The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Live from the Table: NY Times Journalist Ross Barkan on Biden, Trump, Israel, VPs, anti-Semitism...

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Ross Barkan is a novelist and journalist from New York City. He's a contributing writer to the NY Times Magazine and his reporting and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications. His next novel, Glass Century, will be published in 2025 and he's writing a book about American politics and the 2024 elections. 

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Also available wherever you get your podcasts. Dan Natterman here. I've been away. I was in Paris. I was on a cruise in Alaska. Look, I've got to make a living. What am I going to do? You know, this podcast doesn't pay much.

Anyway, I'm here with Noam Dorman. It does pay a little bit. I'm here with Noam Dorman. He's the owner of the Comedy Cellar. He'll be going away soon, too. He's going to Japan. He's going to Maine. I'm going to Japan.

I can't wait. Are you coming to Maine this year? Well, you know, it's only two weeks. It's a little too rushed. Okay. Anyway. Are you coming? We have to talk about that.

Okay, go ahead. We have with us, Perry L. Ashton Brand is here, too, I should mention. We have with us Ross Bark, and he's been on the show before. He's a novelist and a journalist from NYC, New York City, the Big Apple,

a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine and his reporting and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications. Be on the lookout for his next novel, Glass Century. Hmm, sounds intriguing. It'll be published in 2025 and he's writing a book about American politics and the 2024 elections. Welcome back to the show, Ross Barkin.

Yay! Yay, thank you for having me. What were you doing in Paris? Were you being paid to be there? I was being paid. No, I was doing shows there. Our dear friend Aruba Ray Allen has expanded from the Caribbean to Europe, and he's producing shows now in Paris. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, you didn't know that? Don't tell Esty. She's going to be really upset. I think Esty knows. He infuriates her. She's our booker. She views any comedy show anywhere on planet Earth as direct competition. Well, I think she knows already.

That's amazing. I think she knows already. But in any case, that's where I was. I was in Paris, France. And I was so excited for him being that he speaks French and everything, and he's been so just blah. I was like, Dan, how is Paris? Bienvenue.

I have a few questions for Ross before we... Go ahead. No one doesn't wish it to me. It means welcome home. It doesn't mean welcome home. It means welcome. Okay, but he's home. He had nothing for me.

Did you get lucky? No. Did you strike out? I did neither of the above. I didn't make, I didn't. Are you out of the game? Not out of the game. I just.

Usually you hit your legs, your shoes on a foreign soil. It's invigorating. No, it didn't. I'm not making a great effort. I'm not out of the game, but nor do I make quite the effort. You know, I never really made that huge an effort. Wear that sheath underwear. Okay. That's our correspondent.

Can we talk to Ross? Yes, yes. Ross Barkin is joining us. So now that we've gotten to know Ross. First of all, I thought you were coming to hang out last weekend. What happened? Last weekend. What was last weekend?

I thought you were coming down on the 27th or something. You were going to come down to the club. Anyway. No, no, no. I was in Chicago, and then I was in the Midwest. So I don't think I was in New York at that time. Okay. Number one, first question is, you're writing for The Times now?

I contribute to them, yes. I write magazine pieces for them. I have one coming out, hopefully, in a couple weeks. When did that start? Last January. So January of, like, 2023. Well, I didn't realize that. That's a huge thing, right? That's a big

congratulation. Thank you. Yeah. I've contributed to them for a little bit and then I have now a contributing contract with them, which means you do a certain number of pieces per year for the magazine. So I did one earlier this year on Israel and democratic politics. Now I have another one coming

in a few weeks ahead of the Democratic Convention. So I'm excited about that. Now this has been the story of my life And I have another one coming in a few weeks ahead of the democratic convention. So I'm excited about that. Now, this has been the story of my life that I have. And the same thing happened with you. I've, I've read things by relatively unknown or little known people. And said,

Oh, that's that guy's smart. And then seen them, in short order, have their careers mushroomed. That happened with Harry Enten and Coleman Hughes. I mean, they were somewhat known, but I really took to them with the people who work at FIRE, Greg Lukianoff.

I don't mean that any of them were that unknown, but they were certainly not anywhere. And I was like, everyone. So, and I first read Ross when he was skewering Andrew Cuomo about his COVID response when Ross and I were the only two people in America that thought this guy was out to lunch and kind of a phony. Although I would say I would vote for him for president today. Even with all that.

Yeah. But anyway, so much is happening. So much. In such a short amount of time. I don't know what you want to talk about first. You want to talk about... Game for anything, whatever. Let's talk about first Kamala Harris.

Yes. So what's your take on all that? Are you surprised at the overnight sensation? Are you surprised? Am I surprised? I so so we'll back up and say the Biden debate failure did not shock me because I had been for a long time writing that Biden should not run again and he was too old and he was clearly slipping and making these very clear mistakes in public that were being massaged or covered up to a degree, but just almost de-emphasized. Well, let's stop there. Yes.

What do you attribute, how nefarious, how malign were the intentions of the people who were denying it, and how much of it was a really wonderful illustration of how bias blinds people? Yeah, it's a good question. It's one I've been thinking about a lot. I write a sub stack, and I did a piece a little bit after the debate, sort of like ignorance versus deception. Was it ignorance, or was it active nefarious deception on the part of the democratic establishment and the mainstream media and

how they interact and the answer is it's a bit of all the above i think you had a lot of group think you had a lot of pundits you know i think of like a madagalacias type who wrote that it is sort of mea culpa after the debate he said well you know i thought a lot of it was republican disinformation i realized it was Republican disinformation. I realized it was more than that. So I think you had people genuinely blinded and just sort of falling prey to groupthink, and that's very bad. I think you definitely had people, politicians and operatives in the Democratic establishment

actively covering for Biden, certainly his own campaign. And, you know, you had a media that really, you know, certainly, I think, failed at its job. And you had some pieces about him. You know, I remember when he said his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer, died in Iraq. And he said that several times. And each time it would get covered, but covered but never get emphasized and then you'd have someone come out and say well you know he meant that he got sick there then he died a brain cancer you'd get all these kind of it was in the tarp the tarp it's right so you know you there was

the time he he called out to a congresswoman who had died not long ago he shouted her out at a press event and you could just see in the way he spoke i mean he's not coherent any longer he was getting older in 2020 and then he'd really by i'd say 22 slipped a lot so given all that i did not expect him to step aside and actually there be this pressure campaign from democratic donors and politicians to successfully get him to step aside. I was surprised at the swiftness of everything. It almost felt like this switch had been flipped, where on June 27th, going into the debate, everyone said, oh, Biden's not too old. It's Republican lies. And all of a sudden, he was exposed as kind of like the emperor has no clothes moment. And suddenly, there's this

almost mass effort on part of the leaders of the Democratic Party, the Nancy Pelosi's of the world. And then you have the donors. And I do think the donors played a big role in it, too. The fact that Hollywood elites and Wall Street elites both said, listen, we're not going to keep giving this Biden campaign money any longer if he stays on the top of the ticket. I think Biden stayed as long as he could. He wanted to stay, but the pressure was too great. And he's polling badly against Trump. I mean, he really was looking like he was going to lose. So you take all that together in a really one of the most surreal stretches that I can remember in american politics from the debate to the trump assassination

attempt to then uh july 21st biden says he's stepping down i'd gone to the republican convention just the week before and it was sort of like this trump super bowl there was such great you know trump sanctified it was a remarkable event to see so many people so excited for one human being just to be alive and to be doing things and to go from that and then literally that that sunday the convention ends thursday sunday biden announces he's stepping down then you have what new york magazine uh where i write from time to time it's called kamalot which i actually love that front page, Kamalot. So this sort of outpouring, this sort of entirely striking ascension of a politician who's been quite flawed and had a checkered political career. Let's cut it up into pieces because there's so much here.

There's so much to... So first of all, we had predicted here very accurately what was going to happen at that debate. Yeah. There's a clip of me on Twitter where I said that all the rules are going to work in in in Trump's favor. Yeah. And it all happened almost exactly as I said that the. It was clear that he was out of it. Look, we don't really even know now how far out of it he is, but what was clear to me was that too many times we saw him out of

sync with the rest of the room. Everybody's looking this way, he's looking that way. Everybody's looking that way, he's looking this way. And when Obama took him by the hand, that was such an obvious dynamic playing itself out. It was obvious to me when I saw that.

