WEBVTT - And, This is Speaker Newt Gingrich 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:16.280 This is Gavin Newsom and this is new Kidkrich. I 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:19.079 just wanted if I could just briefly up top. You 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:21.440 sent out a couple of tweets over the last twenty 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:25.680 four hours specific to Ukraine. Obviously topical issue, and I 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:30.120 appreciated candidly your tweets which were a little more assertive 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:35.480 pushing back on this notion that somehow time is our 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:37.720 ally with Putin, that it's time to be a little 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:40.560 more muscular, time to call him out. You also called 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.840 out I thought an important fact that's not necessarily part 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.599 of the discourse. He spent twenty one years in Sweden. 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:49.640 I mean, these guys have a longer. 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:55.120 View version that was actually the Napoleonic Wars. 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.600 Yeah, it was Putin who said, look, we fought Sweden 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:00.960 for twenty one years. You think I want to slow down. 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:02.600 You think I'm going to slow down, So tell me, 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:04.800 I mean, where are you in the over under? I mean, 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.680 is you know, I appreciate your advocacy for trump et cetera. 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:11.399 But I think, I mean it is the revelation that 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:13.800 he's waking up to this new reality that this is 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.240 not something you can snap your fingers. Putin's a different 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:16.839 kind of character. 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:22.440 Well, I think that first of all, he probably shares 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.479 a lot of people's concern that if you push Putin 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:31.520 too hard you end up with a tactical nuclear war. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.600 And then maybe more so, I think there's a there's 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:39.679 a dance around Putin that's a little more complicated than 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.199 just yes or no. On the other hand, I think 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:47.400 he actually believed from his first term when they did 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.760 a pretty good relationship. Although he had sent lethal weapons 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.480 to Ukraine. He is much tougher than Obama had been, 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.200 but he was pleasant. They had no major fights, and 0:01:58.280 --> 0:01:59.640 I think he had in the back of his head 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:03.280 to look, we're reasonable, we can talk with each other. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.160 And it's taken him, I think, about five months to 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:12.840 realize nothing Putin says matters. That what matters is what 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.040 Putin does. And when he says to you, oh, I 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:17.960 really like to get to a truce, but by the way, 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.280 for the next three days, I'm going to bomb civilians. 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.720 After a while begins to sink in. You know, it's 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:26.760 the opposite of George W. Bush. I'll never forget the 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.480 day Bush said that he looked into Putin's eyes and 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.120 saw his soul, and I knew that was nuts, because 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:36.960 you can't be a KGB lieutenant colonel have a soul. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:41.240 So with the whole concept of you know, somehow we 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.160 try to make him a Western figure, he's not. He's 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.880 a Russian figure, and Russia is a different culture than 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:49.239 Western Europe. 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.040 And so the idea of what secondary oil sanctions you're 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:53.720 advocating for. 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:59.119 Well, I mean I advocate four big things, more weapons, 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:03.560 faster and something which the German minister Preme minister said 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.640 today that they'd agreed to, which has used the weapons 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:11.160 in Russia, so you start causing him pain in his territory. 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.880 And this is the longer range weapons, allowing them more range. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.280 We've begun to give them weapons that can reach Russia, 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.880 and of course they have lots of They're going to 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:24.480 produce some astonishing number of drones this year. Yeah, I 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.960 mean what I think, like a million five or something. 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.400 I mean, people forgot Ukraine used to be a major 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.400 industrial center for the Soviet Union. There's a lot of 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.320 engineers in Ukraine, a lot of hardworking, smart people, and 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.920 they now mobilize and fighting. I think, so second, you 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.640 give them permission to fight inside Russia. Third, you apply 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:51.440 very severe sanctions on particularly sale of oil, which is 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.720 their only currency that they generated, any hard currency. And fourth, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.520 I would start picking up all of the ships that 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:02.000 are carrying illegal oil and just literally let it be 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.320 known worldwide. You know, if you if you own a 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.400 ship and you use it to carry Russian oil, you're 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.120 going to lose the ship and we're gonna We're gonna 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:14.280 basically impound it forever. And at that point, his method 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.680 of hiding from the sanctions collapses, his ability to sell 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:20.280 within the sanctions collapses. 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:20.840 Uh. 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:22.920 And then the other thing I would do, which has 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:25.840 some legal implications, but I'm a historian, not a lawyer, 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.560 so I don't worry about that, is I would take 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.240 the three hundred billion that is impounded in the West 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.520 of Russian money, I give it all to Ukraine. 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.360 What has been the reticence of That's what I mean. 