WEBVTT - Interview Only w/ Kevin Williamson - Trump Has No Way Out Iran War Without Humiliation 

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<v Speaker 1>code toodcast. As many of you know, I have clear

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<v Speaker 1>that I think that the president's situation, iron is he's

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<v Speaker 1>in a no in situation. It's a no in situation

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<v Speaker 1>he's put himself in. The Only way he can get

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<v Speaker 1>out of it is probably either capitulation or some sort

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<v Speaker 1>of escalation that would be likely politically intolerable. But as

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<v Speaker 1>much as I think that I have done my best

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<v Speaker 1>to convey this, I think nobody has written it better

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<v Speaker 1>than my guest today, and it's Kevin Williamson. He is

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<v Speaker 1>at the Dispatch and his columns in particular on a

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<v Speaker 1>run over the last month have been one of those

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<v Speaker 1>where I'm just sitting here nodding yes, and I'm like,

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<v Speaker 1>I wish I could have articulated as well as he

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<v Speaker 1>wrote it. But that is the beauty of reading. Kevin

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<v Speaker 1>Williamson and is somebody I've read for a long time.

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<v Speaker 1>It's the first time I've spoken to him, so I'm

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<v Speaker 1>looking forward to this conversation. Kevin, Welcome to the podcast.

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<v Speaker 2>Thanks so much.

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<v Speaker 1>Look, you've articulated in a way far greater than I've

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<v Speaker 1>been able to convey about this just colossal mistake that

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<v Speaker 1>he's made. He I think he knows it, and he's

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<v Speaker 1>desperate to find some sort of way out of it

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<v Speaker 1>that isn't humiliation, and I don't know what that looks like.

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<v Speaker 1>So as much as it can be fun to sort of,

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<v Speaker 1>you know, point fingers and go aha, this was a

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<v Speaker 1>mistake a bunch of us told just so, et cetera,

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<v Speaker 1>the question now is how do we get out of

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<v Speaker 1>this with the United States not having its tail between

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<v Speaker 1>its legs.

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<v Speaker 2>We don't That's the short version. I think now. The

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<v Speaker 2>irony of Trump being in a no win situation is

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<v Speaker 2>that he got himself in there by trying to put

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<v Speaker 2>himself into a no lose situation. So by going into

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<v Speaker 2>this conflict without ever really defining what the mission was,

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<v Speaker 2>what victory looked like, without going to Congress, without going

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<v Speaker 2>to the American public, and so he didn't have any

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<v Speaker 2>kind of you know, verifiable, quantifiable metric that he could

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<v Speaker 2>fail to which even therefore be called a loser. And

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<v Speaker 2>he does that a lot. That's kind of one of

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<v Speaker 2>his things, Like, you know, he doesn't tend to endorse

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<v Speaker 2>in races where he doesn't think he's going to win.

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<v Speaker 2>If you look like the Texas Senate race that's going

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<v Speaker 2>on right now, the runoffs of Republican primary, he still

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<v Speaker 2>hasn't touched it. And so one of the points that

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<v Speaker 2>I try to make, not only in this context, but

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<v Speaker 2>in lots of other context is a lot of things

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<v Speaker 2>that we think of as being ethical questions or questions

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<v Speaker 2>of norms, and you know, kind of tradition and things

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<v Speaker 2>like that. We talk about these things like they're these

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<v Speaker 2>kind of airy, fairy metaphysical things that are primarily of

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<v Speaker 2>interest to the afterlife, but they have really important practical consequences.

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<v Speaker 2>And one of the reasons you don't want to have

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<v Speaker 2>a president who can just run off to war without

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<v Speaker 2>going to Congress to get some sort of authorization. Is

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<v Speaker 2>that you want to know what your goal is going

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<v Speaker 2>in You want to get a read from the people

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<v Speaker 2>who have to get elected every two years about what

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<v Speaker 2>they're willing to commit to that project and what they

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<v Speaker 2>think that the American public is willing to invest and

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<v Speaker 2>tolerate in the pursuit of that project. Because there are

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<v Speaker 2>all sorts of different outcomes and different goals that have

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<v Speaker 2>been articulated about the campaign in Iran that are not

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<v Speaker 2>the same. They change during the press briefings. Yes, I

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<v Speaker 2>mean at times. Yeah. So if you know, if your

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<v Speaker 2>goal is regime change, that's one thing that's a very

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<v Speaker 2>that's a hard thing to do. It's a doable thing

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<v Speaker 2>in Iran. We could do it if we wanted to,

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<v Speaker 2>but it's it's a big investment. If your goal is

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<v Speaker 2>to set back their nuclear program, well that's a different thing.

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<v Speaker 2>You can probably do with air power and maybe some

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<v Speaker 2>special forces stuff. If your goal is to have a

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<v Speaker 2>much stronger conviction and evidence that their nuclear program is

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<v Speaker 2>not functional and going to be functional in the short term,

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<v Speaker 2>that's a much bigger commitment. And if your goal is

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<v Speaker 2>to keep the Straight of horm Moves open to oil

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<v Speaker 2>traffic and other trade, you could have just not done

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<v Speaker 2>this in the first place because it was open. So

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<v Speaker 2>right now the main thing they seem to be trying

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<v Speaker 2>to shoes is going to be open. So they are

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<v Speaker 2>really just trying to solve a problem that they created

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<v Speaker 2>for themselves because the Strait was was open before this.

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<v Speaker 2>And one of the interesting things about this is that

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<v Speaker 2>Iran has not won a battle with the United States.

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<v Speaker 2>Iran is never going to win a battle with the

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<v Speaker 2>United States. It's never going to get close to laying

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<v Speaker 2>a glove on the United States. But it's essentially had

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<v Speaker 2>its territory enlarged over this conflict, because the form is

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<v Speaker 2>an international waterway over which Iran has no legitimate sovereignty

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<v Speaker 2>or right to control. But the Trump administration talks about

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<v Speaker 2>it as though it were Iranian territory, and they're just

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<v Speaker 2>out there begging them please, you know, you crazy bastards.

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<v Speaker 2>As he put it, open the Strait. And I would

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<v Speaker 2>love to play poker with Donald Trump, because I'm not

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<v Speaker 2>a very good poker player, but I think he would

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<v Speaker 2>be worse. He's just the worst of this kind of telegraphing.

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<v Speaker 1>He's literally the cards are in front, are on his forehead,

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<v Speaker 1>he doesn't look at them, and everybody else gets to

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<v Speaker 1>see them. Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he's got a lot of money to lose too,

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<v Speaker 2>so that would be that would be maybe a good

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<v Speaker 2>good game.

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<v Speaker 1>Remember he is the only guy to own a casino

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<v Speaker 1>and somehow not make money.

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<v Speaker 2>That's not actually true.

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<v Speaker 1>But the point he was not good at it.

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<v Speaker 2>No, he was terrible at it. And uh, he's the

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<v Speaker 2>only person I know that had a casino with a

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<v Speaker 2>strip club in it who didn't make money. And now

0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.480
<v Speaker 2>that's that's a much taller so much taller order. But

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<v Speaker 2>a lot of people have lost their butts in the

0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:22.240
<v Speaker 2>casino game over the year. I used to live in

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<v Speaker 2>Las Vegas. I followed the business just a little bit.

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<v Speaker 2>I hate the gambling industry, by the way, and I'm

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<v Speaker 2>always happy to see them. I'm happy to see them

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<v Speaker 2>lose something, as long as it's not in Vegas or

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<v Speaker 2>Atlantic City. We can have those two.

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<v Speaker 1>Be that.

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<v Speaker 2>But like when there's a casino on every street corner,

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<v Speaker 2>not to go off on a tangent here when you've

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<v Speaker 2>got him at places like Valley Forge and rural Connecticut

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<v Speaker 2>in places like that, there's too many casinos.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, I think that's the bigger problem. But we

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<v Speaker 1>can Yeah, that's that's the word digress.

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<v Speaker 2>That's a huge, huge issue. We talk about this some

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<v Speaker 2>other time.

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<v Speaker 1>Uh yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>So he's he's bad at this, and he he tells

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<v Speaker 2>the Iranians what his weaknesses and vulnerabilities are. He makes

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<v Speaker 2>these ridiculous bluffs that they don't take seriously. You know,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm going to destroy our civilian infrastructure. No, you're not.

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<v Speaker 2>Your whole civilization is going to end on Saturday night. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>we don't think that's going to happen. We'll roll the

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<v Speaker 2>dice on this because the Iranians know that they can

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<v Speaker 2>take more pain than the Americans can, because we're a free, happy,

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<v Speaker 2>prosperous society where our government has to get reelected every

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<v Speaker 2>couple of years, and they're not. They're used to being miserable,

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<v Speaker 2>and if they're miserable, they don't have much they can

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<v Speaker 2>do about it because the government's got all the guns

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<v Speaker 2>and that people don't have much of anything. So the

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<v Speaker 2>Iranian regime is pretty confident in its place, and Trump

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<v Speaker 2>is not so. So far, they've been calling his bluffs

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<v Speaker 2>one after the other, and they keep they keep winning it.

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<v Speaker 2>And so now we've got this ceasefire so called, which

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<v Speaker 2>I'm kind of a language guy, you know, I'm prestickety

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<v Speaker 2>about language stuff. Am I understanding of a ceasefire? Which

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<v Speaker 2>makes me enjoy reading? You know. I understanding of a

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<v Speaker 2>ceasefire is that's what happens when the firing has ceased,

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<v Speaker 2>and the firing has not ceased, so there is no

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<v Speaker 2>actual ceasefire. But now, but you know, conversations about but

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<v Speaker 2>didn't you know their hold it stops the clock too.

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<v Speaker 1>I bet you didn't know that. And I bet you

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<v Speaker 1>didn't know that A when you execute a naval blockade,

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<v Speaker 1>that that's not an act of war so therefore doesn't

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<v Speaker 1>count against the war powers act.

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<v Speaker 2>Or it is, depending on which which sentence you're getting

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<v Speaker 2>out of them. Oh, my favorite thing about our blockade

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<v Speaker 2>is we're blockading as straight because we're mad that the

0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:31.000
<v Speaker 2>straight is blockaded. That's that's good, that's.

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<v Speaker 1>Every I can't you know. I love one of my

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<v Speaker 1>favorite just visuals and I'm guessing you're you're going to

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<v Speaker 1>be a fan of This is from the movie Uh

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<v Speaker 1>Blazing saddles where he pulls the gun, where the sheriff

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<v Speaker 1>pulls the gun on himself, right, And it feels like

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<v Speaker 1>that's what Trump does all the time. He's constantly going

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<v Speaker 1>to pull the gun on himself. Watch out, I.

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<v Speaker 2>Might choose yeah, and well, and even that, like when

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<v Speaker 2>he's doing this sort of you know, Richard Nixon Madman

0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:00.680
<v Speaker 2>theory stuff and then he talk talks about it on

0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.600
<v Speaker 2>social media that this is what I'm doing, And so

0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.480
<v Speaker 2>he's like he's reading the stage directions and no one's buying.

0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.319
<v Speaker 2>No one's buying the performance. Something I do say from

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<v Speaker 2>time to time that when I say this, people think

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<v Speaker 2>that I'm just like trying to get a rise or

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<v Speaker 2>I'm just being tribalistic or whatever. But one of the

0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:22.640
<v Speaker 2>most important things to keep in mind about the Trump

0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.920
<v Speaker 2>administration that Donald Trump is not smart. He's kind of

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<v Speaker 2>a dim guy. He wasn't that bright when he was

0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:29.480
<v Speaker 2>in his forties. He hasn't gotten better here on the

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<v Speaker 2>verge of eighty. He doesn't know.

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<v Speaker 1>But wait, he calls people low IQ, so it must

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<v Speaker 1>mean he is. You're not saying he's projecting, are you.

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<v Speaker 2>No, I'm not saying he's projecting because I don't believe

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<v Speaker 2>in that Freudian claptrap. He's just a liar of course,

0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.800
<v Speaker 2>and an insult artist. And so he's the guy who's

0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:51.440
<v Speaker 2>not very smart and doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't

0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:53.640
<v Speaker 2>know how stuff works, and he's surrounded by people whose

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<v Speaker 2>metrics of success or not the nation's metrics of success.

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<v Speaker 2>So there are people around whom who want to make

0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.360
<v Speaker 2>money from the administration, who weirdly enough or like after

0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:04.840
<v Speaker 2>social media cloud and stuff like that, which is a

0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:08.000
<v Speaker 2>really weird reason to be Secretary of Defense. But okay,

0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:13.120
<v Speaker 2>because you want to do bench presses on short form

0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:17.520
<v Speaker 2>videos and look weird with your hair and whatnot. But

0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:19.760
<v Speaker 2>I'm not one of the electra people about their hair.

0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:22.960
<v Speaker 2>But it's a really weird administration. There aren't a lot

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<v Speaker 2>of people in it who know what they're doing, who

0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:30.600
<v Speaker 2>have much capability. It's interesting that Marco Rubio, who's outside

0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.800
<v Speaker 2>of his campaigning ability, which I think is pretty formidable,

0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.080
<v Speaker 2>is in my experience, my read of the guy, kind

0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.079
<v Speaker 2>of mediocrity. He's not really a very interesting person politically.

0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.040
<v Speaker 1>Do you think that's just autu in this administration?

0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:46.079
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he is the William F. Buckley would have said,

0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:50.080
<v Speaker 2>he's the tallest building in Wichita, and and he stands

0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.560
<v Speaker 2>out like he's Solon among these guys. You know he is,

0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.719
<v Speaker 2>he is Dwight Eyes right now, he.

0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:57.360
<v Speaker 1>Is Kissinger, he is these guys.

