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- [00:00]
A
This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, an all in one platform that lets you build a real website, claim your domain, offer services and actually get paid. All without needing a tech support hotline. If you've been putting off launching something because it feels overwhelming, Squarespace removes the excuse. Go to squarespace.com clubrandom for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code clubrandom to save 10% off your first website or domain. Well, it still might be cold out, but summer is coming, people. That's right, shorts and bathing suit season is just a few months away and those weeks will go by quick. So time to fix your carb based winter diet with meals from Factor. It's fresh, never frozen and idiot proof, which is key. Head to factor meals.com random50OFF and use code random50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Make healthier eating easy with Factor this year, instead of ignoring the issue, let's fix it. Rula makes going to therapy actually quite easy. They work with most major insurance plans and sessions can be around 15 bucks. The hard part wasn't going, it was finding someone who takes your insurance and doesn't have a three month wait list. Thousands of guys have already used Rula to finally get the care they needed. Don't keep putting it off. Go to rula.comrandom and get started today. Take control of your mental health. I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of Green in all its forms. Get it? And for fellow lovers of, well, Green, the Club Random merch store has you covered. Grinders, papers and Zippo lighters, all designed to support your relationship with Green. Wink, wink. Whatever and whatever philosophy comes with that for you. Head to clubrandom.com and bring home some Random. That's what we depend on you for. Sam.
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B
Thank you. I'm glad to bring this painful moral analysis.
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A
I never took it personally.
- [02:24]
B
I don't think that's quite true. I think you did take it personally and you were right to take it personally.
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A
Club Random. Hey pal. How are you? I'm good. So glad you could come by.
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B
I've made myself a gin and tonic. Awesome. Ready for you.
- [02:37]
A
Oh, what bigger treat in my life.
- [02:40]
B
Yeah. Isn't this great?
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, it's. What is the best thing about podcasting, people? Would you and I, if it wasn't a podcast, be sitting here at 5 o' clock on Wednesday in a perfect world?
- [02:52]
B
I hope so, but you know, I see the months fly off the calendar. Yeah, who do you like? Just.
- [02:58]
A
I mean, when we were 28, you know, like. What are you doing? Nothing. I'm a comedian. What do you mean? I'm doing it's day.
- [03:03]
B
Right, Right.
- [03:04]
A
What do I do in the day? Nothing. I get stoned to think of material.
- [03:09]
B
That's work. I hope you wrote that off. I don't know.
- [03:12]
A
It's always a treat. You're always the podcast I never miss.
- [03:20]
B
Well, I've been. I caught some of these recently. There were some fun conversations, but conversations that kind of went sideways in ways that I was not expecting. It seems like you and Neil Degrasse Tyson were kind of at loggerheads. I forgot the details years ago. No, no, there was a recent one. Or did it just hit my algorithm?
- [03:38]
A
Yeah, I would say it's at least two years old.
- [03:41]
B
Oh, I saw that as a recent one. Okay, then. That's interesting. That's the thing about the machine.
- [03:46]
A
The good thing about. And the bad.
- [03:48]
B
Yeah.
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A
I think mostly the good is that they never go away.
- [03:52]
B
Right.
- [03:52]
A
You know, they're always there. And if you want to see Neil. I mean, look, Neil got woke at the expense of science. Something. I would think I could count on your support. I mean, I couldn't. This was on real time, but I don't know if it came up on this show. But I couldn't get him to condemn the Atlantic magazine, and I think it was Scientific American, both of whom said, separating by sports does not. By sex doesn't make sense.
- [04:25]
B
That was the thing.
- [04:26]
A
Now, that, to me, is the kind of thing that, you know, first attracted me to what you do. Like, the common sense. Like, you've got to be kidding. And, you know, you and I pretty much lockstep on most things, including, like, we do not let the left off the hook.
- [04:43]
B
Yeah.
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A
When they go crazy, that's. I think a lot of our credibility comes from that. And if you don't think it makes sense to separate sports by sex, and you're the preeminent science teacher in this country. Right, right.
- [04:59]
B
I forget. So that should have been some clue that that was not. Not last month's podcast, because it seemed. Seems anachronistic to be debating that now. But why.
- [05:09]
A
I don't feel like those magazines have retracted it or that. That I don't think.
- [05:14]
B
Well, retraction might be asking too much, but I haven't seen anyone defend it of late. I feel like that specific trench is no longer occupied on the left. I mean, it could be wrong. I mean, you know, but like, where's Gavin Newsom on that. And I feel like everyone's pivoted among known Democrats
- [05:37]
A
if we're talking about the
- [05:38]
B
specific issue, like trans girls, trans women in sports, in women's sports.
- [05:44]
A
Okay, but this is a somewhat obviously related but somewhat different issue. This is saying there's no point even having the NBA and the wnba because the differences there are only because of cultural norms that. Please, Sam, don't tell me I've lost you.
- [06:05]
B
If that were true, you should expect the women to eventually just start showing up in the NBA and crushing the guys, or at least hanging with the guys without any problem.
- [06:16]
A
It's not worth discussing. It's too.
- [06:19]
B
Although I'll tell you one thing. So I don't know if you follow MMA at all, but I know what it is. I mean, obviously, men and women should be in separate brackets, and they are. And so those differences still apply. But the women have gotten so much better at fighting, like it used to be, that even the best women sort of fought like girls. I mean, you could see a talent difference. But to watch women's martial arts is just. I mean, it's just astonishing. I mean, some of these women are superheroes against each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, but there you can notice, like, a skill differential that had to be cultural, right? Like, because, I mean, they just absorbed the skill set.
- [07:03]
A
I would say even more so with the wnba. I mean, they play an amazingly entertaining and highly skilled brand of basketball that is in no way competitive with the men. That's not a misogynistic statement.
- [07:20]
B
This wasn't. Who was the first. Who was the canary in the coal mine on this point? Wasn't it John McEnroe who made some claim that if Serena Williams played the.
- [07:29]
A
But, but you've read her. Yeah, her quote backs him up.
- [07:34]
B
She agreed with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said, but that was a long time ago. That was like, you know, 20 years ago or something.
- [07:38]
A
No, wasn't it Serena Williams 20 years
- [07:42]
B
ago when he made that quote?
- [07:45]
A
Well, oh, not that long ago. And hers was much more recent. Oh, I mean, she said, you know,
- [07:50]
B
I thought that preceded the. What we have come to know as Wokeness, but can't say I follow sports closely.
- [07:59]
A
I mean, I think Wokeness. I mean, I did a show called Politically Incorrect. There's the sign. I feel like wokeness began before it was, like, went into full overdrive. I mean, each succeeding generation, I think, you know, kind of goes more in that direction, more sensitive. You know, I remember when Gen Z was coming about and a lot of the talk was oh, they're going to backlash the millennials. Well they front lashed them. Yeah, they went, the millennials look like marines, these kids. Don't you think?
- [08:38]
B
Yeah. Although I feel like, I mean this could be just wishful thinking, but I feel like the spell is breaking. I mean we won't know until we hit this full presidential election cycle in 2028. I think when we field a candidate and see what he or she cannot say. But yeah, I mean I just, I feel like it's just not as much of a thing. I mean again, I gotta bracket this with my sense that I might not be in touch with just what the far left activists are up to now and how well you used to be. Yeah, I mean what I see in my news diet isn't revealing to me the same level of crazy.
