0:00

The following is a conversation with David Pakman,

0:02

a left-wing progressive political commentator

0:05

and host of the David Pakman Show. I

0:07

hope to continue to have many conversations

0:10

on politics with prominent, insightful,

0:13

and sometimes controversial figures across

0:15

the political spectrum. David and I

0:18

have been planning to speak for a long time, and

0:20

I'm sure we'll speak many more times. This

0:23

conversation was challenging, eye-opening,

0:25

and fun.

0:27

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1:06

One of the things in the darkest of

1:08

times for me that's a source of happiness

1:11

is naps. It's kind of miraculous

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how you can go to this world

1:14

and return a new human being. And

1:17

you are, in some sense, a new human being. From

1:20

a physics, from a chemistry perspective,

1:23

even from a biological perspective,

1:26

but what I'm trying to say is from a psychological

1:28

perspective, you're also a

1:30

new human being. Because in some

1:32

sense, the chemistry that

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makes up your brain, the

1:36

dopamine, all

1:38

the different chemicals that control mood and

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motivation and energy,

1:44

mental

1:45

and physical,

1:47

all of that define a human being. Together,

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that is the underlying

1:53

dynamics of personality is

1:55

really fueled, is catalyzed and fueled

1:58

and structured. like the

2:01

chemicals in your brain. And so whatever

2:03

the hell naps do, and there's obviously a lot

2:05

of good science on this, but

2:08

early science, I don't think the science

2:11

of sleep is solved, the only thing we know

2:13

is sleep is kind of good for you,

2:15

but the full dynamics of that is hard

2:17

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2:20

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plus. And the other point is, with ExpressVPN,

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on Linux. I don't know why that's such a

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awesome thing for me. Maybe now it's

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obvious, but in the early days when they worked

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on Linux, like early,

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early days, I don't know how many years ago, but

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I was like, holy crap, this is so awesome.

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This is so awesome that they care about this operating system

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that I love so much. So yeah, it works

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anywhere. Android, your iPhone, all

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of that.

5:21

By the way, I should mention that the peer pressure I have

5:23

to switch to an iPhone, I do have an iPhone,

5:25

I just don't use it. The peer pressure

5:27

is immense, but I remain

5:30

with the Android. It is the phone

5:32

of the people. I still like the customization.

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I like developing for the Android as well, and

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I have several Android phones and

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I love them very much. The customization,

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the freedom, actually the principles

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that's behind it. But of

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a hero of mine. He's somebody that inspires me as

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a human being, as a designer. So

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all of that combined, I don't know. I should be using

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6:22

And now, dear friends, here's David

6:25

Backman. ["The

6:34

Realest Life"] Are

6:42

there interesting differences to you between

6:45

terms like liberal, Democrat, Left-Wing,

6:47

leftist, progressive, socialist, communist,

6:50

Marxist, far left, center left, all

6:52

of these labels? Is there interesting distinctions

6:54

between them?

6:55

Yeah, there's two sets of distinctions. One

6:57

is if you just want to say, let's define each of

7:00

these as political terms. They're

7:02

all different terms. You can be a progressive

7:04

ideologically, but not be a member of the Democratic

7:06

Party. Many say the Democratic Party

7:08

isn't even really very progressive. So these

7:11

are certainly terms that we could define in

7:14

order to have a conversation about the next

7:16

thing kind of as a precursor to a conversation.

7:20

Sometimes the terms are used

7:23

in order to tag someone

7:25

with a certain ideology

7:28

that's not really linked to policy

7:30

or any particular political

7:33

question, but they can be used positively

7:35

or negatively to just kind of say, here

7:37

is the

7:38

image of this individual that I have in my mind.

7:41

So like Marxist is

7:42

right now very popularly being used

7:44

by some on the right to attack

7:47

Democrats.

7:49

There's very few actual Marxists, certainly

7:51

not in positions of power in the United States, but

7:53

even among the general population.

7:57

So I think it's important to distinguish. Are we defining these

7:59

terms?

7:59

We want to compare and contrast

8:02

the ideas that a particular group might bring to the

8:04

discussion, or are we using them as insults

8:06

or to stifle conversation? They're terms that can

8:09

be used to start a conversation or to

8:11

stop it. And the use of those terms

8:13

is evolving rapidly month by month.

8:16

So the term leftist, I think, is a relatively popular

8:18

term now to use in the negative context

8:20

to describe

8:22

what an

8:24

outraged left wing

8:27

commentator. I think what

8:29

you're kind of grasping onto is

8:31

that there's probably some

8:33

set of ideas that would

8:35

apply to most of those who consider

8:37

themselves to be on the left. The discussion

8:40

of how that term is mostly being used is

8:43

not about policy ideas. You're accurately

8:45

kind of identifying

8:47

that. And it does seem like

8:49

progressive is no longer being used as

8:51

a smear and leftist is being used as a smear

8:54

more at this point. Okay. Sometimes

8:56

some of these

8:57

terms are useful. Like can we try to

8:59

pick the terms that are useful, like liberal

9:01

and progressive and Democrat liberal

9:05

and progressive? Is there an interesting

9:08

definable distinction between liberal

9:10

and progressive to you? That's maybe one of

9:12

the most interesting ones. Ten years ago,

9:15

liberal often meant

9:17

what now we mean by progressive.

9:20

More recently, the progressive

9:24

socialist leaning part of

9:26

the political spectrum has started

9:28

to use liberal to mean Joe

9:31

Biden, to mean someone who is

9:33

not really left enough.

9:36

So liberal is very interesting because I remember talking

9:38

with my audience years ago, maybe eight years ago

9:40

or something like that, where I identified I'm

9:43

going to now use the term progressive more commonly

9:45

to describe my own beliefs because

9:48

liberal has now been made a smear.

9:51

It's being shifted into something else. And

9:53

it also means more of like a center left politics.

9:56

So it's changed in some sense by by

9:59

necessity.

9:59

force and also because the

10:03

spectrum has shifted to some degree. So

10:05

the term liberal has evolved.

10:08

Now liberal meaning some kind of embodiment

10:12

of the mainstream Democratic Party

10:14

almost to some degree. Sometimes I'm called

10:17

I'm written off by, you know, within

10:19

my space, there are all

10:21

sorts of shades of gray, which I'm sure we can talk

10:23

about, about where I am

10:26

versus should be, would be, or I'm wrongly

10:28

placed. And sometimes an

10:31

attack on me is he's just

10:33

a lib, meaning I'm not left enough.

10:36

I'm not

10:36

progressive socialist, wherever

10:39

else you want to go. So yeah, the, the problem with

10:41

a lot of these terms and they're used

10:44

very casually by people who call into my show is

10:46

that unless we actually define them each

10:48

time, they very often mean very different things

10:51

to different people and often come with

10:53

an agenda attached to them. So I

10:55

find that they often stifle meaningful conversation

10:57

rather than encourage it.

10:59

Do you sense that there's a drifting

11:01

of a, what

11:03

is the threshold to be a progressive or

11:05

is there, it should

11:07

be used progressive synonymously with a

11:10

democratic socialist.

11:12

I think we should not use it synonymously

11:14

with democratic socialist. And

11:16

this is where there's another linguistic

11:18

confusion and a political confusion.

11:21

So we'll first talk about the linguistic one.

11:24

Social democracy versus democratic

11:26

socialism. Very similar words

11:29

in a different order.

11:31

Okay. My, the way I operate

11:34

is democratic socialism

11:36

is actually a form of socialism

11:39

where one would seek to socialize ownership

11:41

of the means of production. As an example, social

11:44

democracy is a very highly

11:47

regulated form of capitalism, the likes of

11:49

which we would see in Northern Europe, Denmark,

11:52

et cetera. These are very different

11:54

things. I associate progressivism

11:57

in 2023 with social democracy.

11:59

democracy and would consider democratic socialism

12:02

a form of actual socialism that is different.

12:04

It is we're no longer talking about a capitalist

12:08

organization of society. So transition from

12:10

one to the other is a fundamental shift in

12:12

house in house society operates then.

12:16

Absolutely. And when you talk about social

12:18

democracy, you're talking

12:20

about socializing a couple

12:22

more things than we socialize

12:25

in most

12:26

modern capitalist

12:29

countries. I had this conversation with Patrick Bet

12:31

David recently. Social democracy

12:33

is OK. We've socialized the military already

12:35

in the United States. We've socialized

12:38

some health care in the sense of like the V.A.

12:41

and Medicaid, et cetera. We're talking

12:43

about socializing a couple more things

12:46

still in a capitalist country.

12:48

Democratic socialism would be something

12:51

beyond that. And

12:52

as someone who is not a democratic socialist myself,

12:54

I'm maybe not the best

12:57

advocate for explaining exactly

12:59

how that system would function. But it would

13:02

have some version of socializing ownership

13:04

of the means of production, businesses, et cetera.

13:06

So you mentioned you appeared on

13:08

the PBD podcast with Patrick

13:10

Bet David.

13:13

The debate was pretty intense. I

13:15

was I should say I personally

13:18

enjoyed it. I thought actually

13:20

you did well and I thought Patrick did

13:23

well. It was a good conversation. I thought it was

13:25

a little bit of tension. Yeah. I

13:27

thought that Patrick actually.

13:29

So I disagree with the Internet. I thought Patrick just took

13:31

on a kind of devil's advocate like he was he

13:33

was purposely being stubborn to bring

13:35

out the best in you. But the

13:37

Internet thought that he's being stubborn,

13:39

not being open to your ideas. I

13:41

thought the tension between ideas. I

13:45

think a lot of the tension had to do probably with

13:48

Donald Trump and Trump supporters. That

13:50

certainly could be the case. And people wrote

13:53

to me after people wrote to me the full gamut of

13:55

everything you can imagine from this was your

13:57

best thing you've ever done in public to you got

13:59

here.

13:59

humiliated and your mother should have aborted you.

14:02

Okay. So every and everything in between. So,

14:04

you know, take your pick. But

14:06

the most interesting feedback I got was from

14:08

people who asked me after was incredibly

14:11

tense and awkward and because it seemed so combative.

14:14

And I think for I'm so

14:16

used to those types of tensions in the

14:18

discussions that I have that it's very

14:20

comfortable to me. It's not like afterwards it's it's

14:23

there's a grudge or it's tense or whatever the case

14:25

may be. I'm very comfortable. Just

14:27

I disagree with people and that's it. So I did not

14:30

find anything that happened inappropriate. I disagreed

14:32

with a lot of the things he said, certainly. So

14:34

you also spoke on Michael Knowles.

14:36

I think about the idea of what

14:39

is a woman. Do you can

14:42

you speak broadly about your conversation with

14:44

the people you disagree with? You

14:47

know, some of the cases, it feels like it's gone

14:49

wrong. The conversations have gone

14:51

wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I

14:54

mean, I think there's a couple different things. And I'm the first

14:56

to tell you that

14:58

depending on who I'm talking to, I go

15:00

in with a different

15:01

attitude about how, quote,

15:04

seriously, I'm taking it in the

15:06

sense of whether I think it's going to be a deep policy

15:08

discussion versus where whether

15:10

it's going to be more of a performance for an audience

15:13

that is expecting a certain thing. And

15:15

I think there's different types of shows. When I was interviewed by

15:17

this guy, Jesse Lee Peterson in Los Angeles, it's

15:19

very different, for example, than when I'm talking

15:21

to Patrick Bette David, just to give two

15:24

examples. I think

15:27

the reason I stopped doing the Michael Knowles show was

15:29

the number of threats I would get after

15:31

the fact. That's really the reason I was glad to engage

15:33

with him to the extent that the interviews were

15:35

interesting and we could organize it reasonably

15:38

efficiently.

15:39

But the reason I stepped away was

15:42

sort of the aftermath. But I

15:44

did find him to be someone

15:46

who was abundantly clear about

15:48

his view and where he comes from. And

15:50

while I could not possibly disagree more

15:53

with him in terms of politics and culture and

15:55

our backgrounds, everything is just so different, I

15:58

found it easy to engage.

15:59

in the conversation just because of how

16:02

upfront and clear he was about what his beliefs

16:04

were.

16:05

But the number of threats. Yeah,

16:08

it was just too much.

16:09

And this, you know, I don't

16:11

know how much you saw about this recent Twitter

16:14

dust up I was involved in that peaked with

16:16

Donald Trump Jr. tweeting about

16:18

me and then that then declining from

16:20

there. Let's talk through it. I didn't see it. Okay.

16:23

I have to understand like, uh, the way you study

16:25

Shakespeare, I have to study your Twitter. I have to

16:27

understand some ways, how much of his sarcasm.

16:30

It's mostly sarcasm. I mean, here's

16:32

the thing. And I know that there are people who will say, David,

16:34

you're dealing with such serious issues.

