Making Sense with Sam Harris - #49 — The Lesser Evil

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

Sam Harris speaks with Andrew Sullivan about the 2016 presidential election. 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.

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Well, this is another election-related podcast. This might be my last swing at this ball. As many of you know, I've come out strongly against Donald Trump. And the only way to really do this is to support Hillary Clinton. But what I want to do in this podcast is attempt to reach those of you who view any criticism of Trump as partisan. So I'm going to spend a long time here speaking very critically about the lesser evil, Hillary Clinton, about both Clintons, in fact, because they come as a pair. And I've enlisted Andrew Sullivan to help me in this cause because he certainly knows what's wrong with both Clintons. Most of you know him, of course.

Andrew has been a very prominent journalist and editor. He ran the New Republic for many years and he's written for more or less everybody. He's a frequent political commentator and the fact that gay marriage is now legal in this country is largely the result of his work. He was also one of the first prominent bloggers, which he did for 15 years at the Daily Dish. He is now a contributing

editor at New York Magazine and writes great long-form pieces there. He's published several books, including The Conservative Soul, which I link to on my website. And what we attempt to do in this podcast is sympathize with those of you who hate the Clintons and don't want to see them return to the White House. And we do this for a good long while. I'm worried that if you only listen to half of this podcast, you'll go vote for Trump. I don't think you've heard two people who support Hillary Clinton do this? I certainly haven't. And then we go on to argue that the lesser evil is still, in this case, the only good you can do. And now I bring you Andrew Sullivan. So I'm here with Andrew Sullivan. Andrew, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thanks, Sam, for having me. Some of our listeners will be aware of our connection, but for those who aren't, you and I have debated each other twice in print. And the first time was about religion well over a decade ago at this point. And the second was about events in Gaza. And both of those exchanges are on my blog, so people can find them. But one of the great things about our debates, from my point of view, is that they were fairly hard-hitting. I mean, the first one in particular, if I recall, was pretty barbed, or at least I was pretty barbed. And yet, they really became the basis of a friendship. And I mean, you

and I don't see each other that often. We're not in the same city very much, but I certainly consider you a friend. And in my experience, that doesn't happen all that much in public debates. It's very valuable to me that our communications, while we started out very far apart on certain issues, really were, in the aggregate, totally civil and better than civil. I mean, they really became the basis of a real connection, which is fantastic. I feel exactly the same way, Sam.

I've always, however I disagree with you, I've always respected and enjoyed what you've had to say. And I think for someone with religious faith, I think that your challenges have been important and certainly not ones that any believer should shrink from. I think they're things that we should consider and think about, and I'm grateful for it. And I've always detected in you an openness to dialogue above everything else.

And that's increasingly, as I get older, the more valuable that is. Yeah. So I'm grateful too. And also, I must say, as you know, your support for what I would call my spiritual development, I don't know quite what label you put on it, but you were very helpful for me to understand better what meditation is and what Buddhism has to offer. Even though I'd had some encounter with it before, your encouragement and your example has definitely

helped my life and I hope helped my thinking process. So I'm grateful. So yeah, I definitely want to get into that. I really view this conversation as being in two parts and there's a connection between them. But I want to talk about why it is becoming so difficult or seemingly so difficult to communicate effectively on important issues. And the two parts of this conversation, the first is politics, which, as you know, is about as toxic as it has ever been in our lifetime. And the second, I want to talk about what you just alluded to now is just basically what the internet is doing to us. And this could, in some measure, explain why our politics have become so toxic. This could, in some measure, explain why our politics have become so toxic.

I want to talk about how you stepped away from your online life a while back, and this article you wrote in New York Magazine entitled, I Used to Be a Human Being, which is really a wonderful article, which I'll link to on my blog. Let's get into that and spiritual practice and the contemplative issues you have around what the internet is doing to the human mind. We'll do that in the second half. And let's start with politics. Maybe just take a moment to describe your political background and leaning so people know where you're coming from. Well, I grew up in England in the 70s and 80s and was a Thatcherite. Not only was I a Thatcherite, I must have been,

I was, no, I wasn't must have been, I actually was the only boy in my high school in England to have a Reagan 80 button. And so I really was a sort of member of the right in good standing in the 70s and 80s and to a great extent the 90s, even though I supported Clinton in 92. interested in ideas and arguments about free markets, about the sclerosis of the European welfare state, about government ownership of the economy and direction of the economy. And so I was kind of recruited as an up-and-coming right-wing intellectual, as it were. I went to Oxford, where I honed some of those thoughts. But my study at Oxford was in history and French literature. So I wasn't a political major, but I did that in coming to Harvard when I did a PhD in political science at the government department. And my supervisor

of my dissertation was Harvey Mansfield, a renowned Straussian, still a renowned Straussian. Amazingly, he seems to have completely avoided any sort of aging. He's done some deal with mortality. He's got a painting somewhere. He does have a painting somewhere, but he's, he's a real character. Um, and, uh, but I wrote my dissertation, not on Strauss, but on the English political philosopher also understood to be a critical influence in 20th century, uh, small C conservatism, Michael Oakeshott uh and that's my that was my dissertation um so i come from a what i i still regard myself as an oakeshottian in that sense in as much as to have a suspicion of of government control of a two bigger state sector uh a respect for tradition, for how a society evolves organically,

for pragmatism in politics, and for skepticism in intellectual life. And my dissertation was actually upon an implicit esoteric religious doctrine in Michael Oakeshott. So that's where I came from. And then going into America, I supported Reagan in 84, supported Bush in 88, but supported Clinton in 92 on the grounds that while I do believe that it was important to correct for some of the overreach of the left in the 70s and 80s, in power in order to correct the abuses and difficulties and overreach of each other. And so it's important for me as a small C conservative that, for example, the Democratic Party come back to the center and regain power. This is the moment when really my first drift from the right began the idea that I could support

