The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Mickey Kaus

Episode Date: November 21, 2020

Author and journalist Mickey Kaus is a neoliberal-turned-populist Democrat. But be warned, he voted for Trump. Twice! He has contributed to numerous publications including Harper’s, Newsweek andThe New Republic.  He writes about everything but especially welfare reform and immigration and has a newsletter on Substack called kausfiles.

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the Table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog and on the Riotcast Podcast Network. Dan Natterman here with Noam Vorman, owner of the world-famous comedy cellar, Periel Ashenbrand. She is the producer of the show,

and we have with us today author and journalist Mickey Kaus, a neoliberal turned populist democrat, two-time Trump voter. He has contributed to numerous publications including Harper's Newsweek, The New Republic, and says Newsweek twice. But in any case, he writes about everything but especially welfare reform and immigration and has a newsletter on Substack called Kaus Files. And before we start our discussion in earnest, let us give out our email address for comments, suggestions, questions, queries, criticisms. It is podcast at ComedySeller.com. Podcast at ComedySeller.com.

We'd like to hear from you. Let us know what you like, what you don't like can be improved what is perfect as is any comment suggestions you might have get suggestions all sorts of things anyhow uh welcome mr cows to our show thank you and i guess noam was really excited to have you on i i i your tweets on Twitter. I follow you on Twitter. And Noam, you're not on Twitter. I've been checking in on Twitter lately for the first time. I don't think it's been enhanced my life in any way. I kind of wish I could put that genie back in the bottle

and never have started checking on Twitter because I think it's a waste of time. yeah i do i do follow it sometimes now but but you but you're an avid reader of uh of uh mickey's uh well i i i i read you i haven't actually ever read you in recent years i recently now you're now you're on sub stack i want to start reading you again but i used to read you the new republic and and and those magazines back in the 90s, and I was a big fan of yours. Right. A friend of mine said, Mickey, you have that pompous quality. You mean authoritative. No, pompous. I mean pompous. But so the reason I find you interesting is because you're one of these people, and I consider myself one of them, although I didn't vote for Trump, who kind of just had like a common sense, liberal, moderate point of view back in the 90s and 2000s.

And then the world just shifted around you. This is my interpretation of it. And you just didn't buckle to peer pressure. And there's a lot of peer pressure out there now. So that basically, the kind of sensible, common sense, liberal beliefs that I think that you've always held, you just stubbornly remain attached to them. Is that a good analysis? That's a flattering way to put it. The other thing that happened is that when I was a neoliberal in the late nineties, everybody's incomes were going up,

even people at the bottom and then the bottom dropped out for people on the bottom. So that sort of changed the equation. But, but yeah, I like to think of myself as staying true to various liberal principles from the late 90s. Yeah. So let's take it. Let's just sample all the issues because it's going to be fascinating. So Trump, first of all, how many friends have you lost by openly supporting Trump? I didn't have that many to begin with, but I'm down to one, I think.

And the weird thing is, I thought after the election they would let up. Like, okay, it's over. Hey, you know, and no, they're keeping at it. It's gotten worse because somehow it wasn't emotionally satisfying enough. They have to have their revenge on the people who are Trumpists and sort of make them cry uncle or pay a price or, or there's there's some unrequited lust for vengeance there. So is the man a racist in your estimation? Trump? Well, I'm, I'm from the I'm a kid from the 60s. I think we're all racist at some level,

and you struggle against it and maybe maybe he struggles against it less than the rest of us. But you hear people say that, you know, when he was at Fox, Roger Ailes had to tell him, no, Don, don't be so racist. So that would be pretty compelling evidence that he does harbor those beliefs. But, you know, nothing he said really in public would convince me that he's a racist as opposed to some other kind of populist who just does not want to give up on the deplorables. Right. I kind of agree with you. I mean, people of his generation usually have some sort of racial attitudes, you know, maybe Archie Bunker type, but I don't want to defend him against that,

but I would defend him in the sense that I, I don't, I never did think he had any agenda that he wanted to pursue against the races, certainly as black people or even Hispanics, I would imagine if you filled him with truth serum, he would like to see all groups in America do well, as opposed to, and this is what I'm getting at, kind of gaslighting that goes on. We're on the other side.

I guess we're just all supposed to pretend that we don't hear racist stuff every single day. But that racist stuff actually has an agenda. For instance, if you're an Asian and you give birth to a child, they want to deduct SAT points from that child at birth. But somehow they define that as not racism, right? So that's what bothers me the craziest thing was on npr uh either yesterday or the day before you could tell they really wanted to distribute the covid vaccine by race is it what do you mean you're not giving it to

black areas first they've been the hardest hit and and the woman was dumbfounded no we're not we're not going to get discriminated on the basis of race in terms of giving the vaccine. We give them to people that are at the highest risk. Even on NPR, it's become accepted that you could make this incredible race distinction. Yeah. And of course, in so many issues, if you want to pay attention to the people who are hardest hit or most in need, that will disproportionately go to people of other race, which is great, right? It's not that we don't, we should want that. But we certainly don't want to help anybody because they happen to share the same skin color as someone who needs help. One thing that happened in California is we turned down the return of race

preferences. It was on the ballot again and all the Asians mobilized against it. And so, cause they knew it was aimed at them. So it, it, it, it, it failed ignominiously. Yeah. You know about that parallelism proposition 16, I think. I think it was 16. Yeah. So they, then that was, what is it? I don't even remember what it was, when Ward Connolly had that referendum where they eliminated the legal racial preferences in California, correct? Correct. Go ahead. Sorry. They tried to sneak them in the back door in

terms of like overcoming adversity. You got points for overcoming adversity. That's fine. But it didn't you know, that wasn't enough for them. They have to go all the way and make it try to make it explicit. So. OK, so you're a neoliberal. What would your policy and part of being a neoliberal is that you are concerned about the have-nots. What would your policy be to help Black people in this country and poor people in general? Well, you know, there are a bunch of levers you can push. I'm for raising the minimum wage. I'm for some sort of national health care plan. I mean, imagine if Trump had any credible national health care plan, he would have won. So I'm for preserving social security. And one of the good things about Trump was that he didn't screw around with social

security. But there are a couple of levers that haven't been pulled. And one is trade, where we've consistently sort of favored the Hollywood people who want to preserve their copyrights and disfavored the American workers who want to preserve their copyrights and disfavored the American workers who were losing their jobs to China and other overseas companies. And I think we have to protect them, even if it means losing a bit of gross national product. And also on immigration, I mean, it's just supply and demand. You can't raise wages if the reserve army of poor people from all over the planet is going to flood in and take those jobs. That's why Cesar Chavez was very much against illegal immigration when he was trying to organize farm workers.

