The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Trump, and the Elites vs the Deplorables with Daniel Drezner and Dov Davidoff

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Noam Dworman and Dan Naturman sit down with Daniel Drezner and Dov Davidoff. Daniel Drezner is Professor of International Politics, a nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the co-director of Fletcher's Russia and Eurasia Program. He has written seven books and published articles in numerous scholarly journals. Dov Davidoff is a comic and an actor whose television appearances include The Tonight Show, Crashing and numerous others. He is regular at The Comedy Cellar.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar coming at you on Sirius XM 99. Radha! And wherever podcasts are available, Dan Aderman here in studio with Noam, back from the great state of Maine, America's vacation land. He is back. We're also with David Huff, comedy cellar regular, and also a friend of the podcast. That was everybody today.

Noam, you're back from Maine. Are you glad to be back? Sad to be back? We are back. You and I are both back. But I was back last week. Right. So you just got back.

All right. I did a podcast last week from Maine. No. Were you here? Yeah, we did a podcast last week. I called you out for being so cheap. You don't remember? Yeah, but you were via Zoom. So were you via Zoom in New York or via podcast. I called you out for being so cheap. You don't know. Yeah, you but you were by a zoom.

So were you by a zoom in New York if I assume. I guess I was still in Maine. No, I think I think I was home, but you weren't in studio. But maybe I guess I must have been home. I don't remember. But I didn't ask whether you know you were in Maine. You're in Maine, the main. But I did not ask you whether you're happy to be back.

No vacations at Camp David. We're sad to be back. No vacations at Camp David. We're sad to be back. Would you rather be there? Wait, wasn't I back? I was back last week for the for the podcast. I must have done it from home. It doesn't make any sense that I would have done it from Maine because I was just abusing Dan. Well, you could have done it from Maine.

Just to sum up, he was abusing me because at the start of the show last week, I said that when I went to Maine, I put my wallet away when I got there with no intention of using. And and and Noam, I thought Noam was going to say, of course, you were going to use it. It's my pleasure. It makes me happy. Are you kidding me? You know, but but Noam sort of lambasted me that it was a little presumptuous of me to expect me to pay for everything he did pay for everything yes but that it was presumptuous of me to expect it well it's all in reading the tea leaves you know it wouldn't be my style but you know you uh what

wouldn't be your style putting my wallet away i keep it right in my hand ready to go i i you know i said listen we've been we've been through this last week but who was the guest last week richard hair yeah the guy that was i was talking about um what was he what were we talking about intelligence intelligence right and god does everybody have alzheimer's yeah yeah so so that wasn't, I guess I was in Maine for that. You were in Maine. You were in Maine. So the thing is that Dan, of course, I have big people that aren't going to take you out to dinner, you know, but he included in that like ice cream cones.

You know, lifesavers. The life of a 12-year-old. Candy bar. Yeah. He's walking around with cotton candy at a theme park refreshments at the movies, hot dog. He's the daughter. Your second is like everything, like everything, you know, the toilet areas. Yeah. But there was there really wasn't that much because we ate meals at the house.

There was the amusement park, which was a big ticket item. Right. And there was the ice cream run. We did. It's true. We did an ice cream run with it. It's so deeply funny. Yeah, but but I wasn't the only one that didn't didn't. Well, listen, you can't be shocked. You're dealing with somebody was a diminished capacity

to read certain types of tea leaves. This is what we love about him. You know, but but but but had I read the tea leaves, I would have read them correctly because Noam, without hesitation, arguably there were tea leaves that were not read correctly. But, you know, it's a matter of. No, no, I just I was aghast that he would say such a thing. Yes. Out loud.

Look, I'll go even further. Yes. But but but how could you be aghast? Because he said he said many things out loud that he said out loud look i'll go even further yes but but how could you be a guest because he said he said many things out loud but why why are you so aghast that i said it out loud assuming you are you a gas that i was thinking in the first place or a gas that i was articulating i think that a light ass burg a light Ortiz. You're on a very subtle part of human interaction here, Dan. Yeah.

And you're just trampling all over. Right, right, right. It's nice to be generous. That's what I meant about the tea leaf. Yes, yes, yes. The presumption, of course, is that, you know, one can go into a situation like that and understand what it is that you communicate. What would you have done, Dov, in my situation?

I pay for everything I can in that situation. But it's not me. And I also have more dough. And it's a different situation. But, you know, it's unimaginable to me to be in that situation. But that's what's lovable. That's what's so unique about it. It's not just that there's an income

disparity which we discussed last week it's also that you're sort of in some weird way my boss a little bit kind of sort of i mean i and so it seemed like you know the boss is just a christmas bonus let's let's call it let's let's just be honest with every rationale he can to work backwards and not paying for a thing it's a fascinating but that's what makes him fast but had i offered to pay you would have done what? I said, thank you, Dan. That's right. No, no.

Had I offered to buy something like the ice cream, which isn't too, too much, you would have you would have that. If you had offered to pay for the ice cream. Yeah, tremendous. I might I might have said I got it. But I if you guys like, for instance, we go out to dinner sometimes. If I were in the car, I'm like, OK, you guys, I'll let you out here. Can you guys go get the ice cream?

Like we have no money. Right. No, but but along those lines, sometimes we'll go out to dinner and we have to we have to apportion or portion the appetizers so that Dan doesn't consume it immediately before the whole other. No, no, I'm saying it's a tea leaves, but we enjoy that about it. My point is that that's my assumption that's going to take place. It's not I'm no longer a gas. Look, I'm so crazy. I mean, I'll go even further. You know, I had to get the car back early because I had rented it for a certain number of days. And if I if I didn't wake up

at six in the morning to get it back on time, I would have had to pay for an extra day. You know, you call me crazy, but I thought no one was going to say that. Pay an extra day. Treat yourself. I got it. Here's a couple of hundred bucks. I'm going to take you having a car. You kidding me? You never you never presented that to me.

I would have done that. I well, I wasn't going to present it, but I thought maybe I thought you, you know, as I'm told, I'm told that I got an A rating as guests go. No one's had a lot of guests at his house in Maine, and I'm told that I got an A rating. You did get an A rating, but you but you both for congeniality and. Right. And class participation. I went on all I went to. I did everything, you know, I was free.