Clinton over Bush and Perot on the grounds that he was more in touch with in 92, uh, an emerging culture and society that was more diverse, more forward-looking younger. And obviously on the question of gay rights, uh, uh, at least before he was elected, a relatively hopeful and different position. And so I think I placed myself in that sort of liberal Republican slash conservative Democrat mold. And when I edited The New Republic from 91 to 96, I was definitely regarded as a conservative influence on that magazine, even though that magazine was at that point a kind of blend of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. I also defended that magazine's core liberal ethos, even though I didn't fully share it.

Because again, I felt a responsibility to that institution within American politics and culture. again, I felt a responsibility to that institution within American politics and culture. Um, so then I went on, excuse me if I'm going on too long, just to my trajectory. I found Clinton by 96 to be so ethically and morally despicable, um, that I actually supported Bob Dole in 96, uh, on the grounds that I did not, I actually believe that given his conduct in office so far that it was simply a matter of time before Clinton sabotaged himself and the country, which turned out to be, uh, uh, unfortunately, uh, true. Um, in 2000, I was really up in the air. I had a great deal of respect for Al Gore, but I liked at least candidate George W. Bush. I liked the humble foreign policy.

I liked the compassionate conservatism to some extent. not been properly part of the Republican coalition, primarily Latino voters, and thought between a moderate right candidate and a moderate left one, I didn't see a big problem with the moderate right one. It turns out, of course, that I was completely mistaken about that. And in the, I think in the partisan and polarizing moment after 9-11, I kind of went off the deep end and supported the war and supported Bush, largely out of a horror at what Islamist fundamentalism was threatening against core Western values and the mass murder that they were perpetrating in the name of fundamentalist religion. I'm also, I should say, you know, just to fill in people, a Roman Catholic, I still practice, but grew increasingly concerned with also the trend towards fundamentalism of a different kind within the Catholic Church under Benedict XVI, and to some extent, John Paul II. Anyway, I'm just trying to give you a brief overview.

But then I turned against Bush and the Republicans because of what I saw as an inability to effectively conduct a war and to effectively realize that they had made a terrible error. For me, the fundamental issue in that conflict was the use of torture by the United States, which I found to be a step to take us outside of civilizational boundaries. And also a period of time where I felt the Constitution was essentially in abeyance. And I was so repelled by that, that I supported a man I really didn't like very much, John Kerry in 2004, and then came to see Obama as actually what I believed to be the moderate center-right president that I'd always wanted, but even more thrillingly, able to bring African-Americans more fully into that center and into American public life.

And really found in Obama the kind of politician I really could admire. I was one of the first people to really seize on him and support him and became really, in my blog anyway, a sort of key part of the Obama coalition, which I continued through 2012. So that's where I am, a sort of Obamacon, as it were, a moderate conservative that actually thought in Obama that we had a moderate conservative president of really unimpeachable character, considerable moderation, reason, and extraordinary eloquence. I still think he's an extraordinary figure. And I think we still need him quite badly, especially over the next few months when things could get really scary. And his calm, his ability to hold the country together, I think is one reason why in this incredibly fraught period, his approval ratings

are where Reagan's were at this point. I think he will be understood, especially if Hillary, obviously, if Hillary wins this election as the Reagan, the liberal Reagan, the Reagan of the Democrats. And the silver lining I see, we can talk about this some more, about the current moment, which otherwise seems to be the darkest cloud I've ever seen in American politics. The small silver lining is that it might be the final repudiation of the most ugly, disgusting, and foul tendency on the American right. In other words, that this might be the true long game when a president is able to win two elections and then actually get his

opposition to recognize their failure and to adjust towards the new mainstream. That's yet to be seen, but at least that's a small sliver of hope that I have out of this really dystopian electoral landscape that we are now looking at. Yeah. So I have an agenda for this part of the conversation that I want to make explicit for our listeners, because I've said many terrible things about Trump on this podcast, and I'm sure I will say some terrible things today, but this has revealed some very disconcerting things to me about my audience and about just the possibilities of communication. The first is that there's just the fact that there's a significant number of people who follow me who are Trump supporters and who are amazed

that I'm not one too. And I can only assume that this has something to do with how hard I've been on Islam over the years. But I continually hear from people who claim to have loved my work and to have read my books, but now have lost all respect for me because I'm voting for Hillary Clinton. And, you know And one person just wrote saying, it's too bad Hitch died when it should have been you. These communications are very pointed. And the most annoying thing about that one is, honestly, the fact that this person is certain that Hitch would have voted for Trump. Now, we can talk about that. I've talked about that on the podcast. Even with all that Hitch wrote about the Clintons, I think there's

