:19:50.000 Not Johnson.

00:19:51.000 Not Johnson, no.

00:19:52.000 Johnson signed the EO, but the EO became the basis of what Nixon did later.

00:19:56.000 Under the same EO, under the authority of the same EO, the 11246. Exactly.

00:20:01.000 So Nixon didn't put out a new EO, he was just implementing the Johnson.

00:20:04.000 It was just implemented.

00:20:05.000 And that's where the goals and timetables came in.

00:20:07.000 Exactly.

00:20:07.000 But it's a way of effing up the unions, basically.

00:20:11.000 Yeah.

00:20:11.000 That was the start.

00:20:12.000 Dividing, conquer, and beat the unions by giving them a taste of their own medicine kind of thing.

00:20:16.000 Right.

00:20:17.000 And then the expansion, it seemed like there were real ideologues who believed in affirmative action, who wanted to expand it, and Nixon wasn't even paying attention at that point.

00:20:24.000 This was almost coming up to Watergate, so he was busy with other things and doing that.

00:20:28.000 Yeah, but each side was sort of using the other.

00:20:30.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:20:30.000 So Nixon thought he was being cute, and they were just like, great, let's just make this useful idiot who's distracted by this other stuff upon to permanently enshrine race-based quotas in America. 0.98

00:20:38.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.98

00:20:39.000 Exactly.

00:20:40.000 And do you think that – was there any split in the civil rights movement advocates about this possibility or will most just be like, yeah, absolutely, let's take it and run?

00:20:51.000 It depends on when in the history you look.

00:20:54.000 So before the Civil Rights Act, and, you know, who knows how much of this is politics, how much of this is genuine belief, but when the Civil Rights Act was, you know, was being debated inside, everyone said, you know, nothing like affirmative action.

00:21:06.000 Colorblind.

00:21:07.000 Yep.

00:21:08.000 That's my understanding of what the rhetoric was around the Civil Rights Revolution.

00:21:12.000 Yeah.

00:21:12.000 And it switches, I mean, almost on a dime.

00:21:15.000 I mean, by, you know, two, three years later, you have the EEOC. It needs something to do.

00:21:20.000 Nobody is putting up whites-only signs or anything.

00:21:23.000 I mean, nobody's saying they're discriminating based on race.

00:21:25.000 So very early, they start using statistical discrimination. 0.51

00:21:28.000 They say you don't have enough black people.

00:21:29.000 In the early 70s, we're talking now.

00:21:30.000 We're talking, yeah, late 60s, early 70s.

00:21:33.000 It really takes off.

00:21:34.000 Griggs v.

00:21:34.000 Duke Power.

00:21:35.000 So 1971 was the case that said an IQ test, even if there's no intention to discriminate, it could be discriminatory if one group does better than the other.

00:21:43.000 So that was a 1971 case.

00:21:45.000 The EEOC thought it would lose that case.

00:21:47.000 It said that the statutory history of this is so clear that we're probably going to lose, and then we're going to have to decide what to do.

00:21:55.000 And they actually won at the Supreme Court, believe it or not.

00:21:58.000 People were sort of sleepwalking into this stuff.

00:22:00.000 People weren't really paying much attention.

00:22:02.000 So just to understand, the EEOC was on the side.

00:22:06.000 It was sort of the plaintiff in this case.

00:22:08.000 Yeah.

00:22:09.000 Pressing the idea that because there were disparate outcomes based on IQ tests or intelligence tests of some kind that were used, aptitude tests, that that could itself be evidence of actual discrimination and therefore be a civil rights violation.

00:22:23.000 Exactly.

00:22:24.000 And the EEOC brought the case still thinking it was a long shot, is your point.

00:22:27.000 Yeah.

00:22:28.000 And then they ended up winning.

00:22:30.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:31.000 And this is which court, who's under which justice?

00:22:34.000 This was the Burger Court, I think.

00:22:38.000 Burger Court, okay. 0.52

00:22:40.000 Either Warren or Burger.

00:22:41.000 I don't know.

00:22:41.000 Warren or Burger, yeah.

00:22:42.000 Okay, and so they uphold it.

00:22:44.000 Yes, they back up what the EEOC was doing.

00:22:48.000 Without finding evidence of direct discrimination.

00:22:51.000 Well, actually, they actually, they did have they did have –

00:23:20.000 They're saying basically if there's anything that causes a disparate impact, you could still – it's a presumption.

00:23:27.000 It's a presumption of discrimination.

00:23:28.000 You could still overcome that presumption, but you know how expensive and uncertain that is.

00:23:32.000 That's just going to naturally lead to quotas and other kind of affirmative steps to make sure that you have some kind of racial balancing.

00:23:38.000 But yeah, that was the big case.

00:23:40.000 I mean, I don't know how deeply you want to get at this, but the 19 – Deeply is the answer. 0.93

00:23:44.000 The statutory history is so interesting because – When they were debating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Illinois had its own version of the EEOC, and they went after Motorola precisely on this basis.

00:23:56.000 Some black guy didn't do well on a test.

00:23:58.000 The Illinois version of EEOC came and said, okay, this is evidence that the test is discriminatory.

00:24:05.000 So this is a state-level, like, equal opportunity thing, says disparate outcomes case in Illinois.

00:24:10.000 Yeah.

00:24:10.000 And so this became a major story.

00:24:12.000 And they debated this in Congress.

00:24:14.000 They're like, is this going to happen when we pass the Civil Rights Act?

00:24:16.000 They're like, no, this cannot happen.

00:24:18.000 They go out of their way to say, you can have a professionally valid psychological test.

00:24:23.000 It's called the Tower Amendment.

00:24:25.000 Added by Senator Tower of Texas.

00:24:27.000 They went out of their way to say explicitly that this would not happen.

00:24:30.000 In the Civil Rights Act?

00:24:32.000 Yes.

00:24:33.000 There is something called the Tower Amendment, yeah.

00:24:34.000 So the Tower Amendment is in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is, yeah.

00:24:38.000 Because the Illinois case predated it.

00:24:40.000 Exactly.

00:24:40.000 Oh, wow.

00:24:41.000 And so there was a big New York – the New York Times at the time – And what did they say?

00:24:43.000 Like literally you can have facially non-discriminatory tests.

00:24:47.000 As long as they were not designed or used to discriminate.

00:24:51.000 Now, the courts can – you've been to law school.

00:24:54.000 You know how courts can play with that.

00:24:57.000 They weren't designed or used to discriminate.

00:24:58.000 But the legislative history was specifically – Well, I think that's socially fraught territory if you get into the point of saying that something could be facially discriminatory ex-ante.

00:25:08.000 If it's just an aptitude test, to know that that would be facially discriminatory ex-ante is very dangerous – I mean, you see where I'm going with that?

00:25:17.000 Very dangerous territory.

00:25:19.000 And this principle is not limited to tests.