16:36

It's really not okay not to

16:38

take everything you do completely seriously.

16:40

But my view is it's so

16:43

incredible that I've between chance

16:45

and timing and so different things fallen into

16:47

a position where this is what I do professionally and

16:51

it's a career and it's financially

16:53

sustainable and all these different things. I

16:55

don't want to end up taking myself too seriously

16:58

because I recognize the timing

17:00

and lock and all of these other things. And this could have

17:02

gone a completely different way. So my

17:04

approach to a lot of this is let's not

17:07

take ourselves too seriously. And in particular

17:09

on Twitter, a platform that, you

17:11

know, the degree to which it should be taken very

17:13

seriously, maybe has changed

17:16

over time. I'm always sort

17:18

of thinking a little bit tongue in cheek on Twitter. So

17:20

what happened with Donald Trump Jr. So

17:23

or the full arc of it? Yeah. To make

17:25

give you a one minute arc and then we can pick whichever

17:28

parts we want after a

17:30

mass shooting. Now you might say there's like

17:32

two or three a day. You're correct. After

17:35

the Nashville mass shooting at

17:37

a Christian school,

17:39

I tweeted snarkily

17:42

tongue in cheek to

17:44

point that thoughts and prayers

17:47

not only aren't particularly useful after a

17:49

shooting, they also don't prevent shootings, that

17:52

there's some confusion about how

17:54

there would be a shooting at a

17:57

Christian school

17:58

given that it is a place where

17:59

I think I jokingly

18:02

said something like, were they not praying

18:04

enough or correctly? In my

18:06

deep journalistic integrity. You have it. I

18:09

have your tweet. Beautiful. This

18:11

is the only display of journalistic integrity.

18:15

I will show today. And then I have a couple

18:17

of responses. Beautiful. And you deleted the

18:19

tweet since then. Which I regret. Oh, interesting.

18:22

And we can talk about that. I would love to

18:24

because it's such an interesting decision.

18:28

Because when you tweet something, one of the things

18:30

I've also learned is you don't often understand

18:33

how it's going to be read. It's

18:36

going to be analyzed like I mentioned Shakespeare. There's

18:39

certain, the use of certain words that

18:41

you regret saying in a certain kind of way.

18:44

Maybe just because it wasn't as eloquent as powerful,

18:47

it didn't actually convey the

18:49

thing.

18:50

Or is the distraction to the main message, all that kind of

18:52

stuff. Okay, the actual tweet is very

18:54

surprising that there would be a mass shooting at

18:57

a Christian school given that

18:59

lack of prayer is often blamed for

19:01

these horrible events. Is it possible they

19:03

weren't praying enough or correctly despite

19:06

being a Christian school?

19:08

And a

19:11

lot of people quote retweeted

19:13

that, which I'm assuming was

19:17

criticism. So

19:19

Colin Wright wrote, I used to consider

19:21

you a reasonable progressive, but you clearly

19:24

devolved into partisan hackery. I'm an atheist.

19:27

It cannot begin to fathom using the murder of children

19:29

and adults at a Christian school as an opportunity

19:32

to dunk on the concept of prayer. And

19:34

you responded, I'm dunking on the people who

19:36

send thoughts and prayers and do nothing

19:38

else. And the shootings continue. I'm

19:41

sure there's a lot of other interactions. There's a few other

19:43

hundred thousand. So

19:46

do you want the arc leading

19:47

to the leading? So so basically, I just wanted

19:49

to display. Do you know what time of day I

19:51

tweeted the original one? I feel like it was in the

19:53

afternoon or evening of on a

19:55

Monday,

19:56

three forty two

19:58

p.m. on 27th March

20:01

27th. Which was

20:03

a Monday, okay. So basically I tweet

20:05

that and then I finished the day and I-

20:07

So you tweet

20:09

and then you go on with your day. I might've

20:11

looked once at Twitter and

20:13

it had 2000 likes and a few people

20:15

saying, eh, this might've missed the mark, but

20:17

it's sort of like it's one of my 20,000

20:19

tweets, I don't know. I

20:21

wake up the next morning, my baby daughter

20:24

did not sleep till 7.30 the way I would like,

20:26

so she's up at 6 a.m. and I get up

20:28

and I'm just there starting to make breakfast. And

20:31

I glance at my phone and I'm starting

20:33

to, this was when verified meant a different thing

20:36

than it means now. I'm seeing

20:38

all these verified accounts that are,

20:40

you know, quote tweeting it and demanding

20:43

a retraction and whatever. And I go, oh,

20:45

okay, this looks like it's getting, looks like it's getting some

20:47

attention.

20:48

I then continue

20:51

about my day. Around noon,

20:53

I hear from my dad that he got a

20:55

hundred messages from you should

20:58

have aborted your son to, we're

21:01

going to find all of you to whatever else. My

21:03

dad has no idea what's going on. He's like, I don't know what

21:05

this is, but I have a hundred DMS

21:08

to everything else you can imagine. And

21:12

I start to get emails

21:14

about,

21:15

you know, we, you know, your

21:18

Jewish faith, this and that, and the other thing.

21:20

And so at that point to me, I thought

21:23

this is just going to get worse and worse and worse.

21:25

And so I deleted the tweet

21:27

and I really regret doing that because over

21:29

the 48 hours that followed, yes,

21:32

the attacks escalated. It went through

21:34

Candace Owens and then at Fox

21:36

news.com, Newsmax kind of

21:38

peaking with Donald Trump Jr.

21:41

And it was horrible. I mean, thousands

21:44

and thousands of the, okay. But

21:46

once I told my audience about what happened,

21:49

I got thousands of messages from

21:51

people saying, David, only

21:54

someone who doesn't know

21:56

you and is determined

21:58

to interpret this in the worst. possible

22:00

faith would think you're blaming

22:03

kids who died for getting shot.

22:05

Of course you weren't doing that. I wish you

22:07

hadn't deleted it so that it

22:09

would still be up and you would now see

22:12

the tide kind of turning on it.

22:14

This was not a fun three days regardless,

22:17

but I do regret having deleted it because

22:21

it was a panic. I wanted to do the

22:23

quickest thing I thought I could to get

22:25

people to stop trying to find

22:27

family members and send them threats. And

22:30

so around noon, that's what I did. And

22:32

the truth is the threats didn't stop anyway because everybody

22:34

had screenshotted it and I do

22:36

wish I had left it up.

22:38

Is there some degree maybe

22:40

stepping outside yourself that

22:42

you regret tweeting that in

22:44

that it feeds the mockery engine

22:48

that that fuels Twitter. So

22:50

like, does that tweet really

22:52

represent what you believe? It

22:56

absolutely represents the

22:58

disgust with a

23:01

politics that includes

23:03

saying we can't touch guns. We

23:05

just we can't, but we're

23:08

willing to point to mental health

23:10

or say we need more prayer in schools or whatever.

23:13

One thousand percent. It represents

23:15

that view. Is it the

23:17

type of snark and sarcasm that

23:20

I would use if given an hour to

23:22

discuss the topic rather than whatever

23:24

the number of characters is now on Twitter? No, definitely

23:26

not. And so I am

23:28

very cognizant of the fact that it

23:31

was unnecessarily provocative

23:34

how it was written. I

23:37

think I asked a similar question to Ben Shapiro. Do you

23:39

worry that this style of presentation can turn you from being a deeply

23:41

thoughtful, objective political thinker to somebody who

23:43

is just a partisan

23:48

hack or partisan, what's a good word, talking

23:51

head? Do you mean with regard to

23:53

Twitter or

23:55

the format of my show in general? Do I have

23:57

a question? So

24:00

Twitter for now, let's start with Twitter for now. And

24:02

can you silo your style of communication

24:05

on Twitter from

24:09

being a virus that affects your mind? Right.

24:12

I don't have deep thoughts about

24:14

the Twitter component beyond, I think,

24:17

across all sorts of disciplines. This

24:19

is not the best way

24:20

to most effectively solve problems

24:23

and figure out

24:24

solutions to complex issues. You're talking

24:27

about Twitter. Right now I'm talking about Twitter. That

24:29

being said, I think all of us to

24:31

some degree have to adapt

24:34

our content to the platform

24:37

that we're using in the same way that what I post

24:39

to YouTube is different than what I post to TikTok.

24:41

What I post to Twitter

24:43

is also different. Do I think Twitter

24:46

has been an unmitigated good

24:48

for society? No. Have

24:51

I chosen to step into Twitter

24:53

as one of the ways in which I get my message out

24:56

with the good and the bad? Yes. And

24:59

I think that there is a deep conversation

25:01

to be had there. I

25:04

think zooming out a little bit

25:05

in terms of what I do, and I was hoping this would

25:07

come up because I think it's really interesting, I

25:10

will often get emails from people

25:12

who say two things. I will get the, you

25:14

would have such a bigger audience if you did X type

25:17

emails. And usually they are

25:19

plays to sensationalism, salacious

25:23

and titillating content, more

25:25

pop culture stuff,

25:26

et cetera. On the other hand,

25:29

it's folks who say, listen, what you're doing

25:31

really isn't as serious as it could

25:33

be. And it seems like you could

25:35

do something more serious and you

25:37

should consider doing

25:39

deep dives. Once it was do a deep dive into Calvin

25:41

Coolidge. And I was like, nobody will watch that. So

25:45

it's not by accident that my show

25:47

is the way it is. In an hour,

25:50

I'm thinking of all the platforms I'm on and I'm

25:52

saying, okay,

25:53

I want to do a

25:54

relatively deep dive on the

25:56

federal budget. And I want to talk

25:59

about some of the.

25:59

the

26:01

political tomfoolery going on within the post

26:04

office. And I'm going to do a segment about

26:06

the wacky rally where Trump said

26:08

crazy things and made up three words and

26:10

said he endorsed a candidate who's named it. Right.

26:13

I'm crafting that in total to find

26:15

a balance between let's build

26:18

this audience as much as I can in

26:20

order to have a bigger base to get my

26:22

message out there and include

26:24

the more serious stuff with the hope

26:26

that there's a little bit of something for everyone. And I'm finding

26:29

a balance between those two sides

26:31

of the spectrum. It's a deliberate

26:33

thing. And I'm aware that if I were producing

26:36

my show 50 years ago, the balance

26:38

would probably be different and it would probably change again

26:40

if we didn't. If the show was audio only

26:43

rather than having all these video platforms, it

26:45

would also be different. But

26:47

it's a decision that's proactively made

26:49

to try to get the best and

26:52

most out of the hour that I'm creating every

26:54

day. It just feels like there's an entire

26:56

machine

26:58

fed by Twitter and journalism

27:00

that wants to divide people

27:03

and the drama of that division highlighting

27:05

the partisan division. The

27:08

drama of that division feels like it's

27:11

a tension with objective clear thinking sometimes.

27:13

And so that's the

27:16

I worry that there's a drug to it. It's

27:19

too much fun to mock

27:22

ridiculous people

27:24

on the other side.

27:27

I think you're right about that. And

27:29

the fact that that

27:31

is true to

27:33

me supports I've

27:35

talked with my audience about, you know, like the old

27:37

food pyramid, which I guess was like wrong. But

27:39

let's imagine that there was a pyramid that made

27:42

sense. At the bottom bread.

27:44

I think like whole grains. Maybe

27:47

I don't remember. It's been a while. It's not

27:49

junk food is at the very top. I am very

27:52

open with my audience.

27:53

The vast majority of what I do

27:56

is the top of that pyramid.

27:57

And

27:59

I tell people. very openly,

28:01

I

28:02

don't consume a lot of the type

28:04

of content I produce.

28:05

And I think it's really important

28:08

to as a base be doing

28:10

critical thinking, epistemology,

28:13

how do we believe the things we believe

28:15

basics about the world after

28:18

that,

28:19

reading history, economics, philosophy,

28:22

etc. After that, now

28:24

we're getting into current events. I would mostly

28:26

be looking at consuming primary

28:30

source reporting,

28:32

things like Associated Press,

28:35

whatever. I know everybody will have a different list of what counts

28:37

there. After that is when I'd

28:40

say indulge in some of the commentary

28:42

type stuff that I do. If

28:45

you find that I'm thoughtful

28:47

enough to make it into that, but I'm

28:49

very open. And really what I try

28:51

to do on my show often is in being

28:53

that at the top of the pyramid, tell

28:55

people there's all this other stuff that should

28:57

be forming your foundation that

29:00

I hope you're consuming in addition to just watching

29:02

me. And I'm very open with my audience about that.

29:05

What about the shape, the

29:07

dynamics, the characteristics

29:09

of your audience? Is there some degree to

29:11

which you're through mocking

29:14

maybe Republicans that

29:16

there's a lean to that

29:19

audience and then you become captured

29:21

by the audience. Do you worry about the audience capture?