So that's a lever we could pull. And Trump actually did pull that lever. He held immigration in check and raises at the bottom rows for the first time. Let me ask you this. Do you keep up? I mean, this issue of low income, and Dan reads about this sometimes, this issue of low wage immigration, low skilled immigration, and the effect on the American worker. This is was vehement about that. Now we see other studies which say that maybe it's not true. Maybe it's a wash. Maybe it doesn't affect it. Do you keep up with all that stuff? I try to keep up. I'm not on the cutting edge right now. I'm familiar with the famous study of the Mariel boat lift when it arrived in Florida. Did it lower the wages?

And my side said, yes, but the sample size is only like 17 people. And the question is, is 17 people enough? And that's sort of where the debate stopped, where I left it. But there is a consensus that low-skilled immigration, at least, lowers the wages of other low- low skilled people. And it, you know, it stands to reason. And why would employers be so desperate for more immigration if it wasn't that it saves them on labor costs? So it's sort of the science is one thing, but the practical reality is employers are feeling the pinch. They're going to have to

raise wages. So they're asking for more immigration. That's how much more proof do you need? And plus, we have the Trump sort of ran the experiment. He held immigration in check and raises rows until he screwed up the pandemic and then everything went to hell. Yeah, I mean, I have to tell you, as an employer, it does jive with my common sense. And we've been through this when um when when labor is in short supply and i mean it's a dirty little secret but as an employer you don't want american labor not at any price i mean like like i think it's a pro-immigrant thing i'm saying really i mean the quality of a homegrown

employee versus an immigrant you with some exceptions, you can't compare. The immigrants are at twice the cost or cheaper than an American employee. This is one of the things you can't say on my side. The problem isn't that the immigrants are bad, cheap workers. The problem is the immigrants are better workers often than Americans. And we want to get the economy so hot that employers like you have to hire us lazy americans and teach us how to work uh instead of taking the easy way out and hiring a hard-working immigrant yeah i mean and but the fact is if um if labor is short then you got to start poaching other people's employees and the only way to do that is by raising wages you know You can coax old people like me

off the sidelines into jobs, you know? Yeah, that does happen, actually. Yeah. I asked you, in voting for Trump, I guess you made the decision that since you're in favor of a good medical healthcare plan, you felt that that was outweighed

by Trump's stand on immigration and his other positions. Yes. What about the environment? Did that weigh into your decision at all, the Green New Deal? I assume that Trump is bad for the environment also, and I was willing to put that off for four years. The problem with immigration is once we let tens of millions of people in,

that's permanent. No human person is going to chase them out of the country. They're here to stay. So if you have a health care plan, that can wait. That's my reasoning. Are we also just taking a tremendous gamble that we're going to be the first people on the face of the earth that will eliminate, will change human nature and eliminate tribalism and it'll all be okay. And we can, and we can just, we can have everybody's emphasize their ethnicity and where they came from. And then

we'll have, I'll put them all together where there's no clear majority. Everybody just kind of vying for power and somehow we'll all be one united nation. That seems very, that's very wishful thinking. I mean, I hope it works out. At least it's going to take time. You can't, you know, it's like businessmen who come to a company and say, we need a new culture by next week. Okay, make it snappy.

That doesn't work. And I think pretty much everybody assimilates over a generation or two, but you can't let a billion people and expect, oh, they're all going to adopt to us, us 300 million people. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, I know the solution.

Go ahead. When Noam has a solution, I think it's a little radical. But Noam's solution is everybody has sex with everybody else. And we create a nation. We're all one hue. I guess it would be sort of a light brown, a cafe au lait. That's Warren Beatty's solution and Norman Podhoretz's solution.

Norman Podhoretz, yeah. So you've brought America together., but Horace's solution. So, so we brought, you brought America together. Everybody unites around this solution, especially horny white men. No, no one was doing his part. His, his wife is Puerto Rican and South Asian, I guess. It's a word I just learned because they're saying Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris rather is the first South Asian vice president. I had never, I mean, I knew that Asia must have a southern part to it,

but I never heard the word South Asian used in describing people from that area. So anyway, his wife is half South Asian, half Puerto Rican. Yeah, I mean, the rate matters. You add ingredients and then mix, you know, uh and so and there is there is a a rate that that works out i'm um i still say the jews never assimilate because noam insists that his children despite the fact that they're part indian and puerto rican insist that they get converted yeah pro forma by by a-a-rabbi. That is a weakness of mine.

That's a tribal weakness, and I do think about that. And if I could, you know, there's a little game theory going on there. You expect them to be the victims of anti-Semitism, so you want to build them up or something with some identity. But it's not rational. I would give it all up for peace and harmony. I mean, if you actually put that choice in front of me, like you'll give up your Jewish identity

and your children will not care about it at all. But in return, America will be one united people yeah then i i would i would give that up of course i would um i'm not religious it's you know you get attached to these things that's it's just the truth you know your your father was so important to him and but whatever but you know the the thing about all this and you I want to hear your thought on it, is that they seem to be embracing the opposite of what they ought to be embracing. If you want a country with 20% immigrants or whatever it is, then shouldn't you be de-emphasizing ethnicity at that point? Like I've made this point before, like the left will go crazy about any, you can't choose by ethnicity who gets into this country. You can't have that. That's racist to look at the ethnicity of the person who wants to be an

immigrant. But once they get here, well, if they're Asian, we don't want too many of them at Harvard. So in other words, when they have no rights whatsoever, we have to make sure we're not discriminating. But once they are here, well, that becomes the most important thing is that they're Asian, right? So much so that we won't even treat them as regular Americans. Well, that can't work, right?

I think it's conjuring up a future that doesn't work at all, where we're all in our tribes and somehow we're supposed to get along. The refreshing thing about the election is that Trump won the Latino areas of Texas, where the Latinos don't think of themselves as Latinos. The pollsters think of them as Latinos, but they think of themselves as Texans. And they voted as ordinary Texans and they voted for Trump. And that was very heartening, I thought. Whether you're for Trump or not, I think it should be heartening. Yeah, I find it heartening. Perrielle, you have any thoughts on all this stuff? Perrielle is a woke left wing shrew. Is your mic off, Per oh no okay you did a silent laugh um i mean quite frankly it's just astonishing to sit here and listen to you guys pontificate about um you know like whether or not Trump is a racist because of like what generation he's

from and how like guys like that who come from that like as though like that's even like remotely reasonable without and like even if like I could accept some of this without like acknowledging the

he's also just such a monster i i don't deny he's a monster okay neither do i the question is and he's crazy and he's childish and he's he he's not behaving very well lately but uh and i don't cut him excuse i don't cut him an excuse because of his generation although that's obviously one of the causes. All I'm saying is that we have our, you know, we haveiki torches and denounce the Nazis. And yet the media said that he said those people were very fine people, which he didn't say. He went explicitly said they were excluded from the very fine people category. But he didn't, but he didn't do it. There was something not, there was something hesitant about the way he. Yes. I wrote a piece and I tried to wrestle with what was wrong. And I decided that he failed to say,

look, this ideology we have, which is we're the deplorables and we feel under assault, it slides very easily into racism and violence and you have to really watch it. And he didn't acknowledge that and he also didn't really acknowledge that there was a dead person there who you had to yeah especially i mean also you know the way that he sort of brought out the absolute worst of this country and really sort of used it to his advantage is so unconscionable to me. You know, I don't know. I think that at every opportunity he had

to make things better, he made them worse. And, you know, that's something that I can't accept as an American, as, you know, somebody who cares about, you know, the disenfranchised. I mean, all of this, forget like the way that he speaks about women and like all the stuff that you hear about, um, sort of behind the scenes. Um, so, you know, I'm, it's just disgusting.

