Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett.
Speaker 1: I just wrapped a great conversation with Jonathan v Last
Speaker 1: of the Blue Work. It went all kinds of places
Speaker 1: to what went wrong inside the Republican Party, what a
Speaker 1: post Trump Democratic party should be fighting for, and what
Speaker 1: it means to have a politics that centers virtues like kindness,
Speaker 1: and what happened to lead a country to a place
Speaker 1: where someone like Donald Trump could be president in the
Speaker 1: first place. I really appreciate the way Jonathan thinks and
Speaker 1: writes about politics, especially as one of the rare conservatives
Speaker 1: who understood from the beginning why it was so toxic
Speaker 1: to embrace someone as as Trump. I'm grateful to him
Speaker 1: for coming on the show, and I think you'll really
Speaker 1: enjoy the conversation. So here it is, Jonathan, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Finally, John, you know, I understand that there is a
Speaker 1: text chain in which whenever Sarah Longwell or Tim Millner
Speaker 1: has been on the show, you note that you hadn't
Speaker 1: yet been invited. I'm sorry that it took this long
Speaker 1: to have you on, because I'm genuinely such an admirer
Speaker 1: of the way you think about politics the way you
Speaker 1: talk about politics, and as I said to you on
Speaker 1: a sub stack, a compliment that you then wrote an
Speaker 1: essay about to kind of dispute, I appreciate the I
Speaker 1: appreciate those who did something that is clearly harder than
Speaker 1: it looked, which is be honest and moral from the
Speaker 1: right or the center right in the face of trump Ism,
Speaker 1: when so many refused to do that. And so I
Speaker 1: think you have a lot to say to help understand
Speaker 1: this moment. I want to talk about what you called
Speaker 1: a grand unified theory of trump Ism, which you summarized
Speaker 1: as and I quote, the essence of trump Ism is
Speaker 1: that the other side will always choose surrender over discomfort.
Speaker 1: I want to use that to kind of help us
Speaker 1: understand a bunch of different stories. But just what do
Speaker 1: you mean by that and what are some of the
Speaker 1: salient examples to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was worriting about the White House Corresponds dinner,
Speaker 2: and it strikes me this is a lot of the
Speaker 2: way Trump has approached waves hands you know, all of it,
Speaker 2: and especially the way he approached the Republican Party. And
Speaker 2: I have to say this, I mean, Trump really did
Speaker 2: understand the Republican Party in the conservative movement much better
Speaker 2: than I did. You know, he saw those people for
Speaker 2: who they are. And one of the things he has found,
Speaker 2: even with not them, but just sort of mainstream culture,
Speaker 2: is that if forced to make uncomfortable choices, people normally
Speaker 2: choose comfort over like pleasantness. And so this was, you know,
Speaker 2: the the White Hous Correspondence dinner. They invite up onto
Speaker 2: stage this group of Wall Street journal reporters who did
Speaker 2: fantastic reporting about Trump and the Epstein stuff, and these
Speaker 2: people like come up on stage and they're like, I
Speaker 2: guess I'm supposed to shake this guy's hand, and they
Speaker 2: shake hands and then he and he even like when
Speaker 2: he went and gave his speech afterwards, noted he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can believe it. You know, these guys up here
Speaker 2: they kill me all the time. Then they just come
Speaker 2: up and shake my hand. It's like, yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: little weird, isn't it. Yeah, And he he does that
Speaker 2: again and again. He's doing that right now about Todd
Speaker 2: Blanche with Thomb Phyllis and John Cornyn, and they are saying,
Speaker 2: we're totally in on this Todd Blanche thing, even though
Speaker 2: he's your personal lawyer. And even though he ate it
Speaker 2: and embedded the Epstein cover up, and even though it
Speaker 2: was his idea to do this slush fun, the one
Speaker 2: thing is that we really would love We know you
Speaker 2: said you won't do it, but if you could just
Speaker 2: write that down for us, that'd be great. And uh.
Speaker 3: And Trump's response to this is fuck you, you know. And
Speaker 3: and when when confronted with the fuck you, their response,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw I was.
Speaker 1: This is literally where I was going. Next. I want
Speaker 1: to read Tom till So. Yes, So, John Cornyn and
Speaker 1: Tom Tillis have been the hold up in the Senate
Speaker 1: judiciary community, just for people that haven't been following that closely.
Speaker 1: Yesterday Thursday, Uh, they were supposed to vote on the
Speaker 1: on the Todd blanche nomination. This Trump's former personal defensive attorney,
Speaker 1: the guy that met with Gallaine Maxwell. Uh who uh
Speaker 1: wants to be attorney the guy who said that the
Speaker 1: attorney general is not independent, which was by the way,
Speaker 1: Tillis's or Cornyn's or Tillis's red line that's now been
Speaker 1: crossed obviously. Uh. Uh. They have said they're not going
Speaker 1: to vote because they haven't received to guarantee that they
Speaker 1: won't pursue a fund to give millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: insurrectionists and other allies of Trump who have been quote
Speaker 1: unquote persecuted by Biden. Trump puts out a stem winder
Speaker 1: of a statement defending the fund, justifying it completely, saying
Speaker 1: I want this, this is good, Let's do the fund.
Speaker 1: Tillis quotes that statement and writes, and I quote Senator
Speaker 1: Cornyn and I have been working with Acting A. G.
Speaker 1: Tom Blanche to end the Anti Weaponization Fund, and he
Speaker 1: has been forthright, thoughtful, and patient. It's a shame his
Speaker 1: confirmation has hit a snag only because an incompetent personal
Speaker 1: advisor to the President refuses to amend the bogus settlement.
Speaker 1: Once again, Stalin has been failed by the Secretariat.
Speaker 2: If only they would tell him John, the Cullox would
Speaker 2: never have been liquidated. If Comrade Stalin had known what
Speaker 2: was happening.
Speaker 1: All the wheat they would have had where it's not
Speaker 1: for the for these bourgeois farm owners even now right
Speaker 1: corn into us. These are people that are I have
Speaker 1: lost their seats in part because of Trump, who are
Speaker 1: ostensibly I would say probably, you know when they when
Speaker 1: they're alone with their thoughts, believe they are actually doing
Speaker 1: something good right now. But we have allowed Trump to
Speaker 1: move our baseline so far that this is what this
Speaker 1: is what kind of stands in for Republicans not going along.
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to that statement.
Speaker 2: Uh, I mean my reaction was was befuddlement. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but I remember a time
Speaker 2: when people in Washington can be motivated by spite. Yes,
Speaker 2: and like, I don't know, they's just like, wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 2: there be a fuck me?
Speaker 1: No, fuck you.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to confirm your you know, you just
Speaker 2: cost me my Senate seat. I'm never going to confirm
Speaker 2: your age. You know, good luck, hope you the hope
Speaker 2: the Democrats don't capture the Senate, right, And there's none
Speaker 2: of that, there's none of that.
Speaker 1: You know, you're right about the other side choosing surrender
Speaker 1: over discomfort. But it's that there's a kind of I
Speaker 1: think it comes from a place of decadence, which is
Speaker 1: some version of I don't I don't think these guys
Speaker 1: have really thought very deeply of what it is to
Speaker 1: use power via negotiation, right, because the idea that they're
Speaker 1: saying over and over again. I want to get to
Speaker 1: yes on Todd Blanche, like Donald Trump, who is at
Speaker 1: his heart what he believes himself to be is a negotiator.
