The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - How The Elites Betrayed Us. (and Anti Semitism) with Batya Ungar-Sargon

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the opinion editor of Newsweek and author of Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy seller, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Comedy. Also available as a podcast, available on YouTube. This is Dan Natterman. I've decided, by the way, to soften the intro because I think for the political episodes, my intro was not, my previous intros were not appropriate. No, they're good. They're good. People listen. Just go ahead. Well, in any case- Give it your all, Dan. Well, it's too late now. I already did the intro.

Okay, go ahead. Yes, so we have with us today in studio, and it's always better in studio. I hate those Zoom shows. I hate it. Batya Angar Sargon. Sounds like a Star Trek character. The Sargon part, anyway. Who is a journalist, an opinion editor at at Newsweek and also her latest book,

Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. And I'm sure Noam and her are going to have a lot to agree about on that. We have her with us today. Welcome, Batya, to our show. I think I'm probably the person who's the most excited to be here that you've ever had. I don't know why. I have to say about my name, the funniest thing anyone ever said about it was on Twitter. They said to me, your name sounds like the last thing someone hears before you split their head in half with an ax. And I gotta say, I love that.

I love that because that's the energy I'm bringing into this place. So, okay, a few things. First of all, you're the opinion editor of Newsweek magazine. Correct, yes. Now, I have an old sentimental attachment to Newsweek because my oldest and best friend in the world from the age of three, his father was Robert V. Engel, who was the cover editor of Newsweek magazine at its heyday.

And he did the artwork and the sculptures for many of the classic Newsweek covers during the Watergate era. Wow. And I used to be taken to the Newsweek building. I don't think they still have a building anymore like that. And we used to have to run around the art department and the, what do they call that machine? Is it a Lucy?

And anyway, so Newsweek is just a big part of my childhood. Is it true that Newsweek was always the Pepsi to Time Magazine's Coke? I think it was. You would know more than me because I'm too young. Yeah, it was always. It never had quite the circulation. It never had quite the circulation.

But for instance, George Will, I believe, did the back page in Newsweek for a while. Newsweek was still quite prestigious. It wasn't Time Magazine. So anyway, so that's Newsweek. Second of all, before we get to your book, you got a lot of attention for this recent Israel debate you did. Who was on the debate with you?

Oh, I've done a number of them, but you're probably talking about... I did... Were you on Dave Smith? Was that the one? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and, um, Shank Weger and, uh, Dennis Prager. And Dennis Prager.

Yeah. And what's your take on the whole anti-Israel side? I, I find that they've, they've mined like 10, 20 quotes, all of them taken a little bit out of context, and they build their whole argument on these quotes in a kind of way which, like, for instance, they'll concede, all right, it's true that when the partition was accepted,

Israel didn't chase anybody out until they were attacked. But look at this, they were going to. And they find this quote from Ben-Gurion's diary. And I find this just to be a completely unconvincing method of argument, although it convinces a lot of people. So, I don't know, what was your take on the whole experience with those people? It's amazing because I feel like you take these debates much more seriously than I do. I think, I'm trying to think like, should I say this in a way that people who don't agree with me would be able to accept it? Or should I say it in a way that like people who do agree with me would get the most pleasure out of it, right?

Like, that's where I'm always, my head's always at. Do you have that as well, where you're, like, when you're sort of formulating a thought, you're like, I could say it in the most palatable way to my enemies and maybe convince someone, or I can say it in the most, like, shebangy way for my friends and give them, like, you know what I mean? Well, as a host, I want you to say it the way you'd say it

to your best friends alone in a room. Like I want the unvarnished opinion, but you could say it however. The unvarnished opinion is that the anti-Zionist left is completely immaterial and irrelevant because the American people are overwhelmingly Zionist and philo-Semitic. There is no working class wellspring of support for the

Palestinian cause in America the way there is in Europe and in England and in Canada. And so all of this mythology around AIPAC buying elections or like, you know, the anti-Zionist left making inroads in the Democratic Party is just completely irrelevant. The United States is never going to change its position towards Israel, which is that we have a deeply hostile making inroads in the Democratic Party is just completely irrelevant. The United States is never going to change its position towards Israel, which is that we have a deeply hostile State Department, which has always been anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist, and a deeply philo-Semitic electorate, which has always sort of had Israel's back. And that doesn't mean that we don't have healthy debates about the level of support, about conditioning aid to Israel. You know, I'm an

America First person. I think those are really important debates to have, but the anti-Zionist left is, it's part of the woke movement. It's part of the progressive woke movement to which only 6% of Americans belong. And many of those people are still Zionists. And so to me, it's sort of like, yeah, it's important to have those debates because it is important to have debate, but do these debates matter, whether they're right about Balfour or they're right about the history of Israel? To me, as an American who's very interested and obsessed with domestic issues, I think this is all totally irrelevant. Okay. Just to be fair to Dave Smith, he's decidedly un-woke. He's anti-woke. And a lot of libertarian guys, they have no use for the but, but I take your point. But what about the youth of America? What, I mean.

I mean, the fun thing about young people is they grow up, right? So. We hope, we hope. Yeah. There is evidence that this, you know, that like that millennials are less supportive of Israel than Gen X, Gen X less supportive than boomers, et cetera, et cetera. Like that to me is sort of like, it's just not gonna have a significant impact in terms of if you look at who the most harsh on Israel administrations have been, it's like George Bush.

You know, you remember like when Jim Baker was like, you know, screw the Jews, they won't vote for us anyway. Right? Like that was Republicans, right? I mean, things don't really change that much on this front. And I'm not, I mean, I was gonna say, I'm not saying that to dismiss them. Like, of course I'm dismissing them,

but like, I still think we should be having these arguments. They keep me honest. Like as a pro-Israel Zionist, like I want to be in that debate room with the smartest people because I want to make sure I'm right. I've heard you say this as well. I want to make sure I have been up against

the best on the other side. And you cannot be sure that you're right until you've really challenged yourself like that. But that's an exercise for me. Who is the best in your opinion on the other side of this debate? That is a great question. You seem like all blithering idiots to me.

No. At least on that issue, they may be smart people, but when they all of a sudden talk about this, they lose all reason. I think there are a lot of smart people on but when they all start and talk about this, they lose all reason. I think there's there are a lot of smart people on the other side. I have very, very close friends on the other

side, so I, you know, obviously think they are very smart. I loved what you said about the debate at the dissident dialogues about Breonna Joy Gray. You said, the left is not saying this person is not representative. The left is saying this person is representative of our views.

And thus we have to take that seriously because they are identifying with it. I thought that was so honest and smart, although she wouldn't personally be in my list. I will say something that's going to get me in big trouble, which is I'm about halfway through the debate, the monk debate between Mehdi Hassan and Gideon Levy on one side and Natasha Hausdorff is that her name I think so yeah and Douglas Murray on the other side and even though obviously I'm on this the Natasha Douglas side I think Mehdi did a much better job in that debate so far I'm about

halfway through and I think he was making much better arguments and I think in general he's not a journalist whose work I represent very much and so I was very surprised to be watching it and be like he's the one making arguments that are closer to the ones I would make on the anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism side. So you nominate Mehdi Hassan as the best? I can't quite because it's not like the only thing he's done. But if I had only seen that debate,

I would have thought, wow, this guy's not bad. But that's on the issue of whether anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism, that one issue. They didn't stick to that issue. Like, for instance, he completely misquoted Balfour. Oh, yeah, that was horrible. Which was, to me, when somebody does that, I lose such respect for them.

I mean, it's... The thing is, he didn't know. It was obvious that he didn't know he was doing that. To me, it seemed obvious. He had read some article. I think I know who by, because I think I might have published it at my last publication.

