The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Trump Wins: Election Results Hot Take with Richard Hanania

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Richard Hanania is the President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. His substack is: @richardhanania Support the show and get 10 free HelloFresh meals at https://www.hellofresh.com/FREECELLAR

🎵 This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you wherever you get your podcasts. Also available on Sirius On Demand and on YouTube for that multimedia experience. Dan Natterman here, comedy seller. Well, let's call it a regular. Not as regular as others, but regular enough. We're here with Noam Dorman. Hello.

He owns the Comedy Cellar, the ever-expanding Comedy Cellar, soon to be open, a new location on 6th Avenue and West 3rd Street. Perry L. Ashenbrand joins us as well. And via the miracle of teleconferencing, Riverside Teleconferencing software uh the future is here uh richard hanania president of the center for the study of partisanship and ideology also has a popular sub stack which you can talk about richard if you want to uh let people know about the sub stack uh sure it's a sub stack i write regular columns and um it's just my name

richard hanania.com or if you google me it's like the first thing that'll come up well i i read the sub stack the sub stack is excellent richard is one of the um uh most interesting original thinkers uh there is in the country wow he absolutely is and he'll write about all different things that you'd never think of including you read something about did you write something one time about popular music has gotten stale and uh how movies have changed whatever whatever um comes to his mind but he always has uh a take you know um um not just a take for the sake of having a take, but an interesting deep take on things. I don't know, were you a child who pondered stuff? Like, what did that talent of yours arise? If you knew me, if you knew me as a child,

you would probably think I was one of the least likely people in the world to be doing what I was doing. I mean, I was my freshman year of high school, I was ranked 390 out of 400. I just didn't go to school, I didn't really have intellectual interest, I was sort of lost, I was always a little bit independent minded. That's the kind of that's the through line. But then, you know, at some point, I developed intellectual interest, I tried the academia thing, I realized, as you said, I like writing about broad topics. I like just listening to modern music and reviewing it and writing about the economy the next day. And you really can't do that in academia. So I was always sort of in my own world and sort of independent. But yeah, it was a sort of a strange path that I took here. Could I just say that apropos of Bacha Sargon saying you were a compliment vampire?

Yeah, I didn't know what she meant. But I think she meant no, I'm stingy with compliments. But he just called you one, Richard, one of the great thinker, most original thinkers in America. Yeah, well, the only thing that was stingy with compliments would compliment is being very generous with compliments, except to a few. It's stupid. It's a dumb thing. Anyway, so Richard, being the king of the hot takes. Now, you and I have diverged. I'm sure it'll become clear here, because I share your disdain of the anti-intellectual right, but I don't think I've turned away

from the right as much as you seem to have, which is improbable considering your most recent book was just a tour de force against the left and their racial politics. Anyway, let's start with the election. What are the first takes you have? What are your hot takes on the election? The election, I mean, it's it's it's impressive. I mean, the Trump's is a magical figure. I mean, this is this is incredible. I mean, what the man has been through and I'm sort of in awe of it. And I, you know, I have a lot of critiques of him personally. And take a you know this is probably why you think i sound more left-wing these days because i agree with pretty much most of the left

left-wing takes on trump uh but the man has yeah i mean but the man has a unique appeal and you know he just like the stuff that sinks people i was looking at the election results last night like mark robinson you remember mark robinson he was on Nude Africa Forum or whatever. The black guy from North Carolina. You don't remember the story? The crazy black guy from North Carolina? He was a Republican governor. What was his pen name? He was writing

for a while. I don't think he had a pen name. He was writing on a porn forum that was connected to a porn site called Nude Africa. But he had a name that he went by, didn't he? I remember the story, but go ahead. Crazy stuff, praising Hitler and talking about tranny porn and this and that. And of course he lost by 15%, that's like what happens when you do stuff like that.

Trump, I mean, says all kinds of crazy things and he wins North Carolina, right? In Arizona, this crazy woman, Carrie Lake, who keeps denying every election, she keeps running elections, she keeps losing, she keeps saying they're stolen. She loses pretty decisively. A lot of the Senate candidates for the Republican did well. Trump denies that he lost 2020, is still spreading crazy conspiracy theories, recently said he would have won California if not for vote fraud in 2020. And it just doesn't matter. Just nothing matters with this guy. And there's just some appeal. I mean, he, you know, college educated Republicans voted for Nikki Haley. They prefer Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis in the primaries. So like there's no segment of like the

American elite just broadly defined as people with college educations who find this man appealing. But he's got this magic. He dominates the Republican Party. He won two elections and almost won a third. And it's just we have to say this is just a unique historical figure. Do you think any of this is choreographed on his part, his way of speaking? You know, the growl that, you know, we said we love the Puerto Ricans. I mean, was that just something that just came naturally to him or does he think, oh, this would be funny and I'm going to, you know, I just wonder. I mean, you know, I don't assume you know, but I. is that the people who have true charisma and have connection with their followers the way that Trump has, they are themselves, they're not putting on an act. He's putting on an act. You know, he A-B test stuff when he goes to a speech. He says this and the crowd is excited. He says,

I'm going to say it this way, but not that way. But I think basically what he has and what other politicians don't have is he's actually like the voter. Like he doesn't read. He just watches TV. He just thinks immigrants have taken all the jobs. And it's his way of sort of seeing the world. He loves McDonald's, right? He's got this sort of personality and way of being. He's just richer than everybody, but he sort of like acts like the way most like regular Americans would act if they were a billionaire. And yeah, I think he can't fake it.

I think the other people try to take his issues, they do not have that connection with the uh uh with with with his voters well he might be like like his voters but most people don't have that kind of magnetic hold right he's not like them in every way absolutely yeah he's like them he's like them in aesthetics and tastes but like richer and like bolder. They seem to love that. Well, what's your what's your do you have an analysis of why he gets away with the things you described, whereas those other people don't? Yeah, I mean, I have a article called The Biomechanics of Trumpism, and I talk about how there's been these kind of these kind of eras and how people understood Trump. So at the very beginning, there was this idea that like it was just like economic issues, like they were just mad about the jobs going overseas for he he came in.

He governed pretty much like a standard Republican. Then it became, oh, it's all about immigration and it's about foreigners and this and that. And that there's something true to that. But over time, I think people have come to realize that this man just has some kind of quality that's just very naturally a leadership quality. So I was analyzing just his face. When he gets caught, for example, in a bold-faced lie, every other politician or everyone else almost in public life gets embarrassed. They turn a little red. They start stuttering, they talk faster. He just says stuff and his expression doesn't change. Like he just goes, like DeSantis, I was comparing him to DeSantis during the primaries. And DeSantis wouldn't go on CNN. He was like, oh, fake news media. He wouldn't go on any liberal network. And Trump would go on all

of them. And the reason he could go on all of them, and it didn't matter, because no matter what they threw at him, they could have him, they could just be completely correct on the facts and catch him and lies. He would just perform the exact same, whether it's the friendliest interview or the most hostile interview in the world. So this is a man who's like, you know, he's like, you know, you like have unique geniuses that are like once in a century, he's got a unique lack of shame. That is just, you know, he's like, you know, you like have unique geniuses that are like once in a century. He's got a unique lack of shame that is just, you know, whatever the sort of leadership quality has, he's just a unique figure. He also has from time to time moments of clarity where you would think, oh, this is a bright guy who knows what he's talking about, right? A lot of the other ones don't have that. There is, there is Trump. We say, oh, he was very reasonable. He