Speaker 1: That's what he sees himself as. And you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we could, we would, we could attack whether or not
Speaker 1: he's genuinely good at it. But the basics, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: set a crazy anchor, be a radic whatever. He has
Speaker 1: those he has those tools in his tool chest. And
Speaker 1: these guys are such they're just babies about it. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're babies. But here's the thing, and is
Speaker 2: why I think it's vanity. I think this is about
Speaker 2: them wanting to feel like they drew a line in
Speaker 2: the sand. But even their line isn't the real line. Like,
Speaker 2: I am sorry. If Todd Blanche signs a piece of
Speaker 2: paper saying that, you know, we won't do this one,
Speaker 2: what is that That? That is a worthless guarantee. It
Speaker 2: is not worth any It's not enforceable. You know, this
Speaker 2: is not a law. It's not something you have to
Speaker 2: go to the Supreme Court and have them overturned. It's
Speaker 2: just a piece of paper. You do whatever they Robert F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy Junior testified under oath that he wasn't going to
Speaker 2: do anything about vaccines. He said that thing under oath,
Speaker 2: he went and did it. It's not worth anything. And
Speaker 2: this is something that Trump just signed a deal with
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia. Did you see this over over nukes? Like
Speaker 2: two weeks ago? And the deal was signed and then
Speaker 2: he was like, oh yeah, and I want them to
Speaker 2: recognize Israel too, And the Saudis are like, hey, bro,
Speaker 2: what what are you talking about? The papers? Sign bro?
Speaker 2: And he's like, yeah, no, don't don't care. You know
Speaker 2: what It's like? This is this like so even the
Speaker 2: idea that like, oh well we got him to sign
Speaker 2: this piece of paper, is it self ludicrous and decking it,
Speaker 2: which is why I think it's all about self image
Speaker 2: and it's what they've got to tell themselves. And I
Speaker 2: don't understand that, Like I I could understand. Here are
Speaker 2: the things I could understand, John, I could understand them
Speaker 2: just saying I'm getting too old for this shit. Fine,
Speaker 2: have your Todd Blanche. I don't give a fuck. I'm
Speaker 2: out of here, right. I would understand that. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: like it, I wouldn't respect it, but I'd understand it.
Speaker 2: I would understand the you know, now, the spiteful. I
Speaker 2: don't care who you could nominate Jesus Christ himself and
Speaker 2: I would not. I would not, you know, vote to
Speaker 2: confirm him. What I can't understand is I'm going to
Speaker 2: look at the totality of this nominee. I'm gonna find
Speaker 2: one thing about it that I'm gonna set as a
Speaker 2: condition that makes it surmountable, and then I'm going to
Speaker 2: pretend to hold out until you give me a meaningless
Speaker 2: assurance so that I can say I satisfied my one condition.
Speaker 2: That is bizarre. Do you understand that, like, just as
Speaker 2: a piece of human psychology.
Speaker 1: I don't, other than perhaps because they're so solicitous towards
Speaker 1: Blanche himself, and I think they sort Blanche into the
Speaker 1: category as a guy we can work with, right, Like
Speaker 1: you know that, you know he's a guy we can
Speaker 1: work He's he's a serious guy, right, Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: Trump's personalty. He's one of the serious ones. You know,
Speaker 1: he's he's one of the good ones. He's not one
Speaker 1: of the kooks. Right, He's one of ours, right, And
Speaker 1: he's one of ours.
Speaker 2: He's not like that cracking lady, right.
Speaker 1: And he's not you know, he's not like, he's not
Speaker 1: like a Bill POULTI he's a Clayton. Right. We have
Speaker 1: we have the Bill Poultices, right, and we have a Clayton.
Speaker 1: Now the fact that in practice Bill, you know, a Poulty,
Speaker 1: really believes what he says about Trump being persecuted and
Speaker 1: wanting to destroy his enemies, and Clayton just performs that
Speaker 1: way for the cameras. They still view that as having
Speaker 1: a distinction as important.
Speaker 2: Right, And so.
Speaker 1: Because Blanche is their kind of guy, when they have
Speaker 1: that meeting and Blanche says, look, some version of he
Speaker 1: can't admit it. He can't say it's bad. We're not
Speaker 1: pursuing it. There's no intention to pursue it. It's it's dead.
Speaker 1: But the more you press on it, you know him,
Speaker 1: the more he's going to dig in. Right. So I
Speaker 1: am giving you this assurance. It will never be something
Speaker 1: that I pursue as Attorney General. And beyond that, it
Speaker 1: is just very difficult. I just need room, right, I
Speaker 1: just need room to operate within this administration and these
Speaker 1: the they've allowed. You know, there's a like it's true,
Speaker 1: you know, relationships you know, crazy, You'll move your baseline.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You've been in a terrible relationship for a long time,
Speaker 1: and you're just trying to get through the day, and
Speaker 1: you just you're just trying to kind of eke out
Speaker 1: a little wins, get things a little bit back towards normal. Memo,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about here? We are negotiating over
Speaker 1: whether the president can take one point seven seven six
Speaker 1: billion in taxpayer money and just give it to his buddies,
Speaker 1: some of whom beat up fucking cops at the nation's
Speaker 1: capital in an insurrection that these guys all believed at
Speaker 1: the time was so destructive to Trump politically and to
Speaker 1: the country that they didn't worry I have to worry
Speaker 1: about him ever again, so they didn't have to to,
Speaker 1: per your theory, do something uncomfortable for the base, which
Speaker 1: is impeach him and remove him so that he couldn't
Speaker 1: run again. And they have never learned that lesson, because
Speaker 1: if they learned that lesson, it requires something of.
Speaker 2: Them, Remember Mitch, like, they'll take care of the son
Speaker 2: of a bitch for us, right, we don't have to
Speaker 2: do anything on this, They'll do it. And this is
Speaker 2: I don't know, and maybe this is persistent. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe this is a persistent trait of the human condition
Speaker 2: that we see in all times, in all places. I'm
Speaker 2: sure if we were to look at the progress of
Speaker 2: authoritarianism throughout history, we would see a lot of this
Speaker 2: from people. But it's Trump is. Trump is very smart
Speaker 2: about human nature, I think, and he was smart about
Speaker 2: understanding that America is not exceptional.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. I don't agree with that. I think
Speaker 1: that is too too many moves away from the way
Speaker 1: he sees these people. I think, like when he shakes
Speaker 1: the hands of those reporters on that stage, he's actually
Speaker 1: doing what was a criticism of the dinner that actually,
Speaker 1: in hindsight wasn't as true as we said it was,
Speaker 1: which is, oh, it's all a game to these fucking people,
Speaker 1: and that the original criticism of the White House Correspondence
Speaker 1: dinner was these people are supposed to be antagonist the
Speaker 1: press and the administration, and they have this cushy dinner
Speaker 1: and both optically so optically it represents something that is
Speaker 1: like ugly to the American people, But on a substantive level,
Speaker 1: it reveals something, which is their commitments aren't real, they
Speaker 1: aren't serious. I actually in hindsight, don't agree with that.
Speaker 1: I disagree with that. I actually think their commitments were
Speaker 1: real and actually what that dinner, it turns out, was about,
Speaker 1: and something we took for granted, is yes, they're on
Speaker 1: opposite sides in the game, but they're all believers in
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They're in the stadium together playing the game of democracy.
Speaker 1: Trump's not in that, which is why it's so ugly,
Speaker 1: because it's not just that people aren't uncomfortable with discomfort.
Speaker 1: I think that what Trump it's not that America wasn't exceptional,
Speaker 1: or that we don't believe that in America's sort of
Speaker 1: special virtues. It's that he understood that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who don't actually care about those virtues enough
Speaker 1: to do something right. That's true of the press in
Speaker 1: that room. That's true of the lawyers at those firms
Speaker 1: that capitulated, That is true of the corporate media. That
Speaker 1: actually that is that after thirty years of post history liberalism,
Speaker 1: there is a lack of understanding of who you know.
Speaker 1: There's there's a there's been a gunshot in the courtyard,
Speaker 1: someone's got a call nine one one. We all can't
Speaker 1: look out the window and wait for someone else to
Speaker 1: call nine one one. Somebody's got to call nine one.
Speaker 1: And his great realization actually is that none of these
Speaker 1: people realize it's their job, right. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's an indictment of our view of America. It's an
Speaker 1: indictment of this generation of elites.