And I think he just sort of took for granted that this was accurate he wouldn't have blatantly I am yeah I mean yeah it's on I check everything I I go to the internet book archive I download the books I I I'm so you've heard me say this before but it's true I'm so paranoid about ever having to eat crow about getting some fact or some quote wrong. And I think we've been doing this for a long time already. I don't think we've ever had to do it. Like I really try to be careful. And here's a guy who makes his living this way. And he knows how tendentious people can be in the way they use their quotes. So like he's going out in front of millions of people. Let me just, I'll take his word for it.

That to me is crazy. It's a terrible move. Yeah, yeah. Who do you think is the best, Dan? Well, I don't know. Maybe Norm Finkelstein. I don't think any of them are, Norm Finkelstein can be quite good.

And then we'll get to your book. And I actually have a way to get to it. Who do you think is the best? Yeah, I don't think any of them. Finkelstein might be the best when it comes, in a certain way, he's the most fair. Oh. But they.

Yeah, I can't. But the problem is that there are certain inconvenient facts to this debate, which none of them will accept because it blows up the Death Stars, I try to make the analogy. And one of them is that Israel really did offer in the early 2000s and in 2006 with a two-state solution. And they did it in good faith. And it wasn't banter stands. And it was contiguous. And they've tried so many ways to say this never happened.

But it did happen. And you can talk to a number of people who were in the room, Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton, Nabil Amr, the Palestinian guy who wrote a letter about it. And once you have to accept, well, actually, Israel really did offer everything that you claim you want now. And in return, they got the second intifada. It becomes very difficult at that point for them to make a good argument. They can argue about the settlements. And I think we probably agree that there's a lot about the settlements that are basically impossible to defend.

But this is why I say it's woke, because what could possibly lead you in the light of those facts to still side with the defeatist side that's refusing rather than the other side? And I think it's because at the end of the day, they're stuck in this woke binary in which there's no difference between right versus wrong. There's just who has more power and who has less power. And the party with less power has zero moral responsibilities. I think that is what it comes down to. Let me give you another tributary. It is the woke.

And then what do people like Glenn Greenwald, Dave Smith, and Norman Finkelstein have in common? They're all kind of lefty Maoists, pro-Russian. And if you look at their politics, Finkelstein is defending Putin. Finkelstein said Putin had the right to go into Ukraine. Dave Smith, obviously, is kind of defending of those guys. We're responsible for the government. Well, I also kind of feel that way about Ukraine. It's not a ridiculous—I'm not going to defend Putin. Well, I also kind of feel that way about Ukraine. Yeah, it's not a ridiculous...

I'm not going to defend Putin, but... No, I wouldn't defend him either. Some of their arguments are not ridiculous. I think we bear a lot of responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine, is how I would put it. We took provocative actions, for sure. Yes, yeah. And, but that kind of...

Like, one of the reasons these guys got the Trump-Russia thing so right, in my opinion, was because their priors were to defend Russia to begin with. If they hadn't been coming from that place. But they happened to be 100, 1000% correct about everything they were saying when it came to Trump, Russia being bullshit. But the only reason they found themselves there is because their reflex was to resist the accusation against Russia. So tie that to the Israel thing. So I'm saying these people, none of these guys are woke. These are all anti-woke people.

Norman Fuglese wrote a whole book. Yeah. And then there's two other anti-woke people who are anti-woke leftists. Lee Fong, who I really admire and love. I'm a friend of his. Love that guy. And Leighton Woodhouse. Love love that like i love those guys and they're like they have become so much more precious to me in this time than they even were because i know when i'm making these points

like like i know that they would say from the river to the sea palestine will be free in a non-antisemitic way like they do not believe there should be a state of Israel that is Jewish. And I do not believe they are anti-Semites. So like I have to, when I'm making my points, I have to remember that they exist. And I hope that I play that role for them as well, as somebody who is like on the other side, but who they think is trying my best to be honest. They're not anti-Semites, but there's something going on. There's something. There's something going on. They're not not anti-Semite. No, I mean. They're not something there's something going they're not not anti-semi

no i mean they're not no no they're not they see israel through an ethnic lens which is a huge error on their part it's like we don't see it that way we see it as a national conflict between two nations about where a border belongs right and like you know but they can't get out of this american mentality that you have to because the lens through which you view it, yeah, I mean, you can't not view it through that lens in order to get like a full picture. I think they're very, very wrong about this. But I like when I really respect,

like when you've just, you, I always feel like the things I trust the most, the views of mine that I trust the most are the ones that I really don't want to be true. You know what I mean? Like once, cause you're like the confirming your priors thing is a really big problem. You know, like I remember when I first encountered

Heather McDonald's work and I was like, my God, this better not be true because if it is, I'm going to lose all my friends. You know, like no one's going to talk to me anymore, right? Because their whole worldview is based on this mythology. But she doesn't use footnotes in her books so you can't really be sure whatever you know this is a problem with her book no you can't really trace her sources but go ahead well i mean cop friends of mine kind of back you know i mean she sounds very convenient i'm not accusing her of not being right but but i'm always like why are you not sourcing everything my first

book has a lot has sourcing from all of the major claims she makes. So like actual studies, yeah. Bad news, which is about the media and what have you. So. Like I'm sure at some level, if you're an anti-woke person, like all of your allies are in the pro-Israel camp, you know, and all of your allies on the Israel thing are the people you hate and don't trust and know are full of garbage. And there's got to be some level which they would be happy to join the other side if

they could honestly believe it. And they can't. And I have to respect that. Like they can't get there because I have not made the case yet. And so I'm going to keep making it to the best of my ability, trying to say things in a way that the other side could hear as well as my side. But, you know, that's the burdens on us. We have to rise to the occasion. You are really rising to the occasion. Wait, wait, can I just ask one question? Yeah. How would you say what you said in a way

that wasn't the shebangy way to reach the people who might disagree? I would have said that the anti-Zionist left in America is much less broad than some people might think. And that many people who are part of the progressive coalition, especially working class people who would identify with that, you know,

on economic fronts, like, you know, they're really not there on this front. And so, you know, the humility of listening to the people in our country who, you know, do work the hardest and, you know, who we all want to be representing would involve sort of a more pro-Israel point of view. I would imagine that your average American doesn't have a strong opinion one way or the other. Which is exactly as it should be. These are not anti-Semites, but what does puzzle me about them is that once they've established their principles that they're going to judge Israel by, they really don't seem to say, okay, these are my principles and let me apply these same principles to everywhere else in the world as a consistent person.

They really, really don't seem to do that. As a matter of fact, sometimes, I don't know Lee's particular opinion about the Russia thing, but sometimes they seem even to flip them. And that's very frustrating and might lead you to think someone's an anti-Semite. But again, I think it more has something to do with being anti-Western. Well, and also, I really don't agree with Glenn about this issue. He has very kindly had me on his show and given me the platform to make my case a number of times, which I like mad respect. He's good about that, yeah.

And from his point of view, I think what he would say is, is that there's no other issue like Israel where you have so much institutional, there's so much agreement on left and right on this issue between Democrats and Republicans that the kind of the censoriousness that he opposes in the woke movement, like you, there is, there is something there. Now I can say I'm totally pro-Israel and I object to that censoriousness, but I don't hold

it against him that the domestic fight is influencing his view of Jewish power, Israeli power, is it this or that? Like he points out important things. Sometimes, you know, I, again, don't agree with everything, but like we should be the ones fighting for the free speech thing as you are, like the fighting that free speech front, because we don't think you have to choose between those two things.