I, I, I have a friend who wrote for the apprentice and said it was no worse than, you know, a third of the writer's room she was in, in Hollywood. It was, uh,

it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. It didn't stand apart as being bad in the sort of sexist banter category. Does that make things better or worse? Even if that's true? I don't know. That's what she said, whether or not it's true. I tend to think that if the economy, which was blacks were doing very well in the economy and Latinos were doing very well, that itself has a positive effect on race relations. Yes. And unfortunately, it all went to hell when the pandemic arrived. And boy, did he handle the pandemic badly.

And I don't even mean whether he could have saved X number of lives. I mean, just in his tone deaf, every leader in the world, whether they did well or not, and including local leaders like Governor Cuomo, saw a boost in their popularity, except for Trump, based on, you know, just by saying the right things, having a bedside manner. That's what it is. It's the bedside manner. And I really, truly believe that that makes a huge difference in, I mean, all things. What do you think, Mr. Councilman? No, I agree. I thought his bedside manner was bad. And, you know, the standard racist thing to do would be, you know, foreigners are coming bearing disease. We have to keep them out, okay? That actually would have been not a bad tack to take if he'd closed the borders and really kept out,

you know, everybody on the grounds that anybody could bring the disease. He didn't do that. He fell for this like Russia Limbaugh line that it was a conspiracy of the left to undermine his presidency. And that was a huge mistake. Well, this is it.

And this is probably the reason that you're sympathetic for me. This whole wokeness thing. And I'm interested to get your thoughts on whether or not Trump's defeat is better or worse for wokeness. You know, there are a lot of people saying, if you hate the woke, vote for Biden,

which I'm not convinced by that at all. But I just say that there is so much self-censorship going on right now by journalists, by everyday people, by people in the workplace. It's so such that if all this self-censorship could be attributed to a person or a policy, that person, that would be the issue of our time. If it had fingerprints on it, if it wasn't just out in the atmosphere, there would be, it would dwarf every other issue

I think we're dealing with. And a vote for Trump, or at least there's a sympathy for Trump because he is a big middle finger, like nobody else probably could be, to the woke. He does not care. Everybody else, if you accuse him of being a racist, no matter how not racist they are, they will buckle and have disclaimers and compromise or whatever it is. And Trump does not give a shit. And there is something about that that is appealing. So what are your thoughts on all that? I would just say, by the way, don't call Noma racist. His reaction is, is, is, is, uh, he gets very angry. It happened once and I got angry,

but go ahead, go ahead. I, I, it's a very interesting question. I mean, there might be somebody to this, this, that Biden will be the enemy of the woke just because, you know, he that's, you know, he was for bus. He was against busing. That's how he cut his bones by sort of triangulating and pushing back on the left. And I think he is not a woke guy, but he has adopted woke positions in the campaign. the most striking one was his response to the trans mom of the transgender kid or the kid who wanted to change their sex was only eight years old was that was stunning to hear those words coming out of Joe Biden's mouth. And so I don't think, I don't think any of the woke people are going to go away.

And like I said, you know, and with the press, they've built this bureaucracy and they're just redoubling their efforts. They're doing exactly what they were doing, except they switched the target from Trump to some other target, right? last redoubt of free speech where people are supposed to be unintimidated. Andrew Sullivan, a lot of people have met Taibbi, Matt Iglesias have retreated there and now they're starting to attack Substack. You don't have enough people of color writing for Substack, you know? So I'm worried they're going to cut off my gas any, any moment, you know, cause you, you're, you know, start your own gas company. You're, you have, you're, You have the wrong views. But is wokeness, at least in part, anger at Trump directed in another direction?

I mean, in other words, without Trump to be constantly furious at 24-7, does that take some of the fuel out of the woke movement? I tend to think not. I think the woke movement was there before and Trump was such a big bleeding target for them that it almost arrested their development. Now they can pursue the sort of more subtle targets like you and me, that they previously ignored. So I tend to think that now that I talk to myself, that it doesn't go away.

And where does the, okay, so two things I wanted to bring up. I hope I hear it. So Andrew Sullivan, who, you're friends with him, right? We're friends. We've had it out with each other uh about uh earl about the beginning of the 2000s but yeah we we had dinner once recently it was a great dinner he's a nice guy so i'm a huge admirer of his i don't agree with him on everything particularly on israel but um uh when it comes to his uh his his uh commitment to to free exchange of ideas and anti-wokeness, and just the way that he

will publicly weigh things in a very personal way, I really admire him. But he wrote something, I think it came out today, and I'm trying to decide how I feel about it. He's complaining about Trump and this election thing. And he says the following, Trump and the bulk of the GOP are engaged in an unprecedented assault on American democratic legitimacy. They're threatening to create a new normal. Don't concede a loss, claim without proof that there's a massive fraud, resist the transfer of power, try to overturn the results, delegitimize the winner, sabotage the victor's ability to govern. And I'm like, well, yeah, they are doing that. But at least like four out of six of those

things sound like the last four years as well. Right. I'll go through them like threatening. Don't concede a loss. Well, I guess Hillary conceded the loss, but she claimed without proof that there was a fraud. And two thirds of Democrats in 2018 believed that the Russians had fiddled with the voting tallies. They didn't resist the transfer of power, but they did delegitimize the winner and try to sabotage the victor's ability to govern. They did have the press writing lies. They did go into three years of a Russia thing, which many of the people involved had to know was not true. And none of them paid a price for it. So is there, do you see a big difference between what Trump

is doing and what the left has done for the last four years? No, I see a little bit of a difference because Trump is pursuing some lawsuits that are ludicrous, but others that aren't. I mean, we had a massive increase in mail-in voting, and mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud. And if I were Trump, I would ask for a recount in every election where I could get a recount. They're discovering ballots here and there in Georgia just today.

Biden's lead has gone down from 14,000 to 13,000. That's not enough, but it's not crazy for Trump to ask for it. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. I thought you were done. Go ahead, please. Andrew is very excitable. That's what makes him a good journalist. He gets really excited and on a high horse. And I think he got on the wrong horse here. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm disgusted. Well, you know, it's like the birther thing in a way with Trump. Like if Obama really wasn't born in America or if Trump actually sincerely found some evidence and he was following it in good faith, well, that's fine. But it was pretty clear when Trump was saying, we're looking into this and you won't believe what we're finding, that he knew he wasn't finding anything and he was undermining

an American president. And that's not the act of a patriot. Similarly here, I mean, if he really had evidence of fraud, of course, he has every right to do it. But there is this feeling that, no, he knows he's not going to win. He knows there's not enough votes to find. He's got four states. And so he is undermining the country for selfish reasons, right? Well, right. And it might backfire in Georgia.