was measured. He was, you know, he obviously has some life experience to draw from. And that, so sometimes you, you know, I'll say, oh, maybe he is all right. And then I'm like, no, he'll say something crazy again. Have you had that experience at all? Yeah, he does. I mean, I think it's, he's getting less and less coherent as time goes on. He was actually pretty good, actually, on the, I listened to the Rogan podcast. He was there for three hours and never, never lost and never really confused. I mean, it was actually impressive for, for a man his age and you're right. Go ahead. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead. No, I think you're right. He's meant, but you can see the decline. You can watch him in speech 2016 versus today. Um, and especially 2012 2012 it's a big decline uh but yeah he um you know i

don't think it's his necessarily his intelligence his iq i mean he can't he's can't he's not you know dumb um or maybe he's a little bit senile but he's never been really dumb yeah he's got he needs some basic intelligence i think for it to work yeah so the rogan thing he actually i can't remember the details now but he actually had some knowledge about things that Rogan threw to him at a much more granular level than I expected him to have. It's about the environment and something. So he surprised me. And as far as his decline, I have sensed that, although I'm not ready to conclude his decline because, because the man's schedule is insane.

He does more than one rally in a day. He speaks for two hours. He's 78 years old. And sometimes you just hear him and he really seems tired. But then you see him another day when he's obviously early and he's refreshed, where he seems a hundred percent as he always has been. Well, they did do, they did do an analysis of the length of the rallies, and they actually go much, much longer than they did in 2016. But one interpretation of that is

that's actually declined. He can't stay on point. He's just sort of sitting there and just sort of like ranting like an old man going on forever. The Rogan thing, yeah, he said some stuff on the environmental stuff. I didn't check if it was true. Who knows? But he was going with Rogan thing, like, yeah, he said some stuff on the environmental stuff. I didn't check if it was true. Like, you know, who knows? But he was going with Rogan on, he was talking about the history of boxing and he was talking about the history of MMA. And he knew this stuff. I mean, he really like, he could talk about like, who's the greatest fighter, this and that.

And that's just like, that's a regular American. That's what a regular American is. I don't think he held it. Names came to his mind that he probably hadn't said in a while. These are the classic signs of decline. You wouldn't remember names, stuff like that. I'm already having that a little bit. So, okay. So did you expect him to win? And I really want to get into what's gone wrong with the right. I really want to get into MAGA in waiting with you because I find Trump to be quite different than this motley crew of literally crazy

conspiratorial Tucker Carlson, JFK, RFK Jr. It's all connected to Alex Jones. And I mean, this whole thing really were even J.D. Vance. It all worries me after Trump passes from the scene. But let's first get to Trump. Did you expect him to win? The prediction markets gave him about a 55, 60 percent chance. I was thinking probabilistically. I thought that was about right. I didn't have confidence either way. I don't know how you guys felt.

I thought I have a whole theory now. I thought in the last week, all the accusations of him being Hitler, these fake stories about him wanting to put Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, the dumb joke, the offensive joke that Tony Hinchcliffe told at the convention about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage and just the constant calling of calling him as a fascist and all this stuff. I felt that this was having a Pavlovian effect and I thought he was going to lose because of it, because it was having an effect on me. And you just, you know, it just, as a human, just constantly hearing this terrible stuff about the guy, even though some of it was clearly not true,

I said that they're going to take him down. And then also he was giving bad speeches. His last 10 days were just terrible. So here's my new theory. My theory is the following. He was way up in the polls when the polls were showing him about even. Two weeks ago, he was much further up in the polls than anybody realized.

And he certainly did suffer a decline because of all this bad stuff that came out because it had to affect him in some way. And yet he's still, uh, uh, toughed it out because he was still enough ahead to, to, to weather that hit that I'm sure he took. What do you think about that theory?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's been eight years of the Trump show. We've had three elections. I don't know if like one more week of calling him a fascist was probably going to move people all that much. I mean, I think it was just probably, you know, it's inflation. I mean, voters apparently hate inflation. Incumbents are doing poorly across the world. And 2016 was basically, you know, 50-50, at least in the swing states that mattered. 2020 was the same. And just like the anti-incumbent spirit and like the idea that Trump was a little bit better, you know, gave him an extra three, four points.

I wonder if like anything actually mattered in the end, because, you know, this has been the same thing for eight years. But could it be the opposite? Could it be the opposite that people who heard people like Morning Joe saying these, you know, patently untrue descriptions of Trump, things that Trump had said, could they have been so enraged by this kind of state media lying that it motivated them to go to the polls? That's what I think. I mean, I mean, maybe, but that's been going on for a while. I mean, look, you say like 10 things

that Trump said are crazy and one or two of the 10 might not be true. Like the Liz Cheney thing was taken out of context. I think he was saying, you know, she should go to war rather than, you know, I want to shoot her. But he does say like people should be executed. He does say there are tweets or truth social posts where he says, you know, people need to be arrested. He did say, you know, we'll have to look at the constitution. I mean, this, so there are like there, you know, for one or two that the media is sort of exaggerating or making up, there's like seven or eight that are actually real. So look, some people care and some people don't. I think none of them are actually real in the sense that I would listen to them

and think that he meant what they're reporting that he said. Like dictator for a day, dictator on day one is, we can play that later. It's such an absurd interpretation of a lighthearted, almost teasing that he did where he says, all right, yeah, on day one, I'm going to close the border and I'm going to drill, drill, drill for it. And after that, I'm not a dictator, but that's what I'm going to do a day one. Yeah. Dictator for a day one. He says he's going to be a dictator.

Anyway, Dan wants to get. Well, he did say that he was standing behind like plexiglass. He said, well, if they want to shoot me, they got to shoot. You know, he had all these reporters in the front row or whatever. He said that he's got to shoot to the reporters. I wouldn't mind, you know. That doesn't mean that he's intending to kill reporters, but that's sort of dangerous when a lot of people really hate the media.

And the media has done a lot of, some of the media has done a lot of bad shit in terms of their reporting, but that's kind of a dangerous thing to say i think i i agree with the dictator on day one thing even that one you could say that as a joke there are truth social posts there was one recently within the last few weeks where he goes you know we're going to be looking at investigating anyone who's at once it's very sort of explicit and he does say like stuff like mark milley's talking about me that's treason and you know what the penalty for treason is i mean mean, he says stuff like this, like a lot. I haven't seen that.