And so when they go too far on that front to protect Israel in the name of protecting Israel, we have to be really vocal about that. Glenn tweeted, we're talking about Glenn Greenwald. He tweeted out something the other day about a poll, which he claimed showed that the people in Bowman's district, Jamal Bowman's district, actually agreed with Jamal Bowman on Israel. It was just, it was just, he's just going too far sometimes. I just, whatever. So anyway, so that's number one number two is that to get users to get to your book one of the things this was regard to like

what the future is in terms of support for israel and you say america is very pro-israel i'm not so sure especially the youth there was a throwaway paragraph in one of dennis ross's book where he speculated that as it as america took more and more immigrants from third world type countries, America was going to become less and less pro-Israel because culturally the people from these other countries have no love for Israel whatsoever. And as a matter of fact, are more inclined, to take the anti-Israel side. And I worry that the combination of all the immigrants, which is something that you talk about in your book and the social justice bent of the younger generation and the fact that Israel, it looks like it's going to be occupying the Arabic people for for a long time doesn't look like there's any so that 20 years from now it's going to be it's they're not going to be very favorable uh opinion towards israel

that's what i worry about um well first of all i don't know that it's the end of the world if america stops being i mean israel has a lot of new allies in the middle east thanks to president trump so i feel like and they showed up, right? When the rubber hit the road and Iran threw those drones, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Jordan, like they showed up and joined the coalition to protect Israeli lives. But clearly they are allies,

but very much allies for the strategic advantage of being. What could possibly make a better ally? For as long as it remains in their strategic interest. That's what allyship should be based on. If you believe in sovereignty, right? Like those are the friends you want, friends who you're sort of, you have a common cause with. Honestly, I think it goes beyond strategic.

I think it's just, there are billions and billions of dollars of UAE money now invested in the Israeli economy. They're not going to let anything happen to Israel. That's good. And the Saudis are like desperate to have a piece of that pie. And, you know, that's where things are going. The myth that the Arab street cared about the Palestinians turned out to be a myth. And I'm not necessarily happy about that.

It's kind of sad for the Palestinians. But it turned out that the Arab street, at least in terms of the leadership of those countries, they don't care anymore. And they're moving on to greener pastures. So that's the first point is like, it's not, you know, Israel needs us a lot less now and probably a lot less than we need them as a country. But also, I don't know, I feel like I can't, I can't remember the last time I met a Hispanic person, like a normal working class Hispanic person who had a strong opinion about Israel. The idea that our immigrant population is somehow less pro-Israel,

I feel like they probably just don't care about it and don't think about it, which is probably how it should be. It's how most people feel about Egypt probably and Jordan and a lot of other countries that we have relationships with. So I feel pretty sanguine about it, but I could be totally wrong

and we could be headed down. I don't believe this narrative that antisemitism is spreading or rising. I don't think the college campuses are the tip of some sort of antisemitic iceberg. I think that's the iceberg. That's where the vast majority of anti-Zionism certainly is, and probably most antisemitism in America, apart from like the far, far right, which is totally marginal. And what about the schools, like in the kindergartens and the public schools and all of this rhetoric about how they're indoctrinating students and to be anti-Israel? I don't, do you, do you, do you still feel like you are living under the influence of like your grade school teachers and moral compasses? I don't.

I don't i don't but i feel periel is i don't recall their moral compass one way or the other yeah or their names even i'm very glad by the way that we were able to disagree because i also i hate when it's like um when it's you know an echo chamber of like supposedly heterodox views and everybody's like in agreement so it's and i know that you prefer talking to people you disagree with now we're really going to disagree because like i'm super protectionist on the economy and i know that you know i don't i don't think we're going to disagree oh really the name of the book wait i just want to say that i i i am i worry

about the the future not for israel so much but for America. But for the psyche of American Jews who are, and we've never lived in a world where all the images of everywhere in the world are just transmitted daily onto our kids' phones. Like, you know, the things that they're going to see, the occupation, the Israelis, thank God they're starting to draft the, hopefully they're going to start drafting

the religious people into the Israeli army. Maybe that will soften things in some way. I don't know. I'm worried about the future. So- Can I just quickly address that? I feel like if Jewish parents can't make the case for Israel to their children,

then they deserve to have anti-Zionist children. Like that's- And Jewish parents can't. And they can't. And that's their fault. Well, they can make the case, but if there's a tide of, if these kids want to be accepted

by the kids at school, and that's really what shapes kids, I think more and more psychologists are discovering that what shapes kids is at least as much about outside the home than inside the home. And if outside the home, they're trying to fit in with the kids at school,

then- There's a much bigger crisis facing American Jewry, which is that it has no real identity and it is really struggling with that right now. And this has brought that to the fore, but my God, that is a conversation that is long overdue. And yeah, I agree. So your book is a big defense.

Well, let me read the, what do you call the title below the title? The subtitle. The subtitle. The subtitle is a thing on, is it called a subtitle? Yeah. How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. Now, I agree with this 10,000%. Oh.

And so let's start with issue number one, which is immigration. So I'm just going to leave it open-ended for you to talk about it in the way that you find most interesting. Introduce the issue to us and how you think we betrayed these people in our immigration policy. So working class wages started to stagnate in 1971. That was kind of the high watermark for working class wages. They started to stagnate after that. And then just if you factor in inflation just to drop the work of working class people, the hardest working Americans who work physically with their hands for a living started to become devalued and radically to where now working class people

really struggle to achieve the American dream in a big way. And if you look at the graph of working class wages from 1971 to today, it goes like this. Can you put in dollar amounts at all? So I get like a feel for how much they've decreased or anything like that. That's a great question. I mean, today, the median income of a household

is about 60,000. The median income of an individual is like somewhere around 50,000. I don't know in today's dollars what it would have been in the 70s. But in 1971, a man could afford to support a family on a single income, could afford to retire in dignity, buy a home, their kids were upwardly mobile and had at least as many choices as they did. So what changed? So there were a number of things. So let's go through them. I mean, so again, so coming back to this graph, this is the graph of working class wages. And this is the graph of the percentage of Americans living here who were born in a

different country. So the immigration graph, and they go just like this. And every graph shows the same thing. In 1971, the share of the population that was immigrant was 4%. Today it's 15%. The last time it was this high was the Gilded Age, an era in American history that was defined by rampant inequality. And the inequality today is not between, like, the billionaires and the poor. That's what the, you know, the credentialed elites love to rail against the billionaires, you know?

Until someone like Bernie makes a million dollars on a book, then suddenly it's only the billionaires and the billionaires, you know? until someone like Bernie makes a million dollars on a book, then suddenly it's only the billionaires and the billionaires, you know? Yeah. Cause he realizes how, you know, how, how little money a million dollars is, but so it's not really because the share of the GDP that's controlled by the billionaires today is not significantly different than the share that was controlled by them in 1971. So where did the middle class go? Where did that squeeze happen? It went to the top 20%. The credentialed elites with their college degrees in the knowledge industry who now control over 50% of the GDP. And how did they do that? They squeezed the middle

class so that working class people kind of became lower class and lower income, and they became part of the top 20%. And they did that through a series of policy proposals that were put into place by Democrats. And that's the wild thing about it. So this kind of mass immigration, obviously, that was both parties, you know, Republicans love slave labor, too, you know, like everybody loves it. You know, NAFTA, which was again, a bipartisan, but signed into law by Bill Clinton, you know, offshoring a 5 million really good paying working class manufacturing jobs to China to build up their middle class. President Obama defunded vocational training, which is a massive avenue to upward mobility for working class people. You can make good money as a-

He thought everybody should go to college. Exactly. So the idea- It's crazy. Well, so the question is why did they make such a massive error? And it's obviously because college is a Democrat producing producing machine right like you go to college you come out a democrat right it was genius i i wouldn't i i don't know if obama was that calculated but okay so basically all of these things i think he has a an egghead elite yeah yeah totally totally so basically but the but the but the um the messaging to working class people was, if you don't get that degree, you are nothing.

If you do the jobs that allow us to sit in our homes on our laptops, doing our egghead jobs, like changing the diapers of our grandparents so we don't have to, or driving trucks with our food so we don't have to, you are nothing. And you will not be able to support your family. And we, meanwhile, will keep getting a bigger and bigger share of the pie. And immigration is just the number one issue like this. And the way that they got away with it was if you objected to this, mating, establishing a family, wanting to be a provider.