29:24

I worry about it.

29:26

I'm relatively comfortable

29:28

that it's not shaping the

29:31

program to a great degree in

29:34

the sense that

29:36

at this point I have a pretty good sense

29:38

of the things I can say that will upset

29:40

what I might call my core audience. One of the

29:42

interesting things just to briefly go back

29:45

to the Twitter thing was those

29:47

people who were furious with me on Twitter and they

29:49

contacted my advertisers and some

29:51

advertisers dropped me and

29:54

on and on and on.

29:55

None of them are actually in my audience. None

29:58

of them are regular consumers of my audience.

29:59

audience. They were kind of weaponized

30:02

against me by people who said, Hey, look at this. The

30:04

people who follow Candace Owens on Twitter, other

30:07

than for their kind of shock value, they're

30:09

not in my audience. And with

30:11

my core audience, I know there are things I can talk about

30:13

that will generate,

30:14

um, displeasure, I

30:16

guess you could say with my audience. Sometimes when I touch the

30:19

Israeli Palestinian conflict, that will happen

30:21

sometimes on vaccines. There's a portion of my

30:23

audience that is more

30:26

generally skeptical of vaccines. Um,

30:29

sometimes on some foreign policy, uh,

30:31

issues or, you know,

30:33

I'm not a big fan of Marianne

30:35

Williamson nor Bobby Kennedy jr's,

30:38

um, challenges to Joe Biden, not

30:40

because I love Joe Biden, but because

30:43

I don't consider them to be the most serious challenges.

30:45

I know there's people in my audience who don't like that. They get, they

30:47

get mad at me about that. And I'm totally

30:50

okay with that. Uh, and that

30:51

tension with, with my core audience.

30:53

So in that sense, I don't feel

30:56

as though I've had that audience capture

30:58

take place, but I know it can

31:00

happen and I'm very open to

31:02

being told ways in which it may be happening without

31:05

me noticing.

31:06

Uh, so I've, uh,

31:08

made a call for questions on Reddit

31:10

for this conversation. There's

31:13

a lot of good questions that I'll probably bring up, but one

31:15

of them was about, uh, Maryam Williamson,

31:19

um, asking why David thinks

31:21

she is a garbage candidate, which

31:24

of course I've never said, but

31:27

perhaps you have more eloquently criticized. So

31:29

let's, let's, let's go there to

31:32

the 2024 election. Okay.

31:34

So Biden, Joe Biden officially announced

31:36

that he's running again. Donald Trump officially

31:39

announced that he's running again. And

31:41

if that's the matchup, who do you think wins?

31:45

If the election's held today, I

31:48

think Biden.

31:50

Why? Well, first of all, I believe he

31:52

won last time.

31:53

And if I start with the results

31:55

from 2020 and I think to

31:57

myself,

31:58

what has happened?

31:59

And since then that would push

32:02

or pull voters one way or the other. I

32:05

have a hard time making a case

32:07

that Trump is in a better position today

32:09

than he was in November of 2020. So

32:13

that's kind of my starting point, which is it's

32:15

a rematch of an election with a known outcome.

32:19

What has changed?

32:20

And I can't

32:21

make a case for circumstances

32:24

having changed in Trump's favor. To give a couple

32:27

of state level examples, Florida

32:29

seems to be kind of moving more to the Republican

32:31

side since 2020. But

32:34

Trump won that state already in 2020,

32:37

so it wouldn't really change the outcome. Arizona

32:40

was close. I think Arizona has

32:42

moved to the left since 2020. So I don't see

32:45

Trump taking that one. Wisconsin,

32:48

I think the same sort of thing applies. So being very

32:50

like practical.

32:52

That would be kind of the start

32:54

of my reasoning.

32:57

Do you think Joe Biden is a better

32:59

candidate now than he was in 2020? I

33:03

think he's a worse

33:06

candidate. This is going to sound

33:08

ageist, but I think he's a worse candidate

33:10

in that

33:11

he's even older and there already

33:14

seems to be an appetite

33:16

for younger candidates, particularly

33:19

on the Democratic

33:21

voting side. So he's

33:23

going to be four years older. And in a sense, that

33:26

could be a liability. However,

33:28

he also is going to have four years of

33:30

accomplishments. Now

33:32

you might not like the things he's done, in which case that

33:34

would hurt him. But he has started

33:37

to accumulate not insignificant

33:40

number of accomplishments. Some of

33:42

the big things that are known, Inflation Reduction

33:44

Act and covid stimulus, you know,

33:47

but also less well known things like a bunch

33:49

of little tweaks to health care, a bunch

33:51

of little tweaks to student lending. There's

33:53

been a lot of little things at

33:56

the macro level.

33:57

I don't actually think Joe Biden has

33:59

the.

33:59

much to do with this the same way I didn't

34:02

credit or attack Trump for a lot of the macroeconomic

34:05

stuff. But inflation has started to come down significantly.

34:07

The stock market's quite steady, these

34:10

sort of things. I think looking historically,

34:12

it's a pretty okay environment

34:15

for Joe Biden, with the exception that he

34:17

was already the oldest president to be inaugurated

34:19

in 2021.

34:21

And he would beat his own record in January

34:23

of 2025. And I just don't know how voters are going

34:25

to see that. So in terms of just

34:28

a public human being, how

34:30

would you compare Trump and Biden? So if I

34:33

were to give criticism towards Trump,

34:35

it would be that he's chaotic,

34:38

maybe to the point of being disrespectful

34:41

to a lot of different groups, to a lot of different ideas,

34:44

to a lot of different nations and leaders and all

34:46

that kind of stuff. And then the criticism

34:48

towards Biden would be that he,

34:53

maybe perhaps because of age or any other kind

34:55

of cognitive capabilities, is not really

34:57

there mentally.

35:01

In the way that perhaps you could say that Barack

35:03

Obama was there, just mentally being

35:05

able to handle all kinds of aspects of

35:08

being a public representative

35:10

of a nation to the world and

35:13

to the people of that nation.

35:15

So which in the competition

35:18

of personality flaws, which do you think is more

35:20

powerful? You've laid out fair

35:24

and I believe accurate assessments

35:26

of elements of both of those men.

35:29

You haven't weighed in on to what

35:32

degree you value each of

35:34

those assessments, which is where I think the

35:36

kind of meat of this question really

35:38

is.

35:40

I don't see, and I know that

35:43

Biden's going to get us into World War III,

35:45

World War III, that doesn't seem to be happening. I

35:48

don't see the

35:50

Biden deficits you listed, which

35:52

I agree with you on. I

35:54

don't see them as

35:57

dangerous or threatening to the standing

35:59

of the

35:59

United States in this

36:02

kind of

36:03

environment with our Western traditional

36:05

Western allies and geopolitics,

36:08

et cetera, in the way that

36:10

the sort of unhinged personality

36:13

of Trump combined with his lack of knowledge

36:15

about most issues is

36:17

a threat. So for me,

36:20

if those two are the candidates,

36:23

Biden would be my choice. Now, are there people

36:25

I would rather see on the Democratic

36:27

side? Yes. If I knew the president

36:30

would be a Republican, can I think of better options

36:32

than Trump? Absolutely. You know,

36:34

I think it's so funny when in 2012 it

36:37

was Obama versus Romney. The

36:39

difference seemed so significant

36:41

between them. Thinking back,

36:44

I'm sure I would disagree with Mitt Romney about tax

36:46

rates and his views on LGBT or I'm

36:49

sure I know are different than mine, but

36:51

it seems without looking at him

36:53

with rose colored glasses, so comparatively

36:55

benign given the four years

36:57

of Trump. So that's kind of where I come down. Even

37:00

McCain and

37:01

Obama,

37:02

the differences seem quite

37:05

drastic. Yeah. McCain was interesting

37:07

because Palin as his running mate opened

37:09

the door to the sort of cartoonish stuff

37:12

that we've started to see on the Republican side. Palin,

37:16

Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, it

37:18

started going in that direction, which has

37:20

made the party a bit of a joke, aside

37:23

from what you believe the tax rate would be. Right. You

37:25

can say taxes are too high, but Jewish

37:28

space lasers come on. You know, so,

37:30

but, but I agree with you on McCain also. So

37:33

going back to the political terms we talked

37:35

about, what, where in that spectrum do you place yourself

37:38

today? Which

37:39

of the label

37:41

do you think captures your political views? Progressive

37:43

social Democrat, which,

37:45

which again

37:46

is a capitalist. I own my own business.

37:49

I pay the taxes I'm legally required

37:51

to pay and not a penny more. And you know, all,

37:54

all those things, that's where I place myself. Would

37:56

you please yourself to the left of Joe Biden?

37:59

Yes. Yes.

38:00

Where does the AOC

38:02

fit into that? It's

38:05

a good question. What do you think about AOC

38:08

as a candidate? Do you think she eventually runs?

38:11

I think that

38:13

if she doesn't run into

38:15

some kind of scandal, and I don't mean

38:18

scandal in the sense of some

38:20

personal impropriety that, you

38:22

know, but I mean some kind

38:24

of major political problem,

38:28

it seems that she has the staying power

38:30

to be an American elected politics

38:32

for a long time, whether she would even want

38:35

to be president versus maybe

38:37

going to the Senate or being governor or

38:39

whatever the case may be. I have no idea what her ambitions

38:41

are in that sense,

38:43

but certainly like policy aside,

38:45

she has this combination

38:48

of charisma,

38:50

like ability to some,

38:52

but also something about

38:54

her personality that angers the people

38:56

who don't like her in a way that only fuels

38:59

her sort of presence, which

39:02

I think applies to Trump as well, that

39:05

I do think that she has the potential to have significant

39:07

staying power in American politics. President, I

39:09

don't know. Do you think that's the future of

39:13

political elections and politics in general,

39:16

is people who are able to skillfully piss

39:18

off the other side, like AOC and

39:20

Trump did? I think it's an aspect of it. I

39:22

think it's also understanding

39:24

how to communicate policy

39:27

ideas.

39:28

Trump I have things I can praise Trump

39:30

about if we want to get to that segment at some point, you

39:33

let me know when that is. But I do think

39:35

that there are some things Trump is very good at.

39:37

And this is why it's very hard for me to believe

39:39

that Ron DeSantis has what it takes to

39:42

actually

39:43

fight Trump in a national primary.

39:47

And one of those things is Trump

39:49

has a even though he often says very

39:52

strange things that if you transcribe them,

39:54

you go, that's what language is that? That doesn't

39:56

make any sense whatsoever. In the moment,

39:58

the way he relates to.

40:00

Um, adversaries on stage,

40:02

et cetera, is very good in

40:04

that he is very much aware of how it is

40:06

going to be seen by the audience. And so that's

40:08

why a lot of times it's more about, doesn't matter that

40:10

a word salad came out of his mouth, how he immediately

40:12

responded and related to the person who's very

40:15

good. So I think that

40:17

knowing how to be good when clips

40:20

are shared all the time, often out of context

40:23

is extraordinarily important

40:25

knowing how to use social media, which every

40:27

election cycle that means something different,

40:29

but understanding how to use social media, very important.

40:32

Those things are absolutely so

40:35

important and whether

40:37

you're able to do a deep dive on

40:39

the deficit, it's certainly useful,

40:42

but I would say it's a bad thing. It's

40:44

becoming less important in terms of figuring out who we

40:46

want to represent us. So just lingering

40:48

on the AOC and then maybe let's

40:50

throw in Bernie Sanders on that.

40:53

Yeah. So where do you place yourself and

40:55

how do you do the layout of the land

40:57

of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Joe

41:00

Biden

41:01

and David Pakman? My

41:04

instinct is, and the, the, I'm

41:06

going to answer it. The thing that makes this tough

41:09

is Bernie says I'm, he's

41:12

a democratic socialist. He

41:14

ran as a social Democrat. He

41:16

didn't run on anything that was

41:18

really socialism. Right. So

41:21

I'm going by their public facing

41:23

platforms. I've been listening to him for many, many

41:25

years and all the way back to the Tom

41:27

Hartman show and I think using

41:30

the terms as you've been using them, he

41:32

has, I don't think ever been a democratic

41:35

socialist. I haven't heard him speak

41:37

about socialism.

41:39

I think I've heard him

41:42

speak about social

41:44

programs and the value of social programs

41:46

throughout the history of the United

41:48

States and their, and how they've been beneficial.

41:51

My understanding is very similar to yours, although

41:54

there may be stuff from the seventies where he really

41:56

was talking

41:57

about boner bites. Oh shit in the seventies.

