The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 380. A Resurgence of Vision | Vivek Ramaswamy

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger for depth in political discussion, the dire need for a renewed American vision, and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers. Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur, author, and political activist. Vivek has been making headlines since announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, running on a platform in part to dismantle the expansive and corrupt bureaucracy that has seeped into nearly all facets of American government. Prior to this, Ramaswamy was the founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. Leaving in 2021, he published “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.” In 2022, he co-founded Strive Asset Management with Anson Frericks, which focuses on an alternative to the now-pushed ESG investment framework. That same year Ramaswamy published “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” and has since been deemed one of the “Intellectual Godfathers of the anti-woke movement.”  - Links - For Vivek Ramaswamy: For more information on Vivek’s campaign:  https://www.vivek2024.com/  

Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I'm speaking to author, entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate, the Vake Ramaswami, we discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger in the general population for depth in political discussion, the dire need, the necessity for a renewed American vision and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers. All right, Mr. Ramaswamy. We said about four months ago, which was the last time we talked that we would talk in about four months. And here it is.

I was very interested after contemplating our last conversation in staying in touch with you, at least in part, to get more insight into what it's actually like to be on the campaign trail. And so now you've been hard at it. How long it's got to be? How long have you actually been campaigning now? Well, it was last week of February that we began. So it's been just a little bit over four months,

but close to five months. Right, right. So what have you, what have you learned? Well, one of the things I've learned is actually one of the more surprising expectations is that the political consultant class at the start of this campaign had a concern about my style that I think they still continue to have today, which is the advice they give me is to dumb it down, that this is no longer the era of writing books, as you know. I mean, you've written more prolifically than I have, but the

last few years have been in a stage of life where I've been writing books, examining issues with depth. I think the threats to liberty are complex and I've been explaining them. And so when they said is, when you need to get used to the political mindset, people don't have that kind of attention span. They need to be distilled into bullet points, dumb it down when you need to, or nobody's going to listen to you. What I have found is that I have been at my worst when I'm doing that, and I've been at my best when I'm more or less ignoring that advice.

And that's less about me, Dr. Peterson. That's actually deeply encouraging about the voter base in this country. I'm talking to voters that go beyond the traditional Republican primary base, but everything that I'm saying here applies to the traditional Republican primary base as well. I think that our voters today are hungry for death actually in a way that they may have never been. And why do I say they may have never been? Well, I mean, these political consultants are getting their conventional wisdom from somewhere. I assume it's from past experience and not just raw stupidity. They must be judging from prior errors. And at least today, you put your finger on two things

that I think are of crucial importance. One of the things we talked about the last time, you said that you weren't going to have someone else write your speeches. You said you weren't going to use a teleprompter. You were going to say what you thought. Now this is what I've watched happen to a number of people that I know quite well. They get, they lack confidence in their own ability and their own capacity to judge the political context. And they hire political consultants. And the political consultants claim to be political consultants. And the political consultants claim to be political consultants. But my sense with

political consultants is that they're like money managers. If they could manage money, they'd be rich. And if political consultants knew anything about politics, they'd be running themselves. And they always do this say the same thing. They say just what you said, which is, well, people aren't very bright. They don't have a very long attention span. You have to dumb it down, which shows you exactly what they think of people. And it makes it to just exactly who they want to dumb down for.

Like, it might be for the people, but it might be for them. And it's canned advice. And then you said, you know, that you found when you did that, that that's when you went to stray, and you fell off course, and that's what I've seen happen to the other people I've watched do this, is, you know, I don't dumb what I say down ever, and people watch it online, and lots of people say, well, you know, I had to listen to this two or three times,

and I had to look up some of the words, but I'm pretty thrilled that I'm not being talked down to, and I learned something. And so I'm pretty thrilled that I'm not being talked down to, and I learned something. And so I think all of that's a lie. I think it's mendacious. And I also think this is more situational that it's a hangover from the television era, because television, yeah, right, right, because you had television-produced fragmented attention

because you could only get a 30-second sound bite and you couldn't assume that your audience was following you, but that's not true online and not true in the podcasts. So that's interesting. That's actually a great point is that in a certain sense, it's easy to just blame the political consultants, but they may be playing to the medium of communication. Yeah, yeah. So, so they produce 30 second TV ads. That is what they do. Literally, you have to say in 30 seconds. And the final one of those 30 seconds has to be paid for by, you know, XYZ.

So that is already where they begin. And even TV hits that are unpaid ads, and we haven't been doing very much TV paid ads at all. One of the things I'm learning is that actually is probably certainly at this stage of the campaign a horrendous waste of money. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it doesn't make any sense, but even the three, four minute TV hits, it's a bastardized form of the truth.

And I do think especially in this moment we live in, the threats to liberty are complex. They do not present themselves in one bad guy and one good guy. In fact, I think one of the mistakes that the Republican Party makes, and I see this when I go to party events in particular, there will be a lot of signs that will say fire Biden, and then the pledge that the Republican party has asked people to sign is the call the beat to to make it out of the debate stage, which I will sign as a condition for going on the debate stage, but it's called the beat Biden pledge. And it's so reductionist, right? Like, you know, the entire party apparatus is focused on one man.

Not because I have any great feelings about this man. I don't think it's an awful president, but the deeper point is he's barely the president. It's a managerial class that's actually pulling the strings and we can get into the substance of that, but that gets back to the reductionist form on TV or if the political consultants are giving you the advice and you see this just listen to the other candidates

in this race. It's almost as though they're, as they tell them to do, stay on message. And that message is how we defeat Joe Biden and the radical Biden agenda, as though these were words uttered by the same carbon copy printer that was served up to all of the candidates. I think in some literal sense was the same carbon copy that was served up to all the candidates. But then, you know, the, but the good news is you might think, you know, in a less optimistic version of the world, that the politicians speaking like this has a dumbing down effect on the people. And what I see, and I think this is encouraging, certainly on the ground events that we're doing.

Now, are these millions of people now, but these are maybe a few hundred or a big event, a few thousand people at a time and at a small event maybe 50. In roomfuls of that size, people aren't falling for it, right? Their eyes will glaze over, and then the questions I get from the grassroots audience base,

I mean, they're like the questions I get from you, very different from what I would get on cable television on a given night of the week. And so this is deeply encouraging that I think years, I think the last decade of the public knowing that they have been lied to, systematically lied to by the legacy media. I think has inculcated a deep sense of curiosity, intellectual curiosity, skepticism. You know, I think the mainstream media will now complain that that creates conspiracy theories. Many of these conspiracy theories end up being correct.

Some of them may not be correct, but they're still the right spirit of being skeptical of what you're fed such that individual people across this country, college degree or not are asking some of the most intelligent questions I've heard. More intelligent questions about central bank digital currencies than I will get from my former colleagues on Wall Street. More detailed questions about the relationship between the US and the UN, that I might get in a standard foreign policy briefing from somebody who's been giving those briefings

for 30 years. And so I think this is actually deeply encouraging, actually, to say that part of the reason, as I often say, if you give a people who are sheep, a government behaves like wolves. Well, when those people are not behaving like sheep anymore, when they're questioning what, not only their government, but their media and their political class are feeding them, this is a unique moment. And this is where I've, I've maybe, I wouldn't say shifted the messaging, I've discovered the core messaging of this campaign in the last three to four months, kind of what

was in my heart at the start. I'm now able to articulate. We live in a 1776 moment. That's what I think. It's like a moment of the American revolution. That's what I feel in the air. Well, the other thing that's worth thinking about on the television front is that you don't want to underestimate the degree to which network TV and legacy media as such is really entertainment. And so, part of the, well, that's exactly it. So, you know, so that it's politics is spectacle and part of what you're being called upon to act out as a legacy media politician is the, is politician as actor, right? You should be playing the part of the politician and television because it's primarily an entertainment medium demands that.

But that doesn't mean that that's what the public wants on the political front. And I think, you know, you talked about this being a 1776 moment. I know Lincoln wasn't around in 1776, but people used to listen to Abraham Lincoln delivered two-hour speeches, right? And they'd be standing there in the hot sun while he was orating. And one of the things I've also really noticed to vacant,

this is interesting, very few people buy books. It's a luxury market towards an elite market. But the audio book industry has exploded and lots and lots of people listen to long-form podcasts. And they're not necessarily people who read. But it also looks to me, and this could easily be the case, that maybe 10 or 20 times as many people can listen to complex ideas as can read them. And so I think so. Well, it might be the case.

We don't know, right? Because it's a technological revolution. These long-form podcasts. And we don't really know what the significance of it is. Although we do know that the most popular journalist in the world, and that's definitely Joe Rogan, is a long-form podcaster and his podcast regularly run three hours. So obviously people don't have a short attention span. You know, I think that there's a couple interesting hypotheses of what's going on here.

One is there might just be a real scientific understanding that this has revealed, which is everyone might have. I think I have, you know, if this is true for everyone, it's definitely going to be true of me. Maybe a low level dyslexia, right? Dyslexia might not be a, just like a condition for just a scarce few people, that there's something about the way that our eyes process information that's just a little bit behind where most people are on where their ears process information.