I'll look that one up. Yeah, just look up Trump, you know, execute arrest enemies. There's going to be a few that are like sort of fake newsy, but there's going to be a lot that are just like him actually saying stuff that is what it looks like now you're of the opinion that the right is essentially low a low iq uh group and the left is high iq correct am i am i misstating it yeah yes it look it's not simply if you like took a given iq test every liberal and every conservative like liberals would have a few points i mean it wouldn't be that massive. Liberals have an intelligentsia. So like liberal media versus conservative media, like maybe the smart conservative people, they go into business, they go into oil extraction or whatever. But when you compare conservative media and influencers to liberal media influencers,

I mean, it's just it's night and day. And there's not only like an IQ difference, there's just a basic like, are you not crazy? And do you care about getting your facts straight gap between them? And you include Fox News in that? Fox News is not as bad as, of course, a lot of the influencers online. I mean, they did end up paying for the Dominion thing. They did end up pushing. And we have the text from Tucker Carlson saying basically the day after the election, he knew

that Trump's allegations were fake, but then they knew they had to like play along because of because what their audience wanted. And then they were sort of bleeding viewers to Newsmax because Newmax, I think it's the audience is actually the main problem here. So, yeah, Fox News, I mean, it's a serious journalistic outlet. I don't think they make things up. If I see something on there, I believe they get their facts straight. But, you know, there's a few of those institutions out there. Now, right wing people will bring up the

fact, well, what about these stories, including the ones what we just mentioned, like, you know, about Liz Cheney, where they actually have a headline, Trump threatens Liz Cheney with a firing squad. And also the story is like the whole Russia fiasco that at some point was clearly not true or the fact that they denied that the Hunter Biden laptop was real when we already knew that it was real. Like, how do you put those in context? Like they have they're not they're not conspiratorial. They're not batshit crazy, but extremely dishonest. No. Look, it's a matter of it's a matter of degrees. Any media that is has a political outlook of the people there have politics. They're going to be biased. And, you know, I did see them correct pretty quickly.

I did see some stories afterwards correcting the list chain thing. It's not made up out of whole cloth. Right. You look at that thing out of context. OK, it's a quote taken out of context. This is normal stuff that happens in politics, right? They got it wrong. I can't even, I think it's made up out of whole cloth in the sense that there was no way any, we're talking about, again, the high IQ people who have risen to the top of the profession in the world, in the media. There's no way any of them. Can I tell you what made up out of whole cloth looks like? Harmeet Dhillon, who is an RNC official, put up a tweet, retweeted a picture of Jamie Raskin, who's a congressman, Democratic congressman, with a quote,

if Trump wins, we are going to stand there and we're not going to let him take power. He may think he's going to win, blah, blah, blah. The quote was literally just made up, not taken out of context, literally just made up. Right. And another, there's a, there's an article I wrote. What? But part of me says that when the, when the, like, that's, that's some nutcase right wing person. If I, if somebody sent me an article by that guy, I know I wouldn't even read it.

I'm like, don't send me some nutso thing. Right. But when major respectable journalists say, describe what he said about Liz Cheney in a way that no person in, in, with their credentials could have done, except when they know that they're lying, nobody could have heard what Trump said and thought of anything about a firing squad, let alone the fact that she was going to have a gun too.

Everybody knows the point was he was saying, listen, she wants to send people to war. Let's see how she'd like it if she had to go to war. 100% of the people who described it differently knew that's what he meant and they lied. And, you know, that's how I see it. Okay, they make mistakes. They make mistakes. They get things wrong. I agree with you. It's a different kind of thing where your entire sort of media ecosystem just

goes with fake news. So I did write an article called Left-Wing Ideologies Are Not Conspiracy Theories or something like that. So I bring up, do called Left-Wing Ideologies Are Not Conspiracy Theories or something like that. So I bring up – do you remember when Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by a hammer? Yeah, and I remember when Tucker Carlson laughed about him and Don Jr. tweeted out bad jokes about it to the awful – And so yeah. So and like the New York Times has a graphic of all these congressmen like Ted Cruz and like Donald Trump, like the top people in the public, not like a crazy person. You can always find a crazy person somewhere saying something. But Tucker Carlson, all these people implying or saying that he was having a gay

affair and was attacked during it. Right. And I say, let's use this thought experiment. Let's say Ivanka Trump, God forbid, gets into a car accident and somebody says she was out buying crack and driving to get an abortion, right? Just that it would be on that level or just simply made up, had no fact, just because Ivanka Trump happened to be an accident. Do you imagine Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, Chuck Schumer would be repeating? Like, I don't think so. That does not happen.

Yeah. They have different ways that they go about their dishonesty. The left knows how to do it in a more respectable way somehow, and they are less crazy. There's no question. And I would even say they're more decent as people. They are. Because, I mean, I was just astounded that Tucker Carlson and Don Jr. could make fun of the fact that this old man had to have surgery on his skull, hit over the head with a hammer, and that they would even make any joke.

It was just horrifying to me. You know, this is what I, and then, yeah, so I agree with you. Yeah. I honestly don't know how to put it all in context because both sides to me are very repulsive in their particular ways. Yeah. I mean, I think you're, I don't know how to put it all in context because both sides to me are very repulsive in their particular ways. Yeah. I mean I think you're – I don't think you're necessarily being charitable enough about the Liz Cheney thing. Like you say, nobody could ever think that. Look, there's motivated reasoning, right? There's just carelessness.

Like I don't think they were – I don't think many people were sitting there and saying a lie. They probably – they could have – it's possible you see a 10-second clip or a 20-second clip. You don't see the minute before it. But yeah yeah like a media like the the standard can't be does the media ever make mistakes it does the the you know the the you know but that doesn't mean like nothing matters and everyone is almost the same the abc whistleblower story i don't know if you follow this but there was a guy who said there was an abc whistleblower uh who was coming out and was basically saying- Oh, I did follow this. And Bill Ackman retweeted it. Go ahead. Go ahead.

And look, this was an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist that the document was, had misspellings. It was nonsense. It was just complete nonsense. Megan Kelly doesn't report it as true, but says, we're looking into it. This is very serious, right? Megyn Kelly does this. Ted Cruz retweets it, says, huge if true. Marjorie Taylor Greene is at a different level. She retweets it and basically assumes that it's true, right? But this didn't even raise to the level of asking questions because it was literally based on nothing. And this just doesn't happen on the other side. And it's like, we need a world like the complete and utter BS, the stuff that's just like – like it shouldn't be I'm able to go into an anonymous account, make up anything, put up a Word document of two pages, and like a senator is retweeting that. The left-wing mistakes, the left-wing hoaxes, they are not at that level. And if you're at that level, if your mind, if your epistemological reality, how you gain and process information, is that broken?

Like I don't know like where we go from there. Like I think the Twitter under Musk, I mean it's better in some ways. I had some trouble with censorship issues before. But yeah, I don't want this to be reality where it's all just nonsense all the time and there's like no check on it. You said – you use the word mistake. You said the press makes mistakes. Was it a mistake when there's a clip, for example, of Anderson Cooper saying Trump said that there were very fine people on both sides of a white supremacist rally? And then they intersplice a clip of Trump saying, I'm not talking about the white supremacist and the white nationalist.

I condemn them totally. Is that a mistake or is that every bit as as as dishonest as as some of the stuff you're talking about on the right? The very the very fine people thing. It's interesting because if you know the history of this rally, it was organized by neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Right. So he says there are fine people on both sides. And he says, I'm not talking about the white supremacists okay but like that was the that was the rally so i don't consider that to be like that ridiculous like okay include that you know he didn't say white supremacists are good people he explicitly didn't say that but he said something pretty close to saying that a lot of the white supremacists were good people so i know i don't consider that at the same level

see i see i don't agree with you because my standard first of all i i hold i kind of alluded to this already i hold people who write for the new york times or cnn or or any of these major networks up to a high scholarly standard of kind of an oath to the truth and my easy standard is like if i heard their report and then I saw the actual clip, would I then turn to them and say, what the hell? You didn't tell me that. Like, that's all. And that's a very easy answer. So like if Trump, now we don't know, I don't remember what Trump knew, what he didn't know, if he knew who organized the rally or whatever.