But like I said, hey, today, not everybody participates in all the activities. He did the water park. I went to the water park. I did the morning walks at seven in the morning. He did. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Listen, I've traveled with Dan. He's one of the few people we go to Vegas. You know, we've done a number of things with that. He's a classic lunatic. No, no. Listen, I've traveled with Dan. He's one of the few people we go to Vegas. You know, we've done a number of things with that. He's a classic lunatic. You know that.

Anyway, so tremendous human being, but a lunatic. It was fine. You know, at some point when you there's just no forget it. There's just no good way to have this conversation. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. Well, it matters, but there's no way to broach it because it would. What created the situation is this is inextricably linked to that, which cannot understand how to communicate with you about the situation. Yeah. You follow me? It's inseparable. You will never get there. Yeah. It's like an emotional resonance in something hyper nuanced. It's not going to happen. I had to give that up in order to maintain 20 year friendship. I felt what you felt many times.

Anyway, is there is there other are there other topics before we get to our guests? Any other weekly you know, things that have happened? Oh, well, you know, hold on. As long as I'm comedic value here, Dan sent me a picture text to his niece, his response.

His niece had a daughter. So Dan now is a grandniece. A great uncle. She sent him a picture of a newborn baby. He sent back a thumbs up. I mean, part of that was just so that I could

screenshot it and send it to Don. I love it. I love nothing more. I showed it to family, but it comes from that. Well, your experience. Well, let's let's put let's let's talk brass tacks here, Dan. That's the brass tacks. Thumbs up on a great nice. What what what do you think is going on in you that makes you that makes us perceive you as different? Well, first of all, I would say the dove has his idiosyncrasies as well we could delve into those

that's right and first well we don't have time to i guess because i'm different i don't know you know right now i mean you know free to be you know you whether you want to attribute it as people have to asperger's i don't think that's what's going on uh i've been accused of that but i think that's just because it's the asperger's is sort of't think that's what's going on. I've been accused of that, but I think that's just because Asperger's is sort of a buzzword. It's also no longer just a bug and it's not even a buzzword. Half of Silicon Valley, you know, heads of companies that involve a lot of math and software happen to be a bit on the scale. You think Dan's on the scale? No, are you fucking kidding me?

If there's anything I know on this goddamn planet, I'm not more confident in my assessment. Are you? Do I think? Well, what are we, fucking kidding each other? So that's one vote yes. That was great. But without any judgment, it just happens to be on the spectrum, just like, you know, whatever

you call on me. I know I've been accused of that. I don't know. Did I hear the ding dong of our guest in here? The ding dong. So saved by the bell, as it were. Okay. Isn't it weird how we made almost everything up and it still sucks? Isn't that crazy?

Like, you know, they turn the stock market off every night and they turn it back on every morning. And they're like, we're in a bubble! It's gonna burst! It's bound to happen any day now! It's like, then leave it off! What the f*** are you doing turning it back off? Today might be the day!

You're an idiot. turning it back off. Today might be the day. Idiots. They're like, the dollar's down, the economy's... It's like, why don't we just say it's not? How's that sound? Right? They're like, these people have all the money. These people have no money. It's like, print more. Give it to them.

They go, we can't. It will devalue the currency. Just say it doesn't. Everything is made up. Let's make it more fun. Let's base interest rates on how interesting you are as an individual. Right? You show up to a bank bank you do a backflip they're like you got a mortgage anything else you do a handstand they're like your student debts are forgiven uh daniel dresner are you there oh we just have a picture we don't know video dan jesus christ

have you used zoom before it takes a second daniel dresner everybody are you there? We just have a picture. We don't have a video. Dan, Jesus Christ, have you used Zoom before? It takes a second. Daniel Dresner, everybody. Let me give you a quick intro, Daniel. Let him unmute his microphone. Actually, have you ever used Zoom before? You know there's a process where it comes on with the avatar and then it takes a second.

Anyway, be that as it may, Daniel Dresner is a professor of international politics and a non-resident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a co-director of Fletcher's Russia and Eurasia program. He taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder. This is a very long intro, but I think that about sums it up. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel. How do you do? I do well. The reason we've invited you here, and by the way, I have

a lot of highfalutin intellectual friends who are very big fans of your work. I have a lot of blackmail material, so that might be why, but thank you. That might be why. For whatever that's worth, you should know that you're quite respected by respectable people. But you, you wrote a column that, that kind of took apart that David Brooks's recent column. And I was very team Brooks on this column. And I was really surprised to read your column and I will let you inform the audience, what Brooks said and what your take was on.

And then we can discuss it because I think it's a it's a this kind of it's a key issue going on now. I'll just say this, this kind of the elites versus the deplorables, as it were, is an issue we're seeing all over the world. And I think we need to understand it as best we can. So go ahead. You tell us your take on it. Sure. Well, let's start with what Brooks was arguing, which was basically that, you know, admittedly, you're seeing the United States legal establishment moving against Donald Trump. I think he must have written this. I can't. I think it was the third indictment after which he wrote this. The Atlanta one hadn't happened yet. And basically, he argued that he was trying to sort of explain to his own class of meritocratic elites, look, this is why Trump, even after all of the horrible, deplorable things that he's done, can still attract the sort of, you know,

almost blind following that he has, which is that what Trump did was expose all of the various lies and or errors that that same meritocratic elite had committed on the American people for most of the post-Cold War era, including but not limited to the explosion of wealth inequality, the war in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, varieties of scandals revealing that any major institution you want to name, from the police to the Catholic Church, have committed all sorts of scandals. And that the one thing Trump was willing to do was to say out loud that these emperors have no clothes. And so as a result, his followers say, at least this guy, you know, says what I think, and I'm going to follow him. And so the idea that that therefore, all these institutions that are suffering from eroding levels of trust ranging from Congress to the presidency, the Supreme Court to the mainstream

media to business, and so on and so forth. The reason they're suffering that decline is that, according to Brooks, at least sort of lower, you know, working class Americans have looked at this and said, we've had enough. We trust Trump way more than we trust you guys. What I was trying to say was that as an argument, that sounded very familiar because that was pretty much the indictment that was lodged against the meritocratic elite back in 2016 when Trump won for the first time. Again, I always feel like it's worth stressing won by negative three million votes, but nonetheless won in terms of the Electoral College. And that's fair. But we've had seven years since then to see what's been going on. And it doesn't quite fit what Brooks is claiming, which is the sort of which is the story that the reason that all of these folks are, you know, in the bag for Trump has very little to do with, let's say, the increase in economic inequality. Economic explanations don't really play a good role in terms of explaining how Trump gets what he wants, because among other things, if you take a look at both the 2016 and 2020 elections, those earning less than $50,000 a year voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat that didn't vote for Trump. And in fact, Trump in 2020 did far better among people who made