But I think that there's something deeper going on in our moment. And I think it's not a coincidence that we see the rise of this podcasting form at a moment in our history when there's a demand for it and why is there demand for it? I think there is a deep hunger for human connectivity, direct, disintermediated, human-human connectivity. And the reason I say, I think that's closer to the flame is that I see an excitement, Dr. Peterson, when I'm going to these events, I mean, I was in whatever, a few days ago, in a barn, in a small town of just a couple hundred people. There were a couple hundred people in the barn. Literally, it was as though everybody in the town came to the meeting that we were having in that barn.

And I think it's because we live in a moment where people are starved. We talked about this last time for purpose and meaning and identity, but people are also starved for a disintermediated relationship with their fellow citizens and human beings. And so there's something about hearing the voice, especially if it's the voice of the person who actually wrote it, right? So I think that's why the audience are more successful than the actual author. It's also the case with the podcasts that they're unscripted. And so, yes, I think there's a great difference in listening, even, and this might make, this might be one of the ways that a long-form podcast actually has an advantage over a book.

I think you can think more deeply in a book, but I also think it's easier to deceive people because you can craft your lies in a book, But it's very difficult to craft your lies in a spontaneous conversation, right? You get falseness of tone, you get awkwardness of body posture, you can tell when people are delivering a sound bite. You know, and I think part of the reason that people like Rogan and Lex Friedman is a good example too, Friedman is that the reason that they're so popular is because they are genuine. The same thing is true with Russell Brand. You know, I mean, he's got more of a trickster, Stick, and he's a comedian.

But of course, Rogan was a comedian too. But it's, and that is a form of disintermediated interaction. And I do think that it's, and it's the antithesis of the crafted Hillary Clinton political class message. It's part of the reason that Donald Trump was also successful. And it is something that makes itself available to people like you. And Kennedy has been doing this very effectively too, who are using the new media.

Peter Paulie of the conservative leader in Canada has also done a very good job of that. It's direct to voter communication. And I think your comments that the time is calling for that because people are tired of being manipulated by large, what gigantic enterprises, corporate or government alike, they want to see the real thing and they want to hear it because they can tell if it's real then, you know, and Trump definitely capitalized on that, you know, he didn't use the podcast format, although'll use Twitter quite effectively, but he kept it in that 2016 he didn't.

He did. Yeah. In 2016 he did. Yes. And, you know, I think even large scale rallies of being there in person, there's, you know, in some ways, I would say that if I go to go up the chain, I would say there's no substitute for being in person live in a room

with even no screens or algorithms in the air between us, with a large group of people who are your direct consumers of your message. And that's what the part of this campaign I'm enjoying the most. Next best to that are actual unscripted long form conversations where you're not reading speeches into a teleprompter, it's not a three minute hit, you know, context like the conversation we're having now. And I've invested more time in that just because I hope it's certainly effective as a campaign. We'll find out that part later. But I am rejuvenated as the best version of myself when I'm actually able to speak truth without doing it in some sort of artificially constrained format.

Then you go to actually TV hits, which are a true bastardization of reality. Then you go to the ultimate bastardization, which is a 32nd straight to camera TV ad, which is where the most money will actually get spent on this campaign. One of the things I've learned is I don't yet have a strong view on what the political snakes and ladders will be on mapping a path to victory, but actually that might just be the path to victory. And I'm going to stick to that. And that's one of the things I've learned in this campaign.

I've reviewed the empirical literature looking at campaign spending and its relationship to campaign success. And as far as I can tell, there's no relationship at all. I think part of what all of this happens. Well, I also think what happens is that's especially true for incumbents, by the way, there's a small effect of advertising spending for challengers, but it's not very big, and it certainly doesn't justify the magnitude of spending. And I think part of what's also happened to the political consultant class is that Democrat and Republican like,

they've been in bed with the political advertisers and the big media corporations for like six decades. And so the political consultants tell you to craft your campaign in a manner that will maximize your spending in the legacy media format. But there's no evidence that that works, by the way. So, but that's, but that's the pipeline. It's actually fascinating, you say that because maybe you've studied that empirical literature

more than I have. Here's what I will tell you in the last election cycle of a Republican primary and then this one as well. So in 2015, around this time, you could look back at the data in the second half of 2015. How much was each candidate spending per percentage point they had in the polls? So for Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and a bunch of these other guys last time around, it was millions of dollars per percentage point in the polls. For Donald Trump, it was in the tens of thousands, the thousands of

dollars is what we're talking about in terms of paid advertising per percentage point. Now we look at it this time around and I find this encouraging suggest to me, we're on the right track, we're again, you look at the candidates in this race, if you count their super pack of dollars that are spending money on ads, millions of dollars per percentage point in the polls. For me, it's again in the tens of thousands. We're not spending boat loads of money, barely any money on paid ads on TV or otherwise. And I think at this stage of a race, it does say something about, you know, you're on

the product market fit, regardless of whether or not you're using the money to prop it up, I do think there will come a point as a realistic matter at some point in this race. And it did for Trump last time around as well. It's just, you know, part of the, part of the pill you have to swallow is just the sheer scale of reaching still the many people in this country who don't access YouTube or long long form podcasts that still are viewing the linear medium of television. And it is just skewed to be an older voter base that yes, that is going to be there's going to be a time and place for that in this campaign.

But that's almost by the time you get there, you've already won if you're going in the right order. And so that's the way I'm viewing this too is at some point we're going to need the mega money to probably pipe this all the way through. But I'm pushing that as far out down the line as we can. And I am more confident than ever that actually an outsider like me, me in particular in this race, can absolutely defeat the odds and win an election just as Donald Trump did last time around. And it says as much about the improved pipes that we have, thanks to new media that disintermediates television, but it says something even deeper,

Dr. Peterson, about the people. The people can tell when they're being lied to. And I think that we live in this moment where the government, where the media, where the establishment believes that the people can't handle the truth. It's like Jack Nicholson at the end of the, a few good men, right? You can't handle the truth. I think the people live in a moment today, and it's the voice that I'm representing on their behalf,

on our behalf, to say that, you know what? We the people can handle the truth about COVID, about the Nashville shooter manifesto, about the Hunter Biden laptop story, about what really happened on January 6th, about what really happened over the course of the last year of vaccine mandate policies. We can handle the truth. Sometimes it's ugly, but just give us the truth. And I think that that's something that if a good thing has happened over the last 10 years through the Trump administration and otherwise. And I think that that's something that if a good thing has happened over the last 10 years

through the Trump administration and otherwise, I think we have a populace, a population that was trained on knowing that they have been lied to, which means that they are badly starved, hungry for somebody, human being, a medium, etc., where they know they're at least able to get the truth or be able to tell the difference if they're being lied to or not. And I think that is a powerful moment that we live in. I mean, how special it is to be alive in a moment like this. It's like if you were alive in 1775 or the spring of 1776, you'd have a lot of reasons

to be upset about a tyrannical government. But what did they do back then? It was a special time, a unique time to be upset about a tyrannical government. But what did they do back then? There was a special time, a unique time to be alive. I think we're in one of those moments where it is actually a pretty unique time to be alive before willing to open our eyes and see it that way. And then when you have a bunch of other politicians who preach about the virtues of incremental reform, or I'm going to reform X, Y, or Z. I almost don't use the word reform anymore. I think the real choice in this election, in this moment,

is do you want reform, or do you want revolution? And I stand on the side of revolution, actually. I stand on the side of revolution actually. I stand on the side of the American revolution. I'm not talking about violence or anything like this, but I'm talking about a revolution of those 1776 ideals, a revival of the American revolution itself. And in some ways, I'm far more optimistic today. Ironically, you would have thought it might have gone the other direction. I would have thought it would have gone the other direction. I'm actually more optimistic today than when I began in late February, then you and I spoke this March, because I believe that actually we absolutely are in a revolutionary moment.