These things are now crimes to, cause it was an alibi, right? To get away with this, with the fact that they had dispossessed these people. Um, and, and, and the immigration is so important because it shows how the leftist elites take something that is an economic question, right? The supply of labor, like the most obvious economic equation of supply and demand you have more of something it's cheaper you have less it's more expensive and they shut it off when it comes to except that accepted economists uh are not in agreement universally and in fact a large either a large minority or majority of economists will tell you that immigration does not depress wages because it expands the pie.

And I'm not an economist enough to speak to that. But even a majority, if not a large minority of economists don't agree that immigration depresses wages. In fact, every economist will tell you that immigration is good for the GDP. You're even more right than you realize. But this is a problem with economists. It's not a problem with the analysis.

Because what they don't realize is, well, they realize it, but they don't care, is GDP is not evenly distributed, right? So it is 100% the case that mass migration has made this country much richer, right? But it has not made everybody much richer. In fact, it's made a lot of people much, much poorer. It has made the economists much richer. But from what I've read, they talk about that. They say that immigration does not depress wages.

Maybe in some sectors, wages are depressed to a relatively insignificant degree, certainly not much, much poorer, which you just stated. So it just should be said that this is not the universal opinion of economists. No, I'm agreeing with you.

This is completely the opposite of the universal view of economists. But you're saying the universal view of economists is wrong. Well, yes. I interviewed people in this book who have become much poorer since Biden took office because they are janitors and now they are competing with teams completely made up of

illegal immigrants. So just in the last four years, they have seen their wages totally eviscerated because there are now 10 million immigrants here who are only working in four industries, right? They're working in, you know, meatpacking. Meatpacking used to be the job to have. It was like autoworkers. They had amazing conditions, amazing protections, amazing wages. They work in landscaping. They work in janitorial services. They work in service industry jobs, right? These are all jobs that in the 70s provided a living wage. And now they're poor people jobs because either they're done by illegal immigrants who work for below minimum wage or they're done by desperate americans who can't do anything else and and it like the the economists are just completely wrong about this i

know it's really hard to accept that and like when i first realized this i was like how can it be that i like am like gonna take on like all the economists like it feels like I am going to take on all the economists? It feels like a crazy thing to do. But I travel around the country. I interviewed hundreds of working class people. And I just don't think that someone with $43 in their bank account and four kids to feed is wrong when they're looking at the end of the day about how much money they have and which policies impacted them.

Because they can't afford to be wrong. They have no cushion to be wrong, unlike the economists. So these are my thoughts about it. First of all, I have no doubt that all the economists can be wrong because often when I hear economists talk about the things that I know most intimately, like running a small business, it's clear to me that they don't quite know what they're talking about. Number one. Number two, aggregate statistics, where you take everybody and you say, oh, you see GDP went up.

It can gut an entire sector that already didn't make that much money to begin with. And if enough people make more money on the other side, say it works. And in the meantime, these people start killing themselves and get addicted to opiates because they have no work but at the same time that i it certainly has to be true that if i had no immigrants i would have to raise my wages you know like in our kitchen i would have to

right um there is the force of globalization the fact that it, I read this somewhere, that they catch fish off the coast of California and it's cheaper to send them to China to be processed and come back to America than to process the fish here in America to begin with. So I don't know if those forces would be overcomable, even taking less immigration. Nobody knows, right? They have to be because it's godless and immoral to live as we are. We don't realize how good we have it and how the rest of the country is struggling. And the only reason things are cheaper for us is because they can't compete with us. Like we can afford healthcare because they can't.

We can afford homes because they can't. It's just unacceptable. And it's unsustainable. You think that the economy would be unsustainable. You know what's sustainable is a democracy with no middle class. And that's really where we're headed. And- But there's things on the other side of the ledger, like the fact that part of the reason people are so poor now in many places in the country is because housing is so expensive. Yeah. But that could be brought down with better policies, right?

Totally. And that's the equivalent of raising wages in terms of a person, if I make the same wage, but half my rent. They're still going to be competing with us, right? Like, they're still going to be competing with that couple where there's two doctors making, you know, $500,000 a year, right?

So even if we radically increase the supply of housing, which I argue in the book we must do and how to do that in a very clear, you know, we need capitalism for that, for sure, getting rid of the kind of zoning laws. They still, like, we cannot persist in a situation where people who are working much, much harder than us at jobs we totally rely on to survive

are never going to be competitive in the markets we're competing in. Like, that's not, you can't have a democracy that way. And the idea that the ship has sailed on globalization, like Like that's not, you can't have a democracy that way. And the idea that the ship has sailed on globalization, like that basically moving things, you know, to manufacturing to China is kind of like, you know, trying to reverse that is like to bring back the horse and wagon. Like I totally reject that. Like they're still making the same stuff. They're still making the cars. They're still packing the fish, right? What we've done is the dollar is too strong.

Something that Donald Trump started talking about recently when he's talking to people. they're still packing the fish, right? What we've done is the dollar is too strong, something that Donald Trump started talking about recently when he's talking to people. Like we've made the labor of American workers too expensive compared to the rest of the world. And so like that's a situation that is like completely reversible with good policy, with things like tariffs, with things like trade, with creating a new culture, which I think Trump did, and I think Biden kept it, around protecting the labor of American workers. So you believe in tariffs? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You should have seen my face when I saw that headline. Trump

suggested 10% tariffs on all foreign imports. Why does every economist think that tariffs are a bad idea? So again, they're like just completely wrong. If you look at the last administration, you could really see this. So Trump's immediately slapped a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, almost immediately on Chinese imports.

The average steel worker, by the way, they work in the South. So these are right to work states. So these are not unionized guys. The average steel worker makes $88,000 a year, which in the South is like a solidly middle-class wage. Trump said, I'm going to protect that. That seems worth protecting. Slapped 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum. Prices went up for about six months. All the economists were like, oh my God, we're finished. No one's gonna be able to afford

anything. And then they stabilized and came down because we have free market within this country. And the capitalist pressures from within America between steel, steel workers, between the different manufacturers brought the prices down and everything stabilized. And now you can't even see that blip anymore. It's just, I think it's just, and also like that, it's like people will say, well, if you give workers higher wages, there'll be more inflation. And it's like, yeah, but they'll be able to afford more things because they have higher wages. It's just, we're going to feel it differently because our wages are not going to go up. And actually that's good. Like what we want is to minimize that class divide,

the gap between the haves and have nots. Well, my general outlook on the world has been for a long time now that almost everybody that i grew up listening to turned out to be wrong about everything they predicted including nafta like you name it so i i'm always like yeah it could be uh and i feel like um i forgot the other thing but i feel like trial and error is the only thing I believe in and that we should try these things. Except when it comes to congestion pricing. Except for congestion pricing.

Well, the problem is, no. The problem with the government is, just to digress, is that there is no trial and error with the government. Once the government does something, it's virtually impossible to roll it back. Virtually impossible. That's why the government should be the last person to ever do it. Private sector does trial and error very well.

A terrorist would be the government. No, but stopping the flow of immigration and seeing what happens would be different because we would see, are we getting better off or worse off? And then you could reopen the spigot. The only way we'd really know whether wages are going to come up or not, in my opinion, is let's clamp down on immigration for a while and see who says uncle. And in fact, this is exactly what happened in 2019. President Trump basically closed the border, clamped down on immigration, the lowest recorded in history of illegal immigrants. And we saw the bottom 25% of wage earners saw a 4.5% wage increase for the first time in 50 years.