I mean, the whole ballgame now is this Georgia runoff. And Trump seems to think that by protesting the election, he's firing up the base. I just think he's sort of demoralizing everybody. writing articles about how mail-in ballots have a 20 percent uh of fault rate and now you listen to them they're like how could anybody think that mail-in ballots were the least bit uh susceptible a month ago they're talking about how i mean every story trump's undermining the postal service there's ballots in florida they haven't found and they jumped on everything about that you know just as implausible as the Trump stuff, the stuff Trump is jumping on. And they gave that all a fair hearing. They, oh, I just saw something just the Atlantic had an article like, where is it? This article was published, I'm sorry, last week. And the headline was, All Trump's Lies About Coronavirus.

And one of his lies was that he said a vaccine would be ready soon. But, you know, he wasn't lying. And they do this all the time. They overshoot. Okay, this is interesting. There is a definition of the word lying, right? I don't look it up. It essentially means knowingly, knowingly tell an untruth. And they seem to use this word now without ever proving that it was knowingly and also without ever proving that it's an untruth. They don't know whether a vaccine was coming soon or not, right? They

didn't demonstrate that, A, actually there's no vaccine soon, and B, Trump knows it and he's saying it anyway, therefore he's lying. They just love to use this word lie now. Right. I agree with all that. I've talked too much. Somebody else wanted to talk. No, no, no, no. You're the guest of honor. Come on. I, I, I, I, I basically, you know, agree with all of that, that, uh, uh, I keep wondering, when are we going to get the press back? The old press that sort of didn't, you know, tweet even the recipe page against Trump, you know, Trump wouldn't like this dessert, you know? Uh, so, uh, and I don't think we're ever going to get it back i think that's the answer i mean the question i mean is is the idea from you guys that you don't like how trump is maligned because you feel like it's disingenuous and it's hypocritical more than you actually can stand him.

Yes. Yes. I just don't like the thing where every bit of news is twisted against Trump just because the press wanted to get him out of office so bad. And the vaccine one is a perfect one. He happened to say something that was true and he actually did a pretty good job. At least the people under him did a good job with the vaccine. But the press would never have given him any credit before the election.

And I imagine a real reporter could have found out two weeks ago that the vaccine was imminent. There were people like, I think, Rich Lowry of the National Review and a bunch of people said, you know, this vaccine thing is going pretty well, but nobody on the left really. So would you take this position? I mean, Noam, I guess this is a question for both of you. I mean, would you take this position no matter who Trump was? I mean, is there a certain point where you're like horrible enough that it's like, well, you know, you've sort of made your bed. What do you, how do you expect?

No, I think, I think that, I mean, I think that there's this old saying about burning down the house to get rid of the cockroaches or Trump's favorite thing about the cure is worse than the disease. I think to be, I would say that if Trump was the cure He might have ended up being worse than the disease because the toll it was taking on the country whether it was fair to him Or not in large part. It wasn't fair to him the toll was too great and So I you know, I didn't support him in 2016. I didn't support him now But I do it it does bother me that there's such a gaslighting going on all the time

where you hear racist stuff coming from the left, hateful stuff, censorious stuff like Trump is the enemy, some big enemy, he's going to try to do something to the press. Well, they can't stop complaining. Trump said the press is the enemy of the people. Well, yeah, you know, he did say that. And when the press has been telling the American people for three years that their president is a spy or a Russian asset, enemy of the people is not a crazy thing. But of course, Obama actually had, you know, journalists investigated. And that's, you know, that's Obama. But the censorship that the left seems to support is so much worse than anything Trump has ever done. There is a real gaslighting going on. And, you know, you just bristle at that.

Like, yes, Trump said some racially offensive things, maybe, whatever word you want to use. But every day, Nicole Hannah-Jones tweets something at least as racially offensive, and she's the darling. She's the toast of America, right? We talk about this. The mayor of Chicago will openly use racial language about white people. And I'm not hurt by it. I mean, like, what is the standard here?

Why are they normalizing everything that they hate about Trump? It's just when Trump does it, it's, I don't know. I mean, I'm not being, I'm not in my most eloquent right now, but there is just really this sense that everything they complain about, they do twice as much, but then they dress it up as righteousness. And as long as nobody says the emperor has no clothes, we all pretend, no, they're wonderful on the left.

I don't think it's, I'm not certainly not pretending everybody's wonderful on the left. I just think that. Go ahead, Mr. Kaus. Go ahead. Just the latest argument on the right is that Biden is going to go whole hog for censorship because the left is still pissed off at Facebook and Twitter for not suppressing enough speech. And he appointed Rick Stengel, who I've always liked, but has given this, written this op-ed in favor of hate crime laws that really was very vague. I remember he said it was a design flaw in the first amendment because we allowed to burn the Quran. Right. And, and, and it also, it's a,

it conflates the idea that things that aren't true and things that are offensive to people and we can ban both of them. And once you start banning things that are offensive to people, then it's sort of, you've opened the floodgates. He says, I have Muslim friends and they come to me, how come it's legal in your country to deface a Quran? And he says, and I don't have any good answer to that. So, I mean, you know, so he's throwing Charlie Hebdo under the bus, essentially, you know, like maybe they should have been putting, this is crazy talk

for a liberal. It seems to me the answer is, you know, everybody says, well, or he says, well, there's no, there's no proof that in a free marketplace of ideas, the truth will win out. Sometimes the lie wins out. And that's actually true. But it ignores that speech has a value in itself. Me talking to you, talking to another person, that's a positive, saying what we think is a positive thing. Whether what comes out of it is true or not, it's part of community and you don't want to suppress that. Well, I would say that the lie can win out in the short term. The lie can't win

out in the long term. The only way the lie could win out in the long term is when the power of the state enforces it. Period. That's true. Right? But Hitler did win an election. Right. Well, okay. Thank God we haven't... I guess that was enough. It was enough. Right. Okay, but Hitler won, and then that was the last... That was...

Then there were no more rights. There was no more marketplace of ideas at that point, right? Correct. I don't know. I know Hitler can break every historical analogy, but I would say that I can't even believe that at this point in history, we're second guessing whether or not the free exchange of ideas is a good idea. It's just, I can't believe it. Well, don't you think it's equally terrifying that you have a president who is sort of trying to not leave after... He's not trying not to leave.

