Ben Shapiro vs Destiny Debate: Politics, Jan 6, Israel, Ukraine & Wokeism | Lex Fridman Podcast #410

something has to happen with Iran there has to be some diplomatic bilateral communication there no, what has to happen is the containment of Iran's history moving in one direction, why because of time, communism, Nazism, all that was a regression of what was happening in, for example? At the beginning of the 19th century in the 20th century How do you think that today Donald Trump knows that he completely lost the election? Then I do not know. This is one of the areas where we get into this. I don't understand. If a brain break is happening or what's going on, I don't know what world we can live in where we say Trump is less divisive to the country than Biden.

Joe Biden literally used the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration to try to reduce it. Vax imposes on 80 million Americans, that's crazy, what about the super fragile and then what about the new microscopic multiples or the scientific terms exactly or what about the 7,000 letters that are from uh biochem? I got my education in the Soviet Union, so we just did it. math, this is why you are a useful person, does body count matter? The following is a

debate

between Ben Shapiro and Destiny, each of whom arguably represents the right and left of American

politics

, respectively, and are two of the most influential and skilled political

debate

rs in the world.

The debate has been a long time coming for many years, it lasts about 2.5 hours and we could easily have gone on for many longer and I'm sure we will, it's just the first round, this is Lex Freon's

podcast

to support you, check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends, here are Ben Shapiro and Destiny Ben, you are a conservative Destiny, you are a liberal, can you each describe what key values ​​underpin your philosophy on

politics

and perhaps life in the context of this spectrum left-right politician they want to go to? First, yes, I think we have a huge country filled with a lot of people, a lot of individual talents and abilities, and I think the goal of government broadly should be to try to ensure that everyone can achieve as much as possible.

So on a liberal level, that generally means that some people might need a little boost when it comes to things like education. They might need a little boost when it comes to meeting certain needs like shelter, food, or clothing, but in general terms. Speaking, I mean, I am still a liberal, not a communist or socialist. I don't believe in the, you know, total command economy, the total communist takeover of the entire, you know, economy, but I think that, generally speaking, the government should kick. and help people when they need it and that the government can and should be big, not necessarily.

I notice that when liberals talk about government or especially taxes, they seem to talk about it for taxes or greatness, so people sometimes talk about taxes as if it's like a punishment like taxing the rich. . I think taxing the rich is fine as long as it funds the programs we want to fund, but Democrats have a big problem demonizing success or wealth and I don't think that's a bad thing. uh I don't think it's a bad thing to be rich to be a billionaire or whatever as long as we're funding what we need to fund Ben, what do you think it means to be conservative?

What is the philosophy behind your politics? First of all, I'm glad Destiny you're already coming out as a Republican, that's exciting. I mean, we have a lot in common in terms of, you know, the basic idea that people should have so many opportunities. as possible and also to the extent that the government should do the minimum necessary to interfere in people's lives in order to fulfill certain functions, particularly at the local level, which is why many government discussions at the pragmatic level end up being discussions about where the government should be. be involved, but also at what level the government should be involved and I have an incredibly subsidiary view of the government.

I think you know local governments because they have higher levels of homogeneity and consent, uh, they're able to do more things and as you abstract down the chain it becomes more and more impractical and more and more divisive to do more things. In my opinion, the government is basically there to preserve certain key freedoms. Those key freedoms preexist the government. More important than the priorities that the government has, the job of the government is to maintain, for example, National Defense, the protection of property rights, the protection of religious freedom, these are the key focus of the government, as expressed generally in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution and I agree with the general philosophy of the bill of rights and the Constitution, but that does not mean that more cannot be done again at the government level as one approaches the terrain, which by the way is also built into the Constitution people forget that the Constitution originally applied to the federal government, not the state and local government, but you know, if I'm going to define conservatism, it would actually be a little bit more broader than that because I think that to understand how people interact with the government you have to let's go to some kind of fundamental values ​​and, for me, there are a couple of premises: human beings have a nature, that nature is neither good nor bad, we have aspects of goodness and we have aspects of evil.

Human beings are sinners, we have temptations and what that means is that we have to be careful not to encourage the bad and that we must encourage the good. Human beings have agency and are capable of making decisions in the vast majority of circumstances. And it is better for a society if we act. as if they support the basic idea of ​​human nature, in my opinion, there is an idea that all human beings have equal value before the law. I'm a religious person, so I would say equal worth before God, but I think that's also kind of a key tendency of Western civilization to be religious or non-religious, that each individual has equivalent worth in sort of cosmic terms, but That doesn't necessarily mean that every person is equally equipped to do everything equally well, so that's not the case.

The job of government is to rectify every imbalance in Life. The pursuit of cosmic justice, as Thomas Soul suggests, is something that government is generally incapable of doing and more often than not fails and makes things worse, so those are some key tenants and that tends to materialize in a variety In ways, the easiest way to summarize that would be the traditional three-legged type of conservative stool, although there is obviously a very fragmented conservative movement now in the United States would be a socially conservative view in which the family is the main institution of the society, like the small platoon of society, as Edmund Burke suggested, in which free markets and property rights are extraordinarily valuable and necessary, because each individual has the ability to be creative with his property and dispose of it freely. uh and uh and ultimately I tend toward a tough foreign policy that suggests that the world is not full of wonderful people who agree with us and think like us and those people will pursue conflicting interests if we, if we don't protect our own interests, we can do a question about that, I'm very good, I'm excited about this conversation because I think you're very smart, but I feel like sometimes there are ways that conservatives talk about certain topics that seem to defy logical reason, I guess. so here and I'm sure you feel the same about prog.

I feel the same way about progressives, um, but even some, uh, liberals, sure, uh, before you ask this question, it will relate to education, we can generally agree that the statistics are real. and that not everyone could do everything, so, to give a reasoned example, my life was pretty bad. I got into streaming and changed my life and that was really cool, but I can't expect everyone to do what I did well, like everyone can do it. joining the NBA or being like a streamer, of course, everyone has different qualities, okay, so I used to be a lot more libertarian when I was in 2021 and one of the things that dramatically changed my view on government, uh, manipulation of the things.

I guess in society it came time to deal with my son and the school he went to and one of the things I noticed was that when it came time to send my son to school, I could either get a private education or I could go public. uh I personally did 12 years of private Catholic education um however the public schools in Nebraska depending on where you lived were very, very, very good and I opted for a certain district. I bought a house there, moved there and then my son. He was able to go to those schools, um, and he's been going through those schools and the difference in the availability of similar technology, like these kids are taking iPads home and like in first grade, they have huge computer labs and everything you think. what's up.

It's some kind of, I don't want to say unfairness or unfairness because I don't even see it that way, just pragmatically, that there could be kids that are in certain schools that if they had better funding or more access to technologies. or things available to them, that those children would become more productive members of society and that with a little help they could achieve more and do better for all of society, so I think that on the priority list when it comes to education , technology availability is actually pretty low on the priority list. Sure the two things that I've heard are food availability and I think air conditioning I think are the two most important things that I've heard, but sure, well, I mean the most important thing in terms. of Education itself, not just the physical facilities we're talking about, they would actually be two-parent family homes, safe communities that have parents in them, is actually the number one deiser according to Roland Frier and many studies done on this topic in particular and the The idea that that money alone, that investment of resources is the top priority in education, is frustrated by the fact that LUSD, which is where I went to school when I was younger, invests a huge amount of money at USD, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars very often per student and that doesn't result in better school results, so when you say if we could give every child an iPad, would you give every child an IPAD? the question is not whether I had a Star Trek replicator machine.

I give everyone a huge amount of stuff. Surely each resource is appropriate. Every resource is limited. You have to prioritize what the results are that you seek in terms of the means by which you seek them, and so on again. I guess the question is do I object to the premise of the question, which is that again the number one injustice when it comes to education on the list of injustices is the lack of availability of technology or that it's a funding issue. I don't think that's the case, and I kind of agree with you on that, but I don't think any changes in schools will create two-parent households, right, we can't bring a I totally agree with you, which is why I think the problem fundamental educational is not actually a schooling problem, I think it preexists, of course, but then I feel like now I feel like this is kind of a conservative marriage where it's like what can we do to help with the schools, so two of the things that I've seen, I think they're usually mentioned in the research, is that one is air conditioning, that children in hotter environments just don't learn as well, and then the second is access to food, so as children Having a breakfast or lunch provided at school increases educational outcomes.

Now I agree that none of these things could be decisive, in the same way, 20% of the children were graduating and now 80% of the children are graduating or these children. They're all going to enter the workforce with their college degrees and now these kids are suddenly becoming engineers, but in terms of where we can help, do you think there should be a minimum threshold or a minimum baseline of at least every school? should have a leak-free gym or every school should have, if kids can't afford lunch or breakfast, some type of food provided or every school should have these things like Baseline, so again I'm going to argue with the premise of the You ask because I think when it comes to, for example, food insecurity.

Again, school feeding programs can always put money into any program and at the margins create change. I mean, there is no doubt that investing money in anything will create change marginally. The question is. how big the spread is and how big the move is, so what I'm looking at is the Delta and I think you're starting with a second order question, which is what happens if we ignore what I would think. are the big questionsof education, namely family structure, the value of homeschooling, how much parents are able or willing to help with homework, what are the incentive structures we can establish for a society that truly facilitate that, how local communities take ownership of them. of their schools is important, right?

We are ignoring all of these problems in favor of, say, air conditioning programs or lunches, and so in a vacuum, if you say air conditioning programs and lunches, it sounds great in a vacuum in terms of prioritizing values ​​and the cost structure are the things that I think are going to move the needle significantly in terms of public policy. I don't think so, and in fact, I think many of them end up being a disproportionate waste of money. I've spoken quite controversially before about the fact that an enormous amount of school lunch programs are thrown away as if an enormous amount of that food ends up in the trash can, is there a better way to do it?

If there's a better way to do it, then I'm perfectly willing to hear about that better way to do it, but it seems to me that one of the big flaws in the way a lot of government people approach it is: what if we hit every knot? with a hammer? and my question is: what if the Gat is not even the problem? What if there is a much larger infrastructure problem that needs to be resolved in order to fix it? you're changing the lounge chairs on the Titanic, sure you can make the Titanic a little more balanced because the lounge chairs are oriented a little better, but the real question is the water opening onto the Titanic, right, yeah, and I agree I agree with you 100%, but again.

I feel like we're on the conservative merry-go-round and so we never want to address that not a conservative hump. I can say it 10 ways, sure, but this is where marriage would be. I would say there is minimal funding for schools that I think would help kids and do well. What would help them the most is two parent homes and I'm fine, well two parent homes aren't really the problem. The problem is access to things like contraceptives that people don't have. I haven't had kids since early and it's like, but the problem isn't actually birth control, the problem is that you actually need a certain amount of money to move out early and get married and then have a two-parent home, so It's actually like Economic Opportunity.

Well, you're not just a two-parent household, yes, but what are the people who before screw you and have babies? That sure is great. You can say that and try to fight against, you know, many hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. evolution, but people will have sex and have babies and then get married. The vast majority of people in this country with children used to be married. The vast majority of people with children in this country are now unmarried. Increasingly, that is obviously. a social change something changed was not human evolution, but many of those things in terms of depending on whether people get married or not have to do with financial decisions if you have money people are worse off now than they were 50 or 60 years ago Years ago , when marriage rates were higher, people are delaying starting their careers because education is becoming more important.

In other words, people are now richer and more educated, and yet they now have more babies out of wedlock because we are richer and more educated. What I'm saying is that one of the biggest indicators of whether or not someone is willing to get married is how much money both people make if they can leave their home. People don't tend to want to do it. Getting married at 22 when they're fresh out of college when they don't have money to move and can't afford a house because we've changed the moral status of marriage in the culture, meaning everyone is poor, rich, and in between.

They used to get married and, by the way, a large percentage of marriages in the United States used to be what you would call forced marriages, which means that someone got someone else pregnant and because they didn't want the baby to be born outside of a two-parent home, they they would do. So getting married, do we believe that chance marriages are a way to restore balance to education? Yes, absolutely yes, 100% a child deserves a mother and a father, because that is the basis of all this, including education. marriages are fine, let's say this, do we think that's a reasonable direction that society would ever take or is it like it's the reasonable direction for almost all of modern history but history moves in one direction?

Why do bad people not because of time? I don't think it's a question of what that's like and I don't think we've ever liked to roll back social standards until oh well, let's go back 100 years and do things that you know existed before me The entire left right now is arguing that we bemoan social standards by rejecting Row versus Wade, so obviously that's not true. The dispute versus Wade is not a social standard, it is a Supreme Court ruling number one, number two. Wade, we can see that socially we never made much progress in how society viewed abortion.

This has always been an incredibly divisive thing, even so I think part of what Alito wrote about it was that things like gay marriage, for example, passed and is not debated as much anymore, but abortion was never a resolved issue despite that the arc of history is constantly moving in one direction, almost the entire 20th century is a lie, what do we mean by that? I mean, barbarism, communism, Nazism, everything. how Nazism and communism were a regression from what was happening in 1905, these are fine in terms of that communism is a regression. for example, I am not a communist, but as the industrialization of the Soviet Union occurred under the communist society, industrialization killed T of millions of people, that regression, moral regression, which is what we are talking about now, moral regression, and you are you.

If I am suggesting that moral regression, I would not call a return to traditional values ​​moral regression, but your suggestion is that history only moves in one direction and I am suggesting that history not only moves in one direction, but that it tends let's move. actually, back and forth, sure, I don't think all of history will move in one direction, there will be wars, there will be times of peace, I think overall it's more peaceful now than in the past, but I think When we look the way people live their lives, I think we tend to move socially in a certain direction, so when it comes to things like racism or when it comes to things like slavery or women's rights, I think there are two huge things. that's probably not changing in the US and one is access to contraception and the other is working women.

I think these two things are probably huge things that are moving us away from chance marriages or getting married too early and I don't know. Look, do you think those two things are going to fundamentally change? First of all, what the data tends to show is that actually more highly educated people, as you were saying, tend to get married more, so the idea is that women who are educated somehow shed them outside of marriage it is the opposite generally women are not educated those women are not forcibly married those women do not have children now now you are changing the topic my topic was how to marry more people and what I am doing and then he suggested that the Higher levels of education are delaying marriage and making it less likely and what I'm telling you because this is what the data suggests is that actually, as you go up the educational ladder, people tend to be married more than are lower on the educational ladder, if you are a high school graduate you are less likely to be married than if you are a postdoc.

I agree with you, but that's because one of the biggest precursors to marriage is having a level of financial stability, so as people get more education they get this financial stability and then they're in a more comfortable position. to explore more serious relationships. There's another confusion there, I mean, the confusion is that people in stable marriages tend to be children of stable marriages and there's only one way to break that cycle which is to create a stable marriage and that's something that's in everyone's hands again. this notion that somehow it is an unbreakable, shadowless barrier to get married and have children.

I don't understand where. this comes from why is why such a challenge is a challenge. It is unbreakable or unbreakable. Just the initial point was for the school, if we can provide a minimum level of educational material for the children, that's probably good, but when we go back to well, it has to be the families that fix themselves first fixing the families is a multivariate problem that many I am well within my local community we all vote again. I have suggested that there is a difference between the local community and the federal community. It's okay for my local community to vote for school lunches or air conditioning or whatever we all agree to do, because the more local you are, the more homogeneity you get in terms of interest and the more interest you have in your neighbors, that's all okay .

