No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Biden finally shuts down Marjorie Taylor Greene

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

Biden takes on Marjorie Taylor Greene amid uncertainty over whether highlighting MAGA extremists is a good strategy. Brian interviews MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan about his message to Fox hosts and Fox viewers in light of the Dominion lawsuit discovery, whether Biden should run again in 2024, and some of his most memorable debate moments. And national correspondent for the Washington Post, Philip Bump, joins to discuss the transfer of power and wealth from Boomers to millennials and Gen Zs.Buy Mehdi Hasan's book: https://bit.ly/3kQlqTNBuy Philip Bump's book: https://bit.ly/3KVFHBWShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Biden taking on Marjor Taylor Green and whether highlighting these MAGA extremists is a good strategy. I interview MSNBC's Medi Hassan about his message to Fox hosts and Fox viewers and led the Dominion lawsuit discovery, whether Biden should run again in 2024, and some of his most memorable debate moments. And I'm joined by national correspondent for the Washington Post, Philip Bump, to discuss the transfer of power and wealth from boomers to millennials and Gen Zs. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

there was a moment this past week that stuck out at me, and it's when Biden called out Marjorie Taylor Green during a public event. And, you know, a little bit of more Marjorie Taylor Green and a few more, you're going to have a lot of Republicans running our way. Isn't she amazing? And I've been waffling back and forth, because on one hand, I think it's worth it to shine a spotlight. onto her and her antics, but on the other hand, this is what she wants. I mean, for someone who traffics, like, solely in the attention economy, getting name-checked by the president of the United States is like it.

And I'll watch her double, triple, quadruple down, and I'll think to myself, she very, very clearly wants the attention. She's not moderating her positions. In fact, she's getting more extreme because she recognizes that she gets even more attention from it. And so how can it be right to give her exactly what she wants? And it's true, talking about her, gives her what she wants. But I think we have to dispose of this notion that Marjorie Taylor Green and these

MAGA extremists are these brilliant tacticians. They're not. They are crazy people who won in deep red districts that would elect an AR-15 if it got the nomination. That she wants attention doesn't mean that she's employing some brilliant strategy and that we're all falling for her four-dimensional chess. It just means that she wants the attention. And that's it.

And us giving her the attention that she wants is, in my opinion, a small price to pay for showing the rest of the country what the face of the GOP is. That's the flip side of this that Marjorie Taylor-Green can't appreciate because she doesn't have self-awareness. She is bad for the Republican Party. She's bad for swing voters. She's bad for independence. She's bad for conservatives who are tired of the circus.

She allows the Democrats to put a face to the lunacy, and she's doing her own party no favors by constantly shoehorning herself into the news with a new citizen. story every single day. So if giving her, like, the dopamine hit that she's looking for by covering her in a video or a podcast means that a few more swing voters out there can see what the GOP has become, I think that's a price worth paying. And I know, by the way, that there is, you know, an obvious comparison to Trump here, that the media did this in 2016 and gave the guy water to all coverage, and he leveraged that attention into winning the presidency. But there are some obvious differences here. Trump was relatively unknown running for president against like 20 other people

all vying for eyeballs, and they were running against Hillary Clinton, who was historically unpopular. Fast forward to now in 2023, we did the whole Republican extremism thing. Trump couldn't get reelected. Trump's endorsed MAGA candidates all lost in the midterms. Republicans are shedding support from soft Republican voters and from independents, all of which is to say that these two situations aren't the same. What Trump played to his advantage in 2020, 2016 is a marked disadvantage today. And the only people who haven't been able to internalize that are the very people who keep losing.

And by the way, Biden knows that. The White House knows that. To give you an idea of how disciplined their messaging strategy is, I don't think that Biden uttered Trump's name from his inauguration until February of 2022 when I asked him about it during my interview with him. Like, I seriously think that this moment right here was the very first mention of Trump's name from Biden's lips. Looking overseas, obviously, we're seeing now that Russia has invaded Ukraine in defiance

of not only Ukraine sovereignty, but also warnings from the international community. And yet, at the same time, we have someone like Donald Trump who's come out and praised Putin's savvy and genius just in advance of him attacking Ukraine. And other Republicans have rallied to Putin's side as well. What's your message to Trump and others in light of Putin's attacks? Well, I think I put as much stock in Trump's saying that Putin's a genius as I do when he called himself a stable genius. There you go. So again, the reason for that is to say that the message coming out of the White House is disciplined.

Biden's not just going to casually invoke Marjor Teller Green's name if he doesn't mean to. If it's not a deliberate part of this strategy to highlight the crazy and let voters know that when you cast your ballot for a Republican, you're casting your ballot for this. this is who you're empowering. And again, after an election cycle where extremist Republican candidates were almost unilaterally rejected, this strategy isn't exactly unfounded. So as far as Marjoriello Green goes,

if she wants to put the crazy on full display, if she wants to call for a national divorce, I'm not going to be the one to help out the GOP and hide it for them. I didn't elect her. I didn't make her best buds with the speaker. I didn't put her onto committees. I didn't make her the face of that party.

They did. And far be it from me to help sanitize that party for them. They made their beds. Now they're going to lie in them. Next up is my interview with Medi Hassan. Now we've got the host of the Medi Hassan show on Peacock and MSNBC and the author of the new book, Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking,

Medi, thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me, Brian. So I want to start with this because I think this is your element here. We found out recently that Fox was knowingly spewing bullshit about the 2020 election thanks to Discovery in the Dominion trial. What's your message, not just to Fox, but Fox viewers in light of this? You're being lied to. That's what the evidence tells us.

You are being lied to by Fox hosts who say one thing in private and one thing in public, one thing to each other on text and another thing on air when the cameras are rolling. And Brian, you and I, we are condemned as members of the fake news press, of the liberal media. We're often seen by the right as people who look down on conservative voters. We disrespect people in the red states. We don't value them. And I just think to myself, no one has more disrespect, no one has more contempt for Republican voters than Republican cable hosts.