I commented on it. Obama knows that he's not well because you don't take the president of the United States by the hand if you think he's fine. You say, hey, Joe, or you let him wait as long as he wants. He's the fucking president. You don't rush him off the stage. If he's out there, if he's looking at people,

you know, how dare you, right? And he took him like he was his son, you know, so it was obvious. But what I'm getting to is this. What bothers me is that the people who saw clearly, like you, are not elevated as they should be and starkly against the people who got it wrong. The people who got this wrong and dug in on it, they should suffer some consequences. They should not just be able to wake up the next morning. Well, now listen to me about these five things. They've demonstrated to the world that I cannot see clearly and I get paid by the way

to see clearly and I flunked I flunked the most obvious test every idiot knew this was true but me and not only did I not know it was true I called them names I told you they were frauds they were editing they were this and yet I go back to work the next day and

this is bad for our system so go ahead a few thoughts on that one. It was an example of common sense and common wisdom being stronger than the punditry and stronger than those supposedly in the know. You look at poll after poll after poll for years on end. Democrats were saying it, certainly Republicans were Biden is too old to run. And in this majority of voters, majority of Democrats felt this way for years. So the regular person, you ask them on the street, oh, what do you think of an 81-year-old president? Someone would be 86 when he finished his second term.

That's crazy. That's nuts. My late father, who's 83, when he passed and we talked about this in one of the last topics we discussed, and he thought it was insane biden was running again he's in his 80s he can't do it in terms of those who should suffer i i tend to agree with you i'll say this um my experience is they won't and don't and and the the formative event for me was the iraq war where you had an entire pundit class coming out in favor of it, pushing it, arguing for it. Jeffrey Goldberg now running the Atlantic.

You had David Remnick now running the New Yorker, George Packer. Every sort of prestige name in media almost was in favor of this disastrous war. And their careers were completely unaffected. So, you know, this Biden. This is worse, though, because they were going on information, garbage in, garbage out. Right. This was right before their eyes. You could. Yeah, I mean, it's a fair.

I mean, one, you could say more destructive. But in terms of what in terms of what was a worse judgment call? Yeah, I mean, you could argue, yes, that believing Biden was mentally and physically competent to seek a second term was completely absurd. And if you paid attention, and I wrote this too, thinking about the ignorance versus deception, what's worse? Is it actively knowing he is incompetent but pushing forward anyway? Or is it being so ignorant and

having so fallen prey to groupthink that you earnestly think this, that you are that much of an intellectual failure, right? And that's, yeah, I mean, it's it's bad. But but no one it is amazing. And switches get flipped. It was Biden can do this. Biden is fine. No, Biden's got to go. That's that's that switch was flipped. Now we're on to Kamala Harris. She's here and that's it. And we celebrate. Or if you don't like her, you you don't celebrate. But but but it's like the entire Biden chapter has just been thrown out. Yeah, it is remarkable. I mean, I heard people like David Brooks telling Sam Harris that this was, you know, Biden's lost a little on his fastball, but he's made it up in wisdom. As a matter of fact, this is working for him because he's slowed down a little bit, so he's more thoughtful. I've spent time with the president.

I mean, it makes your head spin. Is it possible that he was having an off night? He was not feeling well. He had a cold. If that was the only night. No, it's come out since then. Like Carl Bernstein reported, they've had 15 or 20 incidents prior where he froze up. I mean, a guy to think about is Dean Phillips, this little-known congressman from Minnesota,

ran against Biden for president on the premise that Biden was too old to serve again. He was completely ostracized. He got no votes. He was shut out of, there were no debates in the primary. And now he was proven correct and Dean Phillips isn't getting any rewards.

And I read an interview with him where he said, listen, I decide to do this because I met with Biden along with other members of Congress to discuss legislation a few years ago. And I knew he had slipped and he couldn't do this anymore. There was one thing I always respected about Bill O'Reilly, of all people, as opposed to what you're saying so in the 20 uh 2012 election dick morris i don't know if you yes was a regular contributor on the o'reilly show yeah and he was there with his polls and dick morris obviously was a reputable political uh voice and um he convinced everybody that romney was going to win yes and then Romney didn't win. And you never saw Dick Morris on that show again. O'Reilly just cut him off at the legs.

And I said, well, good for him. And I respected that. And you don't see that on Fox anymore. That chapter of Fox is gone. But that was kind of the way O'Reilly was. And I want to see that somewhere. I want someone to say, no, you're out of here. We need people at the top of their game.

All right. So then I have a tweet here that I, because I like to talk about, listen, you know, it's not just that I want to be right. I think, and I'm pretty sure you're the same. If I start getting stuff wrong, I say to myself, well, I'm getting stuff wrong.

I have no right to an opinion anymore. I mean, I can very empirically demonstrate to myself whether I'm onto stuff or I'm an idiot. Or you feel shame. I feel shame. Yeah, you feel shame. And then you really want to figure out- Why did you get it wrong? And yeah, and I'm not just saying it. I Yeah, you feel shame. And then you really want to figure out why. Why did you get it wrong? And and and yeah.

And I'm not just saying it. I mean, you know, we want to. Funny. We have we claim that we have different points of view, that you're you're a leftist. But we actually disagree on not that much. But when so when Biden was not yet pulling out. Somebody from Commentary Magazine tweeted this Emerson College poll, and it's showing the potential matchups of Harris versus Trump, Sanders versus Trump, Newsom versus Trump, Buttigieg versus Whitmer, you know, all that. And Trump was wiping the floor with all of them.

And the tweet was, here we have why Biden won't quit the race. And I tweeted back. This is July 24th. These polls are meaningless. The exuberance, the hagiographic coverage, the slingshot of pessimism to optimism. They will change overnight. Yeah, that's correct. 100% correct. coverage, the slingshot of pessimism to optimism, they will change overnight. Yeah. Yeah, that's correct.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Correct. But that's what happened, right? Yes. Did you see that coming? I did. I believe you did.

I did because I thought there'd be great relief if Biden left the ticket and she would, Harris would get this honeymoon period, which she is getting. And of course, at some point, the honeymoon period ends. But I thought at the very minimum, the Democratic base would be thrilled to see someone who could really coherently make the case against Trump. Biden could not. He was not capable of going out on the campaign trail, talking to the press, talking to regular people and holding events and doing all this. campaign trail, talking to the press, talking to regular people, and holding events and doing all this. You know, Biden skipped the Super Bowl interview. I mean, this was remarkable. Every year, it's a tradition. The president sits at the Super Bowl,

talks to the broadcasters. It's very easy. Trump did it. Obama did it. It's something you do. You get a mass audience. It's cute. Biden didn't even do that so i think i think there there was this real um happiness and relief that okay we have a replacement level candidate the very minimum who's going to be running in this race instead of biden who is below replacement level because he can't do it there's another aspect to it and i and i didn't write it but i was thinking at the time and it's an indictment of the press. The other part of it was what we just spoke about. After what we just saw, where either intentionally or unintentionally, you, the press, circled the wagons around Joe Biden for all this time, you expect me to believe when a new candidate

steps in there, you're going to somehow give them a hard time. Every aspect of what you just did makes it a certainty that you're going to elevate this new candidate to levels that they've never been at before, because that's what you, I mean, you were protecting Biden. That's like, we have evidence now about the press and their bias in a way that we can no longer pretend otherwise. It's very serious. Of course, if we had a press, they'd write about it, but they won't write about it. But, I mean, this is not a political point of view. It's an empirical fact.

Yeah. Well, it was interesting. You had the period of Biden protection, and then that did end after the debate. And there was sort of all come once this golden period passes. It just it won't last completely. I do think also given the flaws of the Republican ticket now with Trump in advance, there's a lot of grist for the mill. I think if they had a more disciplined ticket, if it was like a Rubio Doug Burgum ticket. Right. And they were sort of just very conventional and running a normal campaign. You probably I don't know if the honeymoon period would last this long because they would be kind of you know staying on course and perhaps there would be more attention sooner paid to harris but i do think given jd vance in particular you know

there's grist for that mill and it is fodder and that's something the republicans have so let's cut to the scene so we don't buy now we cut the movie, Donald Trump. He gets almost assassinated. Yeah. We could just digress for a minute. Do you have any thoughts about the entire Secret Service failure there? It was a tremendous failure. Absolutely. It's something we need to know a lot more about. Certainly, Cheadle's resignation is the beginning of that. I do think one positive thing I'll say, it seems like there's a bipartisan effort to get to the bottom of this.