absolutely no way he would have voted for Trump. But the problem is that no matter how clearly I spell out what is wrong with Trump and describe my endorsement of Clinton as the lesser evil, describe my endorsement of Clinton as the lesser evil, right? I'm accused of being rankly partisan and totally dishonest and of ignoring all that's wrong with Clinton. And this really bothers me because there really is, insofar as I can know my own mind, there is absolutely nothing partisan about my endorsement of Clinton. I could easily imagine a Republican who I would vote for over her. And there's just not much you would have to change about this generic Republican so as to make me vote for him or her over Clinton. I saw your most recent appearance on Real Time talking about Clinton and Trump. And given your background and given that you're in touch with what has been

wrong with our system and the way in which the Clintons in many ways crystallize what's wrong with our system, it seems that you could be the perfect person to help me try to bridge this gap. Because what I want us to do is to talk honestly about what's wrong with the Clintons, to give as sympathetic a view as possible of why people hate them with such passion and why people hate the system of which they are a very clear expression, and then make the case why none of that matters in the current election. Because people are just missing just how terrifyingly unqualified Trump is, and on every conceivable level. And they're not only missing it, they're missing how clear this is, right? I mean, it's just, this is unmissable. So in any case, you and I are speaking on the morning after

the third presidential debate, you know, where the evidence of the difference between Clinton and Trump was not in short supply. So just let's let's just start with the issue with the Clinton. I mean, so why did you break ranks with Bill Clinton and give me a sympathetic view of why someone would not be happy to see the Clintons back in the White House? Oh, where do I start, really? I mean, they're about the pursuit of power by almost any constitutional means possible. There's a lack of integrity to both of them, it seems to me. I witnessed this firsthand. I was editor of the New Republic when Clinton first became president. And the New Republic was, under my editorship, actually championed the Clinton candidacy. One of the first.

Sidney Blumenthal, may God forgive me, was my campaign correspondent in 92. my campaign correspondent in 92. And you saw with Sidney, when I actually caught him faxing pieces to Hillary in advance of their publication to check that he'd got every single spin right, again, shows just who these people are. They're operators. They're at the center of a web of, we used to call it, a clincest of friends and colleagues dedicated to the advancement of each other. They are money grubbers. They are liars. And I, for one, for example, in the early 90s, was one of the first advocates of marriage equality

and for military service for gay people. And to watch them kill us in that period and treat gay people with complete contempt and then to portray themselves as pioneers of gay civil rights the sheer chutzpah of these people when they were actually not just against marriage equality they did everything in their power to kill off the movement for marriage equality. And I know because I was one of four people in that movement at the beginning. Did you ever hear Hillary Clinton on Fresh Air with Terry Gross trying not to admit that her opinion on marriage equality had changed for about 10 minutes and getting more and more defensive. Well, that's part of what drives you crazy about them is their

refusal to tell the truth even about themselves, the constant spinning, the constant refusal to really be accountable. And this also goes to Bill Clinton's history of sexual assault. One of the things I'm proudest of at the New Republic was running an editorial defending Paula Jones's right to have a say in court, which was greeted by the Democratic left as an act of treason. The way in which honest, alleged feminists were prepared to sacrifice every single principle they ever had to advance this man who was essentially one of the, you know, one of the most horrendous offenders in dealing with women sexually just staggered me at the time. And Hillary Clinton, of course, in full knowledge of

her husband's history of sexual assault and harassment, went to town in defending him and trashing those women. All of that that the Trump campaign has re-aired is true. I absolutely believe it's true. Actually, one question there, because I'm not as familiar with the history as I might be. I certainly haven't waded through all the relevant biographies, but many people think that Hillary was legitimately deceived by Bill on many of these points. And certainly, let's say, the Lewinsky scandal, that she had bought his lie that nothing had happened, and you could sort of see her reaction to the truth emerging kind of play out in real time between them. I think that's absolutely true with Lewinsky.

Okay. It's not true with Jennifer Flowers. It's not true with Paula Jones. It's not true with Juanita Broderick. It's not true with Kathleen Willey and others who are beginning to come forward. I think to say that Hillary Clinton was not aware of her husband's tendency for sexual assault and objectification and demeaning and degrading treatment of women is really not to do her justice. She's a grown person.

She sat for 60 minutes in 92 brazenly lying about her husband's affair with Jennifer Flowers. Almost everyone around her acknowledges this. And yet she stuck with her husband. And not only this, but at the very beginning, this pioneer of feminism decided that her career could only really get off the ground if she married an up-and-coming governor and hitched her wagon to his.

This is not what Margaret Thatcher did. It's not what Theresa May did. It's not what Angela Merkel did. It's not what many pioneering women in politics have done, which is why I think it sticks in the craw to see her and why so many people have not been able to embrace her as the first potential woman president. However much we might want to see a woman become president, somehow the wife of a former president who trashed women on the way up and who herself never did the feminist thing and pioneered her own career and her own life in politics is actually not a great feminist icon at all. And always arguing, always arguing that whatever we do, however we behave, we are so much part of the greater good and the Republicans are always so evil

that anything we do is justified. And that, of course, is how they have succeeded. Largely because every time the Republicans have opposed them, they've done so on despicable and overreaching grounds. I mean, impeaching a president the way they did was such a grotesque overreach. And the way they poured into Bill Clinton's private life was just appalling. And I think the American people decided, no, if we have to pick between this charlatan, If we have to pick between this charlatan, philanderer, liar, and these fanatics, then I guess we're going to have to put up with the Clintons.

