Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/7/23 (VAULT UNLOCKED): Vivek Ramaswamy Interview/Jon Stewart Interview

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Unlocked from the Vault we first have a long form interview with Jon Stewart, Saagar, and Krystal. Followed by a re-release of a full length interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, Saagar and Marshall on their podcast The Realignment.Support The Realignment: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-realignment/id1474687988To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, guys, I can hardly believe I am saying these words, but joining us now, the former host of The Daily Show and the current host of The Problem with Jon Stewart, the one and only Jon Stewart. Welcome, great to have you. Good to see you, sir. Oh. Hold on, hold on.

I'm about to make my entrance. There he is. Wow. A little bit older than I remember, but looks good. Very dramatic. Yeah. Pretty good, right? Yeah, I thought that was pretty good.

So I really have genuinely been enjoying the show. We've actually talked about it here on Breaking Points a couple of times, but let's just start with- Oh, thank you. Oh, of course, yeah. What was the sort of creative spark that led you to create this show

and decide to come back into the media space at this time? I think it was that sense of having worked out in Washington. The Daily Show was kind of an exercise in catharsis, an exercise in sitting in your underwear, yelling at the TV screen. And there was a certain impotent rage to it. But it also for my creative mind ran its course. I wasn't quite sure how to evolve it anymore. I wasn't quite sure what else to do with it. And I didn't want it to become a caricature or become rote. And you don't wanna stay somewhere just because they're letting you. And you can see now, like the other folks that had been on it have worked and evolved it

into these different forms that have been really cool to see. You know, Oliver and Trevor and Sam, and like they've moved it and made it their voice. And that's kind of, that's the creative process. But I couldn't, for me, I just needed to step away and kind of engage more in the real world. And so after having done that

and seeing how the halls of power have a relationship with their constituents, but it's not one that is necessarily grounded in their needs or the necessities or their reality and so it stemmed from the idea of like why is that gap so difficult to bridge and it seems simple like to be honest with you a lot of this stuff seems simple so it was like you know the impetus of the show is just why not right you know you'd, you'd have these constituencies with these very real and urgent issues. You'd have the stakeholders in those issues very articulately stating what their problem is or what the process is or the perversion of that process. And then you have people who have an ability to affect change over that, disconnected from it. So the idea for the show is sort of simple, which is set the map on where the kind of corruption or perversion is

in whatever issue we're talking about. Let some of the stakeholders express how that corruption or perversion affects what they're trying to accomplish or affects their lives, and then try and talk to somebody who might have a sense of how you could overcome that or is in a position where they could affect it. It's really interesting to see you in the new format. Long-winded. No, it's fine. We're on the podcast. You don't have to worry about the commercial

breaks or whatever. We got limitless time. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. What I enjoy is that while you were a source for me whenever you were on The Daily Show, you would always famously say, like, I'm a comedian. I'm not delivering the news. But here, you've really embraced both the comedy aspect, the explainer aspect, and then the newsmaking interviews. So how has that kind of changed your, not even calculus, but like the way that you guys come up with the constructs of the show? Because to sit down with a Bob Iger or to sit down with a Jamie Dimon, to sit down with the people that you are and to push

them in a way that, or the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, both, those are not necessarily things that might've happened in the previous era. And you've affected change. I mean, I think single-handedly are responsible for the word burn pits being uttered by the president of the United States in the State of the Union. How have you reflected on that in the context of the current show? Well, I don't know. So part of it is Daily Show made its money on volume. We were there know, we had to do four shows a week. So you're always there. So you would have those types of interviews, but you would also have, you know,

the third lead on New Girl and also somebody who wrote a book about how they built the Pentagon. So it was this wide variety of things where you'd have a, you know, someone was asking me, well, you know, there's an earnestness to the show. And how is that?

And I feel like The Daily Show was very earnest. You may have thought it was cynical, but it wasn't. It was more pathetically earnest and idealistic. The only difference is we would have a correspondent deliver that earnestness with archness. They would approach it from the arch position and then i would say that sounds crazy you know i i would be the the mirror to say to the uh person who is delivering an arch premise but that sounds like it's backwards. Wah, wah. So, you know, we had a lot of people on the show back when I was doing it that were newsmakers from Rumsfeld to Sebelius to Pelosi to-

Right. All these people that were Judith Miller. But I think it got, in volume, it's forgiving in one sense, in that when you fuck up a show or you're not doing it well or you can come back and take another crack at it the next day. But also everything blended together in kind of a stream of it. There becomes a certain meaninglessness to volume.

Yeah. Because all it is is it just plays into the churn. Yeah, no, we totally get it. there becomes a certain meaninglessness to volume. Yeah. All it is is it just plays into the churn. Yeah, no, we totally get it. I mean, we experienced that. I don't know if you know our trajectory at all, but we were, this show used to be at the Hill and it was five days a week.

And we've taken it independent and intentionally scaled it back to three days a week because yeah, you just get in the cycle where you're like, you realize you're talking about stories that you don't actually really care about exactly that you don't actually really think are a great use of the audience's time you're hosting guests that you're like this person's not really adding anything to the conversation so for us three days a week has been a good sweet spot in terms of being able to we do a daily monologue each of us think about have a topic that we have time to get invested in so i definitely hear that i wanted to ask you um you've got a great new episode out on

the media we do a lot of media critique here as well so i want to dig into that a little bit more but one of my favorite episodes that you did was on the economy and you took apart the sort of like moral panic over socialism and also really pointed out that guess what guys we have a lot of socialism for the rich it's only when it's you know to benefit the working class that suddenly we have these moral panics and it just struck me watching that episode that um the critique and the commentary was to my ears a little bit sharper a little bit more pointed than from the Daily Show era. And first of all, I wonder if you agree with that and if you feel like your politics have

evolved or changed over the interim since you were, you know, last doing the Daily Show. I mean, I think my politics are relatively consistent. It's that, I mean, honestly, you could have lifted that, and I probably did, the socialism for corporations bit directly from The Daily Show. Again, I think it's got to do with having a little bit more time to craft something that can be a little bit more specific and a little bit more surgical. I think when you're, you know, comedy in general, and especially as I wielded it, is pretty reductive just in general. It's, you know, comedy is a distillation of a variety of biases and prejudices into, you know, a kind of a catch-all bucket. And so I think for this,

it was about trying to deconstruct the narrative of what is considered socialism. It's the idea that for a certain status quo population in America, an entitlement is just basically shit you don't need. And a stimulus is shit you need that you think is important. And so it's trying to make that point that if you look at the status quo,

mainstream distillation of our economic policy, we have this identity. The show always tries to exist in the difference between what the image of something is versus the room where that image is planned, the meeting where they design that image. Sometimes it's purposeful. Sometimes it's by happenstance. Sometimes it's malevolent. Sometimes it's just blind spots and ignorance. But it's looking at that.

