Making Sense with Sam Harris - #223 — A Conversation with Andrew Sullivan

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan sing the praises of President Trump. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

I am back with Andrew Sullivan. Andrew, thanks for joining me again. It's always wonderful to talk to you, Sam. So first, we should just say that this is a simulcast. You are a freshly minted podcaster, and I'm quite honored to be your first podcast collaborator here, at least at me. Obviously, you've done podcasts in the past, but this is your new Dish podcast. What's going on over there? Tell us your plans. Well, I'm incredibly psyched to do this with you as the first one.

We're going to do this every week, we hope. And the idea is to be able to have a conversation which is not constrained by all the pressures that are on us now in the media, wherever we are, and to talk openly and reasonably with people of different views, believe it or not, and to hash things out in a way that you've always been a master of doing. And so I couldn't be prouder to be launching this alongside you in what seems to be now a tradition, right? Every four years, we get together and explain why we're both miserable about the coming election, but why we're going to vote anyway. So thank you. It's a big honor. And I'm psyched. And this is a big new adventure for all of us. Nice, nice. Well, I'm very happy to do this with you. I must say we have quite a

checkered past here, however, because four years ago, I think we jinxed the presidential election. We had the brilliant idea of doing a podcast wherein we proved that we were as in touch with Hillary Clinton's flaws as anyone. We were not to be outdone by any aspiring Trump voter. And then in that podcast, we quite brilliantly, to my ear, turned the tables after about an hour of running down Hillary to make the case that Donald Trump was much, much worse. And despite all of our lesser of two evils casuistry,

we got four years of Donald Trump. So let's not do that again. I don't know. Our influence terrifies me, as you know. I mean, how could one possibly speak without the thought of changing world history? But we'll do our best, for understandable reasons. But I want us to say something useful at this point, just on the odd chance that there are any persuadable people out there. But I must say, I'm pretty pessimistic about that. I suspect that almost anyone who's planning to vote for Trump at this point is probably out of reach of our arguments. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach such people. But let me just describe what I think the audience is for whatever we might say here. I think anyone who is in the QAnon cult or who

thinks Trump has been put in the White House by Jesus to save the world, or someone who thinks that Tom Hanks and the Dalai Lama and Michelle Obama are all cannibal child rapists. Those people are obviously not within range of us. And I don't know how big a group that is, but there's an impressively large group of people, it seems to me, who are in a kind of, you know, whether they're QAnon or not, they're in a kind of personality cult, and they will be immune to anything I have to say here, and I can't imagine you're going to make a dent either. But there are a few objections that come

from what I consider to be smart, otherwise sane people who are planning to vote for Trump. And the number one objection I get, and if I could distill it down to something this person might say, it's something like, after hearing me go on a tirade about Trump, this person will say something like, I get that you don't like his personality. I don't like his personality either. And I get that you find him to be uncouth and offensive, and so do I. But none of that really matters. What matters is policy. And his policies are fine. In some cases, they're better than fine. And they're better than Biden's are likely to be because Biden is going to be captured by the left socially and economically. So I'm wondering what you do with that objection.

Yeah, weirdly, I have been getting some of that the last week or so from more people in my personal environment, people who keep telling me that, yes, I've lost my mind a little bit because I have become a victim of Trump derangement syndrome and that the policy options that are coming before us are so horrifying. This I don't really agree with for several reasons. I don't think that the issues that Trump really campaigned on, he's really done a great deal for. I don't think, for example, that if you thought that it might be time because of the impact that free trade has had upon various industries in the US, and certainly for white non-college educated workers, that therefore Trump's critique of what had been going on was not without merit. And I agree with that. But there has been no real success

on tariffs, for example. I mean, there's been some minor tinkering, but we haven't seen a turnaround in manufacturing. We haven't seen a turnaround in things like coal. We haven't seen what he promised in 2016. We haven't even seen any serious permanent or rooted policies in controlling or changing the dynamic on immigration, which if Biden gets in, will be back to square one, that we haven't actually seen a war of ideas that has defanged some of the worst elements of the left. If anything, Trump seems to me to have presided over enormous strengthening of elements on the extreme left, and that he has been their best friend in so many ways by making it almost impossible to counter some of these trends on the far left without seeming to defend the indefensible.

So on those people who once substantively are sympathetic to a more adjusted, as it were, conservatism, I don't think Trump has been competent enough to deliver it. And I don't think, and I think in many ways, he's been extraordinarily counterproductive in that effect. And so I wish I could say that, you know, yes, he had a point about immigration. He had a point about trade. He has had a point about white working class people in the West. But failure to deliver, failure to prove that he can do anything about these things. And in fact, when you look at it, he's almost not mentioning either of those key issues of immigration and trade this time around, which suggests that really his attachment

to these causes was entirely instrumental and that really all he's about is his own sense of his own power and his own centrality to any conversation about anything. So I don't think that the argument that somehow some of the issues he championed are legitimate has been borne out in the last four years. I think, for example, he's done more to stigmatize and taint the cause of some kind of control of mass immigration than anyone on the left could ever have done. And I think that's really emboldening the people that he said he was trying to oppose and disempower. Yeah. Your point about the way

in which he's empowered the far left is very important because this is a very common claim that Trump is some kind of bulwark against the craziness on the left. But to the contrary, Trump has empowered the far left, and his ugliness has given the far left whatever semblance of justification it's had. His flirtation with racism, his failure to clearly repudiate white supremacy. He mean, he has repudiated white supremacy to a greater degree than people on the left give him credit for. I mean, he has actually done it in places, but he's done it so badly and so unconvincingly that he is almost the perfect goblin to merit the counter-reaction on the left. And so all the

craziness of the wokeness cult and the overreaching of Black Lives Matter and all of that has happened on Trump's watch. And you could certainly argue in large measure because of Trump and because of how bad he is. So it's just the idea that he is somehow a corrective to this seems crazy. And what I would expect to have under Biden is not the full capture of Biden by the wokeness. I would expect all of us to be able to far more credibly pivot and turn our attention on the wokeness and repudiate it. I mean, not to say we haven't been doing that, but we now do it under the shadow that the right and the far right under Trump has managed to produce. Whereas under a Biden administration, the wokeness can be discussed in terms that

reveal it to be as unhinged and unpragmatic as it is. The manner of his politics, which is that the truth is entirely dispensable, that narratives are what really matter, that he can give a speech, and he's been giving these campaign speeches, which are essentially built upon a complete fantasy about what is going on as well. I mean, COVID is the most obvious example in which he's declaring that it's over and we've succeeded at the moment that it's surging, even in the places he's visiting. And if you could go through his, and I listened to the last debate, and I try to follow the arguments that he's making because I want to understand what's happening. And they're just impossible to follow because they're built upon complete lies and delusions half the time. Fake statistics,

invented scenarios, complete hyperboles in ways that completely distort any kind of rational debate so that you're reduced when you absorb the way Trump discusses with a resort to feelings, essentially, tribal feelings, feelings of emotion that he seeks to evoke and to exploit in a way that our rational functioning is short-circuited. Because how can you begin to counter-argue Trump when it is simply a stream of inventions that are entirely and always self-serving, combined with a constant attempt to trigger and to inflame anybody who might conceivably take an issue with it? And there is something about that that creates a political dynamic in which other actors,

those opposing him, because they can't actually engage reasonably with certain arguments, with evidence, they then are empowered to put forward their own narratives, their own delusions, their own tribal fantasies to counter what he's doing in a point to the extent at which I really think we're lost. We are truly lost. When you listen to the debates going on, there is not a shared set of facts. There isn't a shared understanding that we have to apply reason to these facts. There is no deliberation happening at all.