And in some ways, that's the story of their entire career. And somehow they've managed to always do that, to play the lesser of two evils successfully and in most cases absolutely rightly. I mean I drew the line at the impeachment. I drew, even though I believe that he was a hideous person, I don't think he should have been taken to that. It should have been taken as a vote of censure would have been perfectly acceptable and would have been better for the Republicans. But there again, you get the sort of sense

that not only do they want to just survive by hook or by crook, jettisoning principles, trashing the constituencies they're supposed to support. They then want to turn around and be regarded as civil rights pioneers for women or for gays and all the rest of it. And I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. I just don't buy it. Do you think you're being or possibly being too cynical here on a few points? So for instance, what about the possibility that Hillary stuck by Bill through all of this and obviously got married in the first place to him, not based on some Machiavellian political scheming, but just this is the person she's in love with. She has accepted

his flaws in a way that may hearken back to another generation, you know, Mad Men style. And she was just all in with him and realized that in some purely pragmatic and obviously not honest way, since they're on the right side of history on most of these issues, since they have the right goals for the country, this is how the sausage gets made. You've got to get on 60 Minutes and lie about this meaningless affair that you don't care about, and you're the wife, you're the one who's supposed to care, or you're the only one who needs to care if caring is called for. And you have to lie because this is going to torpedo your political career and your husband's, and it matters because

the other side is wrong on issues of consequence for millions of people. Is there a way to sympathize with her in that moment, or is she still a bit of a monster even then? Of course, everybody's a human being, and I don't doubt that she did fall in love with Bill Clinton. But at the same time, I think it would be naive to believe that their marriage was entirely about love. It was also a political partnership. And in which she used that partnership to gain political power in a way that I think was fundamentally illegitimate in the first Clinton administration. You know, we elect one president. We didn't elect two.

If we had elected two presidents or a co-president, she would be ineligible to run right now. But she wanted her cake and eat it too. She wants to be the advocate of a clean system in government and against campaign finance abuses. But there she is making millions of dollars in ways she didn't need to off very many banks, off many entities and many foreign governments that are just despicable. You can't, there's plenty of ways to excuse what they did and to justify it. And they provided those excuses and justifications. And in many cases, as I said, I supported Clinton in 92.

But over the long run, these things do change you. That if you sacrifice your integrity repeatedly, even if every single time for a little bit, it might be in your mind justified. The cumulative effect of this is to render you incapable of taking any principled or moral position and be seen to be doing so people, when they say they don't trust her, they, they, I think most people have watched closely and they know that yes, she will switch around. She will change. Uh, she will be pragmatic around principle in a way that cumulatively gets to be disturbing. And I think that's the point.

No politician is Martin Luther King Jr. They're not. We have to accept that. But there's something particularly sustained and merciless about her sacrifice of principles in pursuit of power. And I think to be skeptical about that, and also to believe that that kind of figure can never actually reach people and persuade them in moments of difficulty or crisis that

there's someone that they can look to, there's someone they can trust. She still doesn't have that. She doesn't have that with the American people. She's still unable in a crisis, I think if she were president, and I think she probably will be at this point, to actually sit down and really be the president of all the people in a way, for example, that Barack Obama could and did, however hostile people are to him. He did have that connection. People do actually think of him as having integrity because he actually does have integrity. Now, he's a hard act to match, and that's why he beat her.

But here again, you've been in the White House for two terms as first lady. You've been secretary of state. You lost your major attempt to win. What do you do? What you do in her case was to try and prevent any rising star in the Democratic Party from ever challenging her, holding on so that it's her turn, holding the entire party hostage to her own fortunes, squelching possible new blood in order to get another term in the center of power. And at some point, look, I don't want to saint, but there was something consistent about this. And it's typified, for example, by her, you know, claiming to be an avatar of gay rights while her husband signed the Defense of Marriage

Act, doubled the number of people discharged from the military. And then, crucially, I'll give you two examples. One ran advertisements in the South touting in 96 his exclusion of gay people from marriage equality. And subsequently, and I'll tell you this, when I went in, I was testifying in Congress for the Defense of Marriage Act, and we were ready to go in and make our case. That very morning, the Clinton Justice Department put out a completely unnecessary guidance that they believed the Defensive Marriage Act had no constitutional problems whatsoever, just to kick us in the gut, to kill off this movement because it might threaten, they believed, their re-election prospects. And I think, to be honest, I'd be straightforward,

it's the personal experience of this, to be personally lied to, to be told as I was personally told by George Stephanopoulos, that they would, in Don't Ask, Don't Tell, completely ensure that no one was subsequently fired. And yet they doubled the discharges from the military and did nothing about it. And to sign the Defense of Marriage Act, for Bill Clinton to do that, while he's making a mockery of marriage in the White House, at some point, you just have to say, there's something about these people. There is something about these people that is not trustworthy. There's something about these people that in the end will defend themselves against any principle. And I admire a certain grittiness in politics. And I certainly

understand why you have to make compromises. There's something about the relentless willingness to sacrifice any core principles that they have that has rightly made us, many of us, deeply skeptical of them. I also think, just to leave the moral and ethical question, I just don't think she's been that good in public life. I just don't think she's a very good, not just a very good politician, which now even her supporters acknowledge as a candidate, terribly weak candidate in many respects, but not very good in government. When you ask her what has she done in 30 years, she doesn't really have a good argument. She has one good argument, I think, which is the