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.359 It's interesting that Trump didn't move more aggressively to do that, 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:42.720 or is it part of a tactical negotiation? 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.279 State Departminent Treasury will tell you there are all sorts 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:50.960 of complicated questions about doing that, to which my answer, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:55.920 in the Franklin Roosevelt tradition is fine, let them fight 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:57.679 it out in court. Take the money. 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.320 I appreciate it. Well, that's a perfect segue into your 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.919 new book, Trump's Triumph, because I think a lot of 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.520 that is sort of reflected, sort of this notion of 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:11.960 action and moving beyond process and having a more entrepreneurial 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.440 mindset in terms of governance, et cetera. But let's frame 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.000 this book. This book comes out on June third, it's 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.919 your how many, mister speakers, Seriously, how many books have 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:22.400 you written? 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:27.280 Well, I'm told forty four. So are you? 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.839 And you're you're writing all these books. You actually write 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:32.720 these books. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:36.080 You have help, but I write all these books. 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.720 And this one unsurprising that you'd come out with a 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.520 book about Trump's triumphs, but you But what surprised me 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.360 a little bit is this notion that you place them 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.960 as one of the five giants up there with Jackson 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:54.320 and Jefferson and people like Lincoln and Fdr himself. I mean, 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.520 is that your your current belief or is that one 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.120 that reflects. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:08.440 I believe that since the summer of twenty fifteen, because 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.080 I watched him do two things that were kind of amazing. 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:18.280 One was tap into the deeply felt emotions of at 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.640 least half the country and particularly and this is one 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:24.039 of the great ironies that I know you're wrestling with 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.320 and I've heard you talk about it. You know, we're 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.840 having this switch of which party is the working class 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:33.760 party and which party is the elite party. Well, Trump 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.760 intuited this, and people forget he had thirteen years of 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:42.160 doing The Apprentice at NBC. He was a natural salesman 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:46.520 and a natural showman, so his instinct was to go 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.839 right for the blue collar worker. And he did two things. 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.720 In August of twenty fifteen. Vince Haley, who's now the 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.480 Domestic Policy director at that time, was working with us, 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:02.760 and he walked in one day in August and said, 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.080 you have to see the c SPAN coverage of Trump 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:12.560 in Arizona because Trump is talking about illegal immigration. And 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.640 then he invites the father of a young man who's 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.240 been killed to come up on stage. And then Trump 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:22.640 steps way back and allows this guy to have like 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:27.160 five or ten minutes on stage. Was a willingness to 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:30.560 give up the spotlight that most people watch Trump will 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.520 thinks not likely and that most politicians would find very 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.840 scary to give control of the microphone to this person. 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.400 And I watched the dynamics of that. And then you 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.960 may remember the very first debate Chlis and I were 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:50.400 watching in our living room and there was the one 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.240 where he got this really nasty, embarrassingly personal. 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:59.600 Fight and was this the Megan Kelly Kelly? 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:01.880 I mean, it was just it was kind of like, ooh, 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.440 I don't yeah, nothing about them. 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.920 I thought that was it. I thought it was over. 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:10.720 They were racing to the bottom, and I think he 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:15.800 got there first. And which is a line actually that 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.440 a year later somebody would use to describe the fight 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.160 with Hillary in the last month that she was going 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:24.800 towards the bottom, but we thought we could beat her 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.800 to it. So so anyway, so we watched this debate 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.679 and everybody, mean Frank once had a focus group. They 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.760 all thought Trump had lost. Everybody, like you know, everybody 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.760 at our level thought Trump had lost. Watching these various 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:44.559 online things and he's at seventy and eighty percent out 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.880 of sixteen, and I'm thinking, I wait a second, that 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:53.400 there's a mismatch here between everyday Americans and the elites 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.400 on a grant, on a giant scale. And at that 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.000 point I decided that what you had was a phenomenon 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:05.760 who had somehow tapped into a core desire of the 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:11.679 American people that they wanted to have a leader who 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:17.120 would profoundly change Washington. And in Trump you had somebody who, 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:22.480 by personality and by background, was pretty enthusiastic. I mean, 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:27.880 he's always wanted to be a person of consequence, and 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:29.560 you know, if you're the guy who breaks up the 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:33.320 Rooseveltian system after ninety years, you get to be a 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:39.320 person of consequence. And so it fit what his particular 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:41.520 half of the country wants, it fit what I think 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.120 is a historic necessity as a conservative, a political leader, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.840 and it fit you know, his personal desire to have 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:51.920 a prime he wondered. And it's very interesting to think 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:53.839 back to this in terms of the politicians you've known. 