And the top 25% of wage earners only saw a 2% wage increase. And so it immediately had the impact that I would predict would have happened. So we just ran that experiment and then Joe Biden opened the border and wage growth. And I remember the other thing I was saying, I would add that, I don't know if this is dumb,

but I've always thought this and I've never really learned why it's dumb. A lot of the arguments against tariffs are very similar to the arguments that I would make against unions. Unions are kind of an artificial way of raising the price of labor. And then that price gets passed along to the country

and it's inflationary, but people see it as worthwhile because of how it benefits the workers. And that's kind of the same thing that they complain about in tariffs. I think that's really smart and you should write an op-ed about that. But a tariff is a government-

But I'm afraid I'm missing something. A tariff is a government imposed- But don't stab my point. Tariff is a government imposed. I mean, union is just people banding together there's nothing artificial about it we're all making ten dollars an hour and we bring the boss to his knees until he pays us twenty dollars an hour then the boss has to raise his prices and it's inflationary you know and and if and if we if we put a tax on uh chinese goods so so that Americans can only buy the more expensive version of that good, that also then we create labor for here in America

and it's inflationary and it does the same kind of things that unions do. But a union is a market force. It's people saying, you need our labor and we're not going to give it to you at this price. Yeah, I'm saying the same thing. So it's a market force. A tariff's not a market force. It's a government, you need our labor, and we're not going to give it to you at this price. Yeah, I'm saying the reason— So it's a market—a tariff's not a market force. It's a government-imposed— Well, first of all, I might quibble with you about how often union negotiations are really market forces, but presuming that they are, of higher costs and inflationary pressures are something we consider to be worthwhile

because of the benefit of unions, the benefit to the workers who are in unions, even though we know unions cost us more money, unions raise our prices. We're like, no, we're pro-union. It's worth it for the better good of the country. And what she's making the argument, Batya's making the argument,

these tariffs are worth it for the better good of the country. They what she's making the argument, Batya's making the argument, these tariffs are worth it for the better good of the country. They will keep people in jobs. We'll pay the higher price. We'll pay the higher price. And I understand the downside to this. We four Jews agree not everything is about money. What about the idea that let's get our GDP

as high as possible and then with all this money we can help out. People don't want handouts. Well, they might. I'm so glad you said that. I know they don't want handouts, but they might want job training, free universities.

Learn to code. But go ahead, go ahead. Well, this was something that really surprised me in the book was people really don't want handouts. Like they're really- But they might want free universities or free job training, which isn't really a handout.

It wouldn't be- Free vocational training, which is what we had before Obama axed it from grade schools, right? Kids used to be able to come out of school and have sort of some kind of training so that they can immediately go into apprenticeship. But even the Democrats,

so this was the big headline of the book is like there's no real difference between how working class democrats and working class republicans see the world like they have the same values they have so true the same political opinions like very very little distinguishes them and because neither party represents them they like totally don't care how people vote. They polarization is like a totally elite phenomenon. Like only the elites are polarized. Working class people live in very intellectually diverse communities, but also like they agree on a whole bunch of stuff that you wouldn't expect. Like if you just, you know, said, oh, this person's Republican, this person's a Democrat. And one of the things they really agree on is they really don't like

welfare. Like they really, the distributive model that passes for leftist economic, you know, policy in America where you raise taxes, you take all that money and then you just redistribute it. They hate that. They don't feel entitled to somebody else's taxes, although they do support raising taxes on the rich and on corporations, including Republican working class people. But I think what they would rather do with that is fund some sort of like universal healthcare or pay off some of the debt, you know, they don't have a problem with that, but they don't want that money. They don't want a housing voucher. They don't want, you know, they feel like very resentful of people who are like living off the government. What we hear quite often people say the way they justify it all is, oh, Americans won't do those jobs. Americans won't do those jobs.

You obviously think Americans will do those jobs. At the right price, they will. But there's a flip side, which is that immigrant labor is so much better that a lot of employers don't want the Americans who will do those jobs. This is a real market force. Like, you know, I have immigrant labor work for me. They make good money. They are so good. And they stick to the job, and they stay a long time,

and they take it seriously. And from time to time when I have an American kid who does the same job, it's useless. Have you thought about that? I have thought about that a lot. I've heard that, obviously, from many, many small business owners. I think that there is a spiritual crisis right now, especially in the working class.

And a lot of that stems from that. You can't tell people that certain jobs are beneath the dignity of an American by importing 15% of the country to compete with them in those jobs and exporting all of the good ones and then expect them to show up and like, you know, in the full force. And, you know, it just, you can't, we have devalued these jobs. And so, of course, the people who are American who are going to do them and at this moment feel like losers. And so they act like losers. So I mean, yeah, I totally understand why somebody would, it's like, obviously true that somebody coming here in a desperate situation who

is the slave of a cartel because they owe them ten thousand dollars and they have to pay them off and they're coming from a failed socialist state like they are going to work their butt off like that is like obviously the case right there are many things you can do to someone to make them a really good worker but that doesn't mean that we should do that and i'm not saying i'm not sympathetic to you know i i know this is true like hire like a you know local kid and they're just kind of like on their phone the whole time. There's a guy, they lose their job. It's not the end of the world. They don't care at all. This guy interviewed in the book, who's a manager at a Home Depot is telling me about how, like, there's one rule you can't have earbuds in because basically it's extremely dangerous because the equipment is, you could drop a, you know, a

printer on somebody's head on a kid's head. And it's just impossible to get people to take their earbuds out. And I'm very sympathetic to that, but we have to look bigger picture. Like we can't, like it's, you know, the things that led to that and the things making them good workers are not things we should endorse as a society. We have like a lot of problems we need to fix.

I agree with you. Okay, now tell us why- Does that make sense, Noam, that they're good workers because they're desperate and they don't feel like losers because in their culture, in the American culture, to work those jobs is looked down on? I don't know. There's different demographic groups here. There are some demographic groups

which come from parents that are kind of well-to-do. Like I said, they lose their job. They don't really care because they can just go home with their parents. There's other groups. I don't know. We have problems. We have social problems and educational problems and cultural problems that create not good employees. in this country who didn't grow up seeing their mother and father hard at work prioritizing their lives around getting to work on time being on time doing their job pleasing the boss that haven't had

us role models sufficient to even understand how seriously somebody might actually take a job you know that i've had the experience with various employees. They look at me like I'm crazy, like about something that my father, who never hit me, would have slapped me if he heard that I had that attitude toward my boss. There's a lot of things going on all at once. But having said all that,

I very much agree with Bacha that we have to stop this. We have to control the border and we have to pare this down so we can see what's true and our lame theories about how different people work? All of it. We just won't know until we go through it. And we can't go through it until we get a handle on the border. And, you know, even the irrational hatreds, resentments that all this is creating within the country perception becomes reality and it's tearing the social fabric apart even if they're wrong even if they're wrong we need it would be better for the country to experience what it's like to be without immigrants so that we would all lay oh no i guess we really do need more immigrants i think we do need how do you think

a politician would fare if he said look some, some economists say immigration is good, some say it's not. We have, of course, evidence suggesting that it's, you know, eviscerating the middle class. Why don't we try 10 years without, with far less immigration and see? Yeah. And if a politician said that and said, I really don't know, but let's try it. I wonder how that would be received. I mean, certainly nobody's ever said that. Nobody's ever tried that.

I think most reasonable things that politicians never say would be received quite well by the electorate. They have internal dynamics within their base, within their, I don't know that. We had him on the show, Roy Teixeira. Teixeira, yeah. Writes a lot about this. Like all the things that the normies believe. You have

80-75% majorities for so many reasonable policies that neither party will touch with a 10-foot pole. I can't, you probably think. Well, I do think it's funny, because Trump's entire message is like, let's control the border. It's like the whole thing he ran on in 2016. But he's not saying it, he's not framing it as

let's try it and see what happens. But like, so much of his support is coming from that, because he, I think from his point of view he tried it and it. He's not framing it as let's try it and see what happens. But like so much of his support is coming from that. Because I think from his point of view, he tried it and it worked. So it's, you know, like obviously. He does say that. People just don't believe him when he says it. He said, I want a wall with a big, beautiful gate. And we'll let people and people just assume when he says the thing about the gate and that people would actually come in that he's just full of shit.