Of course he is. And, you know, you've got... Terrell. Wait a second. Wait, wait. You have former presidents, you know, you've got... Harrell. Wait, wait, wait. You have former presidents, family members, who are posting pictures of the transfer of power of, you know, with their families standing together in the White House,

being like, this is how it's supposed to be done. Like, I find that quite disconcerting. Mickey, I don't know. It doesn't bother me if they don't part on good terms. You know, if Trump keeps sniping it, I don't care if he shows up at the inauguration, as long as he leaves office, if Biden is duly declared the winner,

as is probably likely, and I think he will. You know, his big thing is he blusters a lot and then he backs off. That's sort of the story of his presidency. I'm worried that he's going to back off so obviously that, you know, Republicans are going to lose Georgia and then my side is in trouble. Relating to that, Mickey, I call you Mickey. No one's calling you Mr. Kaus, but I assume you prefer Mickey. Correct me if I'm wrong. But you tweeted, here's your pinned tweet. I don't have a pinned tweet, but I know a lot of people do. I'd vote for Biden and risk misguided military

adventures, trade sellouts, activist judges, if he had even a vaguely responsible immigration plan, but he doesn't. He'd commit us to serial amnesties and seemingly unlimited asylum claims, a Merkel-like mistake except more permanent. Now, okay, so where are we with that? Biden is in, in all likelihood. Is he going to be able to pursue what you had just tweeted? It's very interesting. I'd assume that he wasn't going to be able to because he did not win control of the Senate. But just today, a bunch of Republican senators were saying, hey, let's cut an immigration deal. So that issue is that threat is still there. And the amnesty threat, it's not it's not an easy threat to to ward off. I mean, under under our amnesty laws, half the world can come here and they will swamp our system

and we don't have enough places to hold them. You mean asylum, right? Asylum. Yeah, asylum. Sorry, asylum. Under the asylum laws. And the asylum laws are actually kind of hard to change. Trump only stopped the onslaught by browbeating Mexico into stopping them at their southern border. But Biden might, you know, Biden might not be able to do that. So he's desperate to avoid a surge of asylum seekers like the one Merkel faced. It's not clear that he's going to be able to do that. So it's not, that's not really a question of who controls the Senate. That's a question of does Biden have the will to stop it? Would you support legalizing the Dreamers and then some sort of

compromise, E-Verify, legalize the DACA people? I'm for an amnesty if the border controls come first, so we make sure that they work. And then sure, then amnesty the people who are already here, including the Dreamers, including the 11 million. My friends on the right disagree with me on that. But nobody is talking about that. They're all talking about repeating the amnesty of last time, which is people get the amnesty first, and then the enforcement measures that are supposed to stop the next wave of amnesty seekers coming in. That never happens. So we wind up with amnesty, and then 20 years later, we have another amnesty, and 20 years later, we have another amnesty. Pretty soon, people

around the world wise up that if they sneak in illegally, eventually there's going to be an amnesty for them. Right. What is the worst possible long-term consequence of a series of amnesties? An economy where unskilled people can't earn a decent living. Because there's always somebody cheaper from the third world is going to replace you. And basically Americans

who don't go to college are thrown on the ash heap. That would be the bad consequence. I agree. We have to legalize the dreamers but we definitely can't deport them because we don't believe in punishing innocents and these people are innocents. But other than that...

But in order to avoid amnesty, given that, Noam, in order to avoid amnesties in the future, you have to secure the border with a vengeance. Because once they're here, as you said, it becomes very difficult to deport them. Yeah, I mean, listen, I've said, when people were against the wall, I always asked them, and they never had an answer, are you against the wall because you think it will work or because you think it won't work? They don't even know quite why they're against the wall.

And I agree, there's a little, it's a little, the symbolism is not something we love in America, a wall wall but that's just symbolism but we have to control our border we have to control our border and um whatever it takes that's what we have to do and then we should let immigrants in because we need we need immigrants and they and they are especially as we have an aging population you know the flip side is also true that at some point we won't have enough labor to pay for our generous retirement benefits is it unfair to immigrants or would-be immigrants from other parts of the world that don't share a border with us uh because if

we need immigrants we can get them there's africa there's asia there's and there's europe and i don't know that we have any responsible to be fair to other nations. I don't know. I tend to think we have a responsibility to cut Mexico a special deal, and that's one of the possible resolutions of this, which is they complain that they can't wait in line because there is no line for Mexico. Their line has been used up. And it seems to me that they used to come

for a few months a year and then go back home. And it seems to me there is some accommodation just with Mexico there because we have also this peculiar history where we took some of their land and they don't quite recognize it in the popular mind in Mexico that it's a legitimate border. So there is a deal that could be cut there. But in terms of the rest of the world, I think you have to be very tough. Is there another argument that says, yes, but from practical considerations, the best immigrant is the immigrant

that leaves his homeland, says, fuck this place. I never want to be here again. Like this is the immigrants. I'm presuming, you know, you're a Jewish guy. This is the immigrant of my father's generation, which was they left Russia or whatever it was, and they kissed the ground the day they landed in America

and wrapped themselves in the American flag more snugly than a homegrown type, as opposed to someone who comes from next door, who can go back and forth, text message, send money home. He can decide at any point to return. That doesn't sound like the best building block for a social fabric. I agree it's a problem, but the votes in Texas

show that it can sort of be overcome. Those people were, they were Mexican for many generations, I agree it's a problem, but the votes in Texas show that it can sort of be overcome. Yeah. Those people were, they were Mexican for many generations, but they're right on the border, right next to Mexico. And yet they definitely think of themselves as Americans. And let me make clear, sometimes I bring this stuff up because people go crazy when they hear this stuff. Because I think these issues are worth talking about. I'm not, I'm not saying it's true or it's not true. I'd like to talk to smart people and, and get their take on it because, um, I mean, we live at a time now where you're supposed to already have the opinion before you

get into the conversation. You want to have a right opinion. And I just, you know, we resist that on this podcast. So I'm not saying Mexicans shouldn't be immigrants. Far from it. Like as an employer, my most important pillars are Mexican employees. I've had one guy who is clearly my, you know, I mean, we'd be lost without him. He's worked me for like 30 years now

so i'm not tony i never see him what does he do i i never i like i never see the guy he works during that you've seen him a million times but anyway so i don't see him he's not as present to say a liz ferrate but i mean this guy you can't as i said before you cannot find an American employee like this. But if you talk to him about his attitudes towards America, and we had him on the podcast once years ago, he will say stuff which is disconcerting to hear from, and he's a citizen, from an American's mouth. It does not sound like the immigrants that I grew up with as a boy. It's a different attitude about being an American. And I've shared with him, I said, you know, that worries me, Tony. If 20 million people felt like you, I don't know how that might turn out.

And he says, yeah, you're right. My know, he knows. My mother, who is an immigrant as well, would always complain about American pickles, saying the Montreal are far superior. She never gave up her allegiance to Montreal pickles. But in any case. Can I go back to Perry Eltham, the Trump not leaving? Because I think there is a scandal with Trump right now. And I don't think it's that he's not leaving, although I don't like any of that stuff. But you know,

he doesn't get to decide when he's president and when he's not. And unless he has the military to back him up, you know, he's, he's no threat. However, the fact that he's resisting going through the process of the regular briefings of a transition period. That is disturbing to me. The responsible thing to do would be, listen, I don't think I lost. I'm going to fight this in court, but I don't know I'm going to win. So in the meantime, let's go through this transition period. Let's get everything where it should be just in case we do have to leave. The country doesn't suffer from this. And again, that's, that's where, that's, I think, a much bigger scandal in what he's doing. It's not as sexy. He doesn't get the attention. But you agree with that, Mickey? I mean, you know better. You know that Trump

would never do. I mean, you just know that that's not Trump's MO, you know. But it's terrible. Like, yes, but, but not a surprise. It's not patriotic at all. No, I agree. What's the downside? The downside is if somehow Trump pulls it out, Joe Biden knows more secrets than he should, but he was ex-vice president. I mean, he knew all this back then. There's no risk there.