And it's pretty clear that the image of the United States as a beacon of free market capitalism, where the government doesn't choose winners and losers, and just this laissez-faire invisible hand creates the wealth. This is how God intended money to be made, is a fabrication and a fallacy. And I think the whole point of the episode was to show that as specifically as we could and to show that it's all a manipulation. It's just a question of

where the powers that be decide to put the emphasis in that moment. Yep. I remember thinking so much during the Trump era, whenever we had to react to some of the insanity. I was like, man, I wish Jon Stewart was around during Russiagate and Smart. So to get to watch this episode was like a cathartic experience because I remember thinking how important it would have been to have you around at that time. And I think the biggest problem, Jon,

which you allude to is, look, you know, yeah, Fox is back. I would have come to your house, by the way. Yeah, you just should have called me. I'd have come to your house. You could have had me around. I wish. I could have sat on the couch with you and watched TV. My mom would have been thrilled, man.

But when I think about it, it's like, yeah, okay, Fox is bad. Right-wing media is bad. We agree, you know? But so many of the same characteristics, the intertwinement of the administration, talking points, building up narratives. And as you point to in your interview with Bob Iger, it's not just that the media is covering fear. It's that by their

ridiculous and selective coverage, they're influencing the trajectory of policy and of politics in this country is just as easily applied to so much of whatever the corporate, liberal media industrial complex, as much as it is on the right john why is it so difficult to get the people in that complex to understand it you know having come from a more conservative background i can tell you a lot of people at fox they know what's up they know what they're doing but the people of the washington post and the new york times they they truly believe they're doing the lord's work, exposing all of this, and they don't even see their own role in so much of the system that they're helping to perpetuate. That's why I

always found your coverage so valuable. It's just skewering of everybody, which I think is where the majority of the country is. They hate it all, all of it. Well, so one of the difficulties of the nihilism that you describe is, I think you have to understand it's about incentives and mechanisms, right? And the mechanism and incentivizing for right-wing conservative media is different from the mechanism and incentivizing for what you would consider your mainstream or uh then you know left-wing media so yes it's it's not about a pox on all your houses it's about criticism of or or examining each thing as its own separate entity, but being as clear headed and smart about what you believe

to be. It's about looking at things on a different polarity, whereas the mainstream media has set up kind of this dynamic of right versus left, because it's producible. And it's a good source of conflict. And it's reductive enough that it's you can repeat it. I mean, the one thing you guys know about making content is it's one thing to be able to make it. It's another thing to be able to make it all the time, every day, consistently. And that's their job. They're on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or you have talk radio, or you have all these other things that have to be producible.

And so, producibility is an enormous foundational principle of the dynamic of right and left. What we're trying to do is look at it from a principle of corruption versus integrity or noise versus clarity. Don't always obviously achieve that, but that's the goal. So, you know, when you say something like the right- wing media, yeah, that's bad, but the left wing media is bad, too. It's not a question of them both being bad. It's a question of what is one trying to achieve? What's the incentive behind what they're trying to achieve? And how are they going about achieving it? Yeah. And I do think there's a big difference between what CNN does and what MSNBC does. And I think there's a big difference between what CNN does and what MSNBC does. And I think there's a big

difference between what all of them do and what the right-wing media sphere is much more directed and much more politically aligned and entwined. I mean, you saw that after January 6th, the text messages back and forth were between the president of the United States and his handlers and Hannity and Ingram. And you know, the right, the right wing's media is a much stronger arm of a political movement. That is true. And MSN.

Although I do want to say, I mean, CNN just got caught in a big scandal where the president of the network and his mistress stand accused of, you know, helping Governor Cuomo at the height of his popularity, coordinating talking points, having him be interviewed directly by his brother in prime time. Jen Psaki is now being floated as a new host at either CNN or MSNBC. And Simone Sanders, who was comms director for the vice president, is at MSNBC. So I'm not sure that there's that much political detachment. Yeah. But there's revolving doors.

And it's what I'm saying is the coordination. You can't have it on the left because the left is a much more fractious coalition. What I'm saying is the coordination. You can't have it on the left because the left is a much more fractious coalition. What I'm saying is their bias tends more towards sensationalism, right, and easy narrative. And it's not relentlessly focused on achieving political aims. And if they are, they're really bad at it. And I would say the example you have about Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo is much more about protecting one of their own than it is about protecting a political movement. That it had a lot more to do with nepotism and the cozy relationship between those industries than it did about, you know, trying to advance

Medicare for all. You know, the right wing media is about, and you've seen them have to flip now when you look at their coverage of Russia and Ukraine, right? So Russia is much more politically aligned with our political right. They're defenders of, they're an Orthodox Christian state, defenders of Western value. So there was great kind of common purpose with our right-wing media. And then this guy goes like full Hitler and everybody's got to backtrack.

