Tomorrow - Episode 50: John Heilemann Explains U.S. Politics and Now Everything Makes Sense

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

On this episode of Tomorrow, Josh sits down with bestselling author, TV personality, journalist, and editor John Heilemann, and the pair attempt to find out just why exactly America is the way she is. Does Trump really believe he can build a wall? Did Hillary see Sanders' Bern coming? And where did John find that electric drill? We may not get the answers we'd like but we'll get the answers we deserve. If you don't tune in, you'll never understand why the political system in the US is broken, and you'll never know the sweet, sweet secret of doubling down. So just listen and learn you commie pinko. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow I'm your host Josh with Fulski. Today on the podcast we discuss Drills, Dubies and Donald Trump. I don't want to waste one minute so let's get right into it. All right, my guess today is an old friend. A new old friend. You like that shit? That's how we're starting. That's how it's going to be. The author of the New York Times bestselling book Game Change. Is it a New York Times bestselling book?

I made that up. It was the New York Times number one bestselling book. Number one bestselling book. For I believe like seven. Game change. He's the host of with all due respect on Bloomberg, Television and MSNBC. Now syndicated. He is the star of Showtime's The Circus. Am I right so far?

And also, and the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, a website. Yes, I'm going to be very toposky like in my guess also. I was like, I'm also a co-creator and executive producer of The Circus and you forgot double down the follow up also in New York Times. That's right. That's right. Double down. He created John Hyalman is my guest of course and he created the Kentucky Fried Chicken Double Down sandwich. Man that sound was this fucking badass. You never had it. You told me before when you talked about that. It looks bad as the chicken is the bun. John wrote a book. Game change. Colin. Double down. No. Game change was the first book. No, no, but then there's no game change the second was called game change

Okay, Obama and Clinton the mechanical and the race of light which was turned into a tremendous HBO film That was very that was very well If you haven't seen it go right now to HBO go and watch the first thing about the Sarah Pell and a couple chapters in the book And then the second book four years later about the 2012 election the first one was about 2008 the second one was about 2012 and that was called double down game change Stakes were slightly lower in 2012. Yeah. So there is a game changes. Is it the stakes were lower? It was a less interesting story. I just want to be clear. It's Double Down, Colin Game Change 2012. Correct. Okay. Yeah. I just want to know where the Colin that's for the branding. That's the idea. We, yes, we went for the branding thing again

on the second book. And he won't tell you this, but I'm going to just put it out there because I think truth is important. He's never had the double down sandwich. I've never had the double down sandwich. Well, I've seen a lot of pictures of it. I have. And you loved it too. It was fucking amazing.

I said this already to you because the chicken is the button. I want the listener to understand that the chicken is the button. There's no bread. They put chicken instead of the bread. And who doesn't love fried chicken? And who doesn't love fried chicken? Well, I mean, I am staunchly firmly against fried chicken at this point in my life.

Really? Why? I don't think we should be eating animals if we can help it. Are you really, have you got a vegetarian? I eat fish. Okay, you're like pescatarian? Yeah, basically.

I don't like that word though, because I think it's bullshit. As long as you're not like a fruitarian, like Steve Jobs was for a while. That a fruitarian like pescatarian? Yeah, basically. I don't like that word though, because I think it's bullshit. As long as you're not like a frutarian, like Steve Jobs was for all of that. A frutarian, and I've also very, I'm extremely into vaccines. Yeah. I'm extremely into modern,

any modern medical treatment and painkillers of all types. Yeah. Right? I got some of this in my pocket. Do you? This is gonna get for, excuse me, a four hour.

I forgot to ask. You know what? I'm asking now. What kind of pain codes do you have with you, John? None of your fucking bills. You have a bad back, right? I got I'm sorry. Of course I ate air quotes a bad back.

Everything on me is good, Josh. All right, so anyhow, John, John is a man who is, you are just fucking stewing in the juices of the 2016 election cycle. Do you agree or disagree with that? I don't really love the metaphor, it's a little disgusting, but yeah, like I'm, you're, but those juices are just,

they're every part of your body is drenched in like a Bernie Sanders Donald Trump Hillary Clinton. I spend, I spend pretty much all of my waking hours thinking about talking about making television about writing about and it was reporting on the 2016 presidential race. Yes. So let's go back a little bit. I want to go back like to the beat, not the very beginning of your career, but early in your career, you weren't like a, you weren't a politics guy really in your career. Well, strictly, you weren't a strictly politics guy.

No, well, I mean, I've done a bunch of things. So the, when I, I was really interested in politics and I was really interested in culture when I got out of college and I sort of decided that politics would be my vocation and culture would be my avocation as it were. And when I first started working in magazines, I was mostly writing my politics, but I was at a very low level. I mean, I was in graduate school. I was like in intern and doing freelance pieces. And the first real job I had in magazines

was at the Economist magazine, where I was a little magazine. Where I was qualified to write about politics, and they said, we want you to write about business. So in 1991, I moved to London, and the first job I had there was writing about what was the convergence story. It was like I wrote about media, telecoms, and computers coming together before the internet. Right. All the shit that was going to be the big wave.

So, I started doing that, and then I came back and I did politics, and then I kind of toggled for a while between doing politics and doing business. You know, I lived in Silicon Valley for a while. My first book was about the Microsoft Any Trust trial. What was that called? Pride before the fall. The trials of Bill Gates in the end of the Microsoft era, which was pretty prophetic. Yeah, pretty frankly.

And like 2001. Yeah. So, I spent, I know a lot, I mean, for as for a reporter, I know a fair amount about the tech business and I wrote, I know a fair amount about the media business, politics, eventually kind of tipped the scale and I ended up doing mostly politics, but I did toggle for a while between those things where I was doing business and then politics. And really, it took me a long time to figure out my friend Kate Boo at the New Yorker said to me at some point when I was like, man, I'm going back and forth between these things. She said, oh, you're not going back and forth.

You're only, you have one subject. You're subject to this power. That's all you care about. Right. This power is like powerful people because I wasn't writing about like, you know, Linux, you know, I wasn't writing about technology. I was writing about, I was writing about, about, about John Doran and Scott McNeely and Bill Gates. And, you know, I was writing about, you were writing about, not in both. You and Bill Gates. And I was writing about, you were writing about not symbol, you were writing about the Missouri- I was writing about the power dynamics

inside the tech industry more than I was writing about like code, right? So, I mean, I'm interested in code, but that was not my thing. But, so, was your family political, were you raised in a family where the conversation was on politics? Not at all.

So, where did the interest in power come from? I don't know. I don't have a good account for it, honestly. Do you just like to be around powerful people? No, it's just like, I don't know. How do you come to be interested in things? It's not, well, it's really not clear to me. I really know because people say things.

Like, oh, my dad was really interested in acting. My dad was an aerospace engineer and was actually more, I actually understand my interest in solid state electronics for my father more than I understand anything political. My father's really not political. My mother passed away a long time ago. It was not political. They were very, they were engineers, you know, and I actually, you know, again, I could I understand why I'm interested, why I was had some facility with understanding the way engineers talk to each other from my parents more than I understand the political thing. I don't even know where that came from. But my parents didn't care about rock and roll either and I give a, I give a, I care a lot about that.

So I think that probably has to more to do with them not giving, I mean, probably. Yeah, that's how it is, right? You know, like, you know, like rock and roll, if your parents read a rock and roll, my guess is you'd be like one of those classical music guys with a fucking really sweet sound system. Yeah, I mean, like, why did you become interested in technology? Can you give an account of that how you became interested and before the verge and technology culture? Like, well, I think I was naturally a nerdy kid, a weird kid. I think I was raised in a way that made me more introverted,

which made me think focus on things that were small and detailed and that happened in your head. Maybe, I don't know. My dad is also a weird sci-fi fan. Like, when I was a very young kid, like my dad was into things like, what is the pyramids of the gods? What is the book called where it's about

how aliens built the pyramids? Cherry to the gods. So my dad was really into the gods. And like, you know, my dad was, he's still left. Obviously, my dad is a weird guy. He would stop me. Like, I remember very vividly when I was like 10 or 11.

My dad stopped me. We were walking through the hallway of our house., he would stop me. I remember very vividly when I was like 10 or 11, my dad stopped me, we were walking through the hallway of our house, and my dad stopped me. He was like, you know, I wish I had laser vision. I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, I didn't say what the fuck, because I was a 10 year old or whatever, because I was like, you know,

I was like, I should just shoot lasers out of my eyes, because then if you didn't like somebody, you could just like shoot a laser at them and disintegrate them, and that would be the end of it. That'd be a bad ass superpower. I was like, that's a strange, but you know, but that kind of thinking. So we were kind of thinking for your dad to say to you.

It's a weird kind of thing for anybody to say in any situation, anyhow. So I think that probably, it's something to do with it. You know, he was into like bad, weird, sci-fi and horror. So I think that probably influenced some of my, I think I come from a long line of weird nerds. Let's put it that way. You probably come from a long line of some kind of nerd.