Speaker 2: All right. I'll to chew on that. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it's certainly I think that is certainly true. It
Speaker 2: may also be true that the rest of America is
Speaker 2: worthy of indictment, but I'll take that into advisement.
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Speaker 1: There's a quote going around. Uh, it's something to the
Speaker 1: effect of more Americans are fascists than we realize, and
Speaker 1: one day we're going to find out, And so I
Speaker 1: want to I want to. This is actually where I
Speaker 1: wanted to go next, because I think it's an.
Speaker 2: Old Hemingway, like the old Hemingway quote. Yes, and how
Speaker 2: many people are fascists and they'll find out when the
Speaker 2: time comes. Yeah, something to I'm butchering.
Speaker 1: I know, I was afraid. I'm afraid I'm falling for
Speaker 1: a brainy quote like Gandhi once said, Live, laugh, loove.
Speaker 1: But the gist of it, I think does apply. A
Speaker 1: point you've made repeatedly, which I think there's very little
Speaker 1: equity equity to in politics, is you can blame Trump,
Speaker 1: you can blame misinformation, you can blame Republicans. And this
Speaker 1: is a paraphrase of something you've written, seventy seven million
Speaker 1: Americans who voted for Trump or some combination of unserious, decadent,
Speaker 1: or weak. Now, it's a lot cheaper in politics to
Speaker 1: blame the powers that be. That's drue on the left,
Speaker 1: that's true on the right, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about the culpability of the actual voters and their
Speaker 1: agency in this. So can you, just as somebody that
Speaker 1: has been an observer of conservatism from the inside for
Speaker 1: a long time, what have you learned about the voters
Speaker 1: themselves through this period?
Speaker 2: Well, so, I mean, I can tell you my impressions.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you that they are like facts that
Speaker 2: I've learned. What I have seen suggests to me, though,
Speaker 2: that you to avoid, to avoid coming to the conclusion
Speaker 2: that voters wanted what they chose, You've got to start
Speaker 2: creating a whole bunch of Rube Goldberg contraptions. And the
Speaker 2: minute you push on any of these constructs even a
Speaker 2: little bit, they start wobbling, and so you have to
Speaker 2: build another one. Right, And so you know when people
Speaker 2: say something like, oh they really they only care about
Speaker 2: the economy, and you're like, well, but the economy is
Speaker 2: terrible when Trump left office, Oh well they that was
Speaker 2: just the last eighteen months of the economy, and they
Speaker 2: really they they think about the first you know, two
Speaker 2: and a half years, and you're like, well, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: Americas always say what do you do for me? Lately?
Speaker 2: They say well, yes, but then they really understood that
Speaker 2: the COVID was an exogenous event and that you can't
Speaker 2: blame the president for exogynous events. You're like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck are you talking about? You think what percentage of
Speaker 2: the country could spell the word exogynous? Right, And so
Speaker 2: you wind up making all of these things to avoid
Speaker 2: coming to the conclusion that no people saw Donald Trump
Speaker 2: for who he was. They heard what he was saying,
Speaker 2: they heard the things he was saying, and they said,
Speaker 2: I would like that. And I think the reason people
Speaker 2: don't want to go there is because that's a dark place, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the conclusion you end you wind up
Speaker 2: with is some large portion of that seventy seven million voters,
Speaker 2: maybe not all of them, maybe not maybe not even
Speaker 2: a majority of Maybe it's only like a third of
Speaker 2: them wanted this, like this is what they understood Trump
Speaker 2: to be, to be promising, and they wanted it. That's tough, right,
Speaker 2: You're now saying, well, hold on. So that means we've
Speaker 2: got like twenty five million voters in the country who
Speaker 2: are fascist like, who want a strong man and who
Speaker 2: are not sold on the liberal order because the reality is, like,
Speaker 2: you don't need a majority. Right, if you have a
Speaker 2: I mean, how many how many Bolsheviks were there? Right
Speaker 2: when for the Russian Revolution it wasn't like there were
Speaker 2: fifty million of them, you know, they had like fifty
Speaker 2: thousand guys. If you've got a core group of people
Speaker 2: committed to illiberalism, you will eventually get a liberalism. And
Speaker 2: I that's the sort of stuff that, you know, it
Speaker 2: just keeps me up at night because I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's an answer to it other than maybe the
Speaker 2: culture heals itself. Wow, that's not very satisfying.
Speaker 1: Or there has been you know forever, because I do
Speaker 1: think that the how many matters, right, whether it's drug
Speaker 1: because I don't think it is. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think it is. You know, there's there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between weak, unserious and decadence, and the distinction between them
Speaker 1: does matter. But even if there is this this group
Speaker 1: of people, and look, Trump's approval rating always remains, you know,
Speaker 1: we've never gotten below thirty, right, Like, let's say it's
Speaker 1: in the mid thirties on a good day. That's a
Speaker 1: third of the country. That's like, I'm still good with this,
Speaker 1: which tells you something whether some combination of loving it,
Speaker 1: or are actually kind of not getting really good information
Speaker 1: about it and sort of and not yet willing to
Speaker 1: walk away. I do think though, like you know, to
Speaker 1: get to get dark and to think about like how
Speaker 1: many you know, how many does he have? There is
Speaker 1: something about the blood and soil trump Ism. It may
Speaker 1: appeal to twenty five million people, but there's not that
Speaker 1: many that are willing to kind of put a lot
Speaker 1: of blood onto the soil. Like. It is an online movement,
Speaker 1: right It is a lot of people on Facebook and
Speaker 1: Instagram and social media and TikTok and wherever and watching television.
Speaker 1: Not I think it's you know, not as many on
Speaker 1: TikTok as they would like, But it's an online movement
Speaker 1: of people rattle riling each other up based on kind
Speaker 1: of narratives about cities and places they are not at
Speaker 1: and people they don't really observe or talk to, but
Speaker 1: they see through television, whether it's and AOC or trans
Speaker 1: people or whatever, and when push clams to show, you know,
Speaker 1: he put a good show on at the insurrection. That
Speaker 1: is a dark day in our history for which Trump
Speaker 1: is responsible. It could have been stopped with a little
Speaker 1: bit of planning by security officials if they had taken
Speaker 1: it more seriously, right, like like this wasn't exactly, this
Speaker 1: wasn't a mass mobilization that could have shut down the capital,
Speaker 1: prevented traffic, that kind of things that have been traditionally
Speaker 1: part of what a true like whatever revolution or counter
Speaker 1: revolution would look like. So maybe they just don't have a.
Speaker 2: Guys, totally possible, totally possible. And I you know, I
Speaker 2: look at it and it's it's just hard to know.
Speaker 2: And I would say, it's not new. This is the
Speaker 2: other thing that I've really come to. I mean, so
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about like my my blind spots,
Speaker 2: and my biggest has always been race, right, And part
Speaker 2: of this is just because of the Kanye. I grew
Speaker 2: up in a very middle class suburb where it was
Speaker 2: normal and race wasn't a problem. And and you look
Speaker 2: at you know, like, oh, we have all the authoritarians. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, before the Civil Rights movement, we got all
Speaker 2: whole swath of the country that was committed to authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: Right before the Civil War, we had half the country
Speaker 2: that was committed to a form of authoritarianism. And so
Speaker 2: there was I mean, for people of our age who
Speaker 2: came of age. In the post Civil Rights era, there
Speaker 2: is a sense of like, oh, the you know, so
Speaker 2: everybody was sort of aligned by the Cold War, and
Speaker 2: so you know, once you get in that twenty year
Speaker 2: period post Civil Rights, before the end of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: it looks like you've got this vaguely liberal monolith. This
Speaker 2: isn't to say that there aren't racists in the country
Speaker 2: and whatnot, but just sort of broadly speaking right to
Speaker 2: kind of both Democrats and Republicans were against the commis,
Speaker 2: you know, and there was the last two years of
Speaker 2: the Carter administration's approach to the Cold War were indistinguishable
Speaker 2: from Reagan's approach to the Cold War, like and so
Speaker 2: there was this like, hey, we're all in on liberalism.
