WEBVTT - Evan Osnos & Randi Weingarten, 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.160 Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.160 where we discussed the top political headlines with some of 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:13.480 today's best minds, and an implan analysis report says Trump's 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.960 policies could cost America twenty three billion in GDP if 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.439 Taurus continue to stay away. We have such a great 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.799 show for you today. The New Yorkers Evan Osno stops 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.040 by to talk to us about the tech brolocar key 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.920 and what can be done about their assault on democracy. 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.040 Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten, president of the American 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:39.720 Federation of Teachers, who will spell out the cruel attacks 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.800 against working people and Trump's big beautiful bill. But first 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:45.239 the news, SAMII. 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.159 We were doing an interview the listeners will hear in 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.159 a week or two about bitcoin. And as you were 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.280 doing that, the headlines started to rise that Trump media 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.560 plans to buy two point five billion of bitcoin. And 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.680 I look Robinhood and it was just soaring through the 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.600 roof that bitcoin price. What are you see in here? 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:10.440 So again Jesse's obsessed with bitcoin. Now, now this is 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.840 Trump World one oh one, right, you know, buy sketchy things, 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.520 make you know, say you're going to buy more stuff, 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.920 Buy the dip. Remember Trump's tweet He's doing the same 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.200 thing with tariffs that he's doing with bitcoin. I mean again, Okay, 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.720 I'm going to read you the statement. First of all, 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:30.680 Trump Media and Technology Group said on Tuesday, it's raising 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.840 two point five billion two by bitcoin. I want to 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:39.920 emphasize the word said here, okay, because maybe but maybe 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.800 they just said it. Okay, this is not a group 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.399 of people for whom their word is something you can 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.600 take to the bank. Now that said, I'm not even 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.920 going to mention the name of the person who had 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.720 a quote about this, because he's very litigious. But I 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.840 am going to read the quote because it's very hilarious. 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.800 We view bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom, 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.960 and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.959 part of our assets. Trump Media CEO, whose name cannot 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.600 be said because of his litigious nature. The investment will 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:20.919 help defend our company against harassment and discrimination by financial institutions, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:25.280 which plague many American and US firms. Okay, first of 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:30.160 all Americans and US firms. All right, okay, we're not 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.600 going to parse that, but we are going to say 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:36.560 that pretty interesting. Maybe they have two point five billion 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.320 dollars to buy bitcoin. Maybe they don't. I would not 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:43.600 take any one of these people at their words zoom in, 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.200 because there's an axiom we're getting this is from axios. 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.040 We're going to zoom in. Nunez says the strategy would 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.560 provide opportunities for Trump media and areas like subscription payments 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.280 and a utility token. Really, who could have seen that 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:03.880 Trump World would get so excited about a very sketchy cryptocurrency, which, 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.959 by the way, cryptos sort of redundant cryptocurrency is sketchy. 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.720 But it's nice to see that Trump World has continued 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:16.200 its march to do what is possibly not what it's 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:20.639 saying it's doing. Who knows, who can say? Who can say? 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:25.080 Speaking of lawsuits, yeah, well, basically each day, as I 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.560 try to select some subjects that you may want to 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.760 talk about, all I do is I just go, hmm, 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:31.120 blizzard of lawsuits? 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.640 Which what should we discuss? And so today's one is 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.600 that NPR is suing the Trump administration over their funding 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.080 cuts from President Trump's stupid executive order. 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:44.520 Yes, so NPR National Public Radio doesn't even get that 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.400 much money from the government. Probably could make up the shortfall, 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.200 but I think it's really important to remember here you 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.640 win in court. You win in court when you sue 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:56.600 trump World, you win in court. You know why you 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.280 win in court because what Trump World is doing is 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.840 almost entirely illegal. There are occasionally times when they get 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.320 away with it because it's a trumpy judge or because 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.480 it ends up in front of Samuel Alito, but largely 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:16.000 all of this is completely an utterly sketch. So you 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.520 should sue. And that's what's happening here NPR and these 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:23.279 are local affiliates. It's suing the Trump administration. I want 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.719 to point out this is a guy record low approval rating. 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:31.960 People don't like this. He is crushing norms left and right, 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:36.400 and so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is going to 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.960 sue back, and good for them. Republicans have been targeting 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.200 the portion of NPRS and PBS funding that is congressionally 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:47.880 approved by the way it's approved by Congress, not by Trump. 