There's electricity in the air. It is a special time to be alive. And if we're able to awaken the positive instincts that come out of that, boy, do I think good things are going to happen in the next 18 months. And this election is just going to be one of them. Well, obviously, the fact that Kennedy's candidacy is quite popular as well as Trump's is an indication that that revolutionary fervor is active, because Kennedy strikes me as as much of a bull in the China shop on the Democrat front,

as Trump was on the Republican front. And you, I've been following you regularly on Twitter and watching how you've been being treated in the press, and I want to get back to that at some point. But also, and it's made me curious too, you've talked a fair bit about your skepticism about, let's say, the deep state, about the FBI in particular, and you've put forward some relatively radical propositions, and you just said that you feel that there's a kind of revolutionary

fervor in the air, which in some ways is a strange thing for a conservative to say, for a Republican to say it. I know you're more on the libertarian end if I hopefully not putting words in your mouth. But what do you think it is that you're bringing to the table that's in that revolutionary spirit? And how do you defend yourself? Do you think against the danger that radical change in and of itself, even if it's hypothetically in the proper direction, can cause its own brand of trouble, doubt

about fundamental institutions and that sort of thing. What do you think is revolutionary about your approach and how do you think you can protect yourself against the potential accesses of the necessity for relatively radical change? I think that there are a couple of unique attributes here for me. One is it does take somebody who comes in as an outsider. You cannot be beholden to the existing system. One of the things that actually constrains the revolutionary impulse, and you could argue whether this is good or bad or neutral, but it's just a fact is the influence of large donors in the Republican Party. There is a version of the world in which they,

I mean, there's an institutionalized function that large donors play, and it's to sort of tame candidates to get them back on a few set of accepted messages that then become eventually the agenda they use to govern. You can argue that there is a conservative function. They're conserving the status quo in a way that some people may argue is good. I think that there are positives and negatives, but I think the negatives outweigh the positives

greatly in the current moment. For whatever it's good, you could debate whether this is good or bad. I am not constrained by that. I'm totally unconstrained by that because I'm not playing the mega super packed puppet game. I am independent. I have put now more than last time that we spoke. I've put over 15 million dollars of my own harder money into this campaign. And we have 70,000 plus small dollar donors. The online fundraising is now, you know, just digital small dollar fundraising is now hit a snowball effect where it's just continuing to accelerate day by day. That's what's lifting this campaign up. And so that's one of the constraints that doesn't apply to me. That

much, I think, was also true largely of Trump. I think it takes a unique combination, though, because where Trump got tripped up with drain in the swamp, gutting the deep state, is what the same members of that managerial class told him when he got into office. They told him lies, but lies that he was forced to believe because he didn't have independent knowledge to know any better, which is that you can't fire civil servants without, without running a foul of the civil service protections, which are these extensive laws designed to protect individual bureaucrats from firing by the US president. Trump's instincts were in the right place. I actually think he was an excellent president in this regard, but he was not able

to implement his own agenda. He was able to expose the problem because the people around him told him a bunch of lies. Why are they lies? Well, my suggestion is read the law. Just those civil service protections, to use one example among hundreds, those civil service protections protect against individual employee firings. They do not apply to mass layoffs on their own terms. The law just doesn't apply to mass layoffs. Mass layoffs are absolutely what I am bringing to the DC bureaucracy. I have said that I will lay off over 75% of the federal employee bureaucrat head count by the end of the first term, 50% by the end of the first year. And we've already offered unprecedented detail on exactly how we will do it, on which of the remaining minority employees in the FBI, minority number of employees, will move to the US marshals or to the Drug Enforcement Agency or to the Financial

Crimes Enforcement Network, which small sliver of the US Department of Education will move to the US Department of Labor so that we neither need an FBI nor a Department of Education. And we can get into those details, but you're asking about a question of personal attribute. And I think that the personal attribute that really matters here is that we need a U.S. president that is at once an outsider to that system, uncaptured, unbeholded by the donor class and the managerial class, but at the same time who has a deep, first personal, bone deep understanding of how to actually get that job done and a deep understanding of the laws and the constitution of this country. Okay.

That is what I think is actually a rare combination that I'm bringing to the table. Okay. Let me ask you about that because that's very, very complicated. So, you know, first of all, it is the case that in most large scale institutions, a small number of people do almost all the productive work, right? That's the square root law. Okay. So if you have 10,000 employees, a hundred of them are doing half the work. Now, we saw a stellar example of that in Musk's takeover of Twitter because he dispensed with about 80% of the employees and all he did was improve the company.

Now, Musk has had extensive experience doing that sort of thing with other companies and he's obviously able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now, you just made the case that you would like to do the same thing, and you also said that you had a detailed plan to do so. And so what I'm very curious about is, how is it that you are, how is it that you believe you will be able to decide

who should stay and who should go, and how is it that you've developed this detailed plan? Like what sort of, what sort of analysis have you conducted that enables you to determine what should be shrunk and how and to know that that's going to cause beneficial rather than damaging consequences? So, there's something we have going for us here is that I don't have to start in a vacuum. There is this thing we call the US Constitution already proven time tested to be the best operating manual for a nation

and preserving liberty and human history. That's certainly my view. Well, it turns out that much of the excess we have seen came from running a foul of that operating document. So many of the administrative agencies that were created were created in a manner that Congress actually never gave those agencies the power to wield the power that they do. The Supreme Court has in the last two years already begun to recognize that West Virginia versus EPA, a case where the Supreme Court held that the EPA's regulation, climate focused regulations on the coal industry were unconstitutional because we, the people, never gave the government that authority. And Congress in turn never gave that authority to this three-letter agency, which nonetheless,

ran afoul. Well, if those EPA regulations are unconstitutional, then it turns out most of the federal regulations today are also unconstitutional. Turns out most of the employees implementing those regulations are actually unnecessary. So in many ways, I don't think we have to start in some first principles whiteboard of a vacuum and say, how are we going to design and draw this up? That would be a fatal conceit. I think that would be hubris.

I think designed for failure to think that one man, Elon Musk or myself or anybody else, is just not going to happen. It's destined for failure. But if you're following a time-tested framework for the operating manual for this nation built, an operating manual built in the shadow of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest mission statement for a free society in human history, well, then I think we actually are doing nothing more than implementing that, which is already time-tested and true. So, I don't want to short sell myself here. I mean, I have, I'm 37 years old, I've built multiple multi billion dollar companies.

I do understand that if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't work for you. I understand what merit a credit hiring looks like. You work for them. You're in some ways they're slave because you're responsible for what they do without any authority to change it. So I understand these principles, but it's not that experience base, not Donald Trump's, not musk's, not mine that could be sufficient

to get this right at the level of the nation. It is actually a firm understanding and commitment to the constitution itself. And that brings me back to that rare combination. You can't rely on your advisors for that. That is not a substitute for San Okam bring an executive experience and then I'm gonna ask my advisors how it's done within this legal framework and ask the lawyers. And I think that's the difference between me and Trump and I think that'd be the difference between me or someone like an Elon Musk or anybody else who is great as a business builder and is a good alternative to the professional political class doing this in Washington DC. But I think it requires a deep intellectual, historical, principled understanding passion

for and commitment to that constitution to see that through, but not doing it as somebody who's coming in as just a law professor or a lawyer, they're not going to have the skill set to actually the fortitude to cut and see that through. And that explains why we haven't had leaders to that effect yet, because that is a rare combination. Those skill sets aren't supposed to go together, right? These are different skill sets for easy. Why do they go together in your case?

So, so I hope they do. I mean, but why do they, why do they go together in your case? So, so, I hope they do. I mean, but why do you call, why do you think they do? What, what is it about your background and your interests that make it reasonable for you to make the claim that you exist at that intersection between like legal prowess, let's say, and, and, and, and, and wisdom in relationship to the constitution and that entrepreneurial bent. What do you have on that front that say Trump doesn't have? Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is I'm not going to claim to be some messiah coming from on high with exactly the prescription, but what called me into this race. I mean, when you and I first started getting to know each other, I, you were, I would

have said we were both nuts if we were thinking about me running for U.S. President. I was driving change in the private sector. I started strive. I was writing books. That was my calling. So the thing that pulled me in, Dr. Peterson, is that I think I am the best among the lot we have now to actually bring that combination to the White House at a moment where we require it to actually reform that

administrative state to gut and bring a revolution to that administrative state that we need a unique combination to actually achieve because I watched where Trump fell short, I watched where Trump excelled above his lot. And so that pulled me in. So I will preface everything I'm saying by saying that I'm not going to tell you that I am some Messiah and here I have arrived, okay far from it. But I do think I'm a product of my experiences. So first of all, I had the privilege of not growing up in money.

I had the privilege of actually having to work for what I've achieved. I'm grateful for that. I did not want to be burdened as many of my peers at places like Harvard and Yale were burdened. And I knew that it's a burden by the burden of inheritance or by the burden of not having the space to actually achieve and ordain for myself

what I would in my career. So I started as a scientist. I was molecular biologist in the lab and my senior thesis all the way through college. I ended up getting into the world of biotech investing, the commercial side of my brain, right? Finding opportunity where others would not. That led me to really enjoy, I'm grateful for this more than boastful of it, just strictly grateful that I was able to find this opportunity to earn

extraordinary success for myself by my mid to late 20s. I was in law school simultaneously as I was making tens of millions of dollars as a hedge fund investor by spotting opportunity and that said, I'm going to take this to the next level. I'm going to start an entire business on finding opportunities to develop medicines that others didn't and built a multi billion dollar company from scratch. And I think that's different than coming in and just managing and being appointed, rising the managerial length ranks of a big corporation, sitting on a bunch of boards and then plopping yourself into CEO when some guy retires at the age of 70, I built that company from scratch.

And so that's one skill set. But actually it was midway through my career at the hedge fund, where I first started that I also have this weird native itch to study law and political philosophy. I'd been so scientific that I actually told my bosses at the hedge fund. I said, listen, I'm going to take three years off. I'm going to go to law school. I'm actually going to, I'm finding reading things in my spare time that I would rather do in a more structured setting. Now, I discovered something important there, which is if you're following your passion, good things tend to happen. They said, just keep your job. They gave me far

more autonomy on the job. They said, go manage this portfolio yourself and do it from New Haven if you want to. I said, great, we have a deal. And that's what I did. But I, for me, it's less that I have a skill set more than I have had for the last 15 years, a dual passion that has given me experiences both akin to that of many legal academics, which shows up in several of my books, which have been quoted in appellate court opinions in the last three years. But my principal day job has still been as an entrepreneur building enterprises, hiring and firing people according to me. Right.