You saw AOC asking tough questions in that hearing. You saw Republicans asking tough questions. So I do think there is this genuine desire to find out how did this kid climb up onto this building and get the shot off and what was it seemed like you know certainly it was a secret service failure it was odd that the perimeter didn't extend to this building that seemed like it was local law enforcement tasked with it with you you reject all conspiracy theories in general is I'm more of an Occam's razor person where usually most events can be explained by incompetency and stupidity and chaos than active scheming in back rooms, you know, men huddling together, coming up with these, you know, very intricate plans that are going to be executed just perfectly. I think there's a lot

of chaos in the world. I think there's a lot of fuck-ups in the world. Well, we saw October 7th in Israel. That ought to be enough to tell you that. Yeah, security failure, right? I mean, 9-11 was a security. If we had better airport security, there's no 9-11, right? I mean, or you'd lock the cockpits. There's no 9-11. i mean or you'd lock the cockpits there's no 9-11 but i do have a question about i mean i i reject the the idea that this was a plot i guess would it be the democrats plotting to get trump killed is that would that be the conspiracy you know if you listen to yeah various crazy what is yeah but i do wonder about this one of like the guiding lessons of my life one of the wisdoms I hope to impart to my children because I think it's it's very important to

understand this in life and it's not it's not a cliche is that it's very difficult for people who are hated to get a fair shake from anybody it's insidious and I what I do think is possible is that in a climate where trump is so reviled in some way they just weren't as careful not not that they want to get him killed or anything like that it's just that you didn't worry about him the same way maybe maybe if you cared if you didn't hate the guy you would have been worried you wouldn't have slept so soundly like you know you yeah you work extra hard for the guy you care do these secret service agents hate him i want no i mean whoever was in charge of right who's in who's overseeing i mean the the yeah the things that they didn't take care of

right we're so overt right you just wonder like what it's either like utter incompetence right or maybe someone some incompetence coupled with just a kind of psychological, say, well, fuck this guy. Like, honey, what are you doing? Oh, I got to go worry about Trump now. You got to protect that asshole. Yeah, that's my job. Something I'd like to know if these sorts of gaps have existed for Democratic candidates and presidents and they just haven't been exploited until this kid who plainly was mentally ill and also obsessed with Trump, and we'll learn more about him, took advantage of that gap, right? Have these gaps existed for years and just someone came along to fill it, to exploit it?

That's another question, too. We need to know that. So then he shows up at the convention with this big bandage. Yeah, it was an amazing scene. I mean, going there to Milwaukee, it felt like a Trump Comic Con, a Trump Fan Fest. I mean, really, you know, take Trump for a furry convention, but for Trump, you know, take any sort of mass gathering of super fans, right, for anything, for Marvel, whatever, but it's for Trump. So you have the most exuberant pro-Trump people in America coming together,

and they're all very happy. There's no, the vibes, as they say, were immaculate. No one was, you know, even though the rhetoric on stage, certainly you have people fulminating about the decline of America and carnage in the streets, but the actual people, I mean, they're enjoying it. I mean, they're having fun. They're laughing. And you experienced that for yourself. The vibes were good. I mean, as a reporter there, what I would say is no one was nasty or mean.

Funnily enough, the RNC itself was very open with the media. There was no sort of antagonism. There was no counter-protesters. I was shocked no Democratic or progressive or any interest group showed up in Milwaukee to protest the convention. That surprised me. I mean, nothing at scale that you could really find. So it was just like kind of this week, this coronation of Trump, the sanctification of Trump. I mean, everyone in that arena was utterly convinced 100% Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States. No questions asked.

It reminded me a bit, I covered the 2016 convention in Philadelphia where Clinton was nominated. It reminded me a bit of that. There was that exuberance, but the catch was Bernie Sanders had won more than 40% of the delegates in that room. There were marches on the convention. There were a lot of angry Bernie people there. So everyone was sure, to an extent, Clinton was going to win. But you had a real sense of division at the convention. I mean, there's none of that. Trump owns the Republican Party. It's his party thoroughly. Everyone, even Nikki Haley is there to kiss the ring.

But did you see Hulk Hogan? Yeah, I saw Hulk rip his shirt off, Kid Rock. This was the high watermark of Trump's seductive powers. I saw more people right at that moment ready to say, yeah, maybe I will vote for him. Yes, definitely. And then he really – so first of all, that ear thing was ridiculous. People wore ear bandages. Yeah, you know that, right?

If Biden had showed up to a convention, Trump would have just been making fun of him. And I actually think Trump's getting too much credit for this as opposed to Paul Pelosi, who Trump made fun of, who went through true terror for his life. Trump was having it for... But I'm sure psychologically, not only the idea that you're almost killed but that

you'll never go in front of crowds again yeah after having so i don't want to i don't want to minimize it too much but i know he would never give a shit if it happens anybody no it would not no and he would have eviscerated biden you're right walking around with that but maxi pad but and this goes back to what my the thing I've always not liked about Trump. I never thought he was Hitler. It was always my beef. I could show you literal emails when I said this in 2016. His inability to control his behavior, to put it in line with his obvious self-interest

is how this guy worries me. All he had to do was get up there and make a tight speech unifying message get up yeah he goes into a 90 minute riff and it was and it was the worst he was obviously overtired like it wasn't even a good 90 minutes of that was bad it was i've seen trump speak and it was people were leaving i mean it was it was it was remarkable in its own way because everything was building up to that speech and and he starts off somberly and and it seems like wow that this is going to be a different trump maybe we'll see and just keeps going and going he can't help himself he even joked that he was gonna blow the speech at the beginning of his speech actually

made a sort of self-referential comment but then then, of course, he goes on and on and on. And I think, you know, I was talking to a friend about this. I don't know who's going to win in November. I really don't. I don't like to make those kinds of predictions. But I do think there is an argument to make Trump was peaking too early. And I think the Republican hubris of that convention, the hubris in general throughout the spring and into the summer were heading the polls or so heading the polls. And I'm like, wait a second. That was Hillary Clinton in 2016. Why do you want to be so far ahead in May and June and July and be tweeting out, wow, we're up plus six in Michigan? It's like, OK, and the election is still.

Can I make a little point about that? Because I actually had this conversation with Harry Enten from CNN. It's like, okay, and the election is still a month away. Can I make a little point about that? Because I actually had this conversation with Harry Enten from CNN. It's an interesting point. People often say that Hillary was also ahead in the polls. But we don't actually know that. We don't know if she was actually ahead because she was given 99% chance

of winning up until Election Day, or if the polls were just very inaccurate at that time and she actually didn't have the support we thought she had because they've remodeled all their polls since. It's just like an interesting thing. But anyway, it's just – it's always something to think about because obviously those polls were wrong. Unless overnight people swung from Hillary to Trump, which I don't think they did, those polls were wrong. Yeah, I mean, I probably it probably depends the state, the national polls versus the state by state polls. You know,

Hillary did win the popular vote, but it was by two points, not by five points. So that that is true. I mean, some of that probably is faulty polling. But but I think, you know, at least in the spring, in the summer of 2016, even most Republicans believed, you know, Donald Trump was probably not going to win the election. And I think the polling is better now. But, you know, I'd say either way, it was interesting to be at that convention and to think, well, you know, even if Biden doesn't step aside, you know, Biden is no doubt the underdog now. Elections are close now. We live in a world where it's going to hinge on a few states,

and that's what it is. There's really no such thing as blowouts and landslides anymore. Are you that excited and that confident that you've won the July convention? And, of course, it all changed in a few days, and now it's a very competitive race, and it's one Trump can win. And if you look at Nate Silver's modeling, I think Silver still has Trump at like a 60-something percent chance of winning electoral college, which is still significant. But Harris has already – her odds have already increased, and it's probably just going to get narrower. I mean Trump has that EC advantage that he's going to keep, I think, into Election Day.

But he's a flawed candidate. And I think J.D. Vance, I wrote a piece very recently. I called him a beta in my sub stack, not an alpha. And we can talk about J.D. because I have a lot of J.D. thoughts. So the next thing is, so much has happened. Again, Trump's inability to do the –this might be a little different, but somehow that pick of J.D. Vance was Trump shooting from the hip. This guy immediately—it was clear to anybody watching, as you say, he's a beta, humorless, lacked all charisma. No charisma. That was the thing when I saw him speak. This guy is nothing.

A stiff? Trump hates a stiff. He's like exactly the kind of guy you know Trump can't stand. And what I mean, this again is the overconfidence. I guess they really thought Biden would stay in because what he needed was for these people who were like, I knew a lot of people like, yeah, maybe I will. Right. Someone just to make people to communicate to people donald trump's not crazy you don't mark a ruby yeah i was thinking rubio would have been a very strong you've known him for 30 years you know you could have pulled probably a lot of people on the fence instead

he goes he goes to like and trump we've known him for so long even when he says stuff like he says he's gonna be mass deportations you don't really think he going to do mass deportations because we've heard him say this stuff before in his other interviews where we don't like to hear him talk that way, but we somehow are a nerd to it. But then who does he pick? A guy who actually sounds like he means it. Yeah, and he's a smart guy. He knows

what he's talking about. He's a bright guy. He's awful. I think the overconfidence, I think Don Jrr played a big role in it don jr and jd get along same generation sort of same same intellectual milieu i think jd's a smarter guy but they sort of roll trump jr in an intellectual milieu into i think i think into the same sorts of people in podcasts i would say you know The same sorts of right nationalist, vaguely populist people I think they both like.