But the fact remains that there is a lot of common cause in their sort of politics. Does that make sense? So I'm not suggesting that left-wing media is the same as mainstream media, is the same as right-wing media. But what I'm saying is you have to be able to critique them for what they are and not put them all in the same pot. And it's not both sides-er-ism to do. Yeah, and there's one, well, there was one piece of that that you pointed to there with regard to the Cuomo scandal

that I think is correct, which is it was much more about, you know, Zucker was interested in getting the governor of New York, who was this big political star at the moment, sort of exclusive to his network. It was great for ratings to have this little like casual back and forth with his brother

where they're joking about swabbing each other's noses or talking about mom's spaghetti dinner or whatever. So there was a money and corruption and nepotism angle there ultimately. And that was one piece that I felt like was a little bit left out of the episode that you did on the media because you talk a lot about the pressure for sensationalism for ratings you know anchors getting the minutes by minute by minutes and seeing okay these stories you know climate change is unsexy but you know russiagate is very sexy so we're going to lead with it every single night and the walls are closing in and all of that but i do think part of the problem is that sort of coziness and that clubbishness,

where they're all in the same circle as the very people whose feet they're supposed to be holding to the fire. So that's how you end up with a situation like Governor Cuomo. And this wasn't just CNN. Everybody was lionizing this guy at the same time that there were real questions about the handling of nursing homes, about the corporate liability shield that he was helping to usher through that was used as a model by Republicans. And all of that was ignored because they were all sort of in the same social circles. And it's uncomfortable to hold people that you know and consider as peers to account. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, you're dead on there. And I've said that to everybody who works here, and I said it to everybody at The Daily Show,

which is when we all leave this show, look around this room, because these will be your only remaining friends. You know, we can't have colleagues. And, you know, that cozy relationship and everybody depending on each other for their livelihoods and that revolving door is an enormous issue. And it's why the, you know, White House correspondence issue should be taken out in the back and or sent to a farm upstate. Like,

the idea that because you can't do your job while protecting access and feelings. Yes. Ever. And I think it's an enormous problem. But I think beyond that problem, you have to look at the dynamics of how they're incentivized to make their money. Look, there are people there that get bonuses for ratings, right, on the news. And so that naturally incentivizes it. Salaries are based on if you can drive a better demographic. So those are all the kinds of things that, and they're competing for a narrower and narrower

audience. And I think if you drill down with almost any of them, they don't think that. Look, I'll give you an example. The way that they're covering Ukraine is bold, it's brave, it's immediate. A lot of times it's thoughtful. A lot of times it's illuminating. And it's heartbreaking, not just for what they're going through, but for having to be on the front lines of something so dangerous. But what it reminds you is there's a different model to do all this. What it does is point out the superficiality and the general tediousness and triteness of the majority of their coverage. Because it's not along the lines of, now let's bring on Van Jones and Rick Santorum to tell us how to put Ukraine into perspective. They're not using the

right-left polarity. They're using right-wrong. They're using corruption integrity. Now, it doesn't mean that some of it isn't manipulated and some of it isn't redundant and overdone, but what it shows is there's another way to do this that's compelling, that is insightful, and within their grasp that they have the tools. And that's all we're asking for is cover it in a manner that is illuminating and not obfuscating. Because generally when you buy into the two-team paradigm there, and they do it differently, right and left and mainstream, you're buying into a false dichotomy and one that clouds the conversation and doesn't, you know.

So when you look at that, it's hard to imagine, well, if you've got the capacity to do it this way, why aren't we doing everything this way? I think a lot of it is just current system thinking. Well, if you've got the capacity to do it this way, why aren't we doing everything this way? I think a lot of it is just current system thinking. So old dad O'Brien actually pointed that in your episode. Whenever Crystal and I started our show, actually a lot of what you said resonated with me.

Whenever you told the Comedy Central guys, you're like, let me do what I want, and if not, you can fire me. Everybody told us that covering the news in a class first in a nonpartisan way was not gonna work. They're like, nobody cares. It doesn't matter. Good luck, all of this.

You know, now it's what number one or whatever in the news category on Spotify, which is not connected to a corporate media organization. Now, no, everyone said we were idiots. Look at you, come on. Everyone said we were idiots. No big deal or whatever. Let's fucking go.

No big deal. Let's fucking go. No big deal or whatever. Let's fucking go. Let's fucking go. No big deal. But this is the point though, which is that nobody wants to take that leap of faith. Nobody wants to try. And within that framework, it's not gonna happen at the most systematic level,

but it's actually something I wanted to ask you, which is that you are one of those people who's not gonna cut anybody's slack in an interview. Yet you got Jamie Dimon to sit down with you. You got Bob Iger to sit down with you. You got the secretary of veterans affairs to sit down with you. What is the model then for people like us who are kind of coming up in your footsteps? Because we find this problem, John, politician wants to come on, but he wants to talk for five minutes and stick to whatever his bullshit bill is. It's like, no, that's not not that's not how it works here and then they say okay i'll go to cnn i'll go to msnbc i'll go talk to the new york times you actually successfully broke through that barrier how

do the people who are coming up do the same thing or is it even possible to have the same level of household id or whatever that you have from coming up in Legacy Media in the 2000s and the 1990s? Well, first of all, your goal can't be household ID. Well, it's not, to be clear. It's to get the big interview too, right? Well, but again, even that, what your goal should be is to get really good at diagnosing what are the corrupting or corroding influences in whatever story. It's about becoming a weatherman for bullshit, for figuring out how is this system incentivized for negative outcomes

or how is this system incentivized to keep the status quo in power at the expense of disenfranchised communities or communities with less power. It's about power dynamics more than anything else. And it's about learning how those work and being able to diagnose them and being able to articulate them in a really clear way. And if you do that, and if you become really expert at that, and then you develop a constituency, and that constituency has value to salespeople, and politicians are salespeople at heart, and if you have a constituency that they feel is an important one, or that they feel will have consequences for them, in a negative way even, if it's shame or if it's uplift.

If you develop that, then you can't be ignored because that's the right-wing media model. You develop this constituency that can't be ignored. My point is develop it in a way that's honest and that is looking at systems not in a political way or a partisan way, but not being ignorant that those are the dynamics which situations and nuance and call out corrupted arguments wherever you find them. And that helps you build a constituency that's, what it is, is earning your editorial authority. And if you earn that, then you can use that to get access to do

those things. But if your access is based on obsequiousness, or if your access is based on the care you will take for that person's, you know, fragile status quo world, like that's useless, it does no good. And you don't need the access. You can do your job, the jobs you guys do, you can do without access. Certainly. We do it every day. Yeah, unfortunately, half of it, yeah.