I'm part of a very, very strong community in our community, we give to each other, we have minimum standards to help each other, all of that is wonderful when it comes to the real problem of education, which I oppose in the sphere politics and this all happens. The moment is that everyone is arguing from the top of the iceberg about how we can move the needle 0.5 percentage points instead of the entire Iceberg melting beneath them and we just ignore pretending that that is just the natural consequence of things . The Story Arc suggests that people will never remarry.

Well, actually, what the Story Arc suggests, realistically speaking, is that people who don't get married aren't going to have children and what it also suggests is that people who are married are going to have children and , therefore, the demographic profile will actually shift over time towards people who have many, many children. I am married, I have four children. Everyone in my community is married. That's like a minimum purchase. In my community there are four children, and what is actually happening demographically is that people who are more religious and get married have more children, so if you are talking about the Arc of History moving towards Mar I , I would suggest that actually demographically over time, long periods of time, not over a generation, over long periods of time, the only cure for the low birth rate will be people getting married and having many children.

Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but I'm just saying that again on your site when I mention the term getting married. I think you can have good conversations about people getting married, because stable families produce stable children who are less likely to commit crimes and who are more likely to go to school and who are more likely to produce members of ET society. . I'm not going to disagree with you on any of that, that's all true. It's just frustrating that sometimes when you mention a problem, everything becomes circular. Getting back to other things, that makes it seem like we can't make any progress in any area without fixing it.

I literally just told you that at the local level I'm fine with people voting for that, for example, at the local level, for example, for the school. Funding for schools is done, I think, generally by district, so what do you do when there are poor districts that can't afford air conditioning for their schools? I mean, the idea would be that presumably if society, the state and I in general don't do it. I'm not talking about the federal state, I'm talking about the state of California for example deciding that everyone should have air conditioning, people will vote for air conditioning and that's perfectly legal and I don't think there's anything morally objectionable about that. per se.

I don't do it either. I don't think that's going to solve anything remotely close to the core problem and I think what tends to happen in terms of government is that people love to argue about problems that can be solved by opening a wallet and nobody likes to solve a problem. You know, closing your sex life to a person, for example, or having children within a stable religious community, like the things that build society. I'm fine with arguing about each of these policies and whether we implement them or not is a question of pragmatism in general.

It is not a question of morality, it is a question of incentive structures, not of morality per se, because incentive structures have moral foundations. There's one thing you know, for example, if you're going to use a welfare program, you have to decide how effective it is for what. multitude, applies where the limits are, discourages work, aren't all these concerns pragmatic, but inAt some level, the general objection I have to people on the left side of the aisle is that they like too much BDC in these conversations? It often feels like a conversation with people who are drunk looking for their keys under the lamp, the problems they want to look at are the problems the government can solve, and then all the problems they don't want to look at. what are the real giant monsters that beckon in the dark that the government can't particularly fix are the ones that they want to ignore and assume are just the natural state of things and I don't think that's right at all and I agree with a thousand million, but then Obviously, my criticism for the conservative side is exactly the opposite, where there are parts where the government could remedy some problems.

For example, children who have sexual relations with each other and have other children out of wedlock, sometimes it is good to have after school programs. to avoid that, like I didn't have time for these things when I was in school, I was practicing football, I was doing cross country practice, I joined a band early, you know, I agree with you that sometimes people just concentrate on one thing. end of the problem like I hate to be that guy, um, but as someone who's ever seen The Wire, I'm sure not going to cite the real life example of cable, but obviously there's a lot you can do in a school.

The children that arrive are so broken because of family life and everything before even getting to school day so I agree that the government is not the solution for broken families, that would never be the case and in it's not really the solution for education depending on the type of solutions you're talking about some solutions yes some solutions no yes the only thing I think What I'm seeing is, like I said before, these minimum threshold things where it's like where can you do the government because you mentioned marginal, which I think is a very good way of looking at things, marginal cost and margin utility for things where the first $1,000 per student that you spend can give you a great return, but the additional 20,000 Next, I think these are all pragmatic discussions, actually, this is what we used to debate in legislatures before they became platforms for people.

Great position, but yeah, sure, okay, yeah, as we go down. From the heavens of philosophical discussion about conservatism and liberalism, let's get down to the pragmatic garbage of Trump versus Biden politics between the two, who was in his first term, the better president and therefore who should win if the two are in fact ours. Options should win a second term in 2024, Ben, sure, in terms of actual job performance, you have to separate it into a few categories. In terms of actual foreign policy performance, I think Trump's foreign policy record is significantly better than Biden's. The fire right now is a pretty good example of that, and we can look at every aspect of the world that's on fire and where the incentive structures come from and how that all happens at a time when it's about the economy.

I think Trump's economic strategy. his record was better than Biden's doesn't mean he didn't overspend, he did, he overspent a lot, but he also had a very strong record of job creation, a large percentage of the gains in the economy went to people in the lower end of the economy. In reality, the gross income of the average American was about $6,000 during his tenure, unemployment rates were very, very low before Covid. I think you almost have to separate the Trump Administration into sort of pre-Covid and during Covid because Co is obviously kind of a Black Swan event, the most significant change in policy in our lifetime, uh, so you know, governance during Co is almost its own category that we can discuss, um, but you know, in terms of foreign policy, in terms of domestic policy, I think Trump was significantly better than Biden has been and that's a positive for Trump, negative for Biden, obviously, you are talking about inflation highs of 40e, you are talking about savings being consumed, you are talking about everything being between 20 and 30 30% more expensive, you are talking about massive increases in the deficit even at a pace that was unknown under Trump.

The deficit under Trump increased by about a little less than a trillion dollars each year until 2020, versus 2020 was the year Co, so everyone decided. that we were going to shoot money at things, um, but then Joe Biden continued to shoot money at things in 21, 22, and 23, you know, that's obviously, in my opinion, bad economic policy, and then you get to the rhetoric and Let's go. to the things that Donald Trump says and, as I've said before, my opinion is that half of Donald Trump on his tombstone will say Donald Trump, he said a lot of things, uh, I think Donald Trump says a lot of things.

I think that's basically part of the pie and that's why everyone who is baffled by the polls is ignoring human nature, which happens in the beginning when you see something very shocking, it's very shocking and then if you see it again and again again, and again and again for Years Later, it's no longer shocking, it's just part of the background noise like nonsense, it just becomes something your brain adjusts to, uh, and I also like a lot of Donald's rhetoric Trump, no, and I've never liked him, I think that's just positive about his presidency, no, I don't know when it comes to Biden again.

I think his economic performance is poor. I think his foreign policy has really been a problem, even the things that I think he's done right are band-aids for the things he created by doing wrong, uh, and when it comes to his own rhetoric, you can argue that he's making progress in a curve because Trump was coming in with such wild rhetoric that just maintaining that wild rhetoric doesn't really change the baseline again for Biden. he came in the same way Obama did with the kind of soaring rhetoric of American Unity. I am the president for everyone, as Trump entered.

He says, listen, I'm the president because of who I am and you know I'm going. to say the things that I want to say I'm going to be in the bathroom and I'm going to be tweeting, we're like, okay, you know what's up with Biden that he came in with. I am a president for all Americans. I'm trying to unify everyone and that quickly turned into a lot of opposition language about their political opponents in particular and trying to lump together, for example, large sections of the conservative movement with the people who participated, for example, on January 6 or who are fans of January 6. um and um, you know, the kind of grouping of everyone in the Maga Republicans who didn't personally sign an infrastructure bill with him, that kind of thing I think has been really terrible.

I thought his speech in Philadelphia was really terrible and Once again, I think you have the problem that he is no longer able to rhetorically unify the country when every speech of his feels like watching Nick Wenda walk on a volcano in a tight PTR and It's really like you're just being nice. to wait for him to follow, I mean, it's sad to say, I mean, the other day he was talking about what was in effect the beginning of his campaign and this is in Valley Forge, uh, and I mean, Jill ran there like it was As soon as it was over, Jill ran there, uh, you know, like she was shot out of a cannon to come and try to guide him away so he wouldn't turn into Shane Gillis Roomba and you know that's not really, You know?

Let's put it this way, it's not soothing to the soul to see Joe Biden rhetorically again, it's a different problem than the Trump problem, but that's my analysis, this is one of the areas where we get into this. I don't understand if it's like he broke his brain or what's happening. I don't know what world we can live in where we say Trump is less divisive to the country than Biden. I think it's so evident that Trump is as divisive as not just Trump. he makes an enemy of every person in the opposition party, he makes an enemy of his own party and every person around him as if we all saw him bully, you know, in Jeff's sessions, we all saw him bully his own party on Twitter , we all saw it. like all these people are walking away from him, even recently, I think it's him, the Secretary of Defense, esper and, John Kelly, the chief of staff, where you know say, I think Trump is a threat to democracy, you know that you have it all. of his previous people around him, some of his closest allies, you have Bill Bar, who won't sign anything he says, you have all these people that he used to work with and they all say Trump. he is a horrible, evil person, he is ineffective as a leader, he accomplishes nothing and I didn't know to say that Biden has failed at bipartisanship when he knows that we have gotten the token law, we have gotten the IRA.

We got the ARP, we got the bipartisan infrastructure bill when we have all this important legislation that's working in this historically divided Congress, unlike Trump who got tax cuts and deficit spending, um, I don't understand where we are. they're in this world where Biden is somehow more divisive than Trump, even the speeches that Ben mentions, they always mention. I remember that one, um, I think we might have even done it in our episode, although the only speech that Biden gave was at one point that because the background is red and the reference speaks yeah, they're like oh my God, it's over, this is the end. and then, meanwhile, you have Donald Trump, you know, coming into office saying things like if you burn the flag, you should have your citizenship. revoked or speaking of Ms.

DNC that I am going to investigate each of these media organizations for corruption. I'm going to open up the laws of lying and defamation. I'm taking all these guys to court. this weird project 2025 stuff where, um, is it John Pasel? I think he's talking about uh, you know, we're going to investigate all these people and we're going to try to commit crimes against all these people. Trump is like the most divisive president we've ever had at least in my lifetime as an American citizen and his rhetoric is on another level in terms of demonizing political opponents, I mean. this is a guy who is known for giving his political opponents bad nicknames, that's how Trump does, you know, it's funny, but even as a Florida resident, if Florida had another natural disaster, do you think Trump would withhold aid because You saw?

I think that was one of the few good things that Des Sanz actually said about Biden was like Hey, listen, you know when the buildings collapsed, I think in Miami Beach, yeah, that, you know, because of the hurricanes, which Biden was there, he was saying if the guys need help, however many billions they may have, meanwhile, Trump I think was threatening to withhold federal funds from blue states that wouldn't, um, I think it had to do with the National Guard, the deployment of the National Guard that they weren't like doing enough for the riots and, uh, Trump was threatening to withhold help from some of these blue states. um, yeah, Trump is literally the most divisive person in the world.

I don't see how, by any metric, he will ever succeed in the divisive category. In terms of economics, I think it's funny that Republicans are very keen to say that, well, we can't really call Trump, you know, postco because he obviously ruined everything, which is fair, but first, what did he do? Trump? tax cuts that he presided over, historically low interest rates and an economy that was already kind of on fire after the last years of Obama, we were posting all-time highs in all the stock markets from 2013 onwards, you know, unemployment rates were now falling under Biden's unemployment. rates are even lower than they were under Trump, but it sucks that for Trump we can say, well, we can't really hold him responsible for 2020, that's how it was.

Well, all we have for Biden is postco, we don't have any pre-co Biden, you know, the economy and it was the same for Obama too when he came in right after the housing collapse and it sucks that the Republicans can get out of office, you know, having burned the entire American society to the ground economically and now We have to try to evaluate, well, what did Obama do during his first two, three or four years trying to recover from where the housing crisis left him and then we look at Biden now, who is trying to recover from Co and now us?

We're rating him on a totally different scale than they rate Trump, yeah that sucks. I think they comment on foreign policy. I'll be honest. I'm a um, I'm very liberal. Very unprogressive, uh, I'll probably seem more aggressive than others, uh, because I'm not a big fan of this, which also means that if Ben agrees, I think people like Trump will be the most moderate. Isolationist people never want to do anything internationally, they just want to, you know, protect America, be at home, protect our economy, do nothing internationally, which is why I was constantly undermining NATO and constantly, you know , attacking everyone. the European Union and you know,cheer on the UK for moving away from the EU over Brexit.

I think that being said, I think Biden has done a phenomenal job when it comes to foreign policy. I think the building of the coalition was very important for Ukraine and Russia. and I'm very happy that you decided to go to our European allies and our NATO allies and try to build a coalition of people to help Ukraine so that it's not just the United States, personally, especially after doing a lot of research. I tend to side with Israel over Palestine in many of the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts. I am glad that Biden, while remaining a strong supporter of Israel, is trying to rein in some of the more aggressive stances toward Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

I'm, I'm proud that Biden said Hey, listen, we're going to delay some of these attacks. Hey, listen, we're going to allow humanitarian aid here. Hey, listen, let's try to, you know, not kill so many Palestinians. there while you still know how to point out that he would be a supporter of um of Israel in the conflict, assuming that the civil cas does not rise too much um for foreign policy, I mean imperfections, I mean, that the biggest one you can give to Biden It's Afghanistan and the polls, but man, what are we going to talk about?

Are you aware of the Inspector General report that says one of the main reasons the Afghanistan PLL was so disastrous was because of the Doha Accords in which Donald Trump led the talks that didn't? I'm not even including the Afghanistan military, I mean, these were disasters like when Biden took office, we had 2,500 troops left in Afghanistan, what were the options that were even offered to Biden at that time? Obviously, you have the abandonment of the Kurds. in northern Syria you know the Turkish armies will sweep um you talk about Iran and North Korea, although I'm not sure where Ben would land on those, but yeah, that's broadly speaking, that's a lot of both, you want to choose.

There's something we don't agree with here, well there's a lot so I want to ask a few questions about each of these so let's talk about the divide for a second so there's no one who can argue that Donald Trump doesn't It's divisive, of course, it's incredibly divisive, it's a given M. Do you treat Biden's rhetoric with the same level of seriousness that you treat Trump's rhetoric or should I probably say it the other way around. Should we treat Trump's rhetoric with the same level of seriousness as Joe Biden or say Barack Obama's rhetoric? I'm going to try to be concise in general terms, especially in studying Israel Palestine and Ukraine Russia I try not to take politicians at their word because sometimes they just say things for the sake of saying things.

I understand that, but generally speaking I'm going to look at the rhetoric and the actions and do the same to them. So yes, I would consider Biden and Trump equally entitled, so my feeling is that, and this is an area where, to clarify, we're going to have a divide, is that of course I don't deal with the rhetoric of Trump the same way I treat Both Biden and Obama are completely uncalibrated, he says what he wants at any given moment and many times it does not even coincide with his policy, can I ask you: for our head of state, our chief executive, rhetoric does not should possibly be one of the most important things you do, I mean the answer would be yes and now I've been given a choice between a person who I think in a calibrated way says things that are divisive and a person who in an uncalibrated way says things that they are divisive and So the evidence that Joe Biden is divisive is all the polls taken essentially since August 2021.

By all available metrics, he is incredibly divisive. A large percentage of Americans are deeply dissatisfied not only with his performance, but they do not believe that he is a unifier. I mean, that's just reality and that can just be a reflection. I mean, honestly, we may be putting too much stock in Trump or Biden personally. It may be that the American people themselves are rhetorically divided because of social media, and social media may, in fact, be. One evaluable thing I would ask you about, though, is I agree, especially when you look at favorability, but sometimes when I look at these polls and you start breaking them down by party, I wonder if it's actually historically divisive Biden or um, I.