S-CHIP program, which really did give children greater health security, health insurance options than they had before, which I think I don't want to dismiss in any way. That's a huge achievement on her part. But that's about it. She also, by bungling health care reform in the first term of the Clinton administration, made health, you know, expanding health insurance of people less likely for another 20 years. As Secretary of State, she supported the only ways you can see her actual input. She supported Libyan intervention, which if you've supported the Iraq war and say you've learned the lessons, which is the best way to think of what she said, although she's took a hell of a long time admitting it and only admitted it

when it would help her politically, one points out. But then to admit that you did something stupid by deciding that you're going to remove a dictator in a Middle East country without planning for the aftermath and then do it entirely one more time when you're a secretary of state, creating chaos in Libya. Right. Although many people have pointed out that there was at least one relevant difference there, which is that you had a significant popular uprising calling for intervention in Libya, which you didn't have in Iraq. Well, you did. I mean, the Shia were constantly, and the Kurds were constantly asking for intervention, begging for it. I think even now, America's intervention in Libya is still popular. I mean, it's still, it's like 70% of Libyans think that it was a good thing.

It is a chaotic situation where ISIS has gained ground. I think there was bad judgment on her part. And I think it's one of the greatest mistakes. And even now, she is attempting to get us militarily involved in Syria. She's learned very little from her own mistakes. And I think it's very hard. And I think you could see it in the debates for her to actually defend her record, to point to anything that really she made a difference that wasn't itself disastrous. Well, there were a couple of great moments last night in the debate that, I mean, she, I think you share my view that she just destroyed him last night. I mean, that was impeccable, but in ways or by techniques that also don't recommend her for any kind of award for honesty.

also don't recommend her for any kind of award for honesty. There were two moments where I was really flabbergasted that he let her get away with these moments and that Chris Wallace did as well. The one where he asked her whether she would give back the $20 or $25 million that the Clinton Foundation had taken from the Saudis. He just kept talking there and didn't give her any space to reply. And then she never had to reply to that. And also, she didn't address at all his claims about Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions. But you could see in those moments how compromised she is ethically in that she really has to walk on eggshells there. She can't just give a straightforward defense of what he's pointing to there, and she just has to hope that nobody notices

and the topic changes. This is an election which, weirdly enough, became a core issue of sexual assault, the way men treat women. And she's the first woman candidate, the president, and she's barely been able to say a single thing about it. Yeah, it's really excruciating. Because of her being, and she recognizes this, utterly morally compromised on the question.

She's also utterly compromised by telling all sorts of private audiences that she believes in open borders when she's now advocating to fend off Trump's attacks, that she's actually tough on border security. Except do you really think that? Because I've seen that WikiLeaks email and my reading of that is certainly much closer to what she suggested in the debate, which is she's, I mean, either she was talking about energy and trade and just used the phrase open borders to signify just the free flow of goods and information and electrons. Or she was talking in a much more utopian style of, you know, we all want to live in a world where there is open borders and just the free flow of everything. But she was not claiming that she wants unchecked immigration to the United States. No, I think that's fair, Sam. I think that's a totally fair point you make. And I do think, but again, the rhetoric she's using to a particular group,

which she then did everything she could to prevent being aired precisely because she worried about the discrepancy, at least in the rhetoric between her private rhetoric and her public rhetoric, is disconcerting. There is the rhetoric she gives to the bankers when she's inside and when she's talking about reining them in on the outside. You know, there's only, again, one instance of this might be one thing you can slough up, but this is a lifetime of doing this. And the other thing I would say is that, is her offhand remarks when she's caught privately. So, for example, in these fundraisers, these gay fundraisers, by the way, where she, you know, she calls millions of people irredeemable in an election. Now, not only just pragmatically, I think that is

stupid, but it's the attitude, the condescension, the dismissal of lots of people. Even if there are plenty of people, obviously, in this alt-right Trump movement that are just foul and despicable, People, obviously, in this alt-right Trump movement that are just foul and despicable. But no one's irredeemable. I think there are people who are, I mean, just judging from my communications online and in my inbox, I think there are people who are irredeemable for all practical purposes in terms of getting them to understand what's true in the world. I was just talking to Peter Singer on a previous podcast. I hear from people who claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax engineered by the Obama administration to justify him coming to take our guns. But to say that half of his supporters are in this category, which he then had to walk back and she withdrew and

retracted what she said. Half of it. Look, yes, there are irredeemable people in that mix. There are also deplorable people, but to dismiss half of his supporters, that's, that's certainly not 20% of the country. Um, you see, I think what the Clint, the Clintons really don't fundamentally believe in the American people. They think the American people cannot really adjust or accept the arguments that they really want to make. They think they're bigots and racists, Neanderthals that have to be lied to in order to get your way. Don't you think the support for Trump, and we're going to segue now into talking about Trump, or at least soon. Oh, let's keep bashing the Clintons. Yeah, actually, I want to bash the Clintons a little bit more.