00:25:21.000 Gail Harriot, professor at UCSD, has basically said everything is disparate impact.

00:25:30.000 Look, if you have a thing saying show up on time, you know, the odds that every race is going to show up on time, you know, at the exact same rate.

00:25:36.000 It's what I call scope three disparate Disparate impact.

00:25:38.000 So basically, she says, disparate impact.

00:25:40.000 Look, it bans everything because literally everything has a disparate impact and then gives the government basically unlimited discretion at what it goes after.

00:25:48.000 So now it's like, you know, under Obama administration, EEOC was saying, oh, it's a criminal background check, right?

00:25:55.000 They started saying you do criminal background check.

00:25:57.000 Look, all races don't have equal odds of having a A crime, you know, having been convicted of a crime, so therefore that's discriminatory.

00:26:04.000 So just about anything they want to do, now they can do.

00:26:07.000 This disparate impact principle is sort of the, you know, I call it the skeleton key of the left.

00:26:14.000 You know, when it was like COVID, it was like, oh, you want to get rid of your mask mandate?

00:26:18.000 You know, they try to apply it.

00:26:19.000 They apply it to disability law now.

00:26:21.000 They'll say- Oh, this has a disparate impact on disabled children or whatever, right?

00:26:24.000 Anything they want to do with COVID, oh, you have to close schools, you know, whatever.

00:26:27.000 Kids get COVID more if, you know, black, Hispanic communities had hardest.

00:26:30.000 Literally anything they want to do.

00:26:31.000 Disparate impact is the Trojan horse for taking the quota system everywhere.

00:26:36.000 It is a really evil principle.

00:26:38.000 I mean, it's, you know, it's facially absurd.

00:26:40.000 It grants arbitrary government power.

00:26:43.000 So what do you think actually, I mean, what you just said, you know, cuts in the other direction.

00:26:48.000 Statutorily, you would say the Civil Rights Act with the Tower Amendment argue against the idea of disparate impact being a basis for a violation.

00:26:57.000 So just delineate, put some meat on the bone here as to, well, why is that still nonetheless the prevailing norm today?

00:27:06.000 Or is it?

00:27:06.000 I mean, this is a somewhat controversial idea.

00:27:09.000 Well, yeah, the courts – I mean, the legislative history is not controversial.

00:27:14.000 There was even a – What like the state of the law today?

00:27:21.000 Is it that disparate impact can be a basis for finding a civil rights violation even when there's no discriminatory intent?

00:27:30.000 That's the entire civil rights regime.

00:27:31.000 It's not that it can.

00:27:32.000 It's the entire civil rights regime.

00:27:33.000 That's my sense of it.

00:27:34.000 But my question is, in light of what you said about the Tower Amendment, how did we get from there where the framers of the Civil Rights Acts so expressly wanted to be clear that so-called disparate impact would not be – A basis for civil rights violation.

00:27:51.000 To me, that's the statute itself to get to a regime where now if you apply a test, say an aptitude test or criminal background check that results in disparate results on the basis of race, today to infer that that's a civil rights violation, how did we get from A to B? I know Griggs was part of it, but that's one case.

00:28:09.000 A little more meat on the bone there?

00:28:10.000 Yeah, there was – so there was – yeah, so the affirmative action in contract is also sort of a disparate impact principle.

00:28:17.000 It's like all you do is you look at your employees and you say, if you don't have this number of people in this job, then you set the goal or timetable.

00:28:22.000 So it's the same – it's actually like the same sort of principle.

00:28:26.000 And how we got here, I mean, it was really neglect.

00:28:31.000 I mean, like – I think that Republicans for a lot of years didn't want to think too hard about this stuff.

00:28:36.000 And so the liberals and the Supreme Court said, okay, we agree with you.

00:28:38.000 No quotas.

00:28:39.000 The Bakke decision, right? 0.97

00:28:41.000 Diversity, not quotas.

00:28:42.000 Okay, well, that's sort of, you know, that's sort of, you know, hokey and sort of, you know, sounds nice and it could mean anything.

00:28:48.000 And so a lot of this stuff flew under the radar.

00:28:50.000 The 19, I mean, to continue sort of the history of this executive order and affirmative action, But Reagan wanted to get rid of it. 0.92

00:28:57.000 I mean, this was like a serious debate within the Reagan administration.

00:29:01.000 And he was basically told by members of Congress that the Republicans and Democrats would overturn his veto.

00:29:06.000 He tried to do something else on civil rights.

00:29:08.000 Reagan wanted to get rid of what?

00:29:10.000 Executive Order 246. Or do a new executive order that reinterpreted it to get rid of affirmative action. 0.81

00:29:15.000 Good for Reagan. 1.00

00:29:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:29:17.000 And he – there was something called the Civil Rights Restoration Act.

00:29:21.000 That's a whole other thing.

00:29:22.000 But he also – he did that, but then Congress overruled his veto.

00:29:24.000 So he tried to pull back civil rights law in this – which actually was a lot of this Title IX stuff came from that.

00:29:29.000 Reagan got his way on this other thing.

00:29:31.000 But anyways, just to stay on the affirmative action and contracting thing.

00:29:35.000 Yeah, so Republicans and Democrats – I mean, look, whenever affirmative action has gone to the voters – Yeah.

00:29:42.000 They said no, except one or two cases where it just barely squeaked by.

00:29:45.000 Even in places like California and Washington, it's lost.

00:29:49.000 But I think – at least during Reagan's time, it was like this bipartisan – there wasn't conservative media back then.

00:29:58.000 And it was just like somebody is pro-civil rights and somebody is against civil rights.

00:30:02.000 And I think Republicans probably didn't think about it too much.

00:30:04.000 And Reagan, because he was a little bit more ideological, maybe more in tune with conservative thought, saw what was going on here.

00:30:10.000 But Congress opposed – the Republicans take Congress in 1994. They think about getting rid of affirmative action there.

00:30:18.000 And then they don't.

00:30:20.000 They have a big fight actually within the caucus.

00:30:22.000 And how would they have done it?

00:30:23.000 Just legislatively.

00:30:24.000 Just new last statute banning any base of federal race-based discrimination.

00:30:28.000 Yeah, there was something called like the Civil Rights Act of I think 1994 and 1995. Bob Dole asked – Did never pass though.

00:30:34.000 Did not ever pass.

00:30:36.000 Bob Dole asked for an inventory of all programs in the federal government when he was a senator that use race.

00:30:43.000 And they came back to him with 160 of them.

00:30:45.000 Really?

00:30:46.000 And this was in preparation of potentially banning all of that.

00:30:49.000 But they just made a decision.

00:30:51.000 They got scared of the issue.

00:30:53.000 Gingrich and these people in Congress, they just blinked.

00:30:55.000 I can't find really a good reason for it.

00:30:58.000 They just seem to have gotten scared.