I'm trying to think of a really polite way to say this. People who, like Trump, worship Trump. I don't know. I like it. One of the most prescient things Trump could probably have ever said was that he could kill someone on Fifth Street and no one. would be really divisive or is it that all the Trump supporters will always say that Trump is great and the reason I would say that Biden is, in fact, historically divisive is because Republicans felt much more strongly about Barack Obama than they did about Joe Biden, but actually no I don't have as strong feelings towards Trump as I do towards Romney or McCain, in the sense that I mean and that loyalty to Trump oh no, there is certainly more loyalty to Trump than to Romney or McCain largely because Trump won in 2016, but Beyond that, what I want to say is that if you look at the statistics in terms of division, Republicans always find the Democratic president to be divisive, the question is where is the rest of the country and right now there are a lot of Democrats. who disagree with Biden or find him divisive, there are a lot of independents who find him divisive, so when we compare these things, I don't think they're leagues apart in terms of divisive effects from what they say correctly and I'm separating that from the inherent content of what they say because obviously what Trump says is more divisive on the raw level, I mean, if he's insulting people rather than what Joe Biden does.

Maga Republicans like it if I were an alien that came down from space. Look at these two statements, I would say this one is more divisive than this one, but then there is the reality of being a human being in the world and that is everyone. put Donald Trump on the cake and Joe Biden again started with a patina of not being divisive and has now emerged as divisive. If you don't mind, I actually want to get to the foreign policy questions because this one is actually a little bit less interesting to me, just a quick thing, I guess, because we can tell the reality and we can look at the opinion polls.

What if we look at legislative accomplishments like Biden working in a 5050-divided Senate? Donald Trump had both houses of Congress. and the Supreme Court and no major legislation was passed, I mean, Congress lost in 2018, but of course, but before that, because we got the infrastructure bill, I think in a year that Trump promised for his entire presidency No I didn't get anywhere, I mean yeah, your Republican base wasn't in favor of massive infrastructure spending and neither was I, so I think it's mostly state and local, they were in favor of massive spending on fiscal weapons, that's not it's a spending, I mean, I mean, effectively, that's right, effectively, it's not okay if you're cutting revenue but you're not changing the level of spending like Biden did with the Ira again, we have a fundamental philosophical difference here, I think. . that when the government takes my money that is not the case, the government is somehow more fiscally responsible and when the government allows me to keep my money I don't see it as government spending, I see it as my money and the government is taking less, That's great, but at the end of the day the government will still have deficit spending and they will have to borrow money from the treasury, right, we have a spending problem, it's not a cash problem.

The problem I'm raising with Donald Trump is not that he has lowered taxes: the United States has one of the most progressive tax systems on the planet, and in fact, if you want to have a European-style welfare state, what you really need is What we need is to tax the middle class to death. I mean, the reality is that the top 20% of the American population pays literally all the net taxes in the United States after state benefits and all this, so if you really wanted to have the kind of welfare state that many liberals They seem to want to have like Northern Europe, for example, you would actually have to tax people who earn 4050 $60,000.

I agree with that, how do you explain the lack of legislation? I mean, yes he is a unifier, because I think the Republican Party itself is pretty divided and I think Trump, but isn't that his job? He is the head of the Republican Party. He is the president. Republican president of the United States. I mean, again, I don't think Joe Biden went wild. the landmark legislation was the biggest, so here's the problem, if you're a republican, the only bills you can get consensus on tend to be bills that, let's face it, are tax cuts because, like you would think , I think you agree.

When it comes to polling data, Americans consistently say they want to cut the government and then the moment you ask them what program they have no idea what exactly the right thing to do is, so trying to do it is much harder to present a bill to cut things to do it. is to introduce a bill to add future things, which is why spending was also out of control under Trump, but there are some Republicans who still don't want to spend on those things so inherently to the task that this goes back to the First question, the task that Republicans believe the government should perform is different from the task that Democrats believe the government should perform, in the same way that the very metric of success for a Democratic president versus a Republican president is Say, for example, pieces of legislation passed as a Republican, one of my goals is to pass almost no legislation because I don't really want the government involved in any more areas of our lives.

I want to ask a couple of questions about foreign policy, yeah, okay, hold on real quick. For example, Donald Trump wanted to punish China and wanted to bring the chip maker to the United States. Biden did that with legislation with a chip law. You talk about spending being out of control and I mean I can agree with that, I think. Anyone looking at the numbers has to agree with that, but why not pass legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act? um, which is at least like neutral spending, why aren't there any bills that Donald Trump can take on?

I mean, first of all, I think whenever the government says something is spending neutral, it rarely materializes that way and it's not going to be a spending neutral bill, but there's a difference between at least saying it's neutral. in spending and this is a $500 billion bill in about 10 years. Well, but again. I don't see a tax cut as a matter of spending neutrality. The big problem is that they keep spending, not that they let me keep the money that I earned and they didn't, but that's okay, so just to understand it. someone just made massive reductions in tax revenue, so tax cut after tax cut after tax cut, but they didn't change spending at all.

You wouldn't consider it an increase in deficit spending or out-of-control spending, you would simply say that 'They're just tax cuts, no, the opposite.' I would consider it an excessive expense. I would consider it an excessive expense. So was it under Trump? So when he did the tax, I mean, the bottom line, by the way, under Biden is much worse than it was under. of course, but we are in the right postco. Co ended effectively, I mean, you live in Florida. Co effectively ended in the state of Florida in mid 2021. If you are a fan of vaccines, in April May 2021 there was wide availability of vaccines whether you like vaccines or not and at that point we were done, I agree, but like we're in a post about how many trillions of dollars have been poured into the world, that's like leading to inflation, right, inflation is like a global problem.

Right now, because of the shutdown of the economy for a year or two, it's not like those effects would go away in a year, true, Co might go away, but the after effects of all the stimulus spending and unemployment, the whole definition of Inflation is also too much money chasing. few goods, so investing more money also generates more inflation, that's what it does, I'm sure I agree, but there is also the definition of when deficit spending occurs when economies are heading for a recession, rather than when economies are doing really well. like they are under Trump and he is deficit spending while Biden can at least argue that he should deficit spend because the economy is headed for a possible recession so this is what I don't think the economy was actually headed for recession, In fact, if you look at the economy, economists said they were economists, they still say that there is a recession on the way, but that was largely due tomeasured to the after effects of inflation, that is, if you inflate the economy, what are you doing?

What we're going to end up doing is bursting a bubble and then when that bubble bursts, we'll have a recession. I mean, that was the basic idea. The idea was whether we would get a soft landing, but if you really look at, for example, the employment statistics or the economic growth statistics in the United States, what they look like under Obama last year and then Trump, I mean, that's right. what the chart looks like, it looks like this and then it gets to March 2020, it says That's right, and then like in September it recovers, it's a V-shaped recovery and then it starts to lose a lot because of the American recovery plan , right, that Biden also made, I mean, four million jobs, yes, no, no.

I'm not going to attribute it to that because the job growth rates from September October November were actually very similar to the job growth rates after Joe Biden took office, what you see is actually kind of a straight line . Anyway, I think that's okay, on foreign policy, this is getting complicated, but on foreign policy, um, the questions that I have regarding Biden on foreign policy, uh, a very, very question. simple, do you think the situation in the Middle East is better now than under Donald Trump, probably, that is a difficult factor, the factor right now is obviously the war between Israel and Palestine that is happening right now, which is a bit bad, but generally speaking.

I'm not sure how much that affects the Middle East, like the collapse of Syria. The 2013 Syrian Civil War sent millions of migrants across Europe, which was under Obama and continued under Trump. Trump did nothing. to alleviate some of the Syrian Civil War um I enter why did Syria end up being a Russian Reserve again? How did Syria end up as a Russian Reserve? Yes, why did it end up being essentially a state of Russia? um I know Putin enjoys access to the ports down there um I don't know you, I mean the reason is because Barack Obama suggested that there was a red line that would be drawn against the use of chemical weapons.

Bashar Assad then used chemical weapons on Syria and Barack Obama. Was the UN unwilling to create consequences for Syria in the form of any kind of Western attack and instead outsourced it to Russia? intervene during Libya, yeah, I mean, sure, but what does that have to do with it? Although I'm just saying it could have been a mistake, learn. The point is, actually, the Middle East, I mean, historically speaking, was historically good under Donald Trump. it means it's very difficult to make the case that before or after Trump they were better than during Donald Trump, the Syrians I don't think Trump helped the Syrian situation get much better um I think Isis, which was in the, I mean Isis had been destroyed by the Kurds in Iraq. for every person by Assad's army by Putin literally everyone was fighting Isis at the time there was a spike in violence and then Trump, I mean you get credit for when you're president, presumably, I mean things got better with Isis Under Trump I mean yeah they did I mean things got worse with Isis under Obama sure he called them JB Squad and then they didn't become JV Squad yeah but I don't know if Isis originates in Syria um and uh bagdaddy. and all the growth of that is necessarily Obama's fault.

I know we like to say that Obama created Isis. I don't know if you say that, but I've heard that said many times. I think it's a bit simplistic. I don't think when I look at the actions that presidents have taken, the biggest criticism I have for a Middle East policy is that I think the Doha Accords were a disaster and I think that's one of the biggest imperfections. that we have now I would also say that moving the um embassy to Jerusalem was also a bit silly and arguably contributed to some of the conflict that we see now.

I will argue precisely the opposite, especially given the fact that after the embassy move in Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords continued to be signed and, indeed, expanded and that if Donald Trump had been elected, I have no doubt that Saudi Saudi would now be a party to the Abraham Accords, in fact, which were basically pre-negotiated and then when Joe Biden took office, Joe Biden took a very anti-Saudi stance on a wide variety of issues, the biggest single effect on the Middle East of Joe Biden's presidency and again I agree with you that not all foreign policy issues can be addressed President Joe Biden's main approach to the Middle East was very similar to Obama's approach, which is why the The Middle East was chaotic under Obama and chaotic under Biden and that was to alienate allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel and, instead, try to make common cause or close agreements with Iran, what that did was encourage Iran's terrorism.

What we're seeing in the Middle East is Iran trying to use every one of its terrorist proxies in the Middle East and it was launched specifically in an attempt to prevent what Biden was actually trying to do, which was good, which was after two years of failure with Saudi Arabia, trying to include them in the Abraham Accords, that was what was blossoming at the end of La, at the end of last year, and Iran saw that. and Iran decided that they were going to throw a grenade in the middle of those negotiations, essentially activating Hamas Hamas activates Hamas commits on October 7 Israel, as a sovereign nation state, has to respond to the murder of 1,200 of its citizens and the kidnapping of 240 Israel It has to do that not only to pursue its own hostages and try to restore them, but also to reestablish military deterrence in the most violent region in the world.

Kah becomes active on Israel's northern border. Kah and the Iranian representative become active on the northern border. border the hudis in yemen activate this is the only reason all this is happening at the same time is because iran is doing this right not just because they are threatening global shpp if you are talking about the effects of war global. The supply lines, which I completely agree with, have had a significant inflationary effect on the economy thanks to the fact that right now the cost of shipping is almost double what it was just a few weeks ago and that is because a hthi heterogeneous group of barbarians are attacking international shipping and forcing everyone to stop using the Babel M Freight and instead go around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, all of that is a result of the fact that Joe Biden refocused to the United States in the early days in favor of a more pro-Iran stance. he appointed Robert Maly to negotiate the deal with Iran, who it turned out was using proxies; many of their AIDS were actually taking money from Iran and the Biden administration literally one of their first acts was to delist Hoodies as a terrorist organization and end sanctions against all of these are moves Biden made since At the beginning, they were disastrous moves, but when it comes to domestic policy, I think it hasn't been as repressive in domestic policy in foreign affairs, for sure, so just a couple of things in the Middle East.

One of the biggest things that threw the Middle East into disaster was that we're all traumatized by this now was the evasion of Iraq. CH or the Republican president surely agrees on that, the deposition of Saddam Hussein and everything that followed probably contributed more to the growth of Isis and the chaos of that whole region probably more than anything else I think before Bush, um, Clinton and even at the beginning of the Bush presidency, we were on some kind of path to normality, um, with Iran, which I think has to happen whether we like them or not, until Bush, for whatever reason, decides throw Iran into the depths of evil and we need to do in the waiting on the path to normality with Iran in the 1990s what we are on the path to normality with Iran in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, My understanding is that, yes, since the late 1990s and before the crisis of evil, uh, labeling Iran, there was going to be some path towards which we could begin to normalize relations with them. I find it very hard to believe and I don't see much evidence, I mean, we can just disagree on that, sure we can disagree on that, but I know that the after effect, just a quick note, the after effect of the Iraq war that was the most devastating was the rise of Iran's power. I agree, yes, due to the destabilization of Iraq and the fact that Iraq did not have a government there that was functional for at least a decade and it was an inni government, it was originally a Sunni government, the dissolution of the Sunni army was a one of the worst things Bush has done. managing all of the above, yeah, all horrible under the Republican president, um, but that, uh, yeah, that probably contributed more to Isis, uh, to the growth of power in Iran, maybe even to the decivilization of Syria, probably more that anything that Obama did, um, also, uh, when we see that Iran is funding people in the region.

I don't disagree with that either. I think Iran is the number one instigator of bad things right now in the Middle East. Iran, um, the IRGC. I reported when Donald Trump killed Simman. I think that. It was something great. I think Iran is a major problem. However, I don't know if the way forward is to be constantly belligerent with Iran or to try to find some path to normality. I don't know if the collapse of Iran. or the destruction of that country considering how unpopular it is even there, like the citizens of Iran, I don't think they're big supporters of the government there, um, I feel like going down a path where you know, let's do our nuclear inspections, we had that . um Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from, let's do the nuclear inspections, let's make sure we're not on the path to nuclear weapons, let's release some funds, let's move in some direction where we can get along with you.

I feel like that's the most important thing that needs to happen in the Middle East, as much as people like to look at the Abraham Accords, who cares what it was? Bahrain, I think Oman, I think the UAE and Morocco, yeah, AR like all these people, even Saudi Arabia. They already have de facto normalization with Israel anyway, everyone is negotiating this. I want to pretend that someone even 15 years ago would have been talking about normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. It's crazy. They were already on the path they had. They had already been de facto trading partners with each other, they had already been collaborating and that is a crazy claim, that Israel and Saudi Arabia were going to normalize 15 years ago, 15 years ago it could have been a crazy claim, but then Turkey, after Jordan and then in the past, like 20 years of similar economic relations and ties with each other, all the leaders in the Middle East and they will agree with this look at Israel and they are going well, well, we have Palestinians that you already know.

God bless them and they do nothing and then we have Israel, which is in a region without natural resources and that somehow becomes an economic giant, they are good at trading with their population, they have education, they know they have military power, um everyone. the leaders of these Middle Eastern countries want to be friendly to Israel and they are engaging in de facto trade with Israel and the idea that, like the UAE and Bain, they were brought in to say, well, now we're going to say officially this I I I simply those are the first steps towards, obviously, the formation of a new Middle East in which the economy would predominate over the sectarian conflict, the main obstacle to that is Iran, which the negotiations with the ayatollah were going to be a solution To all of this, it is absolutely the Abraham Accords that are convincing Saudi Arabia to take a stance against Iran?