But he knew that they were there to protest the taking down of Robert E. Lee statues. And he said, listen, if you're going to take down Robert E. Lee, you're going to take down Jefferson, you're going to take down Washington. There were people on both sides, both protesting about the statues. And he says, wait, but I don't mean the white supremacists and I don't mean the Nazis. I just denounced them unequivocally or something like that. You can't cut out the fact that he says, I don't mean them, I don't mean them, and I denounced them unequivocally and then put a headline on it.

Trump says there's fine people on both sides. You just can't do that. It's not an honest mistake. It's a sneaky, clever way of doing what the dumb right-wing Neanderthals don't have the skill and the intelligence to pull off. They can't be that, that clever, but I don't, I don't know why you give them a pass. I'm convinced they know what they're doing. If they don't know what they're doing, then they're in the wrong profession.

They should be fired. I mean, I just have, yeah, I got a little bit of a psychology background in academia. And I, so I, I know a bit about sort of motivated reasoning. And I think that, you know, it's probably, it's a lot easier to fool yourself about things than you might suspect. But look, this is all good natured. I mean, good, you know, good faith media criticism that that belongs. The New York Times does that. The CNN does that. You know, that's great. We should talk about that. It's a different world is all I'm saying from someplace where you just make stuff up, put it on the internet.

And it's not taking out of context. It's not like not giving – it's just made up just out of freaking thin air. And like that is just like a different level of nihilism. It's a matter of degrees. We're not going to have – I agree. Like if somebody sends me something from Breitbart, unless it's an interview where it's an interview where the source doesn't really matter because it's a transcript, I won't even read it because I just assume they're leading me by the nose somewhere. I don't feel that way about the New York Times, which is why I'm so outraged when from time to time I do discover they're leading me by the nose.

And look, I'm not a guy who just loves the media and worships them. I was like most conservatives three or four years ago i would really really stress about stuff like this like this is very fine people thing and say this is really bad what kind of media these are the worst people in the world um but what happened was like i saw what the alternative i'm like oh wait they care about truth a little bit like they're just not making stuff up what i saw sort of conservatives have only had free speech on the internet for two years, really since October 2022, when Elon Musk bought Twitter. And like, it's bad. I mean, I'm just looking at it and I'm just like, you know, were liberals, I mean, were liberals right? I mean, they weren't perfect. They had a lot of flaws. ABC, CBS,

New York Times, yes. But the stuff that just becomes truth and sort of the right wing sort of echo chamber, I don't know where this goes. It's just a sort of very, very dark. Tiss the season to make life easier on yourself with HelloFresh. HelloFresh's pre-portioned ingredients and delicious recipes sent right to your door are going to be a total lifesaver. All of their meals are chef crafted. So you're going to be eating well and saving tons of time. HelloFresh lets you customize recipes too. So each meal is just the way you like it.

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HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. Well, you know, I'm getting an award next week from the National Coalition Against Censorship because I've been such a staunch advocate of free speech. And I have to confess that I've been having a lot of thoughts along the same lines as you. And I, and I was trying to maybe write something as my acceptance speech to say, look guys,

I'm with you on this free speech stuff, but we have to admit the marketplace of ideas is not quite working as we all imagined it would. You get millions and millions of readers on some totally made up story and then 20,000 find out that it's not true. are ready to address this problem in an honest way, the people who don't respect free speech will do it for us. And they will start regulating it in a heavy handed way. And they'll be right about the problem that they're handling. You know, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's just time over time, the culture learns the ins and outs and these things become less potent but it's it's worrisome to me i don't know how you feel about all that yeah i mean you're right i mean i think every community that like cares about a cause has to say so like like look if you care about the second amendment you care about gun rights and you have

like stupid people who are irresponsible who just go out like firing guns in the air. Like those people are not like on your side, right? They're saying, oh, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the pro, you know, second amendment group. No, those people are discrediting you. They are creating the justification for the censorship. I think that a lot of the free speech people, they look at people like Alex Jones and they go, you know, it's a little bit, you know, a little bit crazy, but like free speech. And like, if they ban him, they're going to come for me next. And it's completely fine to say Alex Jones really sucks. Like Alex Jones is not a good figure. I believe in his right to speak, but he's not a good figure.

And I think that like there needs to be more of that. So I think that that's like, yeah, that's a great message. That's sort of that's exactly what's needed right now. Do you have any like community notes is pretty good well it's underutilized but when when somebody's community noted on twitter i think that's very effective um but i i don't know any other safeguards you could imagine yeah well it's it's so it's hard because the community notes like there's this guy like there's these accounts with like two, three million followers. And like they'll put out like 10 nonsense tweets a day and like one or two will be community noted.

And the community knows people won't see it even as much as the original tweet. So it's not you know, it's not sufficient. I don't know. I think like there might be a way. So I think like something like and it's crazy, you know, even the censorship, like the Twitter stuff, like even the stuff that's not fake news,

like I'll get just like, you know, like DMs and Twitter. And I keep the DMs open. Maybe I'm a masochist, but like occasionally I meet interesting people. So it's worth it. But like,

I'll get a lot of messages that I'll be like, you know, F U U F, you know, the F word for a homosexual, which I'm not a homosexual, by the way, not anything wrong with that,

but they will, but they will but they will call me that. And like, I'll just- You are a Zionist. Yeah. And I'll report it to Twitter now and they'll be like, it didn't violate our rules. I'm like, what value in there is just having, letting someone just sit there and say F-U-F-A, you know, so on. There's just no value.

This speech is nothing. So like if a private corporation wants to censor that, like, great. And then like, you want to do that. But like, everyone who would censor that is like the person who would censor you for, you know, misgendering someone. And then it's like, we just, you know, like, why can't, why couldn't Elon Musk have been the guy who said, I'm going to ban the racial slurs and just like the explicitly fake news. Like you should just get strikes for, if you're just spreading fake news like that, you don't have to like judge people's opinions, like whether it's hate speech, if it's just

completely made up stuff, that would be sort of the balance. But unfortunately, everything is just like YouTube, like way too far in one direction, or just sort of this free for all on Twitter. And we've seen the results. Don't you think the truth is available for anybody that really wants to find it? And I think a lot of it, people don't want the truth. And I don't know that these community notes, people are saying, well, maybe the Democrats aren't operating a pedophile ring under a pizza or whatever, because the community note told me that. I don't know that that does any good. I think people want to believe these sorts of things. yeah i think that's i think that's right but you know you can create like you know there it's a matter of degrees i think that there's people who just are into like the national

inquire or whatever and they want to read about like alien abductions and stuff and i think it's like if there's an appetite for like that kind of stuff and like q anon is sort of like this and you know national inquire was uh really promoting, has always been promoting Trump. And I think it's sort of like the same audience. Like maybe those people should be like, there should be ways to sort of channel those people and their energies away from politics. I think Trump is like a, you know, they're like a moths to a flame with Trump. He really draws like a kind of conspiratorial, sort of disturbed celebrity obsessed kind of individual. So yeah, the appetite is out there. It's just like, how much is it going to be like determining our politics? Now, how do you explain, I think you're aware that I was very early saying that Tucker

Carlson had mental illness and I didn't understand why nobody was acknowledging it when he was saying that the United States government had UFOs that were divinely inspired by Satan that were killing people and the government was covering, covering it up. And it was just like total, you know, things that if my wife started saying that I would immediately take it to a doctor. Right. Like and but it seems now lately he said that he was attacked in his sleep by demons and he has marks to show for it and something else. And I think people are coming around to the fact that he's crazy.