Speaker 2: We don't like this authoritarianism stuff. And I of when
Speaker 2: I was born, and you know, my the my political
Speaker 2: upbringing just thought, okay, so that's America. And so this
Speaker 2: this Trump stuff is new and different, but it's not. Really.
Speaker 2: It's much closer to a reversion to a strain of
Speaker 2: American political thought which actually ran for a very very
Speaker 2: long time. It just happened to have come to an
Speaker 2: end right before I was born. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yes, well, no, it does, it does. It does make sense, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's the ways that and you know,
Speaker 1: I think there was downsides to this version of a
Speaker 1: liberal consensus, the kinds of topics that were acceptable, right,
Speaker 1: the kinds of people that were considered respectable, Like there
Speaker 1: was a there were real downsides to this actual strange
Speaker 1: period in which also in the media, there was a
Speaker 1: there was a real narrowing of kind of the bounds
Speaker 1: of the debate. And there are positive aspects to what
Speaker 1: happens when an entire culture is built around a kind
Speaker 1: of narrow debate that there's not as much different, it's
Speaker 1: not as much in fact, like all of that is
Speaker 1: certainly true. But you see kind of an emergence of
Speaker 1: right wing media during this time that slowly starts building
Speaker 1: power and influence, in part because there is this you know,
Speaker 1: there is this sort of darkness in us, in people,
Speaker 1: right in our culture and in people and there was
Speaker 1: clear whether it's you know Coughlin and then to Limbaugh right,
Speaker 1: like there was people that realize, like there's a need
Speaker 1: that's not being met in a pretty broad way.
Speaker 2: How much causal effect do you give the sort of
Speaker 2: right wing media ecosystem as it evolved in where we
Speaker 2: are now, because I'm never sure, like clearly there's some
Speaker 2: it has some effect, right, I wouldn't say it has
Speaker 2: no effect. It has some effect, but I don't know
Speaker 2: how much. Like if you snapped your fingers and it
Speaker 2: all went away, would things be a lot different? I
Speaker 2: don't know what are your thoughts on this.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've been thinking lately. A lot of what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is a result of a kind of permission,
Speaker 1: like what is fashion right. It's a hard thing to
Speaker 1: define for people. It's a little bit murky, and I
Speaker 1: think part of the reason it's so murky is, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people during Trump one point,
Speaker 1: Zo Wo'd be like, oh, stop calling him a fascist.
Speaker 1: That term doesn't apply. Look at everything's working right, And
Speaker 1: I increasingly just I don't think it is best to
Speaker 1: think about it as an ideology a goal. It is
Speaker 1: permission to a kind of evil that we all feel,
Speaker 1: which is, I will give into my ego completely. I
Speaker 1: will not accept any kind of injury. I will not
Speaker 1: have to admit to any kind of fault. I will
Speaker 1: not have to be wrong, I will not have to
Speaker 1: accept discomfort. I will not have to accept nuance. The
Speaker 1: reason there was a pandemic is because Fauci. The reason
Speaker 1: I was stuck at home is because of the Liberals.
Speaker 1: The reason people died is because of China. The reason
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not happy right now is because of
Speaker 1: AOC or Mamdani or whatever. And that is intoxicating. It
Speaker 1: is an intoxicating way to go through life. Forbearance. Religious virtue,
Speaker 1: civic virtue is a bulwark against those ideas. We all
Speaker 1: feel them. Some are better than others, as naturally showing
Speaker 1: a discipline against them. Some are You know, when you
Speaker 1: say someone, oh, they don't have a bad bone in
Speaker 1: their body, it's actually very hard for them to go
Speaker 1: in that way. We're all on that spectrum. And decades
Speaker 1: and decades of media slowly telling people to just let go,
Speaker 1: Just let go, it's fine, you can feel whatever you
Speaker 1: want to feel, culminates in Trump. Did the media follow
Speaker 1: the people? Did the people follow the media? Is Trump
Speaker 1: a symptom as you call it? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: at root I think it is. I think it is
Speaker 1: that thing inside of us. It is as old as people,
Speaker 1: and we will always have to fight it, and it
Speaker 1: will come and go pods of America is broad to
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Speaker 2: So this is I have a very similar view about
Speaker 2: the parties and that one of the things that the
Speaker 2: Republican Party was able to do when it was strong
Speaker 2: was prevent people like Donald Trump from ever being presented
Speaker 2: to voters, at least at the presidential level. Right. And
Speaker 2: so even if voters would have wanted something like that,
Speaker 2: it wasn't on offer. They got Bob Dole, they got
Speaker 2: Mitt Romney, they got more, you know, guys like that.
Speaker 2: And once Trump appeared, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: when he got big cats in captivity and you know,
Speaker 2: like they get a taste for live meat and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden they won't like take the stakes that
Speaker 2: you throw them anymore. That's what it's like with Trump
Speaker 2: and Republican voters now that they have like, oh I
Speaker 2: could have that, I could have the guy who talks
Speaker 2: about shooting illegals and says, only in the Panhandle, I
Speaker 2: can have a guy who encourages political violence, who says,
Speaker 2: go ahead and knock that guy out. I'll pay for
Speaker 2: your legal bills. Oh yeah, you know, like that's the
Speaker 2: real dope for them. And that's why I have a
Speaker 2: hard time seeing how we go back, because the parties
Speaker 2: aren't strong enough to prevent people like that from coming
Speaker 2: in anymore. I mean, just the structure of our party
Speaker 2: systems are two weak. They're both too strong and two weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, they're too strong to be killed and to
Speaker 2: have a new party pop up in their place, but
Speaker 2: too weak to prevent things like these sorts of takeovers.
Speaker 2: And so you wind up in a sour spot, and
Speaker 2: voters have a taste on voter. Republican voters have a
Speaker 2: taste for this because they were offered trump Ism, and
Speaker 2: then you saw when they were offered DeSantis, which was
Speaker 2: basically trumpsm without the violence, without the physical violence. They're
Speaker 2: like that guy, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, also without Trump, which is who is a
Speaker 1: charismatic figure. And you know, I think there's here's where
Speaker 1: I would say, there's like a little reason to be
Speaker 1: a little bit less pessimistic because I think there's a
Speaker 1: little step best. I think there's a step in there
Speaker 1: that's important as part of this, which because I it's
Speaker 1: not it's not this idea that Trump suddenly appears and
Speaker 1: they can have this kind of you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be on burger, I don't want
Speaker 1: I want the red meat. Right. That's certainly true. But
Speaker 1: there is a moment and it plays out during that
Speaker 1: first primary twenty sixteen where you see Trump doing what
Speaker 1: Trump's doing, you see Rubio just doing what Rubio's doing,
Speaker 1: and Cruise doing what he's doing, and everybody kind of
Speaker 1: looks around first, and they look around at each other
Speaker 1: and they're like, is it okay if I do this
Speaker 1: like I want? I'm in I'm kind of interested. This
Speaker 1: is attractive to me, but I know it's wrong. It's
Speaker 1: still by the I know what's wrong is everywhere still
Speaker 1: to this day. It is the understanding that what we're
Speaker 1: doing is wrong. It is inside of it is the
Speaker 1: unspoken part of everything. It's and everything across the media.
Speaker 1: It is about assuaging the people who know they're doing
Speaker 1: something wrong. You know, when you see that, you never
Speaker 1: see a liberal. You never see a liberal say some
Speaker 1: version of this is just a political disagreement. We should
Speaker 1: still treat each other as friends, right, Like that's something conservatives.