0:09:54.360 --> 0:10:00.439 His slogan wasn't Trump. His slogan was make America great again. 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.920 So he was picking a topic bigger than himself within 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:10.880 what he could grow. And I think after surviving the 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:16.240 two assassination attempts, he really personally believes that God spared 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:19.080 his life for the purpose of actually achieving that. So 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.280 I would My point is not whether you like him 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:23.680 or just like him, but if you look at the 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:29.520 great change agents, they really are. Jefferson Jackson, Lincoln and FDR. 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.320 And I think there's a fifty to fifty chance. It's 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.840 not a certainty yet. And I've told him, you know, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:41.000 all he did was he earned a ticket to the dance. Now, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.280 if he dances well enough and he wins the twenty 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.200 sixth election, then I'll learn a ticket to winning the 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.680 twenty eight election. And then which will probably be JD. 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:54.240 Vans on our side. And if we get the Trump 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.000 vice president's only forty years old. If we get the 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.240 Trump vice president on top of the Trump president, see, 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.280 then he will be in a league with those guys. 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:05.040 We're going to get to that, and we'll get to 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:06.880 twenty six in a second. But I want to go 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:07.719 back a little bit. 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:12.880 I'm not doing your show, Fish, and by the way, 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:14.439 you only thinking about it. 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:17.040 No, All I want to say is I'm grateful you're here. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:19.000 This is a hell of the thing that the two 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.520 of us are having this conversation. So take me back. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.079 It's interesting, you know, and you're absolutely right, and I 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:25.920 appreciate because we had Frank Lunz on and I want 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.000 to talk a little bit about what Frank talked about 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:30.440 in a minute a little bit going back the contract 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.120 with America, et cetera. But Frank made that point about 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.480 those focus groups. But I want to I'm curious your 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.800 point of view. Then with Trump. You must have known 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:41.719 him tangentially. But you were the leader of the as 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.120 you said yourself a second ago, conservative movement. Here's a 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.360 former Democrat, kind of all over the place, no strong 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.440 ideological mornings necessarily. I mean, you must have been pretty 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:57.160 distrustful early on. Were you of Donald Trump? You weren't, 0:11:57.840 --> 0:11:58.080 for sure. 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.080 I've known Trump for a quarter century. 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.319 Right, Uh, politics, though he wasn't always a line. 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.000 I knew him back when he's a businessman. He was 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:11.400 a very noisy businessman. And I'd read his two books, 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.640 which I'd recommend everybody. If you want to understand Trump, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:15.880 you read The Art of the Deal and The Art 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.640 of the Comeback. Comebacks the more important of the. 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.720 Two, because it opens up with some very telling lines. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.520 It's amazing. He opens up with, Uh, my property in 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.679 Atlantic City's losing money. The economy is going down because 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.600 of Iraq. I'm nine hundred million dollars in debt personally 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:38.040 to the banks, and my wife just called and said, 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.200 you wanted a divorce. And he has this great line. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.400 He says, this is the moment you either get depressed 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.920 or you plan a comeback. This book is about that, 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.920 which also tells you a lot about how he survived 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:50.839 the last four years. 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:51.720 That's right. 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.200 This is a guy who's resilient on a scale that 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.199 is historic. We first talked with him Pliston and I 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:59.840 had breakfast with him in Des Moines, in all places, 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:04.319 in February of twenty fifteen, and we talked about running 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.360 for president because we'd run in twelve and learned the 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.120 hard way that if the other guy has many millions 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.080 more than you bet on the money. But I learned 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:15.240 a lot of out running for president. 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.200 Even though you won easily by any objective measure, you 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:19.760 want all those NAMN debates. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.560 At least enough TV, the ads cout on do the debates. 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.480 For me. It was a wonderful learning experience, and I 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.680 think in my willingness to take on the news media 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.280 head on, I was probably a forerunner for Trump's invention 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:40.360 of fake pop news. Well, we talked at length about 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.960 running and it was very interesting, and you could tell 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.280 that he had now moved from that would be an 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.160 interesting thing to kind of a businessman thinking through what 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.040 would it take, how much would it cost, how would 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.840 you structure it? And so I watched his development all 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:02.040 through fifteen, and I I wasn't particularly pro Trump at 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:07.440 that point, right, Frankly, if you remember, Jeb Bush was 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.440 the front runner, He had the most. 