0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:02.160
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Yeahbo can't do everything, including you know, I guess

0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.079
<v Speaker 2>run Spearit airlines or whatever else the administration's going to

0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.480
<v Speaker 2>want him to do. And he's definitely out of his

0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.679
<v Speaker 2>depth with this stuff. Rubio is fine as the Secretary

0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.840
<v Speaker 2>of State doing Secretary of State stuff, which is you know,

0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.839
<v Speaker 2>traditional kind of diplomacy and meetings, negotiation and that kind

0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.240
<v Speaker 2>of stuff. Expecting him to figure out a way to

0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.400
<v Speaker 2>bail the Trump administration out of this war that they've

0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.600
<v Speaker 2>gotten themselves into because somebody probably convinced them, hey, we

0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.120
<v Speaker 2>can do it like Venezuela. It'll be like a long

0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:32.960
<v Speaker 2>weekend and think of how cool you'll look. And then

0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.040
<v Speaker 2>we'll move on to Cuba. And so you can say,

0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.160
<v Speaker 2>look at all these people. You know, the Reagan administration

0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.679
<v Speaker 2>couldn't deal with the RAM but I did. All these

0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:44.000
<v Speaker 2>American presidents going back to Jack Kennedy couldn't deal with Cuba,

0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.439
<v Speaker 2>but I did. Everyone was mad at Venezuela, which I

0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:48.800
<v Speaker 2>don't know that Venezuela was ever that big on our list,

0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.160
<v Speaker 2>at least not for a long time. But okay, sure.

0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.880
<v Speaker 1>Whatever really was only a priority of Marco Rubio's. Yeah.

0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.600
<v Speaker 2>Well, and a lot of people in Florida that the Trump.

0:12:57.440 --> 0:12:59.680
<v Speaker 1>Is good and he represents I mean, I'm not, you know,

0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.040
<v Speaker 1>but it was very much a local I'm from down there.

0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.760
<v Speaker 1>They cared about it. I don't think anybody outside of

0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:09.120
<v Speaker 1>Dave Broward and Palm beached it.

0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:12.719
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I mean I cared about, you know, Venezuela.

0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:15.800
<v Speaker 2>It was in my top twenty. You know, it was

0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:17.480
<v Speaker 2>tough to worry about. You don't cared a little bit

0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.480
<v Speaker 2>about it. I think I cared more about it when

0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:24.600
<v Speaker 2>Chavez was in power than Maduro years and thereafter. But so.

0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.000
<v Speaker 1>I feel like that the and the country that is

0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:32.040
<v Speaker 1>going to bail him out of this eventually is going

0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.480
<v Speaker 1>to be China, because China is going to sort of

0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.440
<v Speaker 1>get they have the ability to tell Iran to back

0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.080
<v Speaker 1>off and open up this straight and let's and that's

0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.640
<v Speaker 1>the irony to this is that we may need China

0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.280
<v Speaker 1>to somehow convinced or convince Iran to cut it dew.

0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, although the Chinese are willing to bear a good

0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.000
<v Speaker 2>deal of pain too. I think if it if it

0:13:56.040 --> 0:14:00.839
<v Speaker 2>disadvantages us, and they intelligently see us as the main

0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:03.600
<v Speaker 2>constraint on their power in the world. I mean I

0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.400
<v Speaker 2>worry about this in the sense that I mean Putin

0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.920
<v Speaker 2>kind of needs a bailout too. And Iran is a

0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:14.520
<v Speaker 2>country that's got two really irresponsible nuclear powers right there

0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.760
<v Speaker 2>on It supporters Russia and Pakistan. And the fact that

0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.280
<v Speaker 2>Iran is no longer going to be able to enrich

0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:24.320
<v Speaker 2>uranium or do all sorts of other things like that

0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.000
<v Speaker 2>doesn't mean it's nuclear ambitions have gone away. I love

0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.040
<v Speaker 2>Pete Hexath talking about bombing their ambitions until their ambitions

0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.520
<v Speaker 2>aren't there anymore. That's that's an interesting metaphysical problem. But

0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:37.600
<v Speaker 2>there's no reason to think they couldn't buy one, and

0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.800
<v Speaker 2>that the Russians might not want to sell them one,

0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.400
<v Speaker 2>or that the Pakistanis might not sell them one. You know,

0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.400
<v Speaker 2>if I were if I were Putin, I think having

0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:51.120
<v Speaker 2>the Iranians have one nuclear weapon or two might be

0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.640
<v Speaker 2>a real good thing for me. That changes the math

0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:56.320
<v Speaker 2>in the Middle East in a big, big way.

0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.960
<v Speaker 1>All you need is heard that like scenario you think

0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.600
<v Speaker 1>that's realistic or is that something we need to Is

0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.320
<v Speaker 1>that one of those a little bit of failure of

0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:05.440
<v Speaker 1>diplomatic imagination.

0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.040
<v Speaker 2>Well, I think that there's no retirement plan for gangsters,

0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.240
<v Speaker 2>and that Putin knows that if he is unable to

0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.800
<v Speaker 2>close the deal in Ukraine, eventually, it's probably going to

0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.960
<v Speaker 2>be the end of him, not just the end of

0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:21.440
<v Speaker 2>his administration, if you want to call it administration, but

0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.840
<v Speaker 2>probably the end of him. And is he a guy

0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:29.200
<v Speaker 2>who's above rolling the dice that way and saying, well,

0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:30.240
<v Speaker 2>the Pakistan.

0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:33.480
<v Speaker 1>This has been the great fear of this war is that,

0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.480
<v Speaker 1>you know, if he doesn't see a way out, he

0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:39.320
<v Speaker 1>knows he's dead if he doesn't see a way out.

0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:40.640
<v Speaker 1>So what does he have to lose?

0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, and uh and again it's just you know,

0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.080
<v Speaker 2>it's one or two. And then maybe he thinks he can,

0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, exercise some influence over the way in which

0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.160
<v Speaker 2>they use them, which he probably could. And it's something

0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:57.400
<v Speaker 2>to keep in mind. There are ways for this to

0:15:57.440 --> 0:15:59.440
<v Speaker 2>get worse that we haven't you know, thought about all

0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.480
<v Speaker 2>that much. I mean, five to fifty diesel. It's not

0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:04.960
<v Speaker 2>very popular among my people down in Texas and all

0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.160
<v Speaker 2>the f two to fifty drivers and have three fifty

0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.600
<v Speaker 2>drivers and all that stuff. But there's there's worse things

0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.040
<v Speaker 2>in the world than six or seven dollars diesel.

0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:16.800
<v Speaker 1>Well he might have been, you know, now the president

0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:18.840
<v Speaker 1>is trying to claim, well, hey, it's a small price

0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.200
<v Speaker 1>to pay. It's not like he prepared the country for this.

0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.640
<v Speaker 1>It was the exact opposite. I mean, and then you

0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.240
<v Speaker 1>go through you know, this is a time we could

0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:32.520
<v Speaker 1>use some allies, but we have basically poked a finger

0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.560
<v Speaker 1>in the and the eye pretty much every ally we have,

0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:41.560
<v Speaker 1>arguably other than Israel, and right now that alliance is

0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.720
<v Speaker 1>politically problematic. Frankly for the president these days. You can

0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:47.640
<v Speaker 1>see a little bit of it and breaking uptema.

0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:50.600
<v Speaker 2>Not to both sides this, but Trump of course has

0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.080
<v Speaker 2>been uniquely bad in terms of our relationships with their

0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:57.520
<v Speaker 2>European allies, and that's costing him right now because he

0:16:57.560 --> 0:16:59.000
<v Speaker 2>would like to see them step.

0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.480
<v Speaker 1>Up, and they would, I think in another scenario would

0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:02.360
<v Speaker 1>help with the show.

0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:04.040
<v Speaker 2>I think they might. But this is this is an

0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:05.680
<v Speaker 2>ongoing problem for the United States. And as I was say,

0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:07.879
<v Speaker 2>not to both sides of it, but you know, you

0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.040
<v Speaker 2>had the Biden administration screwing the French pretty hard on

0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, that submarine deal and all that. And you've

0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.760
<v Speaker 2>had Biden administration and the Trump administration making some pretty

0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:23.120
<v Speaker 2>big decisions about things in Ukraine and other big geopolitical

0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:25.879
<v Speaker 2>issues that touch Europe in a very direct kind of

0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.840
<v Speaker 2>way without really even consulting them very much. And that's

0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:31.680
<v Speaker 2>all fine when you want to laugh about, well, what's

0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.720
<v Speaker 2>Belgium going to do about it? But you know what,

0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:35.880
<v Speaker 2>it turns out we do need these guys from time

0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:39.480
<v Speaker 2>to time, and there are other reasons to want to

0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.720
<v Speaker 2>preserve that relationship other than immediate short term concerns about

0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:45.880
<v Speaker 2>the straight of horror moves. We have other long term

0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:51.640
<v Speaker 2>strategic interests that having good operative relationships with our European

0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:53.640
<v Speaker 2>allies would be would be a great help.

0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.000
<v Speaker 1>This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you

0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.399
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0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:20.840
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<v Speaker 1>my dad didn't leave us in the best financial situation,

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0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.679
<v Speaker 1>insurance policy. Wasn't a huge chunk of change, but it

0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.120
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0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:51.399
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0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:45.520
<v Speaker 1>vary and rates may vary. I'm assuming that the eventual

0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:50.400
<v Speaker 1>deal is the Iran Nuclear Deal two point zero because

0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.840
<v Speaker 1>it's what the Iranians know. It is at least where

0:19:53.840 --> 0:20:01.360
<v Speaker 1>there's some muscle memory and it's it, you know. I'm

0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.440
<v Speaker 1>not sure where else they can go. Obviously, Trump doesn't

0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:06.760
<v Speaker 1>want that to look like he's just doing that, So

0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:09.600
<v Speaker 1>like NAFTA, if he renames it, then it's brand new

0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.160
<v Speaker 1>and whatever. That seems to me the most realistic outcome.

0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.000
<v Speaker 1>But I don't know if he knows how to do this.

0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.280
<v Speaker 2>Well, obviously he does know how to do it. I

0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.359
<v Speaker 2>think there's some questions about whether the Uranians would go

0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.959
<v Speaker 2>for that. I think they're feeling like they've got us

0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:28.800
<v Speaker 2>where they want us in some ways. I mean, they

0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:33.200
<v Speaker 2>know they can't beat us militarily, obviously, can they outlast

0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.359
<v Speaker 2>us in terms of what they're willing to endure in

0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:40.159
<v Speaker 2>terms of damage to their economy and their quality and

0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.520
<v Speaker 2>all that. Sure, I think they probably they're probably pretty

0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.800
<v Speaker 2>confident that they are, So why not do what they've

0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:49.240
<v Speaker 2>been doing, which you say, here's our list of demands,

0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.240
<v Speaker 2>here's our fourteen point list. And Trump says, no, I

0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:52.720
<v Speaker 2>don't like that, And they say, okay, well here's our

0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:54.960
<v Speaker 2>list of demands. And it's the same thing. And it's

0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:58.200
<v Speaker 2>the same thing again, and it's pretty maximalist, and they're

0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.000
<v Speaker 2>not seeming to be backing off from anything. So, you know,

0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.000
<v Speaker 2>I usually like to think the hopeful thing is that

0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:05.760
<v Speaker 2>when you're dealing with people like this, that they can

0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:08.040
<v Speaker 2>be bribed in some way, you know, there's some self

0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:08.600
<v Speaker 2>interest there.

0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.520
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think they can't be. I was just going

0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:14.520
<v Speaker 1>to say this is this to me was his biggest miss.

0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.800
<v Speaker 1>He I think, assumes everybody's motivated by the exact same

0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:22.080
<v Speaker 1>things he's motivated by, and it is always surprising to

0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:27.359
<v Speaker 1>him when somebody isn't. And you know, for instance, I

0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.320
<v Speaker 1>don't think he appreciates that the leaders he's dealing with

0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:34.960
<v Speaker 1>in iran don't care if the Iranian people suffer. Obviously,

0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.680
<v Speaker 1>if they cared, they wouldn't have made the Iranian people suffer. Right,

0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:43.160
<v Speaker 1>this is not an entity. So his those threats, oh,

0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:44.359
<v Speaker 1>you know, they're not gonna be able to do this,

0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:49.159
<v Speaker 1>they sort of don't. I think they fall on deaf ears.

0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:52.520
<v Speaker 1>And then I guess the other other part of this

0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:58.840
<v Speaker 1>is they're not as motivated I think, by money as

0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.840
<v Speaker 1>he is. And so so when you take that off

0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.360
<v Speaker 1>the table, it goes back to your simpleton analysis of him.

0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:09.360
<v Speaker 1>He really is just very simple minded, and so we think, what, well,

0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.480
<v Speaker 1>money doesn't work. Well, now what am I supposed to do? Yeah?

0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.720
<v Speaker 2>If the Iranians were motivated by money, either just greed

0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:18.040
<v Speaker 2>on the part of the rulers of the country to

0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:22.120
<v Speaker 2>you envench themselves, or by the prospect of economic development

0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:24.280
<v Speaker 2>for their country, they would have been on this a

0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:27.920
<v Speaker 2>long time ago. There's no reason that Dubai and Abu

0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:30.879
<v Speaker 2>Dhabi would have, you know, the huge leap on a

0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:32.520
<v Speaker 2>city like Tehran in that part of the world. If

0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:35.199
<v Speaker 2>the Iranians didn't want it that way, that's what they

0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.400
<v Speaker 2>were motivated by. They could certainly have that they could

0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:41.800
<v Speaker 2>be They really could be the you know, the thing

0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.800
<v Speaker 2>that the United Airborms really aspires to be. In terms

0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:45.360
<v Speaker 2>of being.

0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.240
<v Speaker 1>I've had people say they could be India. What India

0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.560
<v Speaker 1>is today should be a run had they never gone through.