I don't know, man. Well, engineers are not exactly normal people. No, they're not. Although, you know, both my parents were from the Midwest. My dad was from Milwaukee and my mom was from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, and they were relatively straight, but as I just suggested to you before we started doing this,

I'm an adopted child, and I know nothing, literally nothing about my genetic heritage whatsoever. I know nothing about it. So, like, I have looked into it. I know a lot about the nurture piece of my rare of my upbringing, but I know nothing about the nature part of my upbringing. How much do you think, so seriously, who the fuck knows?

How much do you think the nature plays a part? You know, I think genetics are pretty powerful, right? If you believe in science, you know, genes are a pretty big deal. Yeah, but they don't think they make you go into politics. No, but are covering politics? No, but, you know, we know that people's dispositions, you know, whether you're extroverted, introverted,

whether you're artistic or not artistic, whether you're analytical or non-analytical, those things are genetic traits that get carried down from generation to generation. And so again, all I'm saying is like, I have a kind of one piece of my explanatory framework for who the fuck I am is a blank.

You don't want to explore anymore? I'll talk to you all about it. I just don't know anything else. No, but I'm saying you've never looked into it. You've never done genealogy, you've never gone through it. I never have, and I have to say, although I've been, for a while, I was militantly against it. I was really, I mean, I had this attitude,

which was, I know who my parents are. These are my parents. It felt like it would have been a rejection of the way in which I was raised to be interested. Now that I'm like a little bit older, and as I said, my mom died many years ago, 30 years ago, I have a little bit more, like I'm a little bit more tempted, especially now that it's easier, the science makes it a little easier to figure that out.

I'm a little more tempted than I was ever before, but I'm still not like running out the door and going to, you know, whatever those, all those various DNA sequencing companies are. Well, I'm not going to force your hand or anything, but I will tell you that my wife, Laura, is very, very interested in genealogy. And I've been fascinating. I'll tell you what I'm... I'm interested in genealogy. I'm interested in eye dream of genealogy. What is that?

I don't know, I just made that up. That's kind of cool. I started as a star. I dream of genealogy. I dream of genealogy. That's kind of cool. I dream of genealogy. That's kind of cool.

I dream of genealogy. I dream of genealogy. I dream of genealogy. I'm a person comes to your on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on.

That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on.

That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on.

That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's going on. That's a strategy that's the same basic idea. Same idea, right? It's a fucking like, to Jeannie or a witch or whatever. Let's get into it, John. Okay, let's go. Let's stop the small talk.

Let's up circle. What do you wanna know? Speak to me, Topo. How? On a scale of one to 10. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

10 being the most. 10 being the highest. And one being the lowest. One being the highest. And one being the least. Yeah, or the lowest. Yeah. How fucked up is this presidential election cycle for us? I mean, how fucking strange is it? Okay, so how fucked up or how fucking strange?

Both. Well, we can answer both separately if you want. I mean, I don't want to be like to go into two like Non vernacular hip hipster talk about those. I don't know what that means. Well, one does that mean You know, I'm saying like I guess oh, man. It's so fucked up. You know, you don't have to eat it You don't have to use it is it is we are in a we're in a in a Cycle and a presidential cycle where the wheels are kind of on the verge of coming off the wagon.

You don't put it off the wagon. On both sides. You don't think a Trump-aviable Trump-republic-in-nomination seems like the wheels are off? Well, I think that from the standpoint of the Republican party, nominating someone who is as volatile as Trump is and someone who is as antithetical to most of the things that the Republican Party that any of us have ever had any experience with in our lifetimes is a pretty scary thing.

If I was a Republican and I defined myself around the ideas and the ideologies and the policy preferences that the party has adhered to for most of the post-war era, I would look at Donald Trump and say, what the fuck are we doing? What's happened to my party? That's what I would say. The phenomenon itself is a very strange thing, an unusual and not inexplicable, but hard to explain. I mean, all I mean about that is the notion that in an environment where, if the two defining features of American politics in the last 20 years have been populism, populist impulse

and strain in both parties that has waxed and wain, but it's basically been ascendent for like 20 years. And that polarization where both parties are moving or pushed further to the extremes within themselves. So the conservative Republican party's got more conservative, the Democratic party's got more liberal. And you agree that's true? Oh, it's unsquestionably true. Like there is a polarization that is pushing in either direction. Yeah, yes. Polarization is the defining feature of our politics, right? For, again, in our lifetime, in the sense that it was, and this is like not just an anecdotal thing, it's an empirical thing, if you look at members of Congress

over the life of the country, and you can basically look at them by their votes on issues, and you can assign, and political scientists do this, they assign numbers, metrics, that can and you can assign, and political scientists do this, they assign numbers, metrics that can, you can assign, you can determine numerically how liberal or how conservative someone is, right? So for the entirety of the history of the United States until two congresses ago, there were always Democrats who were more conservative than the most liberal Republicans, and therefore

liberal Republicans who were more conservative than the most liberal Republicans. And therefore, liberal Republicans who are more conservative than the most Democrat. So you had like, if you looked at the curve, the bell curves, I'm making these, I'm waving my hands in the eye. If you can see this, John is actually making large hand motions. But what you would, but you, what there was was in the middle,

there was an overlap where people in the Republican party and people in the Democratic party, there like deals could occur, things could happen because people would compromise or lean a little bit one way or the other. And the most liberal Republican was more liberal than the most conservative Democrat, right? Yes, so I'm just going to process that. So it's like you would have Republicans

from New England who were more liberal than conservative Democrats from the South. It's now the case in the last two congresses that there's literally for the first time in the history of the country, there's no overlap. So it's an empirical way of talking about why the last two congresses have been the most ineffective, the most unproductive congresses ever, because there's no overlap, there's no space for dealing with it.

There is no vent right in the diagram correct. It's just two bell curves that are don't touch each other in anyway So that's I want to so that's a new thing. Yeah, so polarization new as of how many years? Well, it just late that that phenomenon of there being no overlap is a four-year-old five-year-old six-year-old. Pretty recent. Yes, very recent. So, polarization is the defining feature. And also just that as an empirical thing, and then there's the anecdotal thing, which is that we know that our political lives are defined more by yelling and shouting and screaming at each other than they ever have been before. The Democratic Party is, again, further left.

The Republican Party is further right. So, that's polarization. And then there's populism, which is this thing that you know about, even if you're not interested in politics, which is that more and more people in the country believe that all of the institutions of American life, politics, media, religion, like take your pick, any finance, you know, any big thing that exists in America is to be, is not, is not to be trusted and it's somehow working at odds with the interests of you and me, right? And those, so just let me finish this aside. So those two things, with the Republican Party going further to the right and with the populist

impulse in America getting larger over the course of the last 20 years, the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party as a kind of theoretical notion that someone like Donald Trump could be a dominant figure in a presidential election. And that someone like Bernie Sanders could be a dominant figure in a presidential election is not actually inexplicable, right? That's like in some ways, it's inexplicable. It's some ways predictable.

Right. And in some ways it was predicted. If you go back to 1996, you think of 92 and 96, and you think about Ross Perot and Pat Picanan, you know, Ralph Nader, there were these things that have been happening that kind of pre-saged where we are now. So that's why I say it's not totally inexplicable. On the other hand, you know, a candidate who combines those things with the celebrity power

that Trump has and the fact that he could say not one but thirty things in the course of a campaign that would kill any politician would end their candidacies and would drive them out of acceptable polite public society right and that he got stronger on the basis of saying those things and we could go through them all but it be boring right but it's like you know you know you know but it's like I'm on a band Muslims from the United States John McCann's a loser because he got caught. Megan Kelly is a bitch. The police are bleeding out of wherever. The main cause of this.

Because bitch Carly Fiery is a fucking ugly. Right. You know, Ted Cruz the pussy. You know, real things that he's basically, of course. And widely. And incited violence at your rallies. I mean, all those things are things that any one of those things would have traditionally.

Classically, it would have been a killer. Right. Like the Dean's cream. This is a Dean Dean screen, but like plus 100 plus 1000. So that's the part that's inexplicable. The part of like a, like when Trump first got in the race, I would say two hour credit, mine and Mark, CalPrance, like on our show on Bloomberg, on with all your respect, to our credit, we said from the very beginning, not the Trump would do what he's done, but we said from the very beginning, you have to take this guy seriously and here's why because there

is now a market in the Republican Party for a nationalist restrictionist xenophobic. This is a mercantilist xenophobic. You long to see. No, I'll say xenophobic. I mean all of those things xenophobic mercantilist nationalist all that right. There's a market for that and this guy because he's, as 100% name ID, is regarded by many people in the country as exemplifying wealth and achievement and success, that he's famous and he's really good at television, that that guy is going to find an audience.

Right. How big is it going to be? How robust will it be? Will it be impervious to mistakes and criticism? I don't know about that, but you don't just miss this guy, right? Right. But, but, but yeah, but it turns out you can say, don't just miss him that early on smart. Yeah. Yeah. Will he be impervious to criticism? No, that's the part that's, that's why I say the phenomenon of something like Trump is not inexplicable. The phenomenon of the particulars of Trump is kind of hard to get your fucking head around. I mean, it's just not really easy to understand.