No, I mean, they're already fighting, yeah, they're already fighting each other. I don't think the AB Accords will bring us closer to either type. of real peace something has to happen there has to happen with Iran there has to be some diplomatic bilateral communication there not what has to happen is the containment of Iran, which was what was happening with the greater normalization with the Sunni Arab world and Israel, combined with significant economic sanctions, the notion that there is this crazy notion in foreign policy circles that diplomacy can be a kind of wish thrown out of nowhere, that if you sit around a table, you can always come. to an agreement with someone, the IAS has no common interests with the United States and this idea that they are willing to accept money in exchange for, for example, some kind of PE peaceful acquiescence to the existence of Israel is obviously false, is it obvious?

It is not like this? However, there has been a region with tons of sectarian violence for a long time and finally Turkey said, "You know, this is not worth it." The United States paid him a lot of money. They had talks with Israel. I know what the economy is, the economic gains, the same with Jordan, the same with Turkish politics, but, but,the situation with Turkey was actually quite warm between Israel and Turkey in the 90s, when we had the Turkish secular Muslim regime. place and now Erdogan has joined the frey and Erdogan is significantly more radical than I'm very sorry, if I said Turkey, I'm in Egypt, my bad, yes, of course, yes, in terms of Egypt and Jordan, right?

The first two are what you need, so this is what you need. Is it possible that, in theory, you could reach a deal with Iran alone with a new leadership team? Well, this is true for all the peace agreements in the region that you couldn't have made Israel. Well, they made peace with Egypt and Sadat was the leader of Yom Kapor. True, he did not make peace with Naser. The point is that this is a different regime. A different regime is needed. I am the same regime that made peace. part of the Yum Kapor war was the same regime that negotiated peace with Israel.

I mean, that's true, it's also true that that's a relationship that could be cultivated specifically because it was Sadad who made it clear that he was coming to the table to have the The Iranians ever made it clear that they were going to come to the table to have the discuss, for example, the existence of the State of Israel. No, that's not something that's going to happen, but I think people, each of their representatives, don't just call. for the destruction of the state of Israel they also call for the destruction of the United States. I mean, this is literally the houie catchphrase.

They are busy attacking ships and their slogan is literally ALU Akbar, death to America, death to the Jews, death to Israel. It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker but that and it's not that catchy but that is actually their slogan the notion that the regime that propagates that is going to be dealt with with diplomacy is not only wrong the problem is that it is easy to say What The stakes in diplomacy are fine, so we try to say that the right jaw is better than war. Surely the only problem is that in the Middle East weakness is taken as a sign that aggression might be an appropriate response.

This is how things work in the Middle East. The Middle East and the fact that Barack, Joe Biden, came into office with an orientation toward continuing the policies of Biden and Obama in Iran, has led to conflagrations like these types of wildfires that break out everywhere Iran has borders with the West, Israel or both. Wherever it's happening it's causing forest fires because, again, the logic of violence in the Middle East is not exactly the logic of violence elsewhere in the world. By the way, I think the logic of violence in the Middle East is actually closer to what most international politics looks like to us than we would like it to be.

I mean, I think that's also part of what's happening in Ukraine, which brings me to, by the way, here's my question about Ukraine, real quick, do you think for Iran it's an okay country? that have been sanctioned for God knows how many years now you think that for Iran simply continuing to sanction and contain them is an effective way is more effective than trying to engage them in multilateral bilateral peace talks yes, 100% And the proof is in the pudding before go to Ukraine can I ask about Israel so you both mostly agree, but what is it?

I don't know, I'll say it right, but as I'm learning, what is Israel doing right? What is Israel doing wrong? this very specific current war in Gaza. I mean, frankly, I think what Israel is doing wrongs that if I were Israel, okay, again, America's interests don't coincide with Israel's interests if, if I were an Israeli leader, I would have turned up. and would have made the jump from hisbah early, what does that mean? What does that mean? Then I would do it. I wish Yov Galant, who is Israel's Defense Minister, was rooting for Netanyahu's Prime Minister and the war cabinet, including Benny Gan, so whenever people talk about Netanyahu's government, that's not what that is in force right now, is there a Unity War government that includes politicians? opposition, the reason I point this out is because there are many political people who will suggest that the actions Israel is currently taking are somehow the manifestation of a right-wing government.

Israel currently does not have a right-wing government, in quotes, they have a unity government that includes the opposition in any case and Galant was urging in the early days of the war that Israel should turn north and instead of attacking Hamas should take the opportunity to eliminate hisbah because hisbah is significantly more dangerous to the existence of the state. of Israel than Kamas, I actually agree with that, as far as what Israel has been doing wrong in the actual war, I mean, I think, again, from an American perspective, I think Israel is doing pretty well from an Israeli perspective.

I actually want Israel to be less flexible in sending its soldiers on the ground, so Israel's attempt to minimize civilian casualties and the cost of that has been the highest number of military deaths Israel has had since the Yum Kippur War of 1973. I mean, I know this personally. across one degree of separation, three different people have been killed in Gaza and that's because they're walking in the door. It's all because they're trying to minimize civilian casualties and they're losing a lot of guys in this particular war, you know, the problem that Israel has had historically speaking is that Israel became very complacent with its own security situation and they believed that technology was going to somehow correct the hatred on the other side of the wall, that's very good.

Our people have to live underground for two weeks straight while some rockets fall, but at least it's not a war and that complacency, you know, created what happened on October 7, so, to me, what Israel did wrong There were years and years and years of complacency. and the belief in an Osa system that is essentially a failure because you can't reach a peace agreement with people who don't want to make peace with you, so that's what I think Israel is doing wrong. I have a feeling there will be a wide divergence. At this point, perhaps, so generally speaking, I generally oppose settlement expansion as something that Israel does incorrectly and I think it is something of a provocation to at least all Palestinians in the West Bank and probably energizes the hate. in the Gaza STP for them too in terms of carrying out the war.

The one thing I always tell everyone, especially Americans, is that you can't evaluate things from an American perspective. It's very stupid. A lot happened with Ukraine. where people said oh well didn't they work with the Nazis and the Soviets were the good guys and it's like in other parts of the world it's not that simple um and I think the same is true for Israel Palestine that a Many Americans will analyze that the conflict It is simply one between Israel and Palestine, which is not a confrontation between Israel and then Palestine. Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran right now is, um, I think that's the area I'll break with though.

Ben is I think minimizing civilian casualties and everything is very, very, very important. I think on the Israeli side I don't think it's important for the United States to stay with them because I think the United States will probably stay with Israel as As long as they don't do anything crazy and I don't even think it matters to the international community, it definitely doesn't matter to the UN. because Jesus Christ, um, though, I think it's really, really important for you to think that. In the Middle East, generally speaking, I think the leadership, especially in the Gulf, has overcome the Palestinian issue.

I think the leadership doesn't care as much anymore, but the populations still care quite a bit and I think the main problem that Israel could run into is if civilian deaths increase too much and if they start to reach this, you know, 40 50 60,000 number of civilian casualties, they risk civilian populations and surrounding states in the Middle East becoming so antagonistic. towards Israel that are beginning to take steps towards normalization in the region, so, for example, I know that Bahrain I think has already withdrawn its ambassador to Israel, I suppose it will be temporary. I know that in the public.

On the speaking side there are many people condemning Israel for the attacks and on the private side there are people telling Israel to please kill all of Hamas because this is unsustainable and no one wants to work in this situation, um, I don't know. . Whether this ended up being true or not, I guess it wasn't, but I saw on a couple of Twitter accounts that were leaked that potentially Saudi Arabia was considering setting up a government in the West Bank that they would run um no, I mean, me. I think Israel wouldn't love anything more than that, but that's not one of the big problems in the Middle East.

Literally nobody wants to preside over the Palestinians, nobody has Arab states, Israel, nobody, so I think the problem is and I think and I am. I actually largely sympathize with the Palestinians because I think from '48 onwards I think all the Arab states got them excited about the fact that they wanted the Palestinians to fight because they wanted to fight Israel, um however, like Ha As time has passed and they have realized that it is a kind of lost cause, states have begun to abandon, so these bilateral peace treaties are being achieved with Egypt and Jordan, multilateral agreements such as the Abraham Accords are being achieved and now the Palestinians are looking around and saying: well, you told us to fight all this time and now the only people we have supporting us are Iranian representatives, so the Palestinians are in a very strange situation where they have lost all their support. .

Yes, I think I think that Israel, what I would say, quote unquote, critical of Israel is that Israel needs to take firm steps toward peace, which will probably involve them enduring some undue hardship, so not the October 7 attacks, because Jesus, that's too much, but you. Learn about other types of attacks that they might have to deal with that could cause the death of some civilians, which they do not get away with and do not retaliate if there is ever going to be peace in that region, however, another thing that Always I have said that there is a big problem between Israel and Palestine.

I think both sides think that if they continue fighting it will be good for them, but the problem is that one side is deluded, er, Israel. I think Israel wants to continue fighting. Because they get justifications for the annexation of the Goa Heights, they get justifications for the expansions, especially in the maritime area which I think they will probably try to annex soon, they get justifications for the increased military posture towards the Gaza Strip and the embargoes and Israel is right that if the conflict really continues the situation will only get better for Israel over time, but all Palestinians also believe that if they keep fighting, they thought since 2000 under Arafat: if they keep fighting they will get better gains. also, but that is not the case, is there a difference between the Palestinian citizens and the leaders when you say that I love all the people, I love all the people around the world and I think that when we look at the problems I think we have to be very honest with what we do? people on the ground think and the idea that Hamas is something unique to the Gaza Strip is not only incorrect with the situation on the ground but also incredibly ahistorical and the idea that, like the Palestinians and the West Bank, I think the most recent polls show that I want to say that between 75 and 80% support the October 7 attacks.

Palestinians generally want to fight a violent conflict with Israel. That is not just the government's position. It's not just the people. There's a reason why a boss. He does not want to hold elections in the West Bank and it is because the Palestinian people really want to fight with Israel, but to combat that problem it is as if you have to involve the UN, we have to make a real approach. of the Palestinian refugee issue being handled like a joke at the moment um Iran has to be brought to the table in terms of negotiations uh there has to be great efforts to economically revitalize these Palestinian areas even though they are one of the highest aid recipients in the world, um, you have to do something about the embargo, the blockade and the Gaza Strip, which is not only held by Israel, but also by Egypt, you should ask yourself why, um, yes, there are many things that have to be solved that problem, but the reality is that I don't think Israel really wants to do it because they can continue their expansion in the West Bank and I don't think anyone in the world cares that much that one month we don't do it.

In speaking, I will argue that the idea that Israel does not want to end the conflict is a lie because of the history of what just happened with the Gaza Strip, so when we talk about settlements, for example, Israel had settlements within the Gaza Strip, there were 8,000 Jews living inside the Gaza Strip in gush kaiv, until 2005, they took all those people out, I mean, they literally took them out oftheir homes, and the result was not the emergence of a better attitude toward the state. of Israel with respect to, for example, the Palestinian population in Gaza, in fact, it was more radical in Gaza than in the West Bank, the result was obviously the election of Kamas and the attacks of October 7 in which unfortunately many civilians took part of the October 7 attacks there is a video of people running, who are civilians and dressed in civilian clothes, towards Israeli villages, always the same, well, no, that's 100% true, obviously, uh, and when it's about area C. and Israel's, you know, it assumes a deep and abiding desire for territorial expansion in area C, area C, for those who are not familiar with bear ropes and, again, this is becoming very abstruse, but the bear ropes are divided into three areas of the West Bank.

Area A is under full Palestinian control, like Janine and Nablus, the main cities for example, there is area B, which is mixed Israeli Palestinian control, where Israel provides some level of security and military control, and then there is area C and the area was, as will be decided later, left in the hands of possible concessions to the Palestinian Authority if the ropes had advanced, those are disputed territories, areas are being built in both, in reality no one talks about this, but on the of Palestinians and Israelis, uh and The question you know is whether, if Israel were to stop building, there have been many settlements liberated in the past, including some undertaken by Netanyahu, and he hasn't really done one iota of good in moving forward the ball in terms of actual negotiations with NE again.

The biggest problem is that the leadership of the Palestinians has happened every day since really '67, it's not even 48 because after '40, between '48 and '67, Jordan was in charge of the West Bank and Egypt was in charge of the Strip. from Gaza and at no time did he do so. any of those Powers say, hey, maybe we should hand this over to an independent Palestinian state, which was originally the division that was promoted by the UN partition plan in '47 because of that, the post-'67 leadership and really because starting in '64. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in '64 and called for the liberation of the land in '64.

They had the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, so they're talking about when it was founded in '64. The basic idea . as you know, that indicates that Israel will not exist and that was a promise that almost all the palestinian leaders made in arabic to the people that they are talking to, yasat would do these kinds of things where he would speak. English and he talked about how he wanted a two-state solution and then he went back to his own people and said this is a Trojan horse and if Israel could, if you think Israeli parents want to send their children at 18 to go to monitor Janine and Nablus and be inun you're crazy, you're crazy, the Israelis don't want that, in fact the Israelis didn't want it so much that they allowed rockets to fall. their cities for 18 years to avoid sending soldiers en masse back to the Gaza Strip, it's true, but I think Israel wants to continue expanding settlements in the West Bank, right?

They want to keep building, they want to have all of East Jerusalem. Jerusalem also, I mean, East Jerusalem has already been annexed, so according to Israel, East Jerusalem is a part of Israel that is not a settlement, okay, so with respect to you, you know, does Israel have an interest in expand settlements in the world? Because I would do? Not until there is a partner for peace, of course, that's what I mean, but I say as long as the conflict continues because even when you talk about no, but your suggestion is that they are incentivizing the conflict to continue so they can take over more land.

Well, no, let me be very clear, I don't think there is such a thing as a PL. So some people are saying, for example, that they will take that quote from Netanyahu and try to say that he was funding the people in the Gaza STP by allowing them in. money from Qatar even though he was actually speaking against The boss allows Gus' strip to fall so that Netanyahu can clean it up and give it back to him, etc. I'm not saying I'm not affirming those theories. I'm just saying that I think Israel will take a relatively neutral stance. towards the conflict to endure because as long as the conflict lasts and as long as the settlements can expand I think the benefits I think ultimately benefit Israel, I think there would be a lot, let's put it this way, if suddenly there arose among the Palestinians a deep and permanent desire for peace approved by a large majority of the population with serious security guarantees.

I think it would be very difficult to find Israelis who would not be willing to at least consider that in order not to expand the bathrooms in a kind of I have agreed with you on October 6. I think we're probably a year or two away from that right now. No, no, but no. What I mean is that the Israelis now realized that the entire peace process was a farce, that is, the people on the other side of the table were using it as a Trojan horse in the first place, The death of Oslo is not the death of Israeli hope, it is the death of the illusion that on the other side of the table there was someone worth negotiating with. what's going on and that's why there is this kind of insane disconnect right now between the United States and the Israeli government again it's a Unity government no one in Israel is talking about making concessions to the Palestinian Authority for a wide variety of reasons, including the fact that Mahmoud abas fatak continues to pay real families of terrorists who kill Jews the fund, yes, of course, and that he is from the moderate right of the West Bank, exactly that's it, so again you like the taste in Israel because This is even the people who have the kilon. those are the most secular people in Israel, which by the way was the place that was attacked on October 7.