42:00

You and I even who weren't around, we were doing stuff

42:02

in the 70s. I feel like we did, yeah. My

42:04

sense would be, you know,

42:05

Biden is like center left and then

42:08

I'm to the left of that,

42:10

but maybe just inside of where

42:13

AOC and Bernie are, very, very

42:15

similar to Bernie. I mean, I identify

42:17

with a lot of Bernie's ideas, maybe

42:20

their implementation I'm more flexible

42:23

on. I'll give you one example, Medicare

42:25

for all.

42:26

One way of trying to get healthcare

42:28

to everybody, which Bernie's very big on is

42:31

you take the current Medicare program, you just

42:33

eliminate the age limit, make it available to

42:35

everybody, pay for it through taxation. Interesting.

42:39

However, I'm open to other models

42:41

if they get everybody healthcare. That is

42:44

good quality and affordable. Singapore

42:47

has an interesting model. Germany has an

42:49

interesting model. I am

42:51

more agnostic about how we do it than

42:53

just saying let's expand Medicare.

42:56

Whether that puts me to the right of Bernie,

42:58

I don't know, but I'm not like exactly

43:00

right there on, it has to be Medicare for all. Yeah,

43:03

that's more of a,

43:05

that's more just flexibility versus

43:07

dogmatism. So I don't know if that puts you

43:09

to the left or to the right. I don't either.

43:11

What do you think about the, we

43:14

could term manipulation or the corruption in

43:16

the DNC that perhaps

43:18

tipped the scales against Bernie in the election?

43:21

Do you think there was such a thing? In 2016 or 2020? Both,

43:27

I would say. The

43:30

dynamics there were different with Hillary Clinton

43:33

and the pressure from Hillary Clinton

43:35

is the candidate and so on. Yeah, I

43:37

mean, was there, why

43:39

didn't Bernie win, I guess

43:41

is one way to ask. Okay,

43:44

I think there's a couple things here. First,

43:46

the DNC, I'm not a Democrat.

43:49

Just your audience may not know, I'm just

43:52

independent. I mostly vote for candidates

43:54

that end up being Democrats in local elections.

43:56

Often there's no party designation. So, okay,

43:59

I'm obviously on the left.

43:59

I'm not denying that, but the democratic party as

44:02

an institution has never really been interesting to me. You're

44:05

still a rebel

44:06

that resists belonging to any institution. Exactly

44:08

right. Exactly right. And whether

44:10

it matters, I don't know. The

44:13

DNC and the RNC

44:15

really are organizations that

44:17

to some degree exist to justify their

44:20

own existence because if they were no longer necessary,

44:24

they would go away. And so

44:26

they have to assert

44:28

their value and their importance. They do this

44:30

in a number of different ways, organizing

44:32

the way that the nominee has chosen, the

44:35

convention, working with

44:37

states on everything from redistricting

44:39

to whatever else the case may be, setting the order

44:42

of primaries and having some involvement in

44:44

how that's all going to happen. And

44:47

also coordinating behind the scenes. I

44:50

guess they would describe it as making

44:52

sure our candidates don't get in each

44:54

other's ways. We might see it and

44:56

say they're picking

44:58

the winner. There's

45:00

nothing illegal about them being involved in picking

45:03

the winner, but we might say it's not in

45:05

people's interests. I think the 2020

45:07

primary was really interesting.

45:09

Bernie supporter myself,

45:12

I started telling my audience after

45:14

a

45:15

couple of primaries and even before, based

45:17

on polling and different things, I

45:19

see a real uphill battle here for Bernie.

45:23

And it's really important

45:25

people in my audience are not the average union

45:28

worker in Michigan

45:29

who is mostly working and raising a

45:31

family and then goes to vote on primary day and

45:34

goes to vote on election day. If

45:36

you spend a lot of time on Reddit and Twitter, you're going

45:38

to have an inflated sense of Bernie's

45:40

popularity within the Democratic Party.

45:43

That was my sense. And

45:46

to some degree,

45:48

we saw that

45:49

in certain states. I don't have the exact

45:51

primary order and results in front of me

45:54

or in my head. But the big turning point was South Carolina.

45:57

South Carolina was when

45:59

Joe Biden.

46:00

one and one handily

46:02

understood to be because of the larger African-American

46:05

population in South Carolina. And

46:08

right around that exact same time, I actually

46:10

don't remember now whether it was the day after or the

46:12

day before some of the smaller Democratic

46:14

candidates, smaller in terms of support got

46:17

out and said, I'm endorsing Joe

46:19

Biden. And

46:21

to some degree, of course,

46:23

it was all organized and timed to help

46:25

Joe Biden. There's no doubt about that. This

46:28

is what the DNC does. It's

46:30

hard for me to be mad

46:33

at the DNC because this is sort of like

46:36

if we believe they were there to be

46:38

unbiased arbiters and to stay as much

46:40

on the side as possible, it would make sense

46:42

to be furious that they've gone against

46:44

their stated kind of mandate. But

46:48

we know that the DNC

46:50

negotiates and is working behind

46:52

the scenes and has a favorite. That favorite was Hillary

46:55

in 2016, 2020. So I

46:57

share the frustration about the power that

46:59

the DNC has. But for people who were

47:01

saying they did something illegal or whatever else the

47:03

case may be, that doesn't seem to

47:05

be the case. But this is part

47:08

of why I mean, I would love there not to

47:10

be this duopoly of Republicans and Democrats.

47:13

And there's probably four major changes that have to happen

47:15

in order to make that a reality. But I share the

47:17

frustration of folks while recognizing

47:21

that Reddit was not accurately

47:23

representing Bernie's level of popularity.

47:26

Still, I wish that the bias wasn't towards

47:28

the

47:29

what could be negatively turned a deep state towards

47:32

the bureaucracy, towards the momentum

47:35

of the past, which I think Joe Biden kind of represents

47:38

versus new ideas.

47:40

Which is funny to say that Bernie Sanders

47:42

somehow represents new ideas because he's also

47:44

an older gentleman. Well it's

47:46

a frame. It's a lot of framing.

47:48

And the other aspect of that is on

47:51

paper, Joe Biden's

47:53

platform was arguably the most

47:55

progressive of any Democratic candidate

47:58

who won the nomination.

47:59

Now, of course, there were people who challenged

48:02

the nominations who were to Joe Biden's left. A

48:05

lot of this is perspective and

48:07

it, you know, that's how

48:09

you end up saying the guy who's a couple of years

48:11

older than Biden is actually the guy with the fresh

48:13

perspective, which is interesting because I don't disagree with you.

48:17

Yeah. And then you also have to say the perspective

48:19

doesn't always align with the policies. You're right.

48:22

And, you know, the actual policies of Joe Biden are different

48:24

than that. Maybe the perception of

48:26

Joe Biden or what he ran on. I mean, just

48:28

two examples I would give are during

48:31

his campaign, he played up a little

48:33

bit his interest in doing student

48:35

loan forgiveness and something on cannabis.

48:38

I never bought it. I told my audience, I

48:40

think he's saying this stuff because

48:42

this is the way the tide is kind of the

48:45

wind is blowing and he's being advised to say this stuff.

48:47

I don't think he's going to do very much on either of these things. He

48:49

did actually do some student loan stuff, but

48:53

that would be two examples, I think. Okay.

48:56

Let's go to

48:58

the something you alluded to, which is the

49:00

pros and cons of a particular candidate. Well,

49:03

what do you as a critic of Trump,

49:05

what do you are the

49:08

pros, the strengths of

49:11

Donald Trump and what you are as big

49:13

as weaknesses? The strengths

49:15

of Trump. Let's see how I can

49:18

frame them in a way that is both accurate and

49:21

accurately assesses my feeling about it.

49:23

I can be taken out of context most masterfully

49:26

through the clipping process. Yes.

49:28

Trump's strengths are

49:30

mostly superficial

49:33

and in terms of presentation.

49:35

Trump was able to, I call

49:38

it a grift. Some on the right say

49:41

he's just so good at relating to different types

49:43

of people. Trump as a rich

49:45

guy from New York City was

49:48

able to convince people that he spent

49:50

most of his life trying to be kept isolated

49:53

from, that he

49:55

had their best interests in mind, that

49:57

he knew why they weren't doing what they

49:59

wanted.

49:59

well in the 2016

50:02

economy and that he

50:04

had solutions that he was going to bring forward.

50:07

The truth is

50:09

he never really liked those people.

50:11

And as soon as they weren't useful to him for a brief

50:13

period of time, he, you know, that

50:16

that love affair with his followers stopped

50:18

and then now it's back that he needs them again.

50:21

He didn't really understand

50:22

the causes of the problems that those folks were

50:24

experiencing. And his solutions were laughable. Right.

50:27

He was going to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict

50:30

in year one. He was going to replace Obamacare

50:32

in 2017. Things that were never going

50:34

anywhere, anywhere. But what

50:37

he did really well was he put

50:39

up a united front of

50:41

I know what is ailing you.

50:43

I know how to fix it and I know

50:45

how to fix it, I guess, because he's a businessman

50:48

and he's been above the fray

50:50

of politics for so long, knowing

50:52

how to use political donations to his advantage.

50:55

He called that smart, et cetera. I think that's his greatest

50:57

strength. Why do you say that the the

51:00

the Jared plan for Israel,

51:02

Palestine and the plan for health care

51:04

to improve Obamacare? Why do you

51:07

say this laughable? Well,

51:08

only someone I would include the North

51:11

Korea plan as well, which I'm glad to talk about only

51:14

someone who

51:15

doesn't know anything

51:18

about the size and scope

51:20

of these issues could so arrogantly

51:23

say that they could solve them in that way

51:25

and on that timeframe. I'm all for

51:28

optimism and and bringing

51:30

a new face to things. Absolutely.

51:33

Without a doubt. But you know, a

51:35

wall with Mexico that Mexico will pay for

51:37

at the end of my first term.

51:40

I know there are people who believed it because

51:42

they would call into my show and say, I'm voting for Trump

51:44

because of it. But it's hard to

51:46

believe that anybody serious would

51:48

fall for that unless you were deliberately

51:51

wanting to just believe whatever was being

51:53

fed to you or you just hadn't

51:55

ever thought about these issues before. The

51:57

health care plan, you know, in twenty seventeen.

51:59

they proposed one

52:01

would have led to 24 million

52:03

or so people ending up without health care. Didn't go

52:05

anywhere because it was so terrible. And then

52:07

in August of 2020, Trump said in two

52:09

weeks, I'm going to finally have my health

52:12

care proposal. It's 2023. We

52:14

still never got it. You know, with all of these things, when you

52:16

think them through, it was just sort of arrogance.

52:19

And I get the perspective of I

52:21

want optimism and I liked that optimism.

52:24

It worked. I mean, fair. A

52:26

lot of people saw it and liked it. As someone who followed

52:29

a lot of those issues closely,

52:31

they seemed, of course, like impossible

52:33

promises. Well, it's a double edged sword. So

52:35

to push back a little bit, if you look at

52:38

the things I have a

52:41

little bit more knowledge about, which is the space

52:43

of artificial intelligence,

52:45

there's a company called DeepMind and it's

52:47

a company called OpenAI

52:49

that were laughed at for a long time

52:52

when they were talking about that they're going to solve intelligence.

52:55

And now they've made especially

52:57

DeepMind and most recently

52:59

OpenAI with GPT, they've made

53:02

progress that

53:03

most of the community would not have imagined

53:06

they'd be able to make everything from

53:08

AlphaGo beating the world world

53:11

go champion, just all the different

53:14

steps in progress that can get into

53:16

were surprised everybody and they are

53:18

legitimately

53:21

fearlessly pursuing

53:25

the task of solving intelligence. The

53:27

other aspect, he gets a lot

53:29

of criticism now, but another example

53:31

is Elon Musk.

53:33

I can say a lot of things like

53:35

SpaceX, so commercial space

53:38

flight.

53:39

He was laughed at for a long time that that's possible.

53:43

Same thing with autopilot in Tesla, autonomous

53:45

vehicles. His approach was harshly

53:47

criticized by all the experts and

53:50

still criticized to this day, deeply

53:53

criticized. And I, as a person that I

53:55

believe objectively can look at the

53:57

progress of autopilot as a

53:59

semi-autonomous vehicle system has been

54:02

incredibly surprising. So

54:05

the reason I mention that is sometimes it feels

54:07

like you need the guy or

54:09

the gal who

54:10

makes those preposterous,

54:14

ambitious statements

54:17

like, we're going to solve healthcare this

54:19

year.

54:20

And

54:22

then there's experts like yourself

54:25

that are looking, thinking,

54:27

have you read anything about the history?