And that's what's become clear from these revelations, that they had no problem lying to their viewers, pushing this big lie, because that's what they thought their viewers wanted to hear. So they indulge them with this conspiracy nonsense. There are texts between Tucker and his producer, where Tucker Carlson is saying, I don't really want to do this, but you know, that's what the producer is like, but this is what they want to hear. And in private, they say stuff like Sidney Powell, the crazy ex-Trump

lawyer, who the viewers on Fox and Newsmax wanted to hear at the time. In private, Ingram, Tucker, Hannahty are all saying, she's crazy. Yeah. And we know, by the way, that even those Fox hosts knew that their audience believes them because they said it in text as well. And so every single, you know, piece of this points to the fact that these people were knowingly lied to. And yet the irony of of all of this is that those viewers still won't know because the same people who they trust to deliver them this actual fake news aren't going to deliver them the actual news of the fact that you know they were lied to during this election so that's the irony of all this the gatekeepers are the people who are lying themselves and so that information will never get back to the people

who need to know it most it's so true and it's something that really bothers me has bothered me since at least 2015 2016 uh that a lot of americans are in this bubble and there's no way to get through to them say you're being lied to, you're being conned. These are a bunch of, you know, on the right right now, the modern conservative movement is mainly conspiracy theorists and grifters who are making money off of you. And we saw that with, you know, Trump voters who send, you know, there was that story about them ticking the box or not ticking the box and their donations being taken from their bank accounts and all sorts of stories about how they've been exploited by both Republican leadership and Fox hosts, Fox hosts who are just interested in ratings.

We know that they were worried about news banks taking viewers from them in the immediate wake of the November 2020 election. And so they doubled down on the big lie, which they knew not to be true. They continue. Tucker Kozhen continues to push the big lie, even though we've seen what he said in private. And they don't have the guts to talk about it on air, at least when the texts to Mark Meadows were leaked from Fox hosts.

Remember those texts to Mark Meadows, which I think CNN obtained on January the 6th where they're saying, call off the mob, call off the mob, tell your father to stop, tell your boss to stop. They're texting the kids. They're texting the chief of staff, et cetera, et cetera. At least those texts, they kind of tried to address on air that night and in subsequent notes. These texts, it's silence. Out in the ether, yeah.

Well, I don't know. I'm still holding on hope that my Trump NFTs are going to appreciate double, triple in value. So we'll see what happens on that front. You haven't been con, Brian. Yeah, I feel good about it. Medi, you were featured in an op-ed in The Guardian where you said that Biden's the most impressive president in my lifetime. First, I want to ask why. But second, you know, there is this ink.

among progressives, and I would argue that, you know, it's fair to say you're arguably the most progressive hosts on cable. There's this inclination to attack the Democrats for not being progressive enough, basically always to tack left, because, you know, to coddle the party is basically a concession to the establishment, and it undermines your progressive bona fides. Is that something that you've wrestled at all with? It's a problem in our polarized era where people want politics in the form of a football game. So there is this kind of team sport. I think we saw it recently with the East Palestine situation with Pete Buttigieg.

So for example, I think there's a lot of criticisms of the Biden administration and of Buttigieg both on regulation going back to the Obama era and on their handling of it as a PR issue, their hand the messaging around it. And I think that's a problem. On the other hand, because Fox ridiculously bashed Buttigieg give Trump a pass, involve homophobia, a lot of liberals immediately. want to defend Budja. So immediately at issue like East Palestine becomes partisan. It's you defend Pete Buttigieg and the honor of the Biden administration, or are you defending Trump who went to the town? And my problem is no, there's enough blame to go around. Of course, Trump did a lot of awful things. Of course, Elaine Chow never turned up to, you know, train derailments. Yeah. But we should also be able to say, is the Biden administration doing enough on this stuff? Is

a transportation secretary doing the right thing? Was it right for no senior official to turn up? I mean, the EPA chief went, but who the hell knows who the EPA chief went? Where was the president, of Vice President Transportation Secretary. They didn't leave an open goal for Trump to turn up and pretend to care about these kind of quote unquote left behind people. So I think examples like that are common nowadays where immediately a new story becomes partisan lines. Now, I'm not going to do on both sides here.

The right is a cult. The right treats Donald Trump, you know, as a cult leader. I don't think liberals at that point around Biden, Harris or anyone else. No boat parades for Joe Biden. No, there's been no vote parade for Joe Biden or gold statues. the gold statue literally like Moses style there was a gold statue taken around one of the CPAC one of the conferences but look but there is a huge amount of partisanship let's not deny that and those of us who are on TV on opinion channels opinion shows we're expected to often by some viewers just only attack

one side and I don't do that I hold power to account obviously I see the republican party in the right as the biggest threat to American democracy to our climate to our environment I get that but the Biden administration's in power we should be able to critique them as I do on issues like asylum on issues like the closeness to big business, et cetera. Now, having said that, let's go back to your earlier question. Joe Biden, I did say is the most impressive president in my lifetime. I got attacked by people on the right and left. Interestingly, people on the right say, oh, you're a cloud because they hate Biden.

They think he's the worst. They think every Democratic president's the worst ever. And people on the left, you think, oh, you just sold out when you joined corporate media because Biden's not lefty enough. Of course he's not lefty enough. He's nowhere near lefty enough for me. The point of that comment is to say, he's way more left than I thought he would be. And he's way more left than any previous Democratic president.

I can think of going back to LBJ and maybe even FDR. Now, to say he's the most impressive president of my lifetime is damning with faint praise. It's a low bar. The presidents of my lifetime have people like Ronald Reagan, Bush Senior, Bush Jr., Bill Clinton, Donald J. Trump. Barack Obama is the one people probably would say, most people might say, is their favorite Democratic president. And I'm saying no, I look at Biden, and I think he's done more in his first term than Barack Obama did over two terms. Not just in policy terms, but let's talk about D. People's not done anything. No, sorry, American Rescue Plan, bipartisan infrastructure package, the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act. These are

huge pieces of legislation. Most presidents would be happy with one or two of them. He got four or five of them through, despite having these Republican obstructionists and Joe Manchin, Kirsten, cinema. Those are huge achievements. Let's not be around the Bush. So I would say that, but also, it's not just legislatively, Brian, even the small things or what people would call small things I think of big things. Biden was asked to go on Fox News with Brett Bayer, and I say Fox News, quote unquote. I prefer to call it Fox. It's not news as we just discussed. He didn't do it. He didn't do it. Every president does that Super Bowl interview. I think Barack Obama did it with Bill O'Reilly, if memory says me correctly. I don't think any previous Democratic president would

stand up to Fox in that way. Even that, I think is, whoa, that impresses me. Now, is there a lot more Joe Biden should be doing, especially on issues like immigration, especially on issues like Israel, Palestine, especially when she was like COVID, right? I think he started well and then went downhill. Yes. But is he the most impressive president of my lifetime? Yes. I agree with you.