So how fucked up is it? The two dominant figures in our politics over the last year have been, are two people that it's kind of like wow seriously. You name that Trump and Sanders. Yeah. Because Sanders is Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee. Well, but no, you're not going to be the Democratic nominee. You're any sort of, he's really not. But well, John, well, he's really not because I know how to do math. But I'll, but I, but I, but I, but he, what he has done though is he's done this totally, and I say

this with, you know, with the admiration, he was, he has dominated the democratic debate fully in the sense that it is his, he is the candidate who has enthusiasm of the future, of the people who comprise the future of the party, on every policy issue, he has pulled the mainstream, the person who will be the demagoguon, he has pulled her to the left on every single issue. He set the agenda, he's mobilized, he's, for many, for millions of millennials, he is their first access point of politics and will influence them forever because you are always influenced in a lot of ways by the first candidate you fell in love with, right? He's been the dominant figure

and he's changed her campaign for good or bad, unclear, right? He has now adopted positions that she did not want to adopt in order to try to make sure she didn't get out flanked by him. He's been the dominant story. And he went from being someone who no one in the country knew. Who was a 74-year-old. It was insane. Socialist from Vermont, who has called the tune throughout the election.

So he's been the dominant figure on the Democratic side, Trump's been the dominant figure on the Republican side. That is a, I don't know if you wanna call it fucked up or not fucked up, it is a really unexpected development. It's different. Okay, I wanna think a quick break. And we're gonna come back and we're gonna go. So we haven't even talked about anything. We're I want to take a quick break. Yeah. And we're going to come back and we're going to go.

So we haven't even talked about anything. We're already like a half an hour in the chat. We haven't even scratched the surface. This is going to be like, we're doing this for like three hours. We very well could. And by the way, people who listen to this podcast, the handful of people, would be happy to hear a three hour podcast, I think, on these topics. We take a quick break and come back.

Can I go smoke a doobie? Yes, if I'm included. All right, we break and come back. Can I go smoke a doobie? Uh, yes, if I'm included. Okay. Alright, we'll be right back. Let me introduce you to our sponsor, FrontPoint. FrontPoint is a modern home security system backed by the highest rated service in the business. FrontPoint uses 100% cellular equipment, making it one of the hardest security systems to defeat in the industry. FrontPoint uses only wireless equipment, making it simple and easy to set up. FrontPoint's mobile app even lets you keep tabs on your home from anywhere.

And you could be in Paris, you could be in London, to buy. You can configure the app to send texts or email alerts when your daughter gets home from school, your daughter or son, or when your spouse arms the alarm at the end of an evening. You know, so you can know that your smells is keeping things tight. Even while you're away on business, I mean, especially while you're away on business, let's be honest, you wouldn't know what your spouse is up to when you're out of town.

Frontpoint combines the high tech security with great customer service and has received more five star and a rated customer reviews on sites like Angie's list and Trust Pilot than their competitors. Don't be a fool. Go to Frontpoint.com slash tomorrow to your free quote on a front point system today. You may be eligible for up to $300, $300 US dollars in discounts.

That's Frontpoint.com slash tomorrow. Listen, Mother's Day is quickly approaching. And if you're like me, you can never figure out what to give your mother, let alone where to get it. You know, the thing about mother's days, I always forget that it's happening. And then I realize like the day before,

I'm like, oh my God, or two days before, I'm like, oh my God, mother's day. And I've done nothing. I've got no gift. It's, you know, and it's very troubling for everybody, especially for me and for my mother, frankly. Luckily, there's a great new app called Giftogram. Giftogram lets you send anyone a unique and thoughtful gift

with only three clicks of your smartphone. Ryan, my new producer, just told me that he used Giftogram to send his mom a gift, and it took him like less than a minute, which seems insane to me, but he's not a liar, so I'm gonna have to take him in his word. Look, you simply choose a gift from the curated categories and you select contact on your phone

and you hit send, the gift goes off to them. And here's the magic. You don't even need a mailing address to send a gift. Giftagram asks the receiver for their preferred address and the gift is in their hands in three to five business days. I mean, that's amazing. That's insane, you know? That's like magic.

I mean, that is like a sorcerer comes to your house and is like, I want to, you know, just say who you're going to give a gift to. And he does some thing with his hand and he's got a, he's wearing a hat, maybe he has a long gray beard. And the next thing you know, that person has a gift. This is some Gandalf level citric stuff we're talking about here. This is a Gandalf scenario that you're going to put yourself into. The gift selection for your mother is second to none. You can find modern gifts like baggain,

Olsson, Bluetooth speakers, or more traditional gifts like a three month flower subscription from the books. I think books is sure for book eyes. I could be wrong, I'm no expert. You can send one to your mom anywhere in the US or Canada. So Canadians are included, which I think is very nice. So here's the best part.

Listeners of tomorrow can get $20 off their first gift on giftagram. Just download the giftagram app on your iPhone or Android device and enter the gift code tomorrow. Thank you giftagram for your support. You guys are helping keep tomorrow in business, which is really lovely. And to the listeners of tomorrow, take a look at it.

You know, you've got moms, they need gifts. Giftagram is there. They're making life a little easier for you. Just at it. You know, you've got moms, they need gifts, giftogram is there. They're making life a little easier for you. Just accept it. We're back with John Hyman. Again, author of Game Change and Double Down Game Change 2012. Hosted with Aldi respect. Star of the circus on Showtime and managing the Reblomber politics. Last but not least. Okay.

So we're talking about the fucked up nature of 2016. How much, okay, so as you just described, Sanders and Trump have dominated the dialogue. And I don't disagree at all. I mean, the reality is that Hillary probably thought she was running a pretty straightforward campaign here on issues that were very germane that she was very germane to her very comfortable very easy for the most part straight down the line democratic sort of vibes right yeah would you say prior to Bernie well I think that she was going to say anything radical yeah I mean look I that she, she was very aware from the outset that there was a,

she understands the Democratic Party, right? And so I think she was pretty aware of the fact that there would be a challenge to her left and that the question was who that would be. So she spent a lot of time, she and her husband's been a lot of time fixated on the notion that Elizabeth Warren was going to run. And did a very aggressive, from the moment she got out of the State Department, made a pretty aggressive and mindful effort to not put herself in a position where she could be outflanked by someone who could catch lighting in a bottle and beat her. I think in retrospect, whatever it's worth, I think in retrospect, the strength of the Sanders, given all of the things that are fucked up about Sanders, just purely politically, all the weaknesses that he has.

If Elizabeth Warren had run against her, she'd be the nominee by now. Oh, is it Warren Wobby? Yeah, I mean, if you really believe that. Yeah, well, I mean, a good. Yeah, I'm, if you think you really believe that. Oh, yeah, well, I mean, good. Who, yeah, I'm being, I mean, a little bit, but I mean, a little bit fanciful, but all I'm trying to say is that if it's true that what Sanders has done is,

spoken to an important and dominant in some ways, part of the Democratic electorate in a newly more progressive Democratic party than there's ever been in our lifetimes before. And you think about the weaknesses he has as a 74 year old socialist from Vermont, et cetera, et cetera. If you think about a younger, more TV friendly candidate who had the same issue profile, female, who was female

and could compete on that on those grounds Right or if it could I mean again just like throwing out names right of Cory Booker had run You know you can think of a lot of people who might have been Someone who could outflank Clinton to the left and be younger right and be you know have other demographic advantages that she has But are not the negatives that she has and right well all the up the of none of them would have had any of the baggage she had, right? So there was going to be a populist left challenged to Hillary Clinton. She knew that she took precautions against it. She left herself the wiggle room to be able to get over to the left where she now is on a lot of issues that she doesn't really

want to be as far left as she is. So I think she knew that those things were all coming, but this actual sequence of her campaign was, she left the state department, she did a bunch of speeches, which was sort of fucking stupid, just on the level. You mean like the speeches to a Goldman Sachs? Yeah, I mean, you know, like if you're already gonna run for a president, we still don't have the transcripts to this,

right? Correct. If we were gonna run for president in the Democratic Party in 2016, unless you were like just engaged in political malpractice, you wouldn't go and give a bunch of speeches to a bunch of bankers, right? Just fucking dumb, right? So, so she did that, right? And then she started her campaign and like she spent most of 2015, totally embroiled in the email scandal, right? Right.

And that scandal, whatever you want to call that thing, in the email. What do you want to call it? Well, I want to call it a flap. Let's call it that. I mean, the fact that you don't think it's important. I think it's important, but I don't think it's, I mean, scandal suggests, look, she was wildly inappropriate and not, um not the things that she did in terms of how she set up her information technology system that she set up a home-brew system for

herself that no one has ever done in the history of American politics. In order to, I think, the most- Is that true? No one ever? Not in the way. Not to have like a- many, many, many cabinet secretaries have had private emails, have had private email addresses. No cabinet secretary to my knowledge

has ever set up a home server and then diverted in a situation where they would be, even if they weren't initiating, where they might be receiving classified information on a home system outside the government system. It's like an unprecedented thing. You can argue about how serious that is, how dangerous it was, how reckless it was,

but it was not something that anybody else has ever done before. And what was the ultimate reasoning behind this? Well, nobody really knows the answer to that. I mean, some people believe that she thought there was a way to protect some of her communications from FOIA by doing that, the Freedom of Information Act. Yeah.