54:30

Israel, Palestine is a good example

54:33

of that. Do you know there's a history there? Do

54:36

you realize how complicated, how many

54:38

people have tried, how many people have failed? How

54:40

many millions of people hate each other

54:43

in this little

54:45

place, in this land? Like

54:49

sometimes the expertise can really weigh you

54:51

down. So to push back, sometimes you

54:53

have to have almost be naive

54:56

and stupid and just rush in with

54:58

an optimism in order to actually make some

55:00

progress. I agree with you 100%. I

55:02

think it's interesting that all of the examples you gave

55:05

of successes are from the technology

55:08

space. Not politics, yes. Not from

55:10

politics, which I mean, listen, I

55:12

would love to be able to make headway on some

55:14

of these issues more quickly without

55:15

a doubt. I do think at some point though, when

55:18

it comes down to voting and saying, one of these

55:20

people is going to be ostensibly

55:22

in charge for four years through all of the departments

55:25

and secretaries and choices that they make, we

55:27

do want to apply some level of realism

55:30

with the understanding that your

55:32

examples are from the tech space and they're good

55:34

examples. There's no question about it. One

55:37

thing I'll add to this, I recently read Bradley Hope's

55:39

new book about North Korea

55:41

and it's really about an activist who,

55:46

it doesn't even really matter, but in the

55:48

background of the book,

55:50

it's written, much of what is written

55:52

about happens during the Trump era. And

55:54

when Trump did the first and then the second,

55:57

I guess you'd call them summits with Kim Jong Un. And.

55:59

it actually did seem like

56:02

to some degree, Trump's

56:04

we're going to handle this. Like I do a business

56:07

deal approach to Kim Jong Un in

56:10

some sense, it actually was

56:12

logical

56:13

because of Kim Jong Un and the

56:15

way that

56:16

it was so ego driven and they both

56:19

as sort of authoritarian strong men types to

56:21

different degrees wanted that there was actually

56:23

a kernel where I actually thought as I

56:25

read it, Trump's initial idea

56:28

wasn't crazy. The problem was he knew nothing about

56:30

the backstory of the relationship. He fell for all sorts

56:32

of lies from Kim Jong Un and he made

56:35

offers that didn't make any sense to make it fell apart

56:37

fine. But that's an example where I think Trump's

56:40

personality was not actually at

56:42

its base. The, the problem

56:44

when it came to North Korea. Well, there's other

56:46

things of this nature that could go and

56:49

some people argue goes into the strengths and pros

56:52

of Donald Trump, China, for example, terrorists

56:54

in China.

56:56

Can you make the case that there's some positive

56:58

outcomes of the way Donald Trump

57:00

acted with China? It's

57:03

really tough. And I'll give you a couple of. Okay. Then

57:05

also cons. I'll give you, it's tough to make.

57:07

So the China thing is really,

57:10

so just, um,

57:12

very recently to when we're recording

57:14

this,

57:15

Trump was on Fox news interviewed by a guy named

57:17

Mark Levin and Trump proposed

57:20

a new, I call it a conspiracy

57:22

theory. Maybe it will strike you as something

57:24

different about China, COVID and tariffs.

57:27

And Trump's suggestion was

57:29

that the tariffs cost China

57:31

so much money. China sent the US so

57:33

much money in tariffs that

57:35

they released COVID as punishment.

57:38

Now there's a couple problems with that. One,

57:42

American companies pay the tariffs.

57:45

Trump still doesn't seem to know this. Trump

57:47

seems to believe that when he puts

57:49

a tariff on Chinese imports,

57:52

someone in China is cutting a check to the United

57:54

States.

57:55

American companies buy the stuff

57:58

from China and

57:59

then American companies.

57:59

companies cut a check to the United States for the tariff.

58:03

Trump doesn't seem to get that. But it still

58:06

has a sting to the Chinese economy. You can make

58:08

the argument that if there is a suitable

58:10

alternative domestically or from

58:12

a different country, that it will reduce

58:15

imports, but it didn't happen.

58:17

And we actually have reports now that the

58:20

tariffs on China cost

58:22

about a quarter million American jobs.

58:25

The other problem with that idea is

58:28

China created and released a virus

58:31

in order to hurt you.

58:34

But as of today, five

58:36

point seven of the six point eight million deaths

58:39

were in other countries. It's a very

58:41

indirect way. You're mostly killing people

58:43

in other countries to hurt Trump.

58:46

Maybe there was a this is the sort of

58:48

thing

58:49

where when I think about how Trump dealt with China,

58:52

it's very scary because given

58:54

another four years, who knows

58:56

what he might do if he still doesn't understand

58:58

how tariffs work.

59:00

The geopolitics operates in

59:03

complicated ways with carrots and sticks.

59:06

And Henry Kissinger has written quite a lot

59:08

about this and in some

59:10

sense, the positive aspect here that

59:12

Donald Trump is willing to take

59:15

big risks in

59:17

in the game of geopolitics of

59:19

this giant superpower

59:21

that is China and a lot of others are

59:24

too afraid,

59:25

too afraid to call them out

59:27

to come to the table and criticize.

59:31

I certainly think that's an argument

59:33

that can be made. My question

59:36

would be what tangible

59:38

positive outcomes did it lead to? And

59:41

it's tough to identify any, but I

59:43

think it's a great thing. I mean, listen, one

59:46

of the things you're kind of getting at maybe

59:48

indirectly is that

59:50

there's been this sense that politics has

59:52

been done very similarly for a long

59:54

time and even between Democrats and Republicans

59:58

still even with some policy difference.

59:59

There's still the kind of feeling that

1:00:02

it's disconnected folks in D.C. Mostly

1:00:05

dealing with issues that don't directly affect. I

1:00:08

get that. I'm with you on that. I think

1:00:10

the question is to whether Trump's bluster was

1:00:13

positive rather than extraordinarily

1:00:15

humiliating in many ways. I just come

1:00:17

down on it was an absolute and total humiliation.

1:00:20

But I understand that you can recognize

1:00:23

Trump doesn't know a lot of stuff, but his attitude

1:00:25

was refreshing in some way. That's a reasonable

1:00:28

position for someone to take. I disagree with

1:00:29

it, but I understand it.

1:00:31

But it's trying and feeling better than that.

1:00:34

Trying. This goes

1:00:36

well beyond politics. You know, Wayne Gretzky

1:00:38

has weighed in about this. Michael Jordan has

1:00:40

weighed in about, I mean, this is a, yeah, is

1:00:42

it, is it better to have tried and failed than never?

1:00:44

Is it better to have loved and lost than never

1:00:46

to have loved? I don't know. I mean,

1:00:48

listen, we live through four years of Trump.

1:00:51

We know what that four year

1:00:53

term was like. And it's

1:00:55

very hard for me to say that the

1:00:57

things he tried

1:00:59

were, were overwhelmingly reasonable.

1:01:02

But I get the point you're trying to make and I appreciate it. And

1:01:05

it's if we don't do any of it, then where do we

1:01:07

end up? Sure. We know where we ended

1:01:09

up with Trump and it was pretty embarrassing.

1:01:11

Uh, okay. Let's linger on

1:01:14

some more strengths. We didn't start any

1:01:16

new wars. We didn't

1:01:18

start something to that. Yeah, that's it's,

1:01:20

it's interesting. There's a few different approaches

1:01:23

to dealing with that. First,

1:01:26

it's really important to remember that

1:01:28

the counterpoint to that from the

1:01:30

folks who like to say that was that Hillary

1:01:32

Clinton was going to start three wars. Sometimes

1:01:35

they say four wars. Sometimes they say five wars.

1:01:38

Okay.

1:01:39

The geopolitical situation during the

1:01:41

four years that Trump was in office, I

1:01:44

don't know that they obviously lent themselves

1:01:46

to wars that Trump just barely was

1:01:49

able to keep us out of. I think the Russia

1:01:51

thing is interesting because now it's very

1:01:53

popular to go

1:01:55

back and say, you know, the

1:01:57

reason Putin didn't do the Ukraine thing when Trump.

1:01:59

Right. And to somehow give Trump credit for

1:02:02

that, there's a counterpoint to

1:02:04

it, which is Putin under

1:02:06

Trump, particularly if Trump got

1:02:08

four more years, would have been able

1:02:11

to maybe consolidate power in other

1:02:13

ways because of his relationship with Trump. I'm not

1:02:15

coming down on one side or the other. It's not my area

1:02:17

of expertise, but it's not the open shut

1:02:20

slam dunk that, you know, Trump likes to say it is

1:02:22

Putin didn't invade because he knew I would

1:02:24

crush him. OK. So

1:02:27

it's not obvious to me that

1:02:29

there were imminently wars that would have started

1:02:31

during that time. That being said,

1:02:34

you know, for

1:02:36

all the criticism of Obama

1:02:38

during Crimea.

1:02:41

Trump seemed to just kind of forget about that after

1:02:43

all the criticism and say, I'm not actually going to do

1:02:45

anything about that. And so there's there are foreign policy

1:02:48

criticisms that that could be made. But

1:02:51

it is true. No new wars were started

1:02:53

under Trump. And I like that. I

1:02:55

don't like wars. What do you think about his handling

1:02:57

of covid? Can

1:02:59

you say what are the pros and cons of his handling

1:03:02

of covid? The con for him

1:03:04

is he'd be president right now if he had handled

1:03:06

it differently.

1:03:07

I think it's abundantly clear early

1:03:11

on.

1:03:11

And there's now a lot of really good reporting about the

1:03:14

conversations he was having with Jared Kushner and others.

1:03:17

He became convinced either because

1:03:19

of things he was being told or because he decided this is

1:03:21

the way it's going to be. This is going to go away. Fine.

1:03:25

China. OK, it's in China and Italy. OK,

1:03:27

we have 15 cases, but it'll soon be zero. We'll

1:03:30

be opened by Easter

1:03:31

of 2020. None

1:03:33

of it happened. If

1:03:36

he had handled it in the

1:03:38

following way, and I've said this to

1:03:40

Rogan and I've said this to Patrick Bet David,

1:03:43

and they tend to all see my

1:03:45

side of this. If Trump had said, listen,

1:03:48

we don't know how bad this is going to be, but

1:03:51

I care too much about

1:03:53

the American people to take a shot. So

1:03:56

it's not going to be two weeks. It's going to be a little

1:03:58

bit, but I need your.

1:03:59

help. We're

1:04:00

going to bring everybody together. I don't care

1:04:02

if you're a Democrat or a Republican. We're going to have

1:04:05

MAGA masks and he could have kept 50 cents

1:04:07

on the dollar to pay off Stormy or whoever.

1:04:09

Right. But it would have been I think

1:04:12

he wins reelection because the

1:04:14

perception was and reality

1:04:17

is a version of that. The perception

1:04:19

was that he was way too

1:04:21

cavalier about it early on. People

1:04:24

died who didn't need to die. And

1:04:27

I

1:04:28

think that it was arguably the

1:04:31

one area where he could

1:04:33

have all but guaranteed that

1:04:35

he was going to get himself reelected. Well, to push

1:04:37

back on that, I mean, because you mentioned sort of masks

1:04:40

and lockdowns kind of a solution

1:04:42

to covid. I didn't mention lockdowns, but I'm

1:04:44

glad to talk about policy or quarantine

1:04:46

or like, there's several solutions

1:04:49

to a pandemic, broadly speaking. And

1:04:51

one of them is vaccine.

1:04:53

And so you didn't

1:04:54

mention that he fast tracked

1:04:57

the development. He his administration

1:05:00

fast track the development of the vaccine,

1:05:03

which surprising he didn't really take much credit for.

1:05:05

I think he did. I think he tried. There's

1:05:07

a couple of there's a lot there. Well, to me,

1:05:09

it seems like you can make

1:05:12

the case with

1:05:13

the Trump hand gestures that

1:05:17

his decisions for fast tracking the development

1:05:19

of the vaccine saved tens of millions

1:05:21

of lives. You can make you he

1:05:23

could in the Trumpian way make that

1:05:26

case. So a couple of different things. I

1:05:28

know you don't necessarily follow Trump's

1:05:30

rallies as closely as I do. And

1:05:32

I'm jealous of you for that. But he

1:05:36

did tout the vaccine stuff

1:05:38

hugely for a while

1:05:40

until his audience turned

1:05:43

against him.

1:05:43

And then he had to draw this line

1:05:46

where he was going, I made the vaccines,

1:05:49

which none of you have to take, by the way, freedom.

1:05:52

You don't have to take them. But it's fantastic. And

1:05:54

nobody else could have done it. But don't worry. Nobody's going to make

1:05:56

you take the vaccine. And he actually got

1:05:58

booed at a couple of his own rallies.

1:05:59

is when talking about the vaccines. But let's back

1:06:02

up a little bit. Fast tracking. My

1:06:04

understanding of what he did is

1:06:06

he did what any president in his situation

1:06:09

would do and what many world leaders elsewhere did as well,

1:06:11

which is he agreed to

1:06:14

pre-purchase supply of vaccine

1:06:17

in order to provide money to pharmaceutical companies

1:06:19

to scale up the manufacturing, which

1:06:21

is absolutely fine. But

1:06:24

he wants one of the stories he tells is

1:06:26

it usually takes 12 years to develop a vaccine. We

1:06:29

did it in nine months, thanks to me.