00:31:00.000 And then people just sort of forgot.

00:31:02.000 I mean, it was just – was not a live issue anymore.

00:31:04.000 Trump in 2016 says, I'm okay with – I don't think he knew what it was.

00:31:07.000 Like, Trump, I don't think, like, wants racial consciousness and hiring.

00:31:12.000 But, you know, they ask him about affirmative action and he just goes, yeah, yeah, I'm okay with it. 0.50

00:31:16.000 He probably thinks it just means, like, you know, be nice to everybody.

00:31:19.000 Yeah, but he's the president of the United States and he's setting public policy in an America First agenda.

00:31:24.000 Yeah.

00:31:24.000 And so for him to bless this, I think actually – I think it's dangerous.

00:31:31.000 Yeah.

00:31:32.000 Because it actually codifies.

00:31:34.000 I mean, if you're on the left and you're arguing for these race-based quota systems and Trump's your number one on most things, but even he turns a blind eye and says he's cool with these race-based quota systems, that's a problem.

00:31:46.000 Unquestionably, yeah.

00:31:46.000 And, you know, I was actually listening to a podcast where the head of the part of the Labor Department that's in charge of these affirmative action programs, he was on a Federalist Society podcast and he was – He was bragging about how they actually expanded it during the Trump administration.

00:32:00.000 They brought intersectionality into it.

00:32:02.000 They would say, oh, you look at blacks and you look at women, look at black women. 0.93

00:32:05.000 I mean, it's really shocking.

00:32:08.000 I talked to some people, actually, who were in the Trump White House, and I showed them this podcast of the guy in the Labor Department bragging about this.

00:32:14.000 I'm like, what's going on here?

00:32:16.000 Who was in the Labor Department bragging about it?

00:32:17.000 Oh, the head of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, OFCCP, which is the part of the Labor Department that runs the affirmative action.

00:32:24.000 Oh, my God.

00:32:27.000 OFCCC? OFCCP. CCP. Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

00:32:32.000 I love any federal agency that says CCP. Okay.

00:32:36.000 So the OFCCP in the Labor Department administers.

00:32:40.000 Yeah.

00:32:41.000 How many people do you think work there?

00:32:43.000 Probably not that many.

00:32:44.000 It's a sub-agency within me.

00:32:46.000 I'm just gonna fire him.

00:32:46.000 What do you think?

00:32:47.000 I think that would be a good plan, yeah.

00:32:48.000 I mean, just get rid of them so they can't do their job.

00:32:50.000 I think that would work.

00:32:51.000 Their job is itself a job that shouldn't be done.

00:32:53.000 I mean, that would work.

00:32:55.000 I mean, and, you know, yeah, the guy was – I mean, I talked to somebody close to the – you know, who was in the Trump White House and he said – he was shocked.

00:33:00.000 He was like, what is this?

00:33:01.000 They had no idea what was going on.

00:33:03.000 Somebody just told him that probably in the Labor Department probably said this is a good guy to run this thing.

00:33:07.000 And he goes and he goes to corporate America and he says, okay, incorporate intersectionality into your affirmative action plans.

00:33:12.000 From the Labor Department.

00:33:13.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:33:15.000 And like the conservative movement – So what's the nexus of – so is this guy sitting in the CCP office of the labor department or CCP whatever alphabet soup ungrammatical amalgam of random letters that end with CCP? Yeah.

00:33:32.000 He's calling up then people in corporate America to say you might be in violation if you're doing business with the federal government, if you're not meeting these goals and timetables.

00:33:40.000 Yeah, I don't know if he's calling up.

00:33:41.000 He's sending them letters saying, you know, we're going to do more, you know, spot checks.

00:33:45.000 You know, enforcement is sort of sporadic.

00:33:47.000 So they're, you know, they're increasing enforcement.

00:33:51.000 They're, you know, expanding the search of what they're looking for.

00:33:55.000 Yeah, there was no sense that this is, you know, there was no sense of like, This might be contrary – from listening to this guy, there was no sense this might be contrary to Trump's message or what most Republicans believe or whatever.

00:34:08.000 And look, conservative media dropped the ball here.

00:34:10.000 I mean like – when conservative media is concerned about things, I mean Republican politicians tend to listen.

00:34:16.000 And I think this is why this is changing.

00:34:18.000 I mean I saw just recently in Texas – Greg Abbott just sent a memo to all state agents that said, no more DEI hiring.

00:34:26.000 I mean, what took so long?

00:34:27.000 Republicans have run taxes for- What took so long?

00:34:29.000 I know, exactly.

00:34:29.000 Asleep at the switch, poll test it until you make sure it's really safe, and then you do it?

00:34:33.000 Yeah.

00:34:33.000 When this stuff has been ossified in the culture?

00:34:35.000 I mean, where are these leaders when we need them?

00:34:37.000 Yeah.

00:34:37.000 I mean, like 25, 30 years, Republicans have been in control of Texas.

00:34:40.000 I mean, all it took was one governor coming along and saying, yeah, don't do this.

00:34:44.000 I mean, a lot of this stuff is not legislation.

00:34:46.000 It's executive orders.

00:34:48.000 It's agency action.

00:34:49.000 So this makes it actually easy.

00:34:50.000 I mean, it's easy like if something you have to pass a law for, that's the most difficult thing.

00:34:55.000 So how much of the affirmative action we see in America is created either directly or I would say the combination of this executive order, its implementation, break down for me the pie chart of what you think the sources of affirmative action in America are.

00:35:19.000 So, you know, I think that it's hard to say because we've had 60 years of government regulation and then you've created a whole new culture and you've created whole new industries.

00:35:28.000 The human resources industry takes off in the 1960s out of affirmative action offices.

00:35:33.000 I mean, they just need to keep up with what Washington wants and what they're doing.

00:35:38.000 I mean, the universities – I hope we get to talk about the universities because they actually – the Nixon administration, and I don't want to even blame Nixon personally for this, but basically one of the government agencies, the precursor to education and health and human services, goes to universities and says, we want data on the race and gender of your makeup.

00:35:55.000 Columbia University comes back and says, that is against our principles.

00:35:58.000 We don't even keep data.

00:36:00.000 This is Columbia University on race and sex.

00:36:02.000 And their nexus for doing this is federal funding.

00:36:04.000 Exactly.

00:36:05.000 Yes.

00:36:05.000 This is Title VI. Because that's why I love Hillsdale College because they don't take the federal funding so they still don't do this stuff.

00:36:10.000 This is Title VI. This is not private employment.

00:36:12.000 This is a different part of the Civil Rights Act.

00:36:13.000 Title VI is the university funding.

00:36:15.000 And Columbia says if we had to collect this data, we would need a whole new bureaucracy.

00:36:19.000 We would change the kind of- They say build the bureaucracy is what they say.

00:36:22.000 They basically build the bureaucracy.