Right. And so you're at the intersection of three relatively unique domains of achievement. So you, one on the entrepreneurial front, one on the scientific front and one on the legal front. And so that is, you know, each of those levels of accomplishment are relatively rare. And the intersection is relatively staggeringly rare, let's say. How was it, do you think, and why did your interest turn from the scientific to the legal, and what aspects of the legal in particular compelled you, and then how did that transmute into a political interest?

Well, I mean, the political interest really is barely an interest at all. I feel like this is a sense of duty that pulled me into this political journey. But all the way through the legal doorstep of it, I guess I'm a person that reasons through principles. Okay, I think that science is actually founded on principles that are iteratively weak hone and we have an approximation of the actual truth of the world. But the scientific method driven by hypothesis driven testing, as opposed to just purely deductive, oh, I observe something and then I decide that that's the state of the world.

That's not the way the scientific method works. It's a deeply principled understanding and approximation of the world, right? You form a hypothesis and then you test that hypothesis. You don't just sit and deductively observe the whole time. That's actually not, that's just pure empiricism. That's not the scientific method. And so there's something about that that spoke to me. And I think that was probably why when I started my first major

business, Reuven, which was a scientifically founded company. I mean, I personally oversaw the development of five medicines which R FDA approved today. But the business building piece of it was, the first thing I did was with the day one employees. We sat in a room for about six hours and came up with our first draft of what ended up being 20 business principles. Here are the principles on which the company would run. Value creation in the external world is a sole goal. Everything that happens in these four walls is a means to the end of what happens in the external world.

Whatever is necessary is always possible. We went through several iterations of that. So for me, I think it's just the way that I think in process information. And then that is, I think part of what drew me in my interest in the law and in the ordering. I think we're a nation deeply built foundationally on the rule of law, not the whims of man. And that's what speaks to me about much of the U.S. Constitution, about the United States of America. And so delving deep into what those principles were,

became just a passion of mine. It was a side hobby. I mean, the things I was reading in my spare time in my mid 20s, well, you know, my hedge fund, you know, investor, and then, you know, before my career as an entrepreneur, then it's kind of a weird thing for a guy to do in his mid 20s and spend my weekends that

way. But that's what helped me discover that I have this separate passion that drew me then to go to Yale for a few years. But it's part of what pulled me back even out of my business career. I ran my business in a way that was tethered to those business principles. I think it's part of what allowed me to have success as an entrepreneur. But even when I felt like, okay, I've developed a drug among other things for prostate cancer, now there's this cultural cancer that nobody else is working on.

There are other people working on biological cancer. Nobody was working back in 2020 on the cultural cancer that I believed I had identified, which was the mixture of this wakism with the forces of capitalism back in 2020 when I think this was really still not as well understood as it is today, to say that I'm going to step aside from my job as a biotech CEO to focus on this cultural cancer, but against the backdrop of a legal framework where it feels intuitively like something's gone wrong. It's not obvious that somebody's prosecuting this as a legal violation, but what are the principles enshrined in that law that are violated by what we're actually seeing?

So that's what drew me in. And then one thing, you know, that led me to the doorstep of this. You were interested in science as an investigative process. And then when you set up a business, you started to understand that you needed to develop a set of guidelines that were essentially enabling principles, because that's a good way of thinking about principles or rules, rather than as restrictions as enabling principles. And that attracted your attention to the idea of enabling principles as such. You got deeper into that, particularly on the constitutional front, that pulled you into the legal domain.

And now your claim is that you think that you and your team think that you can use your knowledge of those enabling principles, especially buttressed by your corporate and entrepreneurial experience as a scalpel and a tool of discriminating judgment to what would you say, recreate, shrink back, and reestablish the managerial state as something more akin to what was envisioned in the Constitution. That's the, that's the gist of the argument. That's exactly right. And I think that puts me together in a position to say, okay, now it's just intuitively, there's a lot there, right?

So let's just sort of make this intuitive. What would George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton and James Madison say, if they were walking the modern American terrain, if they were walking around in Washington, DC on a given day, what would they say? Would they be pleased? Would they be proud? Would they be appalled? I think today in many respects, they would be appalled by what they see. And I think

their intuitive understanding that intuition is also part of what I'm reviving here because they're the guys who enshrined that intuition in the form of principles that are in a document known as our US Constitution today. And so for me, I think I share those intuitions. There's the intuitive side of me too, but my skill set is both as an entrepreneur and as somebody who understands principles, including legal principles. And those things don't usually go together.

Now, we haven't talked about all the things that I'm awful at, okay? My artistic talents are sparse. I think that there are, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. But I do think that the unique coincidence of those talents is something that it so happens this moment calls for when we think about who we actually need in the White House to take us to the next level. And I think there's something encouraging about the moment we live in and the challenges we face. It's not Congress. It's driving the administrative state, and that's where my focus is as well, because I think that's where the skill set will be most useful. Well, you could see that Trump was attractive to people because of his entrepreneurial

background and the fact that he was an outsider and the, and his appeal to people because of his entrepreneurial background and the fact that he was an outsider and his appeal to people's sense that things had developed at the managerial state level far too far and that that needed to be disrupted. But Trump was lacking arguably in political experience and potentially an administrative skill, although he had been at the head of multiple successful enterprises, and so obviously had some administrative skill. I think people are attracted to DeSantis, in part, because he has that toughness of temperament that's characteristic of Trump,

but has a better track record in terms of administrative ability. And your claim is that you have an interesting intersection of all those abilities, right? There's an entrepreneurial ability. There's an administrative ability, but then there's also that legal depth in relationship to your understanding of constitutional principles that gives you

an additional edge. So let me, okay, so let me ask you something about temptation, because you know, I've watched lots of things. And there's one more dimension to this. There's just one more dimension to this that I think is important, as I was hearing you summarize this.

And I just wanted to pause because I think it might actually be the most important of all, is I do think there is a fundamental difference between either running an enterprise or even running a state as a governor that is a requirement of certainly the US president in the moment we live in today is I think an ability to articulate and deeply believe in a vision of what it means to be a citizen of this nation. So take everything you laid out, yes, I think you summarized it beautifully, but I think

that that is in some ways insufficient. It's a little bit still too small, because I think that's still like a resume test. And we all are, Trump dissentist myself, and we're in the top three now in the Republican national polling, but the others too, I would put in the same category interviewing for a job with the American public. So, you know, I feel like I'm in a job interview with the American public. So are the others. We should treat it that way and not take the public for granted.

So that's why I'm treating this like an interview. But I think there's a, there's a third element that goes beyond just that descriptive and interestingly detailed account that you and I just went through is this more foundational ability to articulate and believe in a vision of where we are going. And I think this is a big difference for me and this is a generational difference. I think Dr. Peterson, I think this is what is allowing us to reach young people in this campaign in an unprecedented way for the Republican Party.

Part of that's where you're using podcasts, but part of that is just the message is that young people are, as you and I have talked about last time, hungry for a cause, hungry for direction and purpose. And what I see in the rest of the Republican Party, I'm not going to speak about that any other field here, of the Republican Party, I'm not going to speak about any other field here, but the Republican field, what I see is a group of people who are habitually running from something. I am in this race to start leading us to something, offering an actual affirmative vision

of our own. And I think we badly require that in this moment in our national history. So to take everything we talked about, the competence, the diverse skill set from being enterprising, to having deep knowledge of the law, on actually the unpressing in a detail, we've laid out on how to reorganize and gut the administrative state, all of that. But I think the missing fuel that will allow me to see that through, but also revive a missing national identity is having a clear answer to the question of what it means to be an American. We talk about the American

revolution. What were those ideals of the American revolution? How do we revive them in the present? And I think we're seeing that in some ways where, look, to get in the Republican debate stage, one of the requirements was 40,000 unique donors, right? The former vice president of the US just met that requirement. I'm told in the last, you know, 24 hours. We're at over 70,000 unique donors. I've never had a political donor in my life. We didn't begin this campaign with any donor lists. But the beauty of this is 40% of those donors are first time ever donors to the GOP in any form, and most of them are relatively young, actually.

So that says something about one of the missing gaps. When I think the most important thing that I want to be saying that I did for this country when I leave office in January of 2033, that's eight years from now. My older son won't even be in high school yet. Probably the most important thing I want to say is that we revived national pride in my two sons and their generation. And I think it does take someone probably of a different generation. I'm the youngest person ever to run for president in a major political party, but not just

of a different generation, but of a different generational view that we're actually standing for an affirmative vision of our own, rather than just tearing down the vision of the other side. And so I just wanted to pause to say that because I think of all the things we talked about, that's probably the most important actually. Okay, well, I think that's a good addition. And I'll return to the issue of temptation via the root of youth, I think. So let's talk about that vision of the future. So this is gonna be a bit of a convoluted question, because I have to wander around a bit to answer it.