0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:53.919
<v Speaker 2>This, they could be they could be Switzerland, you know,

0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:56.639
<v Speaker 2>in some ways. Sure, and because they're a lot wealthier

0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.840
<v Speaker 2>than India is, for sure, and and they've got you know,

0:22:59.880 --> 0:23:02.560
<v Speaker 2>more resources, and they're better positioned and a lot of

0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:05.560
<v Speaker 2>other advantages as well. But they aren't. You know, nineteen

0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:07.560
<v Speaker 2>seventy nine was a long time ago. They've had a

0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.240
<v Speaker 2>lot of time to think this over, to change their minds,

0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:15.800
<v Speaker 2>to reassess their priorities. They aren't doing it. And what

0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:18.560
<v Speaker 2>that leads me to believes that they are true believers

0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:21.440
<v Speaker 2>to some extent. They really believe in their revolution. They

0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:26.360
<v Speaker 2>really believe in the superiority of their civilization and their

0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:30.480
<v Speaker 2>way of doing things. Their contempt for their Arab and

0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:34.760
<v Speaker 2>Sunni neighbors is not feigned. It's a real thing. We

0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:37.000
<v Speaker 2>do the same thing with China sometimes, where we assume

0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:41.200
<v Speaker 2>that Chinese nationalism is this kind of artificial, synthetic construction

0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:44.120
<v Speaker 2>of the Chinese Communist Party, which certainly contributes to it.

0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:47.080
<v Speaker 2>But Chinese nationalism is also a real thing. It's a

0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.200
<v Speaker 2>real organic thing among the Chinese people. They really prefer

0:23:50.240 --> 0:23:52.880
<v Speaker 2>their own country and their own civilization, their own language,

0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:56.440
<v Speaker 2>their own way of doing things. And they don't look

0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:59.240
<v Speaker 2>at Italy or France or the United States and say

0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.040
<v Speaker 2>we wish we could be just like that. They say,

0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:03.680
<v Speaker 2>we wish we're that wealthy. We wish I had that

0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:05.520
<v Speaker 2>kind of power and some of that prestige and some

0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:07.800
<v Speaker 2>of the options that we have for being the kind

0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:09.400
<v Speaker 2>of country we are. But they don't want to be us.

0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:12.919
<v Speaker 2>They want to be them. And Trump is, you know,

0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:15.320
<v Speaker 2>he's an example of all liars think that everyone's a liar,

0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:21.440
<v Speaker 2>all cheaters think everyone's a cheater, and all you know, shallow,

0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:24.639
<v Speaker 2>low iq megalomaniacs think that the world is run by shallow,

0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:25.919
<v Speaker 2>low iq megalomaniacs.

0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:30.439
<v Speaker 1>Right, So ultimately it becomes who's got influence on Trump?

0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:33.480
<v Speaker 1>And one group of people that has influence on Trump

0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:38.159
<v Speaker 1>are the Gulf States. At some point, they're going to

0:24:38.160 --> 0:24:39.800
<v Speaker 1>get tired of this too. They are tired of this,

0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:44.399
<v Speaker 1>and they've been in this sort of I am I

0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:47.439
<v Speaker 1>think that there are some that wanted this and I

0:24:47.440 --> 0:24:50.880
<v Speaker 1>think there's some that didn't, but there were of the mindset,

0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:52.360
<v Speaker 1>if you're going to do it, go all the way,

0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:54.920
<v Speaker 1>don't do it the way you've done it right, which

0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:01.320
<v Speaker 1>I sort of I sort of respect that that mindset

0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:03.760
<v Speaker 1>I think that, you know, which is don't do this

0:25:03.880 --> 0:25:06.040
<v Speaker 1>half assed. Well he did it half assed and now

0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:07.960
<v Speaker 1>they've got a worse situation.

0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:12.639
<v Speaker 2>But they have encepcially true that of the UAE. You know,

0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:15.560
<v Speaker 2>I think if you look at the UAE's recent decision

0:25:15.560 --> 0:25:16.680
<v Speaker 2>to leave Opek.

0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:18.720
<v Speaker 1>Well they had more to lose in this with with

0:25:18.800 --> 0:25:20.520
<v Speaker 1>this straight shut down, more than anybody. I mean, the

0:25:20.640 --> 0:25:23.399
<v Speaker 1>Saudi's at least have other ways to sell their oil.

0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:25.959
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that gives you a real good indication I think

0:25:26.000 --> 0:25:28.000
<v Speaker 2>of where their heads are at, and they're saying, our

0:25:28.040 --> 0:25:31.199
<v Speaker 2>future is not with Saudi Arabia, and our future is

0:25:31.240 --> 0:25:35.600
<v Speaker 2>not with being an oil dominated economy, which their GDP

0:25:35.760 --> 0:25:38.520
<v Speaker 2>is less than fifty percent oil and petroleum these days anyway,

0:25:39.160 --> 0:25:41.040
<v Speaker 2>so I think it's down to like twenty seven percent

0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:42.959
<v Speaker 2>or something. So that's a pretty good number for them.

0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:46.240
<v Speaker 2>They're looking, they're looking away from that world and toward

0:25:46.440 --> 0:25:48.239
<v Speaker 2>toward the future. That's it's a bit different. But then

0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:52.240
<v Speaker 2>they've got this fanatical, you know, semi medieval regime across

0:25:52.320 --> 0:25:53.480
<v Speaker 2>the water they've got to deal with.

0:25:55.560 --> 0:25:58.200
<v Speaker 1>And Abu Dabi's home to one of the largest Iranian

0:25:58.240 --> 0:26:04.040
<v Speaker 1>diasporas outside a LA. Really, so they have influence on Trump.

0:26:04.200 --> 0:26:08.120
<v Speaker 1>What would that look like if they and and what

0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:10.959
<v Speaker 1>At this point My guess is they will. They are

0:26:11.040 --> 0:26:16.840
<v Speaker 1>now going to have to tolerate a regime that's essentially

0:26:16.880 --> 0:26:21.280
<v Speaker 1>not friendly for the medium term. And I think that

0:26:21.320 --> 0:26:23.800
<v Speaker 1>they thought, well, maybe this was going to come to

0:26:23.840 --> 0:26:27.080
<v Speaker 1>an end sooner rather than later. Yeah.

0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:31.679
<v Speaker 2>I think that they probably in spite of direct experience,

0:26:31.720 --> 0:26:34.359
<v Speaker 2>didn't expect the administration to be quite as irresponsible as

0:26:34.400 --> 0:26:37.359
<v Speaker 2>it has been. I suspect that they thought there was

0:26:37.480 --> 0:26:41.000
<v Speaker 2>more of a program there. Maybe Trump couldn't spell it

0:26:41.000 --> 0:26:43.840
<v Speaker 2>out because he's Trump, but that we had more of

0:26:43.880 --> 0:26:47.119
<v Speaker 2>a strategy and an end goal in mind of what

0:26:47.160 --> 0:26:50.240
<v Speaker 2>we wanted. And I suspect what they were really betting

0:26:50.240 --> 0:26:52.800
<v Speaker 2>on was was regime change, because there have been these

0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:56.520
<v Speaker 2>popular uprisings in Iran that have been crushed, but they

0:26:56.600 --> 0:26:58.439
<v Speaker 2>seem to be getting stronger each time there's a new

0:26:58.440 --> 0:27:01.840
<v Speaker 2>wave of them, and the responses necessary to stomp them

0:27:01.880 --> 0:27:05.119
<v Speaker 2>back down. Have been more vicious and bloody and wide

0:27:05.119 --> 0:27:08.760
<v Speaker 2>reaching each time. And I suspect that what they were

0:27:08.840 --> 0:27:13.880
<v Speaker 2>thinking was that the United States was going to unleash

0:27:13.880 --> 0:27:16.200
<v Speaker 2>this in some way. That was going to be our goal.

0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:18.000
<v Speaker 2>We're going to take out the leadership, which we did

0:27:18.000 --> 0:27:19.000
<v Speaker 2>take out of a lot of leadership.

0:27:19.040 --> 0:27:21.520
<v Speaker 1>Well, it's certainly what it's certainly the case BB apparently

0:27:21.560 --> 0:27:25.479
<v Speaker 1>made to trumps Trump, even though if you want to believe,

0:27:25.520 --> 0:27:27.920
<v Speaker 1>and this is always one of those where it could

0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:33.800
<v Speaker 1>be some cover your ass hindsight, but if you were

0:27:33.840 --> 0:27:37.240
<v Speaker 1>to believe the New York Times reporting on this that

0:27:37.320 --> 0:27:41.200
<v Speaker 1>our intelligence community did not buy what BB was selling,

0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:42.719
<v Speaker 1>but Trump bought it anyway.

0:27:43.400 --> 0:27:45.760
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Well, and again I think that's you know, Trump

0:27:45.760 --> 0:27:49.320
<v Speaker 2>expecting the other people to be like him. So if

0:27:49.359 --> 0:27:51.520
<v Speaker 2>you're the number two guy in Trump's view of the world,

0:27:51.800 --> 0:27:53.520
<v Speaker 2>what you're really praying for someone to take out the

0:27:53.600 --> 0:27:57.000
<v Speaker 2>number one guy so you can step up, and he didn't.

0:27:57.160 --> 0:27:59.560
<v Speaker 2>I think, really consider the possibility that there is this

0:28:00.000 --> 0:28:03.760
<v Speaker 2>religious and political movement in Iran that is very very

0:28:03.800 --> 0:28:06.720
<v Speaker 2>deeply entrenched that makes the number two guy or the

0:28:06.800 --> 0:28:09.960
<v Speaker 2>number three or whatever we're down to. After that opening

0:28:10.480 --> 0:28:12.879
<v Speaker 2>fusillade a lot like the guy you got rid of.

0:28:13.320 --> 0:28:15.560
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's not going to be like Venezuela, where

0:28:15.560 --> 0:28:20.480
<v Speaker 2>you're basically promoting some capo in a crime family to

0:28:20.640 --> 0:28:22.679
<v Speaker 2>godfather's status and doing business with him. That you're going

0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:24.360
<v Speaker 2>to get another guy who's a lot like the last guy.

0:28:24.359 --> 0:28:25.719
<v Speaker 2>And if you kill this guy, you need another guy

0:28:25.720 --> 0:28:28.920
<v Speaker 2>who's a lot like him. And because it's a it's

0:28:28.960 --> 0:28:33.040
<v Speaker 2>a more it's a more legitimate if you understand what

0:28:33.080 --> 0:28:35.640
<v Speaker 2>I mean by legitimate, not in the sense of democratic legitimacy,

0:28:36.040 --> 0:28:40.800
<v Speaker 2>but it's a more real, organic, deeply planted, deeply rooted

0:28:40.840 --> 0:28:44.280
<v Speaker 2>political movement. It's not, I think, a majority movement in

0:28:44.400 --> 0:28:46.920
<v Speaker 2>Iran from what I understand. I think that ideologically and

0:28:46.920 --> 0:28:50.520
<v Speaker 2>philosophically speaking, their government is a minority government in most ways.

0:28:51.080 --> 0:28:53.520
<v Speaker 2>But it's not a tiny minority, you know, it's a

0:28:53.600 --> 0:28:59.800
<v Speaker 2>It's a large enough swath of Iranian society supports this regime, largely,

0:29:00.160 --> 0:29:04.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, religious people in economically undeveloped rural backwaters in

0:29:04.080 --> 0:29:06.560
<v Speaker 2>Aram where their real basis support is, which makes it

0:29:06.600 --> 0:29:09.000
<v Speaker 2>a lot like the Trump administration. Actually, as I observed

0:29:09.000 --> 0:29:09.880
<v Speaker 2>earlier that.

0:29:09.640 --> 0:29:11.760
<v Speaker 1>I was just going to say, I mean, but the

0:29:11.760 --> 0:29:14.040
<v Speaker 1>fact of the matter is this is true with Airdowan

0:29:14.120 --> 0:29:17.040
<v Speaker 1>and Turkey, his base of supporters and the rural. It

0:29:17.160 --> 0:29:22.320
<v Speaker 1>was true of of Chavez. That's how we grabbed power

0:29:22.600 --> 0:29:26.040
<v Speaker 1>was using basically running against Caracas. I mean, it is

0:29:26.080 --> 0:29:29.200
<v Speaker 1>something that I've been concerned about. I've been concerned about

0:29:29.200 --> 0:29:31.960
<v Speaker 1>with our country is that suddenly we look like a

0:29:32.000 --> 0:29:35.280
<v Speaker 1>lot of failed states. We look like we're on our

0:29:35.320 --> 0:29:38.280
<v Speaker 1>way to where the failed small de democracy states have

0:29:38.320 --> 0:29:41.920
<v Speaker 1>looked like, which is this massive divide between urban and

0:29:42.000 --> 0:29:47.200
<v Speaker 1>rural develops into this angry movement that topples the wealthy.

0:29:48.040 --> 0:29:50.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the United States, we have this tendency to want

0:29:50.000 --> 0:29:52.280
<v Speaker 2>to compare ourselves to the other English speaking countries. So

0:29:52.320 --> 0:29:55.640
<v Speaker 2>where's the US versus the UK or Canada.

0:29:55.720 --> 0:29:58.560
<v Speaker 1>We don't we don't want to pretend where we could

0:29:58.680 --> 0:30:01.120
<v Speaker 1>we could become a ven as well or Turkey.

0:30:01.640 --> 0:30:04.000
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, if you think about American sort of society

0:30:04.000 --> 0:30:07.680
<v Speaker 2>and politics and our kind of deep structure, we're a

0:30:07.720 --> 0:30:12.120
<v Speaker 2>lot more like Brazil than we are like the UK

0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:15.320
<v Speaker 2>or Australia or New Zealand or some place like that,

0:30:15.360 --> 0:30:19.600
<v Speaker 2>these little countries. You know, We're a big, complicated, diverse

0:30:19.960 --> 0:30:23.920
<v Speaker 2>country with a lot of very very lively social fissures.