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.480 You know, this is another thing like Trump's executive orders 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.960 tend to undermine the power of the purse right one 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:58.760 of Congress is very few powers tend to be undermined 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.279 by trump Ism. Now, publicans just go along with it 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.800 because they don't care and because you know they'll do 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.360 anything Trump wants. But it's worth realizing that a lot 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.640 of this stuff is actually not within Trump's powers. 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:13.680 Yeah, that sounds right. So the Trump administration has canceled 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.320 Harvard's remaining federal contracts. One of the things we used 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:19.520 to discuss a lot in this podcast back when this 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.640 guy Ron DeSantis was really making a lot of headlines 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.080 was the concept of performative moronics. Yes, I can't think 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.040 of anything that fits that title more than this. 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:36.000 Ooh, performative moronics. That's a throwback to the first Trump administration. 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.240 I think I think that was more of our Biden 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.159 era analysis a lot of the time, if I'm being honest. 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.640 Yeah, so this is really stupid, but it's also I 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.400 want to point out, just shows how little runway they 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.640 have here. So Trump administration will eliminate the remaining one 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:56.000 hundred million in federal contracts with Harvard University. They are saying, Okay, 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.080 so what are they going to do. They're going to 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.400 cut a lot of use federal contracts. First of all, 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:06.560 they're not going to be able to do it. Number one, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.719 they are not going to be able to legally This 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.280 is so fucking dicey. The other thing is like, let's 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.040 just think this through. Okay, So this is stuff like 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.640 training feople. This is stuff like science stuff right, like 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.640 during cancer or stuff happening in the labs. What are 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.240 you gonna do. You're gonna move that lab work to 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.400 the Heritage Foundation. They don't have any labs at the 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.000 Heritage Foundation. You know you have these world class scientists. No, no, 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.360 we don't want the world class scientists. We're gonna we're 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.880 gonna go and throw away all this research and we're 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.359 gonna start doing research. You know what at Hillsdale College. 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.000 There's no medical school at Hillsdale College. Okay, that's not 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.640 how it works. What Charlie Kirk is gonna take over. 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.400 You're gonna have Turning Point USA labs, right, you have 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:57.320 PhD mds like Charlie Kirk doing this is the stupidest 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:02.080 fucking thing ever. To reiterate how stupid this is. This 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.720 is one of these things where we are literally we're 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:10.840 just throwing away scientific advances somebody, not somebody. A lot 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.480 of us are going to get cancer, right, and little 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:15.760 more than a third of all Americans will get cancer 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:18.240 or some form of cancer, and we will have doctors 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.040 who say to us, you know, we have some great 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.800 studies on this, but we're still, you know, maybe four 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.120 or five years behind. We're four or five years from 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.320 getting to a place where we can cure this. Four 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.960 or five years. That's the Trump administration, that's the second 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:35.240 Trump administration. There will be people who die because we 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.800 have lost four or five years of scientific advancements because 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:45.000 of COVID and Donald Trump and RFK Junior and people 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.960 who don't who just literally want to throw the baby 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:50.960 out with the bathwater. So it is so painful for 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.600 me as someone who is not a scientist. It's such 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.920 a tragedy. It's like we are burning the library at Alexandria. 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:02.240 We are cutting our noses off despite our faces. We're 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.760 doing our on purpose. It's not even an accident, right, 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.640 we are literally it is fall of the Roman Empire, 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:11.680 and we're doing it to ourselves. There are a lot 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.600 of reasons how we got here, and I just hope 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.960 that like Canada and Europe and China and all those 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.560 other countries are going to pick up these scientists and 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.000 keep the work going because you know, we are in 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:28.200 a climate rasis, We are in a really perilous moment 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:33.679 in all different ways. Microplastics, cancer, you know, clusters. I mean, 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:38.200 just we are as sort of free apocalyptic America and 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:39.800 a lot of this end. If you don't think there 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.680 are more pandemics coming, I don't know what to tell you. 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.320 It's a very dark moment in American life. 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.800 Yeah, speaking of darkness in America, there's a cloud over 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:54.319 the Pentagon. It's shaped kind of like a buggy beer 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:55.680 that's been frozen. 0:08:56.000 --> 0:09:01.200 No, I'm kidding. Yeah, definitely, definitely, we love it. 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.360 So there's this fellow Pete hegg Sith the controversy with him. 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:07.360 You could pretty much set your watch to it at 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.040 this point that there will be an article about some 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.960 nefarious thing happening, some serious fuckery happening in under his purview. 