So I've been involved in this enterprise that's established in the UK, but has roots in Australia and Europe and the US and Canada. We're trying to formulate a positive vision of the future. And one of our principles, let's say, are suppositions, is that if your vision of the future is predicated on fear, so it's an apocalyptic vision, let's say, and you're using that fear as a means to garner power

to yourself, you're not to be trusted. And this is happening most particularly, I would say, on the climate apocalypse front. And I suspect that there are any number of existential crises awaiting us in the future, as there always are. But my sense is that if you use any given crisis as the means of instilling a demoralizing fear, and the consequence of that is that you're gathering power to yourself, you're not to be trusted as an advocate of the people, and that you should be putting forward

a positive vision. And we're trying to differentiate that and delineate it, and we would like to see cheap energy. We would like to see a multi-dimensional approach to environmental maintenance. We would like to see what would you say, a reestablished commitment to the fundamentals of the minimal necessary family. We're not very fond of corporate gigantism, but most importantly, I would say, of all those things, is that we believe that we can, that people, that we can all be offered a positive vision of the future so that we have something to strive for that's motivating and hopeful instead of being in joint decouar and destroy our own ambitions because we're something approximating a planet destroying force. Now, I know that, you know, the typical young man in grade 12 now is more likely to be conservative

than liberal. It's not true of young women. The tide is turning on the generational front. And I think it is because young people have been force fed so much apocalyptic doom that they've really had enough of it. And so you're, and I see this in your tweets and your communications too, that you're trying to outline a pause division. So, and you've laid out some of the principles. And you talk a little bit about the return to constitutional principles. But if you saw renewed America and by implication of renewed West, what would that renewal look

like? Like where would we be in five years or 10 years that's different from now? And how might you move us towards that? I think it is an ordering of our society on things that have always grounded successful flourishing societies throughout our human history. So the left, praise on this vacuum of identity with race, gender, sexuality, and then now what you just mentioned, climate. It's serial. Once the climate, farce is, and I do think that much of the agenda around it is a farce,

one that once that's revealed and untenable, just as when the COVID-19 pandemic passed, the residual climate has been filled the void. Once this farce passes and people like yourself, myself, Alex Epstein and Bjorn Lomburg and others are playing roles in exposing this, it'll be something else that fills the void. I don't know what it is, but it'll be something. Now, I think that what I see right now is lacking in a conservative movement that becomes to, of movement that becomes too, what should I say, lazy to satisfy complacent, probably complacent as the right word, with just criticizing that vision and the endless hypocrisies and the nature of how uninspiring it is and it is uninspiring.

But just criticizing it is also uninspiring. And so I want us talking more and acting more on ordering a country, a nation, a society grounded in the value of each individual, a member who is a member of a family, who is a family that is embedded in a nation with commitments to that nation. And yes, I think a revival of a belief that we are one nation under God. That doesn't mean a single religion or a single, you know, religious orthodoxy pushed from on high. In fact, I think it shouldn't be so. But broadly, individual, family, nation, God, as an affirmative alternative to race, gender,

sexuality and climate. And I think that that vision is not only more innately inspiring to young people, to all people. It is grounded in truth, right? We have distinct sources of our identity that we as lost human beings, we as lost human beings who wander in that wilderness, biblically wander in that desert. We need something to ground us. And I think that reviving the value of the individual through hard work and the creation

of what you create through hard work and the ability to be proud of that. Now, it's talking yesterday to two entrepreneurs who are themselves already young, actually, not much older than me. Multi billionaires who have are now on their next creation. I asked what motivates you. I think he didn't have an answer other than to say, I hard work, actually. I believe in hard work as an ethic and I believe in creation. That's great.

Roof, I said, I need to help, you need to, I need your help in bottling that up and I need to put that in the water across this country. But the value of hard work, the value of the family, that there is truth to having a commitment to the unit of two parents in the house with a commitment to their children first, the idea that you know what?

I will take care of my family first before I worry about the starving child in the middle of the Congo, not to say that there's something wrong with going and helping the starving child in the middle of the Congo, but to say that there's an ordering. I am a self that that means something. I work hard and create something in the world and I am proud of that. And I am an individual agent, not writing some tectonic plate of group identity, but there's only ever one you, Dr. Peterson, there's only ever one me, there's only ever one anyone. And that there's inherent value as the individuals.

The same thing I'll say is that my first commitments are to my family, the children who I brought into this world, the wife with whom I am raising those children, the parents who brought me into this world. Those are my commitments. And then around that, I have commitments as a citizen to this nation that I will go and visit the south side of Chicago, or Kensington in the middle of Philadelphia, before I go take pictures with some child in Myanmar, so I can post it on my social media account and feel better about myself. I'll get to Myanmar later. I'll get to the Congo later, but, but I'm a citizen of this nation.

And that that means something to me too. So I take care of myself throughout my own hard work and dedication. I take care of my family. I take care of my nation that I'm proud of these things that I believe that were a nation under God. And then, yes, as human beings, we are all equal in the eyes of each other because in the Christian tradition or Judeo-Christian tradition, you'll say, we're made in the image of God.

I'm raising a Hindu household. We say it's that God resides in each of us, but whatever formulation it is, that there is a higher power. And then once we've taken care of all of that, then we can get to Ethiopia or South Africa or Myanmar or wherever else one might go. But I think what we see right now is a substitution of that effect, right?

Intensely worried about the climate apocalypse or intensely worried about some fringe problem that doesn't affect your own community or your family or your nation at home, as a substitute for the actual things that in a time-tested way ground us as human beings. And so I'm so scratching the surface, but at least gives you a taste. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, you know, I've been spending a lot of time assessing the Book of Exodus, right? And part of what the book of Exodus does is lay out a psychological and social alternative to tyranny and chaos.

And chaos is the desert in the Israelite sojourn. And so you could imagine two extremes of misgovernment. One would be tyrannical order, and the other would be desert chaos. And the alternative that's put forward in that book is an alternative that the Catholics in particular have referred to as subsidiarity. And it's the notion of a hierarchical identity that's both individual and social. And it very much parallels what you're describing as the essence of identity itself. Now you see a craving for this on the left because

the leftists tend to prioritize hedonic impulse, right, as sort of the grounds of individual subjectivity. And then in response to the lack that produces, they leap to global identity solutions. And that would be a yes, a race, or maybe the, okay, but what? Limit. Exactly. The appropriate alternative to that is, I think, historically speaking, the subsidiary structure that you're laying out. So you could say, well, first and foremost, you're responsible for yourself.

You have to take care of yourself. And that's a duty and an obligation, but also a source of meaning, right? Of meaningful strides. And if you can manage that, well, then you can embed yourself within a couple. And that's another place you can derive meaning and identity. And if the two of you can organize yourselves halfway intelligently as a mutually sacrificial couple, because you're sacrificing your short-term impulses to her well-being and vice versa, and counseling each other to do the same for yourselves. Well, then maybe you can establish a family, and that's your next level of responsibility. And then maybe a community

or a business enterprise, and then maybe a town, and then maybe a city or a state, and then maybe a nation. And then you said, you know, that has to be nested under God. And that is, like, that's one of the pillars of Catholic social doctrine, one of the three pillars, that notion of subsidiarity. And I think it is the time-tested alternative to, you know, top-down tower of Babel status centralism and the absolute incoate chaos of the fragmented identity that we see unfolding in the world now. And I think that's why this message of responsibility by the way is echoing so deeply with young people, particularly with young men, because meaning is to be found in that subsidiary hierarchy of responsibility.

Right? And it's also ethical and you, you, you implied this. It's also ethical, and you implied this. It's also ethical, oddly enough, to focus your attention first on what's local to you, right? Take care of yourself first, then take care of your wife. It doesn't mean other people aren't important, but it means that you have a hierarchy of responsibility, and that you should take care of what's local and immediate before you dare or dain to presume that you're capable of doing something that's more abstract. And I know people like this.

Absolutely right. That's absolutely right. It's intuitive. It's woven into our nature as man. And I think that we are in some ways running contrary to our nature as man, which leaves a vacuum in its wake that leaves us lost like these relights were in the book of Exodus. And I think that that's where we are in our modern American landscape. And so I think that there's a, there's a, there's a not very practical component of how we revive that worldview. I think there's an attitude where the

things that I'm talking about, individual family, nation, God, these are needless to say, not novel concepts. They sound novel to some when I say them now, to many, to most. And that shows you how dislocated we are right now from even the proper ordering of a society. You don't have to take a Judeo-Christian worldview, take Aristotle. He's at the same thing, basically.

You go to the Hindu scriptures in ancient India, they say the same thing. Basically, you go to the Hindu scriptures in ancient India, they say the same thing, right? So this is time-tested transnational, trans-historical stuff. Okay, truths. Now, the reality is I think that there's a sort of squeamishness, prudishness that make us feel in the modern American moment like we're harkening back to something. Those are antiquated values. They're not cool. They're not the stuff of progress.