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.319 Money, hundred million in a pack, he had his father and. 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:18.640 His brother, he had nationwide name mighty, and watching Trump 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:24.400 psychologically take him apart low energy the case study, well, 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.840 he got so far inside Jeb's head. The Jeb is 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:33.440 running around New Hampshire in shorts jogging. Now the average 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.680 New Hampshire writing regards the idea of a presidential candidate 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:43.240 who's jogging has disqualification on ground just automatically, which which 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.480 was really unfortunate. Jeb's actually was a very good reform 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.520 governor of Florida. But Trump just had this ability to 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.600 somehow set the stage where you couldn't win. 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:55.160 Uh. 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:58.520 And it's a it's a very unusual capability. 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.320 So it's interesting. So I appreciate in twenty fifteen you started, 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.480 I mean there was sort of the dance of sort 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.560 of developing more of this formal relationship as it relates 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.560 to the political and said, did you find him particularly 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:20.600 policy driven then was he inquisitive in terms of tactics policy. 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.640 Look, he's talking about tariffs forty years ago. Yeah, true, 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.640 talking about immigration, I mean the whole He's talking about 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.480 the corruption of washermen. There are some basic themes. But 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:32.560 what I was going to say, though, is, and this 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:35.880 may help you understand where I'm coming from. Trump is 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:40.640 not a conservative, right. Trump is the best anti liberal 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:45.640 politician in my lifetime, better than Reagan. Reagan was the 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.240 great conservative articulator. I sort of stood on his shoulders 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.840 with the Contract with America, and we came out of 0:15:51.880 --> 0:16:00.680 a formed philosophical background. Trump understands that the current doesn't 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.880 work and that the woke phase of the American left 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:09.520 is totally destructive of the American system. This is my view, obviously, 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.720 and therefore he is prepared to fight everybody I want 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:17.880 to fight. Now. The fact that he doesn't read Bill 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:22.400 Buckley and he doesn't have a National Review subscription, I 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.760 don't care because I know that instinctively he'll get up 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.520 every morning and think, you know what part of the 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.200 left can I take apart today? And one day it'll 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.800 be Harvard, and another day will be The New York Times, 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.960 and another day it'll be some bureaucracy, but every day 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.440 he will cheerfully go out and engage and tear apart 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:43.720 the people who I think need to be torn apart. 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.760 So I'm very happy to have a non conservative, anti liberal, 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.080 entrepreneurial activist with all the skills of a great businessman. 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.160 Well so, at peril, I jump right into the book 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.160 and get chapters and chapters ahead. He's also taking on 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.280 things that you've champion. I mean, you've highlighted in the 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:07.040 book the importance of of genomics and synthetic biology and 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:11.040 discovery and invest you know in R and D, the 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.199 issues obviously with DARPA, et cetera. I mean, how concerned, 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:17.480 including by the way, you just did a documentary with 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:21.000 your wife on of all things, four letter word for 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.800 some of your friends PBS. Very proud PVS to me, 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.560 but on journey to America on immigration, and so I'm 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:33.040 curious just that tension. I get this sort of owning 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.199 the lib and liberalism more broadly defined. But where do 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.520 you are you? Where are you in this. 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:42.040 Sort of I think I think when everything shakes out, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:49.360 let's start with immigration. Trump is as pro legal immigration 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:54.320 as he is anti illegal immigration. I mean, two of 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:59.560 his wives are foreign born. His mother came from Scotland. Uh, 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:01.120 you know he he's not going to jump up and down. 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:03.159 And he has said openly, I mean he's come up 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.919 with this idea of this five million dollar you know, 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:07.359 avenue to America. 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:08.640 What happened to that? 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:13.639 Well, I suspect it will be implemented. He wants the money. 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.680 I'm not sure his calculations are right. 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:18.679 Yeah, No, that's a little generous. 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:21.160 Enough people show up to make it a big deal. 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.400 But Canada and other countries have had very similar, smaller 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:33.920 scale example proudgets. There's no question that the most aggressive 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.359 pieces of the Trump coalition would do things that I 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.600 would regard as destructive. There's also no question if you 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:43.920 look at, for example, the caliber of the people he's 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.320 appointed at the Center for Disease Control or for the 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.359 National Institute of Health. These are very smart, very senior people. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.520 And and I just had a conversation with the new 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.399 head of NIH, who clearly wants to clean out the underbrush. 