Speaker 1: There's a conservative effort to say versions of that, to
Speaker 1: kind of make what they've done be normal. But the
Speaker 1: reason I say all that is because that moment of
Speaker 1: looking around is a corrective that still exists. Like, if
Speaker 1: you there are there are two if you go there
Speaker 1: can be two gates side by side at an airport
Speaker 1: and two different airlines operating that gate, and at one gate,
Speaker 1: everybody is obeying the rules of when you board, and
Speaker 1: at the other gate, nobody is why. It is a
Speaker 1: combination of the culture of the flyers, the expectations of
Speaker 1: the flyers, and the rules of the airline do they
Speaker 1: enforce do they send anybody back if they come up
Speaker 1: with their boarding group that they're not in? And also, hey,
Speaker 1: is this an airline where everybody lines up or is
Speaker 1: this an airline where we all crowd the fucking thing,
Speaker 1: like like we're trying to storm the best deal, right,
Speaker 1: Like what kind of vibe is this? And people look
Speaker 1: around and maybe they'll be a transgressor and others will follow.
Speaker 1: Maybe there won't. It's luck. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: luck and happens ince somebody's got to throw the first brick.
Speaker 1: But that moment of corrective is still available even now,
Speaker 1: or is that wrong?
Speaker 2: I don't know. So I yesterday I wrote a piece
Speaker 2: about this conference that the Trump administration did two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: So they did a conference on the Resurgence of Political terrorism,
Speaker 2: and it was all, I mean, it's about, of course,
Speaker 2: irony is dead, right. The people who reintroduced political violence
Speaker 2: into America after like a thirty year hiatus basically are
Speaker 2: now like, oh, oh my gosh, there's violence, right, But
Speaker 2: the only violence they care about is left wing violence.
Speaker 2: That's the big thing. And you had Stephen Miller and
Speaker 2: Marco Rubio both give speeches which were, and I say
Speaker 2: this in a measured way, indistinguishable from something Gerbels or
Speaker 2: Hitler would have said in the thirties. And I just
Speaker 2: went and pulled quotes like from from Hitler and gerbal speeches.
Speaker 2: And they're talking about this is Rubio and Miller about
Speaker 2: the ugly people who I mean, they're like, they're really
Speaker 2: getting into the how do you say it's a physiognomy physiogony,
Speaker 2: you know, like the calipers, like you know, oh, you
Speaker 2: can tell the dysgenic types, the untrements.
Speaker 1: I am on record predicting a phrenology comeback five years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, uh you know, and this is this is
Speaker 2: so why is Marco Ruba Rubio, who is supposedly the
Speaker 2: responsible one, who is the Secretary of State, giving a
Speaker 2: speech at a conference in which he is talking about Americans.
Speaker 2: This is what he's talking about Americans, the protesters, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the left wing terrorists, all this as being
Speaker 2: ugly and deformed and who you know, spiritually, all they
Speaker 2: can do is destroy the work of the great men
Speaker 2: and the great culture that the Arians have built. And
Speaker 2: it just you and I just think, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like Rubio is a pretty shrewd diviner of what people
Speaker 2: want from him in any moment. He seems to think
Speaker 2: that this is what Republican voters want. I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: it was pretty I was pretty worked up about this
Speaker 2: because I mean, it's it's one thing to like rhyme
Speaker 2: with Nazis, it's another thing to like copy them.
Speaker 1: It is that there's a difference between like the Miller
Speaker 1: rhetoric is as fascist and as as as you could imagine,
Speaker 1: even where it's sort of like, you know what is
Speaker 1: good and beautiful and true? Right, there's a kind of
Speaker 1: I don't even know what.
Speaker 2: Can I read the passage? I got it in front
Speaker 2: of me. That's because it's it's really amazing. It's not
Speaker 2: a coincidence that when you look at these violent Antifa
Speaker 2: demonstrations and you see any photograph of those who are
Speaker 2: assembled to be blunt, not one of the people that
Speaker 2: is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal.
Speaker 2: They're all deformed in some way in their appearance, in
Speaker 2: their dress and their mannerism. Why is that? Why if
Speaker 2: you look at two photographs and you see a normal
Speaker 2: American in the street and you see an Antifa protest,
Speaker 2: why do the people that are violently demonstrating, Why is
Speaker 2: there not one normal looking person among them? Every one
Speaker 2: of them, through the course of their life and their decisions,
Speaker 2: has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways,
Speaker 2: to the point where their outer appearance becomes a manifestation
Speaker 2: of their inner hatred. Trust your instincts to all people
Speaker 2: and to cross all civilizations. You know what normal is.
Speaker 2: You know what beautiful is, you know what good is.
Speaker 2: You know that families are right, you know that children
Speaker 2: are precious and beautiful must be protected. Blah blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. This is so much deeper than issues about
Speaker 2: taxation and regulation. It's about normal, healthy, ordered living like
Speaker 2: this is you can you see It's like vermin dysgenic types.
Speaker 2: You can see right there.
Speaker 1: You could see like Gerbels looking at that and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think we got to turn this down a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think we're getting a little bit gonk. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I know, I know we're the Nazis, but this is
Speaker 1: getting a little crazy. Uh yes, But so what's what's
Speaker 1: interesting about that? I saw that passage and if you
Speaker 1: turn on Fox News, uh, at many points during the day,
Speaker 1: you will see a kind of brightly colored, over the
Speaker 1: top aesthetic, including face work and changes to the body
Speaker 1: that are all meant to be Like there is that
Speaker 1: that that like you you stop and you read that,
Speaker 1: and you're like, what are you talking about? Exactly? What
Speaker 1: are you what are you saying exactly? Because when you
Speaker 1: look there is the other side of that is an
Speaker 1: aesthetic to fascism, right, like with what kind of extreme
Speaker 1: aesthetic to what it means to be beautiful? Right, And
Speaker 1: it does flow from this idea of which is like
Speaker 1: one of the lies at the core of fascism itself,
Speaker 1: which is in the same way, you do not need
Speaker 1: to admit to any flaw or fault or mistake, and
Speaker 1: you can dominate and actually to lose is always embarrassing.
Speaker 1: To concede is always embarrassing. One place where we all
Speaker 1: must concede is to time and death itself, right, Like
Speaker 1: we must concede to the fact that we are all well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the techno fascists for sure, but like that, like that
Speaker 1: we all have bodies, right, and that actually we all
Speaker 1: experience pain and we all experience loss, and uh, part
Speaker 1: of like that rhetoric is around convincing a bunch of
Speaker 1: people to deny their own kinds of pain, right to
Speaker 1: like to model a kind of a strength in which
Speaker 1: the reason it's okay to support Trump even though he
Speaker 1: actually does nothing to improve the country is that your dissatisfaction,
Speaker 1: your pain doesn't matter because you you actually are are
Speaker 1: are sort of a tool of this operation, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like there a kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a an a there's a kind of
Speaker 1: ask that they make of their own people to kind
Speaker 1: of like deny themselves, like their own humanity, and how
Speaker 1: they kind of approach the world.
Speaker 2: During Trump one point zero, there was a New York
Speaker 2: Times piece written it was there was some storm down
Speaker 2: in Florida and Trump had like done jackshit for people,
Speaker 2: and the Times reporters like down interviewing Trump supporters who
Speaker 2: had been, like, you know, hurt by by the storm.