But yet he sits a seat away from the president and then he's and he says that Alex Jones is a divine prophet. Alex Jones, who says that the Jews killed JFK and all sorts of Zionist conspiracies, including implicating 9-11. And then J.D. Vance says, Alex Jones is right about a lot of things. And then none of them will give the strong arm to a Candace Owens,

who says that Kamala Harris is not even black, but she's a Jew. And so there's this kind of a daisy chain of crazy all around maga um and shouldn't we be scared about that yes yeah you uh yes obviously you you know you mentioned earlier, like you hold New York Times and CNN to higher standard, which is which is great. But I think there's this is sort of a, you know, could be a dated view because you see like the New York Times and CNN up here and like everyone else who's like a right wing crazy has no power. But you look at the top, you know, podcasts of the country. They're basically Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, not Alex Jones, I don't think, but Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson. And one more. And Hawk Tua.

Yeah, Hawk Tua, the relatively wholesome, innocent one. And so, yeah, these people have power. And when Trump is at the top of your ticket, I mean, he's the conspiracist in chief. So yeah, this stuff like worth taking seriously. And just there's this there's this norm, like when J.D. Vance says, you know, Alex Jones is more right than Maddow. They're thinking in like a very, very tribal way. They want to know, are you conservative? Are you liberal? And they'll defend you if you're conservative. And this is just, you know, we've got to get beyond that. That's a very kind of sort of primitive way to go through life. Can I go Jew on you for a second?

It worries me from a Jewish point of view because, and then I want to get more back to the election, I regard Trump as a very reliable friend of the Jews. He's a baby boomer from Queens. He's typical of his demographic. He spent his whole life with all his closest relations with Jews. And to the extent he has prejudices, even his prejudices fall in the directionas flag. But those people, the other people that we've described, for instance, Tucker Carlson is now enamored with David Irving arguments, David Irving being the most famous Holocaust denier. And as I described, Alex Jones has all

these anti-Jewish and anti-Israel conspiracy theories. I don't trust on paper, I don't mean to cast aspersions on J.D. Vance, but, paper, coming from the Appalachia and not having much experience with Jews and being friendly to people who are so anti-Jewish, I don't think he has any kind of deep affection or worry about Israel or Jewish issues in a way that I could rely on if Trump was out of the way. And so although I've never really worried about right wing anti-Semitism, I do have this foreboding that if Trump were to pass from the scene, MAGA could easily turn into a rightwing anti-Semitic movement. It's not crazy. I mean, because when you look at sort of right-wingers and like sort of when you get into this sort of mystical thinking, this sort of tribalism, this sort of, you know, kind

of conspiratorial right-wing thinking, anti-Semitism is sort of just a natural consequence of that. I mean, the other night someone was telling me that Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate were live streaming together. And you have this one kid, this guy who's like this, you know, Hispanic, white nationalist, Catholic. And you have this other guy who's a convert to Islam, but like posts videos of himself with, you know, hot women and smoking and drinking and so on. And what do they share? They share anti-Semitism, right? So you have these like this kind of sort of right wing, Western kind of alliance with the Muslim world. And yeah, it's I mean, Jews are, you know, intelligent, cosmopolitan, they're just different, they're just a different ethnic group.

And like that is naturally targeted by people who think in mystical terms and think in terms of blood and think in terms of, you know, foreigners and out groups are out to get us. And so, yeah, I mean, there's no like, I think, immediate concern for that. Like the next Congress is going to be, you know, very supportive of Israel. All the Republicans basically in national politics are for the foreseeable future. But it's a generational thing that is worth being concerned about. I mean, Tucker Carlson, as I said, is already into David Irving theories. He's already claimed, why are we giving money to a country, Israel, that's waging war on Christians? There's a lot of stuff coming from him. And it's perfectly reasonable to think that if Trump were to drop dead tomorrow, Tucker Carlson become the heir apparent to MAGA.

And it could happen just that fast. And, you know, I've said before, I don't I regard Joe Rogan as separate from all these people. I don't think Joe Rogan is any kind of anti-Semitism, but he's, he's very, uh, a kind to these people, you know, that he gives them, they're, they're on his show. He doesn't judge them. Alex Jones is his pal. So as I've said on the show before, it's kind of, as opposed to guilt by association, it gives them a kind of innocence by association. And, um, I don't know, I, you know, we Jews are paranoid about these things. So anyway, what what a good reason, I might add. Well, yeah, I guess. What what do you.

So I I am very worried about Trump as a president because he's erratic. And we've seen we got a glimpse of how he handles a crisis during covid. And it definitely wasn't the way Mayor Bloomberg would have handled it or even Ron DeSantis. Right. It was not measured and careful and deliberative. And it maybe didn't even matter that much in COVID because COVID just went through the whole world. But if that was a national security crisis, if that was a world war of some kind, I shudder to think that Trump would be our president. So I have to comment on that. That's just a setup.

But if you want to say something about that, I was going to go on a sort of discussion about Trump and liberals and COVID. But if you were going to say it was almost essential that a major event happened, electoral loss, that hopefully is going to force a reckoning on the left of their horrible ideology, which has cast a dark cloud over so many of us, ruined so many lives. Affected my children. I mean, it could go on and on. Affected you, I'm sure, that hopefully, finally, they're going to have to redirect from this stuff. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I mean, and the most positive thing about this is if it was just white people, if it was white people went 80% Trump and like minority and Trump happened to win, I

think they would just take the lesson that, you know, we're in a white supremacist country and that's all that happened. But actually, I think the data is still coming out. But I think Harris, you know, maybe did a little bit better with college educated whites and maybe whites moved a little bit to Trump because everyone basically moved to Trump. But the biggest shift among counties is like the best predictor of your county shifting towards Trump is a large Hispanic population. And so the I mean, it's amazing. I mean, from 2020, Trump lost, according to the NBC exit poll by 33 percentage points. This time it was eight, right? A 25 point shift in the demographic

in four years. Harris won 53, Trump 45. And that's remarkable. I mean, that's telling you like, this is all this wokeness, all of this PC, all of this, you can't say this, you can't say that it was supposed to make these groups like you and feel comfortable. And they don't, they like you much less that they might like you leftists much less than they did 10 years ago. And I think it's just white people, they don't, they like you much less that they might like you leftist much less than they did 10 years ago. Um, and I think if it's just white people, they don't, they, they get defensive and they say, whatever we were, you know, we're right. And we're just morally righteous when Hispanics.