1:06:32

Decades of mRNA technology

1:06:35

being developed, created the platform

1:06:37

in which you can make

1:06:39

a particular vaccine in nine months. Didn't

1:06:42

have anything to do with Trump.

1:06:43

He did pre-fund and say we will

1:06:45

buy huge supply and that provided

1:06:47

liquidity to the pharmaceutical companies. But

1:06:49

he also delegated control to

1:06:52

people, to experts that

1:06:55

enable that kind of fast

1:06:58

tracking vaccines. Right. He was

1:07:00

very eager for the FDA to approve it because

1:07:02

he saw that there would be a political benefit. He didn't get

1:07:04

in the way, I guess. He didn't get in the way. Fair.

1:07:07

I think now we're on the same page. He did not

1:07:09

get in the way of vaccines being developed,

1:07:11

which is good.

1:07:12

Presidents and bureaucracies

1:07:15

have a way of getting in the way.

1:07:17

I don't disagree with that. I'm not

1:07:19

aware of really any governments that got in the way. I

1:07:22

mean, it seemed given the global situation, everybody,

1:07:25

European countries were pre-purchasing vaccine.

1:07:28

African countries were who were going to be

1:07:31

later to receive vaccines, were partnering

1:07:33

with the European countries that had pre-purchased.

1:07:36

But the most interesting thing about all of this is Trump

1:07:38

did play up the vaccines for a long time until

1:07:42

his crowd didn't want to hear about it anymore, which was crazy.

1:07:44

It was sort of like he became a victim

1:07:47

of the monster he

1:07:47

created to some degree. One of

1:07:49

the effects of all this that makes me truly sad is

1:07:53

this division over the vaccines has created distrust

1:07:55

in science. Yeah. And also what

1:07:57

makes me sad is the scientific

1:08:01

leaders, Anthony Fauci

1:08:03

being one of the representatives of that

1:08:05

community, I would say

1:08:07

completely dropped the ball.

1:08:09

In what way? They

1:08:11

spoke with arrogance, they

1:08:14

spoke down to people, they

1:08:16

spoke in a way that a great

1:08:18

scientist does not speak, which is they

1:08:20

spoke with certainty, without

1:08:22

humility,

1:08:24

like they have all the wisdom and

1:08:27

all of us are too dumb to understand it, but they're

1:08:29

going to be the parent that tells us exactly what

1:08:31

to do, versus speaking

1:08:34

to the immensity of the problem, the

1:08:37

deep core of the problem being

1:08:39

the uncertainty, we don't know what to do. The

1:08:43

terrifying thing about the pandemic, we don't know anything

1:08:45

about it as it's happening, and so you have

1:08:47

to make decisions, you have to take risks about,

1:08:50

well, maybe you have to overreact in

1:08:53

order to protect the populace, but

1:08:55

it's in the face of uncertainty, you have to do that, not

1:09:00

empowered by science somehow, and

1:09:02

the deep expertise that somebody like Anthony

1:09:04

Fauci

1:09:06

claims to have. So

1:09:09

I'm really troubled by

1:09:11

the distress and science that

1:09:13

resulted from that, and you have to blame the

1:09:15

leaders to the degree, leaders

1:09:18

take responsibility, and I think Anthony Fauci

1:09:20

was the scientific leader behind the

1:09:23

American response to the pandemic,

1:09:25

and I think he failed

1:09:27

as a scientist, as

1:09:29

a representative of science. I'm

1:09:31

less, I don't

1:09:33

know if interested is the right word, but

1:09:36

the Fauci review is less interesting

1:09:38

to me in

1:09:41

terms of what comes next than the

1:09:43

first part you mentioned, which is the distrust in

1:09:45

science, and sometimes

1:09:48

I'll get voicemails or emails from people in

1:09:50

my audience who say that I have

1:09:52

had to backpedal on certain things.

1:09:55

Related to this, and one of the things I

1:09:57

tried to do from the beginning was...

1:09:59

not speak in certain terms

1:10:02

when we really didn't have complete information. So

1:10:05

there was this period where

1:10:07

hydroxychloroquine was first sort of mentioned

1:10:09

as a possible treatment prophylactic or,

1:10:12

you know, proactive treatment for

1:10:15

COVID or active treatment for COVID, along

1:10:17

with a bunch of other stuff. There was ivermectin, there

1:10:19

was vitamin D, there were all

1:10:22

sorts of different things. And I

1:10:24

tried to be careful to say

1:10:26

right now we don't have

1:10:29

rigorous science that tells us that some

1:10:31

of these things work. It doesn't mean that

1:10:33

won't come in the future, at which point

1:10:36

if there was something as cheap as hydroxychloroquine

1:10:38

that treated COVID effectively,

1:10:40

unbelievable, fantastic.

1:10:42

It's not, there's no way it ever

1:10:44

will be determined. We don't have that information right

1:10:46

now. So it's not super wise right

1:10:48

now to go and start taking this stuff.

1:10:51

We eventually learned like with vitamin D, having

1:10:54

an appropriate vitamin D level does

1:10:57

seem to be based on what I most recently

1:10:59

read, generally protective and

1:11:02

a good thing when it comes to

1:11:04

infections of different, great. Okay. So

1:11:06

that one we figured out one of the really

1:11:08

difficult things is that the quote truth

1:11:11

about the vaccines

1:11:12

did change. And

1:11:14

the original, again, this is all, I

1:11:16

don't pretend to be an expert, but just someone who's synthesizing

1:11:19

the medical

1:11:20

data and writing about it.

1:11:22

Originally the first vaccine

1:11:25

related to the wild

1:11:27

type strain did

1:11:29

seem to be very effective, not only at

1:11:31

preventing death and serious illness, but

1:11:33

also transmission. There

1:11:36

were people then saying it doesn't prevent transmission

1:11:39

over time. As the

1:11:41

variants came forward, the

1:11:43

vaccine became less effective at

1:11:45

that. At that point, I started telling my audience

1:11:48

something different because as far as I was concerned,

1:11:51

the reality on the ground had changed. In my

1:11:53

mind, that's how science works. It's not backpedaling.

1:11:55

It's we're adjusting our beliefs to

1:11:58

what is taking place in the real world.

1:11:59

Well, to be fair, the

1:12:02

scientists,

1:12:03

many of whom are my friends, biologists and

1:12:05

biologists, they have way more humility

1:12:07

than people like Anthony Fauci who are speaking

1:12:09

about this, or the CEO of Pfizer

1:12:12

who are speaking about this. This is the fundamental

1:12:14

problem here, is the way science works is

1:12:16

there's usually

1:12:17

a lot more

1:12:20

humility and a lot

1:12:23

more transparency about what we know and what we don't know.

1:12:26

People

1:12:28

like Anthony Fauci thought it

1:12:30

would be beneficial for the world if

1:12:32

he speaks with more certainty.

1:12:35

But because of the political division that formed

1:12:37

around that, that certainty resulted

1:12:39

and became completely counterproductive.

1:12:42

That people didn't trust anything about the vaccine,

1:12:44

didn't trust any institutions there

1:12:46

were

1:12:47

that contained the experts that actually knew what they

1:12:49

were doing. And basically

1:12:52

didn't trust anything that was coming out of the mouths of scientists,

1:12:55

some large percent of the population.

1:12:58

Actually that made you completely ineffective

1:13:00

and

1:13:02

at scale as a society trying

1:13:04

to respond to a terrible pandemic. And

1:13:07

that's where I put a lot of blame on

1:13:09

leaders. So political

1:13:12

leaders and scientific leaders are the ones

1:13:14

that should inspire us to all get together

1:13:16

and respond. That should be

1:13:18

the case for the pandemic. That

1:13:21

should be the case in the time of war, all

1:13:23

this kind of stuff. I generally

1:13:25

agree with you. And for me, it's really

1:13:27

about shared blame. And there were a lot of different

1:13:29

reasons why that the early communication wasn't

1:13:31

good. Part of it was, I mean,

1:13:35

for me, I prefer accuracy

1:13:37

rather than overconfidence. I

1:13:39

would prefer, listen, we don't really know

1:13:41

right now

1:13:42

whether masks do X or Y. What we do

1:13:45

know is the supply is really limited of this type

1:13:47

of mask. We're going to try to keep them for

1:13:49

the frontline workers. I love that.

1:13:51

That's the way I want to be communicated

1:13:53

to. A call was made to do it differently, which

1:13:56

was to say the masks don't actually help.

1:13:58

But the real reason is they want to keep them for

1:14:01

health care workers. And then later the masks

1:14:03

are what's going to solve.

1:14:04

I'm with I'm with you 100 percent. I think

1:14:06

the other layer to it

1:14:08

is you can't ignore the political

1:14:11

situation at the time. If

1:14:13

Trump had one reelection

1:14:15

and the vaccine distribution had taken place

1:14:17

while Trump was president, rather than Biden, my

1:14:20

belief is that the same

1:14:22

number of Democrats would have gotten vaccinated,

1:14:25

but way more Republicans would have as well because

1:14:27

they were following not science, but political

1:14:29

leaders. And when it was Biden in D.C. instead of Trump,

1:14:32

a lot of those people said, I don't trust the vaccine.

1:14:35

But wait, it's Trump's vaccine, I thought. Yeah,

1:14:37

but something about the way Biden's distributing

1:14:39

it. So I do think you can't ignore that political

1:14:42

layer. I agree with you. The communication

1:14:44

was a disaster.

1:14:46

Let me ask you about Joe Biden. What are the strengths

1:14:48

and weaknesses of Joe Biden? Weaknesses,

1:14:52

I think, are some of the things you've identified.

1:14:55

He is not seen as high

1:14:57

energy. He is

1:15:01

not the same Joe Biden that debated Paul

1:15:03

Ryan in 2012 and ran circles

1:15:05

around him and just an incredible debate

1:15:07

performance. He

1:15:10

is not inspiring

1:15:13

in the way that someone like

1:15:15

a Barack Obama was to people

1:15:17

coming up and starting to get interested

1:15:19

in politics. I think a lot of those are

1:15:22

fair criticisms. I think on policy,

1:15:25

he's not interested in a lot of the

1:15:27

things that younger voters are interested

1:15:29

in. I mentioned cannabis reform. I

1:15:33

mentioned student loans. So I think

1:15:35

that that's a deficit

1:15:37

for Biden. I think the upside

1:15:39

to Biden is when

1:15:41

it comes to foreign policy, diplomacy,

1:15:44

high level negotiations, knowing

1:15:47

how to engage with allies in a productive

1:15:49

way. It's tough to find someone

1:15:51

with more experience than Biden. I know

1:15:54

that there are counterpoints to what I'm saying, and

1:15:56

those include that was the old Biden. The

1:15:58

new Biden doesn't have it. That includes that's

1:16:01

just a sign of rot because he's been around

1:16:03

for so long. Nobody should be around that long in

1:16:05

politics. Perfectly reasonable

1:16:07

criticisms to talk about. But I do see that as

1:16:09

one of his strengths. And he

1:16:12

also is good at knowing

1:16:14

when he can work with Republicans

1:16:17

and when he can't and not

1:16:19

wasting

1:16:20

more time than is sort of expected

1:16:22

for posturing reasons. And I think that that's

1:16:25

a good thing. Do you think he's actually there?

1:16:27

So in a day to day operation of government,

1:16:30

given his cognitive capabilities, do you think he

1:16:33

is

1:16:34

an active and practicing executive?

1:16:37

I don't know that I can say that

1:16:39

it's because of what may be going

1:16:41

on cognitively. But my

1:16:44

sense from the people I talk

1:16:46

to is that he's very much

1:16:48

involved in the highest level geopolitical

1:16:52

and big domestic economic stuff,

1:16:55

but that a lot of the smaller issues

1:16:57

that presidents might or might not be in

1:17:00

sort of plugged into that he's not plugged

1:17:02

into the details of a lot of the lower

1:17:04

level stuff. Yeah, you could probably apply the same exact

1:17:06

criticism even

1:17:07

more so towards the Donald Trump administration

1:17:10

in terms of being a practicing active executive

1:17:13

who's paying attention. Like for example,

1:17:15

like Vladimir Putin is somebody

1:17:19

who loves the

1:17:22

role of the executive, has a huge amount of

1:17:24

meetings, has constantly tracking information

1:17:26

about agriculture and all the different

1:17:29

subsystems of government. Stalin,

1:17:32

funny enough, was also extremely good at this.