When I wrote like four or five years ago now, that this kind of rhetoric, this kind of worldview, which is entirely narcissistic, which is entirely subjective, which is entirely about feeling and emotion, this is an extinction level event for liberal democracy in as much as liberal democracy requires all of us to engage in a respect for counter-argument, reasonable counter-argument, and to and fro, and trying to accept the result of some kind of deliberation. This he has completely subverted in our psyches and in our public debate, and therefore empowers irrationality everywhere, including on the left, so that we've witnessed people saying things. And what he called truthful hyperbole, when you think about some of the insane things that he said, well, I think of describing multicultural, multiracial, dynamic America in 2020 as a form of white supremacy is nothing but a mirror image of this truthful hyperbole, which makes it almost impossible to engage with reality. That's what he's done.

And he's not solely responsible for it. And I'm not going to say that wokeness or far left or the attack upon liberal democratic values he entirely created. He didn't. He was partly a product of that, but we have a test case of whether he can make it better. And in fact, he, by the very manner of his engagement in the discourse, is making it much, much worse all the time. Yeah, he has this almost supernatural ability to make his enemies worse people, you know, or behave like sociopaths. I mean, he being this sociopath manages to corrupt even the well-intentioned reactions to his norm-breaking. And I mean, this is what bothers me so much about this allegation of Trump derangement syndrome or just this claim that we get that you don't like him as a person,

but that doesn't matter. The problem with that is that it doesn't even begin to make contact with the criticism of him as a person, which is actually relevant to his governing and his assuming the responsibility of the presidency. Because, you know, as president, it really does matter that Trump is a terrible human being, you know, who values nothing beyond his own personal gain and who lies more than any person in human history. These are not private flaws. These are flaws that have done immense harm to our politics and to our society. And I mean, just look at COVID. I mean, COVID is just one phenomenon, which is, in my mind, it's not even the main problem with his presidency thus far. But it's just one case where

these flaws, you could argue, have led to the deaths of some tens of thousands of people who wouldn't be otherwise dead, but for what he has done to the messaging around the public health messaging around the pandemic. And more broadly than that, I think it really matters that we have become the kind of society that could give a person like this so much power and responsibility. I mean, it's just like when you think about the underlying values here, you think about if you're a parent and you could list the virtues that you hope your kids embody by the time they become adults. You want your kids to be intellectually curious and generous and honest and have integrity and have moral courage, have empathy, compassion, wisdom.

Every parent would aspire to this. And Trump is the living, breathing negation of these virtues. He not only has none of them, he is just bursting with their opposites, right? He is greedy and malevolent and uncomprehending and is completely unaware of his deficits, right? I mean, he's just, this may sound like, you know, a mere opinion about his personality, but it's not. I mean, these are statements that are every bit as objective about him psychologically as saying that he's, you know, overweight or that he's taller than average or that he's got bronzer on his face or whatever conspires to make him that color.

And it matters what kind of person you put in this role and whatever you want to say about Biden. And we'll talk about the scandal that no one will talk about. I don't know if you have any information or opinions about that, but whatever you might want to say about Biden and whatever peripheral corruption he could be found guilty of, there is no question that as just as a person, as the ethical core of him as a person, he is on another planet from Trump, and that has to matter. I think maybe an interesting comparison here is Bill Clinton, who I think characterologically is a pretty awful person, but nonetheless was capable of operating, even if he was, let's say, economical with the truth at times. There was at least some kind of

respect he gave to the notion of making rational arguments with evidence and a respect he took, even with when he was being persecuted by a special counsel, with nonetheless going through the motions of cooperating with it, even at one point being deposed and speaking to something which, in contrast with the things that Trump was accused of in impeachment, completely trivial. But Clinton was able, in some ways, but his personal character did, I think, affect his public, but not to the same extent. And this is the key thing here, it seems to me, is a kind of extraordinary and extreme pathological narcissism, which prevents Trump literally from understanding the experiences of anybody outside of himself. And he's an inability to see that he is just one part of a bigger system. And that in fact, as president, he has responsibility for the interests of other people too. So that pathological narcissism, which is really deeper in him than I've ever come across in anybody in public life, means that when you come to a

situation like suddenly there's a COVID crisis, what are your instincts? Your instinct, if you were a regular, reasonably normal person, is, blimey, we've got to do something about this. reasonably normal person is, blimey, we've got to do something about this. How do we figure out what the most sensible precautions are? Let's pick up the pandemic playbook that we had inherited. And you might even think that some of his instincts politically would be very successful. So for example, he's kind of the guy that likes to shut borders. Well, he could have shut every border. He's kind of the guy that seeks to control the country, seeks to put himself at the middle of it. Well, he could have made all sorts of gestures to shutting down the country, to imposing masks. He had incredible leeway to do whatever he wanted. But especially if your goal is to control the

epidemic, what did he do? He immediately understood this to be a possible threat to the economy, which meant to his re-election. So his instinct was to deny it, to push it out of his mind, or if it did happen, to try and tell a story that made it not important. So he continually and persistently lied in order to push this out of his consciousness, because as far as he was concerned, it wasn't affecting him, even though, of course, it would personally in the end. But that basically incapacitated him from making any kind of sane judgment about this. You know, in some ways, you would think this xenophobic germaphobe, I mean, this is a man that won't let anyone near him, What didn't historically,

wouldn't shake anybody's hands. If someone coughed near him in the Oval Office, he would ask them to leave. He was pathologically hostile to germs. That's why he likes fast food, we were told. I mean, he never pressed the lowest button on an elevator because he was terrified of germs. Why didn't this guy use all those things he had in his armor to launch a real campaign against COVID, which would have helped him actually politically in the end? Why? Because he simply narcissistically couldn't believe that if he were to reduce economic growth, it would harm him politically. That's all. Simple short-termism, inability to see beyond that. And the other thing we learned in the campaign, of course, is that within his own structure, within the Republican Party,

within his own administration, we saw this as long ago as the first campaign. No one, no one, no one has any authority to stop him doing anything. He's really extraordinary in his ability to persist with his narcissism through any advice, criticism, other alternative viewpoints, to such an extent that it's a kind of blindness that when the real shit hit the fan, when the emergency happened, as it often does in a presidency. He just didn't have the skills to do it. His narcissism was so pathological, it prevented him from doing even obvious and sensible things. Yeah, he is a kind of moral and psychological paradox in a way, because it's almost like, I think of the fine-tuning argument for God. You and I have debated religion in the past. I don't remember you putting any weight on the

fine-tuning of nature's constants as proof of the existence of God, but many have done that. And, you know, so just to remind people that, you know, if the gravitational constant were slightly different, you know, there'd be no formation of galaxies and all the rest. And if, you know, the charge on the electron were different, well, then many things would follow that would be incompatible with life. And it turns out that these constants are tuned within, you know, the tiniest fraction of a hair to values that are compatible with the universe as we know it, and any change would make things worse. And it's almost like he's, the virtues I listed a moment ago, it's almost like he's got these tuned to their worst possible settings, but this doesn't actually

make him the worst possible person. I mean, there are people who are objectively worse than Trump, you know, you just, you know, compare him to Hitler. Hitler is worse. But the things that actually make Hitler worse are actually virtues, right? I mean, like courage and a commitment to something beyond yourself, right? Like if you add those, you know, generic virtues to an otherwise malevolent asshole, well, then he becomes a more competent, more self-sacrificing malevolent asshole, right? So evil gets amplified by virtues in certain contexts. It's almost like Trump has everything dialed to its least respectable level. He is not a courageous person. He's not a competent person. He's not a consistent person. He's committed to nothing beyond himself. But this makes him, again, it is almost supernatural the degree to which he manages to skate through situations that would have destroyed any other predecessor politically. I mean, literally, he's guilty of a thousand indiscretions, which would have torpedoed the presidency of anyone else. So, I mean, even someone like, you know, Clinton, right, who I share your estimation of Clinton, I'm not at all a fan, and I think he's, you know, there's definitely