And I see to a lesser extent blacks. I don't know if there's been any black shit, but, you know, Hispanics are bigger than blacks at this point, as far as minority populations go. Um, yeah, that, I don't think that can, that can help, but, you know, uh but lead to some reflection. So I'm optimistic on the way it turned out. I went into a whole rant about the left last week. I'm not going to revisit it, but one story I didn't mention, you guys have heard it, but I know Dan hates to hear the same story more than once, but my wife's Puerto Rican. She's a person of color, as they say. And anyway, but my, my, uh, my daughter was in second grade and she came home and she's grown up in a home with, you know,

as my wife's a different color and we have lots of friends who are of all the colors. She never really had any, uh, concept of race as far as we could tell. So in the second grade, she comes home and says, daddy, you're white. Are you white? I'm like grade, she comes home and says, daddy, you're white. Are you white? I'm like, yes, sweetheart. She says, do you treat people badly? I'm like, what? She goes, yeah, we learned in school that white people treat people badly. And I said, sweetheart, have you ever seen daddy treat anybody badly? She says, well, maybe you used to treat people badly. So of course, I was furious about this because just the imposition of this subject matter

on a girl who believes in Santa Claus, I thought was just, it was more about what the teachers wanted to be doing than anything that was good for the students. But so I said, well, I'm going to go to that school, a school board meeting, and I'm going to complain about what they're teaching my kid, right?

I said, I thought about that like a quarter of a second. I'm like, of course, I'm not going to go do that because somebody is going to take out their camera and they're going to record me saying whatever I'm saying and they're going to tweet it out and I'm going to be ruined as a racist or whatever it is. And this is just this, as I said, this dark cloud of really control that this ideology was having on my day toto-day life. And that's just one example. I'm just not going to say all the other examples again, but I'll just say people I know who've been ruined and something had to put a stake through the heart of this. We can't live this way. As opposed to saying it now to like potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

No, I can say it now. Yeah. And, but I, and I said it at the time on the podcast, it's different. And by the way, it got worse because then I was funny to say that. Cause I said it, I told the story on the podcast and I said, and actually, cause I want to teach my kids about race, but I want to do it in not a heavy handed way. I sat my second, my second grader and my kindergartner,

who was very precocious and I down, I read them to kill a mockingbird. And they were totally captivated by this book and they got it. I didn't have to say anything bad about, you know, anybody. They understood the injustice of the story immediately. So then this guy, Seth Simons, who I've become kind of friends with, he wrote a whole column about me being a racist for reading my kids to kill a mockingbird. And of course, nothing happened to me immediately or particularly, but it's a tremendously stressful way to live.

Now, let me add one more thing. I'm my own boss. So there was only so much risk I was taking because I can't get fired. And it was a long chain to think that customers would start calling. But if I was working at a company, they easily could have taken that column, brought it to HR, and we've seen people get fired for stuff like that. So we all know people who are just petrified of getting caught saying the wrong thing because

they can actually get fired from their job. So there's all this self-censorship. There's nobody's fingerprints on it. There's no one leader who's responsible for it. In that case, we would call that leader a fascist. So all of which is to say, I did take this joy in seeing Trump win, not for a second because I like Donald Trump, but because I'm happy to see them lose. And that's where I thought you used to agree with me. And

I sense you don't feel that way anymore. I think it's just because I see the right wingers and crazies because those are my audience. And maybe those are the people, even though I voted for Trump in the end. But my, you know, emotionally, I'm sort of, you know, I'm sort of repulsed by these people too. And so, yeah, I get it. It's hard to sort of keep both these things. I guess when I was in academia, I think I felt more like you because those were the people that were all around me. I became sort of well-known and had like a right-wing audience. And maybe I'm just a guy who just hates whatever's in front of me. And that's all that's going on. Well, how did you vote for Trump in the end after everything you've just said

on the podcast? I'm conservative. I believe in low taxes and low regulation and supporting Israel and, you know, legalizing betting markets and all these being anti, you know, these labor thugs that wanted to shut down the port. So it's just like I'm a conventional. I wrote a book against wokeness, free speech. I mean, I'm a conventional conservative in most ways. It just happens that somehow it's the conservatism that I like sort of seems vestigial. I mean, it seems like just by accident, like the good stuff is still there,

while the right seems to be going increasingly crazy. But look, I'm a policy guy. I'm going to be paying attention to the court cases that come down and what happens in the federal agencies. And I expect under a Republican administration to be more pleased than I would under a Democratic administration. I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. So I think I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat. And I had it funny because her speech pattern doesn't correlate. Why? What's my speech pattern?

No conservative talks like you. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. And I think that the Democrats have shit the bed so badly and especially since October 7th. But even even before that, for a lot of, you know, this cancel culture and these like horrible far left wing, like anti-Semite fanatics. And now we all have to eat, you know, this plate of Donald Trump, like all of us have to suffer because of it. And I think that I was watching this map last night and I was texting Noam and I'm like, it's unbelievable.

Like the entire country voted for Donald Trump. And do you do you see like any I don't know, I'm sort of interested in any of your takes on that, that it was just like they voted against. I think that the country didn't like that there was no primary. And I think that this was really a reaction against that as well. I didn't hear anybody predicting that Trump, that we would know so early who won. I don't know. Harry. Harry did.

Harry did. What did he say? He said Trump or he said whoever it is, we'll know. Harry felt whoever it was, we'd know. He suspected we'd know early. OK, everything's a matter of odds. You know, nobody's everybody else said, well, I think Trump will maybe eke it out, but we won't know for another week. I don't think that this wasn't that right. And this is the other thing that I was saying before we started the show. Like this is Vince McMahon. This is WrestleMania.

I'm not maybe in the end surprised at all that like this is who America wrapped its arms around. Like, I think this is more about America than it does about Donald Trump. Right. That's a question. Yeah, I mean, I think that we we you know, we think that like, oh, the things that annoy me about the left are probably what most people are annoyed by. I do think it's just inflation. I mean, I do think it's just basically like we have the I think it's just the price of eggs, honestly. I mean, I think we have these sort of tribes and they're there.

And like, it doesn't explain why Trump did four points better in 2024 than he did in 2020. Incumbents, you know, there's some people there is a op ed by Iglesias in the New York Times. Basically, incumbents are getting wiped out everywhere in the world because the inflation thing is a worldwide phenomenon. And so like left-wing governments, right-wing governments in New Zealand and Denmark and the UK and Canada, they've been getting wiped out the last few years. I think it's just sort of, there are bigger forces at work here. You're right. There are some people who just dislike, dislike liberalism and what sort of it's become. But I think that like it is easy to like read our concerns into the election results.

I think if the Democrats had nominated like Nancy Pelosi wanted Josh Shapiro and he had gone on TV and said, you know what? Larry Summers and Jason Furman warned us this would cause some inflation. And you know what? It turns out they may have been right. We erred on the side of caution because we were worried about people not having money. And now the best estimates are that one or two percent of that inflation was a result of our policy. But as you can see, we've rung the inflation out of the economy now and we learned our lesson and you're definitely better off with us for 20 other reasons. I think that, I mean, and of course, Josh Shapiro would be smart in a thousand different other conversations where

she was obviously afraid. I'm just waiting for the Eliza Doolittle, you know, my fair lady stories are going to come out of what kind of intensive tutoring was going on to Kamala Harris during those first five weeks where she didn't do a single interview. But they were literally starting from scratch about where the states are and where the countries are. That's how that's how little respect I have for her intellect. But do you agree with one other thing, which is always, and I think it's getting worse. I went to a Trump rally a couple of weeks ago and I, I really did sense this. I'd always felt it, but I really sensed it. They know that liberals look down on them. They know it. Joe Scarborough finally today made reference to the fact of how elites look down on the rubes. And we've seen three administrations make the same kind of faux pas.