I mean, what people should understand is that October 7 was not an attack on settlements in the West, but an attack on peace. Towns that were essentially disarmed and many of these people that were killed were peace activists who were literally trying to work with the people in Gaza to get them. I mean, it's mind-boggling, that's why there's been this shifting of terrain in Israel over the next 20 years. It's going to be about security and economic development, end of story, everything else goes second third and I will say that I agree with essentially everything you're saying, I don't want to go back to another topic, but this is one of the reasons which I was very critical, I don't want to say critical, but a little indifferent about the Abraham Accords because they didn't address anything with the Palestinians, whatever it is, they brought in countries that weren't very relevant to the conflict that they didn't bring to Qatar. which is where a lot of the money and support for God didn't involve Iran at all, it didn't involve bilaterals, but they totally changed the mentality and that's why what I'm seeing now is why you listen, I think that Biden has done better than I certainly expected him to do in terms of supporting Israel, as Obama was much less supportive of Israel than Biden across the board, with that said, the rhetoric he's been using recently and the blank words he's been using recently on the needs of Israel. make painful concessions for peace Israel puts this issue back at the center of Middle East relations The East is doomed to fail magic magic is a strong word the benefit of the Abraham Accords was proof of what you are saying, What is true, is that actually all the surrounding countries have abandoned the idea that there is a centrality to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is not the central conflict in the Middle East and, by the way, one of the reasons why we do not is the central conflict in the Middle East is because Actually, ironically, due to the rise of Iran, it is the Sunni states that are largely joining Israel because they are realizing that they need some kind of counterweight to a burgeoning nuclear energy career.

Can we talk about Ukraine? You probably have a disagreement with yourself. With what Destiny said, my main problem with Biden's Ukraine policy is that he outsourced the end goal of the war to Zinski from the beginning. That might make sense if that goal was something he was willing to fund to the point. of achievement uh or whether zinsky could have achieved it on his own, but right now and this has been true from very early in the war Point Henry kiss gerid uh this that quite early in the war it was very clear that, for example, Crimea was without go nowhere, the Russians were in control of Crimea, unless the United States gave permission to fly F-16s over Crimea, nothing was going to change there, the same was true in most of the Donbass, right in Luhansk and DK, that It wasn't going to change.

Zinsky stated the goal and you understand, he is the leader of Ukraine. The truth is that there was a depredation on his territory in 2014 and that the Russians sent their little green men across the border and then took over all these areas, so he is the leader. of Ukraine is saying: "Well, I want all that to come back now, the reality is that the interests of the United States had largely been achieved in the first months of the war, which means the revocation of Russia's ability to take Ukraine and just ingesting it, and two, the devastation.” of Russia's military capabilities I mean that Russia has just been shipwrecked I mean that the military is in serious trouble because of the war in Ukraine from an American perspective I am very much in favor of all that I think we have an interest in Ukraine maintaining a status of buffer against territorially aggressive Russia.

I think the United States has an interest in degrading the Russian military to the extent that it cannot threaten the Baltic states or threaten Kazakhstan or other countries in the region. The problem I have with Biden's strategy is As always, I think it's a mess and I think messes tend to end with misperceptions. War tends to break out and be sustained due to misperceptions. Misperceptions of the other side's strength. The intentions of the other side. And everything else. People misperceive what is going to happen. say I will cross that line and nothing will happen, that's what Putin thought, he thought I would cross that line, you will hail me as a Liberator and since the United States just surrendered in Afghanistan, you will essentially do nothing and the West is fragmenting because NATO is fragmenting and everything else, and obviously he was wrong on all of those counts, the problem for Biden is that, as with virtually all wars, there was no end line set and it recently emerged that it was widely reported that in reality there was a peace deal that was on the table in the first few months that Putin was on board, which would have basically seeded Luhansk and Denet and Crimea for Russia in exchange for solidifying those lines.

American and Western security guarantees for Ukraine, true: Ukraine would not formally join NATO, but there would be security guarantees for Ukraine. Anyway, we'll end there. It just takes a lot more money and a lot more time to get there. Do you think Trump would have helped push that piece? Yeah, and I think Biden actually did Zeny a disservice because Zinsky knows where this war is going to end and it's not going to end with Lanskin Denes and Crimea in Ukrainian hands, it's just not going to end and he knows it. In my opinion, what Zilinski really needed was for Joe Biden to be the person to impose that agreement on him so that he could then go back to his own people and say, listen guys, he wanted all those things but the Americans were not willing to allow them.

I wanted to have all those things, so we did an incredible job, we did a heroic job defending our own land, we devastated the Russian army even though no one expected us to, but we can't get those things back because it's unrealistic to get them back. those things because the United States is basically more fun and they are the ones who want the deal instead of what Biden said and this was reported in the Washington Post last year, the Biden administration said we are going to fight as long as it takes . with everything that is necessary and when they were asked how long they said everything that Zinski says and that is not a policy that is just a recipe for a frozen conflict with infinite financing, now it may be that Putin has walked away from the table and that agreement be no longer available if that deal is available at this time.

I certainly hope it takes place behind closed doors. My main criticism again of Biden is that when you outsource the end goal to another country without indicating what the US interest is, that is a problem. I also think Biden really did a pretty poor job of explaining what America's realistic interests are. I don't like it when American leaders, um, it's weird for me to say this, but I'm not a big fan that we're in this to protect democracy. kind of rhetoric because, frankly, we are allied with a lot of countries that are not democracies and that's not really how foreign policy works. uh, we should, in general, you know, target 30,000 feet.

Advance democracy and rights where we can, but the reason we were fighting. in favor ofUkraine and when I say fight I mean give them money and weapons, the reason we were doing that for Ukraine is not because of Ukraine's long history of clean voting and no corruption, the reason we were doing that is to counter Russian interests in the region. I mean, it was just a real political game and that real political game is hard to deny no matter what side of the aisle you're on. I think what a lot of Americans are going to come back to is that we have no interest there, why we spend money there and we don't spend money here and that kind of thing and that argument can always be applied unless you really articulate the reason why it's good for Americans Beyond just how ideological it is for the United States to be involved in something, so, for example, I think right now when you're talking about Biden, I think what Biden just did is he The United States, as we speak, is hitting the Houth.

I think that's a really good thing. I think it's a necessary thing and I think the American people should understand why that's happening, it's not because of some quote-unquote ideology, I mean, on a very basic level, but it's really because you're ruining the Straits, I mean. You can't, you can't do that, you can't ruin free trade and Americans have an interest in not seeing all our prices, groceries, doubles and triples because there are a lot of ragged pirates you know, similar to the barber. The 1800s pirates are bothering everyone, so Ben said a lot: Do you disagree with any aspect of the Ukraine side?

A little bit, yeah, I think on the macro side, I agree, maybe we'll get into some things a little bit. about the last thing you said, although I wish Americans could have honest conversations about foreign policy, I think it would be better for everyone, um, I don't know if it's, you know, Red Scare after the Cold War, where it was like literally, you know to the giants, you know we are fighting communism and we feel that after '91, every foreign policy decision should be able to be explained in about seven words, as if he were the bad guy and that's it, I wish we had more honesty. conversations about what our foreign policy interest is in a particular region because I don't think most Americans can honestly even articulate why Israel would be an important ally or why it's important to defend Ukraine against Russia or why we should care in absolutely for Taiwan.

I don't know if most Americans could articulate anything there, even though they may have very strong opinions about why we should be involved in certain conflicts, so I'm fine with that. I wish we had more honest conversations about foreign policy in In terms of how Biden has handled Ukraine, the things I liked the most were the ones where he was very clear at the beginning about what we wouldn't do, so Biden said we're not going to do, um, uh, not a red line, no. flight zones over Ukraine we're not going to deploy troops on the ground in Ukraine we're not going to do anything to let you know that American soldiers and Russian soldiers are crossing swords with each other, that's not going to happen.

I like that. He made it very clear at the beginning and I like that the coalition built between NATO and the EU to get people to send funds to train soldiers, planes and everything to Ukraine. I thought those two things were really good in terms of basically writing Zalinsky a Blank Check. I would like to hope that Biden and the entire United States would learn the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan that open missions with unlimited budgets and no clear goal are like the worst foreign policy decisions that can be made. foreign policy over the last two or three decades, which is unfortunate, but it seems to be the case.

My feeling would be and this is just a feeling. I don't know if internal cables have been leaked that say otherwise, it's the Biden administration. He's probably always had a calm position that at some point there will be an exit ramp here and I think even a month or two ago I think those conversations were percolating that the discussion had started with Zilinsky looking for an exit ramp, but publicly Of course, the United States will never come out and say: we will support you to fight as much as you want for three months. And then after that it is no longer obvious that it cannot be the statement, it will always be that we are going to support you in your fight. against Russia, we tried it under Obama with Afghanistan, it was terrible, surely we can't.

We will scale Troop levels to and as long as you need everything we have to do to defend freedom and democracy in your country and any other statement would be absurd, so I can understand why on a public level it feels like you have given yourself a blank check and a period of indefinite time for zalinsky but I don't think that's going to be the case, I think again I hope we've learned our lessons in the Middle East about forever wars that this is not going to be permanent funding for Ukraine to fight as long as they want um I don't agree I feel like we're playing backwards a little bit by saying that well, it's obvious that they're not going to capture Chief Don, it's obvious that they're not going to capture Crimea.

I agree. Crimea, that was incredibly obvious, but it was also very obvious that in two weeks Russia would own kyiv and Ukraine was going to be Belarus 2.0. I think even for many military and analysts around the world, that was an expectation or at least a major problem that no one knew, the phrase being used right now is paper tiger that Russia's military was so equipped with IL like them, so I can understand why, especially if you're Ukraine and you've repelled an invasion of one. of the largest armies in the world, why you might feel like screwing, you know, let's fight for a few months, let's fight for a year, see what happens and I can understand the United States supporting them, but I agree that it has There must be some reasonable way out. where we're not going to fight forever, I think the US State Department has already started those talks with Zinski to see what that off-ramp looks like, but yeah, I'm not really sure, other than explicitly saying publicly that you can only fight until this date I really don't know what else I would change I don't think I don't think the bid administration should have done that I don't know what else you think Biden should close this deal uh on the funding means there's like six there's a deal of $105 billion that has been delayed by the debate between Republicans and Democrats over border rights, so it basically contains $60 billion for Ukraine, $4 billion for Israel, another several billion for the defense of Taiwan against China and then includes some border financing. and some Border Provisions Republicans want funding for Border Provisions because we can address the issue of illegal immigration, but that is a pretty serious issue and the Biden Democrats have not been willing to delay it and that seems to me to be just left out by the Republican Democrats.

It seems like political negligence, meaning there is a widespread perception in the United States that the border is a disaster area. Joe Biden wants these things, a lot of Republicans don't want these things, if he gives in on the border stuff, he gets all the things he wants and if he's going to be able to go back to the moderates in the country and tell them I did something about the border, It seems like such an obvious victory if he gives in. On the border things, you mean the things from Ukraine, yes, because then he will receive the whole package.

Can he go back to his own base and can he say listen guys? I wanted to be easy on the border, the Republicans forced me to do it, but we needed Ukraine's help, we needed Taiwan, a right, that's his right, honestly. "They're going to be more educated than me on this. I don't like it, or maybe I just don't know enough. I don't like the principle that when we negotiate things in the United States there are like 50 million hostages." points in time for each thing like oh boy here comes the debt ceiling what do republicans want what do democrats want oh boy like here you know we can't fund our government um but I mean obviously the argument will be that If the funding of Ukraine does not come in this bill and if Biden and his administration feel that it is really important that, whether unilaterally or not, but as a single issue, it does not pass, then I would say that right now and I don't.

I don't know what the conversations between the candidate administration and Zinski will be like. I would say at this point that it's probably fair to start making contingencies on the money that we give to Ukraine that listens as this conflict, you know, is being fought now like we are now. I need to start looking for a potential peace, we can't just write you an unlimited check, so if those conditions are imposed, I would be fine with it, but the broader question is whether it is okay to do this particular legislation with everyone. this funding depends on Ukrainian funding, I mean that seems to be the way the government works now, unfortunately, a quick break, a bathroom break, one of the big problems in this presidential election is going to be on January 6th. , it's in the news now and I think it's going to get bigger and bigger, so the first question for Destiny is whether Donald Trump had an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Absolutely, this is probably ignoring all the other topics of the that we have talked about and of which I think there are many that I would say to disqualify. Trump taking office, um, I think the conduct and behavior leading up to and including January 6th, I think is tremendously indefensible. I'm excited to see Ben try to, uh, yeah, the three or four stages are the um, take what I think any reasonable person says knowingly false information about rigged elections or stuffed ballot boxes or Ruby Freeman, you know, running ballots. three times in Georgia taking that knowingly false information and trying to call Secretaries of State and stuff to get them to change their electoral vote.

That was horrible, the plot that the men from the East hatched to have these false lists of electors where the seven states had citizens who came in and falsely said that they were the duly elected electors who could send votes to Congress. That was crazy, it happened. asking or begging Pence to accept these fake electors' statements initially and then just telling him that he should throw it out completely and throw it to the House delegation, which was majority Republican, which was absolutely incredible and then on the 6th of January, trying to capitalize on it. the violence by him Giuliani and Eastman making phone calls to senators and congressmen saying, well, don't you think maybe you should delay the vote a little bit?

Do you know? Don't you think they're just really angry about the election? he told McCarthy that they are more upset than you, you, um, and his complete dereliction of duty and doing nothing to stop the riots that occurred on January 6th because he was too busy taking advantage of them. I think all of this stuff is horrible, I hope to see the Jack Smith indictments in court, maybe even the Georgia RICO case, but yeah, I think all of this stuff is unfathomable and I think when you look at the plot from start to finish, clearly The goal all along was to circumvent the peaceful transfer of power, which was the goal from start to finish, whether through false claims, through illegal schemes, or through violence in the capital to delay the certification of the vote, so I'm glad you're excited, it's always fun, so there are two elements to incitement of insurrection, one is incitement and the other is insurrection, so incitement has a legal standard, just like insurrection, neither of those standards It comes true, so if you ask me.

Morally speaking, did Donald Trump do the right thing between November 4 and January 6? I said, I'll keep saying no, he didn't do it. I think he was saying things that are false, uh, with just false facts about his theories regarding the election. theft of elections by fraud, all this was resolved in court, he did not even present many of the accusations that were presented to him publicly and all the rest of that, if we talk about incitement to insurrection it is a legal standard, it does not mean any of those standards when it comes to incitement it has to be an immediate law, an immediate incitement to an illegal action, that is the standard for incitement and I am very meticulous in how I use this because I speak a lot in public and that means that there are a lot of people who listen, which means some of those people are probably crazy and some of them might go and do something crazy.

If I incite them, the media tends to use the word incitement very loosely regarding this sort of thing, in the same way that Bernie Sanders quotequote incited the baseball shooting in Congress, he didn't B Bernie Sanders It has many things that I don't agree with.agree I think Bernie is an idiot it doesn't matter he didn't incite that so saying bad things is not the same as inciting violence inciting violence the legal standard in the United States is I want you to go punch that guy in the face, that is what incites insurrection, typically in Insurrection and there are some descriptions in jurisprudence, although none in statutory law, as far as I know.