more than $100,000 a year, which is pretty decent income than those who made below that. So this isn't an economic story. And the truth is, is that if you take a look and see, you know, why was it that folks voted for Trump, you know, was it an identity question or was it an economics question? It's mostly an identity question. It's people who think that the United States doesn't look like it used to because to be blunt, we got to want more brown people than we did when those people were, you know, young and so forth. And also, I think the most important part of Brooks's autopsy, which I found really absurd, was the notion that meritocratic elites had failed and therefore people said, this is why I'm supporting Trump, kind of ignores what we've

seen over the last seven years, which is to say that it's not like Trump's elites did a better job. In fact, they did a spectacularly worse job. You know, when they were in charge of Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidency, they botched an awful lot of things most obviously the pandemic uh and so the idea that somehow trump knows better than all the rest of you know the people that brooks is uh railing about again i would have i would have given that argument a lot more serious contemplation if he had written it in 2016 it's 2023 i just don't think it holds up as much okay so i have a couple of questions and i i actually you know i've come to see most arguments as uh both sides are usually right it's just a matter of which side of the argument you want to prioritize. Sure. I but I do as a threshold question.

Do you what is that noise? I don't know. Yeah, I do. Do you do you think it's it's correct? And, you know, in terms of good social science to mix together the non-white, non-college educated people and the white, non-college educated people in order to dilute this argument, because the way I see it. In a very, very zoomed out way, people just don't want to vote for people that don't that they perceive don't care about them and don't like them.

This is why I think the black vote will always go to the Democrats. Even if many conservative policies are demonstrably better for them in terms of you can demonstrate, like, wouldn't you like to be able to send your kids to any school you want? Don't you hate these? You know, they say, yeah, wouldn't you like to go to charter? Of course, I'd like to send my kids to any school I want. And then they'll still dutifully vote for the Democrats. And the non-white voters understand that they're beloved

by the elites of the Democratic Party, college educated or not, in my opinion. And the white working class, simplplistically, the people that Michael Moore used to care about, but, you know, doesn't anymore, or he he might, but, you know, no longer gets documentaries about these people. They perceive that the elites look down on them and and traveling among elites, I think you know, they do look... They perceive correctly.

Yeah, they do look down on them. I mean, I hear people talk horrifically. If we were to parse out the $50,000 vote and just focus on white people, what are the statistics? Wait, wait. So, and this goes back

to the deplorables when Hillary. But we saw articles in The Washington Post about toothless rubes. And, you know, we've seen all kinds of crazy stuff when people let slip on Twitter and whatever it is. And and, you know, it's interesting. I'll just say this as a small businessman. And I think only as only small business people. I feel some of this resentment towards the elites as well, because I know they don't care about me either, you know?

So, and it's very hard for me to, to, to like, Why do you know that if I can ask? What's that? Why do you know that if I can ask? Because. You sound very certain and I'm just sort of curious. Yeah, because every remark. So for instance, when, um, give like example,

it comes to mind may not be the best when the BLM riots were going on. Yeah. And we were here. My stepmother actually was alone in the building. We get checking all the fire extinguishers, boarding up the place, trembling, like, you know, trembling. And the mayor kind of obviously tells the police to stand down or or quasi stand down. Nicole Hannah-Jones tweets that destruction of property is not violence. You know, this kind of outrageous thing that only an ensconced person. Correct. Like she doesn't understand that my property is the same to her career. Like, would you want to see your fucking career destroyed and call it nonviolence?

And this is you think that all the meritocratic elites would agree with that assessment? I would never say all about any group of enough so that that sentiment seems pretty clear to me. But you very, very seldom hear anything. Now, I mean, just if we're going to take down this path, Barack Obama got a bum rap. I looked into it at the time. I don't remember the details, but he did not get treated perfectly fairly when he said about smalls. You didn't build that.

Remember, that was that famous quote. He was not treated totally fairly about that. So I don't want to go all in on the Fox News line on that. But it was still completely tone deaf to a guy like me who was working 80, 90 hours a week at the time. Struggling to make payrolls, you know, worried about it. I remember my father saying, you know, one more snowstorm. He wasn't alive at the time, but this was the kind of mentality. When we're snowstorm, we may not make it, you know, living that way all the time, uh, providing for, you know, a hundred employees, like just, just crazy. And this is crazy amount of work that went into my father and me. And you hear this guy who's, you know, uh, Pondivia,

what you didn't build that. No, of course I didn't build that. But do you really think that that has any bearing on my accomplishment in my life? No, Barack, you didn't build that. But do you really think that that has any bearing on my accomplishment in my life? No, Barack, you didn't build Harvard, but I'm not going to take away the fact that you have a Harvard Law School education. It's so, it's so, and I, you know, let's not get stuck in this, but any, anybody in my position and then the laws that they pass and then the, the assumptions that go on and the, the headlines you see now in my feed about this boss got mad about that. And Elon Musk laid off all these workers, you know, and he's not a small businessman, but the,

but the insanity that they think that he shouldn't lay off workers, even though the company is losing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Anyway, this is I'm mixing a lot of stuff together just because it's it's stream of consciousness. However, I would tell you that that basically every small business man I know looks at the establishment and says they just view us as something to shake down. And they basically view us as the enemy. That's what we feel right or wrong look uh everybody may be wrong about the way they perceive these things but i'm speaking for my people as it were and and the white working class may be wrong that the democrats look down their

nose on them i don't think they're wrong but they do feel that way. And Trump is that mighty middle finger. And they love that. And in your column, you mix together all that. And I'll just read you. So what Nate Cohn had written, and Nate Cohn is, I think, one of the more reliable people out there, right? He said about 27% of Mr. Biden supporters in 2020 were white voters without a college degree.