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.600 Yeah, so let's talk about this. Look, you put a 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:22.760 guy like Pete Hegseth in this job, and I know 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:24.600 you're going to be shocked to hear, but my man 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:30.520 does not know how to do nearly anything, and that 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.360 in itself not necessarily. No, it's bad. So he's running 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:36.520 the dog. I was going to say it wasn't bad, 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.240 but it is really bad. He's running the DODA. Trump 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:46.200 has had many scandals now that are completely disqualifying, right, 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.640 heg Seth has had just scandal after scandal, like the 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.679 wife on the signal Chat. Remember when they added this 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.280 signal chat, there was a bunch of stuff with the wife, 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:01.040 with the brother, anti nepotism stuff. I mean, just like 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:06.400 continual problems with this guy. So now he's fired three people, 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:11.679 and again Trump advisors lose confidence in Pentagon leak investigation. 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.760 Hegseth used to justify firing of three top aides. So 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.280 that sounds as if Trump advisors think Pete hegg Seth 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.199 weekend Fox News host former, he's not doing it anymore 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.959 right now, though he may be back soon. I wonder 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.559 if he gets fired from his job, if he ends 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.000 up going back to the weekend, or if they like 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:32.440 bump him up to the weekday. 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.680 Here's my guess. He takes Judge box of wines place 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:36.200 on the five. 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:36.800 Ooh. 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:42.520 From head of the DoD to panelists on the five, 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:44.880 jess A guitarl Off. 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.720 Put my bet from my crypto ortings on polymarket right now. 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.160 Yes, Jessin to Tarlaf, Pete hagg Seth coming to you 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:55.800 is certainly possible. I would never bet against you, Jesse, 0:10:56.120 --> 0:11:00.240 but I think either way, there's something rotten in the 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:04.679 state of Denmark. Right, We've got Trump advisors losing confidence, 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.000 by the way, and I want to point out these 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.040 guys love to leak. One of the hallmarks of Trump 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.920 one point zero was just continual leaking. Right, you had 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.520 everyone in the world leaking to everyone. So Trump advisors 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.360 losing confidence makes me think that they think that the 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:24.680 legal wire tap may not have been true. Again, there's 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:28.080 a lot to parson this thing, but I think that 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:33.000 there's a real question about when does when does Trump 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:37.559 world start losing confidence? In Pete hexp. So Trump's big 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.160 thing is he doesn't like firing people this time because 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.160 like Rachel Mattow had that whole wall people he had fired, 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.440 so clearly some things do in fact breakthrough. So he 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:50.120 just moves everyone around. So remember Mike Walls was a 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.600 National security advisor. Now he's his body man and also 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.480 cook at mar A Lago. I'm kidding, obviously, and that's 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.080 what we're seeing here. So he Seth will probably be 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:09.000 running hod Or on the five. Eventually we'll see what happens. Obviously, 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:15.320 never a great Evan Osnos is a writer at The 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.439 New Yorker and the author of Behals and Have Yachts. 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:20.360 Welcome to past politics, Evan. 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.240 Osnos, Thank you, Molly junk Fast. 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:25.040 We're you know, very excited to have you. 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.200 I'm very excited to be here. 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:32.200 Have books coming out in June. Yes, yours is a memoir. No, 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:32.640 I'm just. 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.640 Kidding a loop. Should we do that? Do you want 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:37.319 to swop on? 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.000 I'll talk about your book and memoir? So, uh, the 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.040 book is called The Have and the Have Yachts? Have 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:45.560 I butchered the title? Or now? 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.079 No, you you got it exactly right. And it's uh, 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.960 it is with my debt to both Hemingway, who wrote 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.760 to Have and Have Not, and then the other guy 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.679 who got there first. So it is an idea that 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.960 is that resigns in our consciousness. But I think it 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.240 is a unique artifact of our time, the haves and aviats. 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.920 It's so wild to me to watch this cycle of 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:14.600 backlash to backlash to backlash, right like financial inequality, push back, 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.520 some degree of making right or a little bit of 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.200 a change, and then a reelection of Trump. Explain what 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:23.280 the fuck is going on? 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.319 Well, you hit on the exact issue that interests me, 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:31.440 which is that Americans have an almost uniquely complex and 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.559 ambivalent relationship to big money to wealth. I mean it 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.880 is we are both at some moments cynical about it 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.000 and then fundamentally still aspirational. And I mean this is 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:44.240 not like an abstract idea. There was a Harris poll 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:48.520 last year that showed that sixty percent of Americans believe 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.680 that billionaires are making the country less fair, and sixty 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.520 percent of Americans want to become billionaires themselves. It is 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.120 very often it's the same people who have this oscillation 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:02.240 of instincts, and I think you see that in our 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.560 politics where we are tugged back and forth. But I 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:09.400 think what it obscures, frankly, and this is really the 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.199 core of what interested me, was that we are living 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.520 through utterly unprecedented times when it comes to the sheer 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:20.760 scale and speed with which these fortunes have accumulated. If 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:22.920 I can just give you one stat it is that 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:26.960 as recently as ten years ago, there was nobody on 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.720 the planet who had one hundred billion dollars. The idea 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:32.320 of a cent to billionaire was a non thing. There 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.560 are now at least fifteen people who do and to 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:38.840 give you, I mean take Elon Musk as an example. 