0:30:24.400 --> 0:30:26.480
<v Speaker 2>The urban rural one is a very very important one.

0:30:27.200 --> 0:30:30.840
<v Speaker 2>And it's just not very much like being in Auckland,

0:30:31.360 --> 0:30:35.520
<v Speaker 2>you know, or Toronto. It's a different world here. And

0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:40.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, I began my career working in India, and

0:30:40.080 --> 0:30:42.280
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot about American politics. He reminds me of

0:30:42.360 --> 0:30:43.840
<v Speaker 2>Indian politics in a lot of ways.

0:30:43.840 --> 0:30:46.640
<v Speaker 1>There's a kind of very messy politics. Yeah.

0:30:46.720 --> 0:30:49.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the populaism has the same kind of flavor. There's

0:30:49.920 --> 0:30:51.840
<v Speaker 2>you know, regional stuff there. Regional stuff, of course, is

0:30:51.840 --> 0:30:54.960
<v Speaker 2>a lot more complicated than ours. The urban rural stuff

0:30:55.000 --> 0:30:59.920
<v Speaker 2>is a huge thing. The phenomenon of moneyed urbanites rarely

0:31:00.040 --> 0:31:05.680
<v Speaker 2>against the so called elites, which they are. He is

0:31:05.720 --> 0:31:08.760
<v Speaker 2>a good way to get ahead there. And so yeah,

0:31:08.880 --> 0:31:12.560
<v Speaker 2>I don't see Mody and Trump as being two very

0:31:12.640 --> 0:31:15.760
<v Speaker 2>radically different kinds of figures.

0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:23.240
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think politically he's in such a bad place

0:31:23.680 --> 0:31:28.200
<v Speaker 1>because of this war. Do you believe it's constraining it's

0:31:28.240 --> 0:31:29.880
<v Speaker 1>constraining some of his decision making.

0:31:31.280 --> 0:31:33.880
<v Speaker 2>I don't, actually, I think maybe three or four months

0:31:33.880 --> 0:31:36.520
<v Speaker 2>ago it probably was. I mean, not the war, but

0:31:36.760 --> 0:31:39.480
<v Speaker 2>his other sorts of more general political problems in his

0:31:39.800 --> 0:31:43.680
<v Speaker 2>declining popularity were probably more on his mind then, I

0:31:43.720 --> 0:31:47.680
<v Speaker 2>think than they are now. I kind of suspect, from

0:31:47.960 --> 0:31:51.920
<v Speaker 2>my few conversations with people in that orbit have given

0:31:51.960 --> 0:31:56.080
<v Speaker 2>some support to this, that they've just assumed that a real,

0:31:56.360 --> 0:31:59.160
<v Speaker 2>real serious ass whipping is just baked into the cake.

0:31:59.160 --> 0:32:01.040
<v Speaker 2>At this point, they're going to wipe out in the

0:32:01.080 --> 0:32:05.080
<v Speaker 2>mid terms. They're talking about losing that Senate race in

0:32:05.120 --> 0:32:10.240
<v Speaker 2>Texas possibly and which I still don't think is very likely.

0:32:10.280 --> 0:32:12.560
<v Speaker 2>But there are people in the Republican world who are

0:32:12.920 --> 0:32:14.440
<v Speaker 2>seriously worried about that kind of thing.

0:32:15.280 --> 0:32:19.320
<v Speaker 1>And I think Republicans a lot more money of Paxton's

0:32:19.320 --> 0:32:20.080
<v Speaker 1>the nominee than.

0:32:20.040 --> 0:32:22.840
<v Speaker 2>Of yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that they just

0:32:22.880 --> 0:32:25.280
<v Speaker 2>have decided that, Okay, well, we're screwed on this one already,

0:32:25.440 --> 0:32:27.320
<v Speaker 2>so we don't really have to worry about it anymore because

0:32:27.320 --> 0:32:29.520
<v Speaker 2>there's nothing we can do about it. It's just going

0:32:29.600 --> 0:32:32.360
<v Speaker 2>to be a whipon and that's going to be a.

0:32:32.280 --> 0:32:35.000
<v Speaker 1>Well, if that is the case, then he he ought

0:32:35.000 --> 0:32:36.520
<v Speaker 1>to be using more tools than he's usually.

0:32:38.600 --> 0:32:42.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't well, I think their math, probably Trump's math,

0:32:42.360 --> 0:32:44.160
<v Speaker 2>I think looks like this. He thinks you're going to

0:32:44.200 --> 0:32:46.760
<v Speaker 2>lose the House, which they probably are, and they're going

0:32:46.840 --> 0:32:50.240
<v Speaker 2>to get some worse performance in the Senate than they expected,

0:32:50.600 --> 0:32:52.200
<v Speaker 2>but it's not going to be the case if they're

0:32:52.200 --> 0:32:54.080
<v Speaker 2>going to be enough votes in the Senate to remove

0:32:54.120 --> 0:32:56.040
<v Speaker 2>him from office if he's impeached, which he will be

0:32:56.080 --> 0:32:58.320
<v Speaker 2>impeached again when there's a Democratic majority in the House

0:32:58.600 --> 0:33:02.080
<v Speaker 2>and should be by the way I will. There's ten

0:33:02.120 --> 0:33:04.640
<v Speaker 2>different good reasons to impeach the guy, just from this

0:33:04.720 --> 0:33:05.240
<v Speaker 2>time around.

0:33:05.560 --> 0:33:09.640
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's let's pause right here, let me get removed. Okay.

0:33:10.800 --> 0:33:13.040
<v Speaker 1>I don't think it's if you don't have the votes,

0:33:13.040 --> 0:33:15.520
<v Speaker 1>I don't think you should do it. And I've actually

0:33:15.520 --> 0:33:18.360
<v Speaker 1>had It's funny, you're going to get some out of

0:33:18.400 --> 0:33:20.479
<v Speaker 1>boys from some of my some in my audience who

0:33:20.920 --> 0:33:22.880
<v Speaker 1>I've been getting a lot of questions and been pushing

0:33:22.920 --> 0:33:25.000
<v Speaker 1>back on it. They're like, you make the case for

0:33:25.080 --> 0:33:27.120
<v Speaker 1>him to be impeached, but you argue against it. And

0:33:27.160 --> 0:33:28.959
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, well, don't do it a third time if

0:33:29.000 --> 0:33:31.240
<v Speaker 1>you don't have the votes, And I would argue, don't

0:33:31.240 --> 0:33:34.600
<v Speaker 1>do it until you've got Republicans wanting to do it first.

0:33:35.240 --> 0:33:39.240
<v Speaker 1>That if you pursue a third one, you know you

0:33:39.600 --> 0:33:41.760
<v Speaker 1>get defined by this, and I don't think it does

0:33:41.800 --> 0:33:44.880
<v Speaker 1>you any good if you care about winning in twenty eight.

0:33:46.200 --> 0:33:48.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm not much of a political calculator. I'm dumb

0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:49.920
<v Speaker 2>enough to think that you should just do what you

0:33:49.920 --> 0:33:50.720
<v Speaker 2>think is the right thing.

0:33:50.840 --> 0:33:54.120
<v Speaker 1>I hear you, I know, and damn you with you

0:33:54.200 --> 0:33:56.360
<v Speaker 1>and your right thing to do well, you know.

0:33:56.480 --> 0:33:59.120
<v Speaker 2>I mean. Luckily for me, I'm a journalist and an

0:33:59.160 --> 0:34:02.000
<v Speaker 2>opinion writer. I don't have to run for office or

0:34:02.280 --> 0:34:05.920
<v Speaker 2>organize campaigns or do things like that, and so I

0:34:05.960 --> 0:34:07.720
<v Speaker 2>have the luxury of being able to say I think

0:34:07.720 --> 0:34:09.400
<v Speaker 2>you should just do what you think the right thing is.

0:34:10.080 --> 0:34:14.600
<v Speaker 2>And I've a little sidebar here, but we have a

0:34:14.640 --> 0:34:19.080
<v Speaker 2>real plague of cleverness in our politics. You know, all

0:34:19.120 --> 0:34:21.880
<v Speaker 2>of us expensively educated people with liberal arts backgrounds and

0:34:21.960 --> 0:34:25.839
<v Speaker 2>kind of a high degree of verbal dexterity. We put

0:34:25.880 --> 0:34:28.560
<v Speaker 2>such a huge premium on this kind of very shallow

0:34:28.680 --> 0:34:31.240
<v Speaker 2>form of cleverness and trying to think three steps ahead

0:34:31.239 --> 0:34:33.560
<v Speaker 2>about what's, you know, politically good practice and what's not.

0:34:34.160 --> 0:34:37.120
<v Speaker 2>And I think we defeat ourselves very very often in

0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:39.880
<v Speaker 2>doing this. We get worse outcomes than we would. I

0:34:39.880 --> 0:34:41.759
<v Speaker 2>think people in Congress shoul vote for what they think

0:34:41.840 --> 0:34:44.120
<v Speaker 2>is right and say the right things, say what they

0:34:44.200 --> 0:34:46.400
<v Speaker 2>actually believe in, and let people vote for them or

0:34:46.400 --> 0:34:48.600
<v Speaker 2>against them. And most of them have the opportunity to

0:34:48.640 --> 0:34:50.239
<v Speaker 2>go to all sorts of other good jobs. They want

0:34:50.239 --> 0:34:52.319
<v Speaker 2>to do something else in life, probably not cash, but

0:34:52.440 --> 0:34:56.440
<v Speaker 2>tell but maybe everyone else, and just go do what

0:34:56.480 --> 0:34:58.520
<v Speaker 2>you think is right and let the chips for all

0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:01.800
<v Speaker 2>they may. It's not that hard. Occasionally I'll write a

0:35:01.800 --> 0:35:04.319
<v Speaker 2>column where I write a speech for a politician where

0:35:04.360 --> 0:35:06.680
<v Speaker 2>this is what you should actually say if you were

0:35:06.719 --> 0:35:08.680
<v Speaker 2>willing to go out and tell the truth about things.

0:35:08.960 --> 0:35:11.520
<v Speaker 2>And I think in almost every case, every time I've

0:35:11.520 --> 0:35:14.640
<v Speaker 2>written that column, the speech I wrote for them would

0:35:14.640 --> 0:35:17.400
<v Speaker 2>have been politically better than the one they ended up giving.

0:35:18.320 --> 0:35:20.239
<v Speaker 2>Not only would it be them telling the truth about

0:35:20.239 --> 0:35:22.280
<v Speaker 2>things and saying what they actually think. I think, ultimately,

0:35:22.280 --> 0:35:25.200
<v Speaker 2>politically that's probably easier too, because we're not as clever

0:35:25.239 --> 0:35:27.279
<v Speaker 2>as we think we are. I know a lot of

0:35:27.280 --> 0:35:29.319
<v Speaker 2>political speech writers. I've known a lot of political speech

0:35:29.360 --> 0:35:30.959
<v Speaker 2>writers over the year. Some of the are great people,

0:35:31.160 --> 0:35:34.120
<v Speaker 2>very smart people, as smart as they think they are.

0:35:35.680 --> 0:35:38.680
<v Speaker 2>My father this expression not a very nice expression, but

0:35:38.680 --> 0:35:40.120
<v Speaker 2>I'd like to buy him for what he's worth and

0:35:40.160 --> 0:35:42.440
<v Speaker 2>sell him for what he thinks he's worth. And that

0:35:42.560 --> 0:35:47.200
<v Speaker 2>has been my boy images a lot of Washington life.

0:35:47.360 --> 0:35:52.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you'd make a fortune on Donald Trump. Yeah, well,

0:35:52.719 --> 0:35:56.400
<v Speaker 1>I look, I don't I go back to let's go

0:35:56.480 --> 0:36:00.239
<v Speaker 1>back to the political constraints. If he's not allowing his

0:36:00.760 --> 0:36:06.000
<v Speaker 1>political constraints to constrain him, then what is constraining him?

0:36:06.400 --> 0:36:11.399
<v Speaker 1>Because arguably the way out of this is to get

0:36:11.400 --> 0:36:14.160
<v Speaker 1>control of the Strait, send in some ground troops on

0:36:14.200 --> 0:36:16.319
<v Speaker 1>those islands, not all the way into the country, but

0:36:16.560 --> 0:36:20.600
<v Speaker 1>enough to secure the coastline and secure the straight and

0:36:20.800 --> 0:36:25.480
<v Speaker 1>essentially say and yes, it would probably mean more body bags,

0:36:25.560 --> 0:36:28.920
<v Speaker 1>it would probably mean trips to Dover. It is not

0:36:29.160 --> 0:36:34.520
<v Speaker 1>without a huge cost and probably worse politics, probably another

0:36:34.800 --> 0:36:37.600
<v Speaker 1>Senate seat. You know, maybe it's it's four or five

0:36:37.680 --> 0:36:43.759
<v Speaker 1>or six instead of three, a borderline four. But he

0:36:43.840 --> 0:36:45.360
<v Speaker 1>might actually accomplish something.

0:36:46.880 --> 0:36:50.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think that what's constraining him. And again, I

0:36:50.400 --> 0:36:52.040
<v Speaker 2>promise I don't say this stuff to get her eyes

0:36:52.040 --> 0:36:54.680
<v Speaker 2>out of people. I just think it's where things are

0:36:54.920 --> 0:36:56.960
<v Speaker 2>that in addition to being dumb, he's also lazy, and

0:36:56.960 --> 0:36:59.680
<v Speaker 2>he's also a coward, and he's just afraid of taking

0:36:59.719 --> 0:37:01.480
<v Speaker 2>the risk of doing the things that you're that you

0:37:01.520 --> 0:37:02.840
<v Speaker 2>need to do. He cares a lot about it.