I also think that I'm of the mind that we are much, much better served by cheering on our successes as opposed to complaining about everything we don't get because we know that the right is just going to attack Joe Biden and attack Democrats. And so if he's getting attacked by the right and the left, then it's only negative coverage of him. And then we turn around and wonder why. Republicans win and Democrats lose. I agree with you halfway. I would say the importance of still attacking him or criticizing or holding him to account as I do on my show on social media,

etc. is here's the advantage that some people on the left didn't realize. And actually members of the squad, Bernie Sanders, did realize, which is that Joe Biden, one of the good thing, and I mean Biden is in the administration, not just him as a person, especially when he had Ron Clayne as his chief of staff. Let's see how the new guy does. But he's actually receptive to pressure. That's another good thing about it in a way that Barack Obama again wasn't. People have to go back and remember Barack Obama had people like Rahm Emmanuel going out and a lashing out of the left publicly, calling them crazy or needed to be drug tested. All those other phrases. He had people in his comms team saying all sorts of awful things publicly on record about the left.

Joe Biden have literally tried to work with the left. The congressional progressive caucus will tell you they had a receptive ear and Ron Clayne and others in this administration. You can see Biden makes U-turns, good U-turns when he gets something wrong and people pressure him. You'd see that. I'm hoping he'll change on this transit ban for asylum seekers, which we critique the Trump administration for doing, but the Biden administration is now doing a version of it too. So I think pressure needs to be applied because actually that's another good thing about having grown-ups, actual grown-ups in the White House and not crazies, which is they actually respond to pressure, lobbying, activism. Well, then that begs the question, you know, right now as to whether President Biden should run for a second term. And there's kind of this cognitive dissonance where people are happy with the accomplishments that his administration has gotten, but at the same time think that he's too old to serve again.

So there's this cognitive dissonance here. Where do you stand on this? It's a great question. What I worry about most is that wherever you stand, we should be able to have a debate about it. This goes back to your point about, you know, partisanship and my point about politics as team sport. There seems to be on the Democratic side, weirdly, you know, Dem's in disarrays. is now Dems in array and it's Republicans in disarray in civil war. You've got Donald Trump already running Nikki Haley, running Tim Scott's about to announce Ron DeSantis we know is probably

going to run as well. Who knows what the rest will do, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, etc. And it's getting pretty vicious already between Trump and DeSantis. On the Democratic side, there's no talk of at all. Marianne Williamson, great. But there's no actual talk of anyone actually primoring. And Bernie Sanders has openly said he won't. Elizabeth Warren, probably not. Those are of big left-wing standard bearers from 2020. And I wonder, is it right to have no debate at all, regardless of ways you can be pro-Joe, anti-Joe, you can be worried about his age and not worried about his age. You can think he's not left-wing enough, too left-wing. But let's have a debate. Let's not just coronate people. I think in 2016, sorry, in 2008, that didn't work out

so well with the Hillary Clinton coronation when Biden actually, you know, when, sorry, when Hillary ran against Barack Obama and loses. And then in 2016, it's seen. as hers by right and Joe Biden doesn't run. And it doesn't work out so well. I think it's good to have debate. Sorry to plug the book, which is out this week. It's literally cool. It's literally about debate. Win every argument. The art of debating, persuading and public speaking. I say in the book, I agree with the French essays from the 19th century, Joseph Joubert, who says it is better to debate an issue without settling it than to settle it without debating it. And I think, fine, let Joe Biden be the candidate, but debate it. Let's talk about the age factor. Is it going to hurt him electorally?

is it wise politically to have someone in their mid-80s as president in the United States, given all the health issues surrounding that? All of those who would be the heir apparent, if God forbid he passes in office, is Kamala Harris still the right VP, the right successor? We know Pete Buttigieg wants the job at some point, but are there better people? What about all the great Democratic governors who just got elected in November? We talk about the Democratic Party not having a deep bench. I don't agree with that.

Even if I don't share all their politics, they're impressive politicians winning important states. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Wes Moore in Maryland. I mean, let's have a discussion about the future of the Democratic Party. I also have an issue with the fact that the Democratic Party until very recently was a complete gerontocracy. Thankfully, Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn stood aside. But, you know, I think there is a real issue in this country where you can't run for president until you're 35. There's an age limit on one end, but not the other. Yeah.

Mattie, I want to switch over to talking about the book now. I really love the booby trap chapter of the book. So first, can you explain what that is? And also, you describe a few booby traps. Can you say what the best one that you've laid in an interview was? So I talk in the book about the fundamentals of debate and argument. That's the first third of the book is about stuff that people might be familiar with, you know, how you appeal to people's emotions, how you use logic, how you go after,

you bolster your own credibility while reducing your opponents, what Aristotle called pathos, logos, and ethos, how you best use those and I give examples in the book. I talk about the importance of listening. But then I get to the middle portion of the book, and I try and reveal for the first time, and my daughter said to me, my 10-year-old said, why are you giving this away? Yeah. We'll be able to use it against you. And I do give away some of my tricks, some of the tricks of the trade, some of the techniques,

some of the useful tactics you can use in an interview, in a debate, in an argument to get the upper hand, from the rule of three to the art of the zinger, the mic drop, to booby traps, as you mentioned. And what I call booby traps, and I talk in the book, it gives me an excuse to talk about the Rambo movies, which are some of my favorite movies growing up. And I talk about how, you know, random trivia point for the movie buffs, John J. Rambo, who's seen as his great violent killer, actually kills no one in Rambo First Blood,