00:36:24.000 They say we're not even that kind of university.

00:36:25.000 The faculty have control.

00:36:27.000 We're decentralized.

00:36:28.000 Columbia, Columbia University.

00:36:29.000 I can't stress this enough.

00:36:30.000 This is around 1970, 71. Not that long ago, the universities are standing up for merit and for colorblindness.

00:36:37.000 And the federal government is saying no.

00:36:40.000 And, you know, the Columbia University, eventually the president writes like an open letter and says, they want us to become a race-conscious institution.

00:36:45.000 We need federal funding.

00:36:46.000 I guess that's what we're going to do.

00:36:48.000 And then they pay the money and the gravy train goes on.

00:36:51.000 Yeah.

00:36:51.000 The taxpayers and others pony up the dollars to create the bureaucracy to administer this racial analysis.

00:36:57.000 When was this in Columbia's case?

00:36:58.000 This was about 1970, 71, 72. This is nuts.

00:37:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:02.000 The universe is- Oh my God, this makes me- So if you want any evidence- This makes me livid. 0.77

00:37:06.000 We see the universities and we say, you know, oh my goodness, these people are ideologically crazy.

00:37:11.000 And to know the history that the Ivy League schools were standing up for merit at a time and the federal government just not that long ago was saying, no, you have to be another way.

00:37:18.000 I mean, that shows you sort of the power of government.

00:37:20.000 I mean, today, look- I mean, it's why I'm running for president.

00:37:22.000 Yeah.

00:37:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:23.000 People miss this.

00:37:24.000 Thank you for – I mean thank you for focusing on it.

00:37:26.000 Somebody can actually sit in the White House.

00:37:28.000 There's not too many – there's not a ton of things you can do in shaping a culture from the White House actually.

00:37:33.000 Yeah.

00:37:33.000 But this is one of them.

00:37:35.000 Yeah, unquestionably.

00:37:36.000 It started with the federal government, but it started via executive order perpetrated through the entire culture and cultural fabric of our country to create this race-based artifice. 0.84

00:37:47.000 I mean I intend to do more than this, but if you do just one thing in your first four years in office to get rid of this de facto racism, that itself is a boon for the country.

00:38:00.000 I'm just – I'm disappointed that not only Trump, all the way dating back to Nixon, either couldn't get it done or made it worse.

00:38:10.000 And then where's DeSantis on this?

00:38:13.000 I mean, where are the other warriors in the Republican Party?

00:38:17.000 It seems like an issue they're hiding from.

00:38:19.000 My goal is to make sure we don't hide from it.

00:38:21.000 I'm making it a tip of a spear for my policy agenda.

00:38:25.000 So by the time the debates happen later this year, I don't think it's going to be avoidable for the rest of the field.

00:38:30.000 Right, I feel the same way, yeah.

00:38:31.000 But what the heck is going on?

00:38:32.000 You know, I don't even blame – the politicians are sort of a lagging indicator, right?

00:38:36.000 Politicians are responding to what other people are doing.

00:38:39.000 So I blame conservative media.

00:38:41.000 I mean, when I wrote my Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law, when I wrote the piece sort of – my first sort of idea connecting law to wokeness, people were surprised.

00:38:50.000 And, you know, I'd gone to law school with Chris Nicholson.

00:38:52.000 We were both interns at Center for Individual Rights, so I knew a little bit about the legal background.

00:38:57.000 And I wrote this, and then everyone was surprised.

00:38:59.000 Like, wait a minute.

00:39:00.000 Affirmative action is...

00:39:01.000 Even you, the first time I told you, Vivek, I remember you said, affirmative action is just an executive order.

00:39:06.000 People are like, my goodness, right?

00:39:08.000 And so Trump, when he gets rid of critical race theory, the story behind this is he just sees Chris Ruffo goes on Tucker.

00:39:15.000 He just sees it.

00:39:15.000 If Chris Ruffo had said, repeal affirmative action that night, I mean, Trump might have done that instead, but it's what he happens to see.

00:39:22.000 And he gets rid of...

00:39:22.000 So the politicians are...

00:39:24.000 They're not the most scholarly people.

00:39:26.000 They're not the ones reading I think we should change that.

00:39:30.000 Yeah.

00:39:30.000 Well, I mean, I hope so.

00:39:31.000 That's a very optimistic sort of vision of like, you know, politicians who actually care about ideas.

00:39:36.000 But that hasn't been the case so far.

00:39:38.000 So, you know, it's almost a more interesting question.

00:39:40.000 Like, where has conservative media and where have conservative intellectuals been on this?

00:39:44.000 And why?

00:39:44.000 Why?

00:39:45.000 What do you think is going on?

00:39:46.000 Fear?

00:39:46.000 I don't think it's fear because like, look, I mean- It's ignorance.

00:39:49.000 Like, yeah, like Dobbs, like that angered the left, like, you know, conservatives supported that and they did that.

00:39:54.000 I mean, they'll do a lot of things that clearly anger the left.

00:39:57.000 It's really, I think it's just, I mean, there's a general, the movement has become less intellectual.

00:40:02.000 Now, there's this, you know, sort of a different topic.

00:40:04.000 It really has, actually.

00:40:04.000 It's been – there's been education polarization.

00:40:07.000 Even 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, Republicans won college-educated whites in 2012. I mean, that sort of seems like 100 years ago.

00:40:15.000 But 2012, I mean, Republicans won college-educated whites.

00:40:19.000 Now, it's like 60-40 to the Democrats.

00:40:22.000 And of course, college-educated of other races are even more democratic.

00:40:26.000 And so, yeah, I mean, I think there's been a sort of a brain drain from the movement and they're just, you know, even when there's like low hanging fruit of things that they can do and things they could change that's consistent with their principles and would be good politics, they tend not to pick it up.

00:40:38.000 But, you know, we're changing that.

00:40:39.000 We're part of the change that we, you know, we, you know, we're part of the change we want to see.

00:40:42.000 Exactly.

00:40:43.000 I mean, I don't believe in just wishing things into existence.

00:40:46.000 At some point, you got to actually do it.

00:40:48.000 I mean, one of my theses is that we do live in a complicated moment that's different from 1980, where the threats to liberty are plural.

00:40:58.000 They're more complicated.

00:40:59.000 They take the form of this merger of state power, corporate power, sort of cultural hegemony.

00:41:05.000 permeating different institutions even outside of government that it probably takes a leader in the White House who has a first personal understanding, bone deep conviction and constitutional commitment to actually get it done rather than just doing what conservative media tells them to do, frankly, on a given day. bone deep conviction and constitutional commitment to actually get it And so that's part of the premise for my candidacy.

00:41:26.000 But I just think that, you know, it's my expectation, actually, Richard, that everything you're saying is true about why they're not on the issue, maybe more ignorance than fear.