Speaker 2: There's a quote from a woman who says that she
Speaker 2: was disappointing Trump because she said he's not hurting the
Speaker 2: people he's supposed to hurt. And to me, this was
Speaker 2: like the Rosetta stone of trump Ism. Like this is,
Speaker 2: as you say, like they can't stop their immortality, can't
Speaker 2: stop their own pain. But Donald Trump promises to hurt
Speaker 2: the people that they hate. That's really good.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of debate about what Democrats should be
Speaker 1: calling for, what reforms should look like, how we resolve attention,
Speaker 1: which is, if we are able to retake power, it
Speaker 1: will be a great incentive to use the extent the
Speaker 1: new executive strength powers to fix what Trump has done,
Speaker 1: while at the same time collectively understanding that limiting the
Speaker 1: power of the presidency, returning some prerogative to the legislature
Speaker 1: in the courts is a good thing. Pete Boodh Judge,
Speaker 1: I think said something interesting about this that you wrote about,
Speaker 1: which is basically some version of there's places where we
Speaker 1: need to strengthen the presidency. Basically, we need to strengthen
Speaker 1: it on the stuff you want me to do, and
Speaker 1: we need to weaken it on the stuff you don't
Speaker 1: want me to do. Like we has to be stronger
Speaker 1: going after inequality and fighting the corporations, and but we
Speaker 1: need to be the president should be weaker when it
Speaker 1: comes to invasions of privacy and violations of the rule
Speaker 1: of law. Okay, fine, I agree with that. How are
Speaker 1: you thinking about executive power and like and what it
Speaker 1: means sort of post tromp to kind of protect the
Speaker 1: country from another one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't know the answer.
Speaker 2: I you know, I there are you can see like
Speaker 2: three different pathways for this, and it's not clear to
Speaker 2: me which is wisest. There was a bunch of debate
Speaker 2: about this when when Biden took office and he chose
Speaker 2: to try to like Hey, look, Trump was an aberration.
Speaker 2: That's not who we are. And what we're going to
Speaker 2: do is we're just going to go back to being
Speaker 2: normal and we're gonna fake it till we make it.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a crazy view. That was not a crazy view.
Speaker 2: It was totally defensible. It was a real theory of
Speaker 2: the case. It did turn out to be wrong, though,
Speaker 2: and we just need to say that like it was.
Speaker 2: It was wrong, and it wasn't a little bit wrong.
Speaker 2: It was a lot wrong. Biden had a successful presidency.
Speaker 2: He had a pretty good economy. Unemployment was below four
Speaker 2: percent almost the entire time. He beat COVID. We had
Speaker 2: a out a thirteen or fourteen month period with very
Speaker 2: high inflation, but then he achieved a soft landing. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is as good as guests. We did not have
Speaker 2: a recession, we did not have a big, unpopular foreign war,
Speaker 2: and at the end of it, people chose Trump again
Speaker 2: even with the I mean, so Biden's theory the case
Speaker 2: was wrong. What could Democrats do if they take power again, Well,
Speaker 2: they could try some version of we're going to reform everything,
Speaker 2: and so we're going to go after the big institutional
Speaker 2: problems which led to trump Ism, things like the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: things like the Electoral College, things like the Senate. They
Speaker 2: could instead of that, they could pursue accountability. They could say, look,
Speaker 2: the system is what the system is. But we're going
Speaker 2: to make sure that everybody who broke any law during
Speaker 2: that period that just happened, whether they were a member
Speaker 2: of the government doing things that were legal, or whether
Speaker 2: they were private corporations who were participating in illegal things
Speaker 2: with you know, doing frauds and whatnot, everybody pays a
Speaker 2: price so that people see going forward that if you
Speaker 2: get another strong man, if you go along with him,
Speaker 2: there will be consequences, right, That's one thing. Or they
Speaker 2: could say, uh, hey, you know what, people don't care
Speaker 2: about process. People don't care about all that stuff. They
Speaker 2: care about the bottom line, kitchen table issues, John, And
Speaker 2: you know what we're not going to get. We're not
Speaker 2: going to get distracted by worrying about the past and
Speaker 2: fighting the old fights of the old generation. We're going
Speaker 2: to look forward to building something new, something that really
Speaker 2: matters to people's lives. And look, you know more about
Speaker 2: Democrats than I do, but my senses they're going to
Speaker 2: pick door number three if they ever get into power again.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, great, good luck.
Speaker 1: Part of it is like that I worried about that.
Speaker 1: I worry that there is going to be polling that
Speaker 1: says very clearly, you know some version of you want
Speaker 1: to look backwards or do you want to go forward?
Speaker 1: And people are going to say, gosh, I want to
Speaker 1: go forwards, and that will be a real There will
Speaker 1: be a lot of pressure on Democrats to say this,
Speaker 1: and then you will have the Democrats that are the
Speaker 1: smart messengers who say some version of we kind of
Speaker 1: walk at you gum at the same time. You know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna say on this ship they've said it before
Speaker 1: the seat again, John, we got to walk at you
Speaker 1: gum at the same time. So we've got to look forward.
Speaker 1: But also we have to fight for accountability. But all
Speaker 1: of it, to me is avoiding what I think I
Speaker 1: think in like in the democratic art right, like what
Speaker 1: a democrat, what would what would the kind of engaged
Speaker 1: democrats who have kind of been part of this debate
Speaker 1: for a long time, what are they really what are
Speaker 1: they really saying that they want? What they want? Or
Speaker 1: what I what I imagine some version of this is
Speaker 1: what people think we need but have find it hard
Speaker 1: to reticulate. Is we need a period in which we
Speaker 1: have some version of another founding, right, Like we've been
Speaker 1: through several foundings in which we have a big debate
Speaker 1: about authority and limits. In that period of friction, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of room to operate, and then laws and
Speaker 1: norms kick in and it gets constrained and you get
Speaker 1: stuck in that for a long time. Right, That's what
Speaker 1: happens after the Revolution, the Constitution, the Civil War, UH,
Speaker 1: and the civil rights movement, and we're kind of where
Speaker 1: maybe we're due. And what that looks like, right is
Speaker 1: to the Buddha deedtche point, you kind of want a
Speaker 1: period where you can have a president who can operate
Speaker 1: like Trump. Tear down the ballroom, remove all the executive orders.
Speaker 2: Oh, you've all come around, You've all come around with
Speaker 2: me on the ballroom.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm going to put your values to
Speaker 1: the test right now? Would you tear down the new
Speaker 1: Dallas there's a adullas he wants to build the new
Speaker 1: Dallas Airport. He wants to get rid of the people movers.
Speaker 1: You're going to tear that down to to what end
Speaker 1: was to fix the fact that Dallas.
Speaker 2: Is this an infrastructure, Yes, he's announced.
Speaker 1: This week a giant plan to he is. He personally
Speaker 1: has approved the designs for new terminals at Dulles, which
Speaker 1: include getting rid of the people movers uh and a
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand foot parking structure. Now should the president
Speaker 1: be walking through the details of a new parking structure
Speaker 1: when we're at war with Iran and have no control
Speaker 1: of the Strait of Hormoves. No, he should not, But
Speaker 1: he did do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's closer to like highway planning infrastructure though like
Speaker 2: I am not in the like Donald Trump built a
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's Transportational Department built a bridge in West Virginia,
Speaker 2: and so we have to tear that down. That's not
Speaker 2: where I am. I'm in the the ornaments and the
Speaker 2: personal monuments to himself, which are things like the arc
Speaker 2: that's the ballroom, yes, the name on the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1: That way.
Speaker 2: My view is that anything that looks like a presidential
Speaker 2: palace gets pulled down. Yes, anything anything have to show
Speaker 2: that there's no throne there, you know, show the next.
Speaker 1: Guy, anything that any part of his infrastructure where you
Speaker 1: could imagine Uday and kuse walking out yes to say, hello,
Speaker 1: I think you got to tear it down. But but
Speaker 1: back back on this that that you want to do
Speaker 1: a court expansion, get rid of the filibuster, pass some
Speaker 1: sort of uh uh, you know, repeal the big beautiful
Speaker 1: bill taxes. There's a lot of sort of big strong
Speaker 1: executive leading the Congress towards you know, singular goal. But
Speaker 1: then and by the way, but then at some point,
Speaker 1: you also want to reassert the Justice Department as an
Speaker 1: independent body, which I think we at this point, depending
Speaker 1: on the court, you have to do through law or
Speaker 1: constitutional amendment. You want to reassert Congress's prerogatives over the
Speaker 1: national security state, which requires legislation maybe at this point,
Speaker 1: also a constitutional amendment. There's a there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: ways in what you want is a period of time
Speaker 1: where the democratic president operates like Trump before a whole
Speaker 1: set of rules kicks in in which there can never
Speaker 1: be a Trump again, which is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that dictatorships are made of. Right like that, Like
Speaker 1: that's what that you know, what I'm saying, Like that
Speaker 1: is what people want, and yet what that is the problem.