not a single person. Those are in the later movies where he guns down in Russian and Vietnamese armies. In the first movie, he uses a bunch of booby traps. He's hiding in the forest. He's being chased by a vindictive sheriff, and he uses fantastic booby traps that he learned in Vietnam to kind of take people out. And I talk about the way that you can do the same thing through rhetoric, through argument in

interviews. How do you lay a booby? The whole point of a booby trap is you set a trap and the other person sets it off, not you. You invite them in and they're caught off guard and unbalanced. And the way I say in the interview, the way I say in the book is that I've done it in my interviews is you try and catch people off guard. You catch them off guard with their own words, with their own contradiction. with questions that they aren't expecting,

booby traps that lead them to a place they weren't expecting to go. And some people call this a gotcha, and I hate that phrase, gotcha, because, number one, there's nothing wrong with getting people. If you're holding people to account, you know, politicians would say, that's a gotcha question. I've had that told to me by left wing and right-wing politicians.

And I find that ridiculous. It's my job to try and get you in the sense of get you on the record, get you to admit something, get you to be held to account. But also this idea that it's, oh, it's some kind of unfair trick. Well, no, it's not because we know what's going on here. This is, you know, this is a clash. This is a confrontation, especially if it's a formal debate, you know what people are getting into. And one of my favorite ones is I love to use people's quotes against them. It's one of my favorite tactics because people have said a lot of things, especially in a social media age.

There's a lot of material out there. And one of the fun things I've done in the past, and again, some people get annoyed by it, but I think it's legitimate. I talk about it in the book, is I like to read someone a quote of theirs, but not tell them it's their quote and see if they agree or disagree with it. And again, people can say, oh, that's unfair. It's not unfair. It's their word. It's not my job to remember their words. And number two, oh, you're trying to trick them. No, actually, there's a, there's a substantive point to this, which is, are you consistent in your views? And do you recognize that some of your views are bonkers when I take your name off of them? And the classic example of that was General Michael Flynn, who was a national security advisor to Donald Trump.

Prior to him joining the administration, he came on my show on Al Jazeera English. He was then a kind of Trump proxy for the media. And one of the things I interviewed him about was his hawkishness on Iran. He's one of this bomb Iran, bomb Islamist brigade. And we, my team and I did the digging. And some of the things I say in the book is you've got to do your homework, you've got to do your research before you do any interview, any kind of public appearance. And we found a quote when he was director of the defense intelligence.

agency under Barack Obama, he spoke in front of Congress and said, Iran does not pose a nuclear threat or something. I don't remember the exact words, but some form of Iran's not a big nuclear threat. And I read that out to him and said, do you, you keep saying Iran's, we're going to do something about this, what about this claim that Iran's not a nuclear threat? And he goes, I don't agree with that. I said, you don't agree with those words? No, I don't agree. Well, those are your words. One of my favorite, that's one of my favorite moments, because there's nowhere for the person to go. They can't slag off the words. They can't say, Yeah, it's a great. And again, some people think that's unfair. I think it's a totally legitimate

interview technique and tactic because, again, you're not making up words. What's worse is when you put words in someone's mouth. I'm quoting their words to them. It's their job to know. It's their words. Another excellent chapter was beware of the gish galloper. You included the urban dictionary definition in the book, which I thought was awesome. And that dictionary is spewing so much bullshit in such a short span of time that your opponent can't address, let alone count all of it. That is so pertinent today. Who could I be thinking of that? Who could I be referring to them? Yeah, the jury's out on that one. You know, that resonated with me because the whole foundation

of my YouTube channel was taking these clips by Republicans, just, of them just spewing bullshit and not getting any pushback and basically, you know, dissecting them piece by piece. That is why I started my YouTube channel. There's this void in pushback against right-wing disinformation. I have the luxury of doing it on my own time and not, you know, contending with any pushback. So I get to lay my points out and kind of have the last word here. So much of Donald Trump's success is that he can pepper you with an absolute avalanche of bullshit. And it's impossible to push back.

And even if you do rebut a few things, you know, he'll beat you back down with another fire hose of bullshit. So what do you do in that scenario? How do you take on an adversary with no scruples and no shame? like Donald Trump. Yes, and it's sadly no longer just Donald Trump. I start, you know, Jim Jordan and, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, it's become a, it's become a, it's become a Republican tick now because they've seen it worked. I mean, why wouldn't it? They saw it work for Donald Trump in 2016 and to a lesser extent in 2020. This idea that you just steamroll your opponent with absolute nonsense with so many lies, so many conspiracies, so many untruths, so many

factual inaccuracies that your opponent does not know where to begin and cannot just physically cannot in the time allotted rebut them all and the audience and neutral audience is left thinking well maybe that person has a point they said so many things that sounded factual and the other person didn't rebut them and that's what the gish galloper relies on it comes from an evolutionist called dwayne gish sorry a creationist called dwayne gish who used to debate against evolutions and do the same thing just pile on bunches of out of context scientific studies out of context quotes and stats to try and make it look like evolution is false and creation is true. So it's called a Gish Gallup and I say in the book, there is a way to stop it.

It's not easy, but there are methods you can use. And I say it's a three-step process that I outline is number one, you know, pick your battle. You cannot. Don't try. And if somebody, if Donald Trump or a Trumpian figure throws a hundred lies at you, you're not going to be able to stop a hundred lies. Don't even try 99. Just go one.

Pick the most absurd, ridiculous one that maybe represents all the others and take that one apart and point out to the audience that the rest are as nonsense as this one. And I give an example in the book of where I did that in an Oxford Union debate on Islam, where my opponent was trying to say Islam is a religion of violence and listed basically every terrorist attack, every example of Muslims doing bad things that they could come up with dozens and dozens in the space of like a minute and a half. There's no way I could have responded to kind of every issue, misogyny, terrorism, patriarchy. It was a long list of things that Muslims accused of. So I just went for one. I said, hey, you said Islam was born in Saudi Arabia.