0:37:02.880 --> 0:37:06.480
<v Speaker 1>I've always that's how I reassure some of my worried friends.

0:37:06.480 --> 0:37:08.080
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, he's too lazy to be Hitler.

0:37:09.000 --> 0:37:11.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, as Jonah Goldberg always says, Hitler could have repealed

0:37:11.520 --> 0:37:14.480
<v Speaker 2>Obobmacare you know but remember?

0:37:14.880 --> 0:37:16.560
<v Speaker 1>Is that too soon? Are we allowed to laugh at that?

0:37:16.960 --> 0:37:20.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? I don't know, but you know, because he doesn't

0:37:20.920 --> 0:37:23.399
<v Speaker 2>want to have people on whatever his social media thing

0:37:23.480 --> 0:37:25.600
<v Speaker 2>is looking at videos of a ten thousand dollar mind

0:37:25.600 --> 0:37:28.840
<v Speaker 2>destroying a billion dollar warship and it's sinking into the

0:37:29.320 --> 0:37:34.440
<v Speaker 2>into the strait and having to explain that. So, I mean,

0:37:34.680 --> 0:37:37.879
<v Speaker 2>the stupidity and the laziness and the cowardice were really

0:37:37.880 --> 0:37:39.920
<v Speaker 2>his saving grace in the first administration. It is what

0:37:40.040 --> 0:37:41.880
<v Speaker 2>kept him from being worse than he was. He was

0:37:41.920 --> 0:37:43.719
<v Speaker 2>just simply not that ambitious, and to the extent that

0:37:43.760 --> 0:37:46.319
<v Speaker 2>he was ambitious, he didn't know like where the keys

0:37:46.360 --> 0:37:48.120
<v Speaker 2>to the executive restroom were, so it took him a

0:37:48.120 --> 0:37:49.319
<v Speaker 2>long time to figure stuff out.

0:37:52.200 --> 0:37:54.200
<v Speaker 1>This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you

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<v Speaker 1>always said. Mike Penson writes, previous actually didn't give them

0:39:32.120 --> 0:39:35.040
<v Speaker 1>the keys to the restaurant. They actually, in some ways

0:39:35.080 --> 0:39:38.480
<v Speaker 1>perverbially they they at least stock the administration with semi

0:39:39.480 --> 0:39:40.240
<v Speaker 1>competent people.

0:39:41.360 --> 0:39:43.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I don't go on my whole Mike Pence thing here,

0:39:43.920 --> 0:39:45.880
<v Speaker 2>but he did manage to grow a conscience in the

0:39:45.920 --> 0:39:48.200
<v Speaker 2>last eight minutes he was in office or whatever it was.

0:39:48.520 --> 0:39:51.520
<v Speaker 1>You know, again, it's the tall it's the tallest person

0:39:51.560 --> 0:39:52.759
<v Speaker 1>in the little people room.

0:39:52.920 --> 0:39:57.040
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, it was. But yeah, I think Trump is

0:39:58.880 --> 0:40:01.040
<v Speaker 2>worried about what that kind of encounter would look like.

0:40:01.680 --> 0:40:04.960
<v Speaker 2>He also doesn't want to have to suffer the low

0:40:05.080 --> 0:40:09.160
<v Speaker 2>to his vanity of essentially doing all the things he

0:40:09.200 --> 0:40:11.040
<v Speaker 2>said he would never do, which is getting us involved

0:40:11.040 --> 0:40:14.080
<v Speaker 2>in an open ended engagement in the Middle East that

0:40:14.160 --> 0:40:15.960
<v Speaker 2>amounts to an occupational that it would be a kind of

0:40:16.000 --> 0:40:18.560
<v Speaker 2>naval occupation rather than a ground occupational. There'll probably be

0:40:18.560 --> 0:40:22.880
<v Speaker 2>a ground occupation too in some ways. And casting a

0:40:22.880 --> 0:40:26.719
<v Speaker 2>tremendous amount of money with no obvious benefit insight, and

0:40:26.760 --> 0:40:28.600
<v Speaker 2>he can't say, well, we took the oil because you're

0:40:28.600 --> 0:40:29.640
<v Speaker 2>not going to be able to take the oil.

0:40:33.400 --> 0:40:40.360
<v Speaker 1>Well, why do you think this will eventually fracture his

0:40:40.480 --> 0:40:41.200
<v Speaker 1>coalition or not?

0:40:45.440 --> 0:40:47.920
<v Speaker 2>No, I don't. And I think that the reason for

0:40:48.000 --> 0:40:50.680
<v Speaker 2>that is that the Trump movement is essentially a personality cult,

0:40:51.520 --> 0:40:59.360
<v Speaker 2>and they have the cultist's ability to create new stories

0:40:59.360 --> 0:41:01.279
<v Speaker 2>for themselves, which the good guys and the bad guys

0:41:01.320 --> 0:41:03.480
<v Speaker 2>always say the same. So I went down to Texas

0:41:03.480 --> 0:41:06.080
<v Speaker 2>a couple of months ago, a couple of month and

0:41:06.120 --> 0:41:08.719
<v Speaker 2>a half ago, to write about the center race down there,

0:41:08.840 --> 0:41:12.000
<v Speaker 2>the Democratic and Republican primaries, and I talked to some

0:41:12.000 --> 0:41:14.799
<v Speaker 2>soybean farmers. Soybean farming is not huge in Texas, but

0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:17.160
<v Speaker 2>I've been writing about soybean farmers for a while since

0:41:17.160 --> 0:41:20.799
<v Speaker 2>the last Trump had made They should be they end

0:41:20.880 --> 0:41:22.680
<v Speaker 2>up in there. Nope, we like the guy. We think

0:41:22.680 --> 0:41:25.040
<v Speaker 2>he's trying to do the right thing. Yes, it stinks

0:41:25.040 --> 0:41:26.880
<v Speaker 2>for us that our exports have been so messed up.

0:41:27.040 --> 0:41:29.120
<v Speaker 2>We really blame the Chinese and not Trump so much.

0:41:29.640 --> 0:41:33.400
<v Speaker 2>And if it means supporting someone like Kamala Harris or

0:41:33.960 --> 0:41:35.960
<v Speaker 2>someone like that instead, they're just not going to do it.

0:41:36.560 --> 0:41:40.400
<v Speaker 2>And you know, we've got little I don't like the

0:41:40.400 --> 0:41:44.200
<v Speaker 2>whole rhetoric about you know, little family farms versus big, terrible, great,

0:41:44.200 --> 0:41:48.360
<v Speaker 2>big agribusinesses, because agribusinesses where the values really created in farming.

0:41:48.440 --> 0:41:51.120
<v Speaker 2>But we've got a lot of little family farms around

0:41:51.120 --> 0:41:53.279
<v Speaker 2>the country right now that are closing up operations and

0:41:53.280 --> 0:41:55.320
<v Speaker 2>getting ready to build condos or whatever they're going to

0:41:55.360 --> 0:41:58.400
<v Speaker 2>do on their land because fertilizer prices have doubled or

0:41:58.480 --> 0:42:01.560
<v Speaker 2>tripled in some places, and they consume a lot of fuel.

0:42:01.680 --> 0:42:03.560
<v Speaker 2>You know, it takes a lot of gas and stuff

0:42:03.560 --> 0:42:06.719
<v Speaker 2>to run those irrigation systems. And there's pretty good story

0:42:06.719 --> 0:42:08.200
<v Speaker 2>in the New York Times other day about was this

0:42:08.280 --> 0:42:10.479
<v Speaker 2>farm called butter Ridge or something like that, a little

0:42:10.480 --> 0:42:13.440
<v Speaker 2>family owned dairy that just you know, they started losing

0:42:13.480 --> 0:42:16.040
<v Speaker 2>one thousand dollars a day that they were in operations,

0:42:16.080 --> 0:42:18.279
<v Speaker 2>and largely having to do with trade disruptions and then

0:42:18.280 --> 0:42:22.240
<v Speaker 2>Iran and they should be a little bit about this stuff.

0:42:22.239 --> 0:42:24.279
<v Speaker 2>But it's just not the case. We always assume this,

0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:27.000
<v Speaker 2>But there's really no good evidence for the proposition that

0:42:27.080 --> 0:42:30.400
<v Speaker 2>people actually vote in a calculating way that alliance with

0:42:30.440 --> 0:42:32.839
<v Speaker 2>their short term economic interest. That's not how people vote.

0:42:32.920 --> 0:42:36.479
<v Speaker 2>Voting is a cultural thing. It's a matter of sort

0:42:36.480 --> 0:42:41.160
<v Speaker 2>of social affiliation, and it's much more like choosing a

0:42:41.239 --> 0:42:46.080
<v Speaker 2>church than it is like filing your taxes. It's it's

0:42:46.440 --> 0:42:49.359
<v Speaker 2>it's a sense of who they are.

0:42:49.880 --> 0:42:52.200
<v Speaker 1>I and maybe I was. I grew up with in

0:42:52.200 --> 0:42:55.920
<v Speaker 1>a weird household which was mixed politics, so it was

0:42:55.960 --> 0:42:59.279
<v Speaker 1>always sort of encouraged that, you know, you sort of

0:43:00.400 --> 0:43:02.320
<v Speaker 1>could be on you know at a conservative father and

0:43:02.360 --> 0:43:05.399
<v Speaker 1>a liberal mother, and they talked about it.

0:43:05.520 --> 0:43:05.719
<v Speaker 2>You know.

0:43:05.760 --> 0:43:09.000
<v Speaker 1>It was just sort of a fairly normal That's what

0:43:09.040 --> 0:43:12.439
<v Speaker 1>I thought was normal. But I never I never thought

0:43:12.480 --> 0:43:15.439
<v Speaker 1>of in the eighties of politics as religion the way

0:43:15.440 --> 0:43:17.000
<v Speaker 1>it is now in the twenty first century.

0:43:17.719 --> 0:43:20.799
<v Speaker 2>Well, because religion isn't religion anymore, you know, if you

0:43:20.840 --> 0:43:21.319
<v Speaker 2>look at work.

0:43:21.920 --> 0:43:25.239
<v Speaker 1>I buy that this idea in church evangelicals that we

0:43:25.320 --> 0:43:30.759
<v Speaker 1>have as we've lost faith literally as a society. We've

0:43:30.800 --> 0:43:32.600
<v Speaker 1>clung to our political parties.

0:43:33.000 --> 0:43:35.319
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and they're not a real good substitute.

0:43:35.440 --> 0:43:38.719
<v Speaker 1>As it turns, it's terrible. Yeah, they are. At least

0:43:38.760 --> 0:43:42.279
<v Speaker 1>religion tried to teach a moral code. What moral code

0:43:42.280 --> 0:43:43.840
<v Speaker 1>do you get from politicians?

0:43:44.160 --> 0:43:46.400
<v Speaker 2>Well, the Republican Party used to be a pretty morally

0:43:46.440 --> 0:43:49.040
<v Speaker 2>based party. What was it against polygamy and slavery? I mean,

0:43:49.080 --> 0:43:50.960
<v Speaker 2>that's really why you got a Republican Party back in

0:43:51.000 --> 0:43:54.560
<v Speaker 2>the day. Granted that's been some time. They've gone through

0:43:54.600 --> 0:43:59.520
<v Speaker 2>some iterations since then, but they were a party. They're

0:43:59.520 --> 0:44:02.320
<v Speaker 2>a party of New England Puritans. They had a profoundly

0:44:02.360 --> 0:44:03.560
<v Speaker 2>moralistic streak in them.

0:44:04.160 --> 0:44:09.640
<v Speaker 1>And also the Whigs weren't moral enough. Yeah, on the

0:44:09.880 --> 0:44:11.600
<v Speaker 1>on the most important question of the day.

0:44:12.120 --> 0:44:18.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And now, look, God, I'm just so. I'm one

0:44:18.480 --> 0:44:20.239
<v Speaker 2>of the things in life I'm embarrassed about is I

0:44:20.520 --> 0:44:22.600
<v Speaker 2>didn't have a real long period in my life when

0:44:22.640 --> 0:44:25.279
<v Speaker 2>I had like a really strong sense of Republican partisanship.

0:44:25.960 --> 0:44:27.760
<v Speaker 2>I think, I want to say it lasted from about

0:44:27.800 --> 0:44:31.800
<v Speaker 2>maybe nineteen ninety four in the Gingrich election to about

0:44:31.920 --> 0:44:35.080
<v Speaker 2>two thousand or so. And I remember I quit the

0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:38.880
<v Speaker 2>Republican Party over Arlen spector, which now in retrospect just

0:44:38.920 --> 0:44:41.439
<v Speaker 2>seems quaint small.

0:44:41.520 --> 0:44:44.960
<v Speaker 1>What so explain, explain, explain your journey away from the

0:44:45.000 --> 0:44:47.080
<v Speaker 1>GOP that this specter was.