It shows that it's about him and not about the country. It just does. The one thing I remember is, I may be getting my history wrong, but remember JFK ran on the missile gap. Right. And there's a story, I remember reading a history about when he took office, they immediately rushed over to the state and defense departments to get the satellite photos to see all these missiles.

And it turned out there was no missile gap. The Russians didn't have these missiles. Well, where was the transition? And in a real transition, presumably, Eisenhower would have told Kennedy, you know, there's no missile gap in here, the photographs. But Kennedy had to wait till he took office. So I think transitions didn't used to be

as sharing and caring as they are now. Right, but that's not, but they should be. I mean, we all agree they should be. By the way, what do you make of, are you friends with Bill Crispo at all? No, I know him. I think he knows who I am, but barely. What do you make of him and-

Like me and Chris Rock. People like him. Are you watching, do you follow him on Twitter? I mean, such high self-regard, so smug, People like him. Are you watching? Do you follow him on Twitter? I mean, such high self-regard, so smug, as if he hasn't had his hand in so many things that have gone wrong in America in the last 30 years. We were going to be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Sarah Palin was a great,

he was responsible for Sarah Palin, right? You'd think there'd be some humility in this guy. I agree. He was on our side in the last immigration fight. So I cut him some slack. But yes, I agree with your assessment. I just don't, I don't get it that he's like, okay, there was a chapter,

this is gonna be boring for the listeners. But one thing that really affected my thinking, remember who Scott Ritter is? He was a weapons inspector. Right, so he was that weapons inspector and he was the one in the first Gulf, in the first Iraq war, he was a great hero. In the run up to the second Iraq war,

he kept warning us, no, he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. And the media tore him apart and they accused him of taking money from Saddam Hussein. It was all kinds of stuff. They just, you know, belittled this guy. And, you know, and I thought they knew what they were talking about. And then it turned out he was right. He was right all along, this Scott Ritter guy. And ever since then, I've had a certain hesitation about going all in on somebody by attributing the worst motives to somebody. And, you know, pause for a second.

But somebody like Phil Crystal, he's all in on the Russia scandal. I'll give you another example. David Froome, you know, David Froome. So we had him on our podcast and I said to him, listen, I don't think this, this was about a year and a half into the Mueller thing. I said, I don't think it's possible that Trump is a Russian agent because if Mueller were to find out real evidence that Trump was compromised, he would have to come forward immediately because you can't let the United States have a compromised president for another year and keep it to yourself. By then, all kinds

of terrible things could happen. NATO could be, you know, and Frum said, and I think that was unassailable logic. And Frum said, no, no, no, Mueller would do it by the book. And I'm like, you're saying that Mueller would do it by the book. And I'm like, you're saying that Mueller would do it by the book, even if it meant that the United States was essentially being operated by Vladimir Putin by remote control? He said, yes, Mueller would do it by the book. I said, well, this is crazy talk. Like, how do you explain it? That's a good point that I don't think I heard anybody make during the whole debate, which is, of course, you're right about that. It turns out Mueller determined very quickly that there was no evidence that Trump was a Russian agent. And then he spent another year looking for obstruction of

justice. But I still don't understand why Trump says such nice things about Putin. Is it just because he wants to build this big building in Moscow with his name on it? I mean, is it just because he sucks up to everybody? I just don't, those seem inadequate explanations to me. My theory on that is he parrots the Papuacanon line on almost everything.

I mean, look, I can make the argument that Crimea was always Russian, right? It was given over to Ukraine by some kind of Luke, you know, what is it, Khrushchev handed it Russian, right? It was given over to Ukraine by some kind of Luke, you know, what is it, Khrushchev handed it to, right? And that sanctions against the Russians until they give back Crimea

are sanctions till the end of time because they're never going to get back Crimea. That's right. Yeah, I agree with that. So Trump and people like Pat Buchanan say, well, you you know how do we get out of this like you know let's find some kind of compromise and and of course trump doesn't even really give a shit that the russians took crime me about and he he's and he's flattered by

dictators and i i don't think it's any deeper than that you know i don't know. Well, he wants to be a dictator himself, doesn't he? He didn't act like it. It's debatable. He didn't really have the drive to be a dictator. He sort of made noises in that direction. I mean, do dictators generally, would a dictator promote the Second Amendment? Maybe. I'm just throwing that out there.

It would seem like an armed population would be the last thing a dictator wanted and i would think there are countries like venezuela where an armed population is keeping the dictator in power okay okay if you give the guns to the right people right if the guy the right right in the right hands i suppose yeah yeah um well i mean if if you listen to the people who came out of his administration hating him, like Mattis and who are the other ones? Kelly and Bolton. It seems to be the one thing they basically all they don't talk about him being, you know, a Russian stooge or being a dictator. They just talk about being an idiot.

Right. Isn't that basically like that's like the consensus is he doesn't know what he's doing he changes his mind all the time and uh he's just not competent enough to be commander in chief they don't say he was saying you know racist things or anything none of the other stuff seems to um have have have uh been done in their eyesight. That he's just not up to the job seems to be the consensus. They're also mad because he won't stay in Syria, and I think he's right about that. You think he's right about that?

Yeah. Do we really care which faction controls Syria? I mean, it doesn't seem like it's in our national interest. And let Russia have the swamp and try to figure it out. which faction controls Syria? I mean, it doesn't seem like it's in our national interest. And let Russia have the swamp and try to figure it out. I don't think it's a critically soluble situation. I think that we have, I don't know the details. If it could be, if I could be convinced that we have a moral responsibility

to that part of the world because of the mess that we made by going in there in 2002, whenever it was, then I would say we have to live up to our moral responsibility. I mean, 500,000 people died when Obama didn't want to lift a finger. I'm not comfortable with that. Don't we have a moral responsibility, though? I think we do. I'm not an expert on everything that's transpired there, but if we can do it without a major loss of American life, I think stability is erring on the side of it. But I don't know. I don't know that much about it.