- [09:20]
A
Well, I must tell you that a lot of the commentary about where the Democrats should be, I'm talking about the mainstream politicians as they position themselves in the coming midterms and than 2028 on
- [09:36]
B
Israel and Jews, there's the same level of crazy. I mean there's or a new level of crazy. But on like gender issues and racial issues. I feel like I'm not saying.
- [09:45]
A
Well, again, a lot of the commentary from a lot of people who you respect I think and would know like Andrew Sullivan, I think people like that is.
- [09:54]
B
No, he's not woke.
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A
No, no, let me finish.
- [09:57]
B
Oh, sorry. Okay. I'm jumping all over you.
- [09:59]
A
Yeah. The commentary is that the Democratic politicians are not walking away from this issue, that they haven't done that. In fact, I'll give you the example. I remember citing it recently. Seth Moulton, you're familiar.
- [10:16]
B
Yeah, but I haven't really followed what he's up to. But I mean I. Oh, okay. I can't bring to mind anything he said on these topics.
- [10:24]
A
I'll tell you, he said he was highly praised by me and others. I would assume you back in. Maybe it was, it was the 24 campaign and he said I don't want my daughter on the field hockey field being run over. My 12 year old daughter being run over by a boy who was, you know, identifying as a girl. But he's kind of running castigated for this. His chief of staff, I think it was chief of his staff quit. Like quit. Like this is just saying it, not even have a discussion. Can we just get in the break room? And you know, plus he's right, you know and it's the position that most Americans who are not anti trans. It's not that. It's just again, separating sports by sex. Makes sense. So people praised him. I did. For, you know, in what it constitutes. Even though it seems ridiculous to me sticking your neck out on the issue in the Democratic Party. I guess it is. And then recently he kind of recanted.
- [11:34]
B
Oh, sorry, I didn't see that.
- [11:36]
A
I was hoping that it would make more people come out of the woodwork. And he crawled back into the woodwork. Right. So I don't know, you're.
- [11:45]
B
Well, that's the most depressing.
- [11:47]
A
Yeah.
- [11:47]
B
Well, I guess honestly I could be out of touch on this, but I don't think we're going to know until we have a proper presidential race happening and we know what people are doubling down on. It's obviously suicidal for the Democrats to die on this hill. I mean this is the.
- [12:07]
A
That's what people are saying. Yeah, that's the phrase that comes up a lot. Why are you dying on this hill?
- [12:12]
B
Yeah.
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A
Especially since it's not even a noble hill. I don't think.
- [12:17]
B
No, I think it's a morally confused hill at best and a psychologically confused hill. And I'm not sure. I mean this is a very complicated topic, but it's clear that this specific activist orbit is politically just an absolute dead end. I mean the topic is such a super stimulus for at least half the country that they will. I mean they will resist it without any other political concern possibly on the scale. I mean it's just like this is the thing that they will never vote for somebody who is not making sense on that topic.
- [13:01]
A
I don't blame them. I mean Andrew talks about it a lot. I always think he's the best on this topic. Coming from a gay man's perspective. He doesn't like what's happened to the trans and gay lumped together and how they kind of hijacked the whole gay movement and thinks a lot of the kids being transed are just gay kids. If you would just let it take its course instead of rushing it. We don't do it like other countries. We are the furthest out there as far as like letting kids self diagnose doing it earlier, you know, and now the pediatricians associate or something. They have said no, you're right, we shouldn't be doing this. So did the.
- [13:46]
B
In the UK they did that?
- [13:47]
A
No, here, two, two groups here and the associated something in plastic surgeons. I guess they're the ones who actually do the operations. They also say no, no, no, we're throwing in the towel on this one. So it is changing.
- [14:02]
B
I mean, honestly, it's a genuinely confusing landscape. I mean, I think it's, it's. There are clear cases where this is like a, you know, obviously not culturally communicated to the kid. I mean you're talking about a kid at age 4 saying they're in the wrong body and there's just no incentives that could explain this coming from the parents. And then there's just over here, pure social contagion which is probably burning off, you know, or you know, eventually will burn off. And then there's everything in between and there's just, I mean the stuff you referenced with Andrew, talking about the kind of the zero sum conflict between trans rights and gay rights and over here women's rights and that algebra became. If we could just relax enough to be kind of compatient and compassionate with all of this. It's just, I mean it's interesting to figure out how to navigate this because it's surprising that suddenly you discover a tension between women's rights, trans rights, gay rights, and it's. If everyone wasn't in such a rush to burn it all down, we might actually be able to have a conversation about it.
- [15:15]
A
You want my analysis of what the overarching place this comes from?
- [15:21]
B
Yeah, sure.
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A
You don't seem that excited.
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B
Listen, it's 5:30. I came here for this purpose.
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A
You don't seem that excited about it.
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B
I'm on pins and needles, Bill.
- [15:34]
A
I think it mostly comes from there's a faction of the left that their whole identity is really about being social justice warriors. I remember during COVID David Leonhardt in the New York Times who really great reporter and he did this story about the percentage of Republicans versus Democrats who, what their assessment was how many people with COVID were hospitalized. The Democrats are off like by 50%. There was like half the population. And I forget what the line that he wrote was, but it was something like on the left like Covid safety is very core to their identity. And I'm just not talking about just Covid, but like it's very core to their identity that we're the good people. We're the people who don't want anybody to die from COVID Well, nobody really did. Nobody want, there were honest disagreements, but nobody really wanted people to die. People make trade offs with death all the time. You know, we've heard that we all drive cars, people die, blah blah, blah. Okay, so, but that was the overarching thing was like we have to be the good people on Covid. You know, the people with the lawn Signs. It's in this house. We believe there are no illegals on stolen land. And all love is. And you know, things I don't disagree with, of course. Well, I disagree with the stolen landing. That's silly. Either shut up or give it back. But you know, just in general, they have this idea that they are only really fully alive if they are taking the cause of some marginalized group. So they keep finding, I mean, obesity was one for a while. I mean again, that's completely Orwellian. Like healthy at any weight. How dare anyone tell you that that is bad for you to be obese? Now that we have Ozempic. That all went out the window.
- [17:36]
B
But that's interesting. Homeless.
- [17:39]
A
Same thing. Like somehow that got completely inverted. We defend your right to live on the sidewalk where it used to be. The compassionate thing was to get you off the sidewalk. Right. All these, you know, areas were disabled. It was like, how dare you say that? That's. And then it's just different. It's not a handicap. You have to rethink what you think about disabled. It's just a different way of doing it. We're not worse because we can't hear. Yeah, if I couldn't hear, I'd think I was worse. I would like to get my hearing back. All these things that just marginalized people. And I think this is what you have with the trans. We found the civil rights issue of our generation and we can go into battle. You know, to them progress is a threat.
- [18:25]
B
Yeah. I mean you never admit that it's been accomplished. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, I think you could see that most clearly on race. Right. It's like we made so much progress and then we got to a point where we had to be told from the far left that no, this is just a sham form of progress. Actually, things have never been worse on some level. I mean, two term black presidents meant nothing. That's basically tokenism. And we just have a, you know, a five alarm fire right now in the year 2019 around race and everything had to be subsumed by that.
- [18:57]
A
Yeah, that's another one of the examples. I mean that to me, obviously there still is racism, you know, and there always will be. Just like there will always be criminals. You know, it's just not something that unfortunately you can extirpate from the hearts of people and you can't legislate that away.