There are things about Vance I think are interesting. When I watched the speech, and there are parts of the speech, he sounded like Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, Senator in Ohio. He has a populist streak that I think, to an extent, is genuine. But then if you take out,

we won't even talk about the ideology, just pure showmanship and political skill, he doesn't have it. And what's interesting is if you look at his biography and compare it to Obama's, it's actually quite similar. You have a Ivy League law school grad who writes a memoir that is zeitgeist defining in some way and becomes very successful, uses this memoir to launch a political career, achieves a Senate seat at a very young age, is in the Senate for a very short amount of time, then shoots off in the stratosphere. The difference between Obama and Vance is Obama had it, he had that charisma, and Vance does not. That's the big difference.

Yeah, I can make the case that I'm very much like Paul McCartney, too. Yes. Young guy. You line up those. Gets a job in a foreign country playing music. You could make those. Sheath underwear is where it's at. They're the official underwear of comedy. All of the big comedians are wearing them. Their underwear has a two pouch design. One's for your dick and the other's for your balls. They'll keep your dick from sticking to your leg and your balls from sticking to your dick.

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sheathunderwear.com slash seller or promo code seller at checkout. Get Sheath Underwear. Support the show. Support your balls. And I think Vance, I mean, that's the issue. Vance was a young guy who wrote a memoir that was decent, that was well-marketed

and became very successful. And he fell into the Peter Thiel world and Thiel sort of made him rich and that was a marketed and became very successful and he fell into the peter teal world and teal sort of made him made him rich and that was a good break for him and he was able to charm trump jr and trump and that's how he got the senate career in ohio he won this republican primary thanks to trump barely and underperformed the ticket so i mean yeah, he's weak. He's trying very hard to be this tough guy. You have the cat lady comment, and it just comes off as alienating to the average person. Let me tell you what bothered me. And Trump had to clean it up.

It was interesting. I saw Trump's comment on it. He said, yeah, I think he said something like, you know, we're fine. We like families, but we're fine. Some people don't have families, and that's okay. And actually, Trump gave a very sober—it was interesting on Fox News, but yeah, go ahead. Trump is not a weirdo. No, he's not a weirdo, and he's not online. He's of the world.

There are certain things, like say a bad day or whatever, there's certain things somebody can say, and you could tell they got carried away, and I have my own standard about it, but there's certain things I see, and I just can't erase it. And one was how stiff he was with the Dying Mountain Dew joke. Yes, yes. But even worse, when I saw him on Megyn Kelly. Now, Megyn Kelly, who I know a little bit, and I like her very much,

but she was not at her toughest. She was giving a very kind interview. She was really trying to give him a chance to make himself known to, you know, people could be acquainted with him. And she asked him about this thing about, what about women who, women who can't conceive.

Yeah. And somebody asked him, well, what about your daughter? What if your daughter weren't able to conceive? And his answer was, and I just can't get over this because no, nothing you can say will overcome this. His answer was, well, first of all, my daughter is two years old, so that's disgusting. What? Someday she won't be two. I mean, like, and this is the, he had a whole week.

He knew he was doing his interview. Yeah, you can be careful. That's not the answer. This was a prepared response. She won't be two in 25 years. What kind of normal person that somebody's alluding to sexually with, and like this guy is, it's beyond beta. Yeah.

And they should drop him. I think – Can they? Yes. Yeah. They can do anything. Yeah. I mean the Democrats actually in 1972, they had a – the George McGovern ticket.

Eagleton. Tom Eagleton, yes, who was revealed. Today he'd probably get past this, but it was revealed he'd been institutionalized for depression and mental illness. Loses pilot's license. This was a huge, huge scandal in 1972. So he was dropped from the ticket late in the summer so yeah they can do it the party rules they can do what they want um if trump were i think savvier and more cutthroat he would drop him tomorrow and say all right marco little marco come on the ticket jd you tried you're done can't it. And that's what he would do.

I don't know if he'll do that. Why wouldn't he do that? Because I think it's a good question. Why wouldn't he? I mean. He hates who made he was wrong. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think he made choice.

And I think it's very hard for him to say publicly he screwed up. He never does that. He's never apologized. Wouldn't he rather win, though? Like if he thought that it came down to winning or cutting Vance? I mean, there's many things Trump could have done much better. Yeah. I mean, if he had only admitted that he lost the last election on January 5th, he'd be a shoo-in right now.

Yeah, right. I mean, I think Trump, for all his skills, has these very permanent character flaws that keep him from doing easier things. Right? Like Jan 6th. I mean, you could just – don't do Jan 6th. Right, right, right. It was a close election. Actually, he ran better than the polls.

He did very well. He got a lot of votes. And you lose, you can say, all right, now I'm going to come back and steal my party, right? But he could not. So I think of this Vance thing, too. i think he's got his sons in on it you know don jr is very pro vance i think that hurts it um but yeah i mean i i think you know you think of like the online the discussion of weirdos you know someone who is doesn't spend all their day on reddit and like you know right-wing blogs and stuff

doesn't think about like natalism and or think about you know what is natalism everybody should have children yeah well yes the birth rates are declining which is true and it's an issue in developing in developed countries throughout the world that birth rates are going down we have to find a way to replace the population and And that's all true. The issue is it veers very quickly into this sort of very alienating talk of the people not doing it. What's wrong with them? Why aren't they doing it? It's the failure

of this. It's the failure of that. And it also dovetails with an ugly part of the anti-immigration movement, which can be racist. Yes. White people are not reproducing. Yes, and that immigrants are going to replace you. So yes, you have be racist. Yes. It's also, yes. White people are not reproducing. Yes, and that immigrants are going to replace you. So, yes, you have that part of it.

But I guess what I'm saying is someone like Trump, for all his craziness, he's not thinking about that. It never occurred to Donald Trump to attack childless people. The cat, like, Trump doesn't care. Like, he's all his life, he's around people, have kids, don't have kids, you know, three kids, zero kids, gay, straight. I mean, trump doesn't care like he's no he's all his life he's around people have kids don't have kids you know three kids zero kids gay straight i mean he doesn't care it's not but jd vance you know he's in this world where it's like we've got to make sure everyone's having five kids or they're deviant liberals it's and that's how you get end up on a podcast right where you're right we all say things on podcasts you might regret

but you know there are things which wouldn't even occur to us to say and that's the problem with vance and i think you've that but like you said too i mean this bigger problem is he's not an asset to the ticket and i think now there's opportunity cost also yes and and the vp debates which will probably happen i know trump's making noise that, well, will he debate? I think he's going to have to. And you're going to have to have a VP debate. And we'll see, as we're taping this, Kamala will soon pick her VP. And whoever she picks is going to be a competent, normal politician.

And they're going to be on a stage with a guy who's been in the Senate for two years and was Peter Thiel's buddy and wrote a book eight years ago. And that's his resume. And by the way, it's totally, I mean, I asked Harry about this too. If you control for being married with children, there is predictive politics of that. It's not, it's not, it's empirically provable that when people have children, they do veer, on average, in a different direction politically. And to say, listen, I spoke in artfully. Well, all I was saying is that once you have children, you begin to see the world differently. You begin to think past your own generation. And I think this leads to more mature political decisions. This is not hard to get

yourself out from under. It's just not. It's also, if you're a normal person, you just say we should make it easier for people to have families and just say I support policies where we can support childcare and support housing policies to make it easier to buy a home. And that's, whether you're a conservative liberal, you can say that.

And it's not hard. I drive up West 4th Street on the way to work and I go by these sex shops. There's a pink pussycat boutique and another one there. They've been there almost my whole life, adult life, and I never thought anything about them. Now I have an 11-year-old daughter or 12-year-old daughter, and I don't want to see her huge dildos in the window.

It's just a little example that everybody can immediately understand when you have kids. How much is that dildo in the window? How much is that? Okay, so let's get to that now. media understand of it when you have kids how much is that dildo in the window how much is that okay so let's get to that now uh uh uh kamala has to pick a running yes yes and now this we may we might part company here it seems to me pretty clear that a josh superior josh Shapiro is, on paper, the best guy for the job. Yes, yes.

And B, he might not get it because he's a Jew. Yes. I've had this discussion with people where you could have a Jewish VP and a Jewish first man, and is that too Jewish? And I say, this is a Jewish person. Is that too Jewish for America? We could find out. Or for the left, which obviously, I mean, for my— I say this as a Jewish person. Is that too Jewish for America? We could find out.

Or for the left. The left, which obviously, I mean... Some of it, though. I think most... I think the Democrat, the median Democrat wouldn't care, put it that way. And you have a female of color. Yeah, you have that too. The problem is it's taken. No, well...

I don't think the median Democrat, I don't think, cares that he's Jewish. I don't think the median Democrat cares. I agree with you. You're talking about leftists who are pro-Palestine. If I were Kamala, I would not pick Shapiro. Pick Kelly? I'd pick anybody but a Jew

because... Why did you say this? This is not the first time I've heard this, so I'm not gasping. I'm just gasping that he's actually... I would tell you why. Yeah. Assuming that I have to make decisions based on wanting to win. Yeah.