something sociopathic about him, but at least because he was actually quite smart and well-informed and paid lip service, if nothing else, to the values of being consistent and competent and all the rest, you know, and even as a liar, he felt the burden to lie in a way that his audience would not detect, right? So you have to be consistent in your lie and you have to remember what lies you've told. I mean, you have to insert the lie in the right place in the paragraph so as not to have your dishonesty immediately detected. Trump feels no burden of any of that. He's functioning by a completely different psychophysics. And for that, it's almost like he's an extraterrestrial that has been put down into the political context of DC. And he's managed to train everyone around him through just sheer destruction of their expectations to accept everything. And it really is, I mean, honestly, I think he could have had a Jeffrey Toobin scandal of his own this week, you know, been caught jacking off on Zoom,

and he would be fine, right? Like literally his defenders would come forward and say things like, that's how much he loves America. This guy is just so full of passion. Anything is acceptable from him to his cult. And I just have never seen anything like this. No, and I've never witnessed someone capable of believing their own lies with such a plumb and vigor and energy. There's not a single moment in his public life that he has ever seen fit to even qualify. Even when he said things that are so grotesquely untrue, they're obvious, he will never concede the slightest scintilla of doubt about it. And the huge assertion of a big lie and the self-confidence and the psychological tenacity, extraordinary to insist upon this and

to sustain it perpetually. This is four years of sustaining a series of extraordinary fantasies, which started by telling us, even when we can see it with our own eyes, by starting with telling us that his inauguration crowd was absolutely bigger than Obama's. Whatever your lying eyes are telling you when you look at that, that his ability to say that and to insist that it be true, and somehow by virtue of his own psyche to force those around him to accept it. But even more important, they're inconsistent fantasies, even within the frame of his own utterances within the span of a few

minutes, right? Like he doesn't even have the burden of being consistent with what he said 30 seconds ago. Yes. And that is the key to his domination because the people around him have to agree to both things. Remember, they have to agree to first that black is white and they have to agree to the black is blue. And that is the way in which he enforces his domination. This is an entirely primitive, primal, dominance mode of engagement. It is utterly, it's a warlord mentality. It is a mafia boss mentality. It is, I will say whatever and you will believe it. And honestly, I think the capacity to pull that off is a function of some kind of

extraordinary mental disability. I mean, psychological illness, that there's an energy to this. I mean, look at the man. I mean, he's 74, right? And look at the energy. That's one virtue he has. He has the virtue of energy that is otherwise incomprehensible. I mean, the guy is, he's the picture of health. I mean, it's a perverse kind of health because he's obese and he doesn't exercise. And he, you can tell he, he's, you know, the rumors about him eating nothing but crap are almost certainly true. But it's, it's like he is, he, and this is a unfortunately fairly depressing comparison with Biden. I mean, just the physical presentation. I mean, Biden looks, they both stumble over their words, but Biden's stumbles look like senescence and Trump's just

looks like more Trump. Yeah, there's a, it's in, it's, it's, it's, you know, when he says, maybe I'm immune, maybe I'm a Superman. My genes are like these incredibly powerful things. I mean, and the truth is, I mean, I'm just have to sit there and say, you know, I really don't know anybody with this level of energy sustained this long with this amount of stamina. I mean, for God's sake, the man had COVID-19 only a few weeks ago, and he's seen his mid-70s. And one thought for a minute that reality would actually impose itself upon him. But no, no, he's even immune to that. All right.

So I take it back. He's got one dial that's not tuned to the worst possible position. I envy him his energy. That's just the way he has always campaigned. I mean, that is there's something quite amazing. There is something about mental illness that can provide that kind of energy. That's why it's inexhaustible. Because it's built upon a real psychosis within, this real desperate need never to sit still.

I mean, the man has clearly never spent a moment in reflection, never spent a moment in silence, I doubt. You get no impression this man has an interior life. It's entirely outer directed. It's an empty void within that is constantly seeking affirmation. And in that desperation has a kind of unbelievable energy that also in the past defeated his creditors, defeated anyone, anybody rival of his in the real estate. They just, in the end, even though he crashed his company, even though he gave banks unbelievable headaches, in the end, his indefatigability required them to finally leave the table, forgive the debts, cut their losses, or his ability to not pay people, his ability to sue people into submission.

This is a very deep and ugly... I do think of the ancients' understanding of what a tyrant is. I think what we've seen is the tyrant is, to Plato and Aristotle, out of control, personally out of control, entirely a function of his appetites, which are insatiable, and which there is no governing process within his mind. There is no ego to control the id. It is all id, and it's all momentary. So, and it's that impulse that frightened me and still frightens me, given the system that we live in. And one of the things I've watched is, you know, people were worried that he would become a dictator or something. And I looked back and looked through what I wrote about him four years ago to see if I, you know, screwed up, if I'd exaggerated.

exaggerated. And I do think some of us didn't fully assimilate his incompetence or his laziness. And that is a huge relief in a way. But nonetheless- That's my point about the comparison with a truly evil dictator is he doesn't have the competence or the commitment that would elevate him to that slot. I mean, he would need more virtues. He would need to have a sense of responsibility, which is what we understand to be adulthood, which is that you understand that your own actions affect others and you are cognizant of that. He has never seemingly grown up at all. I mean, this is a childlike person of extraordinary appetites and impulses

and whims and fury, the anger, the rage that drives him all the time. I mean, that has also prevented him, for example, for in any way reaching out to others or to expanding his base. He has not sought to persuade people. He sought to rally them because persuading others has to give them some status, some equality to him. These are people who could choose this or no, and he has to persuade them. That implies that he's in some way deferent to them, even if it's a minimal form of deference. He can't do that. So it has to be constant rallying rather than persuasion. And that's why he's not expanded his base, but has increased its fervency. And I don't think that's going to end entirely.

In fact, I think if he were to lose, and I'm pretty sure he will, but I'm not, there's still part of me that wonders if these polls have really captured what's going on out there. Yeah, well, we're right to be shell-shocked from last time around, so. We are, but he also, you know, it turns out he kind of wants to be a talk show host sitting in the Oval Office. That he talks about his own administration

as if he were observing it, as opposed to directing it. And because he lives in this strange world without actual responsibility. So, hey, I just got the biggest platform in the world. I will tweet 30,000 times of irrational, crazy insults. And I think that has, I mean, the impact that that's had on all of our psyches over four years cannot be overstated. I think of him as president as like being in a family where one person is mentally unwell.

Over time, everyone becomes mentally unwell. It takes up so much bandwidth. I can't imagine even his supporters, even people who love him, I can't imagine they feel that this change that has come over our society in the last three and a half years is good. I mean, it's just everyone has to be exhausted by politics taking up this much bandwidth. like intensely emotional, psychologically exhausting, emotionally draining, constant conflict, rage, emotional outbursts. This is all heat. There's almost been no light at all. And I certainly think that psychologically, I've been, I mean, I'll admit it, I think

he's gotten into my head and has created, I mean, I had a clinical depression just a couple of months after he was elected. And I'm not saying that as a joke. I'm saying that having to absorb a crazy person every day that you can't really avoid. those people that have to live in totalitarian regimes where the picture and the face of the dear leader is constantly in your, you can't, you can't get away from it. It's on your wall. You have to adhere to it. You have to, you have to acknowledge it at every time so that there is no space left for you to have a time without Trump. And equally that- What do you, what do you make of the fact though, that there are people, you know, if we haven't already driven them from our audience, there are people listening to us who just don't see this about him. And now, honestly, it's so evident to me that I don't really have even a theory of mind for someone who can't see any of this. But for me, he's a kind of, and this just plays into the hand of anyone

who would accuse me of Trump derangement syndrome, because this kind of has a quasi-Freudian structure, but if you told me that I was going to suffer some kind of neurological illness that would make me exactly like Trump, I would fucking kill myself. I mean, honestly, I think the last time we spoke, I think this was in one of my diatribes about Trump years ago, I recalled the scene in The Exorcist where the priest is performing the final ineffectual exorcism of Linda Blair. And I think he's strangling her and the devil comes into him, you know, visibly comes into him and, you know, shines out from his eyes, you know, the green eyes of Satan. And at that moment, you know, he has this moment of kind of wrestling with himself and then he hurls himself through that window and down those stone steps. And that's exactly what I would do. I mean, honestly, like he, everything I hope to be, everything I admire in myself and want to increase and everything I'm depressed about myself and want to change, everything is pointing in the opposite direction