- [19:15]
B
I mean, I think there's more racism now than there was. I mean, I think there's a, certainly a backlash to Black and brown identity politics. Right. So we have white identity politics now on the right, which is not good. And whether you think about that as just unmasking the racism that was already there or producing new racists, I don't know how you figure that out, but it does seem like a, a less hopeful moment around race in America than it did.
- [19:44]
A
Yes, they went to a place, as we've discussed, many people have discussed oppressed, oppressor, everything had to be one or the other. So the whole Middle east thing got subsumed to that again, ridiculously, ridiculously. The idea that they didn't really think of it any further than the Palestinians are browner and poorer. They must be the good guys. Hamas, the good guys. Bring on the info. Tada. That's liberation. And the white people and of course Jews.
- [20:20]
B
I think you said infatada, that might be some dish that I haven't had, but Intifada.
- [20:27]
A
What did I say?
- [20:28]
B
Infatada.
- [20:29]
A
Which Infatada.
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B
Oh, I think that's our covfefe now.
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A
Try it with rice. Intifada.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Is that it? Intifada, yeah, Intifada.
- [20:40]
B
Yeah. Well, you know which, you don't want to globalize. Kids out there, if you're in doubt about this, don't globalize. The intifada. That's not a good thing.
- [20:50]
A
No. But somehow they worked their way back after 911 to this position I'm talking again about the clueless Woke of the far left, the emo children of Wokeville found their way to this place where somehow the good people were the ones who violate every liberal principle much more than anybody else. You know, I mean, Iran now, what's going on? I mean before the war, before the war, like it's the civil war. I mean it could be over in a week, who knows. But before that, I mean what they were going nuts over was first just killing people willy nilly in the streets, protesting. And before that it was because a woman, about two years ago, I forget the name you might remember, would not wear the. Or she was caught not covering her hair.
- [21:41]
B
Masa Amini, something like that.
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A
And they killed her in prison. And then there was mass protests and they killed all the people protesting. Her getting killed?
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I mean this is. We should plant a flag here at least. I mean this is a scandal on. Should be a scandal left of center that liberals in America or liberals in the west found so little common cause to make with the women of Iran over the last 20 years.
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A
End of the whole Muslim world.
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B
Oh Yeah. I mean, not that it was so clear in Iran. And it was so clear that the, you know, the. I mean, and it was so clear to. If you talk to anyone in the Iranian diaspora, I mean, it's just excruciating. Right? It's like these are the least confused people in the world. The Persians in America around this. And on the left, it's just.
- [22:33]
A
And women are treated shitty by many cultures. Not just.
- [22:37]
B
Yeah, but not quite this shitty.
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A
But not. Thank you, Sam. That's exactly what I was hoping you'd
- [22:43]
B
back to keep you on the straight and narrow.
- [22:45]
A
Not quite this shitty and not quite this pervasive and not, you know, government sanctioned. I mean, Mamdani is half Ugandan.
- [23:00]
B
Born in Uganda. Yes.
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A
And goes back there summer home. I don't know what. But you know, there's no movement on the left to get him to renounce that a little. The government of Uganda is like very officially, proudly on the page of no, we gotta kill the homosexuals. You know. You know, it's just like.
- [23:27]
B
It's the brilliance of double standards. I mean, just you keep score differently when you want to and then you don't have to reconcile these ethical contradictions.
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A
I mean, they do it obviously on the right too. I mean, this whole country is sort of run by the principle of everything is terrible until we do it.
- [23:47]
B
Well, that was then.
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A
It's perfectly okay.
- [23:49]
B
I was going to ask you what has surprised you most in the last year, but you just indicated one of the things that surprised me most, which was after the killing of Alex Preddy, how the gun culture did not erupt in defense of the second Amendment. I mean, because in the immediate aftermath of that killing, you had everyone from the President on down speaking. I mean, this was the president, it was J.D. vance, it was Pam Bondi, it was Kash Patel speaking as though the second amendment simply does not exist. They basically said if you listen, if you're armed near federal law enforcement, you might be killed. That was like. That's just the status quo in America, you know, accepted the people who you
- [24:35]
A
can find umpteen pictures of on the Internet walking into Chipotle with an assault rifle.
- [24:42]
B
Where were those guys?
- [24:42]
A
Like they're in the Mekong Delta in 1967. They've got an assault rifle. Okay. It's not officially an assault rifle. I know gun nuts. They love to catch you on the,
- [24:52]
B
you know, an AR15. You would. If this had happened under Biden or Kamala Harris, you would see 500 guys with AR15s at every single ICE deployment.
- [25:03]
A
Can you imagine if January 6th was a mob of black people attacking the Capitol? I cannot think. Imagine that It's a white event. Sanguine.
- [25:16]
B
Just larpoon.
- [25:17]
A
I truly believe they would have called out jet fighters. I would not be surprised if they would have bombed and strafed the crowd. It just.
- [25:27]
B
Well, it is amazing that more people weren't killed. I mean, that seemed like a situation where they could have just opened fire on the crowd. It was. I mean, that could have. I think we would have drawn a very different lesson had that happened. It would have been impossible to say it was a non event. I mean, the fact that, you know, only one person was killed and you had that weird footage of, you know, cops basically declaring bankruptcy and just letting people in through other doors once they realized they could do nothing, that gets spun. And then you got half the country thinking, okay, this is just a completely fake event. Right.
- [26:04]
A
But I know you gotta always love Trump with, you know, the inability to ever cover his tracks of selfishness. He said, they're not here to hurt me.
- [26:15]
B
Right.
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A
I mean, there's something about.
- [26:18]
B
He says the quiet part out loud all the time.
- [26:20]
A
All the time. It's the most brilliant strategy. Nothing can really be a scandal if everything is a scandal. I was watching Gavin Newsom go through hoops lately because he said something. I'm sure you saw it. He was in Atlanta talking to the mayor and he said, you know, to an all black crowd or.
- [26:40]
B
Yeah, I got 9:40 on my SAT, or I got 960 on my SAT like you guys. I'm dumb like you.
- [26:46]
A
Yeah, it's just. And of course I really feel for any politician because they're on like the. I've been on book tours, you've been on book tours. They're grueling. It's similar to campaigning, I guess. You know, you do so many events a day, so many words are tumbling out of your mouth and if. If you're a Democrat and any 12 of those words are in artfully chosen, you are toast. Or at least it's a scandal and you have to answer for it. And it was. I don't think he's saying what they think they've. But you can make the case because we are a country of bad faith. So as long as you can hang it up there and go, look, come on, deny it. He said, okay, you got me. But Trump never has to answer for that.
- [27:33]
B
No.