1:17:35

So certain people just love the job of

1:17:37

being an executive. And I'm not

1:17:40

sure if

1:17:41

Donald Trump did. And

1:17:44

I'm not sure if Joe Biden in his

1:17:46

current state has the cognitive capability

1:17:49

to. That's a it's a good question.

1:17:51

Kim Jong Un is another one, by the way. You know, there's videos

1:17:53

of him examining a pottery,

1:17:56

you know, a factory where they make plates

1:17:59

and making very.

1:17:59

specific comments about how the plates should

1:18:02

be made. I think that in that case, there's a lot of propaganda

1:18:04

value to it with Trump. I

1:18:07

think you're probably right.

1:18:08

You know, he did get involved in the minutia of things.

1:18:10

I mean, once he pulled out a weather map

1:18:13

and with a Sharpie

1:18:14

drew a different hurricane path that was more

1:18:16

politically convenient to him. That's pretty micro,

1:18:19

you know, saying the weather channels.

1:18:21

I see what you did there. This is OK. I see what you did

1:18:23

there. Micro. He went to Puerto Rico and

1:18:26

he gave out paper towels after a hurricane.

1:18:28

Now he was shooting them like free throws, which didn't

1:18:30

look very good. So he will get involved

1:18:32

in the micro when it's advantageous.

1:18:35

You know what I mean? But I do agree with you that

1:18:37

he wants to just kind of make it so build the wall. I

1:18:39

don't know. Just build it, figure it out, get it done. Quick

1:18:42

pause. Bath and break. Sure. Yeah.

1:18:44

Hilarious.

1:18:47

And just for the sake of completeness, I should mention

1:18:49

the subreddit would Biden has done. There's

1:18:52

also what Trump has done, but it's not as active

1:18:55

and it has like this master list of all the

1:18:57

accomplishments.

1:18:58

I recommend people look

1:19:00

at it because there's a kind

1:19:03

of rigorous and interesting

1:19:05

with links, a list of all the things he's

1:19:07

done just list some of them restored

1:19:10

daily press briefings, canceled

1:19:13

the Keystone pipeline, reverse Trump's Muslim

1:19:15

ban, required masks on federal property, rejoins

1:19:18

the Paris climate agreement, extends

1:19:20

student loan payment, freeze, extend

1:19:22

eviction, freeze historic

1:19:24

stimulus bill, as you mentioned, and

1:19:26

funding for border wall and so on and

1:19:29

so forth. DACA, border

1:19:31

strengthening of DACA rejoins the

1:19:33

World Health Organization. And the timing

1:19:35

of this, of course, is important.

1:19:38

Yeah. Several historic stimulus bills,

1:19:41

which of course you could criticize or support,

1:19:44

raise the minimum wage for federal contractors

1:19:46

and federal employees for $15. There's

1:19:50

a lot. There's a lot. It

1:19:52

makes you realize with

1:19:54

both Trump and Biden that there's a bunch of small

1:19:57

details that

1:19:59

matter. Yeah. Like that

1:20:01

matter on people's lives like actual little

1:20:03

policies Trump did a lot of stuff

1:20:06

as far as I heard for the

1:20:08

military like

1:20:09

not big stuff but small stuff

1:20:11

Yeah, I'd be curious what

1:20:14

you're thinking of I mean, I know one of the big things

1:20:16

under Trump was we're gonna get trans people out

1:20:18

of the military That's

1:20:20

not what I was referring to that he Trump

1:20:23

that tell you Trump's hilarious with these

1:20:25

stories that he tells and one of the story and you

1:20:28

get to know them if you If you follow him at all,

1:20:30

he tells the story, you know when I came into office

1:20:33

The generals came to me and they said sir the

1:20:35

cupboards are bare We have no bullets and

1:20:38

so I rebuilt the military, you know, the cupboards were

1:20:40

bare when Obama left it and it was just

1:20:42

terrible But I rebuilt it and the generals I've

1:20:44

got the best generals. They said sir. It's incredible

1:20:46

what you were able to do You look into it and

1:20:49

it's like yeah That's not really true Like it

1:20:51

is true that there are armaments that just like on a schedule

1:20:53

do get replaced and that's part of the military industrial

1:20:55

Complex, but there's nothing like special

1:20:58

Trump really did but these stories become They

1:21:01

take on like a life of their own and it's

1:21:03

interesting to sometimes try to dig down and figure

1:21:05

out like was there any policy Connected to that or is that

1:21:07

just a story?

1:21:08

Do you think it's possible to have a good conversation

1:21:10

with each of them?

1:21:12

Donald Trump and Joe Biden in

1:21:14

a pot in a podcast context or in a

1:21:16

debate context? Absolutely.

1:21:19

Yeah, you're saying like could I with yes them.

1:21:21

Oh a hundred percent. Yeah, Joe Biden to sure

1:21:24

Yeah, but can you dig into that a little more? Well,

1:21:27

I mean, I don't know what I think

1:21:29

there's maybe something implicit in your

1:21:31

question But there's deeper about

1:21:33

the nature of politics and politicians. Yes,

1:21:36

I think with either of them. I mean

1:21:38

The political differences wouldn't

1:21:41

be an impediment to having a good conversation

1:21:43

with either of them I

1:21:45

think one of the things that's really

1:21:48

tough in my experience when talking to elected

1:21:50

officials is

1:21:51

They could be super interesting about

1:21:54

a hundred different topics, but

1:21:56

handlers decide or

1:21:58

try to get to talk about

1:22:01

something you don't really care about and something really narrow,

1:22:03

which doesn't bring out your best nor their best.

1:22:06

And that's a frustration. But I

1:22:08

think that given an unstructured three hour

1:22:10

conversation, I think it would be interesting to talk to both.

1:22:12

I mean, listen, with Biden, aside

1:22:15

from his view on cannabis or whatever,

1:22:17

his background and the

1:22:20

incredible, unimaginable family

1:22:22

tragedy that he had in his first wife

1:22:25

and, you know, multiple kids dying. I mean,

1:22:28

it's just incredible, you know, and with

1:22:31

Trump, I think also you could have an interesting conversation.

1:22:33

Yeah, those human beings with a life story.

1:22:36

Yes. And they're some

1:22:39

of the most successful humans who have ever lived to

1:22:41

have rose

1:22:43

to this highest office in

1:22:46

interesting, complex ways. Yes. I

1:22:48

mean, one of the things I'm troubled by, maybe you can speak

1:22:50

to, is why we're so negative

1:22:53

towards presidential candidates and presidents.

1:22:56

Why it's

1:22:57

just they go through this

1:23:00

shit storm, no matter who they are. Yeah.

1:23:02

They're like hated, like

1:23:04

all the conspiracy theories and just

1:23:08

the dynamics of how we talk about

1:23:11

them is vicious. If you

1:23:13

just look at replies, Stephen Barack Obama

1:23:15

on Twitter,

1:23:16

it's like, what is going

1:23:19

on here? Why, because we look at other

1:23:21

leaders in other spaces that

1:23:23

were generally positive about it.

1:23:26

Yeah. There's a couple different things. There's

1:23:29

this dynamic, which is really unfortunate, which

1:23:31

is you ask people,

1:23:33

do you approve of the job a particular

1:23:35

president is doing? And very often,

1:23:38

if at any point while they were in office, they did

1:23:40

something you don't like, people will say, I don't approve.

1:23:42

And so by its nature, what that means is just like

1:23:45

the longer you're in office, the lower your approval rating

1:23:47

is going to be. And very often that's

1:23:49

the way it works. I mean, there's major

1:23:51

events like 9 11 spike George

1:23:54

W. Bush's approval to an incredible level.

1:23:56

Then it came back down with the Iraq war. But there's

1:23:58

this unfortunate thing that when people

1:23:59

or just asked, you think Biden's doing a good

1:24:02

job? If four months ago

1:24:04

Biden did something on health

1:24:06

care that somebody didn't like, even if you like most of

1:24:08

it, a lot of people from that point forward

1:24:10

will say, I don't approve. They might still vote

1:24:12

for him because they like him better than the alternative

1:24:15

or whatever. It's it's just the dynamic

1:24:17

of politics. And I agree. It's it's very. Does

1:24:19

it have to be that way? I don't think it has

1:24:22

to be that way. But to unwind

1:24:24

it, so many things would have to change. I

1:24:27

think our election system is

1:24:29

part of why

1:24:29

politics is the way it is, where you

1:24:32

have two choices and it's first past the

1:24:34

post. And we have this electoral college

1:24:36

so that depending on which state you vote

1:24:39

in, the kind of meaning and significance of your

1:24:41

vote is different. If you vote in Montana,

1:24:44

it's the Republican candidates going to win.

1:24:46

And that changes the dynamics. I think that's

1:24:48

part of it. I think

1:24:50

that

1:24:51

at a personal level, I've experienced this

1:24:54

in my life a lot.

1:24:56

We've become and by we, I mean

1:24:58

people in the United States to some degree who talk

1:25:00

about this stuff, we've become uncomfortable

1:25:03

when there is disagreement and it bleeds

1:25:05

over into now we can't have a normal

1:25:08

interpersonal relationship anymore. I'm

1:25:10

from Argentina and in Argentina, it's

1:25:12

really common, even in my family. There

1:25:15

are

1:25:15

incredibly heated political debates

1:25:18

at the start, the middle, the end of some kind of gathering.

1:25:21

But then everybody just goes back to like, OK, we

1:25:23

disagree on some things, but

1:25:25

that's okay. And we can now

1:25:27

go and, you know, finish cooking

1:25:29

the beef or whatever it is that we're doing. And

1:25:32

I experienced this even with people

1:25:34

who come up to me on the street and they go just

1:25:36

earlier today, a guy came up to me

1:25:38

and he said, RFK all the way,

1:25:41

baby, talking about Bobby Kennedy

1:25:43

Jr. And I just kind of, you know, I said,

1:25:45

oh, all right, you know, let's see what happens.

1:25:48

And then there was another moment where

1:25:50

the guy ended up standing next to me for maybe longer

1:25:53

than he thought. And I could tell this guy's getting so awkward

1:25:55

because it was an utterance he thought that would

1:25:57

just be on the fly and he'd be gone. But now we're standing

1:25:59

next to

1:25:59

they're waiting for our sandwiches. It's

1:26:02

like no big deal. You know, it's just, oh, okay.

1:26:04

You like Bobby Kennedy Jr., I don't

1:26:06

plan to vote for it. It's fine, you know? And

1:26:08

that's like a socio-cultural thing. I think there's lots

1:26:10

of other countries. I've spent time in Italy.

1:26:13

I have relatives in Israel where like shouting

1:26:16

at each other is sort of like normal. And

1:26:18

then you just go back and finish the, it sounds like shouting,

1:26:20

I'm sort of exaggerating, but very animated,

1:26:23

what seemed like big disagreements. And then everybody's

1:26:25

cool. I wish it were more normal.

1:26:28

So maybe the mechanism of going from shouting

1:26:30

to being cool again needs

1:26:32

to improve. Because maybe we can't

1:26:34

solve the shouting at each other. Maybe not. So

1:26:37

maybe

1:26:37

we need to somehow figure out the de-escalation,

1:26:40

like making up,

1:26:41

I've had a few recent fights with friends. Really?

1:26:45

Yeah. For politics. No. Oh.

1:26:48

No, but political style,

1:26:50

emotionally drenched stuff.

1:26:53

And it

1:26:55

was interesting

1:26:57

to go through that full process and then make up at

1:26:59

the end, but it was a process. And

1:27:01

it was a process that required being in person,

1:27:04

talking through it. And

1:27:06

it was stressful, the whole thing. And

1:27:09

maybe because most of our interactions are online,

1:27:12

we don't get a chance to do that in person, making

1:27:15

up again. I don't know, but do you think it's

1:27:17

a feature or a bug of the system that

1:27:19

we're so, we just hate

1:27:22

the powerful? You mentioned the online

1:27:24

part. I think it's a, you mentioned

1:27:26

it earlier perfectly, which is you

1:27:28

take

1:27:29

contentious political issues, you

1:27:32

create a platform

1:27:33

that rewards controversy

1:27:36

and disagreement and limits

1:27:38

the number of characters you can use to express yourself.

1:27:41

You kind of throw it into a baking dish

1:27:44

and mix the entire thing up. It's

1:27:46

complete and total chaos. And one of the things that

1:27:49

I've talked before about all the angry emails

1:27:51

and threats and stuff that I get, I'm acutely

1:27:54

aware that if I had in-person conversations

1:27:56

with most of these people,

1:27:58

the conversations would basically be. like, oh,

1:28:01

we have different views about how to solve some of the problems

1:28:03

we're facing. We probably agree about

1:28:06

what the problem is and

1:28:08

we probably share many values. But

1:28:10

on these particular four issues, we may have very

1:28:12

different views,

1:28:14

but that's okay. Online,

1:28:16

that's not the case.