Others, no one really believes that it was like for convenience, because like, you know, it would be like, that is out of pocket, just dismissed. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, look, I mean, we all carry multiple devices around. And it is true her husband had a server set up in the house and a per-while she was piggybacking on his server. But broadly speaking, the deeper issue here is that the

Clintons historically have one of their weaknesses politically is that they have this attitude, which is that like whatever the normal rules are, don't apply to us. And part of the reason they don't apply to us is because we are inherently virtuous, like we are good people. And although we do some sort of skibi shit By and large if you net it all out we're like good for the world, right? So is that true or not true? Well, I don't know that's that's one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder Right, I mean obviously many people feel that

I the beholder oh well, I don't have a judge not saying. I don't know. It's not like I can't say you from nowhere, John. You don't want you to be a wildly neutrally purple straight down the line. You can really just suck my day. Okay. All right. No, it's not that.

It's not that. I just don't think there's an ant. There's not an objective answer to that. And by objective, I just don't mean like, you know, it depends on what your priorities, on what your, on what your values are. Is it true that the Clinton foundation has done incredible things all over the world? It is 100% true. Is it true that Bill Clinton's foundation has also been done a lot of unsimly things in terms of its financial arrangements? Yes, that's also true. Right. How does one, I, again, I'm

not trying to say about the Gates Foundation, lots of other. Yeah, but he's, that wasn't the President of the United States. That's true. Right, good point. And so, all I mean is to say that like, I actually, I don't mean that, I mean to say that I find it hard to evaluate, I can say those two things are true.

One of which is without reservation, they've done ski-v-things in terms of how they finance the foundation. I can also say that when Bill Clinton makes claims about the anti-malarial drugs they've provided and the money they've spent in Sub-Saharan Africa, that's all true, too. How do you put those on a scale and say,

one outweighs the other? I don't, I really get it, no. But you're saying they do. Yes, I think it makes it easier to go. We're gonna piggyback, we're gonna do a hop-skip and a jump to this server over here. I think because in the grand scheme of things, we're actually doing good in their minds. It seems to me over the course of their life,

you know, their public life in American, in the American history that both of them have that believe very strongly in their own virtue that they're doing, that they're in this for the right reasons. And that, that it's a complicated world in which certain compromises must be made in order to accomplish good things. And that you should basically trust us that in the end, we are in this for the right reasons. And so don't look too carefully at some of the stuff that's kind of on the edges and kind of behind the curtain that we do.

Just because basically like, hey guys, we're the good guys, we're the white hats. So, but let me just try to like stay on this one point, which is to say, she announced that she was running for president and spent six months embroiled in the questions, answers, investigations related to the email server. Right. And it consumed her campaign for six months. And in that period of time, Bernie Sanders announced that he was running.

And frankly, I think, you know, for her, she did not spend a lot of time worrying about Bernie Sanders. She was like, here he is, like Bernie's in not, I need to deal with it. Well, or if not a nut that he's a nuisance, more than a like a mortal threat to my nomination. And she worried about other people getting in. And when she looked up, and when she looked up in October,

and she did the Benghazi hearings and Biden decided not to run, she looked up one day in October, and was like, okay, so the person I was really worried about was Joe Biden. He's not running. I went in testified on Capitol Hill at this bally hood hearing on Benghazi, and I knocked it out of the park

and the Republicans were totally fucked up. And as they always are, totally ill-prepared and didn't like prosecute the hearing well. And she sailed through it because she's very, very good in those settings. She's very polished. She looked up and said, okay, where am I? I've got Lincoln, Chefy, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb,

and Bernie Sanders are my opponents. This is a pretty good place to be. I've not been indicted. I'm not even close to being indicted. The email thing seems to be on the back burner. There's still some stuff going on here, but it's not, let's just seem like a mortal threat. These people all seem like despatchable,

given my strengths, given my money, given my history, given my historic nature of my candidacy. I'm good to go. This is all gonna be fine. And then Bernie Sanders, who was all through that period in this unlikely way, on the basis of the big historical factors that we talked about earlier, populism, polarization, and the crazy kind of way in which all of the shit that made people like me and people in our business

dismiss him on some level. And again, I'll say we took him quite seriously and started doing interviews on the show very early, but still, like the notion that that unkempt dandruff on the shoulder can't like become his hair doesn't have a sense of humor. He doesn't talk about his biography. He's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like,

he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like always wants to get into a political conversation. You're like, oh God, Bernie's here. He wants to be an argue. And you're going to go and listen to him and what his speech is going to be.

It's not going to be in any way humanizing or in any way trying to become more accessible. He's going to stand in front of you for an hour and yell at you. He's going to yell at you about oligarchy and political revolution and the 1% and he's going to yell, yell, yell, yell. That it was easy for savvy people to be like,

well, okay, there's like a little bit of a market for that, but yeah, it's like occupied Wall Street. They're going to get a rally a little bit, but then the reality's going to hit. Well, and the thing we totally underestimated was that there was the market for authenticity. Right. And that, that in a, that if Hillary Clinton was the front runner,

especially for millennials, whose bullshit detectors are very, and they have other huge defects, but one of their great assets is that they're like, they're out of two, it was like, here's old Bernie Sanders, like here's this guy, he's unkempt, he's not made for TV, he's not in any way a pre-packaged candidate He's not pull tested. This is the shit he's been talking about for 30 years

And he gets up and he gives us a lecture on Basically an ideological critique of you know everything and he's the fabric and he's Fabric of the nation and he's yelling at us through most of it like in a kind of unpleasant way that that would be like I love that guy. He's the strangest thing. That's not fucking the strangest thing. Is it not? That's not normal. So that's what we all missed.

And it turned out she missed it, but most of us missed it. We all would kind of both God, well, I understand why Bernie like could have like a little traction, but you didn't think he was gonna outraze her. She was, that he was gonna become a huge internet brand. That he was gonna be the one person

in both parties. The field of the party. He's the one person in both parties in this cycle who is a genuine internet phenomenon. Right. He's a meme. There are, you know, the odd Etsy. There are thousands of people making Bernie. He's like silhouette hair.

He's like the grumpy cat. He's the grumpy cat of politicians. He is a fucking, he's grumpy tooumpy cat. He's the grumpy cat of politicians. He is a fucking, he's grumpy too. Except, except, he's totally grumpy. And yet he's raising because of his strength as an online fundraiser. Again, that equals and potentially surpasses that of the first great internet fundraiser,

Barack Obama. He's has this, has extra, this extraordinary capacity to, again, in a way that is judged by a metric that matters in politics, which is how much money can you raise? Can you be viable? He is the guy who became the one most viable, genuinely viable, and in fact not just viable, but extravagantly successful, internet fundraising brand. Like, it's not obvious why that would be true.

But then if you look at it from 30,000 feet now, it's like, oh, it's totally obvious. Is it obvious? I want to get into this. He's the, well, he's the, he's, again, I think it just goes to authentic. It goes to? The authenticity is the driving factor.

I think, yes, I do. Did you think there's a reaction to I'm gonna so the Bernie thing is like to so fertile There's so much fucking weird shit to think about and talk about yeah, but so you I was my next question It's gonna be like how much is the internet a part of this? But I think you answered it already and saying that Bernie is essentially a creation of the internet, like without the internet, without a vehicle like the internet. There is no Bernie Sanders. There's, it would be really hard if you think about the political fundraising system as it exists is there's like high dollar and low dollar, right?

One's like wholesale and one's retail. There's the Coke brothers. Well, I just mean just, again, you know, just, so you have like people who write $27 checks and go to big fundraisers, and you have people who contribute $5 to a campaign. And they, the same first group are rich people, and the second group are

not class or poor people mostly right or students you know again people have a lot of money right people have a lot of money yeah so with Bernie the problem with low dollar fundraising is that it's really inefficient it's like there's a lot of money out there with people like we'll write you a $10 who give you a $10 bill but it's really10 bill. But it's really hard to find them. It's really hard to get the money from them, except for the fact that the internet. What the internet does is small, this one small thing. Well, but it's, but it's really again, politics, but politics is, politics is behind the curve, right? So what, you know, what, what the internet has done is created

a efficient system by which you can raise lots of money in small packages from a lot of people. And so, yes, in the sense that if the internet didn't exist, if the internet didn't exist, it would be prohibitively difficult for a candidate like Bernie Sanders to raise the amount of money that he's raised. You couldn't do that.

That's a very utilitarian answer, what I'm asking is, okay, I get what you're saying. The huge thing. The technical nature of the internet allows that we can fund him more easily, therefore people who have less money. When you're sophisticated enough to understand that the two things are actually not, once you have, once you're using the internet as a tool to gather those checks together in a way that you couldn't do otherwise. The one of the key things then is, okay, so if that's the way in which I'm going to gather

it, now, I'm going to accumulate the money. The building of the brand is kind of central and essential to that. You are, it's hard to know, chicken egg, it's hard to know what comes from it. You don't think there's a clear chicken and egg here. I think that if I think that if you're going to be a successful internet fundraiser, because what you're trying to do is tap into low dollar, you need to be marketable to the kind of people who are going to be internet donors. But by his, and we could probably argue this back and forth for a fucking hours, but he's very nature by his message.