The typical description in jurisprudence is the replacement of one legitimate government of the United States with another by violent means. The notion that Donald Trump coordinated any such insurrection is debunked by the FBI itself, the FBI released a report in uh, I think it's August 2021, suggesting that there was no well-coordinated insurrection attempt by the White House. In fact, what you had was Donald Trump squirming like that weird alien in the movie Life that I once saw with Jake Jenal or it's like some kind of beating. against this glass box, just an alien banging against the glass box, that I think is more what you were seeing from November 4th to January 6th, um and then again the claim that January 6th itself was a insurrection, so I'm virtually not aware of anyone being charged with actual insurrection, there were some people who were charged with seditious conspiracy, there are insurrection statutes that do exist, no one was charged under those particular statutes, you know, there were some people who could be said to have informally insurrection. ideas, those would be the people who wanted to hang Nancy Pelosi or kill Mike Pence and those people are in jail right now uh and the election went ahead, the election was certified Mike Pence presided over the certification Mitch McConnell presided over the certification Joe Biden has He's been president for the last three years, so Donald Trump, by the way, was still president at that time.

If he had actively wanted to do what other people who have launched coups have done, in theory he would have called in the National Guard to not quell the of a misleading legal theory. He did not do it. He didn't try. No one who worked for him did that. is that you know and I want to tell everyone that we can talk about Trump because this is really about Trump. He used a phrase that Trump was spreading deliberately false information. The word that has a lot of weight. There's the word knowingly. So knowingly implies. and no, I believe the information he was spreading was false.

Yes, I think Donald Trump has a unique ability to convince himself of almost anything that is absolutely for his own benefit and I think that's actually what Donald Trump was doing there. the evidence of that is that Donald Trump is a human being in all of us who watched him over the last few years, so you know the idea that he knew it was fake. I'm not even sure those standards apply in any way and just evaluate. him as a human being, which is really what we are asked to do because there is an element of intent in this crime, Donald, do you think that today Donald Trump knows that he lost the election absolutely, so I don't actually believe that, but when So I'm glad that you have experience as a lawyer when we evaluate the men's area when we look at certain criminal statutes where intent is required.

It's a reasonable person standard, as if a reasonable person would have known otherwise. Depends. in the copyright standard, so it is not the same in all cases, if individual intent has to be established, then it is not enough to say that a reasonable person should have known, that would be enough for a negligence statute, generally when talking about reasonable people. The statutes just legally speaking, the reasonable person statute is that if a reasonable person would have known that is when the case of involuntary manslaughter comes, you cannot apply a reasonable person standard to first degree murder, so there is We have to establish the real motive for first degree murder, but first.

Murder in degree, you do not need the statement of I plan to kill this person or I intend to kill this person. We can prove that circumstantial evidence of mood is correct. Yeah, I'm sure you can try it, so I feel like I feel how I feel about Donald Trump. Were there all these people around him that he trusted to investigate voter fraud? He trusted the bar and the Department of Justice. He asked Pence, his vice president, to investigate it. He asked his chief of staff. He asked his legal counsel. To so many people that he apparently trusts. if he's asking them to investigate him and when they all investigated him and told him no, we found nothing, unless we literally make the concession that Trump might actually be a psychopath at that point, shouldn't that be the case?

I've realized, well, maybe I think he should have realized that day of the election that he lost the election, but that's nothing more than that, but I'm just asking, I'm saying that at the time he shouldn't have known to go and propagate those claims that he had asked everyone he trusted to investigate and then take those claims to Michigan and Georgia and then publicly and try to convince people to throw out the election. You don't believe that, but you're doing the same thing. going back to whether a reasonable person should have known yes a reasonable person should have known if Donald Trump knew that's that's different that's a different question and so combining those two questions will lead you to Syed ter, by the way, this is the reason Jack Smith accused the way Jack Smith accused, yes, that was Jack Smith did not accuse of conspiracy Jack Smith did not accuse Insurrection, he did not accuse Sous of conspiracy, right, if so, the reason It's because Jack Smith is a good lawyer, what he's doing is, generally speaking, I would say it's pretty obvious to expand legal coverage in strange areas to cover something that doesn't fit into any of these legal categories, but what I mean is It's just that Jack Smith is on my side and doesn't believe he can actually establish the intent necessary to convict for seditious conspiracy or insurrection.

I agree with that, but I think a lot of the underlying facts, because you mention those calls to uh raffensberger in Georgia, you mention them in the indictments that they were deliberately false information, so it seems like that's going to be part of the case, maybe not convict him on any of the four particular charges he mentioned, but it sounds like that will probably be part of what he'll have to do. set in court to convict Trump, so I want to see the actual text of the charges, so I'm sorry I don't have them memorized. I think it's a fraud charge that generally doesn't apply to cases like this, usually fraud.

The charge is like you were trying to steal money from the general government in the past, although it doesn't have to be just because Smith has presented oral arguments in response to many of Trump's lawyers' claims, this was one of them. infinite civil and criminal immunity was another one where he cites past cases where this type of thing happened because I think it was to defraud civil rights. I think it was the fourth charger, so the civil rights fraudster is usually someone who stands in the real like the door of the voting house and prevents you from voting, no, he has a specious legal theory that he defends in court about If those votes should be thrown out, sure, although I don't like when we say misleading legal theory and novel application which I agree that some of these are somehow novel.

I don't think we've ever had a president try to do this before it's a novel situation where someone has resisted the peaceful transfer of power. This is clearly very good if you're talking about the legal cases, I mean, that's not true, but the G Gors suit in 2000, I mean, if it's comparable to gore, if this is comparable to gore, I'm not saying that be comparable to gore, I'm saying that if the idea is that defending a leg theory in court amounts de facto to some form of denial or electoral interference somehow that can't say that that's not a general principle, it's too inclusive, I'm sure Gore wasn't trying to desertify the vote to the states. right, they challenged their thing in the Supreme Court, they lost their case in the Supreme Court and then the transfer of power happened and Donald Trump had a bunch of legal challenges and then he had a rally and then there was a riot and then he left power, yeah . but Eastman's theory about what Pence could do in Congress is a scream, a truly bullshit theory.

I mean, make no mistake, it's not just bullshit. I think if any Democrat had done this, I think we would feel like we would be looking at it from a very different perspective, because we would be using terms like attempted coup subversion or peaceful transfer of power if a Democratic vice president had tried to essentially say that in Congress they could waste the vote, so I think what I Actually, I want to get here so we can be more specific. Why are these terms important? We agree to talk largely about what happened. I think the characterization of the term is that we are bouncing between two different categories.

I want to make the legal things that we're seeing because, as you said, Jack Jack Smith, no one is charging incitement and I don't think insurrection is part of that, so we're legal only in terms of a president who is trying to prevent the peace. transfer of power, so whether you call it a bloodless coup or a coup d'état or whatever contemporary term you want to use, prevent the peaceful transfer of power by all means or by using means that are inappropriate, it is not exactly the same using means that are inappropriate. or illegal, okay, inappropriate, okay, it's illegal, I don't think so.

I don't think these charges actually meet the criteria for the various charges and we can discuss each case if you wish, sure. As for inappropriate, sure, I think. on tons of inappropriate things, I mean, inappropriate, it seems like the reason I don't like the word inappropriate is because conservatives are so quick to say, well, sure it was inappropriate, but all the inappropriate ones, I mean , I will be able to see that it is more inappropriate. that others simply do not see the most inappropriate, of course, that's fine, that's important to me, although doesn't it bother you that, like Donald Trump, he sought through Trump's legal and extralegal and magical ways to try to consolidate his power as president in the past when should he do it? what I've been able to do is that it's not something that's incredibly problematic.

I mean, the question to me is the most important question that I think the Democrats are trying to promote in this election cycle, which is that he is enough of a threat to democracy that if he were to win the election there would be no other, but he tried last time, couldn't he try next time? I mean, he could try to do whatever he wanted, presumably, and it would fail the same way he did last time. Why do we think that? Because it failed because then R three hours yes, let's say hypothetically Lord, save me uh let's say hypothetically Giuliani was the next um head of the Department of Justice Giuliani was the next Attorney General how would he be confirmed? um, well I'm not entirely sure if, because much of the Republican Party, despite feeling like they don't support Trump when it comes time to endorse him in Congress, would also have to check whether a criminal conviction for holding I I don't know the answer to that for sure, yeah, yeah, we, that's especially the 14th Amendment, we're figuring all this out right now, yeah, um, but I mean, let's say, if not, Giuliani, let's say, if there's any another number of crazy people who In theory, Trump could take his side of the government who wouldn't say anything last, next time because there were a lot of people who rebuked him, there were Republicans in a lot of the states, right?

Rensberger is one of them, um, they were Republicans in his own administration, uh, you have Rosen, uh, you have bar, um, there was his own vice president, but theoretically the next time and I feel like the last time I come in I'm going to do a little mind reading in macro maybe agree maybe disagree I think Trump thought something I don't think Trump knows much about how the government works I think we probably agree on that um I think Trump probably thought that if he had people who out like in At least in his party and in his type of camp they will basically do whatever it takes to give him what he wants and with no respect for the process, but now that he sees it right, it's not enough to just have allies, I need people. who are fiercely loyal to me, wouldn't we be concerned if a guy who essentially tried to steal the election didn't actually try to elect people who would be nicer to his plans in the next administration?

I believe in the checks and balances of The American government I think they worked on January 6, so if you ask me, I think Trump has badintentions or could have bad intentions with that kind of thing, I sure believe that the railing stands and will continue to stand as well. Sure, if someone was right and blatantly said, "I don't want to use the word fascist," but if they said, "I want to be authoritarian, I'm going to abolish all elections," you'd say, "I'm sure that's what they're saying." that, but I don't think he can really do it, so he's fine if he runs for president, you don't mind at all, as long as you feel like the rail Ian.

Maybe I prefer other candidates, but I think it's also one of what you do is that politicians again, this would be an exceptional circumstance, but politicians constantly make promises about things they're going to do and then they don't deliver and we tend to dismiss them, which which means you know If I promise on that first day, as Donald Trump promised, that he will literally deport every illegal immigrant in the country, do I think he will actually do it? I mean, I really highly doubted he wouldn't do it last time. in office, that's just, there are a lot of examples of this, I think, I think here's my question, do you think the guardrails won't stay?

I'm not sure, um, really yes, because I think the problem is one, um, when it comes time for the election. Republicans are cowards in office um and I don't know how many congressmen would support what he wants just because they want to win re-election or because they think it's inevitable anyway, well I mean one of the things that happened in 2022. The Democrats ran directly on this platform and a bunch of Republicans lost, who ran on this platform, literally every secretary of state ran with Donald Trump. We should deny that the election platform was lost in every state, sure, but other Republican offices are that safe, but I mean, look. about what happened with Kininger, Kininger and the Cheney right, who were very anti-Trump after j6 uh, for that select committee, the Kininger right didn't even run again and Cheney lost her election, but I think that's the Widest margin anyone has ever had.

He lost an election like all politics, people who were not born voted. I guess it's a surprising position for me because if we look at principled government positions, the idea that a man who has and I think we both agree on this that Donald Trump, Donald Trump's only loyalty is to Donald Trump, True, we agree that the only thing he cares about is Donald Trump. No, he's the only thing that matters to her. I think that's certainly the most important thing he cares about. It's the most important thing. He cares about what's right, so if you have a man who only cares about himself, welcome politics.

I mean, it may be more, but it may be more with Trump, but it's certainly not unique to Trump. I think the problem with Trump is too. um, I think he's even a threat to the Republican Party which I think you would agree with me, maybe not in general, but on every single point, Trump picks bad candidates, he doesn't care about the future of the Republican Party, as per example me. I think there's a chance, I don't think it will happen because of how the polls are looking now, but if Trump didn't get the nomination, I think Trump would say screw him and run as an independent because he thinks he can win or whatever. be. true, I doubt he did, but in theory, again, Trump was really happy to throw Georgia, um, the two runoff elections under the bus because Ravensburg didn't support him for the election, so what's all this in the service of what is the What is the generalized argument that you are making?

Do you think I'll come back to my question? Do you think that if Trump wins there will be no more elections? What does the percentage say? What percentage do you think it is? It is a reality that if Donal Trum Trump wins, I think there is a 100% chance that he will try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. In terms of whether he would succeed, I can guarantee you that he will not. Because? Because he is in his second term. and he is no longer eligible and he will believe that he won and he will leave, yes, but hasn't Donald Trump himself joked about running for a third term?

That's right, I think I think having a third turn, what didn't Donald Trump joke about? Jeez I'm not okay wait if you want to stop him from creating a revolution you should probably make him president and again here's another broad argument I don't like in favor of Trump and this. It was mentioned earlier in terms of we talked about not grading presidents on a curve, but then we said we took Biden. I am totally grateful. I know I 100% grade presidents on a curve. Are you kidding? Oh okay, I grade almost everyone on a curve I I don't treat my seven year old the same way I treat my 9 year old, it sure feels like we're treating Donald Trump like a 9 year old. seven years old or like a 9 year old child.

I think we should treat him like the president of the United States. I don't think we have a president who has taken concrete steps to prevent the transfer of power, like he did with the electorate, Shem, what he did with Pence, and what you did in trying. to capitalize on J6 violence, a president who has taken concrete steps to improve government, essentially I don't know why that guy would say, well, you know, it's Trump, he does Trump things that the railings held up, I'll probably do it the Next time. When we say we shouldn't, do you mean he actually should be? excluded from office I'm only talking about support because I don't think Republicans should support Trump you lose your incumbent Advantage the guys obviously destructive he is destructive the political party itself as um do you think it should be on the ballot um do you think there are reasons to take it off the ballot, I think there are reasons to be presented, but man, the wording, as much as our founding fathers of the government, everyone else who you know they wrote good amendments and they wrote well in the Constitution, some of the phrases are very very very and section three um the one that doesn't require any kind of real conviction um I don't have a strong feeling about it.

I will say that I am very interested in reading the majority opinion of the Supreme Court. I seriously doubt. The Supreme Court is going to hold that states should be able to decide whether to leave it off the ballot or not. I think it's probably unhealthy for the political future of the United States that the leading opposition candidate is now excluded from the vote. voting is probably not healthy for us, because then what you want to talk about threats to democracy that would be quite serious and applied across the board would, however, be as if that threat to democracy were earned by Donald Trump and the conservatives Who Supported Him I think conservatives made a dangerous gamble when they brought Trump to power and now, like all the consequences of that, it's something that all of us as Americans have to deal with.

I mean, I think the unprecedented legal theory that a state can just remove someone from the ballot based on informally believing that they are, quote, unquote, an insurrectionist, uh, is pretty far-fetched, I mean, that is what it says pretty well, but there's an amendment in the Constitution, the 14th amendment, that says if they've been involved in this, they won't be or you won't. I don't remember the phrase because it doesn't require conviction, but it's self-executing. It could be said that we are entering constitutional law. I mean, there are a number of minority opinions in the Colorado Supreme Court case that are pretty comprehensive.

Argument number one is that this is not self-executing because other elements are not self-executing. -execute uh, that ignores the actual subsequent law that happened. I mean, Congress passed a law, for example, in 1872, defining who was an insurrectionist and who was not an insurrectionist for each election. In 1994, Congress passed a law that specifically defined insurrectionary criminal activity so that in theory, someone could be convicted of insurrection and therefore ineligible to run for office - it's different from, say, the analogues you use the majority opinion, like age, obviously this is not the same thing, we can all tell someone's age by looking at their birth certificate I can't tell if someone is an insurrectionist without any reference to a legal statute or definition of the term.