Speaker 2: That is the problem, and that's the tension.
Speaker 1: That's what they think they got with Trump.
Speaker 2: That's that's the tension, and the other I mean, there
Speaker 2: is also a false sense of security here, which is
Speaker 2: that if the if the people in a democracy want
Speaker 2: a Trump, they will get a Trump, regardless of what
Speaker 2: Democrats build in the guardrails, right, because the guardrails are people,
Speaker 2: and if America wants authoritarianism, it's going to get authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: It's going to get a strong man. So you can't
Speaker 2: fix that part of it, right, and and so that honestly,
Speaker 2: that does I was making fun of the you know, democrats.
Speaker 2: I just want to look toward the future. Maybe that
Speaker 2: is the answer. As I said, I don't come to
Speaker 2: you with answers, John, Maybe the answer is you do
Speaker 2: have to look to the future so that you build
Speaker 2: something so that people don't think, yes, I want a
Speaker 2: strong man. Maybe that's I don't know, I don't you know.
Speaker 2: To me, that doesn't feel like satisfactory. But that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it's it's not the right answer.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a there's also I think I think your
Speaker 1: story of Biden, and I am a great critic of
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, is a little I think it's it's a
Speaker 1: little bit overdetermined in that if Joe Biden. Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: theory right was, we have to we have to demonstrate
Speaker 1: what a democracy should look and sound like, we have
Speaker 1: to reassert some normalcy. We have to achieve some big
Speaker 1: policy goals to demonstrate that government can work. And because
Speaker 1: there was an insurrection and he's such a pariah, the
Speaker 1: Republicans will will move on and they will have a
Speaker 1: primary that sits where you end up with someone somewhere
Speaker 1: between Trump and what Rubio sounded like in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and you kind of muddle through, right Like, you know,
Speaker 1: there have been plenty of cases with history where the
Speaker 1: kind of charismatic leader goes away and everybody kind of
Speaker 1: that you don't go back to where you were, But
Speaker 1: it mattered that there was one charismatic leader, and without them,
Speaker 1: people kind of go back to old habits. The problem
Speaker 1: was to me two things. One, Joe Biden was way
Speaker 1: too fucking old and as a result kind of became
Speaker 1: very couldn't communicate, and his weaknesses as a leader became
Speaker 1: evidence of his age. His age became evidence of his
Speaker 1: weaknesses and became a downward spiral coma for her For
Speaker 1: her best efforts, was unable to get out of that
Speaker 1: for various reasons. The other is, you could have had
Speaker 1: Joe Biden doing exactly what Joe Biden did, and you
Speaker 1: put Adam Schiff at DOJ instead of Merrick Garland, or
Speaker 1: somebody gave Merrick Garland, you know, some adderall in his
Speaker 1: oatmeal every day without his knowledge, and suddenly you have
Speaker 1: some prosecutions happening faster. Trump is unable to run for office,
Speaker 1: and the world looks very different.
Speaker 2: Possible, And I mean I should say in all this,
Speaker 2: it is also possible that everything just kind of fixes
Speaker 2: itself on its own, right. It's possible that none of
Speaker 2: the things that we've talked about happened, and yet a
Speaker 2: decade for now, things aren't worse than they are right now.
Speaker 2: They may not be a ton better, but we haven't
Speaker 2: continued sliding into authoritarianism. We're only like a third of
Speaker 2: the way they are the way we are now. So
Speaker 2: like that's also possible. I'm you know, I am open
Speaker 2: to that. I'm open to all possibilities. John. We often
Speaker 2: find ourselves in the trap of saying, well, what was
Speaker 2: the real reason, and that what I use is like
Speaker 2: murder on the orient Express who did it? All of
Speaker 2: them did it right? And it is it's Biden was
Speaker 2: too old, and Trump was charismatic, and Merrik Garland didn't act,
Speaker 2: you know, with enough enough impetus. Like it's all of
Speaker 2: those things together. But it's also like and the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court was pretty clearly going to try to make sure
Speaker 2: Trump could run again, like that, they wanted Trump to
Speaker 2: be able to run again. They were going to do
Speaker 2: whatever they could to do that, right, And so you
Speaker 2: are in this physic physics. People call it a simple
Speaker 2: complex system, right, It's not a it's not a fully
Speaker 2: complex like complex systems or like ecosystems. They're gigantic and
Speaker 2: they're incredibly resilient. But a government is a simple complex system,
Speaker 2: which is to say, it's like an engineered biosystem and
Speaker 2: those sort of things. Simple complex systems are actually really
Speaker 2: delicate because they don't have all the redundancies and self
Speaker 2: governing features built into them the true complex systems have.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things we've learned over
Speaker 2: the last decade is that the American experiment is a
Speaker 2: simple complex system, not a truly complex system. The guardrails
Speaker 2: are not real guardrails, and that if the people go
Speaker 2: rotten or like sort of lose their minds temporarily, or
Speaker 2: decide they want something bad, they will get it. And
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you don't need all the people, maybe
Speaker 2: you just need forty seven percent of them distributed in
Speaker 2: the correct way or something like that. But you know
Speaker 2: they're going to get it. And so I wish I
Speaker 2: knew what the answer was to all this virtue. The
Speaker 2: answer to this is virtue.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's end right, Let's end by talking about virtue,
Speaker 1: uh for a moment, because I I it's it does
Speaker 1: seem to be like you step back from all of
Speaker 1: this and it is just a collective. Like you can
Speaker 1: blame the elites, you can blame the voters, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 2: There is a.
Speaker 1: There is a sense in which we've just sort of
Speaker 1: lost a kind of muscle memory for the importance of
Speaker 1: making virtue a big part of identity, right just like
Speaker 1: I like I remember when I went there was a
Speaker 1: there was a there was something that would happen on
Speaker 1: sitcoms when I that was just a part of sitcoms
Speaker 1: all the time, which was there was a character who
Speaker 1: would drive back to the bank with the twenty bucks. Oh,
Speaker 1: they got an extra twenty bucks, and that character would
Speaker 1: always drive back to the bank with tent And even
Speaker 1: in that it was a cheesy thing. It's obviously a
Speaker 1: cheesy thing about but like there is a like kind
Speaker 1: of and maybe Trump is reflection of it. He also
Speaker 1: makes it worse. I think about Fauci. When public health
Speaker 1: officials said you don't need masks, right, they were doing
Speaker 1: it because they wanted health in a crisis. They're worried
Speaker 1: about the health system coming apart, they're worrying about first
Speaker 1: responders dying of COVID. They're desperate to get those people masks.
Speaker 1: And they and public Health had a choice, and the
Speaker 1: choice was between trusting the American people with the truth
Speaker 1: or doing a kind of nudge because you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that the PPE gets to the hospitals. They
Speaker 1: chose to lie because they didn't They.
Speaker 2: Did not lie heavily lawyered. I would say this, so
Speaker 2: I've done the Fauci thing a whole lot. I know
Speaker 2: Fauci didn't lie. What Faunci did was a very loyally
Speaker 2: depends on what the definition.