- [27:34]
A
Because he would just double down and go, yeah. And this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, an all in one platform that lets you build a real website, claim your domain, offer services, and actually get paid, all without needing a tech support hotline. The design tools are genuinely sharp. You can use their blueprint AI to get a polished site up fast or tweak one of their templates until it actually looks like you, not some generic Internet business. All you have to do is drag, drop and you're done. And if you offer services, consulting, events, anything, you can schedule appointments, send invoices, take payments, and run email campaigns all in one place. No duct tape, no 5G different platforms arguing with each other. Plus Squarespace has built in SEO so you're not lost to the Internet void people could actually find you. If you've been putting off launching something because it feels overwhelming, Squarespace removes the excuse. Go to squarespace.com clubrandom for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use Offer code Club random to save 10% off your first website or domain. Well, it still might be cold out, but summer is coming, people. That's right, shorts and bathing suit season is just a few months away and those weeks will go by quick. So time to fix your carb based winter diet with meals from Factor. I get extra when I do it that way. Eat fully prepared meals designed by dieticians, cooked by actual chefs, and they're ready in two minutes. No chopping, no meal prep Sundays, no pretending you're on a cooking show. Just eat and eat. And it's real food. Lean proteins, colorful veggies, healthy fats, no refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, no weird lab stuff. Just meals that actually fit your goals. More protein, fewer calories, whatever you're aiming for. We always have a few factor meals in the studio in case any of us need to grab a quick lunch. They've got like 100 rotating meals. High protein, Mediterranean, calorie, smart. Even this new muscle pro thing. If you're trying to rebuild muscles you lost in 2007, it's fresh, never frozen and idiot proof, which is key. Head to factormeals.com/random50off and use code random50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offer only for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor.
- [30:25]
B
Well, even so, we're all kind of living and dying by clips now, and some of these clips are clearly meant to mislead, right? So people take clips of they do it, they do it to us, they do it to Gavin Newsom, presumably. I actually, I think I only saw the clip. I didn't see the full context. But so the possibilities of distortion there are almost limitless. But the truth is, even with Trump, he doesn't pay a price for it. I mean, he's been clipped out of context to his disadvantage. But again, he's got. He's working by different physics. There's just. No, it just almost never matters. I mean, the one thing that is still dogging him, again, it doesn't matter. But if you ask most people left of center to bring to mind the scandal around Charlottesville and what Trump said in the aftermath, and when he said there are good people on both sides and what he meant there, virtually everyone left of center thinks he was praising the neo Nazis. And, and I mean, they could be working at the New York Times, at the Atlantic, and they still think he was praising the neo Nazis. And that was clipped out of context.
- [31:34]
A
And see, that's where you and I, I think, are more similar than most people. Yeah. I mean, if you and I have beef, the world is in a big. Is in a bad place because it would be like the old 4th century Christians when they were like, you know, there was like those, you know, the Arians and the Chalcedians, and they were just arguing over, like, no Jesus foreskin went to heaven with him and the other side did blasphemer. You know, like, we're very close on these things. And that was something I've also said. Like, did Trump say it in artfully? Yes. But, you know, you went to the true part, as I try to do all the time. True, not just say, oh, it was Trump. So we can jump on that. That's bad faith.
- [32:24]
B
But Joe Biden launched his campaign on that. On his website, when he describes why he launched his campaign, he's got like four sentences. And the four sentences refer to that
- [32:36]
A
moment where they will never move away from it, because it's something you got. You got him. And we don't play that game. It's like, no, there's so much you can get him on. You don't need to get them on that. And it's, you know, I know how he thinks. So when he said good people on both sides, he meant, you know, there are people who like me in that crowd. Those are good people. That's just the way his. Whatever is going on in that.
- [33:02]
B
And worse still, he said, you know, 15 seconds before the offending sentences, he said, I'm not talking about the white supremacists. They should be condemned utterly. So he clearly Bracketed it with some sane statement about, you know, who he was not praising.
- [33:17]
A
It's a little money because the white supremacists also do like him. Right. And he cannot, he can generally cannot dislike someone who likes him.
- [33:27]
B
Even David Duke and Putin.
- [33:29]
A
If somebody says I'm brilliant, well, they're brilliant. We know that. We got to work backwards from that. They think I'm brilliant. They're a great guy. And so, you know,
- [33:43]
B
so should we talk about, should we do a post mortem on our. The thing we got sideways?
- [33:49]
A
So much has happened since we.
- [33:50]
B
Yeah. Because I want to ask you about what's happened since and whether we did anything.
- [33:53]
A
Well, it's bad timing a little bit because it's Wednesday before Friday. I'm going to answer on my show Friday.
- [34:00]
B
But when are you going to.
- [34:01]
A
But this is probably airing the Monday after. So it will have aired the tweet he wrote on Valentine's Day before he, you know, went off on me, which I always knew would happen. I mean, I've gotten texts from him that were similar, oh, you know, you're still part of the radical lunatic left. And, you know, I see you forgot about the dinner and blah. Okay. The deal never was that I would hold my fire. And I didn't, you know, I mean, this is the little argument we had. And I. And so I always knew this would happen. But I do want to prove to him, because it, you know, this whole thing was Trump derangement syndrome, that I don't have Trump derangement syndrome, which this is very apropos example of. If you can look at that fine people on both sides statement and look at the truth of it and say, as we are saying about him, you can't get him on that.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah.
- [34:55]
A
Then that. Then you don't have Trump derangement syndrome. But if you can't, as you said, Biden and I'm sure lots of people who just then that is a bit of tds.
- [35:06]
B
Yeah. Well, the truth is, I think most people who are making that mistake don't even know they're making the mistake. They just saw the clip and they think the clip was an honest representation of what he said. But what amazes me is that even our best journalists are in that bucket. I mean, I've seen this error get made, you know, at least a hundred times. And again, it's in the Atlantic, in the New York Times. It's everywhere.
- [35:29]
A
Well, it's interesting. The second day of the war was yesterday. As we're talking now, the Iran New. The New Iran war. And the New York Times headline was, you know, U.S. troops die. That was like, what they led with. Now, that is a big part of the story that troops have died. I mean, it's kind of a bigger story than that. Okay, but then in a country where I've read 80 to 90% of the people are thrilled that the Ayatollah is gone, what picture did they put? Picture of people mourning the Ayatollah, which exists. But I can't believe that somebody at the desk didn't get. I've got a great picture of people dancing in the streets. Yeah, we're gonna go with the people who. We're gonna go with the 10% who are sorry the Ayatollah is dead, because that's gonna funnel the thought of our readers toward, oh, this is a bad war to get into.
- [36:28]
B
Yeah.
- [36:28]
A
Now, we can talk about whether it is or it isn't, but that, to me, is the difference in what the media does now and what they didn't used to do. Like, you're funneling me toward an opinion, whereas I would love it if you just told me what happened.
- [36:43]
B
Yeah. I mean, the boundary between activism and journalism has clearly broken down. That's. I mean, we. You know, I think we'll get to a place where we rebuild trust in at least some of these institutions, but we're not there yet.
- [36:58]
A
And where are you with this new war?
- [37:03]
B
Well, I think you just have to hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously. The first is that it was an evil regime that we should have crushed and could have ethically crushed at any point since 1979. So it seems to me to be an intrinsic good to have done that. And I think we should have come to the aid of the Iranian people earlier than we did. I think the foreign policy of Obama and Biden on this front was a scandal.
- [37:37]
A
Scandal.
- [37:38]
B
Yeah. I mean, I just think. I mean, we were bizarrely deterred by Iran through both of those presidencies. Like, we were clearly scared of Iran. We would put up with any offense from them to us. I mean, to say nothing of them killing our soldiers in Iraq. But we put up with everything. We put up with the Salman Arski. That was crazy.
- [38:02]
A
I thought the Obama plan, which was to bring them into the family of nations, and the deal was they would not get a nuclear weapon for 15 years.
- [38:16]
B
That never made sense to me. Okay.