Islam was born 1,300 years before Saudi Arabia existed, so your mouth is off and got to laugh from the crowd. And that's what you've got to do. You've got to kind of pick the most absurd. Pick your battle. Number two, call it out. You need to tell people what is going on. You say, look, this is what they're doing. They're trying to confuse you.

They're trying to flood the zone with shit, to quote the great Steve Bannon, former advisor to Donald Trump. They openly say it. That's our aim to flood the zone with bullshit. And then the third way is to not budge. don't, this is something I've said for years, Brian. I think you and I have talked about it before on your show. The importance to a good interview in particular is to have the follow-up questions. Don't just ask one question.

They give you a ton of BS and then you move on to the next topic. No, no. You say, hold on. You didn't answer my question. You buried your answer in the midst of all this other crap. And I think that's so important is to not budge your opponent, your adversary, your interviewee, the other side wants to move on to something else. Don't let them.

Stay put. Don't budge. something I do in my interviews. I give the example in the book of Jonathan Swan, then of Axios now of the New York Times. He did this great interview Donald Trump on COVID. And it was one of the first times we saw Trump, you know, really squirming, not knowing where to go because all his tried and tested gish galloping, Jonathan just said, hold on, let's talk about what you just said. Let's talk about that statistic on COVID deaths. And Trump did not what to do because normally the interview would have moved on by them. I do want to read an excerpt from the book on exactly that point

You wrote, referring to Steve Bannon's quote about flooding the zone with shit, the writer and author Jonathan Rauch once remarked, this is not about persuasion, this is about disorientation, he's right. When the likes of Trump and Gish engage in the gallop, their purpose is often not to try to win over, but muddy the argument for everyone involved, that they can bewilder and confused while hopping from one falsehood to the next. And I think that was, you know, that obviously stuck out at me to the point where I wanted to include...

Yeah, and it also has implications for beyond rhetoric debate, argument. It also has implications for democracy, Brian. Right. I mean, the whole point is that it destabilizes everything because then you don't know what's true. And so that's exactly what fascism thrives on. If you read works of people like Jason Stanley, they make this point, the point of the fascist, the authoritarian, why they lie, why they discredit the media, why they don't want to live in a reality-based universe, why they want alternative facts, is not because they want you to believe them over the liberal or the progressive. They want you to, believe no one. They want you to leave you confused, disoriented. And what happens then? Then you are more

susceptible to the strong man who wants to lead you into the light. Medi, you're a pretty dangerous person to debate. How is that impacted getting interviews for you? Because we live in a completely, in a completely bifurcated media ecosystem. And so Republicans don't have to go on left of center outlets because there are plenty of outlets on the right for them to go to. I know for me personally, I can't get anyone to the right of Adam Kinzinger and Mike Murphy, so that should give you an idea of how conservative the guest that I have on. And I hardly have the reputation that you have. So how has that been for you? So it's a great question. It's the question I get asked most. And I remember the time I got asked it literally every minute of every day in the days after Eric Prince.

When Eric Prince, my interview with the former Blackwater CEO went viral at the time, so many people just kept saying to me, why did he come on your show? Why did he agree to an interview? I was like, I don't know. I wouldn't agree to an interview. But Eric Prince did. I often say there's a mix of reasons. I think different people have different attraction. Some people, it's ego. They just like the idea of a row. They think that I'm going they think, you know, no one can touch me. Some interview are called me. I can beat them up. There's a lot of overconfidence and ego amongst some of these public figures. I think some of them just enjoy it, to be fair, especially on the right credit where credits do. A lot of conservatives like to have a row in a way that some liberals run away from a debate, don't like to have their

beliefs challenged. Actually, conservatives maybe because they were in the minority. on their student campus or whatever it was, they used to kind of the rough and tumble of having to defend their positions and they enjoy it. And then some people are just ignorant. I don't do it in an abusive way, literally ignorant, don't know who I am.

And that helped me a lot when I was at Algeria English and a lot of people in the American political scene didn't know me. I got a lot of Republicans on when I was at Al Jazeera English. I mentioned Michael Flynn, Steve Rogers. We had a bunch of Trump people came on the show then, partly because of Al Jazeera English Sweden is a global channel.

And I wasn't a known quantity, perhaps, in that way. Now, MSNBC is much harder. I'm much better known, and I'm coming at them with MSNBC request. We have had a few Republicans on the show, which have created some tense moments, viral moments. I talk about them in the book, John Bolton, and I went really at it over Iraq and Iran and other issues. Republican gregsman Dan Crencher and I had an argument about immigration on Twitter. And again, fair play to him. He agreed to come on the show and continue it on TV, and that was another big moment.

But you're right. It's much harder to get Republicans on the show because why would they come on a show? and do a tough interview where they can go and talk to Sean Hannity. And also, I mean, to be fair, I don't invite that many Republicans on the show. And I'm open about why, because I have a hygiene test on the show, which is I don't want election denies on the show. And unfortunately, the vast majority of elected Republicans and, you know, prominent conservative media personalities now are election denies, are conspiracies. And I don't believe there's any value. I talk about, I love having an argument, but I'm not going to have an argument with people who say up is down,

black, is white, hot, is cold. I don't believe there's a value in platform. Now, I've talked to my team about this. Whether I hold on to that test all the way until November 2024, I don't know. Because at some point, the reality is we live in the two-party system. And if you say, well, I won't have election denies on and one whole party is full of election denies, then you're basically saying you're not going to have one whole party on. Now, how comfortable I'm going to that as a journalist? I don't know. I'm trying to stick to it. I've been sticking to it for two years. Let's see how long I can stick to it. And if you can ask one question to Donald Trump and Joe Biden separately, what would they be?

Oh my word. Oh my word. That's a great question. Well, I'm glad that I'm glad that I asked a good question after having asked the question that everybody on the face of the earth has asked you previously. There's a little bit of redemption here for me. No, no, but the question everyone asks, it's a question that I asked. I mean, it's a good question. That was just because everyone asks it, doesn't mean it's not a good question. It is a good question. I don't know why Prince Kevin the show. What I would say is don't jinx it because I still need people to come on my turn. So let's not jinx it too much. Well, worst-case scenario, I could introduce you to Mike Murphy and you'll get the most...