White voters were 27 percent, according to Pew Research, down from the nearly 60 percent of Bill Clinton supporters who were whites without a degree just 28 years earlier. The changing demographic makeup of the Democrats become a self-fulfilling dynamic in which the growing power of liberal college graduates helps alienate working class voters, leaving college graduates as an ever large share of the party. And I think that's right around. I don't know if I got this from Nate as well. Around one in five black eligible voters, 22 percent of a bachelor's degree lower than the share among all U.S. adults eligible to vote, 33 percent. Another 34 percent have a

college education. So you have a base rate issue there because black blacks are the least educated and they vote you know 90 percent democrat i believe the the the least uh least college educated group you made a you rolled your eyes i'm not sure if you dispute that i think they're on average less college educated than white voters um uh i'm pretty sure that's right. I mean, it'd be great if it wasn't true, but I think it's right. I'm just waiting to see where you're going with this. Well, I'm saying that I think that blacks vote for the Democrats based on identity.

And to mix that and to control for college educated as a way to dispute Brooks's point is to mix together but hold on this is why i actually brought that up because the problem is is that when brooks wrote his column yeah he didn't talk about white working class he just talked about working class right okay we know what he meant oh i'm glad that you know what he meant. I mean, my point here is that when you say working class without, in fact, making it clear you're talking about white working class, then you might have sort of put minorities to one side and pretend like they don't exist. If you want to talk about the issues in terms of white working class, that's fine. You could have an explicit conversation about that. But that's not what Brooks did. Well, he said he he says. But the children of the educated class got college deferment. It continues in the 1970s

when the authorities imposed on working class areas in Boston, but not on upscale communities, imposed busing on working class areas in Boston. Now, when he's talking about imposing busing on working class areas in Boston, I infer he's talking about white working class. Nobody imposed. Nobody thinks that the black working class was bothered by busing imposed on them. Right. I mean, that's just I mean, I guess he should have spelled it out. Actually, that's a great example, I think, of how Brooks's logic is wrong, because if you want to take that example, that's fine. Go with what happened in Boston. But that's what that means that I actually think I know. But my point is, is that if you actually

take a look at, you know, one of the fun exercises and you can try doing this is like if you look at how, you know, the country would have voted for the presidential election. If you eliminate all minorities, it's a white only vote. I'm pretty sure Massachusetts is actually the only state that would have gone for Biden in 2020. So if you're telling me that the legacy of what happened in Boston in the 1970s is so severe that it leads to the backlash. I find it ironic that Massachusetts is the one place where that backlash has subsided considerably. Okay, fair enough. But do you agree from that sentence, it's fair to infer that Brooks was talking about the white working class? I mean, that's why I know, but I took it from that. Right. I think you did. But like, he's also throwing around a lot of other examples that don't necessarily I mean, you know, I, I think he talked about how barack obama taught you know uh

you know use stupid as as a an example in terms of his political stuff which made no sense and really didn't work terribly well why don't we do this i have an is it possible that that brooks article is both flawed and reasonably accurate in terms of sentiment and class, class sentiment. Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, why don't we just take for as a no, you endo that he's,

that he's applying, he means this argument to be the white working class just for this. And now what do you think of the argument? Okay. If you want to make it just for the white working class, fine. As I said, I think the argument would have some more potency if you were,

if this was 2016 and not 2023, because the problem remains that you then have to explain the last seven years of what we've seen in terms of governance where whenever republicans have been put in power they wound up implementing policies that i'm not really sure frankly helped the working white working class out at all and in fact you have to deal with the fact that let's say someone like under the biden administration you've seen an explosion of US manufacturing jobs in a way that you did not see when Donald Trump was president. And you now see if you're looking

at the GOP policy platform, we're presumably supposed to support this if you're a white working class guy. What do they care about? They apparently care about getting rid of abortion rights and transgender issues and critical race theory. I'm honestly at a loss as to how any of this is somehow a boon to the white working class. Well, OK, I can I can tell you that later. So first, I go back to what I said earlier, which is that. People vote for the people they perceive care about them. And do you think ranting about critical race theory and transgender stuff and restricting abortion rights indicates that you care for the white working class?

I just want to know what, what's your assumption? I don't, I agree with a hundred percent. I think that's a waste of time. I think that's why, I think that's why DeSantis petered out. I think he, he totally overestimated how much people actually cared about that. And actually, if you look at DeSantis' poll numbers, it's an indication that these issues are not as salient as Twitter would have believed they are.

I think that Trump, with his tariffs, which Biden has kept, but more importantly, with his rhetoric, this is the truth, with his rhetoric and his attempts, he threw effort at trying to get this company to stay in this company, say whatever it is. Look, this may be a quixotic venture on anybody's behalf because the world has has shifted. Manufacturing is coming back to some small degree. Now, that may be still as a result of Trump's policies that take a while to build up, or it could be- Nah, that's the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.

Well, I don't know. Maybe it's the inflation reduction- No, it's totally that. Don't try to tell me- I'll tell you why I can't. I don't think it's that, because things don't happen that quickly. It takes two years to start something, to build a- can't you can't mess you can't there's no shovel ready manufacturing it takes a

long time no which is why you're seeing the booming construction which is eventually going to lead to more manufacturing jobs maybe it will maybe it won't but i'm saying that um i'm trying to build a new club now i bought a bill i, it's going to take me two years just to open a 180-seat room. There's no way that the Inflation Reduction Act from six months ago has led to manufacturing changes unless it's some kind of targeted subsidy. Well, it's a year old and actually – It is a subsidy. What you're seeing is that because – again, by the way, you can critique the Inflation Reduction Act if you want, but what the Inflation Reduction Act did, along with the Chips and Science Act, was I think two years old.

It couldn't take effect that quickly. I'm not critiquing it. No, it set up subsidies, which basically led to private sector investment, which you're now starting to see come through on the pipeline. Well, great. And if it does change things on the ground for the white working class, perhaps they'll notice it. But I think more likely they won't,

they still won't appreciate it because as I said, going back to, because it's very difficult to vote for these people because, okay, you know, you characterize it and I'm sure you're right as people don't want the country to get so Brown, but I've always struggled with that because if I'm perfectly honest with

myself and with my observation, it's not that simple to cast it in the worst way. Because for instance, when black people are upset that Harlem is turning white and that that what they loved about Harlem is changing culturally. We don't we don't consider them hateful for that. We understand that people like the familiar. People like to be among their own. Tribalism is accepted if voiced from the right demographic. Well, I don't know. I don't even know that that's tribal.