0:44:47.320 --> 0:44:48.680
<v Speaker 2>So I knew him a little bit because I was

0:44:48.719 --> 0:44:51.879
<v Speaker 2>a newspaper editor in Pennsylvania and his daughter in law,

0:44:51.880 --> 0:44:54.040
<v Speaker 2>I guess, was the chairman of my local Republican party

0:44:54.040 --> 0:44:57.200
<v Speaker 2>there Montgomery County in the Philadelphia suburbs. And he was

0:44:57.239 --> 0:45:01.479
<v Speaker 2>just such an obvious, neolistic, self serving weasel who didn't

0:45:01.480 --> 0:45:03.960
<v Speaker 2>believe in anything and would say or do whatever he

0:45:04.000 --> 0:45:06.040
<v Speaker 2>thought it would take to you know, move him one

0:45:06.040 --> 0:45:10.759
<v Speaker 2>degree up the ladder. And then you had challenge to

0:45:10.880 --> 0:45:15.360
<v Speaker 2>him from to me, and the Republicans just you know,

0:45:15.480 --> 0:45:18.240
<v Speaker 2>they would not get on board with it. And I remember,

0:45:18.360 --> 0:45:20.759
<v Speaker 2>of all people, and this is something else they feel

0:45:20.800 --> 0:45:22.880
<v Speaker 2>kind of guilty about. I remember talking to John Cornyn

0:45:22.920 --> 0:45:26.120
<v Speaker 2>about it when Cornyn, I guess was the chairman of

0:45:25.000 --> 0:45:30.360
<v Speaker 2>the National Republican Senate Committee or whatever, and he was saying,

0:45:30.400 --> 0:45:32.439
<v Speaker 2>you know, I get mad at Arland too. I find

0:45:32.480 --> 0:45:34.640
<v Speaker 2>him very frustrating in all this. And I said, well,

0:45:34.680 --> 0:45:36.320
<v Speaker 2>are you mad enough to back to me in a

0:45:36.360 --> 0:45:39.160
<v Speaker 2>primary challenge? And he said, well, he got real Weasley

0:45:39.160 --> 0:45:40.640
<v Speaker 2>about it, and he said, well is he going to run?

0:45:40.680 --> 0:45:43.760
<v Speaker 2>It's before he was in the race. And I was like, Okay,

0:45:43.760 --> 0:45:45.839
<v Speaker 2>that's the only answer I need, you know, That's all

0:45:45.880 --> 0:45:48.120
<v Speaker 2>I need to hear from you. And so I was

0:45:48.160 --> 0:45:50.040
<v Speaker 2>one of those people who thought that John Cornyn wasn't

0:45:50.080 --> 0:45:53.160
<v Speaker 2>hardcore enough back in the day and now, of course,

0:45:53.200 --> 0:45:55.160
<v Speaker 2>even though he's pretty trumping and pretty awful in a

0:45:55.160 --> 0:45:57.440
<v Speaker 2>lot of ways, he is kind of a semi responsible,

0:45:57.480 --> 0:46:01.440
<v Speaker 2>grown up, halfway patriotic, halfway decent human being that the

0:46:01.480 --> 0:46:04.440
<v Speaker 2>Republican Party could desperately use more of. So I was

0:46:04.520 --> 0:46:06.320
<v Speaker 2>part of the problem. I probably am still part of

0:46:06.360 --> 0:46:08.000
<v Speaker 2>the problem in some ways, but I'm not part of

0:46:08.000 --> 0:46:11.359
<v Speaker 2>the Republican problem because I haven't been affiliated with that

0:46:11.400 --> 0:46:12.560
<v Speaker 2>party in more than twenty years.

0:46:12.560 --> 0:46:17.040
<v Speaker 1>Now, do you want to you consider yourself a what

0:46:17.160 --> 0:46:18.840
<v Speaker 1>kind of conservative would you call yourself?

0:46:21.120 --> 0:46:22.960
<v Speaker 2>Just you know, conservative is a good word, I think.

0:46:23.000 --> 0:46:25.120
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if I'm talking about people sort of understand,

0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:28.600
<v Speaker 2>you know, political terminology a little bit, I would describe

0:46:28.640 --> 0:46:31.080
<v Speaker 2>myself as a liberal, but you know, a liberal in

0:46:31.120 --> 0:46:34.320
<v Speaker 2>the in the Adam Smith right economist.

0:46:34.360 --> 0:46:37.000
<v Speaker 1>This is what frustrates me about labels because I consider

0:46:37.120 --> 0:46:42.359
<v Speaker 1>myself a liberal as far as right political debate and pluralism.

0:46:43.680 --> 0:46:46.439
<v Speaker 1>But you know, I'm an incrementalist, which some people would

0:46:46.480 --> 0:46:47.600
<v Speaker 1>describe as a conservative.

0:46:48.000 --> 0:46:53.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I believes describe myself as an Eisenhower anarchist in

0:46:53.320 --> 0:46:56.000
<v Speaker 2>the sense that I have I have sort of abstract

0:46:56.000 --> 0:46:58.720
<v Speaker 2>policy views that are pretty radically libertarian on some things,

0:46:59.680 --> 0:47:01.560
<v Speaker 2>although maybe getting a little less so as I come

0:47:01.600 --> 0:47:03.560
<v Speaker 2>to trust the American people less and less as the

0:47:03.640 --> 0:47:05.960
<v Speaker 2>days go by. But if you ask me about you know,

0:47:06.000 --> 0:47:07.520
<v Speaker 2>what do I think about drugs, or what do I

0:47:07.520 --> 0:47:10.680
<v Speaker 2>think about prostitution? Or what do I think about education

0:47:10.800 --> 0:47:12.840
<v Speaker 2>or social security? I'm still apt to give you some

0:47:12.880 --> 0:47:14.440
<v Speaker 2>pretty hardcore libertarian answers.

0:47:15.880 --> 0:47:16.680
<v Speaker 1>Driver's license.

0:47:17.320 --> 0:47:20.080
<v Speaker 2>No, if you want to know my favorite president though,

0:47:20.080 --> 0:47:23.640
<v Speaker 2>it's Dwight Eyes now, and because I want that sort

0:47:23.680 --> 0:47:28.040
<v Speaker 2>of incrementalist slow let's not get carried away with ourselves.

0:47:28.440 --> 0:47:30.759
<v Speaker 2>We like ideas, but we also live in a world

0:47:30.800 --> 0:47:33.880
<v Speaker 2>that's not dominated only by ideas, So let's deal with

0:47:33.880 --> 0:47:35.960
<v Speaker 2>the stuff we actually have in front of us. We

0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:39.040
<v Speaker 2>have a country that seems to work pretty well most

0:47:39.040 --> 0:47:40.600
<v Speaker 2>of the time. It's produced a pretty good life for

0:47:40.640 --> 0:47:43.200
<v Speaker 2>a lot of people. Maybe don't go you know, knocking

0:47:43.280 --> 0:47:45.680
<v Speaker 2>down Chesterton's fence before you figure out what it was

0:47:45.719 --> 0:47:48.520
<v Speaker 2>built for in the first place. And so I do

0:47:48.680 --> 0:47:52.520
<v Speaker 2>like incrementalism, I do like slowness. I am anti revolution

0:47:53.560 --> 0:47:56.200
<v Speaker 2>I do not like all of the revolutionary rhetoric you

0:47:56.200 --> 0:47:59.080
<v Speaker 2>get in the Republican Party. One of the places where

0:47:59.120 --> 0:48:01.040
<v Speaker 2>I really party company with with Bill Buckley, who was

0:48:01.080 --> 0:48:03.279
<v Speaker 2>one of my heroes. Would he would He would refer

0:48:03.360 --> 0:48:05.919
<v Speaker 2>to himself as a radical conservative a lot of the time,

0:48:06.200 --> 0:48:07.400
<v Speaker 2>And I don't think there's any such thing as a

0:48:07.480 --> 0:48:10.520
<v Speaker 2>radical conservative. You can't be both. I agree, Yeah, I

0:48:10.560 --> 0:48:13.640
<v Speaker 2>understand what he meant by it, but I don't think

0:48:13.680 --> 0:48:16.080
<v Speaker 2>there's any such thing as a radical conservative. So if

0:48:16.120 --> 0:48:18.920
<v Speaker 2>I'd been around, you know, for the Goldwater election, I'm

0:48:18.920 --> 0:48:21.759
<v Speaker 2>sure I probably would have been a Goldwater guy. If

0:48:21.760 --> 0:48:25.000
<v Speaker 2>I've been around active in politics in seventy nine eighty,

0:48:25.000 --> 0:48:29.239
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure I would have been a Reagan guy. But

0:48:29.280 --> 0:48:30.800
<v Speaker 2>if I'm looking back on it from the point of

0:48:30.880 --> 0:48:33.120
<v Speaker 2>view of where we are now and being a little

0:48:33.120 --> 0:48:35.919
<v Speaker 2>older and a little less app to get carried away

0:48:35.920 --> 0:48:38.480
<v Speaker 2>with things, I might feel a little guilty about some

0:48:38.560 --> 0:48:42.400
<v Speaker 2>of that stuff. Do you also would Bean Billboards? If

0:48:42.400 --> 0:48:46.480
<v Speaker 2>I could? I hate billboards. That's my least libertarian position.

0:48:46.719 --> 0:48:50.160
<v Speaker 2>She could rid of billboards. Well, I live in a town, and.

0:48:51.400 --> 0:48:53.960
<v Speaker 1>But what do you see billboards when you're on the interstates?

0:48:54.120 --> 0:48:57.680
<v Speaker 1>I mean in a weird way. It's what keeps like

0:48:57.719 --> 0:48:59.680
<v Speaker 1>a good I like a good lung drive. We drive

0:48:59.719 --> 0:49:03.760
<v Speaker 1>a floor quite a bit from Virginia, and I find

0:49:03.760 --> 0:49:06.440
<v Speaker 1>the billboards. I mean, first of all, I love I

0:49:06.480 --> 0:49:09.920
<v Speaker 1>love seeing the more unique ways trial lawyers try to

0:49:09.920 --> 0:49:13.960
<v Speaker 1>get you to call up their number, or how many

0:49:14.000 --> 0:49:16.279
<v Speaker 1>different ways they can tell you that Jesus is going

0:49:16.360 --> 0:49:18.640
<v Speaker 1>to save you, or how many I mean, I do

0:49:18.680 --> 0:49:25.520
<v Speaker 1>find billboards weirdly telling about what people are seeing. And

0:49:25.640 --> 0:49:28.880
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. I think I get something from them

0:49:28.920 --> 0:49:31.120
<v Speaker 1>when I'm on the interstate. But maybe I'm a weirdo.

0:49:32.000 --> 0:49:34.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Also, if I ever win, like a billion dollar

0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:37.560
<v Speaker 2>power ball or something, I will I live in a

0:49:37.560 --> 0:49:40.600
<v Speaker 2>pretty small little town, and I will buy every marijuana

0:49:40.600 --> 0:49:43.120
<v Speaker 2>dispensary and vape shop in my town and just turn

0:49:43.160 --> 0:49:46.160
<v Speaker 2>them into bakeries or something. And I just hate having

0:49:46.160 --> 0:49:48.120
<v Speaker 2>them around. I've got little bit of kids I don't like.

0:49:48.200 --> 0:49:49.920
<v Speaker 2>I don't like having that out there. So yeah, I'm

0:49:49.920 --> 0:49:53.239
<v Speaker 2>getting to be a crusty, old, get off my lawn guy.

0:49:53.360 --> 0:49:55.120
<v Speaker 2>I think fatherhood has done that to me as well

0:49:55.160 --> 0:49:55.840
<v Speaker 2>as age.

0:49:56.320 --> 0:50:00.480
<v Speaker 1>So if you're a conservative without a home and without

0:50:00.480 --> 0:50:04.719
<v Speaker 1>a party, sure, I look at the and you we

0:50:04.880 --> 0:50:07.760
<v Speaker 1>just got done talking about how we do not compare

0:50:07.800 --> 0:50:10.560
<v Speaker 1>well to the countries we like to compare ourselves to,

0:50:11.400 --> 0:50:15.319
<v Speaker 1>for instance, the UK. But I'm obsessed with what's going

0:50:15.360 --> 0:50:17.080
<v Speaker 1>on over there in their politics and the fact that

0:50:17.120 --> 0:50:21.040
<v Speaker 1>the two major parties are about to become minor parties.

0:50:21.440 --> 0:50:21.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:50:21.680 --> 0:50:23.600
<v Speaker 1>Now, obviously we have a system that makes that much

0:50:23.600 --> 0:50:29.000
<v Speaker 1>harder here, but I do believe if six major figures

0:50:29.600 --> 0:50:34.120
<v Speaker 1>of the Democratic Party all left together and said we're

0:50:34.120 --> 0:50:37.040
<v Speaker 1>starting a new party, the Democrats would disappear the next day.

0:50:38.000 --> 0:50:41.680
<v Speaker 1>And I think it's that. I think the brand is

0:50:41.680 --> 0:50:44.680
<v Speaker 1>that fragile, and I think it's that potentially, and if

0:50:44.719 --> 0:50:47.839
<v Speaker 1>Donald Trump said he was renaming the Republican Party, you know,

0:50:48.239 --> 0:50:52.520
<v Speaker 1>the Trump Mega Party, I'd say seventy percent of elected

0:50:52.520 --> 0:50:55.560
<v Speaker 1>Republicans would switch their party affiliations. Point being is, I

0:50:55.560 --> 0:51:01.280
<v Speaker 1>don't think either party has that much of a Weirdly,

0:51:01.360 --> 0:51:03.520
<v Speaker 1>even though they're sort of were stuck with him, this

0:51:03.680 --> 0:51:09.440
<v Speaker 1>dupe duopoly and ballot access make them sort of feel necessary.

0:51:10.080 --> 0:51:14.080
<v Speaker 1>Yet I feel like they could disappear tomorrow if a

0:51:14.080 --> 0:51:15.680
<v Speaker 1>bunch of people held hands and left.

0:51:16.640 --> 0:51:19.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. You know, Trump's one really smart political thing he

0:51:19.320 --> 0:51:22.240
<v Speaker 2>ever did was that he ran the Ross Perot campaign

0:51:22.280 --> 0:51:25.080
<v Speaker 2>inside the Republican Party rather than his a third party candidate.

0:51:25.080 --> 0:51:27.120
<v Speaker 2>That's what he did. He ran the Pero campaign. He

0:51:27.239 --> 0:51:30.520
<v Speaker 2>was his one great political inside. But the parties really

0:51:30.520 --> 0:51:33.040
<v Speaker 2>don't matter very much. They matter less than they did

0:51:33.080 --> 0:51:34.920
<v Speaker 2>before Trump was elected in twenty sixteen.