John, let me ask you this. What I'm talking about. Do you think that the cable news model is salvageable because you know i even think about the the ukraine war which you said like you feel really good about the coverage and they're doing you know right versus wrong versus right versus left but you know at the same time the the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet is happening in yemen right now they don't find that good for ratings. It's also inconvenient for their friends and politicians because Saudi is one of our allies versus Russia is one of our adversaries. Or you could look at the Afghan war. There was a lot of focus when we were finally,

after 20 years, withdrawing our troops. And now that our freeze on the Afghan government's reserves is helping to spark a mass humanitarian crisis and famine, suddenly there's no coverage to be found. So given the fact that there is such sort of like selective coverage, all based on what's good for ratings, what's good for their friends and whatever political circles that, you know, they're frequenting, is it possible to change the cable news model to be more edifying without just creating an entirely alternative eco-media system? You just did it. You just did it. You just explained how to do it. But don't you have to change the incentives? How do you change the

incentives? Because right now, it's not about the individual people. You know, there's a certain type of person that thrives in cable news because they're willing to sort of accept the system as it is. But it's really not about the individual people. It's about this system that's ratings driven, that's access journalism driven, that's 24-hour news coverage driven. So can you change that really fundamentally without sort of changing that structure altogether. So I guess I don't buy the premise that if you were to cover Yemen responsibly and give it the attention that it deserves or the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, that you would suffer, that your ratings would be the problem. Now, there may be fluctuations, but it's already an incredibly small, narrow group of people. And it's designed by Nielsen, which is from like the 40s and 50s.

So it's a nonsense rating system to begin with. So to be judging important stories, the larger problem for news organizations is they are really good at singular focus. So when you have an event that matches the magnitude of their news gathering firepower, that confluence works really well. But the truth is, they should be able to cover all those things. You're dead on right about Afghanistan, the high dudgeon that everybody took about the mistakes that were made in those two weeks. You're like, where the fuck have you been? And maybe if we had covered it with the kind of aggressiveness that it had deserved from the

beginning, we wouldn't have been there for as long as we were, that we would have a different foreign policy that didn't rely on destroying countries and then being their social safety net for the next 15 to 20 years as we try and rebuild them to the point where they're friendly enough to us that 19 people in a basement in Hamburg couldn't plan an attack. I mean, the whole thing is nonsensical from the get-go. But that being said, these companies make their money on carriage fees. Like, Fox News makes almost $2 billion a year, not just for ratings, but they make carriage fees. CNN makes carriage fees. MSNBC doesn't make the kind of carriage fees that they do. So why do you think then, if it's not a ratings issue, why don't they cover what's going on in Ukraine, for example?

Because I would submit and tell me if you think that I'm off base here. Well, chauvinism. It's chauvinism, but it's, you know, this, what's going on in Ukraine is okay for them to talk a lot about. Because not only is it good for ratings, but it's also Russia is one of our adversaries, so we're not going against one of our allies. But in Afghanistan, now it's the Taliban in charge, and so we can't seem to be nice to them. And with regards to Yemen, Saudi is one of our big allies. They have a lot of money in this town

and all over the country and a lot of ties to political leaders here. So it seems to me that that's a part of how they choose what to cover and what to go all in on. No question. No question. I mean, it's, you know, the Saudis are considered an ally. I mean, it's very hard to think of that regime as anything other than murderous, especially after Khashoggi and those kinds of things. It's very hard to think of that regime as anything other than murderous, especially after Khashoggi and those kinds of things. It's a repressive regime, certainly. But I think the other thing that we have to talk about is what the people of Ukraine look like.

They look like us. And Muslims are scary. And that world is primitive. And Africa is primitive. And those worlds those worlds i mean they've said it trevor did an unbelievable bit on this which was you know uh a lot of news reporters going you don't expect to see this kind of destruction yeah yeah they're civilized. They're blonde-haired and blue-eyed. How could this be? They watch Netflix. Exactly. So I think you're dealing with a lot of, look, biases and prejudice are rife in everything.

The question is getting us to overcome the blind spots, getting us to, you know, not have that. And I sort of described it all the time as an eight-year-old, eight-year-olds playing soccer. There's a ball and everybody runs to it and no one else is on the field. Like hold your positions in other places to give people a better perspective on everything that's going on in the world.

And it's not like it can't be done. Yeah. It can be done. And I think it can be done to profitability. Now, will it be the billion dollars that CNN makes off their carriage fees and things? I don't know, but it'll be fucking profitable. And if you get the right people involved to it, it'll be dynamic. And it's about telling stories and telling them well. Yeah. Yeah, well, we agree with you. And people are hungry for, you know, real sort of unvarnished,

as you put it, uncorrupted, you know, attempts to sort through what is a complicated and nuanced world. So thank you, John, for your time again. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say one more thing. Yeah. Please. When you talk about that the thing that people always wonder is that doesn't mean it's not visceral exactly or emotional right

yes it doesn't it's not something like let's all come together yeah it's just that's right you know one of the things that um inspired us from the Daily Show that we tried to bring into this show is your willingness to, you know, to just look at the landscape and point out the absurdities wherever they were. And the other thing that we really have tried to embrace here is engagement. That's probably the most controversial part of our show, to be honest with you. So thank you for that model. Guys, watch the show is The Problem with Jon Stewart. We've got a nice little graphic we can put up there on the screen.

It really is worth your- I like the graphic. I've gotten a lot out of the show. I think the new model has a lot to recommend it. So thank you for your time today. We were grateful. Thanks, Jon. It was a great honor.

And everybody go subscribe to Jon's podcast. Thank you guys so much. Thanks, man. Oh, thank you. Keep up the great work, guys. Thank you, sir. Doing our podcast. Thanks, man. Oh, thank you. Keep up the great work, guys. Thank you, sir. Doing our best. Thanks, John.