Tribalism. You talk about gentrification is something positive. I believe the word gentrification is no longer the prevalent term. I mean, it's it's so sensitive in my experience. I'm in the real estate business that that when they talk about rent control, it seems it's it gets very political, obviously, because people's ability to cover their monthlies has become entrenched in the system. It's become contingent upon that controlled rent. But that controlled rent also increases the likelihood that the ownership structure of the building will not work

on the building. And so you have this kind of disrepair, these whole blocks, and there is no communication that feels nuanced around that in our political sphere. Listen, you're a national guy, Dresner, and this is above my specific metrics,

but I understand New York City political reality in the context of real estate. And I understand the context of small business having grown up in a junkyard. Well, I'm saying something more primitive than that. I'm saying that when I know that Mexicans like to live in a Mexican neighborhood, we primitive than that. I'm saying that when I, when I know that Mexicans like to live in a Mexican neighborhood, we are tribal animal.

I'm not, I mean, this is inherently the case on a biological level. When you say tribal, it implies to me something a step further kind of, yes. You know, there's a connotation. We grew up in our biological evolution. Yeah. But there's a kind of connotation.

Change the word. There's a connotation with the word tribalism's a kind of connotation. Change the word. There's a connotation with the word tribalism today of kind of animosity towards others. And I'm saying that sometimes it can be animosity towards others. And sometimes it can be, I have no animosity

towards others at all, but I'm comfortable among the people who understand my references. How could you not be? Who understand my- How could you not be? Daniel's dying to say something.

Go ahead, Daniel. Sorry. Yeah. So I got a problem with this argument. my references who understand how could you not who and daniel's dying to say go ahead dan sorry yeah so i got a problem with this argument and and here's the basic line which is let's assume what you're saying is correct that people are tribal and they don't like the fact that you know where they are maybe is changing demographically and so on and so forth if what you were saying is correct then in fact where you should have seen white working class go massively for trump where you should have seen places uh you know that should have said thank god trump says you know what we're thinking is in urban areas and that's not what happened the the places that are in urban areas because that's you're talking about new york you're talking about

oh i'm not so sure that's true but more importantly in new york that's you're talking about new york you're talking about oh i'm not so sure that's true but more importantly in new york that's very true yeah okay but like the point is is that it's the areas that have wound up going you know geographically extremely hard for trump are rural areas and exurban areas that by and large actually don't have you know that that are you know pretty homogeneously white it's more the specter of brown people than brown people itself, I'm arguing, that is leading many of these people to want to support Trump. Okay, so let me mix one other thing in here to get your take on it. Tell me whether you think it's true or not, and if it's true, what its effect is.

And some of what I'm going to describe may not even be accurate in the sense that the perception may not be reality, but perception becomes reality. Sure. Perception is powerful. Fair enough. Yeah. The perception is and there is some reality to it that there is a open season. on racial politics in the sense that white people can be ridiculed for being white. The mayor of Chicago can refer to Karen's that white people can be with pride excluded from jobs that vaccines should not be. You know, the CDC wants to not give to deprioritize white people for vaccines. New York deprioritizes white people for Paxlovid. SVOG, I mean, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, essentially it was impossible to get it, if you're white, that another,

what you hear senators saying, we don't want to hear from another white male. This kind of unabashed um shaming and i don't know what the word is of of white identity politics of it is that's unique no one no other and this obviously has an equal and opposite reaction especially among people who have the highest suicide rates in the country, the only falling life expectancy in the country,

dropping like flies from opioid. And the president, I don't know if he's ever mentioned or he mentions it. So again- He's definitely mentioned it. But if he mentions it, but it's in a long laundry list

of State of the Union, but it's definitely not something he's working on. And then at least there's no, again, perception becomes reality. And your perception is that Trump worked a lot on this. I just want to be clear. No, no, no. I'm saying that white people, white working class feel like the Democrats care more about the plight of the undocumented illegal immigrant and spend much more time talking about it, worrying about it, lamenting it than they than the last time they heard.

Yeah, many Democrats, Chuck Schumer saying, what are we going to do to help these people who we're going to teach them to code this kind of, you know, that I don't know who actually said that teach them to code thing. It was like a 10 year ago line. Like, this is what I mean by this is why I'm pushing back on this. If we were having this conversation a decade ago, I would be more willing to go along with what you're suggesting. Yeah, but you think these people know what you know. To them them nothing's changed in the last five years they're all right now who's being condescending towards the working

class they're not watching the social science statistics they just know that in general and twitter everyone where everywhere else as as as okay i grew up in this environment i can i can i can tell you certainly it's anecdotal i don't have the metrics let me say this you say i mean i grew up with these people. Comedians all the time get up there. You guys, they'll become hacker ready. Yes. It's not good for you white guys these days, is it?

Yes. And the entire audience breaks out laughing because they get it. Sure, I'd laugh. Right. But why? What are they laughing at? They're laughing at the fact that it's obvious that being white is under fire now. Now, I'm I'm well to do.

I mean, OK, hold on. Hold on. Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, gee, why are all these bad things happening? Oh, no. Turns out white guys have been screwing up a lot. Who are the people, you know, beating up, you know, African-Americans when you see cops out there?

Who are the people responsible for you? You know that's not true. You know that's not true. You know that black cops do it too. That's your statistical. That's wrong. You know that's wrong. And you also know that just as many whites get beat up by cops. You're a data journalist. You know this isn't true. I'm not a data journalist. I'm a professor. And hold on. If we're going to talk about the world of perception here, you got to let me talk about

the world of perception. The world of perception is it turns out that white cops are often abusive towards African Americans. What do you mean? Hold on. What do you mean? White people. What do you mean?

You mean one in a hundred? I don't want to. What is that? You're missing the point. It turns out that white people are the ones running Purdue Pharma. They're the ones who have gotten people hooked on opioids. You know, there's all sorts. You know, it's it's, you know, white guys in Silicon Valley who are running various organizations into the ground. Is it anybody in power all the time, all over the world from the beginning of history?

It's even deeper than that. And I confess to certain feelings, you know, I feel I feel very because I'm a person of a certain age. I feel very emotionally attached to the American history. Sure. And I know and I've always known that it's perfectly rational for black people to have extreme ambivalence at best about American history. I totally understand that. And yet, when I hear the stories of the founding fathers and read the Federalist Papers and think about the ideas in the Declaration of Independence,

hypocrisy and all, and know how these ideas, and then see the Hong Kong kong protesters with the american flag which is obviously a straight line from jefferson all the way to that it fills me with with with uh i don't know what pride is because these are not my people i'm a jew from the shtetl but somehow i feel connected to that right and when i when i hear open season on these people judging them by today's standards, you've thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I feel like tremendous aspects. I feel a visceral reaction to it that I'm not proud of.