0:51:37.560 --> 0:51:40.080
<v Speaker 1>Celebrity goals right now, right, Celebrity is a.

0:51:40.200 --> 0:51:42.279
<v Speaker 2>Very very powerful thing in American life. And Trump's a

0:51:42.320 --> 0:51:44.239
<v Speaker 2>real celebrity. He's not like I used to be on

0:51:44.320 --> 0:51:47.239
<v Speaker 2>Fox News guy. You know, he's not Pete Hegseth. He's

0:51:47.440 --> 0:51:49.480
<v Speaker 2>a real celebrity. And that's a huge thing. It's bigger

0:51:49.520 --> 0:51:51.320
<v Speaker 2>on the Republican side than it is on the Democratic

0:51:51.320 --> 0:51:53.600
<v Speaker 2>side because Democrats are more used to being around celebrities

0:51:53.640 --> 0:51:55.879
<v Speaker 2>than Republicans are, because they've got like, you know, Pat

0:51:55.880 --> 0:51:58.919
<v Speaker 2>Say Jack and Scott Bayo and Kid Rock and Ted

0:51:59.000 --> 0:52:01.520
<v Speaker 2>Nugent and that's pretty much the end of their celebrity list.

0:52:03.800 --> 0:52:06.160
<v Speaker 2>But I think the Democrats could be celebrity dominated to

0:52:06.200 --> 0:52:09.200
<v Speaker 2>if Taylor Swift decided to run for president. Yeah, the

0:52:09.160 --> 0:52:11.759
<v Speaker 2>decline of the parties has been a huge loss. You know,

0:52:11.800 --> 0:52:14.439
<v Speaker 2>from a small R Republican point of view, you want

0:52:14.480 --> 0:52:18.640
<v Speaker 2>these mediating institutions. You know. The death of newspapers and

0:52:18.680 --> 0:52:22.480
<v Speaker 2>the death of political parties has made it very, very

0:52:22.480 --> 0:52:27.800
<v Speaker 2>difficult to maintain the institutions of a country that is

0:52:27.880 --> 0:52:31.200
<v Speaker 2>really founded in eighteenth and early nineteenth century political norms,

0:52:31.200 --> 0:52:33.880
<v Speaker 2>when things were run by political parties and newspapers, you know,

0:52:33.920 --> 0:52:38.200
<v Speaker 2>the two big national institutions that mattered most to keeping

0:52:38.200 --> 0:52:42.520
<v Speaker 2>our politics sort of orderly, to keep the aquocracy out

0:52:42.520 --> 0:52:43.279
<v Speaker 2>of the democracy.

0:52:43.440 --> 0:52:46.080
<v Speaker 1>Right. They weren't quite gate keepers, but they certainly were.

0:52:47.560 --> 0:52:49.520
<v Speaker 1>They were people that at least stood in front of

0:52:49.560 --> 0:52:51.879
<v Speaker 1>the openings that you had to build those over if

0:52:51.880 --> 0:52:53.520
<v Speaker 1>you wanted it to break through the.

0:52:53.520 --> 0:52:58.320
<v Speaker 2>Gate Yeah, and they mattered in subtle ways and in

0:52:58.600 --> 0:53:02.600
<v Speaker 2>bigger ways, you know, And that's that's maybe a long

0:53:02.640 --> 0:53:06.920
<v Speaker 2>conversation for another time. But not having those things, what

0:53:07.080 --> 0:53:09.960
<v Speaker 2>has gone into the void to fill that space, Well,

0:53:10.000 --> 0:53:12.960
<v Speaker 2>it's been celebrity, like Donald Trump. It's been social media,

0:53:13.000 --> 0:53:16.040
<v Speaker 2>which is kind of a minor mutant form of celebrity.

0:53:16.160 --> 0:53:19.040
<v Speaker 2>It's it's Andy Warhol's everyone's famous for fifty mendus in

0:53:19.080 --> 0:53:23.040
<v Speaker 2>the future thing kind of made almost literally true. Literally yeah,

0:53:24.480 --> 0:53:27.440
<v Speaker 2>and like, as someone who was once the big trending

0:53:27.800 --> 0:53:32.800
<v Speaker 2>topic on Twitter for twenty four hours, it's not that great,

0:53:32.920 --> 0:53:35.560
<v Speaker 2>but some people really want that, and some people really

0:53:35.600 --> 0:53:36.480
<v Speaker 2>care about that sort of thing.

0:53:36.480 --> 0:53:38.239
<v Speaker 1>I can I can tell you trending on Twitter is

0:53:38.280 --> 0:53:40.480
<v Speaker 1>never a good thing. Really. I don't ever think I've

0:53:40.520 --> 0:53:42.400
<v Speaker 1>ever trended in for a positive reason.

0:53:43.080 --> 0:53:46.239
<v Speaker 2>Not usually, you know, I got a fivot AA and

0:53:46.320 --> 0:53:49.319
<v Speaker 2>I don't use social media, but I saw that on well,

0:53:49.320 --> 0:53:50.799
<v Speaker 2>I guess I used LinkedIn, and I saw that on

0:53:50.840 --> 0:53:54.319
<v Speaker 2>LinkedIn someone a couple of tributes to James Baker that

0:53:54.360 --> 0:53:55.959
<v Speaker 2>had been posted, and I thought, oh, no, James Baker

0:53:56.040 --> 0:53:57.759
<v Speaker 2>has died, because that's the only time people do that.

0:53:57.880 --> 0:54:00.480
<v Speaker 2>It was this his birthday. He was his ninety six birthday,

0:54:00.520 --> 0:54:02.600
<v Speaker 2>I want to say, or something like that, ninety fourth birthday.

0:54:03.360 --> 0:54:06.400
<v Speaker 2>And so every now and then, when you're the subject,

0:54:06.400 --> 0:54:10.000
<v Speaker 2>it's okay because you've had an unusual birthday. Cher will

0:54:10.040 --> 0:54:12.160
<v Speaker 2>trend here in a little bit. When she turns eighty

0:54:12.360 --> 0:54:14.520
<v Speaker 2>or whatever, it still looks like she's fifty years old.

0:54:14.800 --> 0:54:15.000
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:54:15.040 --> 0:54:15.120
<v Speaker 2>No.

0:54:15.239 --> 0:54:18.040
<v Speaker 1>I saw today Kurt Loder turned eighty one, and that

0:54:18.200 --> 0:54:21.160
<v Speaker 1>did he really? That's meaz, Look that guy. That's one

0:54:21.160 --> 0:54:22.880
<v Speaker 1>of those if you're of a certain generation, you're like,

0:54:22.920 --> 0:54:25.759
<v Speaker 1>oh no, he's eighty one. Yeah, what does that mean

0:54:25.800 --> 0:54:26.080
<v Speaker 1>for me?

0:54:26.880 --> 0:54:27.479
<v Speaker 2>Nothing good?

0:54:28.239 --> 0:54:29.680
<v Speaker 1>Let me get you out of here on this, because

0:54:29.920 --> 0:54:34.280
<v Speaker 1>I had a guest last week who floated progressive strategist,

0:54:34.320 --> 0:54:38.040
<v Speaker 1>who floated Stephen Colbert for president, and there was a

0:54:38.040 --> 0:54:40.919
<v Speaker 1>part of me that said, you know, Stephen Colbert versus

0:54:41.000 --> 0:54:43.600
<v Speaker 1>Tucker Carlston, maybe the presidential campaign we deserve.

0:54:45.920 --> 0:54:49.040
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's a shame that twenty sixteen Donald Trump

0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:51.840
<v Speaker 2>versus Hillary Clinton was not a race for mayor of

0:54:51.880 --> 0:54:54.319
<v Speaker 2>New York City. That would have been a good race

0:54:54.719 --> 0:54:56.200
<v Speaker 2>either one of it. Might have been a pretty good

0:54:56.200 --> 0:54:59.600
<v Speaker 2>mayor of New York, might have enjoyed the job, might

0:54:59.640 --> 0:55:03.560
<v Speaker 2>have been good at it. I don't think Colbert is

0:55:03.840 --> 0:55:08.560
<v Speaker 2>the celebrity likely to carry the progressive banner anytime in

0:55:08.600 --> 0:55:11.600
<v Speaker 2>the near future, because he is too old to white,

0:55:11.600 --> 0:55:15.959
<v Speaker 2>and he's kind of yesterday's news. Ten years ago, maybe

0:55:16.000 --> 0:55:19.080
<v Speaker 2>he would have been a more formidable kind of character.

0:55:19.280 --> 0:55:21.160
<v Speaker 1>I hear where you're going. I'm not sure. I agree

0:55:21.200 --> 0:55:24.120
<v Speaker 1>with you on that. I think progressive so badly want

0:55:24.160 --> 0:55:27.319
<v Speaker 1>to win they'll take almost any vehicle that would give

0:55:27.400 --> 0:55:31.760
<v Speaker 1>him power. And I say this not aggressive, not Democrats generally.

0:55:31.800 --> 0:55:34.279
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking about the progressive wing of the Democrats.

0:55:35.320 --> 0:55:36.919
<v Speaker 2>I bet if I thought about it for a few minutes,

0:55:36.960 --> 0:55:39.040
<v Speaker 2>I could think of celebrities who would be better at that.

0:55:39.080 --> 0:55:41.120
<v Speaker 2>And I wasn't joking about Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift could

0:55:41.120 --> 0:55:45.680
<v Speaker 2>be president. She wanted to. Yep, she could, She could

0:55:45.680 --> 0:55:46.920
<v Speaker 2>win forty states.

0:55:47.239 --> 0:55:49.200
<v Speaker 1>Well, I just I guess to just wonder if this

0:55:49.280 --> 0:55:51.319
<v Speaker 1>is our natural because if you actually look and not

0:55:51.440 --> 0:55:53.440
<v Speaker 1>to I want to land this plane here so I

0:55:53.440 --> 0:55:55.640
<v Speaker 1>know you've got We both have other things to do

0:55:55.680 --> 0:55:59.799
<v Speaker 1>with our lives. You could argue Eisenhower was sort of

0:55:59.800 --> 0:56:03.120
<v Speaker 1>the first celebrity president, right, he saved the world and

0:56:03.160 --> 0:56:05.320
<v Speaker 1>we brought him in and then literally you want to

0:56:05.440 --> 0:56:08.480
<v Speaker 1>nominate him, that's right, TV and celebrity, and then we

0:56:08.560 --> 0:56:12.160
<v Speaker 1>basically celebritied the presidency all the way through. Right, We

0:56:12.160 --> 0:56:16.279
<v Speaker 1>were always looking for the next leading man, the next

0:56:16.280 --> 0:56:18.520
<v Speaker 1>person in it was. It was a role almost we

0:56:18.560 --> 0:56:23.400
<v Speaker 1>were looking for, and communication suddenly was a priority rather

0:56:23.560 --> 0:56:25.920
<v Speaker 1>than the ability to do the job rather than having

0:56:25.960 --> 0:56:29.960
<v Speaker 1>any other skill set, just simply having the ability to

0:56:30.000 --> 0:56:34.880
<v Speaker 1>communicate is everything. And I feel like now we've taken

0:56:34.920 --> 0:56:37.040
<v Speaker 1>that even further. There used to be some skill set

0:56:37.080 --> 0:56:39.160
<v Speaker 1>that matter. Oh, you need a governor, because at least

0:56:39.160 --> 0:56:41.480
<v Speaker 1>a governor knows how to deal with legislatures. So that's

0:56:41.520 --> 0:56:43.560
<v Speaker 1>what made Reagan work, and that's what made Clinton work,

0:56:44.120 --> 0:56:46.040
<v Speaker 1>and and that was the case for w and then

0:56:46.080 --> 0:56:49.040
<v Speaker 1>it's like, now all you need is a communicator now,

0:56:50.280 --> 0:56:52.680
<v Speaker 1>and if you get your majority in Congress, you can

0:56:52.840 --> 0:56:54.719
<v Speaker 1>jam through whatever you want to get through. You can

0:56:54.760 --> 0:56:57.880
<v Speaker 1>feel like you accomplished something until there's a revolt. The

0:56:57.920 --> 0:57:00.440
<v Speaker 1>other party comes in undoes ninety percent of what you

0:57:00.520 --> 0:57:03.239
<v Speaker 1>did and they try to do the same thing. I

0:57:03.360 --> 0:57:08.239
<v Speaker 1>do fear that we are getting more efficient with our

0:57:08.280 --> 0:57:12.239
<v Speaker 1>decision making when it comes for presidential politics, where ability

0:57:12.320 --> 0:57:14.319
<v Speaker 1>is out the window. It is all going to be

0:57:14.360 --> 0:57:17.840
<v Speaker 1>about who communicates and organizes the best. That's it.

0:57:18.640 --> 0:57:21.160
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I've for years, I've been trying to finish this book.

0:57:21.160 --> 0:57:24.360
<v Speaker 2>I've been writing on idolatry and the American presidency. And

0:57:24.560 --> 0:57:27.240
<v Speaker 2>there's a reason that kings are just the normal state

0:57:27.280 --> 0:57:29.640
<v Speaker 2>of affairs everywhere in the world. In human history, and

0:57:29.680 --> 0:57:33.680
<v Speaker 2>there's the reason that king worship was widespread throughout the world,

0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:38.680
<v Speaker 2>across different times, different civilizations, different continents. I think that

0:57:38.800 --> 0:57:41.920
<v Speaker 2>the desire to look toward one person, this sort of

0:57:42.000 --> 0:57:46.160
<v Speaker 2>father figure, to be the personification and embodiment of your

0:57:46.200 --> 0:57:50.040
<v Speaker 2>nation and its ambitions and its moral values and its

0:57:50.080 --> 0:57:52.320
<v Speaker 2>greatness and all the rest of that stuff is just

0:57:52.480 --> 0:57:57.040
<v Speaker 2>kind of hardwired into people. It's cultures that don't have

0:57:57.120 --> 0:57:59.040
<v Speaker 2>that are by far the exception rather than the rule.