Marshall and Sagar here. Welcome back to The Realignment. Hey, everyone. We've got a great episode. We interviewed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about his candidacy, what he's focused on, his agendas, priorities, pushed him a bit, only had 30 minutes, not quite the format length we typically enjoy, but this is what you get for entering in this side of the game. Hope you all enjoy this conversation. We'll definitely be

following up. Vivek Ramaswamy, welcome to The Realignment. Good to be on, guys. Absolutely. So Vivek, I think it's important just to put this out at the top. One of the ways I became prominent, honestly, was just by interviewing newer candidates to the field, unconventional candidates, and kind of treating them seriously. So at the top, I just want to say you to the audience, I'm going to treat you the same way that I treated Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump, Mike Pompeo,

any of the people that we've interviewed here. So I think at the top, number one, what is the case for your candidacy? Yeah, the case for my candidacy is I'm not advancing somebody else's vision. I'm advancing my own. And it is a vision for national identity at a point where we lack one. I think America is in the middle of this identity crisis where, if you ask most people my age,

most people your guys' age, for that matter, what does it mean to be an American in the year 2023? You get a blank stare in response. And I think that's a problem. And I think much of what the Republican Party is focused on attacking from wokeism to gender ideology to climatism to COVIDism, for that matter, which I've also been a critic of, a fierce critic of, is just a symptom of that deeper identity crisis. And I don't see another candidate in this field stepping up to actually offer an affirmative vision of national identity that can dilute that vision to irrelevance. And as part of

that, I'm also willing to take on issues that other candidates in this field bluntly seem unwilling, frightened, or unable to take on. I've committed to end affirmative action in America. Okay. I would love for another Republican candidate, all of whom behind closed doors say they agree with me on this, to say that out loud. That could be done by executive order. Most affirmative action in America, not a lot of people know this. The original sin, the head of the snake was a Lyndon Johnson era executive order. Every Republican president since then could have crossed it out. Instead, they complained about affirmative action without actually doing something about it. Same thing with respect to

climate religion. Quick thing, isn't part of the reason why Republicans don't do that is Republicans are doing terribly in the center adjacent suburbs. I think the last thing a Republican would want to convey is that they're going to start a racial battle with the Supreme Court. Isn't that why they're not doing it? I mean, maybe it's political calculus. I don't do the political calculation. I ask the question about from this, this is why I make this about American identity. From the standpoint of what it means to be an American, what are the values that define being an American? Part of that to me is getting ahead, not in the color of your skin, but in the content of your character and

your contributions. That's what it means to put merit back in America. And I think that there's actually broad bipartisan consensus around that more than most people appreciate. California, you'll remember what was a Prop 16 a couple of years ago that a liberal state still voted down on the back of saying that, you know, no, we don't want to amend the state constitution to allow this form of discrimination. So I think actually this meek attitude to think that actually we've got to compromise and somehow we take these two sides as given, that's not my theory of national unity. My theory of national unity is we achieve national unity in this country not by showing up in some proverbial middle and say, can't we all hold hands, guys, and sing Kumbaya

and get along? No. We achieve national unity in America by embracing the extremism, the radicalism of the ideas that set this nation into motion. And you want to know the case for my candidacy? I'm willing to embrace the extremism and the radicalism of those American ideas, even without regard to simple partisan labels or political calculations. And my bet is the American people are going to be able to tell the difference between a foot soldier in the fight

against wokeism who's spouting off talking points that you might have read in a book or in a binder given to you by a political consultant versus somebody whose actual original bone-deep conviction it is that drives this agenda. And in my case, it's definitely the latter from affirmative action to the climate religion in this country to willingness to use the military to solve the fentanyl crisis by going after cartels in Mexico and using our military to protect the southern border. Basic ideas that actually transcend, I would say, partisan lines, but which other Republican candidates appear too fearful, bluntly, to be able to say out loud, I'm taking on those sacred cows.

And I say this as a vegetarian Hindu American myself, take those cows to the slaughterhouse because that's what it's going to take to spawn a national revival that's unapologetic. Here's something I wonder, too. You kind of had a Barry Goldwater movement a moment when you were talking about like extremism he had the famous extremism in defense of liberties no vice you're saying we get the extremism of uh the ideals that you're describing do you get the sense that the american people are asking for extremism right now we look at the 2022 mid the 2022 midterms. Like that was the definition of a moment where like the right thought there was always populist energy,

there's always aggression. And it actually just turned out people don't like stop the steal and want things to be pretty normal. That's the Joe Biden case. What's the response to that? Yeah, so I don't think people are looking for partisan extremism

because partisan extremism is A, unproductive, but B, boring. It's not even coherent. I mean, what does it mean to be a Republican today? What does it mean to be a Democrat today? These questions are on the table. They're circular. Whereas I think what people are hungry for is a sense of purpose and meaning and identity and cause. I mean, I think our generation, all generations in this country are so hungry for purpose at a moment in our history when the things that used to fill that void from faith to patriotism

to hard work to family those things have disappeared and that's what creates this moral vacuum in its wake so are people hungry for it and i think people are starved for it a sense of what it means to be american a revival of a national identity that we long for hungering to be part of a bigger nation filling that hunger with something greater than transgenderism or wokeism or climatism yes people are hungry are hungry for it. Here's my problem, though, is the Republican Party so far has not been stepping up to deliver an affirmative, inspiring vision to fill that void, reviving ideas like merit, like free speech and open debate as our mechanism to settle political questions rather than censorship, reviving the idea that

who would have ever thought the people we elect to run the government are the ones who actually run the government rather than this cancerous federal bureaucracy. These are basic American ideas. And in fairness, I will tell you this, those are extreme ideas. For most of human history, it was not done this way. All the way up to 1776 on the other side of the pond in old world Europe, it was not done this way. So we're the weirdos76 on the other side of the pond in old world europe it was not done this way so we're the weirdos here on the american side of the atlantic in the post-1776 version of our country but that is part of what makes us who we are and we've obsessed so much over you know our different you know we have similar shades of melanin on this particular call but across the country different shades of melanin. Who cares whether we look different,

whether we're diverse, if there's nothing greater that binds us together across that diversity. And if there's one thing that I think our citizenry is hungering for, it is a revival of that commonality, those basic ideals. And dare I say, yes, embracing the extremism of those ideas. I will not apologize for it because that's what it means to be American. One of the talks about extremism right now, Vivek, here in Washington is a Republican standoff with the Biden administration over the debt ceiling and cutting Medicare and Social Security. This isn't something I've heard you get way on. Where do you stand on entitlement programs? Should they be untouchable in any sort of deal? If you were the president of the United States, what would