I'm just being honest about it. It's also representative of the divide. And, and which, which wing of thought do I associate with that? And do I see being solicitous to that? It's a it's a part of the progress. It's not that.

And then, you know, the people like Schumer will just keep their head down. But like the progressive wing of the party. And it's very difficult for me to stomach them. And now that's me. Now, these people we're talking about, they send their kids to the friggin military. They send their kids to die in wars while only a man, while us rich Jews point fingers at them and look down our noses at them. And this this truth to that, I'm saying it's an emotional equation. That is, of course, they have resentments. And of course, it's tough for them to.

And Trump expresses that for them unfortunately unfortunately yes i grew up and this is what brooks is saying this is what in my opinion is what brooks is saying of course that's what he's saying yeah well hey again the problem is is that i'm not as necessarily disagreeing with this portion of it because i agree with you one of the things about american history you're going to do it properly. You know, think about if you really want to read a great history book, read Joe Lepore's These Truths. It's a great one volume history of racial exclusion and slavery and all of that stuff, but also the story of how, you know, America's ideals that as we've slowly come to try to embody those ideals, the country has actually potentially gotten better. And that's an important part of the story. And I agree with you that that kind of narrative is appealing and one that should be,

you know, that Democrats certainly need to articulate and it was something i would add that by the way obama was really good at um in terms of articulating it um at first he was that's fair uh but again the the problem becomes this all explains 2016 i don't know i mean if you want to say that like and as a result trump can literally shoot someone on fifth avenue or get indicted four times on fifth avenue and it doesn't affect his support which by the way the polling that i quoted in that column suggests that that's not the case that actually there are republicans that are sufficiently perturbed by what he did you know you know after the november 2020 election, then I guess my point is, is that you can't freeze 2016 and amper. We've seen over the last seven years how Donald Trump behaves when he's put in power. And I think I'm mildly appalled that more Republicans are not more appalled by it,

I guess. So are you saying that there's been a shift in if we focus on the white working class against Trump over the past seven years? No, I don't know if there's been a I wouldn't necessarily say there's been a shift, but what there has been is put it this way. I don't think the indictment, you know, what you are seeing is, you know, all of Trump's various legal troubles and more than that, just his, you know, his behavior after November 2020, I think has without question not affected the sort of core MAGA supporters. But if you take a look at any of these polls, what they show is that this is a guy with unfavorable ratings up in the high 60s. And that's because as much as he's cementing his GOP base, he's also alienating independents and obviously Democrats.

But like it's I guess what I'm saying is, is that and this is where I think Brooks is wrong. Brooks sees this. Brooks sees the country as a 50 50 country. And I don't see it that way. I see it when it comes to Trump as much more of a 60 40 country, I guess. I think I agree with you on that. I know that doesn't sound like much, but that's a big frigging difference in politics. I had an email conversation with somebody, a well-known writer. You probably know who he is, but I don't

want to say who he was. About what was going on in Israel. A guy from the Borka. We're talking about the judicial, the reason. Yes. Yeah. And I said to him that I see this as a bigger issue.

I see this as the deplorables versus the elites playing itself out in Israel as well. And he said to me, you're absolutely right. The only difference is in Israel, the deplorables he was using it you know the deplorables outnumber the elites meaning that in israel and there i mean is you can say this is fardic and that is part of it but there's a lot of intermixing but netanyahu so heredia and everyone else but now netanyahu is a flawed character, but Netanyahu is not Trump. But he's giving voice to the fact that these people, the deplorables, as it were, are tired of being thwarted. They just are tired of being thwarted. And this Supreme Court, which manages to replicate

itself no matter how how many elections the right wing wins. They appoint themselves and blah, blah, blah. And it's just visceral resentment going on. And we see it in Brexit. I don't know much enough about England to know what it is. I feel it to some extent. And that's worked out real well for the United Kingdom. Let's just add here.

No, that's another. It's too soon to say how these things work out or don't work out. No, it's not. Well, the question is, did it work out for the people who wanted Brexit? You know, there is something about, just in my lifetime, my town,

when I was a kid. What town? Ardsley, New York. Okay. Contractors and working class people who lived across the street, our houses were all about the same. My friends had college educated parents, non-college educated parents, bricklayers, you know, whatever.

That's not the way it is anymore. It's just not. The town is all college educated people. And that easy kind of mixing that went on when I was a kid. But what's the point? Because the underlying economics

have really shifted over the decades. And there's been a segregation where the elites, I mean, I'm not inventing this, I've read about this, but I've witnessed it too, that the- Well, factory jobs can no longer support a family. You can no longer, as a cop, go into a reasonably wealthy or a suburb in Westchester and buy a home inside of five years.

When I was a kid, famous writers, Jimmy Breslin, these were grizzled, working class people who would live. They'd been in the military. They'd been in businesses. They spoke for things they knew about. Every journalist I know now, they just don't come from that. When I tell them what I'm experiencing, they have no idea what I'm like, well, do you know what? Listen, we had one. We had one really nice example of for years. Everybody was looking down their nose on people in border towns. They're racist. They're racist. They don't want Mexicans.

You know, the second New York City is experiencing a little taste of this migrant influx. All of a sudden, New York is screaming bloody murder, but nobody's calling a racist. That's just being unreasonable. And so if you know that and that's true, i read it loud and clear and i i you know that's why what brooks really turned on that spoke to me yeah i guess the way i guess my response to that is god knows you know look i've got a shirt that actually has coastal elite on it. So, you know, I know who I traffic with as coastal elite on it. Oh, coastal elite.