He wasn't going to be the big money guy. And Hillary couldn't be the small money guy because of her message and her background and her nature. So, so, correct. But yes, there's a mechanism, but the reality is that he had a propaganda message. Yes, totally, but we're not saying different things All I'm trying to say is that like here's the thing like if I

Mean it's not like Martin O'Malley Or I mean a lot of our no-balli Martin O'Malley Jim Webb and who is the other one Lincoln shaving a link But it's not like it's like two minutes. They were on but here's a thing you understand though, right? If I took Martin O'Malley, who was a very handsome man, to be handsome, if you ask me. Maybe, maybe. Again, let's wanna finish this.

So if you took a very, I see, a governor of Maryland, two-term governor of Maryland, former mayor of Baltimore, and if you gave him Bernie Sanders' positions and message and you handed him all those things and you said, okay, with this message of anti-Wall Street, anti-big business, attack the oligarchy, et cetera, et cetera, if I gave you all those things, Martin O'Malley, would that then translate into the kind of fundraising success Bernie Sanders' had?

And the answer to the question is no. Right. Because Mario Mal is not a complete freak because Mario Mal is not the 74 year old guy with the dander funders on his own. So that's the thing that's so funny. So it is like the things, it's a combination of the right message directed

at the right audience with the right character, that that old guy, all the stuff that you would say are liabilities in any traditional way. But you would have all turned out to be assets in this world with this message aimed at this audience. I mean, look dude, I have been around the country for now a year, but really intensely

in the last like four or five months. And you can't, you've been on planes like every other day you're on a plane, right? I in the last four or five months. You've been on planes every other day, you're on a plane, right? I can't tell you the number of Bernie Sanders rallies I've been to. I can't tell you, right? And he is a phenomenon for college kids. Right. And a huge part of it is, it's some combination of, it's not just the message, it's the message

and the messenger. The fact that he is a 74 year old, ungrumpy, unkempt, socialist from Vermont. He's like, he's like, he's like, hard of why it works. So let me ask you this, and then I wanna talk about Trump because we've spent like 40 minutes now on just talking about Sanders, which I think is fascinating by the way and hearing your take on it Is it a reaction in some way to we had this like amazingly cool polished

politician in Barack Obama who's like I think you said, but when you said he's a phenomenon when you just said that my mind immediately flashed to Obama in the first, in his first election. In this like wave of holy shit, like it can be different, the Canada can be different literally and figuratively. We have a different future for America. Coming out of like the Bush, the, you know, W era, which was dark to say the least, I think, in American politics and for American spirit, right?

It was like, oh, this guy is going to fucking change the whole conversation. And then we got eight years of, I think, relatively predictable. Now, look, I love Obama. He's got his moments. I think it's hard to disagree that he's, there are moments that are breakthrough, like holy shit this person is really different. But also a lot of the politics were businesses usual.

It was like, okay, president in America running the government, trying to like get things past, trying to move things forward. But you know, the same sort of shit that you bum up against. Is Bernie in any way a reaction to that where it's like? For your Trump. Bernie, well I'm gonna get to Trump in a second, but this is my final thing on Bernie.

Where it's like, okay, I'm a Democrat. There's this young, super polished, unbelievably smart, engaging, like lovable new president. And he's like kind of the same president we've always had. Is it, I feel like millennials who were raised in the era of, I don't want to put words in your mouth at all, I'm just, this is me riffing here. You do, do you get to speak?

Millennials, you have a theory. Who are raised in the era of Obama. That where he was supposed to be this fucking, like, ray of light that just like fixed America are kinda like, okay, fine, get a fucking old guy in here who's been around the bed, who is just like saying, who just seems like basically unhinged. I don't think that's it, I don't think it's that.

Here's what I think, I think that it's more, no, no, you're not like a hundred miles away from something that's right. I just think it's more that's more it's more that I think I think It's more not about the old guy thing. It's more that for if you're If you either voted for Obama in 12 or maybe you cast your first vote in eight maybe Or maybe this is where I may be voted for either one of them, but you've been growing up in Obama's America. Yeah.

Obama was supposed to be transformational. That's what people believed when he first came in. And there are areas in which Obama has achieved a great deal. You know, you can say what I'm about to say without, in any way, trash talking, the Affordable Care Act, or the, you know, Dodd Frank, or the improvement of America's image around the world after W, right? You can say all those things. Game marriage? Yes, right, although again in some of these kids like gay marriage is one of those things that you know Whether I'm eligible. Yes, and you know Barack Obama was not for gay marriage until 2012. I mean, you know, so We'll see against this. Well, he was publicly not for it. I mean privately he is for it But he was publicly his public posture was that you know that he was not in favor of it

So here's my point my point is just that in many respects, that I think for some young voters, many, many, many young voters, that the promise of a transformational presidency, that you got to the end of like where you are with Obama right now. And again, it doesn't like, dude, it's not, you're not trashing Obama to say this,

but that it seemed like kind of like, like a liberal conventional presidency. And it didn't like transform America. Is race relations like radically better eight years later? No. Is the power, is the power of Wall Street diminished any significant way? No.

Is the job market wildly better? Well, is it wildly better than at the depths of the economic, the near, the near great depression that we repeated. Yes, that's much better than it was in January of 2009. No question, but you know, average wages are not rising that fast. The unemployment rate is down, but you know,

the opportunity is not, it's like, it's not, it was a present, it's incremental. It was a presidency that has been, many people will say, if you're a Democrat, you'll look at Obama's presidency and say, it was historic, much was accomplished, but I think for some large subset of Democratic voters, it was still not transformational. And what they hear in Bernie Sanders is not an old, it it's it's the old guy thing is part of the brand But really if you go and listen to what Sanders says is He's saying things Obama could never say never did say never would say we're gonna break a big banks He's saying you know America's a fucking oligarchy. We need a fucking revolution. Yeah

We need a fucking revolution. Yeah, he's saying the word revolution. And socially, he doesn't really say socials in the much what he does say is socialist. So what he does say is revolution. And he couches it by saying political revolution because he wants to stay away from the notion of like guns in the street, right? But every speech is about there's an oligarchy,

there's a billionaire class that the oligarchy and the billionaire class that run America are fundamentally antithetical to the interests of Ordinary Americans the middle class the students the poor the working poor But he's right, is he right and he's saying he's talking right? He's saying all that stuff and he's saying all that stuff you want to admit it He's saying all that stuff and he's saying what we need is a political revolution.

But do you agree with his basic premise? Is there a oligarchy? Is it is is is is Washington ruled by by billionaires and lobbyists and corporations? That's a really it's a the question is like not sufficiently focused to answer in a meaningful way. Really? Yeah.

Do I think do I think the country is run by the 1%? Yes, obviously the answer question is yes. Sure, I should be run by the 1%. Well, it's, it is what, again, the 1% of the critique, the critique of the fact that like super, that there's been this huge acceleration in income inequality and that the people who at the top of the income spectrum,

spectrum who are super, super rich have way too much power, not over Washington for sale, although yes, they do over Washington. But actually more importantly, Washington's like relative. But why would it be? It's like, almost like after thought by comparison. That's my point. That's my point.

That's my point is not like, it's not the point isn't, hey man, there's the 1% and the 1% runs of Washington yes the 1% has an outsized influence on Washington but more importantly like the 1% has a pervasive control over like a large like a vast like how do we live in New York City here where we live we don't you know who has power who like it's a it's a bigger thing than Washington and lobbyists yes but but watch lobbyists, early power, whatever. Deregulation and acquiesce into their interests and demands leads to the kind of control that

you're talking about writ large. The thing that you're saying is, oh, yeah, it's not just about politics, all these other things. It's everything. But if we acquiesce and if we seed power in government or regulatory power, then we're giving them the tools to be much more powerful. Yes, I guess all I mean is that I think Washington is kind of complicated. It's like a, it's a weirdly go on. Well, I mean, there's a, you know, the way in which the one percent exercise power in Washington

is mostly by stopping shit from happening, mostly. Yeah. Shit that would be beneficial to regular Americans. In some cases, yeah, in some cases not. But yes, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to be a pussy about it. I'm just trying to say, look, I get it. Do I think that Bernie Sanders' critique has a lot of validity to it? Yes, I'm not again. I'm not trying to be a pussy about it. I'm just trying to say look. I get it Do I think that Bernie Sanders's critique? Has a lot of that validity to it. Yes, I do yeah

You're a Bernie bro. You're basically a Bernie problem really not in many ways the biggest problem with Bernie's critique is that Bernie Doesn't have a solution. He's got a he's like we got to do this He's got a critique, but he's never remedy So well, it's fucking hard, you know, It is hard. It is hard. So, just, again, being analytical about it, I think you've got a lot of... You're asking it. I'm trying to answer your original question, which was... I think that the... I don't remember. I think great fucking question. Your question was, is the phenomenon of sanders and the phenomenon of left populism that's kind of like the animating governing ethos of what's happening on the Democratic side?