Let's talk about Joe Biden. I mean, look, you know what I'd say? I don't think this is the best question, but it's a question I feel strongly about right now, and it's relevant to our current moment. And no one's really talking to about it, which is COVID. I think the administration really dropped the ball on COVID. I know people want to move on for the pandemic. I'm not one of the people who refuses to, and the pandemic hasn't moved on,

hundreds of people still dying every day. I would say to Joe Biden that when you ran for office, you said a president who'd overseen who had been in office, hundreds of thousands of people died from COVID is not fit to be president. How do you square that remark with your own presidency in which more people have died from COVID than died on Donald Trump's watch? Far too many people have died during this presidency. I'm not saying they're all the fault of Joe Biden. Many are the fault of Fox hosts and Republican governors pushing anti-vaccin nonsense. But a lot of it is to do with the fact that this administration just wanted to wrap up

the pandemic and move on in order to win the midterms and get reelected in 24, even though the pandemic is very much not over. And a lot of vulnerable people who are vaccinated are still dying. to press Joe Biden on COVID. I think he gets a bit of a pass on that because everyone left and right now just wants to move on. For Donald J. Trump, people say to me, what would you do if you had an interview with Donald Trump? And I always say, it would last 60 seconds because he'd get up and walk out. He has a history. People forget this. Before he was late to tough, he walked out on a BBC interview called John Sweeney. He pushed John Dickerson, basically physically almost pushed him out of the, he got a guy to push him out of the Oval Office, but he didn't like

the questions. What would you ask Donald? This is the problem, Brian. It's flooding the zone with shit. I don't know where to start. There's a hundred different topics. Well, you see, many, having read the book, I know that you should just stick to one thing. Just stick to one. Just stick to one. Okay. Oh, I know. I know what I do, Brian. I would do rapid fire. Just fact questions. I think Donald Trump gets away with the fact that no one just asks it. What does NATO stand for? Just basic stuff. I would just literally ask him, who is the president of France? What does NATO stand for? What's America's oldest? You know, just basically because we laugh. The man knows nothing.

And he managed to BS his way through four years in office without anyone really ever just asking him, just simple questions. One of my favorite interviews, one of my favorite interview moments from Donald Trump is he was with some Christian conservative outlet. And they asked him what his favorite Bible verse was. No, it wasn't, I remember that. It was what's their names? It was Halperin. It was Halperin asked him. What's your favorite Bible?

He goes, what did he say? He said, all of them. He said it's very personal to me. I don't like to share that kind of stuff. And they just kept pressing him. He kept saying, oh, you know, I don't really want to talk about that. That's very personal to me as if they're asking for like. Literally never read the Bible.

Actually, you know, I used to always joke with friends that I would pay money to the White House press court during the Trump era if one of them just stood up. If a White House correspondent stood up and just said, Mr. President, when will you be heading for Wakanda? The people there love you. When will you head for Wakanda in Africa? And they're waiting for you, Mr. President. Two weeks.

And you know that he would have said, you know he would have said, they're great people. They love me. They're great people. I'm heading there soon. I look forward to to it. I would have paid money. If you lost your job for that, as a wife's going to be worth it to go out on that way. Medi, where can we get the book? The book is available. All good bookstores. It's available from independent bookstores. It's been out since Tuesday, the 28th of Feb. It's called Win Every Argument, the Art of Debating, Persuading, Public Speaking. It's available on Audible. I read the audiobook. And Brian, just for fun, we talked about Bolton, Crenshaw. The fun we had with the audio book is we put the actual clips. When I talk about

all the interviews, you can hear the actual debates and clips in the audio books. That's a bit of fun for those of you who like to listen to your books or you can read them or you can buy the e-book and read it online. It was fantastic. It's a very quick read. Really great job. Medi, thank you so much for taking the time. And again, for anybody watching and listening to book is win every argument, the art of debating, persuading, and public speaking. Medi, thanks so much for taking the time. Always a pleasure, Brian, Chase. Now we've got the national columnist for Washington Post and author of the new book, The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Philip, thanks for coming back on. You bet, happy to be here.

So, Philip, there is a lot of conversation about generational change in politics right now. The president is 80 years old, up until five minutes ago. The House leadership were all octogenarians. The leader of the Republican Party and Donald Trump is 76. But for the first time, it feels like young people are making their way into power. And not D.C. Young, which is like 55, actual young, like 30, which is what I tell myself as actual young to make myself feel better. Did that play a role in writing the book that this moment is happening, that we're like in this moment right now?

I mean, I started writing the book back in 2021, so shortly after President Biden was inaugurated. And really, the impetus for it was that there was this roiling tension between baby boomers and millennials in particular. And I wanted to evaluate the extent to which that was rooted in real things. So what I very quickly discovered is that I had over the course of my life vastly underestimated the scale of the baby boom of transformative. of effect of the baby boom, the sheer number of babies being born and how that reshaped the country. And what I found is that when you pick out what makes the baby boom, the baby boom, beyond just scale, you know, the demographics of it that are unique and distinct from younger Americans, that you see all the ways in which this overlaps with a lot of different tensions that

we're experiencing. And so it really became this useful lens for understanding the moment that we're in, and then, therefore, to give some additional insight into where we may be going by considering, Okay, here's where we are. Here's why this tension manifests the way that it does. What does that mean about the next decade or two in the United States? Now, when you were interviewing people or writing this book on the issue of Biden's re-election, which is the moment that we're in right now, did you have a consensus on where people stood on that issue?