He's such a racist. He doesn't mean it. But I never took him that way. He owns businesses. He knows that we need good labor. And I think the whole thing of like portraying people who want to control immigration as racists was just kind of a way of justifying, you know, the sort of selling out of the working class. Another surprising thing I found in the book, which is kind of chiming with what both of you are saying is, so the vast majority of the working class. Another surprising thing I found in the book, which is kind of chiming with what both of you are saying, is so the vast majority of the Republican working class people I interviewed want some sort of universal,

government-backed, guaranteed health care. Yes. And the vast majority of the Democrats I interviewed want basically a total moratorium on immigration, legal and illegal, for the next 10 years. And it is my view, based on that, and polling, basically, that suggests that these are... Reuters has done amazing work on this. 70, 80% of people, kind of 70%, fall in that category of wanting much less immigration

and much more access to healthcare. The first candidate to come out the gate and say, I'm running on much less immigration and much more access to health care is going to get an immediate 60 percent of the vote. By the way, none of this is conservative. Ronald Reagan, of all people, wanted catastrophic health care. But, you know, I don't know if you may be too young. The health care, the whole health care debate really changed because at the time when I was younger, the debate was, and even Michael Moore's documentary, I think was along these lines, nobody should be ruined because they get sick. And that made a lot of sense to everybody, you know, some rich or poor, but if you get cancer, like at some point the government should say, and we're not going to let you lose your home and everything just because you get sick. But then when they finally got serious about government health care, it was every checkup, every this, every that. And that's

really too expensive. And actually, Trump, when he tried to revamp Obamacare, he was more along the lines of a catastrophic plan. But wouldn't it be much better if we knew that every American, no matter what their income was, if they got really sick, the government would protect them from disaster. But you know what? You can pay your own frigging doctor visit if you can't afford the insurance. Like you pay your own dentist visit. And maybe then actually the price of the doctor visit would come down because it always comes down when people are paying out of their pocket. It only goes to the sky because people are insured. So again,

I don't know how all that, how all that works, but I don't think the notion of government protecting people from getting sick is a liberal notion. Nixon talked about it. Reagan talked about it. It's one of the things that even the most conservative people have always been open to.

And on the flip side in the nineties, it was the Democrats who were anti-immigration. And Bernie Sanders. And Bernie Sanders. You want to hear my Bernie impression? Yes. You remember when Ezra Klein said to him, well, you care so much about the poor, shouldn't we have open borders and we should bring in the global poor? And Bernie looked at him and went, open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal.

Very good. Thank you. So we got, I mean, I don't know how much more time you have. Why did the Democrats, why do they hate the Trump voters so much? They didn't used to. Again, Michael Moore, when he did that documentary, Roger and Me, that was all about championing of, they didn't call it the white working class then, but essentially the deplorables. This was the the reasons these people won't vote for the Democrats anymore is because nobody wants to vote for somebody who hates them. Nobody wants to vote for somebody who they know looks down on them. And the Democrats definitely look down on these people. So where'd they go wrong? How do they find themselves in this situation?

I mean, it's more than looked down on them. They literally sold them out with all of these policies, NAFTA, right? Opening the border, mass immigration, defunding, vocational training. All of the housing problems are in blue cities and states, right? I mean, you could be really poor in West Virginia and own a home. These are problems created by Democrats. The reason that I believe Democrats hate the Trump voters is, I think you're right, it started out like, they always kind of look down on them, but both sides, the elites of both sides always look down on people who work with their hands. But I think it was like it was just sort of like a university curated, cultivated contempt. And they really turned on them when they got Trump elected, because I think they correctly, maybe unconsciously understood that this was a kind of like return of the repressed of the democratic

voter like trump's base are people who were democrats 50 years ago 40 years ago 30 years ago 10 years ago right that's who his base is if you look at just policy just policy trump is not an extremist trump is a centrist he's dead center fact, he sounds much more like a 90s era Democrat than he does like a Republican. And for that, they hate him and they have to cast him as this boogeyman because he is the proof of this massive betrayal. He's the evidence of this massive betrayal. They left the whole agenda of taking care of the working class on the table and he just scooped it right up. And so he proves that all of this woke discourse and all this social justice stuff and the entire progressive movement is not about being left it's about being

rich and that this wokeness is a smokescreen for the class divide and in exposing them he really threatens like the hegemony that these people had before he showed up on the scene i mean who was challenging them i think that's why you think it's a little unfair to say that that um that they have contempt for people that work with their hands i think that's unfair i i think it is i don't i've never i mean maybe people have these biases and they don't express them obviously but i i think that may be an unfair charge i've never heard that expressed so why why do you think people like hillary refer to them as the deplorables why do you why do you think they make fun of people at trump not because they work with their hands because they not because what do you think the reason is because they they follow this demagogue and you know and and they they believe crazy things and um i don't think it's

because she has contempt for the working class as such. I think she has contempt for people that, you know. There's a culture on the left that is developed around the worship of expertise. This was the kind of Obama culture that you were bringing up, like this kind of like credentialism. Like they just worship credentialed knowledge. And along with that is this unconscious view that if you don't have that credential, you're not a full citizen or you don't,

you really deserve, like if you are going to vote against what they want, they really don't, like, do you accept that there is a feeling among Democrats on the left that like, if you're going to vote for Trump, it would be better if you didn't have the right to vote? This whole trying to get him off the ballot.

Okay, well, they might feel that way, but I don't think it's because they have contempt for people that work with their hands. I think it's because they hate what Trump stands for and they don't want him in office. And anybody that agrees with him, you know, is, is,

is deplorable, but it's, it's because of, you know, and I don't think it's because of just this innate contempt of people that are uneducated or that work with their hands. Some weird things are going on. So,

so if the Republicans are the party that wants to lower taxes on the wealthy, but the Democrats are the party that attract on the wealthy, but the Democrats are the party that attract all the wealthy, then to me that says that the wealthy don't really care that much about their tax cuts. As I've traveled through social strata, I would have some observations.

I don't know how they apply. First of all, my father was a self-made man and he had absolutely no elite snobbery. All the people that he came up with, most of them were not college educated. He admired them. He thought they were smart. There was none of that.

His son went to an Ivy League law school. I still, I don't have that elite snobbery because I grew up around my father and all those people in a small business like this. But I'm very aware that many of my friends that I met in those Ivy League schools, they were second and third generation within elite world.

And they were snobs. They looked down at somebody who didn't speak well, who, you know, they just looked down at working class people, except if there are minorities, because then there was guilt about that. So, so, and I think you see that in a wealthy, like you'll see the Trump voters saying ridiculous things, believing ridiculous things, and they will just make fun of them and look down on their, look down their nose about them. You'll see minorities saying ridiculous things, doing ridiculous things. They'll never say a bad word about that. Right. Because somehow,

and that's what we have, right? We have this wealthy elite, hyper-educated and wealthy kind of so well-off. You don't even have to be that that well off to be this way, that you're not that actually sensitive to tax rates going up and down. And they're very concerned about the people, you know, the minorities and people they feel are victims of America's history. And they're right. And that make them feel bad

about their own success in life. They feel like it's not right that I should be so successful, especially when they were born into it and these people are struggling. So they make common cause with them. But then these white people in the middle, they have no use for them.

And what do we have? That's what we have, a party of small businessmen, Republicans, like small businessmen, people who are very sensitive, not just so much taxes but regulations and and and things like that or people like me who are very sensitive to the fact that during the blm riots the mayor of new york says you know stand down and people in new york times are saying uh destruction of property is not violence when all i have is property my whole livelihood is property nicole hannah jones can't lose her livelihood through looting. Right.

Right. So they don't understand. So you have small businessmen, people who are sensitive to government regulations, white working class people, people who don't. And then you have this combination. And then Democrats are these very, very high achievers, very, very. And all the interest groups, the intersectional interest groups that are a cause. And that's, I don't know, that's kind of what we're seeing. Totally. And it makes sense to me because it's not money.