I think that's a uniquely postmodern attitude. And I think one that many, especially millennials, Gen Z actually might actually come back to it because they're so starved, but millennials, my generation feel like that was like not cool. And certainly if there's a boomer preaching to us as such or a Gen X or a preaching to us as such, I think that there's a reluctance, almost a contrarian impulse, equal and opposite reaction in the other direction, a sort of natural rebellion to it. This goes back to also the special set of attributes that I think it takes

in this unique moment to get this done. This is my responsibility to make faith, family, patriotism hard work to make these values cool, actually, for the next generation. The way we live by those values, the example that I want to set living in the White House, I'm not some old foggy from a giant, from a past generation preaching how it used to be. I'm talking about this on the campaign drill certainly in the way that it can be. This is a progressive vision as I cast it because of how far we've come. This now becomes the stuff of progress, not regress. And I think that, I know that's framing,

and you could just say that's just marketing, but there's some element of marketing to the job. To get this done, human beings have to come along. There's some element of marketing to every job. Yeah, and I think that's okay. I don't, I don't, chafe at that, I accept it. I embrace it. Let's accept that part of the job of the next US president is to be a successful marketer for the values, as long as you're marketing

something that's good for you, that's grounded in truth, that's good for the nation. There's no shame in that. But I think that has a young person as a guy who's still, I actually, you know, this month, I'm turning 38, but as a guy who's still 37, you know, I think that there's no shame in that. I am openly saying it. Many young people will hear me say this and that's okay. They can be in on the, in on the marketing campaign to say that, yes, I'm marketing to you guys, but I'm marketing something that's true. These values are cool.

They are meaningful. They are different. They are today heterodox. You want to stick it to the man. You want to be a hippie. You want to be heterodox. You want to be countercultural. Say you want to get married in a heterosexual relationship and bring kids into this world and teach them to believe in God and be patriotic and pledge allegiance to the flag. That's pretty heterodox today. Put up the US flag instead of the trans flag in the month of June in front of your house. Yeah, that actually is pretty heterodox today.

And so it's my job to reawaken that spirit. And again, you can talk about Trump or Biden or whoever. I think there are intangibles. Yes, we can talk about the differences in having, well, who has the business skill set, well, who has the legal skill set, and these are important discussions. But I think far more important is who is going to be able

to bring along a generation that is starved for purpose and meaning, but running and latching on to the superficial fast food that the other side is serving up, as opposed to serving up the more substantial fare in an appetizing format that they actually want to consume it. And I think that's something that I feel like I'm not going to sprain this as sense that I have the unique ability to do because then it's just more boasting. And I feel like I've been already boasting too much in this conversation. That's not the point. It is something that I have a responsibility to do. I have a duty to do as a member of my generation

and somebody who can do this with that comes a duty to do it right now. And that's the sense of duty that I feel right now. So let me ask you the other question that I, that has emerged in my mind as we've been talking. So, you know, for most of my career, I was a popular professor and I had a little bit of exposure on the broader public front. I worked with small television station in Ontario. And so I had a taste

of public recognition, let's say. But I didn't become well-known until I was in my mid-50s. And that's protected me, I would say, to some degree, against some of the excesses that might otherwise be associated with that. I'd have very established family and long-term friends who were accomplished in their own right. And like a phalanx of people around me who could counsel me carefully as my star rose, so to speak.

Now, you're a young man, and you've been very successful on multiple fronts and for a very long time. And you've garnered great wealth. You've had a lot of entrepreneurial adventures. Now you're running a very public candidacy for presidency, but you're 37. And so one of the things we talked already about the temptations that you faced on the campaign front with regard to the advice that you were receiving from the political class and how you whisked to that. And I guess I'm curious, and I think

this is probably the therapist in me thinking about someone who's in your situation is like, and you've provided a partial answer in your understanding that you have a responsibility at all these levels of social embeddedness. But how do you keep your, how do you keep your ego from running away from, from you given your, the particulars of your situation in combination with your use. What do you have around you that keeps your feet on the ground, do you think, or around you or within you? Honestly, it's very practical and simple. The first thing is my family.

I actually am pretty grateful to, I don't know that I hope you didn't mind me mentioning this, but the best piece of advice I got at the start of this campaign was just like very practical advice from Tucker Carlson. Okay. Tucker told me, it's just like very practical stuff. He said, travel with your family, take your bubble that you live in with you, right? Because at some point you're going to show up on the road and you're just gonna be floating in the ether and waking up in some hotel asking,

okay, where am I? And I'm just floating and going through the motions. You're gonna feel like that at some point in this campaign. And here's how you protect yourself against that. Whatever you have at home, just take it with you. Or when you don't take it with you, just make it a rule that you wanna come back and spend as many nights at home sleeping in your own bed as possible.

I came home at 11.30 last night, a few nights ago, it was 2 a.m. when I got back from Iowa. Oh, actually, where was it coming from? That was New Hampshire, excuse me, Lewis Treck or I'm coming from, but it's 2 a.m. But I still made a point to come back rather than to sleep the night over there because just as a very practical point, does nothing philosophical about this, it grounds me. I wake up that next morning to the sound of my young son crying and it annoys you at first for the first split second

and then it's just joy after that, which is like, that's what you wake up to in the morning. And I think that we're traveling as much as we can as a family. Now, now my wife has her own version of this, which I wouldn't say is in conflict, but has some logistical attributes that we have to balance, which is her version of also as part of staying grounded in a journey that she did not sign up for. She does not covet attention. She doesn't hide from she never seen her, she's very earnest and connects with people

at a level sometimes that's even deeper than I do with many audiences. And she's not shy about it, but she doesn't covet it in any sense, certainly doesn't seek it. The thing that keeps her grounded is, in addition to our family unit, which is important to her, is she made a decision that I admire her for keeping, is she's kept her full-time job through this. And it is not a lightweight, full-time job. She's a throat surgeon. She literally saves lives of people who have gone through cancer at the Ohio Cancer Center at the James Hospital at the Ohio State University. People have been through had neck cancer. The consequences of that. She's a throat surgeon, the best one of the best in the world, certainly the narrow domain she's in. She has people who fly here to see her. She keeps her operating room schedule. And so let's say I'm in Iowa on a Friday night.

There have been cases where she would, days where she will do 12 cases in the day and still be at a dinner event where we're both speaking in Iowa that night. And so for each of us, it's, I think the practical steps actually. I think we're, and this is where I'm so grateful to Tucker, actually, I launched the campaign actually on his show and it was just in the chit chat that we had after that that I got like probably the best practical tip that I have since used throughout this campaign, which is as simple as this, whenever you can, just make it a rule, we will travel with our family as a family unit. Whenever that is

possible, that is just what we will do. When that is not possible, because a poor guy has to stay in Columbus, Ohio, maybe I'll get one on one time with Carthick, she'll stay with Arjun. And when it's not possible for the kids to come, what would be too taxing for them, or they have their activities, I will make an effort and even if it is 2am, I will be back home in this house where I'm talking to you from. And maybe I'll get an hour less sleep, but I'll be more grateful for it in the morning

when I wake up the next day. Well, you know, that harkens back, that harkens back to this issue and idea of embedded responsibility that we already discussed. So one of the, what would you call it, errors that the psychotherapeutic community has foisted on the general public.

And I think this is true, even of the greatest therapists, is the idea that your sanity is something that's somehow located in you. And I don't think that's true. Like, I think your sanity is the harmony that's established between your multiple levels of social embeddedness. And so, when you abide by Carlson's advice to take your wife and your children along with you, you're actually taking the structure of responsibility that reminds you to be sane along with you, you're actually taking the structure of responsibility that reminds you to be sane along with you, right? And because we all need to be tapped into

harmony and unity. And you do that, not so much. Some of it's abiding by your own principles, it's internal, it's pure force of will, but as Carlson pointed out, you know, you can wake up after a month on the road, you're kind of lost and suspended in space. That's also the time where a moral error of one form or another is much more likely to occur. But if you're in constant communication with those embedded levels of responsibility, that also keeps you on track in that conservative manner that it is part and parcel of secure sanity.

And that's another advantage to adopting social responsibility, right? Is you surround yourself with people who remind you to be sane? Yeah, because I don't know about other people, but I'm not a perfect person or endowed with some sort of divine infallibility in the decisions that we make. And so we just put ourselves in a position to make the moral decision at every step through the structures that have, it's not, I didn't invent this. My parents demonstrated it by example to me. And I suppose they didn't invent it. It's societies throughout human history in our faith-based tradition. I mean, the Hindu way of life, just as the Judeo-Christian way of life,

puts a great premium on this institution of the family. And so I think it's actually comes down to just being that practical about it, rather than to be overly abstract. It's like, you know, you and I talked about the bats in the cave, I think. You know, I certainly see us see myself. All of us, I think my generation, maybe all of us as Americans, as human beings today, like blind bats, lost in a cave, right? And the

bat, how does it figure out where it is in that cave? It sends out an echolocation signal that bounces back off the wall and then it comes back and it says, this is where I am. So if we human beings are doing the same thing, this is my family. That's true. That bounces back. It says, this is where I am. I believe in God. I'm a citizen of this nation. Those things come back and say, this is where I am. When those things disappear or they're distant, what happens? We sit down these signals, and then nothing comes back. And we're back in the desert, who were back to being the Israelites

in the book of Exodus, we're back to being Americans in 2023. And so, Yeah, well, that's part of that problem of overemphasis on subjective self-identity. You know, right? This is a big, this is a terrible thing that the radicals on the left have done to people

psychologically is to tell them, you are only what you claim to be. It's like, well, no, that's not true. You're what you've been able to negotiate with other people. And that's a damn good thing for you too, because as you pointed out about yourself, like isolated and alone, there's no indication

at all that we'd be other than, you know, maximally sinful in the direction of our greatest weakness. We need other people, and part of our identity is the ability to integrate ourselves with other people and to use them as signaling devices for our own orientation as you pointed out. That's a deep psychological truth, and it is practical in the way that you describe, too, right? It's you distribute the responsibility for your sanity to the community that you take responsibility for and that works And that's not an internal or psychological phenomena. That's a so phenomenon. That's a social phenomenon And that's one thing the conservatives knew, I would say in their conservative philosophy that the liberals who are hyper individualistic miss completely.