Was that a topic that you encountered as a result of this book? Not really. I mean, I started writing this in 2021, right? And so it was still very much like, hey, there's this new guy who's president. Right? You know, we mean, we, this, the book was completed before the midterm elections, for example. And so it was sort of, you know, I didn't have the, the insight into the way in which Americans would react to the first two years of Biden's term, which obviously went better from Biden, I think, than many people, Biden probably himself included, would have expected. So no, not really. But it very much was the case that a lot of the conversations I had about the book centered on the extent to which older people continue to maintain power, primarily political and economic power to a lesser extent, cultural. power that is somewhat unexpected based on our past patterns of, you know, when older people have ceded power, but totally expected given the scale of the baby boom. You wrote in the book about like the staggering amount of wealth that was, that's held right now

by boomers. That's obviously in stark contrast to younger generations, like my own, for whom money is but a fleeting mythical entity from times past. You then talked about the transfer of wealth over the next few decades that we should expect to see. Can you speak on where that money will go and how it will be distributed based on generation? Yeah. So there's a couple of things to remember. The first is that it is the case that baby boomers make up most of, not most of, a disproportion share of the wealth in the United States.

In part, that's because they're more likely to own homes and homes are a very good storehouse of wealth in the United States. So if you own more homes, you're more likely to have wealth. also means, and this is a lesser issue, but probably pertinent to a lot of folks, is that if you live in your parents' house, your wealth is included in their wealth. So if you have your own job and you're making an income and so on and so forth, that's actually including your parents' wealth because they're the homeowner. So that's made a lot of Gen Z's very wealthy people out there. Well, they can at least talk about it. Yeah. You know, but I mean, it's also

the case that when we talk about that, because there are so many baby boomers that on a per capita basis, per on an individual level, baby boomers aren't really much wealthier than other generations were at the same life stage, right? There's just a lot of them. And so when you have a lot of people who each have an individual small amount of wealth, that accrues to a lot of wealth. That's not to say there aren't a lot of wealthy baby boomers. And this gets to your point. What happens over the course of the next two decades in terms of all the wealth that the baby boomers now hold? So I spoke with this group called Cerule Associates, and they estimate that somewhere north of $50 trillion of wealth will be transferred out of the baby boom generation

over the course of the next two decades. But that doesn't mean that it is going to inherit and It doesn't mean that every millennial is going to get a check in the mail. I mean, lots of millennials and Gen Z people who are listening to this are very cognizant of the fact that, you know, that if they have baby boomer parents, they may not be inheriting very much, right? There is still going to be this wealth gap, you know, the very, very rich Americans, if they are transmitting wealth through bequeathments, that's going to lead to their rich kids, kids who are already wealthy. But it's also the case that when we talk about this transferring of wealth, it isn't simply about bequeathments. It's not about when you die, you inherit money. It's also about what's called intervivo transfers, which is things like, you know, buying house for your kid or paying for a kid or buying your kid or buying your kid a car or paying for, you know, daycare for your kid. Those sorts of things are wealth transfers to younger generations. But it also is dependent upon how long people live, how much they accrue in medical costs. What senior housing looks like if they can afford that. We're going to see this really, really sharp boom in the senior housing industry. And, you know, even now, despite the fact we've had 70 years to anticipate this coming, there is a lot of discussion. about what that looks like, how we accommodate people, and the ways in which the medical system

accommodates folks, a lot of that wealth is going to go to doctors. It's going to go to, you know, senior care facilities. And the longer people live, A, the less they've planned ahead for, you know, they weren't planning to live in 95. So, you know, that's going to affect how much money they have, but it also increases the likelihood they're going to have to spend on these other things. So that's money, too, that's not then getting transferred to younger generations. So is it fair to say that if we're in a system where there is so much wealth inequality anyway that that transfer of wealth will kind of just lend itself to that system will just kind of like we'll just kind of like exacerbate that system even more and so not necessarily that that thing that when that money trickles down to the next two

you know over the next two decades that it'll suddenly leave all of the generations from gen z to gen x flush with cash it'll just kind of play into the same unequal system that's kind of landed us here in this moment of inequality that we're in right now Yes. It is the short answer to that. Yes. You know, I mean, it's, you know, the example that someone gave me that I think is a really, really good example is that when we talk about what this transfer of wealth looks like, it is not only not the case that, you know, especially if we eliminate the state tax, reduce the state tax, right? The state tax has the effect of to some extent, you know, breaking up for how that wealth is apportioned. But, you know, the richest Americans don't even need to bequeath money. You know, the example that I was given was Ivanka Trump, right? She doesn't need to wait for Donald. Donald Trump to die to be rich. She's rich, right? She's been rich her entire life because her father has invested in her and paid money for her and because, you know, he's set up businesses for and all these. Like, that's how the system works, right? And so you have a lot of very wealthy baby boomers. Donald Trump born the very first year of the baby boomers who already made their family rich and have used their own wealth to increase the wealth of their family collectively, that then is just going to get greater once they die and issue their bequeathments and so on and forth. So, yeah, so it is. absolutely the case that that pattern will continue. You know, barring something like the collapse into, you know, a true socialistic state in which, you know, everyone's taxed it 100% and redistribute, which seems unlikely. Yeah, probably unlikely. You had alluded to this before,

but there is always a lot of intergenerational fighting. You mentioned that the impetus for the book was a lot of the millennials versus boomers. There's a lot of resentment for the way that they had it and subsequently the way that they view the world as a result of that. But that doesn't exist anymore like boomers could buy a house for less they could go to college for less they could hold fewer jobs at once they could retire earlier um and all of that you spoke about in the book but i'm curious and i don't know if you can answer this but were boomers that different culturally as young people from current young people that there's just that there's this giant cultural disparity now or that or did that disparity just kind of widen as they aged no i mean i think they

certainly were culturally different i mean you know one of the things that you you learn as you get older And I'm not a young man in my 30s like yourself. I'm a little bit older than that. But one of the things you realize is, for example, when you look at, like, look at comedy shows from the 1970s, look at like things like Monty Python, right? Like, I think kids today probably don't have the same appreciation for a Mighty Python that someone did in 1970 because the, you know, the cultural norm for what was funny changed. And if I use that as an example because I think it's very, it's easy to grasp.

But I think that holds for a lot of different things, right? And so look at politics, right? that the issues that motivated liberal baby boomers in the 1970s and 1980s are not the issues that motivate liberal young people today, in part because they were successful, right? They were successful at combating some of the things that they were fighting. They were successful to large extent of, you know, sexual discrimination things along those lines. Younger people now are, you know, more concerned about gun violence and climate change and LGBT issues, which were not on the radar for baby boomers to a large extent.