As opposed to, you know, taking a stand for justice. Yeah. Because it's already clear that if I pick him, it is going to bring to the surface ugly things from within 15% of the party base that I am now going to have to be dealing with. And at the convention where at the RNC, even to mention the word Jew led to cheers. Cheers, yes. At the DNC, that is not going to be the case.

It's going to be different. What do I want to open this can of worms for? Right, right. case. It's like, what do I want to open this can of worms for? Isn't it that they're going to lose a lot of Jews and... I don't think so. If the Jews haven't lost by now, I don't think they're going to lose.

There also aren't a lot of Jews. Most Jews don't care if... We don't want a Jew in the White House or anywhere close to it. I wouldn't mind a Jew. We don't need it. We don't need it. We don't need it. We got other shit cooking. We got show business. There is another argument which I'm not averse to, which is

that at a time when there's a war between Israel and Iran, whatever it is, and America has to be seen as an honest broker, that you don't want a Jewish president anyway because through the eyes of the other side, they might just assume. Problem is you're going to,

you'll have that for the next hundred years. So you got to put a Jew on ice till probably the 22nd century. We'll solve it. Put a Jew on ice. Anybody that, well, they're going to put a Jew on ice when Noam gets frozen.

That's going to be the title of this episode. But what percentage of people that are willing to vote for a half Indian, halfblack person with a Jewish husband are all of a sudden going to be turned off because the VP candidate is Jewish? I think that's a fair point. I actually think that's a fair point because we went through this with Obama. Why is the line we can't cross when we've done it now for a black politician with a name that many people found strange.

And Kamala Harris, right? Half black, half Indian. It's not because half black and half Indian. I mean, hold on a second. We're talking about the intersectional base of the Democratic Party. No, I know what you're saying. You're saying you have a Jewish VP. It'll kick up Israel.

They're already calling him genocide, Josh. You're saying you have a Jewish VP, it'll kick up Israel, Gaza, in a way that if he picked Kelly, for example, just the astronaut, the kind of interesting but boring astronaut from Arizona, you wouldn't deal with it. No one has feelings about Mark Kelly and Israel. So I see that point. I think it's a fair point. Also, she is not, I mean, whatever you think about Israel, she's not reliable, even if you agree with this, that she ought not be reliable. She's not reliable on Israel already. For instance, when she made that first speech after Netanyahu gave his speech, after she had the meeting with him, she said the following line.

She said, Israel has a right to defend themselves, blah, blah, blah, all the kind of boilerplate stuff that Hamas is terrible. And then she says, but I will not be silent. Now, that line is a dead giveaway psychologically of where someone's coming from. When you say, but I will not be silent. I think she's to the left of Biden on Israel. Who's asking you to be silent?

Like you're saying as if there's pressure on me to be silent. Like you don't say, but I will not be silent if no one's pressuring you so and she will she will not be silent i will say what you know i'm i'm being pressured not to say i don't think josh shapiro is an i will not be silent guy i think no i i think shap I think Shapiro is at least in the Biden camp of supporting Israel indefinitely. Well, I think Harris's policy views are relatively just not formed either way. I think she was not in the Senate very long

and its VP foreign policy was nowhere near her portfolio. So I do think she's a bit of a blank slate in terms of where she will really be on these issues. Like we don't really know. But we can use that example of Biden and his and his cognitive decline in so many ways. under the peer pressure of that milieu, who has expressed intersectional ideology, expressed equity as opposed to equality notions, and it would be quite out of character for someone with all those, with that profile,

to not veer to the left on Israel-Palestine, which is her right to do. But I'm saying let's not pretend otherwise. Joe Biden, if you look at the polls like Democrats, above like 55, they're like 80% pro-Israel, right? Biden is of a particular

generation that has a kind of memory of the Holocaust, the gravitational force of the Holocaust, and they are, in his heart, I believe Joe Biden is quite pro-Israel. He might buckle a little bit because of Michigan, because they're going into an election. He's still a politician.

But if you gave him sodium pentothal, I believe he would actually say, no, I'm a Zionist. I don't think she is. Well, I think what the inevitable shift that is coming is future Democratic presidents, whomever they may be, will be not as resolutely supportive of Israel as Joe Biden has been. I think the party is moving left on that. I think the Republican Party is polarizing in the other direction. Do you agree they're also a little anti-Semitic on the left?

I mean, the stuff we saw. I don't. Kamala, no. Not Kamala. I don't like the mainstream. Not Kamala. Who was tearing down those posters? Who was saying those things in all the campuses? I mean,

some of the stuff, it's just not too far. I have a lot of thoughts on this. A lot of thoughts. Will the Jews finally abandon the Democratic Party en masse? No. Not in the near future. I mean, certain Jews, I mean, Orthodox Jews, yes. No, not Orthodox Jews, though.

But the secular Jew, no. The secular, otherwise liberal Jew, no. But yeah, I think a very observant Orthodox Hasidic Jew. But they've already. Those guys are not. I'm not talking about those guys. But they were never. Yeah, those guys.

I think the secular will if there's a reasonable Republican. I actually think if it's just a normal person with most of Trump's policies. Could they do it? a reasonable Republican. I actually think if it was just a normal person with most of Trump's policies, but... Could they, yeah. If it was me speaking like Donald, you know, saying the same kind of like,

I think we should control the border, like basically kind of Trump. Trump is not that conservative in his actual policies, right? No, he's not, no. I think you would see quite a few Jews. I have to tell you,

I've seen just... We know them, yeah. Yeah, like I've seen people who are like gay creative Jews who have been lifelong Democrats have just been like, I am not going to vote for people who are anti-Semitic and who hate Israel. Yeah. So now what's your feelings about the— The left, yeah. The anti-Semitism. The anti—Iemitism. The anti...

I think there... Don't make the mistake that they made about Biden. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I think... So I have a few thoughts. I mean, for one, you have a very complicated situation where Judaism, which is a many thousands year old religion, is completely associated with the actions of a nation-state. Now, we know why that is, obviously, right? We know the history. But it gets very fraught,

where you have a nation-state with a democratically elected government, a prime minister whom no one in America voted for, making decisions, doing things, we can say right or wrong, right? They're doing things that, because of the dynamics, are done de facto in the name of Judaism. So it gets very difficult where, yes, there are anti-Semites out there, undoubtedly, right? Is it anti-Semitic to very furiously criticize

the Israeli government? No, right? When does that veer into anti-Semitism? I very furiously criticize the Israeli government? No, right? When does that veer into anti-Semitism? I think that's an interesting question, right? But we've seen it veering into anti-Semitism a lot. Depends on which instance, though. Again, is it if one, for example, if one tears up the Israeli flag, is it anti-Semitism, right? That's a nation state.

That is a country. If you tear up the American flag, it's anti-American. Are you anti-white? Are you anti-Semitism, right? That's a nation state. That is a country. If you tear up the American flag, it's anti-American. Are you anti-white? Are you anti-Protestant? I'm with you. What are you? I think it's, yeah. I want to have the essence of truth on everybody.

Yeah. But when I saw, like at Columbia, there's a Zionist among us. Yeah. Take one step forward. Take one. And then to know that that same guy, Kimani James, had actually said in his interview with the Columbia administrators,

I want to see the Zionists die. And they did nothing. And the poster's being torn down. And it was just so much stuff we've seen. But it's also the notion of intersectionality that sees the Jews as white people. Yes, which is stupid. I think that's dumb. And they express openly and proudly.

It's ignorant. No, openly and proudly they express hatred of white people. Yeah. You'll have people in the Senate. We've heard enough of white men. Yeah. And it's just a little, a slight tick beyond that to say we've heard enough from Jews because they've already normalized the idea that you can judge people by that. And then you say, we want equality of outcome.

Well, who is more the enemy of equality of outcome than this tiny population of Jews that dominates 10 to 1, 100 to 1 per capita in the outcome of intellect and everything. And they define, you know, Robin DiAngelo and Kendi, they have defined racism as inequality of outcome. So even without Israel, they have set us up with an ideology which sanitizes the fact that we are the villains by nature of our achievement, by nature of our color, by nature of our... And then so then that to me is why they are so anti-Israel. It's not they're so anti-Israel.

I think that's what has prepped them and softened them up then to hate Israel because you may have a problem with Israel, but the story they have about Israel is wacky, is crazy. They want the elimination of Israel. Yes, maybe in the third week in October, they didn't know what River of the Sea actually meant. So they didn't know, but they know by now. They haven't let up on it.

Is anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism the same thing? Yes, well, at certain times. I let up on it is is anti-zionism anti-semitism yeah same thing well it's at certain i would i would not say it is well but yeah but that's that's that's a disagreement yeah i would not say it is does it have to be to be a noxious toxic i'll tell you what is it i thought a lot about this yeah it of course it's not if if i mean if i i made the point to Brett Stevens months ago that, well, some people are pro-Putin against Ukraine, and they don't have some hateful ideology to explain it, so somebody can always have any kind of view. So you could think Israel shouldn't exist. It's weird because it's a country since 1948.