I just want to give you, I just want to insist, you know, anybody listening to this, I'm passionately in favor of her winning this election, passionately. Yeah, we're going to get there. Even though I have no illusions at all about what a wretched example of the worst kind of corruption in politics. Yeah, we're going to get there. that really is disgusting. I'm still completely without any qualm supporting her for this election. Believe me, I would not have led us here if I didn't know we were getting to that punchline, because my goal here is not to reduce the likelihood that she's going to be the next president, because I really do feel, and I think you feel as well, that we are witnessing a fairly frightening moment in American politics. Not fairly. I think you feel as well, that we are witnessing a fairly frightening moment in American politics. Not fairly. I think it's the most frightening moment of my adult lifetime.

But to take a few more whacks at the lady, when Trump said, are you going to give back the money to the Saudis, the 20 million, I forget if it's 20 million or 25 million, and the other Gulf states have given a ton of money to the foundation. What do you think she could have said to that had she given a reply? Here's what she should have said. And it's interesting why she didn't. What you can say is, look, yeah, I took $20 million or however many dollars from a disgusting regime, but I saved 11 million lives. And, you know, that's yes.

If you want to really raise big money to help people who are living and dying with HIV in Africa, you'll get it, take it from whoever. Right. And that's the frank answer. But to say that, you'd have to say the Saudis are despicable. afraid to lose if she speaks more honestly about Islam and Islamism and the spread of jihadism and the Saudis' role in doing that and the necessity to achieve energy security in light of the Saudis' role? I mean, why can't she speak basic human sanity on this point? Because it would give her some political liabilities as president with respect to the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, which she wants to keep open. She can't, characterologically, can't take a clear moral stance on these questions and be completely frank. That's what people say when they don't trust her. They can feel there's an obvious answer to this, but she can't do it. Like, for example, on border security, she actually, if she

wanted to go at Trump and say, look, I'm in favor of tough border security. I believe in that. I believe in that. I voted for many things that beefed up the border. I mean, this metaphor of the wall is one thing, but yes, she did support the wall. Why can't she forthrightly say that? Because she then worries, well, that will alienate some Latinos that I have to keep on my side. She couldn't make a distinction in the convention between legal and illegal immigrants, which is a crucial distinction, one of the things that Trump has been able to use, because she doesn't want to offend this constituency. It's always calculation and it's always caution. And, and, and that's, that's, that's what drives you crazy about them after a while. They can't say what they know. They refuse to be that clear about it. And she's worse even than her husband. And, and, and it's that constant hedging, that constant leaving, abandoning any sort

of conviction. So for example, on Obamacare, she could not say, which she should say, what we have to do to make this work is to beef up the individual mandate to make sure more healthy people are brought into this system. And the government's going to have to do that to make this work. She won't do that because that would possibly alienate some people just as, uh, and so she won't, she won't, that because that would possibly alienate some people just as – and so she won't. She won't – doesn't want to alienate the Saudi government. She doesn't want to alienate any supporters. And so we end up in this sort of calculative muddle in the middle where people don't trust her.

And my worry is that if you don't trust her now, how are you going to trust her when really something goes badly wrong? I mean, I think it's a dangerous—we can talk about this, but I'm fearful of her presidency in the sense that I'm not sure she has the ballast to hold this country together at a time when it seems to be careening apart. Well, one thing that's causing it to fly apart is—this is the way it seems to me based on my communications with people and just what I read online, we're living in just a totally balkanized epistemology where people are getting their information from sources that you just have a kind of the Breitbart universe and the New York Times universe, and they almost don't share a worldview on any level. Occasionally, some fact will cross the boundary there and remain a fact. But the role that conspiracy theory plays in our world and the way in which it is potentiated at every point by tiny but nevertheless real conspiracies. I mean, you find, like the WikiLeaks emails, my reading of them thus far, is that

there's really not much there that is surprising. I mean, like, how did you think the sausage was getting made? And what did you think the private communications in a campaign would look like? Right? I mean, there's not, there are things there we wish wouldn't be there. We wish people wouldn't operate this way. But there's nothing there that I've seen that is fundamentally shocking or that tells us something we don't know or that is or didn't know or that or that would be disqualifying to her candidacy. No, I agree. What's shocking, however, is that people's private correspondence can be hacked and delivered this way. And I think and I think the ability for politics to function at all, for government to function at all, does require some lack of transparency. Any organization has to have something that's private so that it can actually function. But that is sort of a point in her favor. Yeah, I think it is.

The Trump phenomenon is also a point in her favor. To go back to the comment you made a few minutes ago, that one of the things that is odious about her is that she believes you have to have a public and private conversation, which are distinct, because the people can't handle the truth. There's so little appetite or ability for honest reasoning that people will seize upon your words, like the way she was using the phrase open borders in context, as opposed to the way that those words can be made to seem. And you'll never become president, or you'll never achieve the office you're seeking, because people are stupid and cynical, and the truth will be used against you. So you have to focus on everything.

Compare that with Barack Obama. He's not that way. He actually did articulate what he wanted to do in his speeches, in his State of the Union addresses. He was very clear about what he tried to do. He was very honest. Although we don't have his private email communication from his campaign. No, but we do know that he had confidence not in lying to the American people about who he was, what he wanted to do. And he won two elections and he is ending with an approval rating that's similar to Reagan's. I think the Clintons give up before they even start. They've learned this from being hazed, essentially, and coming of that generation of Democrats who, especially during Reagan and Bush, really believed that the American people did not agree with them.