Is it partly in reaction to a sense among many Democrats and certainly younger Democrats that Obama was not transformational? And that Obama did not, that he made incremental progress and that it was real and substantial but that he was not a transformational figure in the Democratic Party or in the country. I believe that the answer to that question is yes. That part of that is like that's what that's comes from. Getting back to my point. Yes, I'm getting back to your point.

Basically right is what you're saying. Incredible. I know you love that when somebody tells you you're sort of a lover. I do have to say it is deeply satisfying to me on several levels. Okay. So you want to talk about Trump now, right?

Yeah, we have to, I mean, can we talk about his hand size? Well, I gotta tell you, I'm voting for Trump, okay? I'm a Republican, hardcore lifelong Republican. You don't know that about me. And I am casting my vote for the best, most viable and most interesting Republican candidate in years. Donald J. Trump, who is a fucking great American

and a beautiful man. Donald J. Trump billionaire. And he doesn't mention any art. Yeah, he really does. Now, Trump is a piece of shit. And I just wanna say something, it's not a piece of shit because of his ideology, which is bullshit in theater.

He doesn't have ideology. He is an entertainer. He's the best entertainer. I think you might not agree to this because you've got to deal with Trump all the time. You've got to do interviews with him. But he's a great entertainer in that he says, like, what is right at the time?

And he can move very quickly past that and erase it essentially from the public discourse, which is a modern capability. Yeah. I don't think that he's actually Republican at the core. I don't think he's like, I think he may be fiscally conservative because he's a billionaire and all billionaires

are fiscally conservative. You don't meet a lot of them who are like, I wish I had higher taxes. Some, but not many. Right. Socially, I think he's pro light, not pro life, he's probably pro choice, really. I think he probably doesn't care about immigrants because he employs a lot of them, a lot of them.

He probably doesn't care about trade going overseas because he uses a lot of overseas trade to make his ties and jackets and other bullshit that Trump incorporated makes. And I think that he just saw an opportunity, which is like a broken party. This is me. I don't fucking know. I'm no expert.

I'm just some guy from Pittsburgh. Are you from Pittsburgh? I am. Really? I think you saw, you didn't know that? No. Really? Oh my God.

You just know that. I just explained so much. I think he saw an opportunity. And he was like, these bozos don't know what the fuck they're doing. And I have a lot of money, and I'll just step in and see what happens. And he has been seeing what happens up to the nomination. Now, you tell me how wrong I am about that.

And then we can talk about hands. There's no question that Trump saw a market opportunity in the Republican Party for a certain kind of politician. If you go back and look at where Trump was historically on a variety of issues, the things that you're saying about his many of his positions, abortions are a really good example, right? I mean, not that long ago, he was not just pro-choice, but was like for partial birth abortion. Probably. Viannally.

So not for it, but like he was tolerating. He was like, please go get a partial birth, right? Yes. So, you know, and he's, if you think about, I just always try to think about all these people in the context of the world that they live in and come from. You think about Trump's life as a man had night, you know, real estate developer, mogul, married multiple times, goes on Howard Stern all the time and talks about his sexual conquest, you know, flies around in a private jet, you know, talks about how hot his daughter

is. Right. Yeah. On a regular basis. So all of that, you know, would suggest that it's hard to imagine that Trump is a social conservative that his claims to being pro-life and some of his other claims that those are anything but cynical. I mean, again, I don't know what's in the guy's heart, but the circumstantial evidence is strong about he saying some things that are not necessarily fully what he believes. I think the economic stuff, if you go back, again, historically, the stuff he says now

about the Chinese, he was saying that the Japanese 20 years ago, there is, as you know, we've had these panics about when Sony got bought, when Sony came in bought Columbia Pictures, there was that whole freak out about, you know, Japan's taking over America. Now there's more of a like China's taking over America thing. I mean, even in New York, you hear about this, every 10 years, there's like a, they're buying all the skyscrapers.

Right, yeah. And that's like a, you know, that's a cyclical thing. And there are business people in the world who believe those things. I mean, again, I think it's sort of nuts for the mercantilist kind of view of how trade works is kind of crazy. But I believe he's sincere about that.

No, I agree with you. When he talks about... But I'm just saying, look, I mean, I think there's just a mix of things. I think Trump has adopted certain policies and postures that are totally craven like that he doesn't really believe. And I think there are others that he really genuinely

does believe. And it's the ad mixture of those things that has worked for him so far. Do I think he thinks that immigration is a really huge problem? I mean, again, I just on the basis of what my intuition and my sense of spending time at a spent a firm out of time with him, tells me is that he thinks immigration is a real problem. Does he really think he's gonna build

like a big giant beautiful wall on the Mexican border? I can't believe he's smart to think that that's real. The wall is like a kind of weird, it's like a fantasy, it's like a child fantasy, right? When we talk about things like the wall, you might as well be describing like, we're gonna build a ladder to space, right? Which people talk about. That's what I'm saying. There are plans like, oh like we're gonna build a ladder to space. Yes, right? Which people talk about.

That's what I was saying. There are plans like, oh, we can build a space ladder and they made at some point. But like if you and I talk about it or if Donald Trump talks about a ladder to space, we're not really, we don't really mean we'll build a fucking ladder. It's very difficult. You're gonna climb up and you're gonna be in the fucking stratosphere and then oh, you're in space. It is difficult to believe that Donald Trump, given his intelligence, thinks that like there's some chance that he's gonna build a giant ladder. So I'm gonna cost 11 billion. So I'm gonna cost 11 billion. And then the Mexican government in space it is difficult to believe that Donald Trump given his intelligence thinks that like there's some chance That he's gonna build a child on the cost of 11 billion

So he comes and that the Mexican government is gonna pay for it Well, and then every time the Mexican every time the every time the Mexican president says something he doesn't like he says Maybe I'll make it a few feet higher because that's like Sounds so I mean infantile right can we just say that so what we can say is that it's worked for him pretty well and You know there's things that I think he's more again like most politicians there's there are a range of things in Trump's policy vernacular Portfolio that are like things that he really really believes in and things that he's being more less cynical about. Right. It just happens that the things that he's really cynical about seem to be things that are

like they're more extravagantly cartoonish in some ways than the things that a lot of other politicians adopt as a purely as a matter of political expedience. For instance. Well, like the like the wall, right? And that's there's I you just made the whole analogy at the great length about like the ladder to space. Yeah, I'm saying like, I don't really think that there's any serious person who thinks in the Republican or Democratic Party who thinks there's any chance that in any time in our lifetimes, there's going to be a giant, beautiful, gorgeous, guilt-edged wall on the Mexican border. So, but it's just fucking crazy to you.

You cover this. Don't you seek, aren't you desirous of sanity in the world, in our society, that we can go, hey, you know what, everybody? But people do that all the time. Stop this fucking bullshitting the wall. We're not building a fucking wall. No one's building the wall.

But we Trump or Hillary or anybody. Oh, what world do you live in where that's not set all the time? I mean, I don't mind it. We're not an avatar. Like, why don't we just say things that are real? I think this is actually what, what? But this is, but Josh, but they're irid media.

You read media. Like, like, do you think there's an absence of people calling bullshit on the wall? I really, I'd read 200 articles. I can't. 200 people on television who've said the wall is bullshit. Is that what they say?

Is that what they're just Bernie say? Yes, of course. They say it also. So why does our populist not understand that it's a bullshit idea? Okay. Why do we, why are people like, yeah, he's gonna build the fucking wall?

Why are people how they are? I don't know. That's what I want to get to the bottom. I was hoping we could figure out how to be the podcast. I can't help. I can't help. Okay, so getting back to trying. I can't help it. So you're saying, I get figure out how to do that. I can't help you with that. I can't help you with that. Okay, but can we, so getting back to Trump. I can't help you with that.

So you're saying, I get it. He believes some things. He doesn't believe other things, which it's like every politician, they're gonna say some shit for the public and they're gonna do some shit because they really believe it. Do we agree? Yes.

Okay. Trump, so you're like, oh, you hate Trump. At the beginning of this part of the conversation. I said, oh, you hate Trump. I think this is bad of the conversation. I said just, oh, you hate Trump. I think it's bad guys. He said this is not to me. Yeah. To be clear, what I said was, I'm sure you really hate Trump.

And you're about to like trash Trump. So go please be my guest. You're more than welcome to. So here's why people do. Here's why I dislike Trump. Again, it's not like, it's not like the marketplace of ideas. This is an underrepresented point of view. Can I tell you why I just go ahead?