But, and this goes back to what I just said, but once people are on full notice that when you say river to the sea, most people think that means you want to see people annihilated or... I would say... We want to globalize the intifada. Right. Well, you may not know what intifada is, but normally when the Arabic people threaten another intifada, they mean the killing of. Yes. And once they are informed of those ambiguities and they dig in on using that language, that hurtful language. Yeah, I know very well when I say intifada, they know it could mean killing them. And I'm going to keep using intifada.

There's so many other ways I could explain what I want. No, I mean, let's globalize a peaceful uprising. Let's globalize peaceful protests against Israel. If they dig in on the word intifada, I would say, obviously, we have no technology to determine it. I would say at that point, you have to say, preponderance evidence. This is animus towards Jews because it's, it's, it's disgusting. Like if it was black people and I said something and somebody says, no, you have to understand. That's what the slave owners used to say about black people. Immediately I would say, no, no, I didn't mean that.

I'll never say it that way again. I only meant this. Right. It's the most natural thing in the world to correct yourself when somebody presents to you a reasonable interpretation where they would take you to be hateful or God forbid want somebody to die, but they don't change their language. And that I think is case closed as far as I'm concerned. I think they are anti-Semitic, not all of them, of course. Yeah. I think language is tricky though, because I think, yes,

some are sat down and explained to, but I think are not right and and some think you know a slogan is a call for liberation it's a call for they see it as a call for palestinian liberation right that's how some see it some see it as the murder perhaps of jews other see it as the uplift of palestinian people right these are the people who freak out about pronouns because it offends people you know it offends well everyone's hypocrite slogan but everyone, right, but that's the problem. Like, literally everyone's hypocrite, right? You have all the anti-woke, free speech crusaders

throughout the 2010s telling us, you know, language is not violence. You know, we have to protect free speech. I'm a huge First Amendment person. We both are. Right? And then it comes to Israel

and suddenly you get the most woke-sounding arguments in defense of Israel that I have heard. I agree with you 100%. You cannot say, no, this word is too hurtful. I'll say that, look, the Palestinian protesters, a lot of them, I'll say a few things. One, you're going to have Israel forever. There's going to be a state of Israel. So if one is calling for like a binational state, supported or not, it's never going to happen, right? I think we all agree with that. But, you know, you have these discussions where

I get very tired personally, because it feels like one can't even have the discussion because language itself is getting so policed in the way the left policed language. And I was very against that. I do find now, you know, that the Barry Weiss is the world, the sort of anti-woke right. I saw at the Republican convention, right, this idea, we're for free, we're for free expression. Well, you are. So, so debate someone who's critical of Zionism or debate these slogans, right? And if these protesters are committing violence, right, I agree that is horrible, right? 99% of them, you can disagree what they're saying. You know, I disagree with things they say too, right? They're camping out. You know, you can say don't camp out on property, right? You should be expelled from school. Fair,

fine. That's an argument, right? But these protesters, these pro-Palestinian protesters, anti-Israel protesters, certainly, how many of them were rioting and looting? How many of them were smashing up windows? How many of them were punching out cops? I mean, they weren't, right?

And yet we're so incensed by them, in a way. Whereas in 2020, we could say yes, these protests got violent. That's fair. First of all, we could write it on a napkin what percentage you think of the anti-Zionists. But neither of us thinks 100% of anti-Zionists are anti-Semitic or 0% of anti-Zionists are anti-Semitic or 0% of anti-Zionist, because if you're 100% of anti-Semites are likely anti-Zionists and there's a lot of anti-Semites out there. So certainly, so we, that's unknowable. And I'm from day one, I even defended that woman,

the first woman who got fired to NYU who wrote the letter or the, from the law school. Yeah. I tweeted in her favor. Yes, yes, yes. I had a guy working for me that first week who wore a Palestinian flag to work, and I had a Jewish comedian. I said, leave me alone. It's none of my business. Yeah. I don't want to police anybody's language.

Yeah. Zero. As a matter of fact, I prefer to know where people stand. I'm not talking about policing their language. Yeah. I'm talking about reading their sentiment from the language they choose to use and in the context they choose to use it. And I know that if I was using language which black people reasonably could say to me, you know what you're saying is what people who want to kill black people say. Right, right, right.

And I continued to use it, they would suspect that I don't like that. And they'd probably be right because any decent person would find a different slogan. So if you are a protester who is calling for the end of the war in Gaza, calling for a ceasefire, and you're calling for a Palestinian state. Two states now! Two states now! Right. What if you're calling for a binational single state with equal citizens, Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian, all have one vote and all can come together? What if you're calling for that? What's your slogan? I could come up with a slogan. But what I just described, some people would call virulently anti-Semitic. What I just described, they would say that that is

calling for the end of the Jewish majority. But when River to the Sea is taken from actual genocidal slogans in the original Arabic. Yeah. They need a new slogan. They should find a new slogan. They don't want a new slogan. That's what they mean.

Well, there's nothing that's popular. I mean, it's easy to come up with a new slogan. They don't want a new slogan. That's what they mean. There's nothing that's popular. I mean, it's easy to come up with a new slogan. The intifada even actually bothers me more because more than once, Abbas has threatened another intifada. And nobody ever

asked the question, do you think he means peaceful protest? I'd say strategically, if I were advising, if I were giving counsel to the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist faction, right, I would agree with you in saying, look, do you want to build out popular support for your viewpoints? You know, these slogans are alienating to people. Say something else, right? You're saying they don't want to. That means they hate Jews. I'm saying it's complicated. Some probably hate Jews, but some are just like, oh, this is a good slogan. This is what it sounds like. This is what Palestinian liberation

sounds like. We don't have other... What are the other calls for Palestinian liberation that are popular in the protest? Is this Black Lives Matter caught on? How about Palestinian Lives Matter? Did you do that? PLM. Someone would call it anti-Semitic.

It's a very interesting... I like PLM-Semitic. It's a very interesting... It's a very interesting type of... I like PLM. Are you sure? It's a very interesting type of anti-Semitism I've commented before because any... Not any,

but almost all these protesters, if their daughter brought home a Jewish guy to marry, they wouldn't care less. Yeah. Like, traditionally, like, if you hate Jews, that's the worst thing.

Like, your daughter's going to marry him. But it's not that kind of anti-Semitism. So it is what it is. You only have to perceive it, but it's, what it is is filtering down to my children. Right.

Where their friends have made remarks about their pages. My daughter, God, I don't know if I told you this. So this may be a little indulgent, especially your interview but i was gonna tell you so my daughter went to hebrew school she hated hebrew school yeah and she didn't want to go through the rigmarole of getting a bat mitzvah and the truth is orthodox don't get bat mitzvah it's an american tradition my mother wasn't bat mitzvah my grandmother's not bat mitzvahed. It's an American tradition. My mother wasn't bat mitzvahed. My grandmother was not bat mitzvahed. And this was happening right at the time of October 7th. And I was very afraid of turning her off,

making everything about Judaism being something she hated. At the same time, there was all this anti-Israel feeling in the air. So I decided to let it go. I'm not going to force it. And I got some flack from Jewish friends, whatever it is. And the day before yesterday, my daughter says to me, I want to get a Jewish star

to wear. And I was like, really? So somehow, something triggered her. And I suspect it was stuff she was hearing at summer camp. Yeah.

So somehow this is filtering down to Jewish children feeling that it's an issue to be Jewish. Yeah. And I don't need it to be anti-Semitism. I can grant you for the sake of my name, it's not anti-Semitism. Sure, something else. But as a Jewish citizen of America, it's affecting my ability to live,

my daughter's ability to live like I lived as a young man. And it's getting closer to aversion to the mean, as close to the way my father described living as a Jew in America. And we need to fight against this. Even if it's not anti-Semitism, considering most Jews are Zionists, somebody that's virulently anti-Zionist is going to be anti-most Jews, at a minimum. So this is where we can get to historical context here. If you look

at the history of Zionism, there were many Jews who were not Zionist going back to the early and mid-20th century who felt that the idea of establishing one country for Jewish people in this desert was not a great idea. That's pre-this thing. That was a strategic argument among various factions. But post-1948, I'll give you then a different example. Post-1948, a lot of Jewish intellectuals in the United States in the 1950s into the 1960s, pre-1967,

I would say, a lot of Jewish intellectuals would have said, this Israel thing is not great for the American Jew. I think Einstein was... Yeah, Einstein, and I think beyond Einstein, too, just into those who were born in America and working in America, they would have said something like, yeah, yeah, Einstein, and I think beyond Einstein, too, just into those who were born in America and working in America, they would have said something like,

listen, we're trying to assimilate into the United States here. A lot of them were anti, I'm talking about the New York intellectuals, they're very pro-America, anti-Soviet Union. I'm sorry to stop you, but it's very important. But I would say they saw it as a burden on the American Jew. But this is the thing. This is a very important distinction going forward. What they didn't see it as was an immoral state.