- [38:19]
A
I thought it was worth a try, but that moment has passed, whether it was or not. And maybe I was wrong, maybe it never was, and maybe they were always cheating and also, there was a big flaw in it from the beginning, which was the deal was you give up your nukes, but we're not pestering you about being terrorists.
- [38:39]
B
Right.
- [38:40]
A
You keep doing that.
- [38:42]
B
But, I mean, terrorists is one word for it. But the core concept for me is they were always jihadists. This was a jihadist regime, and their death to America, death to Israel. Spiel was sincere.
- [38:55]
A
Yes.
- [38:56]
B
They clearly had genocidal aspirations with respect to Israel, and we couldn't countenance them getting a bomb. And I don't think we could have ever have really negotiated with them. They were always going to.
- [39:11]
A
I don't think the Middle east puzzle, which has been a thorn in our side, the whole world side, for so long, would ever get fixed before Iran got fixed. It's just too vital to the region.
- [39:23]
B
All right, so that's the first thought you have to hold in your head. But the second thought is it is absolutely valid to be worried about this war and even opposed to it, given these further facts, which is we have the most corrupt, most incompetent administration we've ever had, and there's every reason to worry that this is being done for the wrong reasons. It'll be done badly. Trump may just pivot, you know, a week from now, saying, you know, I'm done with this. We won. I mean, these people lie about everything.
- [39:59]
A
I don't know about that. I mean, I feel like domestically, yes, I would go with that somehow overseas. I mean, he. Look, it was late in the day, but was better than anybody else did. Getting the hostages back.
- [40:12]
B
Oh, yeah, that was great.
- [40:13]
A
And that was great. Okay. And then there was no.
- [40:16]
B
But I've actually said, he deserves the Nobel Prize for that.
- [40:19]
A
Yeah, right. I did, too. And also the, you know, just a basic framework going back to the first administration with the Abraham Accords. I mean, he has approached the Middle east differently and with better results. I'm sorry. I mean, somehow, you know, he's the best friend Israel ever had as far as, like, just backing them and being unabashed about saying, we believe in Western values and democracy, and there's one place in the Middle east that mirrors those values, and that's Israel. Yeah. I mean, Obama and those people. That's what I liked least about their Mideast policy, was we always had to pretend everything was 50, 50. Well, it's not 50, 50. I mean, you talk about this more eloquently than anybody. The moral confusion of people who don't get this ridiculous idea that we have to pretend that the Hamas People who put the women in the beekeeper suit and use children as suicide bombers and civilians.
- [41:17]
B
There's two sides to this. This dilemma.
- [41:19]
A
Yeah, you know, people said that about Charlie Edbow, on the other hand, drawing cartoons.
- [41:25]
B
Those were vicious cartoons.
- [41:27]
A
Sure, A room full of dead cartoonists, machine gunned in the middle of the day. Yes, but see those cartoons?
- [41:35]
B
What, but what did they draw?
- [41:37]
A
Punching down, Sam.
- [41:39]
B
Yeah.
- [41:39]
A
Punching down is the worst thing you could ever do. Punching down. I don't have to tell you.
- [41:45]
B
Well, so I certainly hope that I'm wrong. But I'm just saying that the people who are worried that Trump did not build any consensus among Americans for this war, they didn't consult Congress, that we've got people like Pete Hegseth running the show. All of this is inauspicious and we have no allies other than Israel.
- [42:05]
A
But did it turn out that bad with the Venezuela one?
- [42:08]
B
You know? No, I don't think we know yet. I mean, we'll see what life in Venezuela is like in a.
- [42:13]
A
Just the mission itself.
- [42:15]
B
Yeah, no, but that was a very surgical, you know, I mean, just take, just special ops. That's the best we got.
- [42:20]
A
Yeah, just say, just say we don't know who did it. It just happened. We don't know who the administration was.
- [42:25]
B
Those people were experts. Yeah.
- [42:27]
A
If you just heard what happened, what they did.
- [42:29]
B
Amazing. That's a Bond film. Yeah, that's amazing.
- [42:32]
A
And I've heard the details since. Not just from the right, you know, they were able to like get this guy. By the way. I gotta say, the world's bad Gu are fucking idiots. The people, the moolahs in Iran, who all met in one place. Let's all gather. Senator, what about Zoom? I think it might be a good time to just zoom in. No, no, we're all going to gather in one place. Make sure you tell the CIA where it is. I mean, they're just stupid. Madero, just an idiot. He thought, oh, they're not going to come here. And they're all paper tigers. Also, you know, there's something about this that I like about calling the bluff of countries that for years, you. I know you're not going to do anything because they'll say it's colonialist or racist or something that scares the shit out of you. And you know, if you do, oh, we'll bite back. Yeah, okay. I bet you they were. I bet you Iran in a week has no missiles left and they have no way of fighting. They have no air force.
- [43:31]
B
They're just completely helpless to we might see some terrorism. I mean, I think I'm supposed to be worried about. Yeah, but.
- [43:39]
A
But I mean, if Venezuela is. To me, that's the only thing we have to go by as a guide.
- [43:45]
B
Well, I think it's. I think it is a fundamentally different situation. It's just very, very different.
- [43:49]
A
It's different in ways. I don't know.
- [43:52]
B
So Venezuela, you're looking at what we're very, very good at and is kind of immune to. I mean, it's whatever motives we had for doing it. If you just tell Delta Force, go get that guy.
- [44:07]
A
But that's not just all we did. There's a new idea now. I'm not saying it's going to work yet, but it's definitely different than nation building, which is what we tried to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is this idea of kill the guy in charge who's really bad. The next guy up put the gun to his head and said, you see what happened to that last guy? How'd you like to work with us? Because we're not gonna take over your country.
- [44:33]
B
Yeah, see, that's. We're not gonna take. I think Iran is fundamentally different from Venezuela.
- [44:37]
A
That could be the case.
- [44:39]
B
Yeah. Or the cause. The next guy is also a religious fanatic. And the guy behind him as a
- [44:43]
A
three is not a bunch of religious fanatic.
- [44:45]
B
No, no, no. But if you're going to maintain the Islamic regime or the irgc, if you're gonna. I don't think the other thing to worry about. Again, second idea, in addition to it being good to dethrone jihadists, the second problem with Trump is that the communication about this has been so terrible. Like they've given every possible motive and none for doing this.
- [45:13]
A
That'll be forgotten in a month.
- [45:15]
B
Well, if it works out, I mean,
- [45:16]
A
so did George Bush with the Iraq war. Remember, it was. At first it was about jobs.
- [45:20]
B
Right. But like jobs, one of the things he said is, one of the things Trump has is he's imagined. He's just spitballing here, but he's imagining that the IRGC is just going to kind of rejoin the population.
- [45:30]
A
IRGC being the Republican Guard.
- [45:35]
B
These are the people who just killed however many thousands of protesters.
- [45:38]
A
But I'm going to put my marker down here. It's March 4th, the only day that gives an order. Think about it, kids. March 4, 2026. I think that this is the moment where it finally does happen. I think I've seen it before with communist regimes when they fell after the Berlin Wall went Down. I mean, Ceausescu in Romania, just to give one example, was in his palace with the 2,500 rooms where everyone was lit while the people had no electricity and had 60 watt light bulbs. And right up into the end, he did.
- [46:17]
B
Have you seen the footage where he actually lost power? You can actually see the footage. I mean, you can just find this YouTube power.