And therefore, the only way to advance themselves was to do all this stuff on the hush-hush. I saw this particularly with gay rights, where they refused to make strong, clear arguments for why this mattered. Some of us were out there trying to make the substantive arguments, believing if we made those substantive arguments, the American people would come along. And you know what? They did. because we didn't adhere to this idea that the American people are essentially a bunch of idiots and also bigots that you have to, you have to, in order to be, to advance reasonable goals, you have to somehow dissemble because the people can't be trusted. That is where they come from. They come from the view that no one really agrees with them, that they have to do this by stealth.

And they have to have one conversation inside the tent and another conversation out. Now, that is not what Barack Obama has done or has said. And he's been more successful. But actually, in defense of Clinton or to impugn Obama as well, he's done it really in the identical way she has on the topic of Islam and jihadism. This lie that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing to do with terrorism and that ISIS is not Islamic. I've talked about this on the podcast many times. There certainly is a rationale for that lie. And it may in fact be true that it is politically prudent or just geopolitically prudent to lie in this way. But it is a lie, and everyone knows it's a lie, and the experience of being lied to on that point, especially in the immediate aftermath of some terrorist atrocity is so galling.

And the difference is that Obama has explained candidly why he won't say, for example, radical jihadist terrorism, because he thinks it will make it harder to defeat radical jihadist terrorism. Now, you can agree or disagree with that. Right. But he said that. Yeah. But he simply just at the 11th hour being pushed. I mean, for after years of, I mean, he said it in a way, I found his defense of the way he talks about this fairly infuriating because it was a really bullying, hectoring, sanctimonious attack on people who just want an honest discussion of the issues. And I think, I mean, I certainly can argue that we would empower the moderate Muslims and the reformers in the Muslim world much more if we just had an honest discussion about the civil war that's occurring in the Muslim world. I'm with you, Sam. You know I'm with you on

this. I do think that the role that you and I have is different than the role of a president running a war. Yes, I've certainly acknowledged that as well. And there are, in wartime, there are some things that you don't want to give the enemy a propaganda advantage. And one of the reasons, for example, I'm for Clinton, not Trump, is I think a Trump victory would empower jihadist terror in a way that, that would be terrifying and that, and that he's then response to that would be incredibly destructive of our constitution and our way of life. Uh, so in some ways I think, and the fact that she referred to

Lincoln in some of these respects, that, that, that there is a balance, especially in wartime, which is what Lincoln was dealing with. It's what actually any president of this country, insofar as jihadist terrorism is in some way has declared war on us and who we are, is going to have to have some wartime cavilling of the truth, just as happened in the Second World War. There are some things that are allowed in that context, I think. Now, I agree with you, it's frustrating, and I don't think it's actually very helpful, but I think there's a legitimate argument for it, and I think Obama finally did explain. It's also true, of course, that just saying these words doesn't actually help us develop a strategy, although I do agree with you that I think it would help air the real differences between many Muslims and what this disgusting, terroristic, and violent impulse is, and ideology is, and religion is. But the other problem is that it has, at least from my perspective, given us Trump.

Obviously, there are other reasons as well, but it is one of the main ones that has brought Trump to the very threshold of the Oval Office because, I mean, I'm hearing it is the most common thing I hear, and again, I get a fair amount of this from my erstwhile readers and listeners, there are many single-issue voters out there. And the issue is Islam, terrorism, immigration, insofar as we're talking about Syrian refugees coming in who are going to be jihadists or Islamists. It's a single issue. These are not people who are worried about Latinos coming to pick our fruit. They're worried about what they see in Europe. I mean, the migrant crisis in Europe is a disaster.

I mean, as much as your heart breaks for the people who are coming out of the hellhole of Syria, who you would just want to help and who are never going to become jihadists, what is happening in Europe is really horrible for... It's horrifying. And Merkel bears a huge amount of responsibility for that. And I think, for example, some of that is precisely why the UK left the EU. Well, left, but voted that way. So I agree with you. However, the United States is not Europe. It's not absorbing a million. It's absorbed almost no one.

So, I mean, comparatively very few from Syria. We have two vast oceans. But yeah, I do think that not addressing this from a really constructive, clear-minded, and positive way does allow someone like Trump to gain credibility because people want to hear someone telling the truth. Yeah. that many people are in this country, especially those without degrees, do have their wages depressed by mass immigration, especially immigration that is not in any way legal or documented. And that's a completely legitimate question. And when he says we're either a country or we're not a country, he's right. And it frustrates me that not addressing those facts will lead to extremists and crazy people like Trump being able to secure a foothold. And that's deeply, deeply concerning. Yeah. So let's begin to segue into why none of this matters. Given all her flaws, what do you think Clinton

will actually do with respect to immigration, with respect to jihadism? My argument against the people who whinge at me about Islam and jihadism and Clinton's lying about it, Islam and jihadism and Clinton's lying about it, my argument is that clearly she knows where the jihadists are and she has been prosecuting or has played her part in prosecuting a war against them. If you're a liberal, perhaps to a fault, right? Sounds like you are that sort of liberal, at least on that point. You think she's too interventionist, probably too eager to fly drones over foreign countries, whether acknowledged or not, probably too eager to fly drones over foreign countries, whether acknowledged or not, and too eager to bomb jihadists and not think too hard about the possible collateral damage. We could talk a lot about the wisdom or not of intervening in the