you plan to do so with those programs? So the first observation I'd make is this is, again, another one of these strawman partisan struggles. I mean, one of the things that Republicans ought to be honest about was that spending was high under President Trump. I'm actually an unapologetic America first conservative. I think in order to put America first, we have to actually redefine and rediscover what America is. Now, Donald Trump, he had a lot of things right. One of the things he didn't have right was the amount of money he spent. So I think that this is far from a partisan struggle so i generally favor spending less money as the federal government what about the time of my programs give you the give you the broad backdrop so look i think that there are easier ways to solve this

than just sort of dig trenches and and then pretend like we have some sort of disagreement about it take somebody who's earned over $10 million over their life. Should they be eligible for Medicare in the same way as somebody who hasn't earned over a million dollars in their life? I think we have to be able to have that discussion rationally without using toxic code words like means testing. I think if you get it really specific, I mean, that's a line that I would draw. Okay. I think that somebody who's earned 10 million and that's a lot of people in this country. And I think that, you know, in my full policy team, early days, first week of the campaign, this is not one of my campaign priorities. Rock solid on the 20 or so things that I do plan to deliver. This is not, admittedly, entitlement reform is not part of my case for the presidency.

You asked me what was, I'll tell you about it. This isn't on the list, but it is something that a leader of the United States is going to have to consider. And the way I think about this is that there are reasonable incremental steps we can take to get the country back on the right track. The way I saw for it, what is on my agenda is shutting down many swaths of the federal government, because part of where you get spending bloated the way it is, is if you put people in a job, they think they're supposed to do the job and all jobs in

the federal government involves not only spending money on their own employment but spending money on behalf of the federal government itself and so when i say shut down the department of education part of that is because the department of education has no reason to exist but part of that at the federal level but also part of that is because it's a step towards creating a culture in the federal government of not only spending less money, but returning it to the people to whom it belongs. So that's going to be my main contribution. And I've laid out the fact that I'm going to shut down government agencies. I'm going to actually fire employees pursuant to Article 2 of the Constitution, which says

that actually the U.S. president runs the executive branch of the government, no matter what civil service protections and statutes say. Those are the kinds of issues I'm most focused on. But if you're gonna ask me directly, I'll tell you where I am on this entitlement reform. Okay. Well, here's the thing, like we're, cause I, you know this,

like I'm not a huge fan of like 2000s, George W. Bush, like naming the president of like Taiwan gotcha journalism. The reason why we're asking you, I think this actually matters beyond what you're saying though is we can say whatever we want. What matters is what the voters actually think and i could tell you the donald trump 2016 voters actually did not like how jeb bush was not aligned with their vision of

how entitlements and social security actually worked so what i want you to reckon with here right so talk about like you're saying these values of like merit and like individualism relate how that vision translates into how we treat old people in this country because this is frankly a debate with obama care not being overturned with social security prioritization failing that the left has broadly won so express that entitlement debate through the values you said at the top of the episode yeah so look i think that we have to start with the lower hanging fruit to start a spawn a cultural revival that gets us. So here's my theory of the case philosophically, and then I can get to the specifics as much as I want on policy.

So my view is a lot of the things we're going to have to do in this American moment will demand sacrifice. The one I've been most explicit about is decoupling from China. I've called for a declaration of independence from China. Sounds great on paper. In practice, a lot harder than it sounds. Why why because it's going to involve some trade-offs we got addicted to buying cheap stuff for a long time that was a purposeful bargain we entered but it got us into the precarious geopolitical position we're in where we're in this codependent relationship with an enemy that's different than anything we ever experienced with the soviet union in the last cold war wait so

quick to understand make people understand this then So what you're saying is under your presidency, assume you could get this passed or whatever, you could make this happen. We cannot do business with anyone in China. An American, sorry, I'm not just like a small business, like garage cannot source its goods from China. That's what you're saying. Well, I'm gonna be explicit about a couple of things

of what decoupling means, but at the limit, we have to be prepared to tell US businesses that you cannot do business in China unless and until the ccp reforms its behaviors or the ccp falls and then for reasons i can explain to you because i think china is in a very precarious position right now and we're working within a short window we pull the rug out from under them that delivers that reform and possibly the fall of the modern ccp as we know it xi jinping shot china's economy in the foot to take his third term last October. So there's a complex geopolitical view here that informs my view that this is actually leverage

we exercise to defeat them economically so that we never have to militarily. I could go on for hours about that. But I bring that back as an example to say that, yes, we have to be willing, as you pointed out, to make some short-term sacrifices in order to achieve long-run gain. But I think the American moment right now calls not for Chamberlain. It calls for Churchill. It calls for thinking on the timescales. Yes, I'm not shy to say it, timescales of history rather than on the timescales of an electoral cycle. And if we're able to do that, okay, then I think our kids and grandkids are going to be a good place, but we can only do it if we know what we're sacrificing for. And that's why it comes back to this case

for national identity, okay? You know, entering a family, think about values I inherited from my parents, right? Entering a marriage, having kids, raising a family. These things involve a sacrifice and trade-offs too, but you can make those trade-offs if you know what you're sacrificing for. I think it's the same thing in your capacity,

not just as a family member or a parent, but as a citizen of this nation too. And that's why my focus, the next president of the United States, no successful president, no successful president in history has been able to take on everything at once. You pick the few things you're going to do, clearly pledge what you're going to do, go deliver and accomplish it. In my case, it's going to be to fill that void of a missing national identity by setting in place, setting into motion a set of policies that help us revive that sense of national culture and pride, start to declare independence from China, and begin to demonstrate how we're able to make the short-run sacrifices in order to do what actually needs to be done

in the long run on the scales of history. And so that's how I think about my priorities there. Sure. You're calling this America first 2.0. And it really raises a question. I know a lot of Trump people here in Washington. I've interviewed the president several times. What was wrong with America 1.0? And there was quite a bit of a discussion on the platform that you laid out. We didn't see immigration there at the top. Is there a reason that you didn't put immigration in your formulation of America First 2.0? You talked about wokeism, climatism, because- Immigration's in there. Yeah, immigration's in there. And I chose to do something that most candidates don't do is I launched my campaign, both on television and with a simultaneously

published op-ed in the Wall Street Journal laying about, I think, the most specific campaign launch that, at least in modern history, candidates launched with immigration was on there i believe in merit in immigration so meritocratic immigration is the cornerstone for me i divide this in terms of accidental immigration versus versus intentions what about overall levels of the vague are we talking about so the jerry questioner plan so sorry so go ahead yeah wrong discussion right so i'm not rejecting your premise because other people talk about this too. But look, I think that we should ask ourselves, what are the right kinds of immigrants we want? Right now, we're getting the wrong kinds of immigrants.