00:41:37.000 Pretty soon, we're going to see a trend that's already started to happen in the last couple of weeks where the other candidates in this race are just taking my ideas.

00:41:44.000 And I'm happy about that, actually.

00:41:46.000 I think that's a good thing for the country if we open the Overton window.

00:41:49.000 It could either be the Overton window of fear or the Overton window of ignorance.

00:41:53.000 But either way, to actually take on sacred cows of affirmative action, climate religion, using the military to decimate cartels, basic stuff that – Certainly nearly all Republicans, but even most Americans actually end up supporting.

00:42:08.000 So I think that'll be a good thing.

00:42:10.000 But I want to get to the bottom of how difficult it would be to execute.

00:42:15.000 I mean, for me, I think the simplest thing to do...

00:42:18.000 I'm not saying it's the only thing to do, but the simplest thing to do would just be to rescind Executive Order 11246. I mean, it seems like a good day one item.

00:42:29.000 Yeah.

00:42:29.000 Actually, I mean, it would probably be stronger to just clarify it and make it like the opposite.

00:42:34.000 Like, you can't have an affirmative action program because, look, you know, this would be consistent with... 0.93

00:42:39.000 Actually, I like that.

00:42:39.000 Thank you.

00:42:40.000 So maybe we'll make a...

00:42:42.000 rescind and replace yeah yeah so there was a little bit of this in the trump administration where they would uh you know princeton at one point i kind of like that actually a lot because if you just rescind it you mean the federal government's no longer requiring it but yeah i mean there's place it you actually are codifying the civil rights acts and you can use actually the what do you call that the uh you can use the tower amendment as your statutory basis for that executive order yeah which is to say that actually because executive orders technically have to have a statutory basis yeah great yeah well even well that's another

00:43:09.000 that's a whole kind of words the statutory basis of it but um Yeah, like Title VI, for example.

00:43:16.000 Title VI does exist.

00:43:17.000 It says, don't discriminate based on race.

00:43:19.000 And then Title IX says, you know, gender.

00:43:21.000 Discriminate based on gender.

00:43:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:22.000 And so, like, you know, this is used to push for woke stuff.

00:43:26.000 But, like, you know, technically just using the letter of the law, it should be pushed to use – look, if you – and this is what the Supreme Court, you know, hopefully is going to rule in – In the Harvard case, the problem is now, the universities are getting rid of the SATs.

00:43:43.000 I mean, we'll see.

00:43:44.000 We'll see how desperate they are.

00:43:45.000 I mean, there'll at least be market pressure.

00:43:47.000 I mean, look, if they sort of want to toss out their reputation and start taking a worse applicant pool just to practice affirmative action, they'll suffer the consequences of that at the very least.

00:44:00.000 Will they, though?

00:44:01.000 It's an experiment.

00:44:02.000 We have no clue.

00:44:03.000 I don't know that they will suffer the consequences because that becomes the new culture.

00:44:07.000 It depends.

00:44:08.000 But, I mean, markets are a thing and markets, you know, they do care about- Universities don't run on the basis of a market system.

00:44:14.000 But the, you know, the students and sort of the elite professions, you know, McKinsey still wants the best people and, you know- Do they?

00:44:21.000 I mean McKinsey has the same quota systems now.

00:44:24.000 I'm just not sure that at a certain point the free market cannot fix what it is not free to fix.

00:44:32.000 Quite literally McKinsey does business with the federal government.

00:44:36.000 That means they're bound by the same constraint.

00:44:38.000 Well, I mean, hopefully by that time you're in office and, you know, you're not- We'll change this.

00:44:41.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:42.000 Well, hopefully we can put this in a position such that the market does fix it, is the way I think about it.

00:44:46.000 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:44:47.000 I mean, we- I don't think this- where I'm going with this is a Supreme Court ruling, if it's narrowly construed to just being in the area of college admissions, that's a step forward.

00:44:54.000 Right.

00:44:55.000 But it doesn't actually fix the market.

00:44:56.000 The market still has its hands tied.

00:44:58.000 You need a president, that's where I'm running, among other things, to actually- Yeah.

00:45:02.000 To actually liberate the market.

00:45:03.000 Yeah, unquestionably.

00:45:03.000 So you're saying- Assuming those things happen, then the market will take care of this, sure.

00:45:07.000 Yeah.

00:45:07.000 I mean, we've had 60 years of bad policy and bad court decisions and a lot of regulations.

00:45:11.000 And then a culture shaped in the wake of it.

00:45:13.000 Exactly.

00:45:14.000 So look, I mean, it took – we've had these ideas of disparate impact and affirmative action.

00:45:18.000 We've had it for half a century now.

00:45:20.000 And it took a while to get – the entire culture has been shaped.

00:45:23.000 So if you do everything – you get in and you do everything you want in an administration, it's not going to like we're going to go back to the culture of colorblindness and meritocracy overnight.

00:45:32.000 Right.

00:45:32.000 Hopefully, the idea is 10, 20, 30 years later, right?

00:45:36.000 Next time there's austerity, they cut the HR department, they realize they cut all the DEI bureaucrats, new businesses brought up, they don't have the government on their neck, and then we have a different culture.

00:45:45.000 Nobody even at that point connects it to the policy that you implemented in 2025, right?

00:45:51.000 But that's the hope.

00:45:52.000 I mean, it's not satisfying to people.

00:45:54.000 People want to see you did policy X, and then the next day you see the world just completely changes.

00:45:59.000 But we didn't get to wokeness like that.

00:46:01.000 We got to wokeness through a bunch of bad government policies, bureaucracies created, rules created.

00:46:06.000 People stopped paying attention to the original policy.

00:46:08.000 And then you wake up one day and the world's gone crazy.

00:46:10.000 And that's less satisfying, but that's, I think, a more realistic picture of how the world works.

00:46:14.000 It's the slow motion boringdom of exactly how it happens.

00:46:16.000 That's why you've got to care about the minutiae.

00:46:18.000 Yeah, the managerial boredom.

00:46:19.000 I mean, I think you cannot fight the culture war without taking the managerial bureaucracy on that actually created those cultural conditions because it's a lot more sizzly to go after critical race theory or gender ideology or whatever as a one-off playing whack-a-mole.

00:46:38.000 It trends better on Twitter and I think it makes for a better news cycle for a politician.

00:46:43.000 But the harder work, but more important work is dismantling the bureaucratic machine that created this in the first place.

00:46:53.000 Yeah.

00:46:54.000 That's actually what I find – I mean, I'm interested in both, but that's what I find far more interesting than the content of the culture war itself.

00:47:02.000 Yeah.

00:47:02.000 That is the machinery.

00:47:04.000 That is the – Those are the weapons of the culture war, the managerial class. 0.76

00:47:08.000 Yeah.

00:47:09.000 I mean, Reagan did a little bit of this, but Clarence Thomas was the head of EEOC. They did reduce- I did not know that.