As I said, the wealthiest people in the world are not voting their pocketbook. Well, I would argue that they actually love higher taxes because it's a form of indulgence. They're paying off the system that rewarded them so handsomely. You probably think that's unfair. And you know, Trump said, no, I,

I said, I said, I said, and in one of Woodward's books about Trump, Trump said, Trump wanted to raise the top rate. And he was like, they can afford it.

Trump said they can afford it. And one of the guys in his administration says, president Trump, you can't, you're a Republican. Now you, you can't do that. It'll never get to the Republicans. And Trump's like, but they can afford it. He couldn't process that the people in his strata would care about an extra few points in the tax rate. All right. So what else? Let me ask you another question. One of the things that's never been apparent to me, I'm always wary of things which have a kind of emotional impact,

but people don't ever seem to go past that to really discern whether the impact is actually empirically valid. So we hear that wealth inequality is greater than ever. And that seems very powerful. Does it actually matter? Is it possible that with wealth inequality, we're better off? One of the things I had asked Tyler Cowen one time is that if every billionaire on planet Earth came to live in America, wouldn't that be good for America? Wouldn't that mean much more wealth inequality? Like, why do we assume that wealth inequality is bad? It's so funny you said that, because I say that a lot also.

Like, if the average American was a millionaire, right? But we also had a lot of billionaires, we would be very unequal, but we would all be fine, right? I totally agree with you. I don't think inequality in and of itself is a problem. Like it's the thing I have a problem with is the fact that the average person who works much harder than the people in the elites

can't afford the most modest version of the American dream. Like that, we used to have a compact with the working class. Can't argue with you. You can, if you work hard full time, you'll be able to own a home, raise a family, retire in dignity and have access to healthcare. And people work really,

really, really freaking hard and they can't afford those things. And that's unacceptable because we in the elites take them for granted. And I, that's my problem. It's not the inequality, like as such, it's not that certain jobs are worth more than other jobs or what have you. It's that, you know, people in this country are working their butts off for us. And we have made them poor. And I can't stand that. Do I take it you're going to vote for Trump? I am an undecided voter, actually.

You don't sound undecided to me. I'm very excited about the debate. I'd like to see someone like you vote for Joe Biden. What do you think is going to happen in the debate? I'm keeping an open someone like you vote for Joe Biden. What do you think is going to happen in the debate? I'm keeping an open mind. We're watching it here

tomorrow night. Moynihan is coming down too if you want to. That's great. I'm going to be out of town but I'm very excited about it. Are you excited about it? I can't wait.

I know, me too. But mostly, I mean, I can't wait to see what happens but I have this theory that everything that Biden held out for in terms of the rules

could backfire on him. I don't know if you, if you read what I said. So for instance, Biden wants the mics cut off in between questions. Now at that first debate in 2020, Trump was interrupting him constantly. It was Trump's worst debate performance ever. So what is it's like taking Twitter away from Trump, depriving Trump, the opportunity of being a boorish asshole interrupting all the time is only good for Trump. That's number one. Number two, the crowds. Trump likes a crowd, but when Trump gets in front of a crowd, he's big, he's right. He starts riffing,

whatever it is. And it looks bad on the small screen. It looks over the top. Trump, when he's one-on-one in an interview, as we've seen, can actually look quite reasonable. So now Trump's going to be alone in a studio. So he's going to be down. Biden is the opposite. The only time we've seen him look good has been somehow energized by crowd. If you don't believe he's on drugs, I don't think he's on drugs or maybe, you know, nothing major. He gets energized by a huge audience. You know, Dan, it's very difficult to be low energy in front of a few hundred people, very hard. So he gets energy from that. Biden is going to speak for two hours in an empty studio,

straight to camera. He's liable to completely run out of gas and and again to sum up everything that made trump's first 2020 debate performance a historically bad performance these rules would have prevented that genius by the way just so let's see let's see who are you voting for? I don't know. Can I just? I can tell you. Go ahead. As far as the American dream that people can no longer afford, I look at the 50s. I see houses, small houses.

They don't even build houses that size anymore. One car. Of course, obviously, we have technology that you couldn't even buy at any price in the 50s. I go on these cruises sometimes i work on i'm not seeing rich people on these cruises i i people flying in a way that people didn't fly in the 70s you had to have money to fly in the 70s is the american dream as you define it um the same american dream that people were living in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s i mean i wouldn't want to

go back to the 50s because it was like very racist. So like obviously there's ways in which America has gotten better, right? I'm just saying that we like, I think, first of all, if you poll Americans and ask them what constitutes the American dream, there's sort of a wide consensus on this, that it means like owning a home. And you're right, the homes today are much bigger, but maybe that was a mistake, right? If we've made it so that like, only very rich people can afford certain things, that's really bad. I agree with you, a lot of working class people go on cruises, and they love them. But by the way, do you see how cruises are talked about in like the mainstream culture? And this is another really big problem I talk about in the book is the culture now is created

for the like peak American consumer who is now one of these credentialed elites. And so basically, it used to be that culture was produced for like the average middle class American. Now it's produced for people like us. And what that means is that the restaurant you could be a working class person who can afford to take their their family to, let's say Olive Garden for a nice, you know, a nice treat, right? A special occasion, right? But that restaurant in every show on your streaming services is going to be treated like a punchline. And that is disgusting. It's like everything they can achieve, cruises, are treated like a punchline because the shows are being written by people who went to Harvard, right? That's how you get into those jobs right now is through these elite universities.

And I just find that to be like so spiritually appalling. And, you know, you're right. There are certain things that are better. People can afford flat screen TVs, but they don't have homes to put them in. And maybe they'd be better off without them. So let me say, you know, you kind of undersold one aspect of your point, but I read you. And it's a moralistic, as you said, spiritual point, which is that it's unacceptable to you that in such a wealthy country,

so many people have to struggle this way, that have to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week and still barely have enough of what they need to live comfortably and live with that anxiety. It's also very dangerous. Like, it's not, I mean, yeah, I feel it morally, but it's like, it's very dangerous for democracy. Like, if you don't have a middle class and you only have- But if it weren't dangerous to democracy, I think it would bother you just as much.

I would still be really upset about it. But the plea I'm making to people who are not as bothered is, you should worry about this for yourself. It is dangerous, but it also does seem unexcited, especially if you're right, I don't know if you're right, that it wasn't always this way. The good old days can always be as an exaggerated type of thing. But I will tell you this, I looked it up. So when I was growing up, I lived on 100th Street and Riverside Drive, 280 Riverside Drive, apartment 5K, if anybody out there.

And we had a very, very big apartment. I mean, very big, a big living room. I had my own bedroom. My parents had a kitchen, just an eat-in dining room. We paid $250 a month rent in around 1970. I looked it up. That would be $2,000 today. I guarantee you this apartment now is going for $8,000, $9,000 a month.

And no middle-class family, which we were at the time, completely middle-class, would be able to get anywhere near that apartment today. No middle-class family could live that way. And my family did in the early 70s. we're near that apartment today. You could, no middle-class family could live that way. And my family did in, in, in the early seventies. So that is a fundamental change and it's awful. It's awful.

And for a while, my father was in between businesses and we were living that way. Just so my stepmother's teacher's salary, a teacher's salary, when we managed to keep that roof over our head and maybe they went into some debt or whatever it is. But, but I even remember going to other teachers' apartments because my mother was a teacher. And they had nice apartments.

Nobody could live that way today. Yeah. So I don't know if that's just New York. Well, that might be a New York City phenomenon. Maybe they could live that way in the suburbs or in... West Virginia. Well, not West Virginia, but something's changed. Something's changed.

All right, as far as who I'm going to vote for, because I don't like to duck questions, I don't vote, first of all. But this is exactly how I feel about it. I hate the left. One of the things that really disturbed me about Biden was during COVID that we became ineligible for certain programs because I'm white. And at the same time, they were, as you know, the CDC wanted to give vaccines just to prioritize race. And in New York, they were giving Paxlovid based on race.