And if you're an anti-Zionist because you think it doesn't benefit the Jews, it's not the best strategy, these are all arguments. None of those can be considered anti-Semitic. Actually, all those arguments coming from what you think is best for the Jews. There are left-wing Jews today who think it's an immoral state. They are there. Anti-Zionism now

is almost exclusively these are, this was an evil outpost of Western settler colonialism and that's just different. And I can't conflate it with... It's also tricky because any modern,

any nation, right, is the product of settler colonialism. The United States is, you know, Europe. Except more than half of Israel has been in that Middle East. It was evicted from the Arab countries. Right. And Jerusalem always had a majority of Jews. And then some refugees went there.

You had a war in 1948. It was quite rough. And a lot of Palestinians were thrown out of their land, too. Yeah, yeah. Listen, that Nakba is nothing compared to the Nakba they're suffering now. Yeah. I mean, I don't... Yeah.

But they are similar only in the sense that in 1948, I mean, closer than we are to COVID, these people defending themselves in 48 were from the concentration camps. Yeah. And now they're facing another genocidal enemy. Yeah. Five Arab armies attacked and shit happened in that war. Some people ran away.

Many were thrown out. This is, I mean, it's almost impossible to imagine that they didn't throw more of them out, considering what those people expressed as the intention they wanted for the Jews at a time when on planet Earth, the slaughter of civilians as targets was completely normalized. We were bombing Dresden.

We had dropped an atom bomb all over the world. It was just open season. 25 million Russians killed. And the Jews pushed out 300,000, 400,000 people who were attacking them. And where'd they push them out to? Over the line. You know, like we're in Manhattan.

We push them to Queens to the, to the land, which is supposed to now become their country. Right? No, we want to stay in your country. Well, you can stay in our country, but you're killing us. So we're pushing you to that country. This is, this needs to be reprocessed. This is not this great historical crime.

This is, like I said, it's hard to imagine that they didn't push more of them out after they were attacked. So I'm not defending anybody who's pushed out. I think they should pay them reparations as part of any settlement. Everybody's pushed out.

They should get paid money for the land that they were evicted from. That's the way things are settled in the modern world when people get pushed out. Even in America, we want to build a highway. We throw you out of your land and we pay you for it. That's a much

less reason to throw somebody out of their land. So I can't... What's happening now in Gaza to me is a thousand times worse to the Palestinians than what happened. I always wish that Europe hadn't been so anti-Semitic, where as reparations they could have just given a chunk of Germany and France to the Jews after World War II.

They're never going to do that. They could have just carved out a nice state there in Europe, but that's not the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They would have taken it. They would have taken it. They probably would have taken it. And there are all sorts. If you look at the history of Zionism, there are all

kinds of discussions, including Africa, where this land of the Jews would go. We have to move on. We're here now. And what's interesting about it is that Gaza is Palestinians, but Hezbollah is not Palestinians. They're not even Sunni. Iran

is not even Arab. So when you look at the Sunni countries, who are cousins almost indistinguishable from the Palestinians, right? I mean, they are actually indistinguishable from the Palestinians, except their history has diverged geographically a little bit. They've made their peace with Israel. The big guns against Israel now are people who have no actual stake in it in the way the Palestinians do. So this has to tell you something about the root cause of the conflict, that it goes deeper

than you displaced us and now we want some land back. No, it's also a conflict that tragically is not solvable in the near future. I think that's something we all grapple with because we're used to having easy solutions. We're used to saying, well, if X, Y, and Z are done or if A, B, and C are executed, we can fix this. I'll give you an example of Russia, Ukraine. I think that is a war that is ultimately solvable and solvable will be brought to a conclusion at some point. It will not satisfy many people, but it will happen. I think it'll happen probably in the next year, two years. This is salvable too, though. Actually, you crazy, the last thing I want to talk to you about.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if you deal with Iran, I mean, all of the armies that, quote unquote, armies that are attacking Israel are proxy armies of Iran, right? Like the Lebanese people don't want to go to war with Israel, and the Israeli people don't want to go to war with israel and the israeli people don't want to go to war with them either right but how do you this put this palestinian problem of gaza how do you how do you give them a functioning state how do you get rid of hamas then have the plo run it how do you have a peace agreement it's not how do you get there it's it's it's not that i haven't gotten there yet it's because how do you get there? It's not that hard. It's because

the $64,000 question is, and I'm skeptical about this question, is a functioning state side by side with Israel. Israel doesn't want it.

Does that have anything to do with what they want? They don't express that. They have no leader who says it. By all accounts, when they've been offered that, they turned it down. When George Bush had Abbas in the White House, Abbas turned away from Bush. When Barack Obama offered, he couldn't get an answer from Abbas. There's no literature. There's no slogans. There's

nothing about them. The Israeli position, and this is where you're at a disadvantage because you don't know them like we do. The Israelis were all for it. All for it. They elected Olmert, the prime minister, which is not that long ago,

on a platform of withdrawing from the West Bank. And he was elected. He said, I'm going withdrawing from the West Bank. And he was elected. He said, I'm going to withdraw from the West Bank. And they elected him. Where they really moved to the right was when they began to associate that kind of sentiment with their children being killed in intifadas. It's like, you know, we need to wake up. So let's just go on to Ukraine.

Right, right, right. Ukraine. Right, right, right. Ukraine. There was a time when, and I blame Biden for Russia invading Ukraine, by the way, but there was a time when we thought they might just pull this off. Putin might get deposed. We heard he might have pancreatic cancer. I didn't think they would, but yes. People did.

It was, people did. And I certainly had no right to my own opinion. I said, you know, maybe. And if they could, then I'd support it, right? Yeah. The bloom was off that rose. There's no way Ukraine is ousting Russia or defeating Russia or Putin's being ousted.

None of it's happening. So like you could be, you could buy futures on a stock and then now you're, you're selling it short. It doesn't, you know, you have to, you have to change your mind because of reality on the ground.

So where are the Democrats on this? They're still pretending somehow thatraine can pull this out and then they get mad at people like trump or even vance who imply we're going to impose a settlement here yeah but i'm more towards well if you don't want to impose a settlement what the hell do you expect going to happen there yeah killing these people i've i've been writing on Russia, Ukraine from time to time in my own sub stack in the nation. And I hold views on it that are currently associated with the Republican Party, which are very weird to me. And I think it speaks to the strangeness of our current political situation where the most hawkish internationalist elements on this issue are in the Democratic coalition. And it's the Republicans like Vance. It's because the democratic coalition and it's the republicans like

vance it's because the neil kahn moved to the democrats yeah like like the vance trump wing sounds a lot like noam chomsky and literally no noam chomsky was saying look we we have to and kissinger both actually were saying similar things that this war needs a settlement of some kind it's not necessarily going to make everyone happy. But I wrote this going back to 2022. Russia cannot be defeated in the sense that you're fighting a land war against one of the largest countries on Earth. They have far more people. They have far more material.

They have modern weaponry. And they're going to stick it out. Now, can Russia run roughshod and take over Ukraine and Europe? The answer is no. And the reasoning is rather simple. And when I learned this, I was surprised that more people don't understand this. With the evolution of military technology today, it's much easier to play defense than offense. With drone technology, with the way we can launch missile strikes now it is very hard to land invade somewhere you can't do blitzkrieg world war ii style invasions

any longer you can't march across countries once you get a little into it the the defense gets all the advantages you can dig in you can spy on your opponents uh you know you're they're positioning and you can you can target them so that's basically what happened in russia ukraine you know russia came in they got bogged down ukraine made some progress they got bogged down and you basically have a world war one style conflict it is sort of like very modern trench warfare two sides that can't really progress that much. They're just killing each other. And at some point, you know, an adult has to get in the room, which is the United States.

We are the adult. And we have to say, listen, guys, this is not benefiting anyone. Russia, you're not getting all of Ukraine. You're not getting Europe. Ukraine, you're not getting Crimea back. It's not happening. We reach a settlement. We drop a boundary.

People will be mad and sad, but we have to stop the killing. And I don't blame Biden for the invasion. I don't, but I blame- I'll tell you why in a second. Yeah, I can guess why, but I do blame Biden for prolonging this in the sense that, and Western Europe too, I think Western Europe plus Biden bought into this sort of delusion of if we just give enough armaments to Ukraine, And defeating Russia is not something that is going to balance out planet Earth. for all these conflicts, Russia and the U.S., both the Soviets and the Americans, understood we can't come into direct conflict. It is deeply dangerous for the United States government and the Soviet Union to directly fight each other. And in this war, Russia-Ukraine, we get closer

and closer to a direct U.S.-Russia conflict, and that is devastating. And I fear nuclear escalation. That's something I give Trump and sort of the Trump wing credit for. For whatever reason, they seem to openly care about this. I don't really hear this on the Democratic side. We cannot climb that nuclear ladder. There's a lot of weaponry on both sides. There are possibilities for real tragedies. And so I personally think we need to find a way to deescalate and get to a peace situation. I think the U.S. and Western Europe can do it, but they've got to see reality in front of them and get Zelensky in the room.