Clearly the right thing to do would have been for Obama not to encourage a rebellion against Assad, which was doomed and cost many, many lives after the Arab Spring. He should have been more of a realist and said, look, we have to deal with Assad. He's in control. I accept that argument for our troops in Iraq, but not in Syria. All right. finally I guess in the last thing on Trump we're Jews and we're not supposed to ever appear to be have dual loyalty you don't want to upset Ilhan Omar but he has been the best president for Israel ever right has there ever been a better president for Israel? I argue with my

left-wing friend, Robert Wright, who say he's been a bad friend to Israel because Israel's now over thinks it can overlook the demographic time bomb that it faces with the Palestinian birth rate. And instead of forcing them to reach some accommodation, now he's let them, you know, try to put it off for, you know, another decade or so. And that's in the long run, that's not good for the Israeli state. Now, how could your friend say such a thing? That presupposes the existence of some accommodation

that the Palestinians would accept, which to my knowledge doesn't exist and nobody claims exists. Can anybody tell me what they'd accept? Well, it almost happened. You've reached my level of inexpertise. I only survived at the New Republic because I didn't know anything about the Middle East. If I'd known something, he would have asked me to write an editorial. And so I studiously was ignorant. But I, you know, and my friend has given up on the two state solution. So what, you know, what what does he propose now in its place? I don't know.

I mean, I'm all for a two state solution. And I hope the Palestinians will. And I think they will eventually. But, you know, Abbas is on the what is it? The 15th year of a four year term. I mean, what are we pretending that Israel is dealing with some sort of actual leader that's responsive to his people? And why don't we insist on democracy for the Palestinians?

I bet you if we did, that we'd get closer to some accommodation. And maybe when the other Arab countries are making their separate peace, that will put pressure on the Palestinians to make an accommodation. But one thing is for sure, if you listen to Dennis Ross and Bill Clinton and everyone else who was around at the time of Camp David and then afterwards with Olmert, the Palestinians were not ready to make a deal, right? I don't wanna be tendentious about that. That just seems to be the history.

It gets deep in the weeds. There was an influential article that argued that there were a lot of parts of Camp David that were really onerous on the Palestinians and written by a guy named Danny Benjamin who used to work for the Democrats, probably still does. So the answer is it gets very complicated. But I've always assumed that what you say is right.

Yeah. And we had Benny Morrison, the Israeli historian, and he hates Trump, but he doesn't believe the Palestinians. And he's a big champion of the Palestinian people and a big critic of the way they've been mistreated. And they have been mistreated, but he doesn't believe that the Palestinians are ready to make peace. You should have Leon Wieselter on because he's the guy at the New Republic who actually did know about the Middle East. Oh, no, he's been canceled.

We don't... Oh, he's back. Oh, he's back. He has a 400 page magazine that he's hawking. He'll definitely he'll definitely do your show. The question is, I hope he'll be in funny mode as opposed to to, you know, serious, thoughtful mode. He's very funny if he wants to be. Oh, let's get him on. All right. So what else? I want to know if Mickey is watching The Crown on Netflix. I'm not. And I'm not watching Queen's Gambit either. I understand that doesn't have anything to do with The Crown.

The Crown does not. But the title is reminiscent. Should I watch The Crown? Well, first of all, The Queen's Gambit is excellent so i would recommend that to anybody it's about chess but you don't have to be although you might be into chess i know nothing about chess but i enjoyed it nonetheless it's about competition and it's about a child prodigy whatever whether it's doesn't matter and the crown i just started

watching the fourth season i skipped right to the fourth season because it's about princess diana who i have great affection for and who i grew up with did you know that they play super bullet chess have you ever heard of this they play chess i saw this guy magnus whatever this norwegian guy was like the the champion of the world they play 15 second chess games i you can see it on youtube it's the most amazing feat of genius I've ever seen. And they play full games and each person, you know, they have a timer and

the entire game is within 15 seconds. 15 seconds to move or 15 seconds for the whole game? The entire game is played within 15 seconds. Harry L has your email. He goes, I'm going to send you a video. You will not believe this is real. It's like Art Tatum, the amazing jazz pianist. You just can't believe goes i'm going to send you a video you will not believe this is real it's like um like art tatum

the amazing jazz pianist who's like you just can't believe that anybody can process anything that fast is is just unbelievable that you have time to watch this on youtube but not 15 seconds right back to the numerous emails that i send you with important questions about this podcast. And why did we gloss over the fact that Dan has affection or a great deal of affection for Princess Diana? I mean, I wouldn't have pegged you for that. Well, she was the people's princess, Perry. And although I'm not a British, I was very fond of her. Well, she was beautiful and she was had a certain elegance and um the question is did and she died young which I guess is a you know will always

provoke certain feelings were you also sad and tragic and and and lonely and you feel well if only she know we knew each other maybe i could have fantasy but it's not an uncommon one what about carolyn beset kennedy did you also have affection for her no because she was not in our lives for very long whereas whereas whereas diana you know she was like it's 1979 or so 1980 she started dating and then shortly then shortly thereafter, it was a wedding. And then the divorce and all that. Go ahead.

Was she killed intentionally? No, I don't believe so. I know people say that. Ariel's never met a conspiracy theory. She doesn't like it. Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Mr. Kaus, do you think that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in Mr. Kaus, do you think that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison? Yes, I do. Because I know, well, I do too. It's just so nice to have someone esteemed.

But he'll have a reason. Go ahead. I mean, there's certainly a reason people wanted to kill him. Supposedly, he was running an operation for some sort of foreign intelligence service that passed them, at least passed them information. It wasn't set up by them. I don't think it necessarily was set up by them. But the prison he was in is supposedly run by a Dominican gang. And they can basically do what they want there. There are guards and authorities, but the guards don't run the joint. The gangsters run the joint. So if they wanted to kill him, I think they could do it. So you have the motive and the means. And if you look at the wounds on his neck,

those are not the wounds from a guy. Those are the wounds for somebody who's been garroted. They're not the wounds from a guy who's strangled himself on a bed sheet. So those are my arguments. That's the best news I've heard all day. Look like the Marxism of Perry L's lover is next. But there is a good Diana rumor, which is that Bill Clinton spied on her because he thought that she and Teddy Forsman were going to run for president and she was going to be first lady. And he wanted to head that off at the pass. Is that true? It's true that Teddy Forsman, I think, thought he was being spied on.

I don't know if it's true he was spied on. I like all of this much more than the Trump stuff, I have to say. Well, we're on our last gasp of Trump stuff, right? This might be our last. I think it's fascinating. It will be fascinating to see what he does after the election, because most presidents just kind of fade off into the sunset, and whatever they do is not particularly interesting.

Trump might be the exception and actually do something that people find interesting. I mean, hasn't Jimmy Carter like parts of South and Central America, like single-handedly? Yeah, that's right. Anyway, good riddance to Trump, you know. By the last question, what would you do for healthcare? I'm curious to know. I'm, you know, I'm old enough to know a lot of people on Medicare.

Let's put it that way. Everybody likes it. It's a great system. So if we could have that sort of system for everybody in the country, I think that would be good. People say it's too expensive. The benefits aren't right. I think they're close enough.