from what Trump has fully actualized in himself. And it's just, so he is a kind of super stimulus to me. He is just the most appalling person I can name, right? And again, I mean, honestly, it's like the invidious comparisons to someone like Osama bin Laden are honest. I do not feel the same way about Osama bin Laden, though I recognize the harms that he caused based on his ideology. And obviously, I've said more than my piece against jihadism. But Osama bin Laden is, as a person, is far more understandable to me and far less reprehensible personally, psychologically, than Trump. And I think the way people, and this is

just a guess, because I'm honestly genuinely shocked when I look at polling and find, for example, that white Catholics are 50-50. Now, I was, you know, I brought up a Catholic. I am a Catholic. There are certain core, I mean, we can disagree about religious faith, but there are certain values that are taught. And he is literally the negation of every single one. I mean, it is almost impossible to come up with someone less officially Christian in the virtues than Trump is. And yet half of them think he's okay. And look, here's one thought is that they're not really thinking about him. They're thinking about the people they hate. They're thinking about those liberals. He drives the liberals crazy, as you can hear, you know, at least from my microphone. And they love that about him. god damn these people i want and if and he is if you imagine that people are just blinding

themselves to who he is and just are so consumed by loathing contempt for the elites then you can see how psychologically you can support him without thinking too much about him and and he is if you think of him as one giant middle finger, then it works. And I do think there is, and I do think the way in which the media has responded and in which other institutions have responded, including things like the FBI and CIA and the mainstream media in its broad sense, and even the judiciary, who have gone nuts. They have overplayed their hands in ways that equally undermine confidence in a liberal democracy that seems as if it's all just some great tribal struggle. And if it is that tribal struggle, and you know you hate those people, well, maybe he's

tolerable. Maybe he's just simply a weapon at hand. And given the sort of way in which those elites have never truly copped to their responsibility for some of the worst decisions in the last 30 years in this country, especially insofar as they affected regular working class white people, I think is integral to understanding his appeal as a concept. And I sympathize with that. I really do. And I've tried to learn from it. At the same time, he is so despicable and so dangerous. I mean, the fact that we are sitting here a week before an election, and neither you nor I can know for sure that one of the candidates, in fact, the president, will wait patiently for all the votes to be tallied, where there will be no question that there will be a clear and obvious transfer of power, that we will be resolved. We'll have this big conflict, but it will be resolved and we will move forward. The fact that we don't know that for sure, the fact that this man is even holding the stability of our system as a weapon shows an unbelievable level of recklessness and irresponsibility and a true danger to everything. And I'm, you know, I'm so tired of being told right now that you overestimated, you hyperventilated,

he hasn't been a dictator, blah, blah, blah. And this is a very sort of world-weary sense. Yes, but what are we supposed to do? When a president says, I may not abide by the results of the election, are we supposed to sit there and say, oh, well, we know he doesn't really mean that, or we'll be fine. No, that's not our responsibility. Why are we being put in this position at all. How dare this man come into our democracy and threaten it this way? It is unprecedented. I know I sound passionate about this, but at this point, no, fuck you. That is not tolerable. No party should support it. No one can tolerate it. And yet he does. And by doing that, for those of us like me who are institutionally very conservative, who believe that liberal democracy is fragile, needs to be defended, this is a crime against our very system of government.

The fact that this man can sympathize with and openly support people who are engaging in the most hideous, repressive measures like Putin or Xi, or he could actually, we're told, tell Xi, don't worry about putting all those Uyghurs in concentration camps. I'd be with you if I were over there. This is, sorry, but it's just, it's not a personality flaw. It's a critical undermining argument to everything that we believe in in the West. Yeah. So you've just hit upon the worst current thing about him. And it's the one recent fact that I think, in isolation, I mean, forget about everything else we've said about him or could be said about him that I think should be a deal breaker for somebody. The fact that

we have a sitting U.S. president who will not commit to the peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election. I mean, this is just so unbelievable, and it is so dangerous and irresponsible that, I mean, that should be the only thing you have to know about him to know that you can't vote for him. I mean, I really do think that that really does supersede any other concern we could have about anything. And there are literally a thousand other things that almost rise to that level. I mean, the fact that he's someone who repeatedly has asked why we can't just use our nuclear weapons, right? I mean, he's the one person in our society who can launch a nuclear first strike,

and he seems to be conflicted over the ethics there. There are literally hundreds of things like that that we could dredge up to disqualify him or prove his unfitness for office. But the fact that he will not commit to a peaceful transfer of power here, and the fact that he's willing to roll the dice with the obvious harm that that is doing to our politics and the risk that is amplifying for

political unrest in the aftermath of the election, I mean, it's just, the thing that's amazing to me is that he has not lost support on the basis of that. I mean, I would think that his support should go to zero after saying that. I mean, the only thing he could say that is equivalently crazy to this, and he almost did it. I mean, he made a joke about Biden getting assassinated at one of his rallies the other day. But the only thing that's actually analogous to him not committing to a peaceful transfer of power is for him to actually encourage his supporters to assassinate Biden. If he stood up at a rally and said, listen, we'd all be a lot better if one of you put a bullet in this joker, right? I mean, if he did that, the truth is, I'm not even sure

that's worse. I think it might be more shocking to some people, but the fact that he is willing to roll the dice with endless allegations that the election is rigged, there's no way he could lose but for essentially a Democrat-run coup, and he's not going to commit to the peaceful transfer of power, and he's just willing to just let that aftermath play out with 400 million guns in the society. It is unbelievable that we're here, and he's just willing to just let that aftermath play out with 400 million guns in the society. It is unbelievable that we're here, and it's doubly unbelievable that we haven't seen the support for him go to zero on that basis. Yes. And the truth is that I am genuinely frightened of a close result,

which he refuses to acknowledge. I'm genuinely frightened of an unbelievably specious attempt to call the election on election night, regardless of whether we've completed or voted or have counted all or even a majority of the votes. The fact that I'm afraid that he could indeed call for violence in the streets in his defense, that he could stoke and would talk about this as if he weren't ultimately responsible for law and order in the United States, is simply unique in the history of the United States or unique in the history of Western democracy, actually. And given the passions that he has created, and given also the racial fault line that he has mined, and given the radicalization that he has also enabled, but he hasn't created it entirely

himself, but he has definitely made it worse. We're talking about probably the most dangerous period in modern American history in terms of the stability of the actual regime, of the stability of the system. When the person in charge of the system openly speaks of no responsibility for maintaining it, in fact, because again, I come back to this pathological narcissism, he cannot see outside his own personal pride, ego, and self-interest that we are still in a terribly precarious situation in this country. And I will not breathe easily or sleep well until he is removed from office. And I felt that way for them because I can't ever see because he's never given us any indication of any limit, any limit to what he will and will not do. It is a constant process of shock. And when you look at classical depictions

of crazy tyrants, this is their capacity. It's part of what maintains their power. They never tell you the limits on what they can do. They always keep you guessing. We'll see what happens is one of his favorite phrases, which is a threat. It's not an observation. And his refusal to ever put any outer limits on what he can and cannot do in the terms of this culture is unique and it is terrifying. And I'm sorry, but Republicans and conservatives who sort of roll their eyes at this as if what they're witnessing is entertainment. Truth is, I don't think I've seen the rank and file Republican response to his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power? I mean,

have you noticed how Republicans spin that and bracket it or otherwise convey their reasons for not taking it seriously? I haven't seen a clear, absolutely unequivocal, except maybe from Romney, statement from people with power saying this is unacceptable and must be stopped. They tell us that it's not going to happen. He's just joking.

This constant, he's just joking stuff. Again, it suggests that we're watching a miniseries rather than living in an actual functioning republic. But I mean, in this case, he's so obviously not joking.