Yeah. So, you know, I look, I'm a professor who lives in a suburb in a Boston suburb, Massachusetts. I know who I am. that that the the sort of meritocratic elites brooks talks about are arrogant that way and aren't necessarily um uh gonna you know going to are you know are condescending in that way yeah i guess the way i would put it though is when you use the word humility that is not the word i associate with donald trump it is certainly not the word i associate with any of the republicans who are trying to claim but but my point is is that like you know you don't get to say you know the problem with the meritocrats you don't get to say the problem with the meritocrats is that they're out of touch

and will refuse to like you know engage in humility and then talk about how populists are for sure confident about you know like, like, like that, that, that they need to display the similar humility. I would ask you this, your professor. And is it, so we know that at least the standard take on, on Hitler's rise was that the treaty of Versailles created this tremendous post-World War I. Andler and hitler was able to hyper inflation hyperinflation weimar republic did trump create this anger oh or did he or did he tap into it and if he tapped into it then let's talk pre-trump what caused it it's a more complicated story he absolutely tapped into it he didn't create it okay but

we're now at a point where he's also like you know yeah that explains again and if you had taken brooks's essay and said you know publish it in 2016 and by the way there are about six million versions of that essay that were published in 2016 totally fair We're now at a point, though, where, you know, the question isn't why is it that people voted for Trump in 2016? The question is, why is it that so many people support a guy who, by any objective standard, was a bad president and B, was really good at criming. No, no. I can answer that. He was not a bad president by any objective standard. That's not- Oh! Well, you see, this is the thing.

Now, listen. Listen, you're actually making- Keep laughing because you're making my point. Because- How are you going to- I'll do it. I will. I will.

Go for it. One of these I will. But one of these before one of these Trump voters sees you laughing like that. And they say, I'm never fucking voting for those that listen to him laughing because because they the economy was booming under Trump. The tax cuts which he which he gave, they which they which which we were told were so horrible. They did not repeal them because they actually turned out to be middle class. He was very bad. Now they weren't repealed because there weren't the votes to repeal them. Let's be clear. Well, they also, by the way, Trump Trump was the first president, I believe, in the postwar era that when his when he left office, there were fewer American jobs than. No, let me start it.

OK, well, I'm going to. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. That's an empirical fact. Don't don't let me tell you. Let me tell you, you're wrong. And I'm going to tell you why you're wrong. OK, they did try to repeal the salt tax. Schumer said that was the number one priority of the Democrats.

The salt tax is the deduction for wealthy people of their property after 10,000. I know what the SALT tax is. Yeah, so they worked hard to try to repeal that. They worked hard to try to repeal the taxes on the wealthier. This was a shame on the Democratic Party, but it shows where their votes and where their money is coming from now. There's many articles written about this. The only part of the Trump plan that they focused on was not what how it affected the working class.

It was the salt tax that the state and local deductions for for for wealthy. How many people pay more than ten thousand dollars in property tax? Yeah, I paid for it. Yeah. So so that but so the economy was booming. He was I would say that he was bad on COVID from my point of view. However, from the point of view of the people who didn't want to wear masks and people who feel vindicated now by some data, which actually does vindicate them. They don't even feel he was that bad on COVID. Ironically, they probably don't like operation warp speed, but I'll, I will have to give him credit for operation warp speed.

Maybe someone else would have done it, but he did it. And, you know, he wasn't a debacle in Afghanistan. He seemed reckless, but it seemed to all kind of work out. And he did all this at the time that he was being accused. How did it work out? I am

dying to know how you think it worked out. I mean, admittedly, he didn't start World War III, but that's kind of a low bar. I'm saying none of, like, I was very concerned when he was speaking like a schoolyard taunt to... Oh, towards Kim Jong-un,

for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But nothing terrible happened. I was concerned about a lot of the way he was going about certain things. I thought he was right for taking out Soleimani.

I thought he was right for appearing to be kind of the madman thing that Nixon talked about, like people were a little cautious about him. I think the border, the border was much more under control than it was. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That no, that's not disputable. The numbers of migrants now. Now, I'm not I'm not even necessarily blaming Biden for it. But if you're going to say that whoever's president gets the blame. So you're saying he's he's objectively a horrible president. I wish that were the case because he's objectively an asshole. He's objectively right. But I don't think if you didn't tell me that we had Trump as president while I was living through 2016, I wouldn't say, holy shit, things have gotten really bad here.

What's what's gone on to this country? That's an excellent point. Things were good. We were booming. Business was booming. What happened? Did he hang up on me? No, no, no.

I'm still here. Can you put that? Isn't there a foundational consideration here that we're not giving voice to, which is which is why did we elect a fuck you? And the answer to that is something yeah but the again minus three million familiar with well perhaps but i look wouldn't no no this is important i want to stress it's a lot of people no no you can't simultaneously claim that there was this groundwell of support for donald trump while at the same time having to acknowledge that he lost the popular vote

by three million votes. But there's still an incredible amount of support. The most incompetent politician. Perhaps, you know, there's still an incredible amount of support. It's what you said is 60 40. Well, either way, he overachieved your 60 40. That's fair. Sure. But the perception of this elite demographic relative to what we're describing as working class. But the perception issue is still exceeding is very pervasive. It's still really, really the case. But do you think it's anecdotal? But I mean, I know this empirically. I can't prove it via political metrics. It is very much entrenched in our experience socioeconomically and otherwise. And so you can deconstruct David Brooks via statistics.

But I cannot accept that the people that I grew up with in a junkyard in Jersey have changed at all from 2016. If anything, if anything, the wealth disparity is becoming, you know, more exaggerated than it was in 2016. Trump lost in 2020. That's not exactly true, but OK. Yeah, I'm not going to. I don't have any dog in the back. The fact that Trump lost in 2020, I assume, indicates that there's been some shift. You know, it's not just about Trump.

It is about the divide. Trump could have easily won in 2020 if he had done some. He didn't lose in 2020, in my opinion, because of his bad job as president. He did it because he was terrible. His bedside manner was terrible during COVID in my, you know, isn't that part of the job of being president?

I don't understand what you're talking about. No, but underlying all of this, I, you're, you're kind of tripping me up, but you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying that the,

the normal occupancy of the presidency, he he didn't lose because of that. And if that had been the way his term ended, if not for this pandemic, I think he almost surely would have won reelection, certainly would have gotten the 90,000 votes that he lost by in the electoral college. He was very erratic and very offensive during the pandemic. And then he was erratic and offensive during the entire four years of his presidency. The pandemic just brought it out more visibly for everyone to see. But every world leader, every world leader, no matter what their death count during the pandemic gained in approval in

their countries, except for Trump. Yes. So that's something he did. Which was telling. And then he had that first debate performance where he was fucking out of his mind. Do you remember that? He was just an asshole, as you put it. He was an asshole.