- [46:25]
A
Not one.
- [46:26]
B
No, not like where he was standing in front of a very large crowd saying something. And there was this moment. I remember almost none of these details, but I just know this video is findable on YouTube. There's a moment where he worries about his own security in front of a crowd, and they just kind of disappear because it was just clearly not safe for him to be in front of a crowd. And what's amazing is all of these totalitarian regimes, however powerful they become, you're almost never in a situation where if the crowd wanted to take back power, they really couldn't do it. I mean, like, even if you got 100 guys with guns, if you got 15,000 people in the crowd, they can kill all those guys with guns. It's just no. 1. This is a coordination problem. No one wants to be the first person shot.
- [47:18]
A
And I mean, the Iranians have already lost probably, what, 20,000 people who were willing to get shot.
- [47:24]
B
But it's still. I mean, again, it's just the nature. No. 1. Those are peaceful protests where the guns are being turned around, but they do.
- [47:32]
A
But they.
- [47:32]
B
I'm just saying if you could solve the coordination problem where a crowd decides, okay, we're just going to kill these guys. Right? Like, you just. It's very hard to make that decision altogether.
- [47:44]
A
No, what happens is that the Praetorian Guard changes. They say, you know what? I see this is going the other way. I just can't fight the whole country. I don't want to. And they join the other side. I mean, we've seen many revolutions.
- [47:58]
B
There always has to be accepted by the. That's the thing. If you're the guy who just killed, you know, killed my family because you were on the other side of the politics, right? You know, am I just going to welcome you back once you, Once you decide to put, you know, put your AK47 closet, these are much more difficult
- [48:14]
A
choices than we have here in America. But there is. It's a tipping point thing. There does become a tipping point. And I think the message of this is your moment. We're helping, like, in a big way. And Israel right now, what they're doing, we're not helping.
- [48:32]
B
Again, this is. I'm all for this, except there's so many mistakes we've already made. Like, if our goal was. First of all, we should have a coherent goal that we can articulate to our own population and to our Congress. We haven't had that. If the goal is, listen, it's finally time to unseat this regime and free the Iranian people. Right. There's a. Whatever it is, 80% of people want to live in something like a secular democracy. We're going to help them do it. If we were really aligned with that, there are things we would do differently. I mean, we disbanded Voice of America, where I put it in the hands of Carrie Lake, who disbanded it. And, like, so we have no messaging into, okay, you know what?
- [49:19]
A
Voice of America is a Tomahawk missile. That's what the Voice of America is.
- [49:24]
B
Even just to help them, they have a coordination problem to solve. There are ways that it is totally rational to have absolutely no confidence that Trump and Pete Hegseth are really thinking in humanitarian terms about how to help the Iranian people. They're just trying to win this in whatever winning means in their brains. And I just. My fear is that Trump, unlike every other president we could name in our lifetime, Trump is actually capable of breaking everything and then just turning on his heels and saying, we won. It's the greatest day for America. Now, have you seen these curtains? These curtains are amazing.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah, but that's pretty much what the plan is. We don't want to go back to nation building. We don't.
- [50:15]
B
Well, I'm not saying we do, but I'm not.
- [50:17]
A
I was disappointed the other day when he said we might put boots on the ground, because that's what I don't want to do. And I thought, like, if he can make Venezuela a functioning country. And by the way, the connector to there is Cuba, because they also get the oil from Venezuela, and they're right on the brink. And they're having negotiations, apparently, with Marco Rubio.
- [50:42]
B
Well, that is a situation where I actually. I know almost nothing about this, but I can well imagine. Cuba is totally doable, unlike Venezuela and unlike Iran. I bet we could roll into Cuba and say, listen, guys, this is all gonna change. It's either gonna be a resort community and you're all gonna be rich because communism is over and there's a new sheriff in town.
- [51:07]
A
Well, you're just pulling that out of your ass. I know, but I guess the Cuban Communist Party is as entrenched in Cuba as it. Much more so than it is, I think in Venezuela, they're socialists. They're not. I don't know if they know what they are. I mean, they've been all around. Cuba's been communist since 1959, but in
- [51:24]
B
the aftermath, you know, I'm. But again, getting the top spin from what we've done in Venezuela and what we've done in Iran, what the basic,
- [51:33]
A
what the basic plan is, as opposed to what we tried in the past, which was nation building. The plan is you cut the head off the snake. You say to the vice snake, you want to get on board, because this hasn't been working anyway. We both know it. We both know that these are horrible, failed societies. I mean, like something like a quarter of the Venezuelan people have left.
- [51:56]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [51:57]
A
I mean, that's an incredible statement. A quarter of the people. It's like in this country.
- [52:02]
B
But again, in Venezuela, we seem to have absolutely no connection to a real humanitarian purpose. We're not trying to.
- [52:10]
A
The humanitarian purpose is to get rid of the government.
- [52:12]
B
That was a no, but we didn't do that. We just got rid of the top guy and his wife and then taking the oil.
- [52:18]
A
But now we're talking. We're talking to them and saying, do you want to live? If you want to live, we would want.
- [52:25]
B
Give us the oil. We're not.
- [52:27]
A
The oil is part of it.
- [52:29]
B
Yeah. I mean, it was explicitly part of it in a way that shocked everyone.
- [52:33]
A
You're not going to get me to defend Trump on corruption. I've done 20 editorials about how corrupt he is, and there's always a side deal for the family. That's one reason why he's always mad at me still, of course. But. Okay, put that aside for a second. You said two thoughts are important. Right. The other thought is, in the long run, if we could get Venezuela to not be this basket case in the Southern Hemisphere, wouldn't that be worth it? And the idea, as if you're not gonna do nation building, if you're not gonna topple like we did Saddam Hussein, and then install somebody that half the population resents and thinks is put there by Uncle Sam, if you're going to let it happen a little more organically and just threaten the next person to say, okay, just pivot, pivot to this way of doing things, I think it's worth a try. We've tried everything else. And if that can work in Venezuela, and I don't know why it couldn't. I mean, there are a million reasons why it couldn't.
- [53:37]
B
There's lots of Criminal gangs. I mean, there's a lot going on in Venezuela, but. Yeah, but it's just the wrong analogy for Iran. I mean, what you don't have in Venezuela is the religious fanaticism and the history of theocracy. If you left the theocrats in charge and just got kind of younger, more, you know, we're not going to.
- [53:57]
A
We're not going to do that. They've already killed the next wave.
- [54:00]
B
I know, but still, there's 10,000 of those guys.
- [54:03]
A
Yeah, but there's also. There's also a large population of people who want the opposite.
- [54:08]
B
Absolutely. But the irony here is that. And this cuts against your. Your bias, which I share. No more nation building. No more boots on the ground. Iran was always the best case for nation building. I mean, it was a much more
- [54:21]
A
sophisticated culture, but it has to happen organically or internally.
- [54:25]
B
Right. But again, this is a situation where we could have been greeted with flowers, unlike in Iraq, unlike in Afghanistan. I mean, Afghanistan was just. That possibility was unthinkable in Iraq. I understand how people were confused in Iran. You really, given the. Given the nature of the culture outside of Iran, the diaspora, and given just the kind of subterranean level of secularism and sophistication in Iran and just how tired they are with theocracy. I mean, I once got on a zoom call with. It was like 100 persians to just talk about Islam and jihadism.
- [55:14]
A
You could have just gone to dinner in Westwood.