I would also say be careful with that because remember one of Trump's first major political actions was challenging Obama's birth certificate and I thought that was silly at the time, but in any case, I like that they both said 100% chance that Trump will try to run for a third term and 0% chance that, in the third term, he'll be done, man, are you kidding me? He wishes Trump would do it. walk around with his hands up and be like he's a two-term president. I'm the only president since Grover Cleveland, he would know that, but since Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms, I threw Joe Biden out of office and I threw Hillary Clinton out of commission, man, it would be like I was living large, Are you kidding me?

He doesn't want the presidency after that. I just think it's scary that, like Donald Trump, he feels that way with all the accusations that are sometimes made against Democrats like Biden is ordering Garland to investigate Donald Trump and blah blah blah uh it seems like Donald Trump I would actually do that with your justice department and give them the order. Well, for example, with Jeffrey Clark, Jeffrey Clark went to Rosen and Donahue and said, Hey, listen, I need you to sign a letter that we're going to use to essentially intimidate states into overturning their elections by saying that we find important. election fraud and part of that threat was Jeffrey Clark saying listen if you're not going to do it Rosen uh you know Trump is going to fire you and just make me acting attorney general that was a threat that he carried and I think Trump repeated that threat in a meeting later I just reprimanded her when I think half the White House staff said if you did this you'd be fine, so that's a slightly different topic because now you're getting into all the election shenanigans and all that, but I'm saying he threatened to fire his acting attorney general if he didn't run the same platform, essentially as if Trump could order his justice department to do something.

Isn't Beyond The Pale for him? Isn't Beyond The Pale for him? order them to do it and then it's not Beyond The Pale that they reject it doing what is the story of his entire administration, while Joe Biden orders his justice department to do things and then they just do them right. Can't. Go into details, um, it's just one of the big problems I have, I mean, for example, all the talk about Trump's executive power, Trump's tyrant. I mean, Joe Biden has used executive power in ways that far surpass the president who has been stretching and stretching. and stretching executive power Jo Joe Biden is acting as if Joe Biden has gone far beyond anything Trump was even remotely trying to maintain through pure executive power, and in reality, Trump's use of executive power is not It's not even close to what Obama was in terms of his ability to literally pass border policy. he had him use executive power to march the military to the border to do border policy.

I mean, I mean, Joe Biden literally used the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration to try to impose vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans. That's crazy, he literally said I can't. relieve student loan debt and then tried to relieve hundreds of billions of dollars in studs, what happened was it was overturned by the Supreme Court and then they did it, they still did it. Biden boasts about what he could, about what he could. so he was able to alleviate, which I think was related to a particular type of student loan debt, but I'm just saying that the guardrails remain under Biden as much as they do under Trump, the only difference is that Once Biden, you know , he exhausts his executive power, he doesn't go around lying to people or trying to extort people or trying to come up with crazy schemes.

Well, I mean, this is the way I would think about this, think about the guardrails being held as the filter. Sure, okay, I mean, the coffee is in the filter, part of it you know what you want to happen and all the things that the guardrails prevent other things from happening. Now the question is what liquid you are pouring into the filter is okay, that is, if I, if I am, if the filter exists, if the guardrails hold and if Donald Trump can't steal the election, what is the policy that Does it pass through the other end of the filter?

The politics I get from Donald Trump at the The other end of the filter is a bunch of stuff I like, the politics I get from Joe Biden, the other end of the filter is a bunch of nonsense I don't like, so that's the basic calculus, okay, so the idea is essentially that Donald Trump's rhetoric is crazy, but we don't care. Donald Trump would probably try to steal an election if he could, butYou probably won't be able to do it. She's not going to do it again. I told you it's not like that. You don't think he has any reason not to?

Because she won't be eligible to be on the ballot. I mean, the way you want to talk about the 14th Amendment M, that's where the 14th Amendment applies. Okay, that's where it really applies. You can't, he is not qualified to be on the ballot in 2028, if he is the president of the United States, states can literally, self-executely, remove him from the ballot just as if he were over 35 a once he has been president twice. You are no longer eligible to be President of the United States, so why do you have to stay away from the B?

Why would you stop the 14th Amendment if you thought Vice President Pence could unilaterally decide the outcome of the election? on the ballot, now his theory is that he will be re-elected and then in 2028, he won't even be on the ballot and will order his new vice president, K Lake, to simply declare him president of the United States when he hasn't been on a ballot I don't know what the plan would be. I think we can laugh and say there's no plan we can come up with, but I think with the machine gun that's going to walk I think the problem is that, like the idea of ​​electing another president who has tried to circumvent the peaceful transfer of power Using additional legal means and then pretending that we can't come up with a single plan, he could try to circumvent other legal processes to have a third term or a longer term or install whoever he wants as the next president, just when one person has already shown you who they are and with all the people around them. he's okay with that when every single person who's worked with him except Sydney's friend, uh Eastman and Giuliani, which I don't think, I don't even think anyone would want to join those three, um, it just seems crazy.

To me, we'd say yeah, let's just go ahead and give this guy another term for president, but like he can't run for a third term, so it's okay when there's like 50 million other things to justify you. that if you want him not to cause electoral problems you should elect him president in the next election cycle and then he won't be electable, that's fine, that's a totally lame argument, but that's fine, recently in the news, the presidents of Harvard Pen and MIT they don't fully denounce calls for genocide and that Rose questions the influence of Dei programs on universities, so perhaps we look at this or move away more broadly from identity politics on universities or from the awakening of identity politics in our culture about how big the threat is.

This is to our culture and to Western civilization, so it's obviously a big threat. That's why I think it's a big threat. I want to give a definition of awakening because very often people are accused of not using awakening properly or believing that it is some kind of trap. -all phrase I don't think it's an all-encompassing term eh, I think wokeness has its roots in postmodernism, which essentially suggests that every principle is a reflection of the underlying structures of power and that therefore any inequality that arise under such a system is a reflection again of that power structure which used to be applied in a somewhat Marxist way, the suggestion is that economic inequality was the result of a misallocation of power in the structure preserved by an upper layer of people who wanted to reduce the exploitation of people. that was sort of a Marxist version of postmodernism and then it transmuted into sort of a racial version of postmodernism in which the systems of the United States have a white supremacist orientation and are perpetuated by a group of people who are actually in favor of the preservation of white power and white supremacy, which is the generalized theory of critical race theory, as proposed, for example, by Jeene Stanic and Richard Delgado in their book on critical race theory, which has taken a softer form we refer to as Dei, the key in Dei is the e which means Equity, so Equity is a term that does not mean equality.

People confuse it. Equality is the idea that we should all have the same rights. We should all be treated equally by the law. It is an inequality that arises from any system, therefore it is due to discrimination and the best way to know if someone has been a victim is by difference in their race and we can know if you are a member of an oppressed group or an oppressive group by the intersectional identity you carry and by the nature of your group's success or failure predominantly along economic and power lines in American life, this means that if a group is predominantly economically successful you must be a member of the victimizing class and the only corrective for that group.

It would be as I the discrimination that is built into the system, which is incredibly dangerous, leads to a victim-victimizer narrative that is unhealthy for individuals and terrible for societies, frees people from individual responsibility and destroys the very notion of a objective metric by which we can decide meritocracy and meritocracy is the only system that humans have devised that has positive externalities in literally any area of ​​life. Any other distribution of the power of wealth carried out on other lines that has nothing to do with Merit has negative externalities. Every system that has to do with Merit has positive externalities. externalities because presumably the most effective and useful people are going to be successful under those systems, that is the very basis of a meritocracy and the externalities of that mean that other people benefit from the meritorious and excellent performance of those people, perhaps it would be good to get his comments on your old stompsgr Harvard, do you think the president of Harvard should have been fired?

I mean, I think she should have been fired not because of the plagiarism accusations. I think she should have been fired based on her performance in that congressional hearing, uh, if the word black had been substituted for Jewish in that statement by Elise Stanic that she was asking about trans or literally any other minority in America , maybe with the exception of Asians, then the answer would have been very different coming from Cloudy and gay. That being said, I don't think Cloud and Gay's shooting really has much meaning. I'm, she got what she deserved. Sure, that means the underlying system based on Dei Equity has been severely damaged in some way.

No, I think this is a way for universities to basically throw someone overboard as a sacrifice to maintain the underlying system that continues to predominate in American universities, where they spend literally billions of dollars each year on Dei Initiatives and hiring of diversity and diversity administrators and all this I mean one of the rising costs of education is in the massive administrative function that universities now carry out instead of tjing and you know, the cost of dormitories and stuff, guys . I probably agree with a lot of this, maybe I do, um, I don't know, I don't know what makes things do this, but it seems like we can never like to have something good and then end up as something good, uh. things are always taken to their extremes and then we have to fight at those extremes, as I would say in my day we called it sjw social justice warriors before it was woke, like from 2013 onwards, whatever, there are aspects of the wake up that I think they are good, I like the additional representation we have in the media now.

I like how much people complain about the Internet and how it's regulated that there are a lot more groups represented on the Internet, whether we're talking about, uh X the. platform for formerly known as Twitter or Facebook or whatever, I think in some way or if we are driving, you know, the achievements of women in school and in the workforce in general. I think these are all good things, the theme that you What we found is that people never have a stopping point and I think people get lost in this awakening for the sake of awakening, where we start to see these very strange deformations of these academic arguments, I guess, that are used for really horrible things.

So, for example, I think in the United States you can talk about things like white supremacy or things like the oppression of certain demographic groups, especially with Jim Crow and pre-Jim Crow laws, and you can even talk about the effects of that, but then when you come across this strange world where we've warped these things so that not only is white supremacy still as present today as ever, in reality, black people from other minorities can't even be racist, no No I have the power because we're going to use a different definition of racism and we can only talk about punching up instead of punching down, and we're actually going to say it's totally okay for these people to say or do whatever they want and it's never wrong. , but as white people who have always been oppressors, even if you're like a guy from a trailer park whose family is addicted to meth, you know you have all these privileges, etc., etc.

I think you run into these problems. where wokeness starts out as a really good idea and I would say it's accomplished some really good things, especially when it comes to women's education, and then it gets so academic, so there's a word academic, whatever, where you take something and put it. I go to school too much and then it comes out like a Frankenstein, you know, cancer, baby, of such horrible things like today, when I'm reading things and I know Ben is the same as if I hear someone say the word like anti-racism. I'm probably ignoring everything else you have to say, uh, if you pronounce the word like Colonial, whatever I'm probably going to say, you probably don't have anything good to say, um, yeah, a lot of that's taken too.

So far, but you know, what I'll blame for some of this is I'll blame conservatives for some of this because I think one problem that happens and I think Ben might even agree with me here as well is that I think two have happened. big problems. In the United States, I think generally speaking, one we've become more different than ever and two, we're becoming more similar than ever and when I say this, it's like we're dividing into these groups and then these groups are imposing this crazy homogeneity between these two separate groups and I think one of these schisms has been the reluctance of conservatives to engage in things related to higher education, so for a long time conservatives are saying like, oh, you know, education. the institutions are against us, you know, Russ lb talks about how evil universities are and blah blah blah, and then what happens is conservatives are less and less willing to participate in them, so you get this scenario or this environment where everyone who is involved in uh academia on the administrative side is fucking crazy, they are even crazier and I also want to make a distinction between administrators and professors because a lot of times when you're reading story after story After Story of how all these crazy administrators who are moving further and further to the left, usually the faculty are fighting against that, a lot of the 10e professors, a lot of people in their departments are saying, "Wait, well, actually We don't agree with this, but I feel like it's because conservatives for so long I've demonized these institutions instead of critically evaluating them, uh, and I've tried to have an honest critique and engage with the fact that they're completely separate and when you just have a bunch of lefties or righties together, all of them What they do is they've veered even further into their crazy directions.

I feel like that's a big problem we're dealing with in the country, where conservatives have completely broken off some conversations and will no longer participate in them and then. the people left simply run as far to the left as possible when you look at certain institutions. I think one of the things that people on both sides of the aisle are constantly looking at is whether the institution suffered such capture that there's just no ability to fix it and when you talk about universities I'm not going to blame conservatives for the failure of universities because they haven't been present in important positions at universities since the late 1960s.

You can read Shelby Steel's work in this where she talks about how you know she used to be, now she's a conservative black person, she was a liberal black person in At the time, he was actually a pretty radical black activist at the time, in the '60s, and he talks about walking into the office of liberal administrators who are largely on his side regarding civil rights and being radical, he claims that the University's systems were inherently broken, inherently incorrect, and could not bearrange and talks about this in a very evocative way. It's a very evocative episode in which he speaks. about how he's smoking and as he smokes the ash grows bigger and bigger and the ash falls on this very expensive rug and the president of the University who listens to him rant and Rave, said Shelby Steel says I thought he was going to Say something about this, I want I mean, he was destroying like a thousand rugs in his office being an idiot and instead I could see Wilt inside, I could see him collapse, he didn't have the institutional credibility or the intelligence or the spiritual strength. just saying, listen, I agree with you on some of this stuff, but you're being an idiot and what you see in the late '60s and early '70s is, in fact, the collapse of these institutions to the point where When I went to university there was a radical disproportion between conservatives and liberals and the problem is that when it comes to a system like universities, you basically have to separate universities into two separate categories, one is the root where universities are still very good American universities.

As far as the root is concerned, there are still leading universities in the world. Harvard's major creations these days come from actual hard science fields, then there's the liberal arts field where you basically have a self-perpetuating elite because that's how dissertations work if you have someone who is very on the left and decide that you are going to write a dissertation on the history of gun rights in the United States, the chances of your dissertation advisor approving it are much lower than if you wrote something that tends to agree with the political positions of your thesis advisor now listen, I think there are open and tolerant professors even in liberal arts at these universities I went to these universities I went to UCLA I went to Harvard Law School when I was at Harvard Law School One of my favorite teachers was Lonni Guier.

Lonnie Guier. They tried to appoint her, I believe, Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration. She was too liberal and they rejected her, so she was like a total communist when I went there. She was great. She had debates every day. She was wonderful. She used to write me recommendations for my legal work after we left Randle Kennedy. I don't really agree with him. Randle Kennedy was excellent. Teacher. There are some teachers who are like that. Unfortunately, he tends to be. In these Echo Chambers there is more and more ideological conformity that is rigorously applied and is from left to left, so for example when I was at Harvard Law School the president of the University was another president who ended up being AED Larry Summers Larry Summers had been Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and made the critical mistake of suggesting that perhaps the lack of women in hard sciences in prestigious positions was possibly due to two factors that people refused to talk about: one was the possibility that women didn't actually want to be in hard sciences is almost the rates that men do, which turns out to be true and two was the correct distribution of the main IQ, which is something you certainly weren't allowed to talk about on the idea that men's bell curve when it comes to IQ, especially in severe subjects, tends to be shallower than women's bell curves.

When you get to the end of the bell curve, what you tend to see is a lot of really dumb guys and a lot of really smart guys, and when you're talking about top colleges maybe that has something to do with the disproportion and is trying to explain that , to say our systems don't discriminate if we end up with more men than women maybe more men are applying and more men are qualified, that's pretty much was overthrown for that by a leftist faculty and you know the General Alum Network at Harvard University , so there's a lot to blame the conservatives for giving up the playing field.