People whose first act of entering this country is a law-breaking one should not be permitted to enter this country. I say that unapologetically as the kid of immigrants. I'm not a hardliner on that. I believe in using the military to secure the southern border if necessary rather than protecting somebody else's border abroad. This is a higher priority here. However, and by the way, even in the legal immigration system, we have this harebrained idea of lottery-based immigration. Who on earth would want America to pursue a lottery when you could just pick the best ones instead, right? Best ones as defined by loyalty to this country, by willingness to make contributions to this country on the basis of economic and otherwise career-based track record to predict who's going to make the biggest

contributions to this country. So I think merit-based immigration ought to be the right answer. And so these people who want to get this into discussion about this many immigrants or not, I say there's two problems with that. One is, let's say you just pick level X, whatever that number is. It may be that there are not enough immigrants who even meet that bar. Why should we let that many immigrants in? Conversely, if we have immigrants who are really willing to serve this country as citizens, make contributions, assimilate, be part of America and be proud of it, even more proud than people who actually inherit their status as American citizens, great, let's have more of them. But that's so far from where we are today.

The problem today is that we actually have an accidental immigration policy starting with a disastrous illegal immigration influx starting at the southern border. Got it. I just want to go back to the – It's a false straw man that otherwise exists in this numerical debate that some people like to have. I understand. But what was wrong with America First 1.0? Why is 2.0 better than 1.0? Nothing was wrong with America First 1.0. I wouldn't borrow the lingo America First if I thought something was wrong with it. I just think we need to take it to the next level. But then to follow up on that, right, President Trump is in the race. He was in the race whenever you announced your candidacy. 2.0 is going to be juxtaposed then with 1.0. So why is 2.0 then better than 1.0? The original version is on the policies. I think I'm just willing to do certain things that President Trump, if he was going to do them, would have done them already. Eliminating affirmative action is the easiest example because that can be done by executive order. But that's small ball. Not small ball, but small picture compared to the deeper answer to your question.

I think in order to put America first, we need to rediscover what America is. I care a lot about national unity. And I know President Trump, he's a friend. He's misunderstood on us. He cares about national unity too. I know he does. But he, I don't think is capable in the same way of delivering it. Because if he was, we wouldn't be where we are right now. And so to me, I think the thing that I care about, many of your listeners care about, many conservatives in this country care about, what Donald Trump cares about is having not a national divorce. And one of the things about this conversation about a national divorce is the more you talk about it, the more it speaks

itself into existence. I care about having one nation left at the end of it, e pluribus unum, from many one. That is the vision that set this nation into motion 250 years ago. And I think we need a leader who is capable of actually delivering on that, both by going further than Donald Trump ever did on questions from affirmative action to dismantling this climate religion that shackles the United States without shackling China. That's going further on putting America first. But it also has a clear North Star on the ideals that set American motion, and speak to that with national unity as an express objective on the other side of it. There is a contradiction here. You're talking

about national unity, but you say something like climate religion, which basically flips the bird at half the country. How do you get national unity through polarization? I disagree with you on that premise, actually. Where's the proof? I respectfully disagree with you. Yeah, of course. I think that most people in this country agree with everything I've said so far, okay, that there is a climate religion that shackles the United States without laying a finger on China, that the United States should be producing more fossil fuels. And it's completely hypocritical to tell companies like Exxon and Chevron that they can't, to only ship that oil production to places like PetroChina in China. Last time I checked, it was global climate change. And even if you subscribe to the tenets of this religion, methane leakage is far worse over there than it is here. And methane is 80 times

worse for global warming, even than a unit of carbon dioxide. So a lot of this is a farce. I mean, even the ESG movements and the climate movements, hostility to nuclear energy, befuddles the lies reality, because even if you cared about carbon production or carbon emissions, you would be embracing nuclear energy production. So I think a lot of people see through that hypocrisy. A lot of people understand that, as I've joked around, this has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ. Okay, so you're not flipping the bird on Christians by saying that you actually oppose the Spanish Inquisition at the height in Seville in the 15th century. I think the same

thing is true in America today. People recognize that these religious movements aren't even about the gods that they propose to care about from racial equality to the climate. They've really become vehicles for aggregating power for the people who wield these magic words as a way of exercising dominion and control and even punishment, self-punishment on the back of it. And I think that goes for the racial equity agenda to climate change in a way that, by the way, the calls I've gotten, I've been surprised even from Democrat friends or otherwise, after they watched my opening video and, you know, well, I've been one week on the campaign trail, but saying that, you know what, I'm afraid to say this to my friends, but actually a lot of them

like what you're saying. What did I say in my opening video? I don't care if you're Black or white or Democrat or Republican. If you're on board with these basic principles, these basic rules of the road, then we're on the same team and we can disagree on whether ivermectin treats COVID or whether corporate tax rates should be high or low. But if we're on board with the unapologetic pursuit of excellence, of free speech and open debate, of self-governance over aristocracy, of recognizing that China is indeed our number one long-run threat and that it's worth making some sacrifices to address that. That's what it means to be American today. And that's a pro-American movement that transcends these, I would say, somewhat boring, even sapophoric

partisan boundaries that we've somehow become a prisoner of, in part because of modern media a bunch of other reasons. Sure. We've got less than five minutes left, so Sagar and I will be quick about these ones. So you had an interesting interview with Hugh Hewitt earlier in the week. You didn't know what the nuclear triad meant. Triad was, we'll put that to the side. You can learn what that term means. I know you know what it is now. That said, I think the significance behind the question, though, is the president is in charge of the means to end the earth. You can definitely train to learn what acronyms mean. I'm not convinced that you could learn in a year and a half during partisan Fox News hits, podcasts like this, how to actually sit down with Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. Convince me otherwise. Because I get your point about how-

Yeah, so you make a great point. And thank you for taking the superficiality out of it, because anyone can learn a term, right? So this is a word. Okay, I understand that there's land, air, and sea, but I'm approaching this with humility. So I think one of the things that's different is, yes, I'm a fast study. Yes, have I taken on other complicated problems before and learned them fast? Sure. But I got to approach this, and I am approaching this with humility. So I'll just tell you where I came from earlier today i was having lunch upstairs in my house i'm in the basement now with a former cabinet level secretary from the trump administration who was over here visiting me we spent two hours training on on the relevant issues you know i think precise what does training mean does train because because once again let me tell

you a quick story berlin, 1961, incredibly important. JFK, he's in the presidency. He meets in Vienna with Khrushchev. He looks like a fool in front of Khrushchev because JFK is a very smart guy, but he was like kind of not really ready for it. Khrushchev builds the Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis.