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.320 But and I say this as a guy who, while 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.560 balancing the federal budget for four years in a row, 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.359 the only time in one hundred years, we doubled the 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:13.159 size of nih Well balancing the budget so deeply in science. 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.680 But I'll also tell you it's now a big It 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:19.879 kept growing. So what we doubled was the baseline from 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.680 which it just kept growing. And it's a big bureaucratic 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:25.200 system with a lot of ballogne. I mean, when you're 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:30.240 paying sixty five percent more than the grant so that 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.440 Harvard or Stanford or somebody can pay for overhead, there's 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.879 a lot you can do that doesn't hurt genuine reform. 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:39.720 You also have a big problem which I don't know 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:41.879 how they're going to solve, and that is they've gotten 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.240 into this ropidope system where people will file for a 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:50.240 research project, not reach the conclusion because they've already filed 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.439 for continuing and if they reached the conclusion, they have 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:55.920 to go out and find a whole new topic. That's 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.879 a fair amount of stating down research by your rocratizing it. 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:03.600 So I mean, I'm passionate about this stuff. I'll give 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.439 you one other example. I am totally committed to space. 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:10.760 I have been since in nineteen eighty one, I introduced 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:14.040 the Northwest Ordinance for the Moon, saying that if you 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.879 got to a certain population, you could apply for statehood, 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:19.320 which at that time people thought was nuts. Now they 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.080 still think it's nuts, but not quite as nuts. 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.479 I remember you in the debates talking about space and 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:25.959 we were wondering what the you know, you were on 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.520 the edge there, so you have been you consistent. 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.040 I'm just glad that Elon came along and maybe doable. 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:36.119 And I'll give you an example. When the starship actually 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.800 gets settled down and works properly, it has thirty three engines, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.600 it produces two point three times as much thrust as 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.600 the Saturn five the rocket went to the Moon two 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.200 point three times as much. So your choice is to 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.199 go with the traditional NASA spend an amazing amount of 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:54.439 money and maybe get two people in the surface of 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.800 the moon. Or this thing will lift one hundred people 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:02.440 or one hundred and fifty tons, so you could put 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.400 fifty to seventy people on the Moon in one bite. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:06.800 I mean, just boom. 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.960 But to your point, that requires ns It requires all 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:16.040 of the innovation and entrepreneurs I mean, it requires research institutions, 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.919 It requires presumably institutions of higher learning as well. Are 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.760 you concerned about what's happening in terms of those partnerships? 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.639 I mean, just I think about Sandia Labs, Lawrence Livermore Labs, 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.320 I think about all the R and D that's happening 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.760 with military and obviously with academia. I mean, you're concerned 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.439 that there's a recklessness. I appreciate solving for issues of 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:42.399 some abuse or some inefficiencies, but there seems to be 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:44.880 a blunt approach. 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:47.600 Now, first of all, I think there is. As a historian, 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.919 I would argue that when you try to make change 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:55.080 on this scale, you're going to have very sloppy margins. 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:00.600 You cannot move slow enough to be careful or the 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.680 old order will surround you and drown you. Here here 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:06.119 you have you have to be, which means you're going 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:07.920 to make mistakes and you're going to screw things up. 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.000 You got to go back and fix them. At the 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.320 same time, I would say, uh, I really I worry 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.879 about our greatest universities. Partially I suspect the opposite of 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.440 your view, which is partially I think they're so left 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.840 wing now that they're virtually to tolitarian, and that they 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:27.720 create a group think that is really destructive. And yet 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.439 at one point, just a generation ago, these were the 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:35.120 greatest centers of learning, on the planet. Uh, And it 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.520 does worry me. How how do you how do you 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:39.879 keep the best of Harvard or the best of MI 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:43.360 I T or the best of Stanford or Berkeley? Uh, 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.560 without well at the same time taking head on the 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:50.879 kind of ideological group think that has become literally almost 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:55.200 to tolitarian in its unwillingness to have any competition of ideas. 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.560 And I think that's a real challenge and we don't 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:00.479 truth is, we don't have a good answer. 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:03.600 No, I mean, how do you square that circle? Specifically 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:06.359 on this notion of the journey to America? And I 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:08.520 want to talk to about the timing of that. And 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:12.160 by the way, congratulations ninety minute documentary on PBS that's 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:15.000 really a love letter to absorbing the best and the 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.159 brightest and who we are as America in the spirit 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.120 of Reagan. You talked about the life force of new Americans, 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:24.440