00:47:15.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:15.000 Clarence Thomas, yeah, before he was a Supreme Court judge.

00:47:17.000 Oh, really?

00:47:17.000 I'm in the middle of working my way through a biography of Clarence Thomas that's due to come out soon.

00:47:23.000 Maybe I haven't gotten to that part of it yet.

00:47:26.000 Yeah, and they pulled back a lot of the enforcement based on disparate impact and all this other stuff.

00:47:32.000 And so, yeah, I mean, there was a more limited version of this.

00:47:34.000 But you're right.

00:47:35.000 There are certain government agencies and government bureaucracies.

00:47:37.000 Look, if they have diversity in their name, like from a conservative, nothing good is going to come out of that.

00:47:42.000 Yeah, I mean, actually, I mean, if only if they meant the kind of diversity that you and I might actually value.

00:47:47.000 But that's not what they mean.

00:47:48.000 Yeah, right.

00:47:49.000 So, yeah, I mean, nothing good is going to come out of that.

00:47:51.000 I mean, diversity, that's sort of branding.

00:47:52.000 They used to just call them affirmative action offices.

00:47:54.000 Oh, they did.

00:47:55.000 At least they were honest about it.

00:47:56.000 Yeah, in the 1960s, 1970s.

00:47:58.000 That became a bad word.

00:47:58.000 They just called it affirmative action compliance.

00:48:00.000 It was basically, we're just complying with the government and then eventually became, you know, the diversity- You're talking about in the federal bureaucracy or in corporate America?

00:48:06.000 In corporate America, too.

00:48:07.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:08.000 I don't know about- It's a compliance group.

00:48:09.000 Probably in the federal government, too, if I had to guess.

00:48:11.000 I would guess so.

00:48:13.000 And then the diversity idea came.

00:48:15.000 And then, like, you had these entrepreneurs who started saying, oh, diversity is just good business, right?

00:48:19.000 They sold their sort of expertise and- Mark Benioff or whatever he spouts off on a given day.

00:48:24.000 Yeah.

00:48:24.000 So it was like sort of a self-looking ice cream cone where the government would say – have these things and these people would come in and they'd be in the bureaucracy and it's sort of this mess that's been created with federal law at its root.

00:48:37.000 But yes, I mean the goal is you – there's things in the federal government you can attack directly.

00:48:42.000 The OFCCP, I don't think there's anything – Good that they do.

00:48:47.000 Maybe they can, you know, go after, like, explicit, like, whites-only signs if you find that among contractors, right?

00:48:51.000 Yeah, that exists a lot today.

00:48:53.000 Right.

00:48:53.000 It's like, I love these, like, made-up figments of imagination.

00:48:56.000 Well, you'll see a lot of other versions of that.

00:48:59.000 You'll see blacks-only, black-owned businesses. 0.94

00:49:01.000 Exactly.

00:49:01.000 I, in my lifetime, have not seen a whites-only sign other than, like, maybe at some, like, sort of stultified tennis club where they're referring to, like, the clothes you wear.

00:49:10.000 Yeah, well, I mean, that's part of it.

00:49:13.000 That's part of it.

00:49:14.000 They needed something to do.

00:49:15.000 They said no more racism.

00:49:16.000 People said, okay, we don't – and look, the markets, you know, people want to make money and, like, people are just – you know, like, my idea that, like, markets are fair isn't that, like, Capitalists are angels.

00:49:26.000 It's like they're selfish enough that they want to make money, right?

00:49:28.000 Yeah.

00:49:29.000 And so if you have something to produce, that's why immigrants come to this country from all over the world. 0.99

00:49:33.000 That's why my parents came.

00:49:33.000 Of every shade, every hue, every religion, every strange cultural background, every kind of food you could think of, and they succeed.

00:49:40.000 Why?

00:49:40.000 Because markets are selfish, because people are self-interested, right?

00:49:43.000 And I think Americans are good people too, but basically it's the market forces.

00:49:47.000 Actually, the immigrant thing actually brought up a point that I think sometimes gets forgotten in this.

00:49:51.000 And so the irony is that affirmative action, as I understand it, ends up helping The kids of black immigrants who came to this country in the last 50 years far more than it does the descendants of slaves.

00:50:05.000 So even if this is about dismantling systemic discrimination, we stupidly make it about your skin color than we do actually about what the original justification of affirmative action was even supposed to be, right?

00:50:16.000 Yeah.

00:50:17.000 I mean the way they – Kids who come from West Africa or whose parents or grandparents came from West Africa, they're the ones who then claimed the victimhood mantle when in fact it had nothing to do with them. 0.66

00:50:25.000 The way we classify race, I mean, it's strange.

00:50:30.000 One of the things I show in my book is these words Hispanic and Latino, they were very rarely used in the English language before the government made them a category.

00:50:39.000 So you look at Mexican-American or Cuban or Puerto Rican-American, those go down since the 1970s, and Hispanic and Latino go up.

00:50:47.000 So I have a chart that shows this right in.

00:50:48.000 It's like an amalgam of like multiple different cultures that have nothing to do with each other. 0.92

00:50:52.000 Exactly.

00:50:52.000 So the government said you're a people and then they said – like La Raza was getting all of its money basically from the federal government at the beginning.

00:50:59.000 They were getting grants from these various programs saying we're La Raza, we're the race.

00:51:02.000 It started out as a Mexican group and then they basically said, okay, we're all Hispanics.

00:51:07.000 The Asian Pacific Islander thing, I mean it's bizarre. 1.00

00:51:11.000 I mean it's the fact that there was some lobbying at some point from a – there was – Different groups tried to get included, right?

00:51:20.000 So like Indians came, they wanted small business loans. 1.00

00:51:22.000 Now, Asians get discriminated against in affirmative action in colleges.

00:51:25.000 But for small business loans, all the law says is you have to be a minority group.

00:51:28.000 So most of the minority small business loans, they go to Asians usually.

00:51:32.000 Totally. 0.89

00:51:33.000 Not blacks or Hispanics. 1.00

00:51:33.000 So they're overrepresented there. 1.00

00:51:35.000 And they lobbied.

00:51:36.000 So now they're minorities, right? 0.98

00:51:37.000 The Indians are minorities.

00:51:39.000 Pakistanis are Asians. 0.94

00:51:40.000 And then they said no to the Iranians and the Arabs.

00:51:43.000 They said, we're going to draw the line.

00:51:44.000 Draw the line.

00:51:45.000 It's so arbitrary.

00:51:46.000 They got to draw the line somewhere.

00:51:48.000 So let's just get real practical about the next couple of years.

00:51:52.000 Supreme Court is ruling on the affirmative action case, what we expect to probably come out in May, right?

00:51:57.000 Probably, yeah, June.

00:51:58.000 May, June, you know, whatever.