I'm gonna tell you why I personally dislike Trump. And you can tell me whether or not you think it's a valid reason to just like him I can't already tell you. I think it's valid I think we just move on to the cred to the end to the end to the end of this project I just I think people have ever right to have the views they have no but listen But here's Mark. I am sure your views are valid. You really did took at some point during this. I missed the moment, but here's my thing. Trump thinks that this process is bold. It seems to think that it's a that it's some kind of theater that it's that it is theater. No question. And I think the circus shows that in game chain shows that you've been involved in like I think particularly in the last 10 years, let's say,

of pointing out how much theater there is in politics. It's hugely dramatic for no reason other than the drama of it. I know, obviously, the power you gained through that use of drama, the correct use of drama. But the theater that Trump creates in this country, and I think it's difficult to deny this is happening right now, that the theater he's creating is violent, is productive, is xenophobic, hateful, and ultimately damaging.

You say this about McCain, and Sarah Paylon to a certain degree, she wasn't, I mean, certainly you guys covered this extensively. I wish I had a video of what John is doing in the studio right now. He looks like he's about to fall asleep on the microphone. No, I'm just very difficult for me to make my long-winded point. I'm just massaging the microphone. But what if I can bug me?

I'm just sexy for you. Besides the fact that I think that he's sort of like, that he's so sexy for you. Bull. Is that the fact that he's just kind of joking with all of those? All of those. Is that he makes America a less smart,

less sensitive, less meaningful, less intelligent country. I mean, his rhetoric is fucking backwards. It is, it is us 50 years ago, 100 years ago. It is us from our worst moments. The shit that he thinks is light and like a way to move his demographic outwardly is damaging, highly damaging and progressively damaging to what we have built over hundreds and hundreds of years in this country. We're not, we're a pretty fucking new country,

but we've more to really hard to build some things that are valuable, you know. Civil rights is something that is valuable here. And I think that his rhetoric, whether he believes it or not Chips away at some of the fundamentals of like the progressive and I don't mean progressive in the political sense I mean progressive in the in the human and social sense the progressiveness of America And I think like whoever you are I may agree with some of his fiscal his fiscal ideas and his ideas about Trade and not all of them, but some of them potentially.

But the xenophobia and the hate is damaging to this country on levels that I don't think we can like, calculate at this point. And so, yeah, I mean, I have a fucking problem with it. So, that's my complaint about Trump. Feel free to respond in any way that you'd like Knowing that Trump is a great great friend of yours, and you've got an interview I'm definitely in this cycle. No, I just know I'm Interviewed him many times and I will interview him again. I think because you know, he's really interesting And it's my job. He is really interesting. So

it's a little bit fucked up to identify the problem to the extent that there's a problem with Trump as being Trump. Right? In the sense that the stuff that Trump is saying is only powerful because there is a market for it. And just like Hitler. Well, there's always a market for bullshit. Yes, there's always a market for it.

There's always a market for hate. But this might, but this might, it's the American, it's the American way to fucking rise above that shit. Yes, and when, and when, look, if your view is that, like there's, there's much the Trump says that I object to at like a human level and I say it on television all the time, you know, I'm perfectly happy when Trump called from Muslim ban, you know, I said it was dangerous and wrong when Trump has inside about violence is rallies, I've said the same thing. You know, about McCain, about a million things, like I don't have any hesitance about calling out Trump when he says something like that I regard as

capitalizing on people's sense of anxiety and fear and grievance rather than being uplifting or inspirational or unifying. All those things are like, or like we, we, again, I don't think I'm particularly noble. I think like many people do it. If you watch cable television for a while, you'll find many people on television. Chris Hayes, Chris Hayes,

Abbas, Abbas, Abbas, Abbas. You'll find many people on television criticizing Donald Trump all the time. That's not particularly bold. I mean, the, you know, and the things you said, all of which are things I've heard in other places. And again, I'm not trying to trivialize what you're saying.

That's original. I'm not trying to trivialize what you're saying. It's not original. I'm just trying to say, like, there's a thriving market in liberal views. Do you think I'm liberal? Well, when it comes to Trump, yeah, they're kind of a caricature of being liberal around Trump is like being, you know. Again, though, I'm just, can I try to,

I know you had like a long time to make your, your, your relatively incoherent, rambling point about Trump. Let me just try to say what I'm gonna say. your relatively incoherent rambling point about Trump. Let me just try to say what I'm going to say. Yes. So here's what I'm trying to say. The Republican party has a problem. The problem is in Donald Trump. The problem is the fact that that there's a giant marketplace for many of the most retrograde and divisive

and fear mongering elements of the Trump platform. But if it wasn't Trump, it'd be somebody else. If that, if the things that you find most troubling about Trump as a figure of division and a figure of fear mongering and a figure of xenophobia and so on. If those turn out to be a minority view in the country broadly and a minority and not even possibly not even a majority view within the Republican Party, I look at that and say, well, I already knew there were people who had those views in the Republican Party and Trump gave a very vivid, very television friendly, very charismatic voice to those things. But who's, where's the problem there? And that is, we're talking about, in another context, we're talking about chickens and

eggs, you know, the Republican Party has been, you know, a large segment of the Republican base has been drifting in this direction now for a decade. And so Trump is like the perfect distillation of a set of views that have become very familiar and very much the common currency of a large part of the Republican. He's very seen. So he's very, he's very big, potent, TV friendly, charismatic version of that distills all of that

into one big body, right? And it's like you see all that and you say, okay, so that's Trump, right? That's, you know, like, do you think, do you think it's a, he's a symptom of the Republican? Yes, a certain segment of the Republican party. I don't think Trump is calling,

I don't think Trump is like the cause, right? This is kind of a question of cause or a symptom. And, you know, again, I'm not the first person to say this by any means. I just think like, you know, Trump is like the cause. This is kind of a question of cause or his symptom. Again, I'm not the first person to say this by any means. I just think like, to the extent that if you want to criticize Trump for being cynical and saying that he recognized that there were positions he could take in the Republican party that he could capitalize on and make himself a credible political figure, if you are going to take that posture, which I think is a reasonable posture, that actually implicitly in that argument

is to say that those views already existed in the party. He didn't create them. He didn't just generate change. He didn't gin them up. He just, he became the lightning rod. Yes, and he pin pointed them and gave them voice in a more compelling way than anyone else had done up to this point.

So let me, okay. And that by the way, I think that is a completely reasonable and very, very, I mean, a much more reasonable take than mine. Okay. Well, I don't actually think our takes are that different. Well, like the years, yes, you need more context. It's more like, you look at someone like, you know, if you go back and look at George Wallace,

you look at various figures, you know, you can hold them responsible for things. Like, I think, you know, Donald Trump go back and look at George Walls, you look at various figures, you know, you can hold them responsible for things like, I think, you know, Donald Trump goes and was fucking rallies and talks about how people should be taken out on stretchers. Like, you have to fucking like call that person out and say, that's inciting violence at your rally, that's fucking unacceptable in America. Don't do that.

And that's fine. You should say that. Are you saying that? Yes, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'll say it now. Yes, no, the, the, the, the, but inciting violence at political rallies is a bad idea. Don't do that. Donald Trump doesn't. He isn't cop to that.

Don't do that. He isn't cop to it. He's not like, yeah, you're right. You know what I shouldn't have said. I don't really care whether you're cop or him. But I'm saying, but like that matters too, right? Yes, I agree. So I think it's irresponsible. I think it's like, it's not okay. And I think he should be called out on it. And he should be. And I have. And I will continue to. But my only point is like, you can, you can both call him out for that and recognize that he is not like the wellspring of the things that turn into... That exists, and he can either ameliorate it or he can exacerbate it. It's not okay for him to exacerbate it, and we should be normative in our world and say

when someone stands up in front of a rally and says, you know, I, along for the good old days, when people like that would have been taken on stretchers as a result of someone who's like, you know, doing in the best political tradition of America standing up and offering dissented a rally, that's not okay. That's, you know, that should be called out. That should be criticized. That should be like all that stuff. And I'm happy to do it here Here or at other forums that I speak,

but it's not, but by calling them out, you also need to recognize the fact that the reason why it's powerful is that the impulses are already there and that the people who are showing up at those rallies are showing up there for a reason because they have views that they've come to along before Donald Trump was a presidential candidate.

Right, which brings me to probably not the final in our lifetime of having this conversation, but maybe the final topic of this show. Yeah. Because this is fat, by the way, I just want to say fascinate to hear you. You're going to have to edit this shit. Ryan, what do you think?

I mean, I'm going to have to edit it. Not that. That's your, but there's a lot of interesting shit here, but like this to me- What the point out that John has a title? What is- What is- I've added that- That battery's gonna die, don't know, that's good stuff, that's high quality.

But here's what's interesting, like here's what I want to know. Okay, what do you want to know? We have this thing in America, which I find so bizarre, this binary idea of belief systems that if I am pro-choice, I'm also more likely to give to the needy financially and tax the rich higher and all these things that go the liberal or democratic set of things that go the liberal or democratic

set of things that I believe in, right? Versus the, the Republican, as you said, very at the beginning, we're increasingly polarized in these beliefs, right? These belief sets are becoming increasingly, and by the way, correct me if I'm wrong in saying this, or interpreting what you said. We're increasingly extreme. Is that what you say it's true?