And he lost by a whisker. And by the way, it could be just the fact that he stupidly told Republicans not to use mail in ballots. So so we don't even know what the temperature of the country was, if not for that, because he lost by 90,000 votes. Not sorry, he he. But you say 90,000. I say seven million. But go ahead. No, no. Lost the election. You could say he lost a popular vote by 7 million.

He would have won re-election. 45,000 votes gone the other way. 45,001 votes gone the other way. He would have won. So maybe just the mail-in. Yeah, but by that logic, if like 50,000 votes had gone a different way in 2016, Trump doesn't win.

So I'm not quite sure this works. No, it's just showing how close it was. Yeah, yeah. And just to draw any big conclusion, I just think that his based on his record as president. Putting aside his record during this pandemic, his record as president saying if he weren't an asshole, his record. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, his composite that was disastrous. His statistical record, the metrics of whatever you want to go, wage increases, whatever it is. This was a pretty decent record as president.

And it's interesting to me. And I don't say that with any pleasure. I say that having to feeling like I have to admit what's true is true. Right. And to hear a professor say he's objectively a bad president. I say, well, this is why this is this is the divide, because in your circles, forgive me, I don't mean this badly in your circles. This is unquestionably true. When was the last time you were at dinner with anybody? So what are you talking about, Dan? You know, like, yeah, this this goes this goes without saying in the same way certain things go without saying.

It's not orthodoxy and shouldn't be, it should not be treated as such. Yeah. All right. Listen, you're a really interesting guy. I'd like to do again. Yeah.

You're in Chicago. Is that right? You're in Chicago. No, I'm outside of Boston. You're outside of, Oh, I'm sorry.

You said that. So I used to live in Chicago though. Yeah. So yeah, you said a suburb of Boston. So if you come to New York, you should, you should.

Yeah. Comedy cellar. Yeah. Really have you should. Yeah. Comedy cellar. Yeah. Really have it out. Yeah. Be great. I think books. I think Brooks is on to something.

I just and I think I think Brooks is well-meaning. I just don't think the argument quite holds up. But but this way, I like having the argument with you. This is fun. You may be right that Brooks is wrong about certain aspects of his argument, but it would be very, I believe, it'd be a big mistake from that to pass over everything of what he's saying, which is, I think, very important. If Biden would say a few things along the lines of what Brooks said. Rather than what do you think Biden would say that would actually I mean this sincerely, what do you what are the few things that you think Biden should say that would work in

terms of expanding the white his white working class support without alienating the rest of his support? So, you know, Biden said Biden famously said about Romney, he wants to put you all back in chains. And he said about Georgia, it's worse than Jim Crow or whatever, Jim Crow on steroids. This kind of stuff is very, very alienating

to people who disagree with him because nobody wants to be called the worst thing you can be, which is a racist, because you disagree. Although the power of that term is diminished because, because the left uses it, weaponizes that and in context where it has not been earned.

But some of this may also be policies because I was very, very alienated when they had that restaurant, we need a restaurant, uh, relief, you know, for COVID. And when they announced that a white male owner was not going to be eligible for this program. This was federal or was it New York City? No, this is federal. It worked out for me because they ended up having a nightclub program, which which was not that I was fucking fit to be titled. What do they what are they doing here? Are they going to like,

how do you even organize against that policy? Am I, are we supposed to organize as white people? Like white, like this is insanity that they're backing working people, small business people into a corner where they either have to swallow. Yeah, you're right. I am white.

So I guess I should, I guess I should get on the back of the line for disaster relief, even if the guy next to me makes more money than me. Right. Right. Or be called a racist. So just so you know, in Trump, Trump's program, you had to provide, I'm not giving Trump any credit for it. This is the program under Trump. You had to show last year's revenue, show this year's revenue. If you lost 90% or more, you were in the first tranche. Essentially, if you lost the most,

you got the money first and it went away. As soon as Biden took over, he said, no, no, no, you have to be essentially anything but white male. My wife's not white, so we joked about giving my wife uh uh 50 of the business and i said that's okay i'll take the loss but uh but the perception of what you're saying is more important than what you're saying can you

accept in america the idea of saying you know what there's a hurricane okay we're gonna build the white people's houses the black people and we're gonna build everybody's houses, the black people. We're going to build everybody's houses except the white people first. To have a party that stands for a policy like that is fucking insane. The Overton window has shifted and they view it as morally required.

It's kind of a form of retribution. I guess people who didn't do anything. Yeah, because people were innocent. The party... Hold on. I need to get going, actually, but I just want to didn't do anything. Yeah, because people were innocent. The party. Historically not. Yeah. Hold on. I need to get going, actually.

But I just want to close with this thing. You keep talking about it's the perception. No, this is. And that's a perception. That's real. No, no, no. But you keep. But, you know, your partner keeps saying it's about the perception.

And it's a larger issue is about perception. Yeah. Right. And the law. And by the way, like, you know, that's true. Like, if enough voters think something is true, then politicians have to respond as if that's true and i think the issue i have with brooks and the issue i have with his argument is that the perception he's trying to foster is the idea that you can explain everything that's going on with Trump and all of this sort of populism

due to economic reasons. And that perception is wrong. I think politics enrages people. It's not just economic. I agree with that. I think you meant that. Right. By the way, the problem is. But hold on. And I'll just close this. The problem is the fundamental problem with perceptions is it is fantastically difficult to change them. Yes. And the perceptions – That's why this is where I do agree.

2016 and now. Right. And this is where I will close with Bruce. I got to tell you a story before you go because you'll like this. Okay, quickly. Go, go, go. Al Franken, the senator. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He does comedy here from time to time. And comedian, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And when he first came in, I was complaining to him about this restaurant program. And he couldn't believe it was true. I'm like, yes, this is true. You can read about in the paper. And you and he was like and he clearly he was he thought this was. Hello, sir. He thought this was a bad idea or like he was. But, you know, God damn well, if he'd been in the Senate, he would have voted for it.

This they're going too far with some of this stuff. I think the pendulum is swinging back. It always does. The last 3,000 years of recorded history it has. Look, it's very, very interesting stuff because we need to get a handle on it. We got to try to get the essence of truth on this wherever it is.

And we're talking, a lot of people talking past each other. Anyway, it's really been a pleasure to meet you. And please, yeah, come to New York. You must come to new york right i come to new york every once in a while yeah sure i'll let you know yeah please do all right thank you very much sir thank you podcast to comedy seller.com for comments questions and suggestions thank you duff david off for joining us god bless xander dresner bye-bye