This ball has been teed up for him, you know, now at least a dozen times. And every time he declines to hit it in the way you would expect a U.S. president to... I think it's because he sees himself sort of in a lawsuit where you never concede anything. And you, until the very last minute when you, if you're forced to settle, you may be forced to settle, but you certainly never give away any leverage in advance, which of course might be a sensible strategy if you are a private actor within a system which has already guaranteed some basic security. When you're actually the president of the United States and you're putting the entire

system at risk, I just think there's an incredible complacency about the stability of the system, which really does help reinforce to me, who thinks of himself as a sort of classical conservative, just how anti-conservative this Republican movement is. It is absolutely contemptuous of procedures, norms, and institutions, has absolutely no concern for their preservation, does not even see the system that we live in for what it is. It is simply a TV show. It is simply a talk radio show. It is simply a forum for entertainment. And yes, I can get moved each another way, but by the entertainment, I can get really pissed off at all these crazy lefties. I can love listening to Joe Rogan. I can do all that, but I'm not going to keep my eye off the ball of sustaining the system. I've read enough history. I've seen enough. I've read enough literature to see what

is in front of our noses, which is this guy should never have been in there, ever. Yeah, there's now this loss of trust in institutions, but the loss of trust is, to a shocking degree, warranted. I mean, there has just been a hollowing out of institutions and there's been a denigration of them to the point where you're just not even sure how many competent people are left in positions of responsibility at places like the FDA and the CDC. And the press has based on its own, I mean, for the very dynamic you described, I mean, like so much of the counter reaction to Trump, the necessary counter reaction has been so deranged by how bad he is that now you have something like the New York Times is the worst possible incarnation of itself because it has been so captured by the spirit of the resistance. And it's true, for example, with some of these courts that struck down his immigration rulings, which were self-evidently from the get-go within his purview, agree with him or disagree with him,

that some of these legal and judicial arguments have been thrown up by some of the courts, which have eventually been shot down, have nonetheless been discredited at the courts, I think, in a way that was always a danger in this. The overreaction was always going to be as dangerous long term as his excrescence. And that's what the trick is within liberal democracy is to keep, try and keep these things at bay bay because otherwise they cannibalize everything. They cannibalize the rule of law. I mean, what he's done with the Justice Department, for example, I mean, what he's done to the credibility of the FBI and which is, I think, terrible in as much as we do have to have

trust in neutral institutions that enforce the law. And if the FBI doesn't have that trust, we're in terrible trouble. At the same time, he's provoked reactions within those systems that I think have been excessive. I do think, and in the media, I mean, I think the Russia obsession, the notion that we were going to prove that he is a paid agent from the 1980s onwards. I mean, this stuff was a fantasy. And even though there are lots of troubling ties between him and the Russian people, he doesn't have any qualms or scruples

about taking aid from anyone. And he naturally sides with dictators because he likes them. He thinks they're cool. He thinks they're cool. He thinks they're the ones that really know what's going on. So his support for Russia, or his closeness with Putin, were completely overdetermined. But the entire establishment had to engage in what turned out to be a three-year-long goose chase to find some obvious smoking gun, which was never going to be there in the first place,

and has thereby helped discredit a great deal of these institutions. I mean, I think what you read in the New York Times today is that when you read, for example, Ben Smith in the New York Times, not to get personal about this, but who's defending keeping the Hunter Biden stuff out of the press, when you realize that this is the person who published the Steele dossier without any qualms whatsoever or any context or anything other than, hey, here it is, let's have a look at it, you begin to realize just how the press has discredited itself and in public opinion also. And I must say, Sam, I mean, I look at places like CNN and I just, I can't believe it anymore.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's completely broken. Yeah. It is broken so badly. And a function of this, of course, is that it's also incredibly boring. You look at what's happened in mainstream media and it is one endless, tedious recitation of the same prejudices and views without any, and you've seen them internally be incapable of accepting a diversity of opinion within their own ranks. It's been a terrible period for media, even though they have done incredibly well financially

by pandering in this way and by becoming essentially abandoning any pretense of neutrality, they don't realize that that in itself is also an attack upon liberal democracy. And I want there to be a newspaper which I can trust. And I want to read a newspaper where I don't read every page and feel there is an obvious agenda here that even I, who loathe the man and despise many of his policies, I still find irritating and crude and self-discrediting. Well, that's just a crucial line that can't be crossed. I mean, there's so many valid, honest, well-calibrated things you can say against Trump that you never need to exaggerate. I say this knowing

that some people, having listened to me for the last hour, will think I've exaggerated his flaws, but I can assure you I haven't. But to take the one piece of fine print I put out earlier on, he has this very frequent attack against him that he didn't condemn white supremacy and that he, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, he said there were good people, fine people on both sides and left it at that, right? That's simply untrue. You can take five minutes to listen to the press conference where the fine people utterance first escaped his mouth. And within 15 seconds of saying that, he said, I'm not talking about the white supremacists, you know, that we should condemn them utterly. He was absolutely clear about that,

that he was talking about what he imagined to be a different crowd of people who were simply protesting the removal of monuments that were dear to their heart, right? And these were not the tiki torch carrying anti-Semites. Yeah, he did make a distinction that the press simply lied about. And Biden lies about it and Kamala Harris lies about it and whether everyone knows their line or not or they just can't be bothered to figure out what's true, I don't know. One wonders whether Daniel Dale has rules on this. There are things that are said about him that are not true and that are unfair.

Yeah, the point is you never need to do that, right? You never need to be dishonest with respect to criticizing him. Yes, but they have a agenda in doing that because they want to racialize this. The left has done a great, sterling, constant job of saying that what this is really about is not illiberalism. It's not the dangers of a person who can't be trusted or who is a fantasist or a narcissist or a dangerous person. They want to make this into proof that, in fact, all of America just voted twice for Obama is a white, not just racist, but white supremacist. And therefore, they have to up the ante all the time.

What's fascinating to me is after four years of that, four years of it, it looks as if Trump is going to significantly increase, even from a very low base, but nonetheless, increase support among blacks and Hispanics. And if Biden wins, it's going to be because he won over elderly whites, rather than... So the actual data that we're seeing does not portray this. And you also realize that the people who were critical in giving Biden the nomination were basically solid black democratic voters who have their feet on the ground and their head screwed on right, who understood that it is not in the interest of African Americans to have their entire neighborhoods ransacked with looting and rioting and in flames, that people do want to see police misconduct held to account. They do want to see real reform. And there is a huge, I think, majority for practical common sense reforms in restraining police abuse. Absolutely.

reforms in restraining police abuse. Absolutely. But that is being blown away by an attempt to create this sort of grand racial tribal narrative that isn't actually borne out in reality. And that's also the case with the question of immigration, where what are completely genuine and completely legitimate democratic arguments about how much immigration should we have, how little immigration, how should we have, how little immigration we should be, how should we enforce? These are completely legitimate questions for politics. And yet we are told that anybody raising these issues or even having anything but a completely permissive view is inherently thereby a white supremacist. Now, of course, when people are being told that, that things that they just wanted to have a voice on, that they're bigots for even raising it. Of

course, they're going to be more concerned and hate the people calling them bigots than the person they think might actually in the end stand up for them. And that helps Trump do what he wants to do. I think Trump is, I think in the sense that he's dismissive of African Americans and contemptuous of, and lacks any empathy or compassion or any sense really of the nuances of history, is a racist, yes. But do I think he's a kind of longstanding white supremacist seeking to oppress? No, he's desperate for minority votes. He champions them. He talks about them all the time. It's more complicated than that. And I think- Well, he's totally without ideology. He's not committed to anything. I do think, I believe to a moral certainty that I have evidence that he's racist, but it's not especially

public evidence. And I've talked about this before, but I know at least two people who have it directly from Mark Burnett that he buried the Apprentice tapes and that on those tapes, you've got Trump using the N-word in earnest, not talking about it as a word, but just using it because that's what he calls these people. We also know that he's a rapist. I mean, this is not up for dispute. So you just struck a point of contact to the Hunter Biden scandal that no one will talk about. The truth is, I haven't looked into this enough to have formed an opinion about it. I just know how inconsequential an exercise that would be, because the truth is,

inconsequential an exercise that would be, because the truth is, there's basically nothing that could be there that would swamp the invidious comparisons I've made between Biden and Trump thus far. It's like, you know, even if you could prove to me that, I mean, to take another scandal that no one wanted to talk about, the allegation that Biden had, you know, sexually assaulted somebody who was working for his campaign, whatever it was, 20 years ago. At a certain point, the New York Times talked about that, but only to sort of put it back in the closet. It didn't seem especially credible, I think, in the end to people.