00:52:00.000 You know, we can play our betting odds, exactly what they'll say, but assume that there's at least some limited basis for overturning affirmative action in college admissions, but it'll give us a blueprint for what applies outside of college admissions as well.

00:52:12.000 How much easier is that going to make my job in doing the things that I've said I want to do as U.S. president?

00:52:17.000 It can be a virtuous cycle.

00:52:20.000 So the Supreme Court decision, there's a lot to be said about that.

00:52:24.000 One thing that I hope they do, and I may write about this, is that a lot of the colleges, they're saying that we're going to try to get a diverse student body, but we're going to do other things to get diverse instead of directly considering race to the application process.

00:52:40.000 According to the plain text of the Civil Rights Act, to rejig your admission system to get a certain number of black and Hispanic students, I think the Supreme Court decision should be broad enough to say, no, that's not allowed either.

00:52:53.000 I mean, it's common sense.

00:52:54.000 If you said, we want to rig the system just to have whites instead of blacks, but after you said we can't discriminate, people would see that clearly. 1.00

00:53:00.000 So a broader Supreme Court decision...

00:53:03.000 That's something along the lines of, you know, all consideration of race means all consideration of race.

00:53:07.000 You can't rejig the system and still get government federal funding.

00:53:12.000 That would be very helpful.

00:53:15.000 Yeah, and then, you know, some of the stuff like the EEO 11246 stuff could be due right off the bat.

00:53:20.000 Even like the...

00:53:22.000 There was talk in the Trump administration, and they never got around to this, but getting rid of disparate impacts, a standard for Title VI as a general matter, you could do that through executive orders or at least through the executive agencies.

00:53:33.000 There's talk of Bill Barr's DOJ doing it near the end and just sending out that sort of directive to the rest of the government, not directive or guidance or whatever.

00:53:43.000 And so, yeah, there's that.

00:53:44.000 I mean, like, you know, legislation, I mean, if you want to be really ambitious, dust off the Civil Rights Act of 1995 or whatever, 1994, whatever year it was, you know, get rid of the – there's a professor at George Mason named Dave Bernstein who talked about the separation of race and state.

00:54:00.000 Yeah, I like that.

00:54:00.000 I like that a lot, actually.

00:54:02.000 Yeah.

00:54:02.000 Separation of race and state.

00:54:04.000 It should be just as unthinkable to – it's unthinkable right now to say – for a government agency to say we have too few Catholics or too many Jews or whatever.

00:54:12.000 It should be just as unthinkable to say we need more Hispanics or more Asians or whatever it happens to be.

00:54:17.000 Yep.

00:54:18.000 And I think this – I think it creates a cultural tailwind to get this job done.

00:54:22.000 It's not going to – the Supreme Court ruling is not going to get the whole job done.

00:54:25.000 And, you know, a lot of people say, oh, if you start attacking this stuff, you know, the liberals are going to mobilize, they're going to do – it's like you don't know that because public opinion is not on their side.

00:54:34.000 And when public – when they feel the wind of public opinion at their side, then they could feel that – they could feel like they can get aggressive.

00:54:40.000 When it's going against them, they have to hem and they have to haw.

00:54:43.000 They're politically self-interested actors, too.

00:54:45.000 And not all Democrats are on board.

00:54:48.000 I mean, if you explain to – even if you look at the polling, how California – I mean, I think 55% or 60% voted against affirmative action.

00:54:54.000 So once it becomes partisan, maybe they coalesce.

00:54:58.000 But there's a chance to split this, especially with the Asian population, especially even with Hispanics when you see the kind of – there's no indication that they particularly like racial preferences even though in some cases – I mean, California Prop 6C, look at that vote.

00:55:12.000 Exactly.

00:55:13.000 Yeah.

00:55:13.000 I mean, it was basically every race, I think, either voted or close to a majority of every race voted for it.

00:55:19.000 So you're pushing – you're uniting the conservative movement, right?

00:55:23.000 It's like, oh, populist libertarians.

00:55:24.000 Like, no, we can all be on board with this, right?

00:55:26.000 You're the most libertarian to the most populist least libertarian.

00:55:30.000 We're all – That is one of my goals, by the way, this unite the conservative movement, unite the country.

00:55:34.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:55:35.000 One is a precondition for the other.

00:55:37.000 Yeah, I mean, the DEI, you know, the HR ladies might not like you, but no, yeah, they're not a huge portion of the population. 0.99

00:55:44.000 They might be out of a job.

00:55:45.000 That's why they won't like me.

00:55:46.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:55:47.000 To the extent that anything can unite this country.

00:55:49.000 Unite the country mostly is the best we're going to be able to do.

00:55:51.000 To the extent that anything has 60%, 70%, there's not a lot of things like that, and this is one of them.

00:55:56.000 So, you know, I think I wanted to just close this with, like, put the law and policy and the history to one side.

00:56:02.000 Very interesting.

00:56:04.000 I learned a lot, so thank you.

00:56:08.000 I think we don't talk enough about the impact that affirmative action has on black Americans, actually.

00:56:16.000 Yes, it is on its face a form of anti-Asian racism, anti-Indian American racism, anti-white racism.

00:56:24.000 That's obvious on its face.

00:56:27.000 But I think it is starting to create this new wave of anti-Black racism that stems from resentment, that stems from a feeling that things aren't working like they're supposed to meritocratically because they're not.

00:56:47.000 But even to the Black person who would have otherwise earned his post exclusively based on merit, If I had to pick, I think the system is most unfair to that person, more so than to me, or to you, or to anybody else.

00:57:04.000 Because for us it was just that we didn't get a position.

00:57:07.000 The...

00:57:08.000 More difficult reality is you got the position but you weren't treated with the respect that you should have been because someone still condescended on you.

00:57:16.000 And it's fueling this new kind of anti-black racism that it's almost no one's fault, not the person who feels the attitude, not the person who – certainly not the person who experiences the attitude.

00:57:26.000 It's the fault of a system that created it and I think that's just the sad part in all of this.

00:57:30.000 I don't think we talk about that enough actually.

00:57:32.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, who knows how conscious this is, you know, this kind of resentment.

00:57:37.000 But yeah, I mean, a lot of these, you know, a lot of these sort of studies programs, African American studies, Chicago studies, they weren't, they didn't, you know, their origins wasn't like that of other academic, you know, fields where somebody had an intellectual interest and they were contributing something new to humanity, like, you know, psychology or whatever.

00:57:53.000 It was more like, you know, some students occupied, you know, government or college buildings like at Cornell and Berkeley, and they demanded an African-American studies program.

00:58:02.000 A lot of the time, it was like the stuff that they, because they were affirmative action, they got it to the university for affirmative action in the first place, they had to build a whole grievance department, like a study of grievance to explain their failure.

00:58:14.000 There was a big, you know, scandal at, I think it was UNC, where like they were putting all the black athletes, you know, because they got double, you know, they were athletes, so they came in with less...