And you know what, maybe those who are saints or the rare, saintly individuals who are rare in human history that walk this earth, maybe they don't need that. They're on a higher plane than people like me. I think that ordinary people, people like me need that grounding in order to have my grounding in who I am, avoid moral error as you put it. I think that's an important insight in all of this as well. It might be why you see instances of moral error more often from people who do put themselves in the position to wake up and a given day and not know where I am or feel lost in this aimless passage of time.

And so, you know, I guess I don't want to discount the possibility that there are a few people out there who independently could find that for themselves without creating the structures around them from family to nation to God and belief in God to ground themselves and these things. But I certainly think that I am like most people in that, yes, I do need it. We do need it.

And part of what we do is, you know, there's this old expression where you practice what you preach. I actually feel that what I'm doing much of in this campaign is it's not that I'm doing that because I'm practicing what I'm preaching. It's the reverse. I'm just actually on this campaign preaching what I practice. And I would like to actually share that privilege, I'll use the word, the peabord. I would like to share that privilege with everyone in this nation with, certainly every kid in this nation to enjoy the ultimate privilege that I had as a kid, which is not that I grew up in wealth, I did not actually, but I grew up with two

parents in the house with a focus on education, a focus on the family unit, a focus on God. Now, my kids, they are growing up in much greater wealth than I did, but that's not the attribute that makes the difference. We're doing our best to give them that same privilege to parents in the house, to A.M. or not, to parents in the house with a focus on education, on a focus on the family unit, on the focus, with a focus and a belief in God.

And why, if I'm aiming to lead this country, why would I want anything other than to share that same privilege with every other kid who's growing up in this country as well? Does that mean that one of the 25% of kids, and it is that high who are born into fatherless homes or raised in fatherless homes today, don't have a shot at achieving everything that I have or people like me have in my life. No. No. In fact, if I'm speaking to one of those kids, I will say that in your unique experience, there is still sources of strength that you will be able to find. It doesn't have to be exactly what mine was. Would we have gotten out of world? Would we have one world war two if FDR didn't have polio? I don't know.

Actually, I just, it's a weird question to ask, but, but I don't know. I mean, but does that mean we wish polio upon every U.S. president or every citizen because that's how we protect ourselves? No. And so both of these things can be true at once that when you encounter hardship, you don't have to be victimized by it. You still can derive at an individual level fortitude from it, because if it isn't the two-parent household, then it can be something else that grounds you.

But that also should stop us short of saying, oh, well, because somebody else can do it or did do it, that we should wish polio in the FDR analogy case or a single-parent household in the case of a quarter of people in this country's case upon everybody else. No. And I think that both of those things can be true at once. parent household in the case of a quarter of people in this country's case, upon everybody else's no. And I think that both of those things can be true at once. And so what I'm saying here, I want to be very careful that that doesn't negate hope or possibility for those. No, I think you made that very clear.

What do you think you've done or your wife has done or both of you have done that makes your marriage work? Like how long have you been married first? Why do you think your marriage could sustain the pressures of an extended campaign and then a potential presidency? Because that's a hell of a lot to ask for any bond to maintain, that many transformations.

Why do you guys done that should, let's say, speak to a certain degree of confidence among the listeners in the integrity of the commitments that you've made on the family front. Well, I would say that the superficial answers we just got very lucky. The deeper answer is I think we chose well. The true answer is I think that we were actually, we were set up by fate, I think by God, to be in this marriage with one another.

I mean, there are, I've never met and will never meet somebody in my life who pushes me. And I think that that's, it's the push actually between us, right? It was, you know, I think that a part of us, she pushes me to be the best version of myself. The only person more unforgiving of my failure to be the best version of myself than me, I'm very unforgiving of myself, but there's one person

even more unforgiving and unsparing. And that's a poor vote. And I return the favor to her. And I think that that is that push. It's how do you do that without alienating each other? How do you do that without alienating each other? I think it is, well, the occasion of there will be spikes in moments of insecurity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the lack of alienation

doesn't actually come from there without, that comes from within, right? So when you have somebody who loves you and is pushing you to be the best version of yourself because they know that they can expect more of you and then you lash out at them as I on occasion, made my weaker moments do, that is actually an insecurity in me. And I think that my ability to at least see that is part of what, and she helps me see it, right? Understands enough of me to understand what those moments of insecurity are, to just say, okay, he didn't mean what he just said, but we're going to

actually get to the bottom of this. That's actually been for us a very different way that might not be working for everybody else. It's not just like two magnets that are automatically stuck. That's been the result of it. It's actually two people who are in a constant cooperative struggle in pushing one another to be the best version of ourselves. And I think that's why I would describe it. I think actually that cooperative tension is part of what actually keeps our marriage and our family units so deeply, steel level strong. And I think that

that is. I think Ben Shapiro. I think Ben Shapiro. I don't think we would have found it. Shapiro told me that the Hebrew word for Eve means beneficial adversary. And it means optimize player. It means something like optimize player in a challenging case. Right. So that's the best description of it. That's exactly how it feels. You got me in sort of, let me try to describe it. I have a feeling it's hard to capture in words. Yeah, yeah, you just captured it in words. That is it. And it just it just actually raises another one of these kind of conservative values. That's a little bit.

Uncouth maybe to talk about or you're not supposed to do it beyond the pale to talk about right now, but it's just the importance of choosing who you marry and choosing very well and almost the responsibility that I'm grateful that my parents, a porous parents, both exercised in making sure that they were, you know, filtering for making sure, understanding their kid, probably better than anybody else. That's something that I think many parents abdicate today is to say that, oh, he's, well, I think he would find somebody more matched for him, but at least he's happy or at least she's happy. You're studying Exodus, but this might be, this might be more of a Genesis example.

I think it's probably late in the book of Genesis when Abraham sends his servant after he has him put his hand under his thigh for the moment of commitment. That was just how they made commitments back then. We don't put people's hands under their thighs now, but that was, I think, the biblical version of a solid commitment to say, go back all the way over there to our homeland to find the proper spouse for my son Isaac, who was, he was the son that he got asked him to sacrifice.

He didn't have to sacrifice. It was important to him to know that he went all the way there and what if I come back empty-handed? He said, I will not come, you will not come back empty-handed. If you do, I will relieve you of your promise, but do not come back empty-handed. And I do not want her, I don't want him marrying someone, you know, a canonite or something like this. So, he brings back Rebecca. And I think it's just a beautiful story of the importance of

parental, some, it doesn't always have to be this way, but the spirit of it, at least, is, if it's not apparent to someone close to you, maybe it's a best friend, but who really cares enough about you to say that maybe that's not the right person. And what I will tell you is in the period that a poor vanille were dating, pragmatically, we knew we were going to get married, but we were waiting for it to finish medical school and by the pragmatism of, you know, all of that. If I was doing it again, we just got married sooner and just be done with it. We don't have to have a big ceremony about it. But we started in 2011, we got married

in 2015. There wasn't one person who cared about either of us who would have looked and said, you know, maybe you want to take a step back and take it a little bit slower. But if the people around me who know me best, they would have stepped up, including, I know, to including my parents and family members and my brother and my best friends, they would have stepped up and said, hey, this isn't right. Why don't you, you know, are you sure you want to go this fast, take it slow? Not a single person around me said it because they knew it was right. But I think it also just highlights the importance of, we could say we got lucky, but I think that actually it was the fabric around us.

Each of us that helped us get it right too. And so I think even the importance of who you choose in your marriage, I mean, the Bible has a lot to say about this. Hindu tradition has a lot to say about this. My parents have a lot to say about this. And if you asked me 20 years ago, I would never be saying this right now, but I think that actually there is a role for family members to play. That's why it's role for why is council. It is. Yeah. I enjoyed that. And I thankfully, I'm eternally grateful that I was blessed with the wife that I have now that was not a product of accident.

It was actually a product. Why do you accident. Why do you think she supports your, you know, I've seen many couples compete with each other and interfere with each other's progress forward, sometimes out of spite and jealousy and hidden resentment and bitterness. And your wife appears to be on board with your ambitions or with your joint ambitions. Like what? And you said, you know, that she, you, you have a child. She has maternal responsibilities, but she's maintained this difficult career. She's obviously balancing that

with the support she's providing you for your complex endeavor. why does she support what you're doing? I think that it's, I think that she and I both share this in common is that we don't view this as balance in a certain sense. If we were gonna view this as a game of balancing, competing responsibilities, no chance. Cause I mean, just think about the endeavor I'm on with two young kids at home.