I totally agree that conservatives should not have given up the playing field in some institutions. the universities were delivered much earlier than 20 years ago, they were delivered in the late '60s and early '70s, yeah, so I think, a couple of things, one of the big problems I have with this kind of thing, no. I know if we call it the mistake of Trumpism or populism it's this complete disregard for institutions and this disconnection from participation in the system, so that's one of the big things I have with progressives about who cares because they're all 20 years old. and they don't vote. anyway, um, but it's another thing that I notice with a lot of people who are Trump voters, Trump fans or whatever, this idea where we say this institution is irrevocably destroyed, it's irredeemable, it can't be saved, it can't be saved. can none of that. we can fix it um and I think what that leads people to do is they become even more disconnected and then there's a general hopelessness when it comes to how society works or structures in such a way that you fall into that populous brain rot of the only person who can save me is Donald Trump.

I can't trust literally anything and I think when you start leading people in that direction all it does is further amplify all the problems that you complain about, so that's one of the reasons why when we talk about conservative participation I want there to be more conservatives who are trying to participate in academia, but I feel like the mainstream thought or the leader speaking against it is basically saying it's a waste of time, it's completely lost, so I. I think the alternative to that is that they are seeing on the right a growth of, for example, alternative universities, saying the worst: no, no, I don't believe that at all.

I think the competition is a great way to incentivize some change on behalf of universities. that they may have forgotten that there is another side of the aisle in the United States. educational system at the higher levels if you are not in the stem it is a complete scam I think it is a complete waste of money I think it is a complete waste of time and I think that is all it is is a formalized and very expensive grading mechanism for IQ people, that's it, people take an SAT, you go to a good school, you take four fucking years.

I know I did it at UCLA and then we looked at, based on your degree, where you should go to law school. I could have gone straight. high school to law school with maybe a year of training and then I did a year of law school and finished well, the reality is this is a giant scam and again it's a bipartisan issue but it's just a widespread issue that we have and you want to talk about things that hurt the lower classes in In the United States, the degree hemorrhage is so wild and crazy that there are so many jobs in the United States that should not require a college degree that we now require a college degree for because there was a strange idea that occurred to the Americans and they got confused. correlation of causality they would say oh look, people who go to college make more money than people who don't go to college, therefore everyone should go to college, maybe the reason is because people who go to college university were better qualified for particular jobs. because on average not all the time, but on average a lot of those people were smarter and made more money because of it, so all you've done is create these extra layers of stratification so that a person who used to be able to get a job with a college degree now you have to have a postdoctoral degree to be able to get that degree a person who used to be able to just graduate high school now it's the fact that you have to go to Juco and then you have to go to college or no one It's going to look at your resume, it's really terrible for people who can't afford all of that, it's led to this massive increase in the cost of education that is inexplicable outside of this particular type of bleeding and, by the way, federal subsidies. for higher education again, one of my problems with federal subsidies for higher education.

I would love for everyone to be able to go to college if they are qualified to do so and if it is productive, but one of the things I did when I went to law school. It's that I took out loans because a bank said they would give me my money back if I got a law degree from Harvard, but you know when you're not going to get your money back if you're a bank, you're not going to. lend to a guy who wants to major in art theory, you know, because it's a good bet there's no guarantee, right?

If I give a loan for a house, I can get the house back, how can I get your garbage UCLA college degree back? There is no way to get it back. do that so you know one of my so yeah, this is the broader conversation about education in general. I think the education system is looking for a bruise and I think all it takes is for it to completely collapse on the non-core side where actually learning things is for people who employ Just say: give me your SAT score and I'll hire you for an apprenticeship directly after high school, which would eliminate much of the middleman, but as to the general point you're making. about institutions.

I may not agree with education and how far it has come in general. I agree with you, so overall I agree and I can use my favorite longest word in the English language here. I would consider myself in many cases an anti. -He is an establishmentist, right, look, I like to leave that because if you are an establishmentist that means that you like the establishmentist. I'm anti can you say that word? That's what we all learned when we were anti-dis establishment teris long group say what's up? super fragile California, leave it and then what about the new ultramicroscopic or scientific terms or what about the 7,000 letters that are from uh biocham?

I got my education in the Soviet Union so we just did math, I didn't learn any of this that's why you are a useful person, sovet Math Union was that 1 plus one how to make it equal to three we know long words and he scams on Internet and I speak for one anyway, but the point is that I don't disagree that there is a general tendency of the population on all sides of the aisle to look at institutions and then throw them overboard. I think part of that is earned by people who are in positions of power in institutions that have completely undermined the faith and credibility of those institutions.

I think you have to examine institution by institution which ones are salvageable and which ones aren't, so I'm not a total anti-disestablishment. I would be partially in that camp, there are certain institutions like liberal arts higher education that I think we might be better off without, and then there are certain institutions like, for example, the involvement of the American government, where when people talk about we need a revolution, like no, that's not something, we need an evolution, we need a change, we can use the system and you know, but I think you have to establish, you have to look at it industry by industry, you know, just institution by institution in that position about institutions, do you think Biden or Trump would be on the side of institutions?

I think the institutions in the United States at the government level are strong. I think social institutions are fair, yes, but I'm just curious about your general view of institutions. Do you think Biden or Trump would advise you more about how you view them? I mean, I think in rhetoric Biden would do it and then I think he would rip the face off the institution and use it as a Mas like the cannibal Lector. I mean, he resisted calls from some people to fill the court and uh, yeah, because I think. that his use of executive power was greater than Donald Trump's the power he had he used to greater effect than Donald Trump Donald Trump again hit the sides of the box but couldn't get out of it, well, um, really quickly because that answer went way further than the initial question, but yeah, just really quick, the reason I repeat that my main problem that I feel we have in society today is that people are getting into their own bubbles, the idea of ​​having conservative and liberal schools seems like the saddest thing in the world to me, since I wish conservatives and liberals went to school together because I think these people need to interact more with each other, if only to say that. the other person is not like some monstrous and horrible entity that wants to destroy the country.

Listen. I think that a classically liberal idea for many schools would not be a bad thing. I think that would be a good thing. I just wonder if that can be saved and if it is possible. It can't be saved, so the answer to that is to create change. I feel like the biggest problem we have is that people get sorted into these different ghost worlds, where even if you live in the same city, there are totally different ones. worlds that exist between liberals and conservatives and I feel like one of the barriers to people understanding the other side sometimes is just a little bit of information or a little bit of first-hand experience, when in terms of information,I'm sure Vi um, I don't know, I don't know if this is a complete study, but they were talking about how a large percentage of students would change their minds from The River To The Sea when you told them what from the riv what the river and what the sea was, yes, or when you said yes, what does a one-state solution mean?

A lot of them like it so much that the numbers went from about 70% to about 30% in terms of similar support, um, it would fall and it wasn't because you were doing a radical redefinition of their entire ideology, you were just giving them a little more information, and then, something that I have seen at a first level is when I go and speak or do debates at the University, sometimes. I'm in very, very, very conservative areas, some of my fans are trans and a trans person shows up and talks to conservatives for a while, not like in a speech, but like in a bar or setting at most. of them go, they like, oh, not all trans people are like this crazy lunatic on Twitter who is fucking a real crazy person and then for some of my fans, when they date conservatives like, oh, these guys are actually quite friendly, I thought they would.

They have all been homophobic, racist, transphobic and evil, but they are not, they are normal people. I feel like we need more of that. I totally agree with that, certainly, yes, and I feel it in our social media platforms, in our algorithms and our schools. I feel like we are sorting more and more and more and more and any kind of rhetoric that encourages sorting is really bad and harmful, we need to keep mixing and there are other things I want to talk about is open your mouth. Destiny the unifier Wow okay since we don't like Trump as we get closer to the end let's descend further and further into the meme uh Ben you're in a monogamous marriage uh and Destiny you've mostly been in one marriage open until recently, how fundamental marriage is. monogamous marriage with the United States of America can open marriage work, are they harmful to society? um Ben, marriages are the most important thing people can do in the United States because the things that are within their control are easier to control than the things that are outside of their control.

Control people tend to think about big political changes, obviously things they can do to change the entire system, but the reality is that the best thing you can do to change your society is to get married, have children, and raise them responsibly. The best thing you can do is make an open marriage work. I mean, I think it depends on your definition of work, so in my version of work the answer is no, because what you really need to facilitate the healthy growth of a child. It is a father and mother who are committed to each other.

All the ideas that there is no emotional component to sexual activity are completely misleading, that it is better for men than women, but it is not true for either, the idea of ​​a total, total commitment to a being human with which you genetically create children, which is typically how we have done throughout human existence. In fact, it is the fundamental basis for any functional civilization. It allows the transmission of culture and values. the transmission of beliefs and responsibility and that is what gives the big lie to both the community lie and the atomistic individualistic LIE. The community LIE is that you belong to the giant community of man which is not true because you have a family uh and their loyalty.

It should be and is naturally towards your family members, first how we learn and then explain it, uh, and it is also a lie to the notion that all of us, atomized, responsibilities-less individuals, are born into a world of responsibilities. We are all born into a world of responsibilities, rules and roles, and those are good ones, and if we don't socialize our children that way, number one there will be no children, number one there will be no healthy CH. Number two, there will be no healthy children. Number three, there will be no foundation for any of the social fabrics, which is the true glue that holds society together, nor for a functional government, so yeah, yeah, monogamous marriage.

I am a Fan. Married 15 years, four children, yes. Destiny, what do you think, um. I think when we talk about similar relationships or marriage, I think something that's really important is that we have to talk about whether or not children are talked about or not, because I think once you introduce the child aspect, I think the style or the type of relationship. What you do will become much more important than everything that existed before that. I agree, for example, in terms of what Ben is saying, there will probably be some structure that is ideal for the care and raising of a child um, I think having a child gives you a lot more acceptance from society because now , suddenly you worry about a lot of things that maybe you didn't before because not only do you exist in society, but you can't just run, uh, now you have a child that exists there and you have to make sure everything runs smoothly, no just for you but also for that child, and possibly, although we're getting into strange places, I suppose, in the world now.

Children are the main conduit through which cultural values ​​are transmitted and everything, um, the only kind of strange thing that we are dealing with and have been dealing with for several decades and We will continue is that as the As societies progress it seems that people have fewer children and in reality I don't know 100% what the answer to that question is. I'm sure it is. I mean an implementable answer that works and that we know we can. get everyone on board with this, it seems like for a lot of human history, having kids and it still is having kids is amazing and kids are great and kids are magical and miraculous and all this, but in reality There wasn't much competition. for your attention, having a child just when you reach a certain age and start working, especially if you are a woman.

I mean, childbirth is the next step and then having a family to raise your children and then doing that is kind of like that. The next step today, especially when women can work, especially when women have access to contraception, there are many things available in the world that compete for the interest of people who might otherwise have children, in such a way that we've almost flipped it in such a way that it's been brought up before like rich people tend to have fewer children than non-rich people, um or unless you're part of particular religious communities that strongly encourage having children.

I don't know if I would say that there is a moral imperative for an individual to have children. I think there are a lot of interesting arguments along that path. I don't know if we're at the point yet where we need to say, "Oh my God, we're running out of people, we need to have more kids." Um, I don't think we're there yet, but we are seeing strange demographic trends that are having a huge impact on how countries perform, for example the fact that we have a disproportionately huge aging population that needs to be taken care of. with medical expenses and everything that votes differently than our younger population and that when they die, the way that society will look will be very different um, yeah, I.

I'm not entirely sure what the future will look like in terms of pressuring people to have children when each industrialized country, as it industrializes, has fewer and fewer children. questions for the answer my answer was go to church religion yes yes well we could talk about religion but that's not fast at all let me ask uh this is from the internet does body composition matter? Jesus Christ, you're really bringing out the red. pill stuff, are you avoiding answering? I mean, it totally depends on who you are, if you are someone who doesn't care, no, if you are someone who does care, yes, yes, of course, it depends on the the answer is yes, okay, should the pornography?

Not if you could do it. Yes, no, there is no benefit to porn. It is a waste of time and destructive to the human soul. I can't believe I'm asking this question, only fans are empowering. or destructive to women, Jesus, these are rapid fire, yes, just you. I mean, it probably feels empowering to those who are making a lot of money from it, it probably feels disempowering to others who feel affected by the cultural norms set by women who only make fans. There's my quick answer: It's destructive even for those who are making a lot of money because when you degrade yourself to just being a set of human body features that other people masturbate to, it's bad for you and it's bad for them, yes.

Is rap music absolutely you evolved in this or have I evolved in this? So again I'm going to go to what is the definition of music. My original argument about rap was that music involves the following three elements: Rhythm Melody Harmony that rap typically involves. maybe one of those uh there maybe there's a melody maybe sometimes um so it depends on the type of rap uh with that being said, I might be convinced on this topic, but listen, I'm a classical violinist, I mean, that's how I was raised I listen to Beethoven, Brahs and Mozart like in the car with my children, so is it comparable?

It is in the same category as Beov Brahs and Moart. It's very difficult for me to stay in the same category. Okay, it's both. World class debaters, even public in intellectuals, if I can say Jesus is very tough here, I know you both care about the truth, what is your process to get to the truth? I think it's very important for everyone, they will say that they are objective and they are not partisan, I think it is very important to have mental safeguards for bad opinions, so for example a couple of things that I will ask myself are for a particular debate am having, can I convincingly argue both sides of the debate?

If I can't, I won't bother having the debate because I realize I'm probably too partisan and if I can't even make an opposing argument here, another question you might ask yourself is, well, what would I do? It takes to convince you to abandon a certain position, if you know, if you firmly believe you know that Medicare for All is a good system for managing America's health care and someone says well, what would that take for you? convince you otherwise if you can't even imagine what it would take to convince me otherwise, you're probably too deep into a position, so I think if you go through life saying "well, I'll do my best to be impartial instead of saying I try my best to be aware of my biases because the latter is more realistic, the former is literally impossible unless you're a computer, um, yeah, so I think having actual mental practices that you engage in to deal with. of counteracting some of the biases you have are more important than trying to pretend you're bias-free and then consuming all your One Source media, yeah, Ben.

I mean, I think I agree with the how-to guide. The simplest thing is you read a bunch of different things from a bunch of different sources and where they intersect is probably the set of facts and then everything else you extrapolate the opinion from different premises that that's some kind of short story, so read , read the New York Times and Breitbart and they will disagree on many things, but if the core of the story and the Daily Wire certainly read the Daily Wire, if you read the Daily Wire and you read The Washington Post and there is a nexus of the same. then you can guarantee that at least you know if we are all blind by feeling the elephant, at least if we are all feeling the trunk, we know that there is a trunk there, you may not know what the elephant is. and if you're feeling frisky, then check out Destiny too.

Thanks, you talked about it. You know, we had a conversation debating Ben for a long time. What is your favorite thing about Ben Shapiro? What I like most about Ben Chapiro is at least when we. In the election season he is very critical of his own party. I appreciate that, um, not that. I feel like Ben generally tries to stick more to fact-based arguments than other conservatives I hear, which is something I appreciate because it's more fun to fight on factual bases to discuss things like foreign policy or whatever, rather than of people who only dwell on idealistic or philosophical grounds because they don't want to learn about any of the facts, so I appreciate that Ben, I've had the opportunity to talk to Destiny now.

What do you like about the boy? A lot of similar things, but it's a lot of fun to see how you do your process. That's a great thing. It's something great. It's a gift. the AUD because, honestly, doing what we do a lot of what we do is sitting and reading and being behind closed doors and educating yourself and talking to people, but being able to see how you do it in real time is a really interesting window into how people think and how people learn, that's a really good thing, gentlemen, this was amazing, it's an honor, thank you for doing this today.

Thank you so much, thank you for having me, thank you for listening to this debate between Ben Shapiro and Destiny to support this

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