But even if it had been every bit as credible as the allegations against Trump, well, it's one allegation against, what, 20 in Trump's case? I mean, so it's like there's nothing you're going to find in the Hunter Biden story that is going to rise to the level of the corruption I already know Trump is guilty of. And that's why it's deeply uninteresting to me. But I share people's concern that we are now in a place in our democracy where we feel like we can't even report stories because they could so destabilize our politics so that we would wind up with four more years of Trump. I think it is, in fact, true as a matter of just the changes, you know, hourly changes

in public opinion that Comey's reactivation of the Hillary Clinton investigation in the last week of the campaign is why Trump became president. I mean, obviously there are many other variables here, but that was the thing that changed the polling decisively. I mean, you can just essentially time it to the hour, but we're here. So I don't know what should we be doing with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden at the moment. I've thought about this too. I think the reason why they did have an impact is because it played right in 2016, is it played right into the existing narrative of Clinton as a crook, basically, and as a very deceptive and self-interested, old-fashioned, corrupt politician.

And so it hit that way. Although the truth is, even then, we're talking about a massive double standard because whatever you could convict anyone else of in that regard, Trump has that in triplicate. Yeah, I have done my best to read these stories about under Biden's laptop. And when I think it through rather like you, rather uncannily like you, I think, well, compared to Ivanka, compared to Don Jr., compared to the unbelievable, open, proud corruption of this obviously corrupt family in the White House. This is trivial. And I think, and I do, but I do think that carefully engineered, last minute, partisan-oriented sudden revelations should be met with skepticism and restraint from the media.

And I think that's perfectly sensible. What the Wall Street Journal did in reporting this out and telling us what wasn't there, actually, that there wasn't anything there, was the right thing to do. The extraordinary attempt to forbid any discussion of this in any other media source, the way in which bringing this up is regarded as some sort of horrifying thing. Whereas in fact, obviously, it seems to me, Hunter Biden is a corrupt individual. The way, in a legal way, most of the time, there's nothing illegal about the way he parlayed and peddled his connection to his father. And this is a problem.

It pales in insignificance compared to what Trump is doing and has done. It doesn't implicate Joe himself. But the way in which the mainstream media has responded instinctively to suppress this story and the way in which social media then reacted also by suppressing this story, I cannot but unnerve us. This is a media that is more interested at this point in controlling the news than airing it. And I don't think the Giuliani's slightly nutball interviews about this or some of the details of this, I don't think they're that persuasive. I don't think it would dramatically shift. But I don't like the idea that we have a media interested in keeping from the public stuff that might change their minds about a political debate at this point in a campaign. I just don't like it. It's not what our instincts should be as journalists. Our core instinct should be, what's here? What's in it? It shouldn't be to push it out there like Ben Smith did with the Steele dossier. It should be, however, not to say this must never be talked about. And

what I've seen, I mean, the refusal to air this, except on Fox, and then there are some lonely people like Matt Taibbi, who is interested in writing about this. And Glenn Greenwald, who is, I think, trying to write about this in Intercept. But that you won't find it anywhere is troubling to me. And especially troubling because if we do get a change of regime, if we do get Biden in, then all these people are going to be involved not just in suppressing information, but suppressing information on behalf of those in power. And I see the mindset among my peers in journalism, and it chills me. They really do believe that their job is to advance, quote unquote, social justice. It is not to get as much information out to people as possible and let them decide for

themselves. And that's a really disturbing thing. And I've seen it up close. And I've seen the pressure socially on people not to do this. And being a journalist is to be an asshole in so many respects. It is to embrace your position as the skunk at the party, the person bringing up the unpopular stuff, the stuff. Now, you can do it responsibly, irresponsibly. I'm not saying this stuff should have been spread all over the place immediately. But I am saying the way the media has responded to this seems to me deeply unhealthy. It speaks to a rot in mainstream media and its understanding of what journalism is. And it concerns me. It really does.

I understand why people don't want a last minute Comey with some bullshit distorting everybody's views at the last minute. And I do think this was cynically done by partisan people for partisan purposes. But Hunter Biden is almost certainly a shady individual. purposes. But Hunter Biden is almost certainly a shady individual. And Joe Biden's refusal, refusal even to address the question, simply to dismiss it out of hand as a smear job as opposed to engage in it. Similarly, his refusal, his absolute refusal to say where he stands on the question of court packing, which is an incredibly important topic, and to have been supported by the mainstream media in not answering these questions, in fact, cheering him for not answering them, is troubling, and certainly troubling for the future.

It reveals that the media is disposed to treat, and social media are disposed to treat, much of American society as dangerous children. But the truth is, given what has happened and given that the dangerous child half of our society voted for last time around, that's not totally unwarranted. I mean, there really is this concern that even with however scrupulous you are to deal with the information, it is a kind of, informationally, it is a kind of toxic waste that will get spread around. And given the asymmetries here, I mean, what's so amazing is the New York Times gets one thing wrong to its everlasting discredit, whereas Fox need not get anything right. And they're both considered news organizations. And Trump can lie and lie and lie and lie, and no one cares.

And it can be as obvious as the sun is in the sky. And it catch Joe Biden lying clearly, and that could completely derail his campaign. But for good reason. I mean, those are the norms we want. We want to get back to a world where to catch someone lying in public life dictates a real reputational cost. How did we get so far from that? Again, in Trumpistan, everything functions by a different physics, and awareness of that has just paralyzed us in trying to deal with it. I get it. I think you're absolutely right. I think social media can do things that are really destructive,

absolutely right. I think social media can do things that are really destructive. And I do think some level of responsibility from those who control that social media is important. I'm just concerned that it gets to a slightly pathological and rather knee-jerk attempt to suppress information rather than to get it all out there. Well, it's also the Streisand effect. I mean, by trying to suppress it, you're now calling attention to it. And it's also the Streisand effect. I mean, by trying to suppress it, you're now calling attention to it. And it's... Although it seems like they have managed to squash it. I mean, I think the fact that there isn't really anything really damning in this about Joe Biden himself has helped keep this thing from not being the central. And of course, it shouldn't be a central issue in the campaign.

And of course, Tucker Carlson sitting down for an hour to spread this stuff is clearly not really a function of journalism. It's a function of partisan warfare. At the same time, again, I'm being squishy here, but I do think you have to, as a journalist, if this stuff comes out, you have to, for example, ask Biden, is this untrue? Are you telling us that this is a complete fraud, that this laptop is not Hunter Biden's, that nothing in this is true about Hunter Biden? Is this an entirely false flag operation? And the fact is he hasn't been forced to say yes or no to that.