0:57:59.760 --> 0:58:03.240
<v Speaker 2>And uh, we have to fight our way out of

0:58:03.280 --> 0:58:06.440
<v Speaker 2>this primitivism every generation. You know, we're we're made of

0:58:06.480 --> 0:58:10.480
<v Speaker 2>the same stuff that the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens

0:58:10.520 --> 0:58:13.080
<v Speaker 2>were three hundred thousand years ago or maybe a million

0:58:13.120 --> 0:58:15.760
<v Speaker 2>years ago, depending on which dating system you're going off of.

0:58:16.240 --> 0:58:19.160
<v Speaker 1>We might be a little more muddish mutt like than

0:58:19.240 --> 0:58:20.840
<v Speaker 1>some of the previous iterations.

0:58:21.240 --> 0:58:23.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we're still barking at the moon though. And if

0:58:23.240 --> 0:58:26.920
<v Speaker 2>you don't have you know the uh, it's it's the

0:58:27.320 --> 0:58:30.240
<v Speaker 2>famous Hannah or Rent line about every civilization being invaded

0:58:30.240 --> 0:58:32.520
<v Speaker 2>by barbarians every generation in the form of their children.

0:58:33.080 --> 0:58:36.280
<v Speaker 2>It's it's true, and that's just that's that's who we are.

0:58:36.320 --> 0:58:39.040
<v Speaker 2>We don't. I don't believe that there's you know, progress

0:58:39.040 --> 0:58:41.439
<v Speaker 2>in that sense is why I'm not a wig. And

0:58:43.000 --> 0:58:45.560
<v Speaker 2>we have we start from scratch every time there's a

0:58:45.600 --> 0:58:48.640
<v Speaker 2>new person I've got I've got four kids under the

0:58:48.680 --> 0:58:51.480
<v Speaker 2>age of four, and they all started from scratch. They're

0:58:51.480 --> 0:58:54.280
<v Speaker 2>all uncivilized little monsters when they come into the world,

0:58:54.280 --> 0:58:56.600
<v Speaker 2>and you have to whip them into shape. And that's

0:58:56.680 --> 0:58:59.600
<v Speaker 2>just how things are, and we're not going to grow

0:58:59.640 --> 0:59:01.800
<v Speaker 2>out of it. We have to have institutions in a

0:59:01.840 --> 0:59:05.880
<v Speaker 2>sort of national memory and a civic memory and a

0:59:05.920 --> 0:59:09.200
<v Speaker 2>shared civic philosophy that elevates us out of that. You know,

0:59:09.240 --> 0:59:13.160
<v Speaker 2>every successful country has an idea of itself and what

0:59:13.200 --> 0:59:15.520
<v Speaker 2>it's about and what it's there for. We're different for

0:59:15.640 --> 0:59:17.640
<v Speaker 2>most and that ours are really spelled out in these

0:59:17.680 --> 0:59:20.960
<v Speaker 2>documents because we're not you know, kind of ethno state.

0:59:21.280 --> 0:59:26.440
<v Speaker 2>We're not you know, the American race. But even countries

0:59:26.440 --> 0:59:29.400
<v Speaker 2>that don't have that kind of literary aspect to their

0:59:29.520 --> 0:59:32.160
<v Speaker 2>national history and their national founding and their founding story.

0:59:32.200 --> 0:59:34.000
<v Speaker 2>And also we're a very modern country. You know, France

0:59:34.000 --> 0:59:35.760
<v Speaker 2>has been around for a long time and we haven't.

0:59:39.440 --> 0:59:41.880
<v Speaker 2>That idea has to be refreshed and renewed every generation.

0:59:41.960 --> 0:59:43.680
<v Speaker 2>And if you lose it, just having the words on

0:59:43.760 --> 0:59:46.600
<v Speaker 2>the page, hanging on a hall, on a document in

0:59:46.600 --> 0:59:49.360
<v Speaker 2>Philadelphia is just not going to not going to do

0:59:49.400 --> 0:59:51.520
<v Speaker 2>it for anybody. It's not going to work. I have

0:59:51.680 --> 0:59:55.520
<v Speaker 2>been losing that because we're postliterate, and because we're rage

0:59:55.560 --> 0:59:57.680
<v Speaker 2>addled and bored, and we're maybe too rich for our

0:59:57.680 --> 0:59:58.080
<v Speaker 2>own good.

0:59:58.400 --> 1:00:00.760
<v Speaker 1>I would argue a majority of our v voters have

1:00:00.920 --> 1:00:06.640
<v Speaker 1>really only known to Presidents Obama and Trump, who were

1:00:06.640 --> 1:00:10.040
<v Speaker 1>both built to be larger than life figures built.

1:00:10.160 --> 1:00:12.919
<v Speaker 2>I think American politics changed radically for the worse after

1:00:13.000 --> 1:00:15.880
<v Speaker 2>nine to eleven because of the kind of psychic trauma

1:00:15.920 --> 1:00:18.160
<v Speaker 2>associated with that event. But now we've got a generation

1:00:18.200 --> 1:00:20.400
<v Speaker 2>of people who've grown up never knowing what life was

1:00:20.440 --> 1:00:23.840
<v Speaker 2>like before that, And pretty soon we'll have a generation

1:00:23.840 --> 1:00:26.640
<v Speaker 2>of people who've never really known life before social media

1:00:26.840 --> 1:00:32.080
<v Speaker 2>and smartphones, and that's going to be difficult to bounce

1:00:32.120 --> 1:00:32.560
<v Speaker 2>back from.

1:00:33.160 --> 1:00:36.720
<v Speaker 1>All Right, give me one reason why you're optimistic that

1:00:36.880 --> 1:00:39.360
<v Speaker 1>has nothing to do with having young kids.

1:00:41.240 --> 1:00:45.520
<v Speaker 2>I know that my redeemer liveth affair, But.

1:00:45.720 --> 1:00:47.160
<v Speaker 1>How about optimistic for the country.

1:00:49.360 --> 1:00:53.160
<v Speaker 2>I've often described myself as being short term paessimists long

1:00:53.240 --> 1:00:57.480
<v Speaker 2>term optimist, and my pessimism has become, if not more pronounced.

1:00:57.680 --> 1:01:00.200
<v Speaker 2>My imagination for what the downside could look like like

1:01:00.240 --> 1:01:02.960
<v Speaker 2>and how intense the dip might be and the bad

1:01:02.960 --> 1:01:05.160
<v Speaker 2>effects that go along with it. It's more intense now

1:01:05.160 --> 1:01:07.680
<v Speaker 2>than it was. Well when I wrote the book The Engineering,

1:01:07.720 --> 1:01:12.880
<v Speaker 2>It's going to be awesome that said, and I think we're.

1:01:12.760 --> 1:01:14.200
<v Speaker 1>Going to hit a low, and I don't think we

1:01:14.240 --> 1:01:16.200
<v Speaker 1>have any idea how bad it's going to ban. Like

1:01:16.280 --> 1:01:19.680
<v Speaker 1>I Americans, I'm borderline prepper for that stuff.

1:01:19.760 --> 1:01:22.320
<v Speaker 2>Americans don't want to be poor, we don't want to

1:01:22.320 --> 1:01:24.520
<v Speaker 2>be miserable, we don't want to be vulnerable. We're smart,

1:01:24.520 --> 1:01:25.880
<v Speaker 2>we have a lot of resources, we have a lot

1:01:25.880 --> 1:01:29.440
<v Speaker 2>of assets, we're very creative. We have this culture of

1:01:29.560 --> 1:01:32.000
<v Speaker 2>innovation that you don't really have anywhere else in the world.

1:01:32.160 --> 1:01:34.160
<v Speaker 2>You know, Germany's got lots of really really smart people

1:01:34.160 --> 1:01:36.400
<v Speaker 2>and good engineers and technicians and stuff. But there's a

1:01:36.440 --> 1:01:38.880
<v Speaker 2>reason that like all the Internet companies essentially coming from

1:01:38.920 --> 1:01:42.120
<v Speaker 2>the United States, and why we have things like venture

1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:44.160
<v Speaker 2>capital that they don't really have in Europe. In the

1:01:44.160 --> 1:01:47.320
<v Speaker 2>same kind of way I've often said, we have our

1:01:47.400 --> 1:01:49.280
<v Speaker 2>murder problem for the same reason we have our venture

1:01:49.280 --> 1:01:51.960
<v Speaker 2>capital industry, because we're just not people who process risk

1:01:52.000 --> 1:01:53.520
<v Speaker 2>the same way the rest of the world does. We're

1:01:53.640 --> 1:01:56.400
<v Speaker 2>very aggressive and assertive and willing to roll the dice

1:01:56.520 --> 1:01:59.720
<v Speaker 2>on things, and that will ultimately service well, I think,

1:01:59.760 --> 1:02:01.680
<v Speaker 2>because capital wants to go to the places where the

1:02:01.720 --> 1:02:04.400
<v Speaker 2>best use can be made of it, unless we really

1:02:04.480 --> 1:02:07.240
<v Speaker 2>really set our minds about destroying our country and our

1:02:07.240 --> 1:02:11.240
<v Speaker 2>institutions in a very programmatic kind of way, which you know, Germany,

1:02:11.440 --> 1:02:13.440
<v Speaker 2>arguably the most civilized country in the world in the

1:02:13.480 --> 1:02:17.200
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirties, did there is president for this, which China

1:02:17.280 --> 1:02:19.960
<v Speaker 2>did to itself, and the cultural revolution in the Malears,

1:02:19.960 --> 1:02:23.400
<v Speaker 2>which Russia did, although it was still a pretty backward

1:02:23.400 --> 1:02:26.160
<v Speaker 2>country when it went through those things. Although we're very

1:02:26.200 --> 1:02:29.720
<v Speaker 2>civilized and cultured backward country in many ways, so we

1:02:29.960 --> 1:02:33.200
<v Speaker 2>we're our own best hope and our own worst enemy,

1:02:33.200 --> 1:02:35.040
<v Speaker 2>I suppose, is what I would say. And I'm still

1:02:36.520 --> 1:02:40.640
<v Speaker 2>slightly more than fifty percent of the view that the

1:02:40.680 --> 1:02:42.840
<v Speaker 2>better version of that wins out in the long run.

1:02:44.200 --> 1:02:47.240
<v Speaker 2>But I do have a suitcase full of a shoe

1:02:47.240 --> 1:02:49.480
<v Speaker 2>box full of Swiss Franks with a forty five sitting

1:02:49.520 --> 1:02:51.640
<v Speaker 2>on top and on the shoe box lit it says

1:02:51.720 --> 1:02:52.040
<v Speaker 2>plan B.

1:02:54.880 --> 1:02:58.240
<v Speaker 1>Look and note. Look, I am I share with you

1:02:58.320 --> 1:03:02.320
<v Speaker 1>short term pessimism, long term optimates in that the next

1:03:02.320 --> 1:03:06.160
<v Speaker 1>election isn't going to solve this problem. We've probabully got it.

1:03:06.840 --> 1:03:10.600
<v Speaker 1>We've probably got another half generation of this before we

1:03:11.600 --> 1:03:15.040
<v Speaker 1>I subscribe to what Churchill said about America. We'll eventually

1:03:15.080 --> 1:03:19.200
<v Speaker 1>do the right thing after we've exhausted every other essentially

1:03:19.240 --> 1:03:19.880
<v Speaker 1>every other path.

1:03:20.520 --> 1:03:22.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well we're rolling our way.

1:03:22.720 --> 1:03:27.120
<v Speaker 1>That's right. Hopefully we're almost done exhausting all the bad paths. Kevin.

1:03:27.200 --> 1:03:30.720
<v Speaker 1>I enjoyed this a lot. I appreciate it, and we

1:03:30.760 --> 1:03:32.680
<v Speaker 1>could have gone a couple hours. We've gone down other

1:03:32.720 --> 1:03:34.520
<v Speaker 1>rabbit holes, but I appreciate the ones you let me

1:03:34.560 --> 1:03:34.919
<v Speaker 1>go down.

1:03:35.480 --> 1:03:38.040
<v Speaker 2>Well, feel free to invite me down the rabbit hole

1:03:38.080 --> 1:03:38.680
<v Speaker 2>anytime you like.

1:03:39.080 --> 1:03:43.520
<v Speaker 1>I will do that and enjoy fatherhood. It seems like

1:03:43.680 --> 1:03:47.040
<v Speaker 1>you you went from zero to that is zero to

1:03:47.040 --> 1:03:50.320
<v Speaker 1>four nineteen months. That is something else. That is that

1:03:50.400 --> 1:03:53.800
<v Speaker 1>is that is changing your life starting at age fifty.

1:03:53.800 --> 1:03:59.960
<v Speaker 1>That was smart. You know what, get into coach? Wait,

1:04:00.000 --> 1:04:01.880
<v Speaker 1>what do you do that you haven't even gotten to

1:04:02.000 --> 1:04:07.000
<v Speaker 1>the weekend Youth Sports marathons. Just wait, just wait, and

1:04:07.040 --> 1:04:09.560
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure you think, oh not my kids. Oh you wait,

1:04:10.320 --> 1:04:12.960
<v Speaker 1>you just wait, that'll be You'll be driving all over

1:04:13.080 --> 1:04:14.800
<v Speaker 1>southwest Virginia.

1:04:15.160 --> 1:04:19.520
<v Speaker 2>Looking forward to the station Wagon. Yeah. Thanks, Kevin, appreciate

1:04:19.520 --> 1:04:20.120
<v Speaker 2>the time. Thank you,