Obama talked about they cling to their religion and their guns. And Hillary Clinton called them deplorables. And Joe Biden, maybe he meant it partly or talked about garbage. And we've heard other journalists refer to them as toothless. And people just won't vote for someone they know doesn't like them and doesn't respect them. It doesn't matter what the policy is. But there's plenty of, by the way, Trump voters that are well-to-do people.

Listen, any of these discussions, there's X number of these and X number of those. I'm saying that part of Trump's base is rock solid. They were never going to vote for anybody else but Trump because they're not going to vote for the people who hate them. And then you have these people who were persuadable because of actual facts on the ground, as which is kind of alluding to. And she seemed so unimpressive altogether. What do you say, Richard? Yeah, I mean, this idea that Democrats look down on, you know, rural people and so forth, there's probably something to that. But like, you know, Republicans also have their sort of talking points. I mean, the childless cat ladies, you know, the stuff they say about women, sometimes the Obama thing, I mean, it was a

private fundraiser, he apologized, like right after. So I mean, the guy, you know, he was president for 80 years. And there was one, you there was one thing like this. Obama didn't make a habit of doing this. He was very good at actually not doing stuff fun of college graduates or like graduate students or something, because like, you know, it just seems you don't expect it. Oh, my God, Obama. So, yeah, there is this sort of class dynamic where like liberals are the upper class party. And so they have to be a little bit more careful. It just stings more when they do this stuff. I actually said exactly what you just said,

that they also, I've sensed, they have their own sense of inferiority. Like if they walked, if they came to New York as tourists and they walked into some beautiful nightclub with beautiful people there dressed in fashionable clothes,

they would immediately feel super uncomfortable in their own sense. Because it's like, I don't belong here. This isn't, so they start with that kind of, it's yeah. It's sort of like PC with race, right? Like when whites say stuff about blacks, it hurts a lot more than when blacks say stuff about whites. And like, we have like norms against it. So like, it's okay for politicians to say big city, liberal, San Francisco, liberal. If a politician from San Francisco or New York says, you know, a bunch of rubes in Kansas, that's much more politically incorrect. So we do have this kind of thing where the group that's seen as a little bit lower status or less advantaged

in American society does that. So I don't know like what liberals can do exactly just because they are the upper class party. So like they're always going to be held to a higher standard on that stuff. But I think, well, you know, the comedians always talk about punching up and punching down and that's kind of a related concept, but I think I'm,

I'm offended by the lack of respect. So many of these elite people, I know them. I went to school. Them have for their fellow citizens. If you spend time, I'm pretty sure you have with with everyday people from walks of life that you haven't experienced,

in a very short time, you begin to realize they're awesome, they're funny, you begin to enjoy their differences, they're not dumb, you know, they're just wildly different. And, you know, I don't... Well, Richard says they are dumb. Sometimes they are dumb. I mean, that's a very, yeah.

You were talking about the IQ differences between the, you know, sometimes they are dumb. I think that there is, I mean, there is some truth. Yeah. I mean, I would know the saying sounds beautiful and we should all try to respect people and all of that. But I mean, there are like IQ differences. Like some people are much fatter than others. And like, I don't think it's dumb. I mean, aren't you also an idiot if you're chanting from the river to the sea and then somebody asks you what river and what sea and you say the Hudson, like you're also an

idiot. Like who said the Hudson? So what in one of these like viral videos that they're like, you know, it was like at Columbia or something. Yeah. I don't even like the idea. Yeah, it's legitimate. Those were dumb.

Those were uninformed people. Yeah. I mean, if you're smart enough, you'll have a differential with the average person that you meet in any walk of life, right? But like normal, like it's it's it's easy to just go around looking like i saw some lady went viral on twitter her name was like susan smith and that wasn't her name something like this there's some obscure lady p she had phd in her bio so you know she's insecure and she has things like so and so so i saw this susan anna's yeah i know exactly what you're talking about and she said something like you know white uneducated, white, you know, white non college graduates are going to destroy the

country or something like that. And then this got like 14 million views. And I looked at this like, who the hell is this woman? Right. And all these people are retweeting. This is why Democrats lose. And I'm like, this is not the DNC. This is not Joe Biden. This is just some random woman. And if you're going to like, if you're going to like go out of your way to find that stuff, it's always going to be out there. So it's like, I think people need perspective. I think people like can like hope that like Kamala shouldn't talk like that. Tim Walz shouldn't talk like that. Biden, Obama shouldn't talk like that. Anderson Cooper shouldn't talk like that. But like, if we're just going to find any random woman who has PhD in her bio and say, this is like going to determine our politics. We're in trouble because there's, there's no curing that. So here, her name is

Suanna Smith, PhD. She, the, the tweet that I'm about to read has 17.2 million. Yes. And it's all people dunking on her. It's not liberal saying this is great. It's all people saying that, you know, screw this woman. Oh, that's good. So the tweet is there is a reason why educated people vote blue. What we're seeing, what we're seeing is the uneducated population of America holding the rest of the country hostage. This is why there's such a push to weaken education, ban books and outlaw the teaching of black history by the Republican party.

And then, and then there's a little bit more. I mean, she's. How many followers does she have? How big of a deal is, is this woman? I'll tell you right now, she has 1500 followers. Yeah, exactly. Conservatives for five years are going to remember that tweet and say, this is why, you know, this is why we hate the left. Yeah. Well, Perry L has a little bit of that elitism too, by the way. And she's not, no, no, no. All right.

Richard, you're such an interesting guy uh um you know i'm not going to bring up the the uh issue of your your guy who has a story of redemption in your own ideology which is uh um very inspiring in a way i only bring it up to say that i i imagine that you agree that that the left was a threat to you because they would try to unearth stuff from your past and they've tried to ruin you, right? Unsuccessfully because you're your own boss. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. I mean, I felt sort of the boot of these people. I mean, I know as much as anybody, I think, you have to go out of your way not to let that color your view too much. I mean, the fact I want everyone to love Richard Hananya and never censor him and, you know, give him the biggest megaphone possible. And I think I'm smart and reasonable and all that.

But, you know, at the same time, that can't be my entire politics and that can't be my entire worldview. And I can't just run into the anyone, the arms of anyone who's right wing and say, no matter what crazy thing they're saying, this is my side. I can say the new Twitter is better for me. I had even like not even like the old stuff that I wrote that was actually crazy, you know, years ago, I would get suspended on Twitter, once I made a joke, death to boomers, like something like that, just like death to boomers making fun of somebody. I got like a 10-day suspension or something on Twitter. And I had like two strikes for like really BS. And they were targeting me because I'm right-leaning, obviously, or at least not caring about me because these other people get more leeway. And Twitter has been much better for me. I've gotten a lot more followers. I get a lot more engagement. Elon himself follows me and likes my tweets and retweets me sometimes. And that's, that's great. Um, I have that perspective. And at the same time I could say, wow, Twitter sucks and sucks. Uh, you know, it's just, you just have to sort of work to keep that perspective.