And he should be forced to say yes or no to that. We should know if he thinks this is an entire fabrication or if he thinks it's a real thing that somehow they got hold of this laptop. It really is Hunter Biden. But it's being distorted or manipulated. Those are two options. The press has let him get away with that. So let's say we escape the worst possible outcomes here and arrive at something like the best possible from our point of view, which is that, you know, Biden wins in a landslide and there is a peaceful transfer of power and Trump tries to, I mean, it's interesting to consider what he will attempt to do as an ex-president. I guess I'm just

wondering, what aftermath can you imagine for Republicans? Just imagine the Republicans who will, at that point, try to diminish their culpability for having enabled Trump for four years. Just culturally, politically, what is the process of resetting going to look like? It's almost like you need truth and reconciliation commissions to give people the space in which to offer the appropriate mea culpas and to get, you know, a reboot. I'm not sure it's that hard, because I think you can make an argument, and I'm looking at sort of center-right parties in Europe on this. There are things that Trump identified and elevated that are real. There is a real worry about large swaths of the working and middle

classes in the West being completely left behind by globalization and the power of unrestrained global capitalism. And there is also a genuine question of how fast a population can change demographically without being counterproductive in terms of it provoking racist, xenophobic, or nativist responses when it is at what is a historic peak. I mean, not seen for another over a century of something like 14% of the entire population of the United States not having been born in the United States, which is as high as it's been since the early 20th century, after which there was a very draconian immigration law. I think those issues can be integrated into a more sensible and liberal democratic conservatism, that you can harness

patriotism, you can harness traditional values with skepticism towards completely free trade and with some more control and enforcement of immigration laws in a way that is a completely plausible and probably quite popular position. And it's something that, for example, in the UK, the Tories were able to do quite successfully and win an 80-seat majority, the biggest majority in decades in the UK parliament. And even though they're struggling with COVID, obviously, that's quite an achievement. I'm quite optimistic about the possibility of a kind of adjusted conservative. It's not going to be a return to neoconservatism in foreign policy. It's not going to be a return to neoclassical economics. It can't be because they have become, I think, a victim of their own success. they have become, I think, a victim of their own success. So I do think there's a possibility for a figure to emerge to say, we get what you were saying. We realized this guy was out of his mind. I mean, they're not going to say it quite that boldly, but they will emphasize things like the

rule of law, give and take in a democracy, those kinds of values. But to be honest, what I really hope is that Biden will be and present himself as being a unifying president. And that means really, first of all, finding a way to keep us and keep this economy alive during COVID, which is going to be brutal in the next six to nine months. But I do think there is a real opening for a major stimulus. I think there's a real opening for major infrastructure investment, for green energy investment. I do think there is an appetite for repairing our traditional alliances, which could be very popular. And I do think there's an appetite for police reform, which is not framed in the terms of some sort of great reckoning with institutionalized racism or

white supremacy, but which is geared towards bringing the races together around law and order and protecting everyone. I think there is a real opening for that kind of centrist democratic position, which is going to actually, in policy terms, be a shift economically to the left. And I think if Biden is able to do that without caving to some of the more extreme cultural and social elements in his coalition, he could be extremely successful. And so my hope is that we might move away from tribalism. I'm encouraged by Biden's quixotic but enduring belief that he can talk to a few Republican senators and get some kind of support. I do also think that Biden uniquely does not trigger white voters in the

way that another Democrat might. I do think that there will be a big fight within the Democrats over who's going to win. And in my darker moments, I think Biden is just out of it and will cave and will bring in so many crazy-ass wokies into the situation that it will all become terrible. But I don't want to give up on that possibility. It's not like Biden. Biden has run a campaign for the center. He has not, even though he has endorsed big infrastructure spending and debt, which I think is probably necessary given the extraordinary crisis of the global economy in this epidemic. But I think in general, he's quite appealing to lots of people, as we've seen. And I think he's also a decent person in as much as he won't

outrageously lie. He won't stir up racial animosities. Today, for example, he just came out very simply and said, the riots and looting in Philadelphia last night are just unacceptable and wrong, period. And that's important. It's important that the cops understand that the president is not going to sell them out at every opportunity, even though he's going to be tough in making sure that the injustices that are there are examined and rooted out. You know, I just wonder whether Biden isn't actually a better spokesman for Obamaism than Obama was, even though Obama was incredibly eloquent. There was just something culturally that didn't, that clearly it didn't, I mean, I found him unbelievably inspiring and culturally ennobling and wonderfully,

but clearly that didn't work for large numbers of people. They felt alienated to some extent. And Biden is not that. The fact that the Democratic base picked this guy, the fact that Black voters disproportionately picked this guy is encouraging to me. Black voters disproportionately pick this guy is encouraging to me. And it's an opportunity for us to revive a certain liberal democratic, I mean those in two small L, down. I want, I want some of the tension to be released. I want, I want a president I don't have to think about for a few weeks. I want, I want someone whose core psyche I'm pretty comfortable with, even though Biden over the years has driven me nuts and he's irritating in some ways and he's, he's, he's,

he's confusing and, and he can be, and he has been a blowhard. What's interesting to me is the Biden they've given us in this campaign is not that Biden. He is more the elder statesman, come together, let's all get along figure, elderly figure, someone who represents a past understanding, for example, of bipartisanship. And these are things that they have advertised. They put them front and forward. That matters in terms of how the administration will evolve. He's going to have enormous pressure on him from the left. But I think, I mean, my hope, again, I can't guarantee this, and part of me is pessimistic, but my hope is that he can really do that. He can put together a civilized civil coalition around the center. And I think that, and I actually think, and this is another debate, if he gets a really

big win, I think that helps him against the left. Because he's going to bring in a whole bunch of Democrats into the Senate and the House who are going to be answerable to swing voters in marginal seats. And if you look at the way the Democrats responded or the way they campaigned in 2018, if that is where Biden goes, then I think it's quite possible he'll do very well. killed you very well. But as you point out, he is the elder Biden, and to the point where it does not seem irrational to imagine that he's a one-term president, and he may well be succeeded at some point in the middle of his term by Kamala Harris. I mean, actuarially, it would not be a terrible surprise. So how do you view the prospect of a Harris presidency? Why do you ask me that question? Is this the part we cut out so as not to give energy to Trump voters?

Yes, I'm not that, I wasn't that, to be honest with you. There's an element of her that obviously seems to be tough minded. And I'm certainly in favor of women in high office. And that's a plus as far as I'm concerned. There's an element to her that has seemed a little unserious, to be honest with you. that has seemed a little unserious, to be honest with you. I mean, I remember her in one of those debates where she said that within 100 days, if they didn't pass gun control legislation, I can't remember exactly what she said, she would enforce it herself. And I'm like, and Bryden actually in that debate said, well, you know, constitutionally, you can't do that.

That's not within the powers of the president. And I was like, well, that's an obviously good point. And I waited for her to respond. She's a prosecutor. She knows the law. She knows the Constitution. And she just kind of giggled and laughed and said, oh, come on, Joe. We can do it if we try.

Yes, we can. And I was like, that is not a serious person. But in terms of fears that she is a full avatar of the wokeness, I mean, her history as a prosecutor would suggest that she's not among the defund the police crowd, whatever lip service she's paid to wokeness in recent months. No, but she also seems to have her finger in the wind and is a somewhat canny politician. and is a somewhat canny politician and we'll see. He would have to die for her to succeed.

I think there's still quite a chance he'll be hanging on for four more years. I don't think he's going to run again. And I do think, therefore, after the midterms, there's going to be a real fight for the future of the party. I can't imagine him running for a second term. And I do think that also gives Biden an opportunity. You know, if you are trying to be the unifier, if you're trying to be the person who settles things down and attempts to put us back together in some way, then not having an interest in your own perpetuation for second term

gives you a kind of platform to do that more in a bipartisan way. And I do think that's Biden's instinct. I do think he misses the old politics. Now, there are many who say, don't be an idiot. The Republicans are evil, that they won't compromise, they can't deal. They will probably oppose, for example, an unbelievably necessary stimulus during COVID. They will probably do what they attempted to do with Biden, with Obama, which is, you know, basically try and cripple his ability to repair the damage. That depends how badly they're defeated, I think, and who's left. And it also depends on whether they take the same attitude to Biden that they did to Obama. And I think Biden does have some serious relationships in the Senate, particularly, I think Biden does have some serious relationships in the Senate, particularly, that helps him.