Listen, Zelensky, you know enough. You fought hard. Listen, Putin. Comedian. We've got to get it yeah get the get the showman in the room and it'll happen at some point but it's not happening yet yeah um you know the only question will be and then i'll tell you why i blame yeah so the question will be as kissinger had said before he died that he thought whatever ukraine was left with should be allowed

to join nato yeah um i i would like to see that outcome as well but i have no idea how if that's possible yeah um the reason i blame biden when i say blame biden i i i don't presume to say it would have never happened uh except for biden but i think there's a significant less than zero chance that if he had behaved differently, maybe it wouldn't have happened. You don't know. And the headline is, the zoomed out version, is that he communicated to the world and to Putin

that there was no chance that America was going to do anything if you take Ukraine. He did it specifically by speaking one time when he said well if it's a minor incursion well it might be okay with it but more importantly than that i think harris said this too he said and if it's a major incursion well you're going to have some economic sanctions which to putin's ear was well if all i have to worry about is economic sanctions i'm cool with that no so that was essentially, tell him right this way, as opposed to saying,

if you, first of all, I don't know what could have been done in terms of actually putting tripwires of some sort there that Putin would have had to worry about triggering something with America, or by saying, if you go in here, we're going to arm these people to the teeth.

We're going to, it's actually everything we did. Like, why not tell them up front that's what we're going to do? Maybe that wouldn't have worked. But Putin didn't even have to go through that stressful decision. If he knew this was going to be such a slog, perhaps.

Maybe he would have come to some compromise. And then finally, the way they pulled out of Afghanistan. I mean, I know people don't like to admit this, but it is provocative to see the United States of America run out of a country with its tail between its legs. It emboldens our enemies. So that's why I blame him. Right, right, right. He said all that.

Am I sure it wouldn't have happened anyway? No, how could I be sure? Yeah. He really wanted Ukraine Ukraine for sure. I look Biden in Afghanistan. It was sort of an impossible situation where no president could unwind it and end it. But it wasn't urgent. They didn't have to do it like that. But what what way what better way could there have been to leave Afghanistan?

I guess that that's the question. Was there a good, safe, normal way to leave? I'm not sure. I don't know if there was all those weapons there. Well, he was told apparently now to do it that way. The kind of notion when, listen, I don't like

the Democrats, not because of their tax policy. When you hear like the Secretary of State say things like, well, if the Taliban want to be considered in the company of polite nations, they can be concerned about the way they're perceived by the rest of the world.

They were saying things like this. These are idiots. The Taliban does not give a shit about being respected among the community of nations, right? And sure enough, the behavior we've seen since then, they're right back to terrorizing women.

But they really believe this stuff and they're impervious to updating their worldview no matter how many times it proves bankrupt. Yeah, well, I think that's more the foreign policy establishment than just Democrats. You're sort of describing the Washington blob hive mind, it seems like, which goes across parties.

Maybe, maybe, that worldview. Yeah, Washington foreign policy. I mean, they're saying the same thing about Hania now, though, is that, you know, he was moderate in his position. And, I mean, you're seeing this language about this guy who... Well, what you are seeing is people say that Netanyahu did this in order to not have to agree to a hostage deal. This, to me me is madness they they did not have to risk

a regional conflict to simply not agree to the ceasefire deal like i i i'm open to the idea that netanyahu because he's afraid of going to jail whatever it is is dragging his feet on the sea i don't believe that but i'm open to that because the idea that he would risk Tel Aviv on fire, this is just crazy talk. And when you used to ask people, what do you want them to do in Gaza?

People would say, well, they should do targeted assassinations. They say, well, now they're doing targeted assassinations. I don't like the targeted assassinations. Well, then what can they do? Well, they could just give up anyway we have to go you are

you know I like you very much I had a lot of fun what are you doing in Japan just family vacation Japan have you been there before never been there before oh it's wonderful

I loved it I went there last year it's my favorite place to go it's great are you doing where are you going we have a trip planner who's going to

Tokyo Kyoto and what are the other Osaka Osaka yeah we have a trip planner we're going to Tokyo and Kyoto Osaka gotta take the Shinkansen take the bullet train we're gonna go to some anime things how old are you? 34

you don't know this yet but when you hit your 60s all of a sudden you start saying fuck it I need to start doing whatever i want whenever i want yeah and i was always actually kind of like that yeah i mean i did not ever deny myself much but now it uh i i'm tripling it like anything i want to do i'm like fuck it we're going you're gonna think america well you may think america is a failed state already but you're seeing the, well, then you might, you'll see the Japanese infrastructure and you will feel at least temporarily that America is profoundly, profoundly far behind. I did take the TGV in France and I know there's reasons we don't have it here, but it is a wonderful thing.

Yeah, yeah. When it's not being sabotaged. Yeah. To not have to deal with airports. Yes. The Japanese, the metro in Tokyo and Osaka and the bullet trains, you will feel you live in the future and we live somewhere many decades in the past. Japan has many problems, but on the infrastructure, they are a century ahead of us. In one century from now, I don't know if we will be there.

There are certain cultures that can have nice things. When you don't have to worry about vandalism, you don't have to worry about shoplifting, you don't have to worry about graffiti. I'm just going beyond the literal, the speed. If you had a Japanese-style subway system in New York, you would have subway lines going literally to every part of the city. It wouldn't take you an hour and a half to go from Brooklyn to Queens.

It would just be like there'd be a grid, and you can literally go anywhere, and you'd be taking high-speed trains to Washington, D.C. in like 30 to 40 minutes. It's fairly inexcusable that that doesn't exist here. If it was in Japan, you'd be rocketing on trains up and down the Northeast Corridor. I get what you're saying. Philly would be a 30-minute commute with a bullet train. But somehow it is an expression of their culture that has its pluses and minuses. I mean—

That's maybe true in the cleanliness part, but on the infrastructure, it is they prioritize it. Also, their government, their structure. I think America, one problem we have is we a lot of layers of local federal regional governments that really gum up the works for lack of a better term whereas in japan these sort of centralized bureaucracies they can decide you know we're doing this we're doing this project this timeline spending money prioritizing that's a great example as i I understand it, the main... Other than the fact

that our population is not as dense as Japan, one of the main reasons we don't have bullet trains is because it's just... The process of buying up land is so cumbersome. All the legal issues...

We do have much more, it's true, zoning hurdles. Yes. Someone in Japan, an American who speaks japanese told me too one underrated reason we don't have bullet trains is that the airline industry has would not would not want it and would not cooperate cooperate whereas in japan there's sort of this this

interesting synergy between the the airlines and the bullet trains. We have to go. We have to go. But for next time or even for an article or to talk privately, I am incensed by, and this is on the right now. For years, I never considered right-wing anti-Semitism as something to worry about. I no longer feel that way. And this even includes with J.D. Vance, this tolerance and good feeling towards Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, that whole mix of people. Jews who are undermining the notion of truth and spreading conspiracy theories into the mainstream is so, in my opinion, so dangerous for America. And it's being tolerated in a way that really disturbs me.

I like to talk about that. Next time. Something should be written about that. I mean, Alex Jones is out there saying that. Maybe Noam Dorman should be the one that writes. Alex Jones is out there saying that the Jews killed John F. Kennedy. And then Tucker Carlson is saying that Alex Jones is a supernatural prophet. Tucker Carlson is sitting at the Republican convention.

Yeah. And Tucker Carlson says that the United States government has UFOs who are really soldiers of Satan. Yeah. And Tucker Carlson says that the United States government has UFOs who are really soldiers of Satan. Yeah. And then and and his tentacles all around. Yeah. You know, it's important for a nation to have a sense for what can and can't be true, because you think that anything can be true. It undermines your faith in any in anything. And Trump has his own partners with the election denial, but I actually think that's a different thing. That's just him trying to cheat. Anyway, this conspiracy theory is...

I do have somewhat of a soft spot for Candace Owens because we went to the same high school, albeit several years apart. She says Macron's wife is a man. Anyway. You saw that? No. She's out of control.

She really is. But she's not treated like the supermarket aisle, like National Weekly World News. She is joined at the hip with people who are sitting one chair away from the former president of the United States at a public convention. This is not okay. All right.

Good night, everybody. All right. That was fun. A huge thanks to Sheath Underwear for sponsoring the show. And don't forget to head to sheathunderwear.com slash seller and use code seller today to get 20% off your first order. Support the show and support your balls with sheath.