- [55:16]
B
Yeah, exactly. But I mean, to a man and woman, they wanted us to invade their country. I mean, it's like, I mean, this was just a very different attitude. They're tired of, you know, they're tired of theocracy again. That's probably 20% of the population is ready to double down on theocracy and jihadism, but.
- [55:37]
A
Oh, I think maybe even more. I mean, you see the people in Tehran, that's the capital. That's where the sophisticated people are. Trust me, when you get out to West Virginia, Iran, there's a lot of people. Yeah, there's
- [55:50]
B
rolling the call. Yeah.
- [55:52]
A
I mean, but, you know, I think it's an ancient culture, a sophisticated culture. They're not from the Middle Ages. That's why I was always thinking that the Obama plan might work, because they do kind of want to belong to the family of nations. A lot of them there. Okay. It didn't. Now we're in this place. This is what has to happen. I mean, it's unfortunate that people die in wars. I saw one of our bombs apparently hit a girls school, which is horrible. But how many millions of women in Iran could be leading better lives and have their lives spared?
- [56:33]
B
I haven't heard an analysis of what happened there. What I did hear is that that school used to be part of like a military base or something. Like it seemed like an instance of bad intelligence. Like the buildings had been part of a military base. And then war.
- [56:46]
A
There's. I mean we killed Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. The Kuwaiti dude shot down three of our friendly. You know, they thought they were shooting the difference.
- [56:58]
B
I mean to remind people the difference here is that not even our enemies sincerely believe that we intended to bomb a girls school.
- [57:05]
A
Exactly.
- [57:05]
B
That we're fighting people who will intend to bomb a girls school.
- [57:09]
A
Exactly. Yes.
- [57:11]
B
And that's all the difference. I mean that's everything.
- [57:15]
A
That's what we depend on you for, Sam.
- [57:17]
B
Thank you.
- [57:19]
A
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- [60:05]
B
This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip off with a variety of non alcoholic craft styles. Available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com near Beer Fit for all times. I'm glad to bring this painful moral analysis.
- [60:39]
A
You know, I, I don't, I don't worry about you, but I, I, you know, I mean, the Trump thing, we're free to have that differentiation of opinion.
- [60:51]
B
So we didn't do the post mortem on that. Do you want to do it or
- [60:53]
A
you don't want to do it? Sure. I mean, like, I don't, I never took it personally. It was just.
- [61:00]
B
Well, no, I don't think that's quite true. I think you did take it personally and you were right to take the thing you took personally. You were right to take personally.
- [61:07]
A
Oh, okay. So no, I took Anneke's email personally cause it was condescending.
- [61:12]
B
I know I was not in the loop for that, but I'm telling you,
- [61:16]
A
it was very condescending. Okay, but that's okay. We can make up there too.
- [61:21]
B
Unfortunately, I don't get editorial privileges on our emails.
- [61:24]
A
No, I'm sure you don't. But my thing always was with you was like, I look up to you. There's so few people I look up to as you know, the person who like, doesn't make judgments based on emotions. And I can't find the logical argument for not having dinner With Trump, it's either that we have to isolate him, which is insane, because he's the President of the United States, you know, scorched earth policy. Nobody talked to him, of course, people. Everyone has to talk to him. And half the country would love to talk to him so that we can't isolate him. The other argument would be, well, you're elevating him. Elevating him. Like he's gonna become platform. This is insane also. And the other argument was, you know, he would seduce me, which plainly that didn't happen because he's mad at me again. So to me, it's just the emotion of I hate. And, like, there's nothing you say, I hear you. I never miss a podcast. And when you go off on Trump, you do it in a more eloquent way as you do about everything. And, like, there's no place where I'm not shaking my head in agreement. You know, it's not that I get all the critiques, and I, by the way, made a lot of them before anybody. I mean, I'm a little bored with the subject. I've done it. I did Trump, you know, Mob boss in 20, 2016. Okay. So, like, you know, I did. I showed the tape of him jerking off two guys, like, 40 times.
- [62:53]
B
Okay.
- [62:55]
A
I wanted to go to this other level where we have this communication. And there was an article in the New York Times two days ago about the Prime Minister of Finland. His name is Alexander. I'm not sure how you pronounce this. Stub. Not stub.
- [63:11]
B
I know you're not going to get any help from me.
- [63:12]
A
Yeah, I never heard of him. Anyway, he was a golfer, so he golfs. I mean, the New York Times, this is not a quote. This is the Times saying they don't always agree, but Trump listens. That's what I found. And, like, I got so much shit for. No, the answer is not less people like me talking to him. It's more people like me, that part.
- [63:34]
B
So I'm genuinely uncertain about this. So a couple of things are clear to me, and some things are just not at all clear to me. But first, I think your audience might be confused about what we're talking about in terms of how you and I got sideways here. So you had your dinner with Trump. You got an immense amount of shit for it. You gave your postmortem on your show. You got an immense amount of shit for that. From a certain core, I seem to be echoing a lot of that pain you were getting. And so what happened on my Podcast. I was reacting to many things at once. I was reacting to a lot of the podcast bros who had had Trump on their podcast, and Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and Andrew Schultz and the rest, and I thought, performed really irresponsible interviews where they just kind of midwifed his lunacy and made, you know, election denialism seem all too plausible, et cetera. And I think probably got him elected in the end or were among the things that got him elected. But. So I was reacting to that. And then you had. And then I was reacting to you. And my reaction to you, I think, got a little top spin from my prior paragraphs, reacting to others. And so the thing you, I think, were rightly pissed off about was that because, I mean, as a friend, you would. You could expect me to give the clearest and most charitable possible framing of the thing you did and not make obvious errors and leave shit out to your disadvantage.
- [65:06]
A
No, I wrote you and I said, just. Can you at least wait till to see how I behave now? After dinner?
- [65:13]
B
Yeah, but I wasn't criticizing. I never thought you were gonna soft pedal him going forward. I just thought.
- [65:18]
A
So then what is the argument?
- [65:20]
B
So here's the argument. I just thought. I think it's a truly a no win situation you walked into. Now, I completely understand why it seemed like the right thing to do. And I'd be interested to know if, in retrospect, you think it seems like
- [65:36]
A
the right thing to do. It's only a no win with the people who hated me already, the Blue sky crowd.
- [65:41]
B
But look at him. Look at him. Who don't like to leave him. Yeah, yeah. No, I've never been there. But.
- [65:46]
A
And that's okay.
- [65:47]
B
Yeah.
- [65:48]
A
We wear that as a badge of honor.
- [65:50]
B
Here's the clearest case for me. Look at the people who are. Who have been serving in the first term, served in the administration, like the serious people who were not from Trumpistan, who served.
- [66:04]
A
McMaster.
- [66:05]
B
Yeah. McMaster, Milley, McRaven. All the, you know, all the M's or crystal. Yeah. These are serious people with serious reputations to protect. And it was easy to see how they thought they were gonna be the adults in the room and prevent bad things from happening and change the man, change the presidency in some way.
- [66:26]
A
I'm not a cabinet member, just a comic who had dinner with him. I didn't think, I'm gonna change the pot.
- [66:31]
B
But this is like the more extreme case of what you did, which is the argument is it's better to talk to the guy. I mean, If I'm not talking to the guy, you've got some lunatic like Pam Bondi talking to him.
- [66:43]
A
If I said things to him, trust me, that Stephen Miller never says.