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.240 I mean, at the beginning of Trump's first term, he 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.280 had about ten billion dollars. Today, as everybody knows, he 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:48.360 has four hundred billion dollars. And if you talk to 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:53.160 people who are scholars of not just scholars of the 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.160 recent period, archaeologists who look at inequality back to the 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.360 Neolithic period, they will tell you that it is very 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:01.720 hard to find in a period that is anything like 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:03.960 what we're living through now. As somebody said to me, 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.080 the people who built the pyramids, we're living in a 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.000 less unequal society. 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.800 So I want to get to the fall of the 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.280 Roman Empire because it's my fall of the Roman Empire. 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:18.920 There's a lot of joking that goes around that this 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.280 is a similar moment in America. You know that American 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.440 history that we history rhymes and we are in a 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.680 moment where the center cannot hold right, that there's just 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.880 too much inequality that we have, you know, And again 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:35.840 maybe it's this idea of the printing press. You know, 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:40.520 the technology has catapulted us into a kind of dark ages, 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.520 you know, a kind of brought time period. But but 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.960 do you I mean, is that your take on this, 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.840 I mean, what do you think, what do you think 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:50.080 about the instability? 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.360 Well, I think that the Roman analogy is more than 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.080 casually important, Like it is more than just that we 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:58.120 sometimes throw up our hands and say God, it feels 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.880 like the fall a Rum. The great scholar of Rome, 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.040 the late scholar Ramsay McMullin at Yale, was once asked 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.320 he'd written acres on the subject of the fall of Rome, 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.360 and he said, well, if you really ask me to 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:14.960 boil this down, he says, the fall of Rum took 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.720 five hundred years, but it can be distilled into three words. 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:26.280 Fewer had more. The growth of radical inequality in both 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:31.120 political and economic power is such a large and encompassing 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.560 fact of our lives that it's almost like climate change 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:36.400 in the sense that you can go through the day 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:40.280 without thinking about it, remembering periodically, oh, yeah, this is happening, 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.240 and it probably will change the world I live in, 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.000 But you can lose sight of it. And there are 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.800 these moments, these little dramatic indications, these moments when it 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.000 comes into our lives. And I think that the Musk 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:55.360 Trump joint venture is one of those times when we 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.520 have been suddenly aware of what the windfall in economics 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.880 has meant for our politics and our political culture. 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.760 Elon Musk started out as pretty popular talk us through 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:08.680 his devolution. 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.240 Yeah, I think he would be the first person to 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:16.680 in some ways acknowledge that he was caught unaware by 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.240 the collapse of his relationship with most of the public. 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:22.960 I mean he was until not long ago. If you 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:24.919 lined up a group of college students, you would very 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.920 often hear them say he is somebody who gives us 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:32.600 inspiration about what this country can be. And his level 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:39.240 of seclusion from actually the public, from real live experience, 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:43.240 as indicated by things like him saying that as many 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:45.600 of us have heard that the greatest flaw of Western 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:50.800 civilization is empathy, or describing social Security as a Ponzi scheme. 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:55.679 There are really a tell about how far his life 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.760 had become really divorced, in a kind of lunar way 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.959 from the lives of most other human beings. And I 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:05.639 think this is a theme that runs through my book 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.760 because over and over again I would find myself in 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.399 places that I know quite well. I mean like Greenwich, Connecticut, 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.240 which is where I grew up, is a place that 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:20.359 has historically been kind of in some sense connected to 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.200 but also disconnected from the rest of the country by 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.720 the forces of wealth. But in recent years, and Musk 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.720 is just the most dramatic illustration of this, that the 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.160 building of walls, both literally around people's estates but also 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:38.520 psychologically and emotionally and culturally has become so profound that 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:42.200 we are now living in an arrangement that is much 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.280 closer to what it was like in This is not 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.160 an extravagant analogy, but like medieval Europe, there's a reason 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.639 why people build castles. They built castles to defend themselves 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:56.160 and their property against others. And Elon Musk is a living, 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.879 breathing demonstration of what happens when you think that you 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.000 understand how other people live and you don't. 