I do think he's better at congressional engagement and management than Obama was for psychological reasons. And I do think Biden is capable of reminding many people in the middle, and I'm thinking particularly white people, say, in the Midwest, that the Democrats aren't viscerally and characterologically hostile to their interests and ideas. And I think his religious faith plays a part in credentializing him in that way. His background does. And I think, especially in a health crisis, I think there's something about his ability to empathize with people who have been stricken with grief and illness and struggle is actually important. We need it. There is nothing feigned about that. Whatever you do or don't know about him as a person, his backstory as someone who has suffered bereavement upon bereavement, and in the first

case, just the most shocking kind. I mean, the idea that someone with these reserves of compassion and just empathy for human suffering, I mean, that alone would be such a change in the office of the presidency. I'm from a sort of traditional Irish Catholic family. It's in England and everything, but we're all rough. I know that guy. I know that guy. And I know he's a good guy. I just know that.

And I can't tell you how deep one's yearning for just some human decency in that office. And I do think they've been very effective at putting that across. I do think they've been very effective at putting that across. I do think that some kind of, the presidency is a weird thing. It's not a prime minister. And there is a role in which the president does,

as it were, bind the nation in a series, in a matter of grief. And what we have been going through requires some kind of ability to understand that. I think, for example, the way Trump dismissed drug abuse, Hunter Biden, coke addict, crackhead or whatever he called him, such a fucking despicable human being that guy i mean i i just that detail alone the idea that in a presidential debate one of the candidates would attack the other one as the father of a crackhead i mean just that's where we are but when you're also dealing in the context of this awful epidemic which has been socially and personally isolating has been been incredibly, I mean, we've not only lost people, we've lost people we couldn't visit, we couldn't see, we couldn't help. I mean, I lost my dad and

couldn't even go to a burial, you know, and it's, there is an open wound in this country that Trump does nothing but pour salt into. And, and we also have a crisis of addiction, which this epidemic has made even worse, that we're seeing the numbers of opioid addiction go up again. And fentanyl is spreading again. We really do have a spiritual crisis. I'm going to trigger you, but I- No, no. I've reclaimed that word for my own purposes. Okay. So I'm with you. I can translate appropriately on my side. Okay. We're all dealing with existential questions of life and death.

And it does matter that someone is at the top that feels like he's not seeing you entirely as instrumental to his political fortunes, that might actually take a moment to be with you and to acknowledge. We have never, for example, in this country, we've never really acknowledged the deaths that we have. We could have half a million by the spring. And, you know, other countries have had moments where they've stopped to universally celebrate health care workers or those people. There have also been moments in which people have stopped for a moment of silence in memory

of those we've lost. I mean, this is the other context that we're in right now of this extraordinary dislocation in which we're all living in this uncanny valley of our previous lives, in which everything seems similar, but it's just awfully off-key. And the other thing we learn about these experiences, this human experience, I wrote an essay earlier this year about plagues in history, is that what they do to societies is they suspend you in midair for a minute. And they are moments in which you can actually socially really reorganize and restructure in ways that otherwise might not happen. really reorganize and restructure in ways that otherwise might not happen.

And I do think that we're going to see, and as someone who was, you know, a supporter of Thacher-Reagan and a lot of neoliberal economics for a while, I do think that it's a, and it's quite plausible argument, if you shift from race and identity to class as a Democrat, you actually have a unique opportunity to build a consensus around more support for working people, more support for people with addiction, more compassion in that context without dividing us by race, and massive inequality that absolutely needs to be addressed structurally with some redistribution. So there's a moment here, an opportunity that, again, you don't see this old dude as necessarily harnessing, but I think he might be, in a paradoxical way, a man for the moment in as much as that, yes, he could preside over this

without making people afraid of a sort of leftist takeover, because old Uncle Joe's in there, also could be quite structurally important in terms of the economy. But also, I think we want a defense of the West. We want someone to stand up and defend our way of life against the emerging powers of East Asia and Russia in ways that our current president has absolutely undermined from the get-go. And I do think that's a great opportunity for this dude. And I think he should, by the way, I think he should appoint Obama as Secretary of State and send him around the world again.

An apology tour. Another apology tour, yes. Second. But this time with real feeling. Yes, exactly. But so I'm, I also think, by the way, we're also going to have this like, this unbelievably riotously debauched 20s. When we get past COVID. When we get past this, people are going to get absolutely fucking pissed.

The roaring 20s. We're going to be fucking everything. A hundred years later. We're going to be fucking everything site. We're going to be drinking everything site. We'll be doing every single of drug and so on. And anyway, Biden is a transitional figure, but primarily a sort of binding up the wounds kind of guy. Now, I may be being naive here. I'm not saying that these forces of polarization, of tribalism can disappear. They're going to, in here, if we get through this period peacefully, and if the decision

to vote Biden is a big one, so that it can't really be psychologically reversed, if it's a kind of LBJ Goldwater thing, then you can, I think, fix the thing. Goldwater thing, then you can, I think, fix the thing. What I fear most is a narrow wind that is brutally contested that leads to unbelievable dissension and violence and the interregnum. I mean, those are the nightmare scenarios that are in front of me. I'm just praying they don't happen. I think there's a chance with a landslide that we can get past them. But of course, you know, we don't know. We live in history. I think we've discovered that it isn't over. Yeah. Well, fingers crossed, Andrew. I think that this is a great place to leave it. Before we sign off, I just want to say something to your audience. I mean,

we're on both of our podcasts now, but talking to the Dish audience, you and I have just spoken about all the ways in which bad incentives and pressure have corrupted the media and how difficult it has become to have a sane and intellectually honest conversation about difficult topics. And I really hold you to be one among a handful of people who can be relied upon to take intellectual and reputational risks to advance that honest conversation. And it's getting harder to do that. And the business model of journalism has been inimical to ordinary people doing that, and it's been taking, you know, extraordinary people or extraordinarily lucky people to do it. And, you know, you and I don't agree about everything. You and I certainly started out debating things

and debating one. It's been a few years since I looked back at our first debate about religious belief, but, you know, it was surprisingly hard-hitting, if memory serves. And the fact that we have arrived in a place where we're friends and we're this copacetic, it just speaks to something about you that I have not discovered in everyone I've disagreed with in quite the same way. And so I just urge your audience to support your current endeavor, because the only thing that will allow you to be the voice we need on all the topics you will touch is a secure business model. And so, I mean, they should support your podcast.

They should support your newsletter, as I am. And I'm loving your newsletter, by the way. So I know it's uncomfortable to ask an audience for support, but it's not uncomfortable at all for me to ask your audience to support you. And so I just really urge people to do that. Thank you so much. I mean, one thing we do every week is that I'll write my piece, but we really will publish the strongest dissents and arguments against it and force me to engage them in a reasonable way. And no one else is doing that. It's not a comment section where people yell at you. It is an attempt to put me on the spot every week to make sure that I'm kept honest by my own readership. And

yes, I mean, we've proven that this can't happen anymore in so many media institutions that have been captured. And so supporting us really, really matters. And I'm really grateful you've been an absolute role model in pursuing this kind of intellectual inquiry. And you've helped me

calm down and think seriously and be a better writer and thinker. And my readers do the same thing. And if you want to encourage that kind of discourse, please support us. Our paywall goes up this week. And so lots of you will be in that position of choosing whether to actually back us with your dollars or not. It doesn't matter. You know, you're welcome, whatever. But please help us. Please, please support us. The

weekly dish, it's out there on Substack. And I'm so grateful, Sam, for you to support that. And I'm also thrilled that this conversation is the first of a series of conversations I'm having with some, I hope, some really interesting people in which we will be having the same kind of conversation, which is not, which is an attempt to get to the truth. That's all. I just want to figure out what's true. And if that's your goal, then please be with us and help me do it. Nice. Well, I certainly hope that politics becomes so boring that our next conversation has nothing to do with it, that we won't even be tempted to talk about politics. That's the world I want to live in, Andrew. Amen. That is the ultimate achievement of a liberal society, is to have moments where

we can leave politics entirely behind. Nice. Well, to be continued, brother. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Sam. God bless. I mean, I didn't mean that in a trickery way. It just came out. It just came out. May the force be with you.