I got to make this speech in a, in a week or two. If you, if anything comes to mind about along the lines of that subject, email me. I'll give you credit in the speech. I am, I want to, it's a free speech thing. So I do want to say something to annoy them. I think that's very much in line with what they should expect. Somebody tweaked it a little bit. Yeah.

And if you have, you know, if you have a draft or something you want me to look at, yeah, send it over. I'd be glad to. I'd be glad to. Oh, that'd be terrific. Give me my feedback. All right. Any final hot take on any subject under the sun that you're thinking about these days before we let you go?

No, I mean, it's going to just be, I mean, we're just less than, you know, 24 hours from finding out what happened in the election. It's going to be a fascinating four years. What I'm going to be looking for is, so my support for Trump is based on the idea that it's going to be, not going to be RFK coming and Tulsi Gabbard coming into the administration. It's going to be looking like something like a normie Republican administration that we had last time. I mean, as normal as a Trump administration can be. And so I think when the talk is going to start like tomorrow for who's going to get what position and the betting markets

I saw were already up for Secretary of Defense and all that. And so that's the interesting thing to watch for between now and the inauguration. It'll tell us a lot about what kind of Trump administration we're going to get. I want to know, sorry, I want to know if, if Noam is pleased on balance with the outcome. Can I tell you after the administration ends. I think you meant after the podcast. The risk that we might be taking is not a responsible risk that I would ever take with the United States of America. I feel that much apprehension about Trump that I could never just simply sign off on the idea like, yeah, this is fine to make this guy the most powerful man in the world for four years. Having said that, I think it's a low probability. It could be 1%, but I wouldn't get in an airplane

that has a 1% probability of crashing. So I would never sign on the dotted line for taking that risk. Now that we're in that universe, I can't deny the emotional pleasure I get in seeing the left. You know, just I watched Morning Joe this morning, just like flailing about for six or seven different explanations at the point where Al Sharpton called the Hispanics racist because they wouldn't vote for a black woman of color. I mean, it was awesome to see them eating their young. And I can't you know, I'm still an emotional being and I get pleasure from that.

So, no, I wouldn't have, if you put it onto my head, I would not have put him as the president. But I think, as Richard says, I'm a conservative and the potential positive outcome from him is definitely much greater than from her. The question is, you kind of agree with me, right, Richard?

I love that we're sort of the opposite. Like, I'm just annoyed by all these right-wing people on Twitter. But like, I sort of want, so it seems like you wanted Kamala to win, but like, you also want the left to suffer. And I sort of wanted Trump to win, but I want the right to suffer. We're sort of parallel. It's really funny. Well, I also hate the right.

And by the way, did you know, I lost a friend over this one I'm about to tell you. So JFK, oh, I keep saying that, RFK tweets out about he wants to take fluoride out of the water. I'm like, fluoride out of the water? This is fucking crazy. And then Alex Tabarik, you know who he is, right? You know, Tyler Cowen's partner, the Mars Revolution,

tweets out this very reputable study of studies, which indicates that, you know, actually, we don't have sufficient data on the effects of low levels of fluoride in the water. And as a matter of fact, at slightly higher levels, we know that it's harmful. And we didn't know this in 1960 or whatever it was. So actually, i had to say well if if this study is reliable of course not if i had known this if you told me we don't have

sufficient data to tell whether this low level of fluoride is safe for my kids of course i would never tell you put it in the water i'd say put it in the water after you find out i can send it to you so i sent this to one of my friends and they fucking freaked out because I'm taking, you know, and I said, listen, nobody hates RFK more than me. Nobody hates conspiracy theories more than me. Nobody has less, nobody more than me is any

of those things. But, you know, it wouldn't be the first time that there was a chemical that we all thought was perfectly safe and, yeah, okay, so the John Birch Society also said it. That's an argument? Like, that's not an argument that this is true or false. And we got into it, and I lost a friend over this.

Who? I can't tell you who it is. Well, yeah, I lost a friend over something similarly ridiculous. So anyway, you should take a look at that. You can find it in two seconds. It's an Alex Tabarik's Twitter feed. Okay, yeah. I trust Alex on these things. I didn't know the Florida thing was so controversial. So yeah, I'll keep an open mind and not find it in two seconds it's an alex tabarks twitter feed okay yeah really i trust alex on on these things i didn't know i didn't know the florida thing was so controversial so yeah i'll

keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions just because rfk said it too i i feel the same way about them as you do and and apparently in europe they don't put it in the water well have you seen the english you know and we have it in toothpaste. So that should be, we don't. And how many of us even drink water from the tap anymore? Right. So there's so many reasons you might say not to do it anyway. We're data driven people. All right, listen, you are, I was so excited that you agreed to do our show the day after the election. You're one of, I really admire you. Everybody should get your sub stack

because you're doing very worthwhile thinking on behalf of the human race. And it's the truth. He has original things to say all the time. And you never know. This is the highest compliment. Whatever the issue is, I never know, except maybe on Israel, which way Richard and Ania is going to come out.

I have to read him to know where he's going to go. And even on Israel, he'll have nuances. It'll be tough to get him to take the anti-Israel position, I believe. Are you, do you believe Trump overall is the better choice for Israel? Or there again, you say? Richard, no question about it. I have an article called How Trump Proved the Experts Wrong on Israel. I go into sort of the Abram Accords and all that.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's never been a better example of the Biden administration's incompetence, in my opinion, than the way they tried to negotiate for Hamas to release the hostages while at the same time forcing Israel to withhold its military pressure.

I mean, any fourth grader could have told you. Yeah, I worry about some aspects of Trump's foreign policy, but Israel and you look at, you know, I mean, Kushner, Kushner's family. I mean, this is something that Trump's base is pro-Israel. Trump himself is dispositionally there, people around him. Yeah, I think there's a lot of mysteries about what Trump might do on this question. If you like Israel, I think you're going to be happy the next few years. And by the way, we always have to be open to the idea because we should all – this whole problem early on might have brought this thing to a close much quicker and saved many, many lives. They're still dying. You know, I know sometimes pro-Israel people can be guilty of actually not caring about that stuff.

But on this show, it's something that we've really tried to grapple with because it's so hard to process war and the consequence to innocent people. And sometimes there has to be war, right? So this kind of half-assed showing of, you know, negotiating without leverage, negotiating while taking the leverage away that the biden administration forced on israel i i think a lot of people may have died because of that

yeah i think you're right and there was there was even a report that senwar was basically sending letters to other people in hamas telling them that you know the pressure coming from the biden administration was a reason not to negotiate not to make a deal yeah i mean they you mean, they, you know, they have, he said, we have them where we want them. That's what he said. We have them. The strategy, the Western compassion is the strategy, right? They have a strategy and it depends on them hiding behind enough civilians that you pressure Israel and Israel can't, can't do anything. And if you don't play along with that strategy, ironically, it actually helps you

because then what's the point? Then they see they have to get real. Yeah. All right, sir. As always, a pleasure. I'm gonna let you go. Richard Hernania, everybody. Good night.

Good night.