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.359 So interesting because I think that's completely right. And I 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.720 also wonder how much Elon Musk is is a function 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.040 of not having anyone around you who has ever told 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:13.760 you the truth. 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.760 Oh, completely right. I mean, this is the great risk 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.200 for authoritarians, either in private business or in public office, 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:28.080 is that you become so insulated and comfortable. It's like 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.560 this kind of amniotic fluid of agreement around you that 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:35.800 nobody who disagrees with you, stays very long, and as 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:39.680 a result you make actually sometimes terrible mistakes. This is 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:44.360 what's known as authoritarian backlash, and it's where you misjudge 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.240 the public mood. You know, if you're the Shaw of Iran, 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:52.000 you host a giant party to celebrate your leadership a 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:56.119 few months before the revolution rises up and removes you. 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.400 And that's the pattern. And I think it's because there's 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.040 nobody around who can say it. I'll give you one 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.760 other fascinating example. I wrote a profile that's in this 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.160 book of Mark Zuckerberg when he was in the period 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.080 of kind of coming to terms with his vast new powers, 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.280 and he had gone you'll remember Molly on this like 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.239 kind of weird tour of the United States where he 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:22.320 was going out and wanting to meet people and people, 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:26.639 and it was kind of it got mocked because, as 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:28.400 people put at the time, they said, this really looks 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.000 like a man who has landed or a person who 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.239 has landed on this planet and is like, bring your 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.000 humans to me. I will see them, and I will 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:37.520 meet them, and we will eat their things. And then 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:42.119 and somebody who had worked for him told me, look, 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.239 the reality was when he was on this tour. We 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.120 could all see that this was really not going to work, 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.320 and it looked, it looked kind of ridiculous, but there 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.760 was nobody around him who could and would tell him that, right, right, 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.200 right right, authoritarian backlash. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.359 So is it a question to keep going with this theory? 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:07.160 Putin's war with Ukraine is that? Is that the same? 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:11.160 Very much so. Putin is the paradigmatic example of what 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.760 the scholars call a sultanistic oligarch, which is a wonderful 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:21.239 term actually, and a sultanistic oligarch is somebody who is 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:25.960 essentially agreed upon by the other elites or the other 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.320 oligarchs in a society to let one among them rule, 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.119 and it's because they all benefit from that. But the 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.919 danger of becoming a sultanistic oligarch is that kind of 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.720 seclusion and that kind of absence of any sort of 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.679 critical thinking and judgment around you. And so everybody begins 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.440 to say to you, well, it seems like invading Ukraine 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.119 is a brilliant strategic move, sir. And you know, we 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.520 all saw those images of the of the boardroom where 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.879 the oligarchs and the and the leaders of the intelligence 0:21:55.880 --> 0:22:00.240 community in Moscow were being briefed on this plan and 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:03.760 there was up warrious applause, and that is a it's 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.240 you know, it's a lesson that I think goes beyond 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.320 just talking about our president or the Russian president or 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:15.159 it is really like a deep lesson in the problem 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:20.640 of becoming too far ahead, too far isolated, and becoming 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:24.080 too sure. To quote Kendrick Lamar, that you deserve it all. 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:28.000 It's a risk it'll blow up on you. 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:31.679 It'll blow and that's what we're saying. So what we 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:33.960 saw with Elon I just want to get back to 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:36.280 Elon for a minute, because he is the most pertinent 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.600 right now in our American political world, is that his 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:45.640 polling went down. His the numbers at Tesla's prophets were 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.560 down seventy one percent. Who even knew that could happen? 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:52.399 At a company, right they sold well? I saw reporting 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:57.480 that they sold seven thousand cars in Europe. I mean, okay, 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:01.639 do you think that these kind of come to Jesus 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:05.639 moments where you see that the emperor really has no clothes? 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:08.439 Do you think they influence the zeitgeist or do you 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:10.840 think they're just sort of I mean, what, you know, 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:13.040 the question we all have all the time is what 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:13.800 breaks through. 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:19.160 Yeah, I think there's no question that this leaves a 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:22.399 scar on the public mood. It's not just on Elon 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.840