You know, I've built businesses and everything else, but this is another scale altogether. At the age of 37 with a wife who's a full-time surgeon, if we're playing in the game of balancing, there's no balance in this. That ball games how, I think it is because it is part of a shared project of asking ourselves, how do we make the most of the short time we're given on this earth?

There's more to our life. We agree on this. There's more to life than the aimless passage of time. We were put here for a purpose. I think that my wife, or Vesci, shares a conviction that I was put here to pursue the purpose that I'm pursuing now. Does that end in the White House?

I mean, we certainly hope so. Not for ourselves, but for our sense of purpose, but that's God's plan, not ours. But she believes that I am following my purpose, just as I believe she is following her purpose in doing what she does today. And there have been times in our life where, we talked about that cooperative

tension. Well, that's a team sport actually. It's like when, you know, it's like almost an analogy of, you know, Kobe Bryant, right, the way he would push his fellow Los Angeles Lakers, they're still part of the same unit. And so, you know, I'll give you an example when, when our first son, Karthik was born, he was born in February of 2020. We had moved to Ohio not long before that, but a poor was finishing up her final months of training in Columbia and Cornell Hospital, New York Presbyterian's hospital system to be any antiches that throughout surgeon she is today. And you will remember February 2020 was right. He was born on February 23rd to 2020. That's right on the cusp of that first wave of the pandemic in New York City, where unlike the later waves that were catastrophized.

Now, that was a real wave of, in New York City, condensed Manhattan's hospitals were for a matter of months, overrun in the ICUs included. And she has this special skill set as a throat surgeon, but she has three weeks into giving birth. You know, she could take as long as a maternity leave as she wanted. She felt that this was her duty. Her colleagues were short staffed. I think one of them was maybe was without violating any norms or anything, gently suggesting what kind of trouble they're going through and facing. And she just said, okay, it's my obligation to go back. I'm a biotech CEO. I'm running a successful enterprise multi-billion dollar company. But it's 2020. Circumstance of change. We brought our first

sound into this world. It was the early stage where nobody knows the first thing about this virus. And so literally in March of that year, she made the decision. She gave birth on February 23rd by mid March. She's already made the decision and going back in mid March to treat patients on the front line to open air surgery of people who are COVID positive at that time.

At the time, people didn't know whether that was a significant thing or not to be concerned about. If you have an infant. And so what did I do? I was in Ohio for a month and a half with our newborn infant. The one thing they said is it probably doesn't affect young people badly, but you don't want an infant,

you don't know yet. And so back in March and April of 2020, I took a step back from my day-to-day grind as a biotech CEO to say that, we've got other people in charge. I'm taking a little bit of time to play my dad. day grind as a biotech CEO to say that, you know, we've got other people in charge. I'm taking a little bit of time to play my dad. My role is a dad as a father. And I was the one, you know, mixing up our, you know, mixing up formula or taking the breast milk she fed x to us and feeding the little man that actually gave us a unique bonding that I

don't think we otherwise would have had if I was still in the hustle and bustle of traveling in internationally and doing deals and developing drugs that I've been doing in the two years before. But that was that moment. I think that a poor van I sat down in December and I couldn't have predicted to you that I would feel this way, but I felt compelled. I felt and I continued to feel that same sense of duty for all the reasons we talked about earlier that I have to do this. This is what's right. I think that this is quite possibly the purpose for which I was put here. And I cannot let this moment pass even though we have all the reasons in the world of the inconveniences of this journey of running for president being the

wrong thing to do right now. This is what this is what I feel compelled to do. And in an instant, I mean, she had for us as a unit to make sure this is the right question for us, pushed me as she does. Are you sure that we shouldn't be doing this even 20 years from now? Suppose even it is your destiny and your role to be the US president, shouldn't we do it when these kids are out of the house when we have more experience? And we she pushed me and we pushed each other to make sure that we had conviction that there's the right answer. But once we have that conviction, she's all in in the same way because this isn't my project versus hers. This is asking the question of why we as a unit were brought together, why God each put each of us here, put us here together to realize our purpose in the world.

And does that mean that I'm then attached to and fetishizing the result of being the White House? No, I think that would actually be the wrong way to look at this. But if I am called to do what I am now, we will be open and open-minded and open-hearted to whether God's plan has me in the White House next November or next January of 2025 or not. We're not attached to that result, but I am attached to following out what I believe is my conviction and duty, but I couldn't do it without the foundation of a family starting with a spouse, a wife who pushes me to actually do not more of not not less of that and view it as some balancing actor trade-off, but actually further in the direction that I already feel called to go. And there's no way I would

have achieved the success I have in my life. There's no way I would have the capacity to do what I'm doing now. Were it not for that? And I would I would like to think if a poor boy here, she would in her own version of success that she's had in her life, the impact she's having on the patients, she sees every day that I've played a role in pushing her to do the same. Right. Right. All right. Well, that's a very thorough answer to that question. And, and I guess probably the answer that, you know, people would hope to hear. So, so look, So look, we'll talk again, A, and maybe something approximating three to four months. We thought the last time we talked

that it might be good to do this to check in ever so often. Oh, we ought to, I thought we were just getting warmed up. I was just kidding. But we've got another, we've got another power to do behind the daily wire, behind the daily wire plus platform. So we will, we will turn to that. But we have run 96 minutes and amazing.

I could have guessed it. Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's, that's how it's supposed to happen if the conversation goes well. And so it's very interesting to watch your progress through this. What promises to be the strangest and most surreal presidential election, I would say in living memory, it must really be something to be on the front lines, you know, plowing your way through this. And it'll be very interesting to see.

It's been interesting to watch your success so far, which a success that seems to be expanding quite remarkably and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly. And so it'll be amazing. It'll be remarkable to watch that unfold. That's some major drama. You know, I think that's relevant to your notion that you should hold on too tightly to the outcome, because you actually don't know what the right outcome should be. Maybe this is your time for that ultimate goal, the presidency, but God only knows what you could learn along the

way if you stick to your principles and exactly what you're only 37. There's absolutely no doubt that whatever you learn along the way, if you stick to your principles is going to serve you well in whatever might come your way in the, you know, additional 60 years you have to unfold your life. So I really do hope and wish that in prey, I suppose, that you're able to stick to your principles and abide by the truth that you swore to allow to guide you and to stay out of the hands of the bloody political consultants and to continue talking directly to people. And that is what's called for now, it is what people are crying out for now and be lovely to see someone actually do that.

And it looks to me like so far, you've managed that for what it's worth for my opinion. And it's a hell of a thing to be able to continue doing that in the face of all the pressure that's going to come your way, especially as you become more successful and more sick of fans and temptations as well as opportunities come your way. So I hope you keep your feet on the ground and your head in the sky properly.

And it sounds like you have the wife that can help you do that and the family and friends as well. So hooray for that. So for everyone watching and listening, I'm going to talk to Vivek another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus platform. I often do something autobiographical on that front, but I think today I'm going to hassle them instead because I read a New York Times article recently, which was a bit of a hit piece, and I thought it might be entertaining and interesting to walk

through that and dissect it. It's not like I'm a big fan of the New York Times. I suppose most people watching and listening know, but it's interesting to take apart what it is they're attempting to do. And I'd like to see how Vivek responds to that. So that's the plan for the daily wire plus platform. In the meantime, thank you all for watching and listening. And thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me again. It's quite a privilege to be involved even in a peripheral way in this campaign. Hopefully you two won't censor this podcast as they did with my discussion with Robert Kennedy, which is 100% unforgivable, but seems unlikely. Yeah. Well, you know what, if they do, we'll find other ways of reaching the people with the truth. And that's what I admire about what you do. Speak the, and you and I both, I think,

speak the truth without attachment to the result. And I think that that's what I admire about what you do. Speak the, and you and I both, I think, speak the truth without attachment to the result. And I think that that's actually what keeps us tethered. So thank you, my man. Yeah, well, you know that, that, that, I think one element of faith in the truth is the decision. And I think it's a decision. I think it's a decision of faith that whatever happens if you speak the truth is by definition the best thing that could have happened

Yes, that might not be what you planned, but what the hell do you know, you know? Yeah, you're buying the decision Yeah, well, they're certainly not infallible. They're certainly not insensible. Yes. Yes. Yes Plans are silly compared to the truth. So right exactly Yeah, yeah, well, it's a nice it it's, it's, it's a way of finding a really firm foundation, you know, because, and a way also of contending with your own ignorance, you know, you think, well, I said what I had to say and it didn't turn out how I expected. Well, that doesn't mean that the consequence was erroneous. It wasn't what you expected, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. That's a hard thing to understand,

especially when the consequences appear somewhat dreadful, because they can be. But of course, the consequences of speaking falsehood can be dreadful and generally are much more dreadful, right? Lies lead to hell. That's for sure. All right, sir. Well, thank you to everyone watching and listening

to the DataWire Plus folks for making this possible to the film crew here in Toronto and in Vivek's location for Facilitating this flawlessly and for everyone watching and listening your time and attention is much appreciated. Thank you very much, sir Thank you you