Middle East at this point, but it seems to me that there's no question she understands that we have a problem with jihadism, that securing our the Saudis and the Qataris and all the rest into the Clinton Foundation will make her somehow unable to prosecute the war on terror. I don't find any of that credible. No, I don't either. I mean, precisely because she's such an operator. She's perfectly capable of taking money for them and not feeling any moral obligation to uphold them in future. I mean, that's who these people are. Yeah. And just, I mean, this is a point that I was surprised she didn't make in the debate because she's being often slimed and even slimed by Trump himself, this billionaire or pseudo-billionaire, for being

completely beholden to the billionaires who give her money, both for her campaign and for her foundation. And yet she's explicitly promised to raise taxes on them. Why doesn't she say, if I'm such a puppet of the billionaires, why can I promise now prior to the election that I'm going to raise taxes on them? Right. The good thing about having no principles and no core loyalties is that you can you can do all this. And but again, she doesn't want to quite advertise that she has no principles or loyalties. So she's, again, slightly constraining herself on those issues. But yeah, and vice versa. If Trump is the real tribune of the plebs, why is he giving all these people a massive tax cut?

It doesn't make any sense at all. Don't you think there's something a little more sympathetic we can say about her at that point, though, where she— sympathetic we can say about her at that point, though, where she, it's not just that she has no principles. It's just that there is, I mean, to take the foundation as the narrow case, she will take money from even odious people because she actually knows she can do good with it. And her heart is in the right place insofar as what she wants to get done in the world. I mean, if she had all the power, what do you think the world would look like? It would not be a world of shocking inequality and children, you know, working, you know, in sweatshops. It would be a world very much

like the one you hope to have realized at some point. It's not that her heart's in the wrong place on these issues. And for something like her foundation, yeah, why not take the Saudi money and use it to deal with the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa? Yeah, in some ways, yeah, no, I agree. And the one thing I don't like is the personal money grubbing. Oh, you mean so just the personal enrichment through speeches? The personal enrichment through speeches to people and organizations and regimes that are really disgusting. Right. You don't have to do that. It doesn't advance any broader social good. It just makes you money. Yeah. Well, I mean, and Bill Clinton has been especially egregious there. Do you know the stories of him asking to give speeches?

I forget which regimes they were, but obviously the wrong ones. With terrible human rights records, he wanted to give his $400,000 keynote somewhere and sent something like three appeals to the State Department to get this okayed. And they kept denying it. Like, this is not good. The optics are all wrong here. And he just wouldn't take no for an answer. I mean, just like the next $400,000, even when you've made whatever it was, $48 million in a period of four years on your speeches, he's just got to grab that extra check. I mean, these people have never seen a check they didn't like. got to grab that extra check. I mean, these people have never seen a check they didn't like. No. And it seems as if they can't just be well off. They have to be extremely well off. They have to hobnob with some of the most wealthy individuals in the world. And they want to

compete with those people and be in that league. Again, look, we're all human. We're not electing saints, but there's something unseemly about their money-grubbing and their ability to accept massive conflicts of interest in order to enrich themselves. There is something unseemly about this. I forget the name of the charity, but you remember that model who was hit in the Asian tsunami and who's, I think, lost her boyfriend or fiance, and then she started a charity, I think, for Indonesian relief, tsunami relief. And this got a fair amount of press at one point, and they held a fundraiser for her charity, and I think it raised like a million dollars, and Clinton was the keynote. But then it comes out that he charged $500,000 for his keynote.

You bet he did. I mean, it would never, it's like he's already, he's already, and maybe this money went to the Clinton Foundation. Let's say that's the best case scenario. But he's already fantastically wealthy. He's ostensibly supporting this charity that's just struggling to be born, right? And all he has to do is show up and give his speech. I'm sure he didn't even have to travel for it. And he takes fully half of the money raised. That tells me

everything I need to know about him. It would never occur to me to do that. I mean, if I am speaking, you know, like in a couple of weeks, I'm going to speak with Richard Dawkins at a benefit for the Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation. It would never occur to me to ask to be paid to do that. It's like there's something, it's like, let's get every last dime, no matter what you get off these people. And it's it really is. Yeah, there's an there's there's an extremity to them that takes even if you were to even if I were to concede the point that ex-presidents should be able to make a huge amount of money off, you know, private speaking to private groups. There is simply a degree with which they are, let's put it, you know, they are money-grubbing in a way that really does leave one's jaw open sometimes. I mean, that's all I'm saying. And you look at someone like Jimmy Carter, who has behaved in such an exemplary fashion, or even George H.W. Bush. And I think those things matter in a

republic. I think one of the reasons our democracy is in such terrible straits and the reason that people are so cynical about it is because they see these public officials trying to use public office for their own personal enrichment. And that is, it may be in any individual case defensible, but collectively and politically, it tarnishes our system. It adds to the cynicism. Well, the revolving door that people talk about is obviously corrupting, where you have senators who become lobbyists who become senators who become lobbyists. Look at that opportunism. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org.

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