00:58:23.000 You know, with worse academic records.

00:58:26.000 But they were just putting them in the African American Studies program because, like, I guess they were just – that was just what you do with people who, you know, can't cut it in other fields. 1.00

00:58:34.000 Yeah, and it sort of creates these new made-up fields and it creates this culture of condescension, right?

00:58:40.000 Yeah.

00:58:43.000 It's kind of sad, actually.

00:58:44.000 It's funny, you know, so when I was in law school, there's these two girls who I went with, and they were, you know, they're liberals.

00:58:49.000 But they were talking about another student who passed, who failed the bar, right?

00:58:53.000 University of Chicago Law School, not many people failed the bar.

00:58:55.000 So it was something they were talking about.

00:58:56.000 And they're like, oh, he's a white male.

00:58:58.000 That's very strange.

00:58:59.000 And they're like, oh, no, I heard he might be Hispanic.

00:59:01.000 And their assumption was, if he was a white male, he would have gotten to University of Chicago Law School on merit.

00:59:05.000 He wouldn't have failed the bar.

00:59:06.000 Yeah.

00:59:07.000 When they said, oh, he's Hispanic.

00:59:08.000 Oh, it sort of makes sense now.

00:59:10.000 Okay, now I understand he'd failed the bar.

00:59:11.000 And you know what? 0.99

00:59:12.000 That assumption, you might want to say, oh, these liberal girls hypocrites. 1.00

00:59:15.000 It's a reasonable assumption. 0.97

00:59:16.000 It doesn't land well on my ear, but if you think about it, they're just responding to data, to statistics.

00:59:23.000 And it's no one's fault.

00:59:24.000 It's not their fault.

00:59:24.000 It's not the fault of the black person, the Hispanic person, the white person who's on the receiving end of that difficult kind of statement.

00:59:33.000 Yeah.

00:59:33.000 It's just the fault of a system that created those attitudes, but you're not allowed to say it in public, but it doesn't change the fact that people actually think it.

00:59:40.000 Yeah.

00:59:40.000 Tom Sowell has talked about this.

00:59:42.000 He said he was an expert in cameras or something when he was in the military, and he says people would, even the most racist guys from the South would come up to him because they said, oh, the black guy learned this.

00:59:51.000 He didn't have the opportunities.

00:59:52.000 He must be really good at it.

00:59:53.000 And he noticed over the years as affirmative action became more instituted, he didn't get that kind of deference anymore.

00:59:58.000 People make different assumptions.

01:00:00.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a cost. 1.00

01:00:04.000 People are not that stupid. 0.97

01:00:05.000 I mean, people can see that you're – people, when they talk about law admissions or they talk about admissions to graduate school or universities, they know the bar is being lowered and they know what that means and they have experience. 0.99

01:00:15.000 They know who the smartest people in their classes are.

01:00:17.000 They know who got in and who maybe can't keep up with the work.

01:00:21.000 And you're not allowed to talk about it.

01:00:22.000 You're not allowed to, you know, make a political issue out of it.

01:00:26.000 This kind of like sort of, you know, submersion of like what's really going on and the sort of dishonesty it teaches.

01:00:33.000 It's not healthy for our culture, and that's why it's important to address.

01:00:36.000 And I think it is one of these issues.

01:00:37.000 You put your point on it correctly.

01:00:39.000 Motivates me even more to go after this in this Republican primary processes.

01:00:43.000 I think it can unite conservatives, right?

01:00:43.000 processes.

01:00:45.000 You've got the Trump wing, the Bush wing.

01:00:47.000 Bush actually said it well in this.

01:00:48.000 I might have criticized George Bush for a lot of things, but not for this.

01:00:49.000 I mean, I've criticized George Bush for a lot of things, but not for this.

01:00:51.000 He's called it the soft bigotry of low expectations.

01:00:53.000 Chief Justice John Roberts famously said, right, the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, right?

01:01:03.000 And so say what you will about John Roberts, say what you will about George Bush.

01:01:04.000 And so say what you will about John Roberts.

01:01:05.000 Say what you will about George Bush.

01:01:07.000 This is something that the conservative movement has been on the right, the proverbial right side of history.

01:01:12.000 We've been on it for a long time.

01:01:14.000 We've actually lacked leaders to execute.

01:01:16.000 Trump was actually a leader who failed to execute.

01:01:18.000 So for all the criticisms of Bush, and I agree with him on a lot of those criticisms, you got to call it like I see it.

01:01:24.000 Here was one where the conservative movement's been right for a long time.

01:01:27.000 You had an executive who did take a strong view of executive power who just didn't get the job done.

01:01:32.000 We're going to get the job done.

01:01:34.000 And I think that that will hopefully be the beginning of a, at long last, the beginning of an e pluribus unum reuniting of the country, a revival of the country around this idea of merit.

01:01:48.000 And I think we could do that, put the merit back in America, I joke around sometimes.

01:01:53.000 I think that's actually one of the missing ingredients in our national revival.

01:01:56.000 And I think that what you're doing, I mean, I think is part of it because people don't, I think, know how to talk about it in a way that's positive.

01:02:02.000 Oh, this black guy got an advantage. 1.00

01:02:05.000 It's unfair. 0.73

01:02:06.000 Okay, yeah, it's unfair.

01:02:07.000 That's right.

01:02:07.000 But that doesn't really motivate people to take on this uncomfortable issue.

01:02:11.000 When you say, we're going to sort of have a new national identity.

01:02:15.000 We're going to care about merit.

01:02:16.000 We're going to care about excellence.

01:02:17.000 We're going to care about doing great things.

01:02:18.000 Then you get the motivation to overcome that political resistance.

01:02:21.000 So, you know, we're going to do it in a positive way and not because we're just sugarcoating it with some positive veneer.

01:02:27.000 No, the essence of merit, the essence of excellence is itself a positive and galvanizing message accessible to anyone, no matter their skin color.

01:02:37.000 Yeah, we want to cure cancer.

01:02:39.000 I mean, we want to colonize space.

01:02:41.000 Yes, we're going to need to get the best people to do the best job.

01:02:44.000 Exactly.

01:02:45.000 I love it, man.

01:02:46.000 Thanks for joining.

01:02:47.000 I hope this is the first of a few that we do over the course of the next year.

01:02:51.000 I think we only covered one topic of shared interest.

01:02:54.000 We have others, too.

01:02:55.000 So, you know, let's dive deep when you're ready.

01:02:57.000 Absolutely.

01:02:58.000 Anytime, Vivek.

01:02:59.000 This is great.

01:02:59.000 Yeah.

01:03:00.000 Thanks for coming out, man.

01:03:01.000 Thank you.

01:03:02.000 I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - April 12, 2023

The Hidden Truth Behind Affirmative Action with Richard Hanania | The TRUTH Podcast #10

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