1:28:18

And it leads to, you know,

1:28:20

the mess, mess that we get

1:28:22

ourselves in. But I think that it's a feature of

1:28:24

a lot of the systems that are being used to disseminate information.

1:28:28

Again, let me linger on that. Do you regret

1:28:31

some of the mockery and the

1:28:34

snark you use on Twitter and even

1:28:36

in your show that kind of feeds that

1:28:39

division?

1:28:40

I don't regret it in the sense that

1:28:42

it's a calculated

1:28:44

part or tool that

1:28:47

I use in addition to

1:28:50

figuring out how to simplify complicated concepts

1:28:52

and choosing stories that I think are underrepresented.

1:28:55

And, you know, it's all part of like the package

1:28:57

of what I'm doing. I recognize

1:29:00

that my show is not the audio

1:29:02

visual visual version of a peer

1:29:05

reviewed, you

1:29:07

know, randomized controlled trial about abuse,

1:29:10

abuse on abortion or whatever the case like. I'm

1:29:12

very much aware of that, but I don't

1:29:14

regret including it as a as

1:29:16

a tool that I've used

1:29:19

to build the community in some

1:29:21

total that I've built over the last more than 10

1:29:23

years. I guess I could ask about the different trajectories

1:29:26

you think your show might take. So,

1:29:29

you know, the dynamic you had with Donald Trump

1:29:32

Jr. and maybe Candace Owens is the more appropriate

1:29:34

comparison. Are you okay

1:29:36

having that dance

1:29:38

for the next few years between you and Candace

1:29:41

Owens and just kind of the mockery,

1:29:44

the derision that's a part of that process

1:29:47

and taking part in that?

1:29:49

You know, I'm fine with it

1:29:52

in the sense of

1:29:53

personally, I tolerate

1:29:56

it well. Until

1:29:58

it crosses the line. line and

1:30:01

people pull my family in and

1:30:03

people. So that's the part that we set the family

1:30:05

stuff aside. If I set that aside, just in the digital

1:30:07

space, I'm glad to mix it up. Now

1:30:09

the truth is Candace Owens has had me blocked

1:30:11

for years up until this incident. I

1:30:13

don't know why she unblocked me just

1:30:16

to tweet about what I tweeted about. I

1:30:18

don't know the backstory of that genuinely. I

1:30:20

have no idea. So I don't have a sense

1:30:22

that she's super interested in engaging

1:30:24

with me on that. But all of these people, I

1:30:27

mean, Candace Owens is welcome on my show anytime. Don

1:30:29

Jr's welcome on my show anytime. It's

1:30:31

been a decade since I had Ben Shapiro on.

1:30:33

He's welcome at any time. I'm

1:30:35

glad to have these conversations and

1:30:37

I think it's an important thing. And

1:30:40

also I wish that everybody

1:30:42

was willing to have the conversations in good faith rather

1:30:45

than as performance. It's

1:30:47

not even really performance art rather than being simply

1:30:49

performative for an audience that you have.

1:30:51

In terms of your motivations, do you see, do you

1:30:53

worry about the effects of something you spoke

1:30:56

of, spoke about offline or like

1:30:58

the YouTube algorithm?

1:31:01

Do you, are you driven by the number of views

1:31:04

your videos get or

1:31:06

are you driven by something else?

1:31:09

So in my world,

1:31:11

I guess I would say the number

1:31:13

of views that any platform generates

1:31:17

is a

1:31:17

metric

1:31:19

that I can choose how to interpret. I can

1:31:21

choose to interpret it as I've

1:31:23

created content that's interesting to people or

1:31:26

I've created content that's really angering

1:31:29

people and that's why they're showing up. They don't actually

1:31:31

like it. It's because they're angry or whatever else the case may be.

1:31:34

But it is true that there are algorithmic

1:31:36

changes that can take place. There something happened

1:31:38

in early January that affected us on

1:31:41

YouTube or there are periods on TikTok

1:31:43

where you can tell we're doing all the same

1:31:45

things. Something has happened and

1:31:47

then you never usually figure out what it is. So

1:31:50

for me, it's sort of just like a general

1:31:52

tool to see what

1:31:54

is the level of interest in what I'm doing

1:31:56

and are the numbers so out of whack

1:31:58

with what I would expect.

1:31:59

I should look into whether something deeper is

1:32:02

happening. Has there been some change to an algorithm

1:32:04

or whatever the case may be? I had a debate

1:32:06

once with someone who accused

1:32:08

me of using clickbait to generate

1:32:11

views. And we had a really interesting conversation where

1:32:13

I said, tell me really what you mean

1:32:15

by that. Is your argument that

1:32:18

I'm using titles that

1:32:20

don't actually represent what's

1:32:22

in the video? No. What's in the

1:32:24

title is in the video. I go, okay. So it's not that the title

1:32:26

is dishonest. Are you saying, saying

1:32:29

I'm deliberately picking titles that will garner

1:32:31

a larger audience? And

1:32:34

they said, yeah, that's kind of what I mean. And I said,

1:32:36

isn't that kind of what we're all doing? The alternative

1:32:38

would be choosing titles to generate

1:32:40

a smaller audience, which seems like a real kind

1:32:42

of waste of time. So

1:32:45

I'm trying to navigate and

1:32:47

play the game in a way that's comfortable, but

1:32:50

use the metrics more as a tool than

1:32:52

as something to obsess over. Nevertheless,

1:32:54

the metrics are

1:32:56

what they are and that they are able to

1:32:59

affect your psyche.

1:33:02

It's very difficult, which

1:33:04

is why I have a Chrome extension that hides all

1:33:06

the views and all that on YouTube for

1:33:08

me.

1:33:11

It's difficult not to let it affect

1:33:13

how you think about ideas.

1:33:16

So maybe your extensive exploration

1:33:18

of a particular topic like healthcare generated

1:33:21

very few views.

1:33:23

It's difficult for you to still care about

1:33:25

healthcare.

1:33:26

There's some aspect of the human mind

1:33:28

that starts

1:33:30

being affected by those views. And I

1:33:32

think that's a really dangerous thing. Mostly

1:33:35

it's

1:33:38

probably beneficial because it probably makes

1:33:40

you a better presenter. If

1:33:41

you do care about a topic a lot,

1:33:43

you become more charismatic, more you

1:33:46

learn sort of in a Jimmy, Mr.

1:33:48

Beast way, how to present the ideas better. But

1:33:51

it also can affect which topics

1:33:53

you choose to cover, what you choose to think

1:33:56

about those topics, the

1:33:58

audience capture those topics.

1:33:59

really scary effect. I'm really

1:34:02

worried about my own mind and that. So I run

1:34:04

from that aggressively. One

1:34:07

of the things that I include

1:34:09

in my overall approach is I

1:34:11

don't think about any one clip. I think

1:34:14

about

1:34:14

an entire show or a week of shows or a

1:34:16

month of shows. And so

1:34:19

it's less about, does any one clip do well?

1:34:22

My view going in is I'm going

1:34:24

to do stuff that won't do that well,

1:34:26

but I think it's really important to do. And I want to make

1:34:28

it part of my show. And so when I did a clip

1:34:31

with 10 ideas for reducing gun

1:34:33

violence, I know that that's not

1:34:35

going to get 500,000 or a million views. I know

1:34:37

it's just not going to. And the

1:34:39

first day it'll get 12,000 and I'll

1:34:41

go, I don't care. That's

1:34:43

fine. There's a group of people in my audience

1:34:46

that values this stuff. And I want to keep doing this

1:34:48

stuff. I'll end up surprised sometime.

1:34:51

And two weeks later has 150,000 views because

1:34:54

it started being shared or great, but

1:34:56

I don't go into it thinking these

1:34:59

all need to be home runs by that metric.

1:35:02

I always go in saying, I want to put

1:35:04

out a diversity of content, including stuff that

1:35:06

is less titillating and salacious, but is

1:35:08

important to do.

1:35:09

It's more researched, et cetera.

1:35:12

And so that's the way I try to resist exactly

1:35:14

what you're talking about. And I think you have to probably know

1:35:16

yourself. Like for me, metrics, I

1:35:18

just like numbers too much. And for me, metrics

1:35:21

do affect me. This is why I don't pay attention at all.

1:35:23

Like I can't, I would love

1:35:26

to hire somebody in the team who cares, because we

1:35:28

currently have folks

1:35:30

who just, all of us just don't care. Because

1:35:33

he probably is good to care enough to

1:35:36

kind of just do good thumbnails and this kind of

1:35:38

stuff to pay attention. But to me personally,

1:35:40

I just find inner peace

1:35:42

and focus if I don't think about the numbers

1:35:44

at all.

1:35:45

Because I find myself,

1:35:48

I just remember a long time ago when I started

1:35:50

a podcast, I

1:35:53

would think that I failed if it

1:35:56

didn't do well. Like if I didn't celebrate

1:35:58

the person well enough, I didn't. do a good

1:36:00

job enough of a conversation. Well, that's

1:36:02

not necessarily at all what that means. It's

1:36:06

hard not to- This is tough stuff. I mean, yeah, I

1:36:08

know exactly what you're saying. And part

1:36:10

of it is, I

1:36:12

mean, it starts in my, you

1:36:15

have a little bit of a different situation than me because

1:36:17

you're doing long form conversations with people

1:36:20

and the prep is a little bit different. One of

1:36:22

the things in my space, because I'm reacting mostly

1:36:25

to what's going on in the news and then also picking topics

1:36:27

to dive into it a little bit more deeply, is

1:36:29

I have very little control over the news cycle. And

1:36:32

there is a metametric or

1:36:34

a macro metric that affects me that

1:36:37

will quadruple my audience

1:36:39

and then take 75% of it away, which

1:36:41

is the seasonality of election cycles. And

1:36:44

the first few election cycles,

1:36:47

it's very tough because I go, it's October. I'm

1:36:50

like, at this rate, we're going to

1:36:52

have 20 million subscribers by next, these numbers

1:36:54

are unbelievable. And then it's January

1:36:56

30th,

1:36:57

the inauguration's over,

1:37:00

the debate is about the debt ceiling

1:37:02

and nothing's going on. And I go, nobody's

1:37:05

watching my content. I must

1:37:07

have forgotten to upload a, like something must be

1:37:09

wrong.

1:37:10

It's completely beyond my control. So

1:37:13

I just, and I think

1:37:14

part of what you're saying is, I try to focus

1:37:16

on the things I can control and understand

1:37:19

those that I really have no control over whatsoever

1:37:21

and try not to worry about them. And

1:37:24

try to do the things that make you happy

1:37:27

at the end of the day.

1:37:29

You mentioned RFK, the guy you met. What

1:37:31

do you think about some of the other

1:37:33

candidates outside of Joe Biden in

1:37:35

the Democratic Party, RFK Jr.?

1:37:38

What do you think of him as a candidate?

1:37:41

I've met him, we once had dinner and we

1:37:43

have a number of friends in common, which is what

1:37:45

makes this a little more awkward. But

1:37:48

I think his campaign is basically

1:37:51

sort of like a chaos candidacy

1:37:54

to

1:37:55

raise awareness and maybe raise money either

1:37:57

for his book or his anti-vaccine organization.

1:37:59

Children's Defense Fund, I believe

1:38:02

it's called. I think there's some reporting that

1:38:04

Steve Bannon really liked the idea of him

1:38:07

running as a Democrat, again, to just generate

1:38:09

chaos. I don't find it super

1:38:11

interesting. I don't find it worthy of that

1:38:14

much discussion. Smart guy,

1:38:17

nice guy,

1:38:19

has been doing anti-vaccine work

1:38:21

that I don't find particularly inspiring. So

1:38:23

it's not just anti-COVID vaccine.

1:38:25

It's more broader than that. He's been in that

1:38:28

space long before the COVID vaccines.

1:38:30

Yeah. Yeah. I don't find it super interesting.

1:38:32

Well, he also wrote the book,

1:38:35

The Real Anthony Fauci. Is that the name of the

1:38:37

book? Did he write that? That's interesting. I didn't, I

1:38:39

don't know. That's, I'm not sure about that.

1:38:42

I'm aware of that book. I didn't know he wrote it.

1:38:44

I think I need, but it's been a,

1:38:46

it's been on my reading list to get,

1:38:49

I've been trying to get a good balanced reading

1:38:51

list about

1:38:53

the COVID pandemic to understand what

1:38:55

the hell happened. And anytime

1:38:58

I start to try to go into that place,

1:39:01

it's just, I'm exhausted by it. Well,

1:39:03

it's interesting to me that you wouldn't wait longer

1:39:06

before delving into those books to

1:39:08