Speaker 1: Of his is. I yes, so I want to be
Speaker 1: clear Anthony Fauci was somebody that devoted his life to
Speaker 1: public health. He's being smeared to be blamed for the
Speaker 1: entire pandemic because these people are being fundamentally dishonest. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was president, he was lying the whole time. He
Speaker 1: was a man that did his best in a massive emergency.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just saying him collective. The goal was
Speaker 1: to convince Americans that they did not need masks when
Speaker 1: they did because and I think rightly they knew that
Speaker 1: if you said to the country, don't buy masks right now,
Speaker 1: their life saving and we need to save them for
Speaker 1: the people that are in the in the in the
Speaker 1: shit right now. I don't think that they were wrong,
Speaker 1: right I don't think they were wrong. Agree and that
Speaker 1: and like and to me, like that is at the
Speaker 1: root of this, like that sort of politicians not politicians
Speaker 1: and officials not trusting the voters. The voter's not trusting
Speaker 1: those people in return. And I just don't know, Like
Speaker 1: the question is, what does a virtuous cycle look like,
Speaker 1: in which you're kind of getting back to a common
Speaker 1: sense of high trust society versus low trust.
Speaker 2: I wish I knew, honestly, I wish I knew, John,
Speaker 2: because I think you're right about the general public. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, the general public is made up
Speaker 2: of all of those nurses and orderlies and texts and
Speaker 2: docs and who showed up to hospitals taking care of people,
Speaker 2: especially in New York. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 2: people remember everybody is like this this mass, uh you know,
Speaker 2: forgotten this mass forgetting about COVID because like nobody wants
Speaker 2: to remember it. But New York looked like fucking doomsday.
Speaker 2: You know, like there were just like mobile refrigerators with
Speaker 2: bodies just you know, stacked inside the in the alleys
Speaker 2: outside hospitals. It was it was like seeing one of
Speaker 2: these virus movies. And the hospitals were full of people
Speaker 2: who just went in and tried to save lives and
Speaker 2: put themselves at risk anyway. You know, all these essential
Speaker 2: service workers who were like people who worked at just
Speaker 2: delivery and logistics, people who worked in grocery stores, you know,
Speaker 2: checkout lines and stocking things like. That's true too, Like
Speaker 2: those people did that that was virtue. And so I
Speaker 2: it's become so hard to understand, Well, why is it
Speaker 2: that these people will exhibit such true virtue at the
Speaker 2: individual level. But then when we ask, do you think
Speaker 2: people respond collectively in the right way or would they
Speaker 2: have run out and just like hoarded, you know, like
Speaker 2: holding toilet paper every time there's a warning about snowstorms.
Speaker 2: And I don't know how to square the circle there,
Speaker 2: And I you know, maybe maybe the answer is like
Speaker 2: you just have to trust people and if they make
Speaker 2: the wrong choice, so be it. And everybody lives with
Speaker 2: radical candor. I don't know the answers, and I wish
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is I do think it
Speaker 1: matters that Donald Trump had been president for several years
Speaker 1: and like he makes these these kind of he makes
Speaker 1: mistrust and cynicism more true of us. And I do
Speaker 1: think maybe the answer like it's in the same way.
Speaker 1: Why do I think you and Sarah and Tim and
Speaker 1: others who have had profound disagreements over the years stepped
Speaker 1: up when others didn't. Well, I think part of it
Speaker 1: is these virtues aren't just something you believe in. I
Speaker 1: think everybody would claim to believe in them. They were
Speaker 1: part of your identity, right, they were part of your identity.
Speaker 1: And a politics in which Democrats find a way to
Speaker 1: make those kind of virtues central to how we talk
Speaker 1: about ourselves, how we talk about what it means to
Speaker 1: be an American. I do think is kind of points
Speaker 1: to the way out because I think the difference, I
Speaker 1: do genuinely think the difference is is what are you?
Speaker 1: Are you a Republican? Are you a Conservative? Are you
Speaker 1: a Texan? Are you an American? Are you moral? Are
Speaker 1: you righteous? Are you honest? Are you somebody that is
Speaker 1: good at are you fair? Dealing? Right? Like? Do you
Speaker 1: cut lines? Or do you understand why you shouldn't even
Speaker 1: when you see others doing it right? Like these kind
Speaker 1: of simple things are like kind of I think part
Speaker 1: of what Trump makes less salient to people. And I
Speaker 1: think maybe that's part of the way, whether inside the
Speaker 1: Republican Party or in the Democratic Party, a return to
Speaker 1: that kind of moral language is maybe part of what
Speaker 1: has to happen next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wish again, I don't have any of
Speaker 2: the answers on this stuff. I think a lot about kindness,
Speaker 2: because kindness is one of these values that sort of
Speaker 2: sands over vices, you know, like if you can fix
Speaker 2: kindness as your north star that cuts across you don't
Speaker 2: have to be you know, a Christian or a Jew
Speaker 2: or a Muslim or an like. It's just it's universal, right,
Speaker 2: everything understands kindness, and to the extent that we could
Speaker 2: try to just model that and be me talking about kindness.
Speaker 2: I know it's hysterical, but you're.
Speaker 1: Rumored to be a very kind person. That's what the
Speaker 1: rumor is to believe. I mean when they let you
Speaker 1: out of that room you're in.
Speaker 2: But I strive for it, right, I mean, it is something.
Speaker 2: I think it's something we can all. We can all strive,
Speaker 2: we can all be aspirationally kind and maybe that collectively
Speaker 2: leads us back somewhere less terrible.
Speaker 1: And I will also just note too that like in politics,
Speaker 1: these kinds of virtuous words aren't always going to be
Speaker 1: on the list of polling questions or the list of
Speaker 1: topics that rise to the top. But I will remember
Speaker 1: when when Hillary Clinton was campaigning in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: I know, every losing campaign did everything wrong and every
Speaker 1: winning campaign did everything right, and we shouldn't have pokemon
Speaker 1: goed to went to the polls, but when she would
Speaker 1: say what we need is love and kindness, it was electric.
Speaker 1: It was the most electric thing that came around her
Speaker 1: in a campaign that was kind of more in the
Speaker 1: kind of neoliberal language of kind of technocracy. That idea
Speaker 1: of kindness did like kind of bring something out of people.
Speaker 1: So I do think it's a very good place to
Speaker 1: leave it. Jonathan ve Last, It has been so good
Speaker 1: talking to you, you know, and I hope you felt
Speaker 1: I was kind today.
Speaker 2: This was so great. I loved hanging out. I would
Speaker 2: do a show with you every week. You me and
Speaker 2: Alex Wagner. Wow is great.
Speaker 1: Okay, get I gotta talk to my bosses. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: we're an independent media company.
Speaker 2: H you mean, Alex, what are we gonna do. We'll
Speaker 2: do a show about pinball, let's show about comic get
Speaker 2: on the blow whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can talk about by the way, we can
Speaker 1: talk about watches too. Uh.
Speaker 2: Are you a watch guy?
Speaker 1: I'm a watch guy. I got I got a Grand
Speaker 1: Saco going right now?
Speaker 2: Oh, which one it's I gotta?
Speaker 1: I got the It's the It's the It's the Cherry Bossoms.
Speaker 1: It's the Cherry Bossoms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know class Grand Saco is a If you
Speaker 2: love Grand Sacho, then you really love watches.
Speaker 1: I'm a nerd. This is for for those This is
Speaker 1: a this is a nerds This is a nerds watch,
Speaker 1: and and nerds stopped me on street because they know,
Speaker 1: because they know. But everyone, oh, that's a Seco. No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: my friends, it's a Grand Saco and the story of
Speaker 1: Grand Saga.
Speaker 2: The Ratsu polishing, my friends.
Speaker 1: And what people don't know is that there was a
Speaker 1: period of time where Seiko wanted to compete with the Swiss,
Speaker 1: and so they've had two factories, Grand Saco and King Siko.
Speaker 1: And they said fight to the fucking death, boy, and
Speaker 1: you know what they did.
Speaker 2: And say, go one. It's the Japanese way.
Speaker 1: The Japanese way.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Jonathan's so good to talk to everybody. Go subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Bulwark. Uh, go subscribe to the Triad his newsletter,
Speaker 1: and and subscribe right here on this channel. Help us
Speaker 1: build a pro democracy ecosystem to get good information to people.
Speaker 1: And that that prize is kindness. How about that? Positive
Speaker 1: America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced
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