So I love the idea of Biden's idea and Clinton's idea of lowering the age. And the closer we can get to actual Medicare for all, as opposed to some, some, you know, stripped down plan that we call Medicare for all, uh, I would be for that. All right. I don't, I don't know enough about it. My, my only, my only, um, concern in all these things is not even whether we can pay for it, although that should be a concern, is that we don't do anything to hamper, to impede, to throttle the rate of medical innovation that goes on in this country. And as you suck out profit motives, I worry about that. Look how this vaccine has come just when we need it. Imagine a one or two percent slower growth in medical technology

over the last, since Hillary Clinton proposed her health care, and who knows what situation we'd be in now. So that's always my concern with this thing. I agree with that. I assume that there'll be such political pressure for any innovation that that will counter, you know, be a counterweight to cost cutting and let's, you know, be a counterweight to cost-cutting and let's, you know, people want cures. What I would do,

they don't, I don't know that like, you know, one of the vaccines is the Pfizer vaccine. Their partner was a German company. So,

and Germany, I believe, has a robust system of national healthcare and that didn't seem to hamper their innovation. Because we have America. But I don't know the details.

I said it's the only thing I'm concerned about. My solution to health care would be catastrophic health care for all, above a certain amount of money, means tested. Because always the way it used to be sold was news reports of people going bankrupt because they get sick. And we also, well reports of people going bankrupt because they get sick. And we also, well, nobody should go bankrupt because they get sick. Nobody should have to sell their house because they get sick. So whatever that amount of money is, $10,000, $15,000, where people can go into debt or pay for themselves.

And beyond that, the government should step in and protect everybody from bankruptcy. Noam, would you add to that theory that no club owner should lose his club because of a pandemic? Yes, I do agree with that. But this idea that we can't have a healthcare program unless it's tampon to artificial heart coverage seems to me more trouble than it's worth. We don't need the government to pay for every little thing, every little medication, whatever it is, day to day.

I think the government needs to protect us from being ruined, being ruined when we get sick. And that would be much less ambitious. That's what I would have been. I guess that ship has sailed. We're worried. It's not going to happen. All right.

Anything else? What's on the top of your mind, Mr. Kautz? What's the hottest issue in your mind when you wake up in the morning? The absolute hottest issue is the Georgia runoff. And you're running one totally not very good candidate who did insider trading. And the other one is sort of a boring senator. And Stacey Abrams is there with her mail-in votes. And she might win.

Oh, there's another perfect example of the gaslighting. And Stacey Abrams is there with her mail-in votes, and she might win. Oh, there's another perfect example of the gaslighting. Stacey Abrams, totally debunked, has been claiming that she won the election for four years. And now Trump says, no, I didn't lose. And it's like, oh, no, how could anybody say such a thing? I think that if it's a referendum on divided government, divided government will win. I think it's pretty clear, and I would imagine, especially in Georgia, the country doesn't want to see the court packed, the filibuster gotten rid of. I think the country would be happy with a divided government. So I think at least one of them will win. I don't know. It would help that argument if Joe Biden was a liberal dynamo who was clearly champing at the bit to pass outrageous legislation.

And instead, he often seems like a guy who just wants to sort of sit in a comfortable chair all day. By the way, on the things that were very unfair, it does not seem at all, does it, that he's senile anymore? No, he doesn't seem senile at all does it that he's senile anymore no it doesn't seem senile at all uh the the only uh possible counter argument is that well he has some condition where if he takes a drug he's okay for a few hours and then he goes collapses for the rest of the day but that's the way i am too i don't understand what's so terrible about that i mean they were yeah they were quite unfair to him. We didn't buy into that argument on this show.

I always said, I don't know that he's seen us because he's stuttering, you know? Well, they said that about Trump and we were skeptical about that. You know, but cognitive declines can start very subtly and slowly. It is possible to be at the very, very beginning stages of a cognitive decline and it's very subtle.

He's definitely changed. He used to be a total motor mouth, where if he came to your publication and, you know, and they said, hey, come down and talk to Joe Biden for an hour. Everybody said, oh, no, sorry, I have a haircut appointment. Nobody wanted to go hear the guy because he wouldn't stop talking. And that's all ended. He doesn't, he's not like that anymore. So something happened. I believe pretty surely that he has the normal,

sluggish memory of a 78-year-old man, which is not senility. And probably, you know... But it's also not every 78-year-old man. Alan Dershowitz doesn't seem to have that at all. Well, even Dershowitz probably has it to some extent, but he starts at such a high level, it's probably not noticeable. But all I'm saying is that Biden is probably very likely to make flubs in an interview. And then, of course, those flubs will be magnified by the fact that he's rumored to be senile. So I can see why he sees nothing to be gained by taking that chance. But like in those debates, those were long debates. He, I mean, there seems to be no senility to me. I, you know, the,

the Atlantic was writing articles about how Trump maybe should be involuntarily committed based on it. So anyway, everybody should just take it easy. All right. It was been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cousier. One of the kind of like the figures I've looked up to for, I don't know, 30 years now in your writing. So it's kind of it's kind of really cool to meet you in person. We're not in person. As in person as it gets nowadays.

Yeah. And you're not in New York, are you? Where are you? I'm in LA. Well, if you ever get to New York after the vaccine, I hope you'll come visit us in the Comedy Cellar. I'd love to. And tell us what you really think. You can really cut loose.

I don't know if you drink whiskey, but really, really cut loose. No, we get a lot of writers like Yasha Mounk and Coleman Hughes and Harry Anderson. We have a lot of people. You come, Noam.

We'll order food from another restaurant because with the real VIPs, he doesn't give them his own food. All right. And I'm going to send you an email of that bullet chest. You should take a look.

It's amazing. All right. Anything else, fellas? I just say watch The Queen's Gambit on Netflix if you have the chance. I highly recommend it. Mickey, where can everybody find you?

You can find me at Substack. My newsletter is called Kaus Files, K-A-U-S-F-I-L-E-S. And I also do a podcast every Friday called The Parrot Room on Patreon. That's a good name. Have you had Andrew Sullivan on it? No, I was, my partner Bob has had Andrew Sullivan on independently, but they were talking about their dogs. You should get them all, like Greenwald, all the Substack people,

a Taibbi, and have like one like round table that would be fascinating that would be good I don't think I would be I wouldn't I wouldn't be chosen for that round table

but it would be a good round table no you could host it you could host it you don't have to be chosen if you're the one that creates it that's how Noam's

been getting away with you know that's where the big intellectuals around him all the time all right I gotta go i gotta practice classical guitar with my son oh wonderful man he's uh man he's into the guitar now yeah

yeah he seems to be into it he seems to be into it yeah but classical but what kid likes classical what about the pop stuff the beatles uh classical training is the best for any musician Eddie Van Halen started out on classical piano enough for Eddie it's good enough for Manny Duke Ellington

started out classical instruments very important yeah that's the once again you said in the beginning

we'll stay to the end podcast at comedycellar.com for all your critique suggestions and advice and I know

Noam has a rather Periel has an Instagram account for the show. At live from the table. I'm going. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed for America. Fingers crossed for America.

Thank you, Mickey. Thank you.