Well, I was actually trying to say something a little bit more precise than that, which is the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party's had moved further along the ideological spectrum. So the Republican Party is now more conservative than it was, and the Democratic Party is now more liberal than it was. Right. That doesn't actually seem more extreme. That doesn't, but it's crucial this distinction because there are a lot of data that suggests

that the country hasn't really changed very much at all. So that our politics are part of what's so fucked up about our American life in the area of governance and politics is that the parties, and particularly in Washington but elsewhere, is that the parties are and particularly in Washington, but elsewhere, is that the parties are much more polarized than the country is. And the country is basically a center-right, center-left country, but that their representation in the political sphere is much more polarized, which actually is a whole other topic that we've been long time ago.

I don't want to spend another whole bunch of... What are you asking? What are you asking? What are you asking? Can we get to a place where we're actually more nuanced in our politics, where I don't have to choose between the Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, where I can choose like a politician who is actually speaks to the relatively middle or reasonable concerns and needs of the populace.

Right, because I feel like we're in a place where I could never imagine there's not a single Republican candidate, not one of them, as a person who is typically sort of liberal and Democrat, and I could even consider a little bit. And I believe that there are a lot of places where a Republican candidate could be Not strictly like a long fucking party lines and still be a good Republican

So I guess what I'm saying is like in your opinion is there is there what is the inevitable end of this thing? Are we just going going more and more extreme until we're like in all-out civil war or is there some Sanity that can come back to these? Do we need two fucking parties? I don't know. What I'm asking is, does it always have to be this stupid? That's what I'm fucking asking. Because it seems incredibly, I'm sorry, I know that this is your game.

You're like, you're fucking on it, you're surfing a wave, you're on your fucking long board and surfing some wave of politics that is very entertaining and enjoyable to you. And like you can play around with these like the idiosyncrasies of these candidates and they're extremes. But to like regular human beings, it's like when the fuck is this going to stop? Because it seems like it's only getting worse. Right.

Doesn't seem like it's getting better. So help me out. Or we can just call it. No, I mean, first of all, like, I'll just say because of your, like, because if you're extraordinarily, like condescending ass-holic attitude towards, like, what I'm doing.

I'm not condescending to you. You really are, actually. No, I'm just saying that, like, I know this is just stop, just stop, stop, stop, stop. You really you really are. No, I'm just saying. I know this just stop. Just stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Amazingly, you joking out of your hide again. Can we get him? Ryan, could we get this man some water? Amazingly. My attitude is that out that I'm surfing a fucking long border on people's idiosyncrasies and all that bullshit you just said. My attitude is like, is that I'm, is that, as a, is that as a journalist that I'm really interested in the human beings who are like, likely to be the president of the United States.

You know, and I don't choose them. And the system, the, the party process is what it is, but as someone who actually is involved in the telling of stories about, you know, the human beings who are ostensibly the most powerful people on the planet, like I'm interested in like what makes them tick, who they are, what's good about them, what's admirable about them, what's deplorable about them, and like trying to convey that in some way is what I actually think I'm doing and not like surfing the longboard along the sea of secrecy, whatever the fuck that is. I get the, I get the, I get the, you secrecy. So whatever the fuck that is. I really, I've had it like, I get the, I get the, I get the, I get the,

you see more nuance than like I do. Well, yes, I, oh, God, I hope so. I think so. I hope so. I think so. So just like I see more nuance, if we were to tell you what smartphones right now, I can see. So that's, so that's, you know, what I think I'm doing.

You know, I, I'm very appreciative of the notion that people are frustrated with the thing that I actually was really interestingly talking about a second ago, which is that like, I think a lot of people are frustrated with the choices they have. I think that it's hard for me to be predictive about what's going to happen. Whether we're going to get to a place that will be more satisfying to you, you know, whether there are black politicians that you will like that you will like. But I, well, look, I mean, I think what you would find a satisfying, nuanced, a politician

that would align with your views is not necessarily a politician that would align with the views of, you know, a lot of other Americans who are equally frustrated with the system as it currently, like there are ways of being frustrated with the system with what it cops up. There will be many Americans who find, if we ended up with the Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton in general election, there will be millions of Americans who find that really unsatisfying. That will, that think I really don't like either one of those people and I don't really want to, I can't affirmatively vote for either one of them so i can we get a third

party in there well we we i got again the top very long conversation about why we begin you're asking me like to kind of design a system of i was a lot i could like redesign the whole american electoral system in a way that pleased me but the like that would you all i'm trying to say is that among the many millions of people who would find a Clinton Trump general election unsatisfying, there will be many millions who find it unsatisfying in a different way than you find it unsatisfying.

You have an idea of what kind of a candidate you would like. Again, totally valid that you have that view, but there are also a lot of other people who are equally unsatisfied with the current choices, but who would like a totally different kind of candidate than the one you would like. So it's, you know, it's 350 million people in the country and there's a vast diversity of views. I would like there to be, you know, in some idealized system, it would be, you know, you know, nice if the candidates that we had to choose from represented a greater diversity of views and were more aligned with more people than this, you know, I mean, we have two, like just as a piece of data, right? The two likeliest nominees in the party right now are wildly unpopular with like vast numbers of people in the country. Like Hillary Clinton is their own base.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two most of all the candidates that are in the race right now, and of all the candidates probably have never been in the race. They're like the two most unpopular people in the country. You know, they have like disapproval ratings of like 60% and approval ratings of like 40% they're like way underwater with most people. It seems like a totally nuts thing that that could be right. That the people who won their party's nominations

are widely disliked by Americans generally speaking. That seems like a pretty dysfunctional system. I don't disagree with that. I have no idea how to design a better system so that we have to have that. Oh, other countries are placed. Multiple parties. Many other countries do, but we are who we are.

I mean, I don't mean that to be like our system instead of the binary it is but you know look i mean a lot of these phenomena there's you know there's far right parties in france there's Jeremy Corbyn in britain there's like you know there's a there's some of the same kind of trends are happening in other western democracies that are happening here i i don't know how to make a better system, but I will say that the current President of the United States, who won election, not that long ago, right, when he first won in 2008. Barack Obama. Barack Obama in 2008 was someone that many, many, many tens of millions of people in the

country thought was, you know, a great historic advance that they were really proud to vote for, that they came out for with a great degree of enthusiasm and a great degree of hope when they voted for him. Right. And that was the last president. He's still in office and he still is hugely popular. I mean, you know, among Democrats, you know, he said 85% approval rating. And he's not someone who, again, Republicans hate him. Many Democrats really like him. But it wasn't like a lot of people in 2008 when

he first got voted in. You knew people. And maybe even you were one of them who voted for him, not because he was the lesser of two evils, but because you thought he was actually like, you were actually like psyched to go to the ballot box and vote for him, right? I mean, I don't know if that's true of you, but it was true for McCain. So did you really? No, of course not. That's absurd. Right. So, but you see what I'm saying, I would vote for somebody who'd put Sarah Paylon at any scene in the office, but you see what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that like, the guy who's currently in office was someone who millions of people were really satisfied with. Yeah.

I mean, you could, I'm saying about satisfaction, it's just about the divisiveness. It's just about like getting to a place where we are able to talk about things in terms of, less in terms of black and white and more in terms of shades of gray. Yes.

50, 50 if possible. The problem with you, Josh, is that you're too smart. Yes. That's the thing. No, I don't think that's the problem. No, that's the problem Is that you're so much smarter than so many other people in the country that are you mocking me right now? No I feel like you are I would ever mind. I feel like this is a monkey. What circumstances would ever mock?

So I think we got to wrap up So that I'm so that attack on an insulted attack. I'm so disappointed. Why I've this is the longest podcast I've ever done on the thing on tomorrow ever It says oh 508 that can't be right. No, yeah We're like it's like day day we talked we talked for more than five minutes and son is coming up This is like a slumber party. Wait, we've talked for more than five minutes and 20 seconds, right? Yes, much more than five minutes. I go into a a few things? Did I go into a few things? I think it was a point where you had to do a few things. Yeah, but...

Did I miss something? Oh, shit. I think you were here for all of it. There were a lot of insults thrown. Yeah. It was also a lot of great complimentary conversation. Yeah. John, thank you for doing this.

You have to come back. One of my great pleasure. One of the best things I've done in a long time. But you will admit, when we started, I said this is gonna be the only thing you've done today that you get to swear on. That has been true. I was swearing all day long when you were talking about it.

You give it dot on air. Oh yeah, that's probably true. Anyhow, thank you for doing this. I actually have, this is, I mean, thank you for having me. I know you think that I've been condescending and rude to you, but I've found this to be. No, only momentarily. I know you think that I've been condescending and rude to you, but I found this to be. No, only momentarily.

I found this despite your bullshit. I found this to be one of the most fascinating. Only momentarily condescending. No, this is really, you're not consistently condescending. Just occasionally. That's my thing. Anyhow, John, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

You have to come back. I'm coming back. Maybe before, during the general, and we can talk about, like, what are things have, like, and you have to come back. I'm maybe before, during the general, and we can talk about, like, where things have like, awesome netted out. Okay, bye.

All right, thanks, John. Bye. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best. But unfortunately, for your family, they're on the other side of Donald Trump's wall. So the very best is gonna be very hard to come back for them.