That is the definition of an example of how in the presidency, there was no training for that that JFK could have done between 1950 and 1959 1960. so what does training mean in that context for you is at least understanding the history and the status quo but you can't you have to analyze the future situation you can never do it by analogizing as a substitute but one thing that we're going to do that's different on this campaign and i haven't talked about this so i'll mention this to you guys is we're going to tape that we're going to do it daily we got two

hours at least daily where there's somebody coming in flying here spending time with me in columbus ohio we're going to actually let the world watch how i learn okay nobody and by the way many of the governors who are running they're utterly unprepared on foreign policy as well not because it's their fault it's just not the nature of what it means to be a governor so nobody is really prepared to take on this quick pause it's important i would not debate that you being incredibly educated and smart may know more information at the end of this campaign than a governor does. But the issue of George W. Bush wasn't that he didn't know enough facts. It's that when 9-11 happened,

he had terrible judgment. He had terrible judgment. He was emotionally immature. He wasn't intellectually suited for the job he was foisted upon. I'm just concerned if we reduce this to an SAT quiz, that's playing to your strengths, but not playing to the actual job. Yeah, there's a difference between being smart and being wise. And you know what? In the nature of this conversation, there's nothing I can say that would convince you or should convince you of the answer to your question, right?

But I think that what you want is somebody who approaches it with humility. This is a long process for a reason. I think the early states in Iowa and New Hampshire play a really important role here where people actually, I spent a little bit of time there last week. I was really impressed. I mean, people have a sixth sense for who's real, who's not, what to ask. I mean, the questions and the exchanges, the parts that they were picking up on. We have an all right process. It's not a perfect process, but we have an all right process for vetting who gets to run the free world. I'm entering this ring pretty early to go through that.

People should be skeptical of me or anybody else, but maybe especially somebody who's young, who's never held political office, who has the hubris to think he can run for president of the United States. And you know what? We will leave that to the voters next year. I think that this year should be about defining the agenda. So for a second, my ask to you and everyone watching this is forget the question about the who in the primary for a little bit.

Let's first define the what and the why. What do we stand for? Why do we stand for it? I think that's what's missing in the Republican Party. I expect, you know, bluntly, I'm not trying to be humble here, as you can tell. I think I have already this last week and will continue to lead the way in specifically defining an agenda and offering specific policy solutions. I invite the other candidates to join me. That's what this year should be about. Next year should be about the question of the who. And I will be very transparent and open about this. People have a chance to watch how I learn. I will approach this with humility. And you're right. There's a temperament question to this too. It's not just about who has the right ideas, though I think this year's emphasis should be on that. But next year, let the voters decide who they think that right standard bearer is going to be. And I hope that I'll earn the trust of the

people who vote for me. I have faith in the democratic process as well. So last two questions, I know you got to get out of here. Number one on the election of 2020, was it stolen or not? Yes or no question. Yes, but not in the way that not in the way that you mean that question. Okay. So what do you mean by that? I think the technology companies tilted the scales of public debate. Okay. I think that this was, I think the Hunter Biden laptop story epitomizes what was wrong with the lead up to that election cycle. There was a true story that was censored in the name of misinformation, actually created more misinformation, that somehow this was Russian disinformation. Guess what? This was American disinformation, that that actually

wasn't a true story. By the way, the same lesson we've learned this last week as it relates to the COVID lab leak. And so I think that, you know, I think the 2016, I think the real, if I had to pick one election that was stolen from Trump, though, it was actually the 2016 election, the one that he won, not the one that he lost, because he had to actually deal with two years of a fraudulently based inquiry that was based on completely false and politicized premises. But I also think that we should stop using these retroactive, we're not going to move forward by adjudicating the past, we're going to have to understand, going forward, how are we going to fix the democratic process? And it's not just about the ballots we cast every November. It's about a democratic culture of free speech and open debate.

And I think the litmus test for the health of a democratic process is actually the percentage of people who feel free to say and are free to say what they actually think in public. I think over the last eight years, we've done poorly in that regard. I think we have an opportunity to do better such that the 2024 election can put that dirty past behind us. No disagreement on much of what you said, but I do have to get specific because it's an important thing. I'm talking about mass voter fraud. There was no mass voter fraud in the 2020 election. I have not seen any evidence of mass voter fraud. I distinguish that from micro examples that have clearly been reported and documented. I have not seen evidence

of mass voter fraud. Great. And final question here is on abortion. So one of the vice president Pence and big disagreement between him and President Trump is on a national abortion ban. Where do you stand on national abortion ban? So I am pro-life. However, I think that for years on constitutional grounds, we have correctly argued that this is a state issue. And I think it should remain a state issue. I think overturning Roe in the Dobbs decision, I think it was the right decision on hard constitutional grounds. Full stop. I'm hard lying on that. Crystal clear. I think that we constitutionally finally got it right. That's where I'm at. For years, it was argued to be a state's rights issue. And both for constitutional as well as public policy reasons, I think that's where it should rest.

So would you sign any federal abortion legislation, 15-week ban, 22-week ban as proposed in the Congress? As somebody who is staunchly pro-life and unapologetic about that fact, I think that the states should get to that answer. That's my answer. All right, well, Vivek Ramaswamy, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. We know that you took some time out of the schedule.

I look forward to some of the videos that you're talking about, the two-hour videos, the education sessions, and you're welcome back on the the schedule. I look forward to some of the videos that you're talking about. The two hour videos, the education sessions, and, you're welcome back on the show anytime. Thanks very much. Appreciate you guys. Absolutely.

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