You know, climate change wasn't something they're cogniz enough, right? And so you have also that political cultural change. But I think one of the reasons that the generational tension is as acute in the moment as it is, is that you also have the emergence of social media, you have the ability of young people to speak directly to older people in a way that simply wasn't possible in the 1970s. In 1970s, yeah, you could go to your campus of Berkeley and protest and, you know, maybe get coverage in San Francisco Chronicle, but it's not the case that you were able to do a, you know, do a TikTok video making fun of a boomer that goes viral in 200 million people see it, right?

like this, that just wasn't possible. And now we see this, this ability of younger people to speak directly to these, you know, institutional power in a way that is very frustrating to older Americans and certainly not something that they were, uh, they could rely on when they were young. You went to the villages to talk to some boomers there. One of the topics that you touched on was Social Security. I know the villages skew heavily Republican, but is there any acknowledgement, especially in the moment that we're in right now, that Republicans have spent decades trying to cut earned benefits like Social Security, which I'd imagine these seniors would view as an important issue.

So when I was in the villages, I ended up not talking to a lot of people, maybe a dozen or two, because it's just hard to talk to people because, you know, everyone sits inside and, you know, when you wander the streets of the communities and the villages, you end up not seeing folks. I mean, you can go out on the golf course, not a lot of people on the golf course necessarily want to talk to you. So it was sort of interesting from the standpoint. Like normally when I'm doing interviews in the neighbor, I'll just go up and knock doors and people answer the door. I see people out and walking around. The villages is a very

different vibe than that. But your point, I think, is a fascinating one. One of the things that we've seen is, you know, Donald Trump in 2015, 2016 was very clear. Like, we're not touching Social Security and we're not touching Medicare. I mean, to the extent to which he actually would have upheld that had been presented to him, of course, is certainly subject to debate. But he understood, you know, in the same way that he understood a lot of things that that older conservative Americans were worried about, part because he was one, because, you know, he is someone who watches Fox News all the time, that he understood that this was something that was going to be increasingly problematic. And so we see, for example, the state of union dress when Biden's

like, hey, look, Republicans want to do this. Republicans are like, no, no, no, no, no, we would never do that. We promise and promise. That's because the Republican Party is more than half over the age of 50, more than a third of them are 65 and older. They're much older than the Democratic Party, which is in part, you know, because the America's population is aging, part because of the baby boom. But, yeah, I mean, well, I didn't hear directly from people in the villages, hey, you know, we are frustrated with Republicans for doing this particular thing. It certainly is the case that I think both parties now recognize because America is getting older that talking about these things as potential targets for cuts is simply, you know, much less politically tenable

than it would have been 30 years ago. On the issue of disinformation, boomers are the target of so much disinformation right now because they don't have the same digital media literacy that young people who grew up online have. How do you think disinformation will evolve once it's only folks who grew up online that are consuming that content. And I think of it like this. I sometimes think that phone scams are only here because there is a generation of people who fall for them and that after baby boomers, those scams won't be viable anymore. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, I think disinformation will sort of evolve. I mean, disinformation is basically market force, right? That there are always people who are going to want to hear a particular thing. And if you can

give it to them, then that creates an opportunity for you. And so the methodology of how that disinformation spreads in the moment. It certainly is the lowest hanging fruit is, you know, to put together a crappy website that says, you know, oh, Donald Trump just, you know, strangled Barack Obama by hand, click here to see how, right? And people like, oh, great, I want to watch that video, right? You know, certainly that is the case now that these are the sorts of things that yield the reward, what are that reward is, clicking on a thing or, you know, scamming people out of their credit cards or whatever. But I just think that'll evolve. And so, you know, as younger America, it's not like in 30 years time when everyone's growing up on

social media, there won't be any more scams. The scams will just be things that play to people's weak spots. Yeah. Philip, as a Gen Xer, what was it like to write a book about the transition from boomers to basically millennials that effectively proves the point that Gen X may have a proclivity to be forgotten? Yeah, no. It's funny because I have these conversations about the book and invariably there'll be one or two Gen X is like, I didn't mention Gen X at all. And my response to that is always like, look, we're supposed to be the guys that don't care, man. What are you doing? They're like breaking the vibe. We're supposed to be the chill, angsty, you know, the guys hanging out in the background. But yeah, I mean,

again, the act of writing the book really helped me understand the scale of the baby boom. It really helped me understand the scale of millennials, too. I mean, you know, when you look at the number of boomers, there were in United States when boomers first started turning 40, and you look at the number of millennials that there were in the United States when they first started turning 40, which is fairly recently. Basically, it's, you know, it's a 9 to 10 ratio, ratio, that there are about 90% as many millennials as there were boomers that stage. So there are a lot of millennials. It's a big generation.

Gen X wasn't, right? And so we didn't have the same rule of challenging baby boomers for power in the way that millennials and then Gen Z when you add on top of millennials are able to do. And as such, we just had a diminished role in the conversation. Just weren't as many of us. We couldn't challenge the boomers for power. And we were just sort of like, you know, we're more as to the shark that was the baby boom generation.

And, you know, that's our lot. Philip, where can we get the book? son do you know where to buy books anywhere man Amazon you know like you know penguin random anywhere you can but you know it's available I you know one of the things I was I was intrigued by this I was looking to see where they're available in libraries a lot of libraries I'm waiting less for which I'm excited to see so you know if you don't if you don't feel like spending for you just have to wait a little longer but public library is always a good way to go too well I would highly recommend it it was a great read again that book is the aftermath

the last days of the baby boom and the future of power in America Philip bump thanks so much for taking the time thanks for having me then thanks again to Philip One last note, just to reiterate what I mentioned last week, I started a Spanish channel on YouTube. The handle is at Brian Tyler Cohen, Espaniel. If you've got friends or family who speak Spanish, send them a link to the channel. We have a growing problem reaching Spanish-speaking audiences, so this is my way of bringing them into the fold. But it's a slog, so I could use the help getting the word out. Okay, that's it for this episode.

Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.