And that the Overton window had gone that far, I think it's astounding. So I kind of hate the left, and that's just one of the reasons. I'm very happy that the Trump Supreme Court got rid of racial preferences. I prefer Trump's policies. The only thing about Trump is that he's unhinged. He's clearly unhinged. And I could show you a text message of mine from 2016 where I'm saying, I don't know, I wouldn't hire a guy like that to run the olive tree because

he doesn't even seem to be able to comport, to control his own behavior, to comport with his own self-interest. He was just like, and then if you have a guy like that handling a crisis, which we sort of did during COVID, but somehow God seems to look out for Trump and it didn't really matter that he was shooting from the hip for two years or a year during the pandemic. But if he had to handle three wars at the same time, everything that's going on in the world now, I'm not comfortable with a guy like that being in charge of the country,

having his finger on the button, as they say. So I guess what I'm saying is intellectually, I know that Trump shouldn't be president. And it should be said, by the way, a lot of people have stolen my argument. You know, from time to time, I make an argument to somebody and they don't really let on to me

that it made an impact on them. And then a year later, I'll talk to them and they'll make my own argument back to me, forgetting that I was the one who told them that argument. And this has happened to me recently. Even worse, don't you see it in like, it shows up in like the Times or what? But the argument I had been making already

for a long time, you've heard me, is that you have to take very seriously that all the people who were in Trump's inner circle, people who shared his policy inclinations, basically all of them say, don't ever give that guy the keys again. Like, you know, you don't want that man as president. He's dangerous. So I take that very, very seriously. So intellectually, I feel like you can't take that risk with America. So I would have

to say, if I were hiring, I would not be able to hire Donald Trump. Having said all that, I know on election day, in some sick way, I'm going to be pulling for him because of how much I disdain and hate the people who are running against him. But I think maybe we need to suffer another four years of those people to get past Trump so we can have a sane version of his policies, which are sorely needed.

Hopefully we can survive. That's my answer to it. Is that not so? This is my wife, Juanita. So if you had a gun to your head and had to vote, you're saying you would vote for Biden. Come here, come say hi. That's my wife, this is Bacha.

Nice to meet you. Yes, I get away with a lot because my wife's a POC. So when we were applying for the restaurant program, by the way, in the end, there was another program, the restaurant program, we couldn't get the restaurant relief. So you'll find this interesting. So the original, there were two rounds. Under Trump, you had to show how much you made in 2019,

how much you're making now. If it's less than 75%, if you're making less than 75% of what you used to make, you're in the first round, second. It was very, very, very- So reasonable. Very reasonable. A child could have constructed it,

literally a fifth grader. Then we needed a second round for restaurants. The Biden plan came out and said, no, no, the first thing we want to know is what's your race, what's your nationality? And if you're a white male, you go to the end of the line, no matter what. And of course the program was funded

that by the time it got to the white males, there was going to be no more money left. So you had, and listen, I'm not, what? You got to talk on the mic if you want. But now listen, we are very blessed in my family. I'm not crying poverty. We would have survived it one way or another, but I knew people

around me, most small business owners who were on a razor's edge. And the fact that they were not, and many of them went out of business. I mean, after COVID, there was empty storefront after empty storefront restaurants because they were owned by the wrong color person. It's as if there was a hurricane and it flattened houses in various degrees. And rather than the government building the most damaged houses first, the government built the houses of non-white people first. It's basically exactly what they did.

And again, it's morally wrong and it's very dangerous for the country because in some way, like let's say I wanted to organize against that policy. Am I going to organize as white? Like, do you really want me to start organizing as white business owners? This is great. What could be more disgusting and more dangerous for the country?

That's so gross. But if you force people, if you treat white people this way to their disadvantage, you give them no choice. They're not just going to shut up and take it. So, Juanita, do you want to come say something before we go? No, I think you said it all. Oh, go ahead, sweetheart. No, come on the camera.

Come here, come here. Come here, you got to come here so people can see. Sit with me, come here. Quick, quick, because we have to go. Bacha has to go, I'm sure, and military. No, no, no, she can come sit right here. Come sit here. This is my Friday.

We're going to be celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary. Oh, how beautiful. 29 years together. Oh, my Friday. We're going to be celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary. Oh, how beautiful. 29 years together. Oh, my gosh. She was a waitress here. Yep, pregnant. When she was 19, I Me Too'd her. Oh, my God.

That's so romantic. We forgot the best part, Noam, is that she was with child. She was pregnant. Not by him. Oh, my God. This is so romantic. This is like a movie. Yes, it's like a movie. Except for the part where she's pregnant with by him oh my god this is so romantic this is like a movie yes it's like a movie

except for the part where she's pregnant with another guy's kid why not that's the great part that's the best part of the movie she was pregnant

by somebody else and I was living in this place and I was chasing her around this well this this was come on please

before yeah this this was our old apartment that's so adorable yeah so you want to tell me about the applying for the restaurant aid and stuff This was our old apartment. That's so adorable. So you want to tell me about applying for the restaurant aid and stuff? No, I think you said it all. It was pretty disgusting.

I mean, like it should have been based on income or like, you know, profit, not race. And that just is so discouraging. So some people suggested, well, you know, what are you talking about? All you have to do is take, put your wife, put half the business in your wife's name. He was like, no way. I'll take the hit. We'll survive. We'll be fine. But then another program came, they actually constructed a nightclub program. What's crazy is that we have that option, right? We have a mixed household. Other people don't.

And they were suffering. I mean, a lot of businesses closed down because of that. Yeah, we got Ronnie. It's just disgusting. Yeah. You know? All right, Bacha, is there anything else? By the way, she bought us this book and she inscribed it. I think she assumed I spoke Hebrew.

No, I didn't. Oh, you didn't? Oh, but I'll treasure this. This is so sweet of you. And she wrote a Jewish prayer. I just think the world of you, I think you really I think you're really intellectually honest and curious and brave

and you're one of these people who doesn't realize the impact you're having because you're also kind and brilliant. It's a very unique combination of. Better than Ben Shapiro. I don't like this. Better than Ben Shapiro, don't you think? So you know Coleman Hughes?

Yeah. So Coleman and our family are very, very close. Okay. We take vacations together. He's coming to Japan with us. He spends birthdays. I mean, you're talking about very, very close. And he had a book that came

out and he says he says i signed it for you he gives it to me i look at it says to noam coleman i gave it back to him i gave him back the book i was like yeah i know you're gonna write something nicer to me to nom coleman and you wrote going to write something nicer to me. To Nom Coleman. And you wrote me this beautiful, you've never even met me before anyway. All right, so Bacha, do you live in New York? Yeah. So you got to come start hanging out with us. I will.

Yeah, it's fine. I love comedy. My whole life I've desperately wanted to be funny and I'm not. But like my dad's really funny and my brothers are really funny. So I like love funny people. I think you are funny because you do a good Bernie Sanders. sanders that's my only joke i love that i love the impression plus we're such a diverse group of people i know this is like the the three jews podcast but the truth is we're really a diverse group of people that hang out together we have so much fun my wife is so pro-israel first of all she got shadow banned she got shadow banned on instagram

and all i say i don't even have any followers i don't know how i go shadow because she because she shares every meme that's unverified or whatever it is you know no it's all i say thank god she didn't marry a palestinian because she would be so pro-palestinian i think people know right from right and wrong from wrong. You know, it's just like, you can't drink the Kool-Aid and be like. All right, all right, all right. Anyhow, we got Ron and Waiting in the Wings here. All right, Dan.

Well, we got Ron. I don't want to be rude to our next guest. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Dan. Bacha Ongar Sargon. How do you pronounce it actually?

You said it perfectly. Sargon. Second class. How the elites betrayed America's working men and women. Get it at a bookstore near you. Thank you very much, Baja. Now we know you'll come on again, right? I will. Yeah, yeah.