- [66:46]
B
Exactly. So that's the same temptation. The temptation you felt, I think, is the same temptation of McMaster saying, if I'm not gonna do it, you're gonna get some true believing lunatic, get some grifting podcast host who just came in here, you know, who's building his brand. In fact, I'm glad he's talking to
- [67:05]
A
the President of Finland, who sounds like a very reasonable guy, but. And I'm glad he had Mondami to the Oval Office and suddenly the like, maybe we should deport this guy tomorrow became. He's an interesting. I mean, look, I'm not saying you can take the crazy out of the equation. I'm just saying he's there, he's not going anywhere. You can't isolate him, you can't elevate him. You have to deal with the person who is there, who is, you know, the people that you're humanizing him. He's a human. Can I just be upfront about that? He is a human with great flaws, which we've all recognized, but it is a human you have to deal with and it's better to deal with. There is no there there to the other side. The other side is just no. We go sit at the lunch table and we don't invite him over. It's just silly.
- [67:56]
B
Okay, so there was one thing that was genuinely confusing about your summary of the dinner.
- [68:03]
A
Right.
- [68:03]
B
Which I could see. How I can see why you got the backlash, because there was a very bright shining object in what you said that you didn't seem to see. You didn't anticipate it was gonna have the effect it had, which is when you said, listen, I've met the man behind closed doors. He is not crazy. He's not crazy the way you think. He's not who you think he is. Right.
- [68:28]
A
I can give you the exact quote, cuz I wrote it.
- [68:31]
B
Yeah, go for it.
- [68:32]
A
A crazy person doesn't live in the White House.
- [68:34]
B
Right.
- [68:35]
A
A person who plays a crazy person on TV lives in the White House.
- [68:38]
B
Right.
- [68:39]
A
And I'm not the only one to have said that.
- [68:41]
B
Exactly. But so you. And it's not clear whether the subtext of what you were saying was this is less scary. But the. But the. But the.
- [68:54]
A
To me it is right.
- [68:56]
B
But the way it landed with your audience or much of your audience is I'm not sure that's not more scary or more evil.
- [69:03]
A
But I. But again, I could read you the exact words. I can't. It's not my responsibility if I say words and it doesn't register, people are too emotional about it, so it doesn't land in. I said a number because I just reread it because you were coming here. I said a number of times, I'm just reporting this.
- [69:22]
B
I get it.
- [69:23]
A
And I didn't let him off the hook even then, with the things I don't like that he does. But I just said, I'm just reporting this. You make of this what you will. What I'm not going to do is lie and say I met Shrek at the White House. I didn't. And I'm fully aware that one of these is an act, if not both. At certain. I don't know what goes on in his mind. I mean, plainly, I've said it a million times. I think he has a case of malignant narcissism. If I was doing a Shakespearean drama about this, I would wear. A tragedy always includes the idea that the main character has a tragic flaw. Hamlet couldn't make up his mind. Trump's tragic flaw is he cannot take criticism, which is a terrible flaw in politics. So anytime you hear something that's anything less than flattery, it's going to be a problem. And yet on this night in private, that was not the case. Now, you know, we can do this. Should I go to the White House? One who wouldn't take that offer up. Please, it's a private dinner with the President. Just stop it. Secondly, when I come back, should I lie about it? I didn't.
- [70:39]
B
As many times as I could, I wouldn't take that. I could not have taken that invitation.
- [70:44]
A
Yeah, that's you.
- [70:44]
B
So. Yeah, but that's the thing. It's like, it's not. I completely understand why you went. I mean, it's totally convincing.
- [70:52]
A
But I honestly feel like your position is not someone who wants to actually make the country better. Well, someone who just wants to wallow in Trump hate, which is fundamental.
- [71:03]
B
You know, I want to make the country better, and I'm not wallowing in anything. I just. What I'm seeing is the possibility of that errand backfiring.
- [71:15]
A
How?
- [71:16]
B
Well, the way it backfired in your case. I mean, it backfired. Look, I mean, look, talk about the aftermath. I mean, he's now attacking you for having come.
- [71:25]
A
Proving my point that I never
- [71:28]
B
pulled
- [71:29]
A
a punch, never stopped being doing my job. There was never a deal on the table that I had.
- [71:36]
B
Was anything accomplished? It just seems like a lot of pain.
- [71:42]
A
It was. Look, I don't read my social media, so, I mean, I know you gave up that which is a big part of your life. I was never there.
- [71:51]
B
Right.
- [71:52]
A
So pain. You know, all I hear is when I go out in public, I walk into a restaurant and 20 people come up to me and say, thank God for you and for keeping it down the middle and for being honest to both sides. No, I know there are people probably sitting in that restaurant thinking, oh, there's the asshole who had dinner with Trump. And I know in this town, the super woke show business community, like most of them don't like me for that because. But I don't feel like that is a sophisticated position that I have to respect.
- [72:24]
B
Again, that's not sophisticated. But there's no one who should be angry at you for doing that. The fact that you did it is totally understandable. I'm just saying that it was like, I mean, honestly, this is like a jump ball situation. It's not clear to me what should or could happen here. But my intuition is there's no just for me personally, it's completely foreseeable that that would be a failed project and I would come back and my recounting of it would be. Of course, I was charmed by the guy. He's normal behind closed doors. He's a great host. His vibes were surprisingly good. And communicating all of that. The reason why none of that lands the way you might think is didn't
- [73:15]
A
land with you land with a lot of other people.
- [73:17]
B
Well, I'm talking about the blowback.
- [73:19]
A
It didn't land with the Hollywood community. That's a very small sliver. I promise you. I walk with this face in public. I hear what people say. It landed with a lot of people, even in this woke town, so. And again, it wasn't about the fact that he's charming. It's about the fact that I was able to have a human conversation with him without the bluster, without the how dare you or what? We're back to okay, but how calling me a jerk.
- [73:44]
B
Do you think you had a human conversation with him given the way he's spun the conversation since?
- [73:49]
A
No, but he. First of all, again, we have been in communication since then. This is a year later. So for a year, instead of just trading insults publicly, you know that thing I have up there with all the insults that he signed my prized possession. Instead of that, there was a dialogue. Dialogue is always better. And you know, as long as there's a spark of a chance that you can reach the part of him that's at least listening or reasonable or. I mean, people have done it. He was gonna send troops to San Francisco and the mayor talked to him instead of just holding up a sign that said fuck Trump. Like that's doing anything to me. It's just. It's just childish. If you think that is. What is the. I'm not saying you are the person, but Katie Porter held up a sign, Fuck Trump and people. And you know, and you saw Jasmine Crockett just lost the primary in a Texas. That tells me people are not on that page. They threw her out. For a Democrat who's on the page of let's just work together, do what we can, do our best with a guy who's not easy to talk to, but not impossible. Not impossible. And talking is better. The other side has absolutely no upside.
- [75:10]
B
Let's take this off your case. And it's a similar case. I mean, there's a slightly different. But this makes the same point for me when I look at how the business community, like the elite business leaders, like the heads of the most valuable companies.
- [75:24]
A
Different case. They were ass kissers.
- [75:26]
B
Yeah. Okay, so. But in their minds, they are. They're telling themselves a story of he's the President of the United States. Of course I have to go to the White House. Of course I have to do business with him. I've got a fiduciary duty to my shareholders. I'm gonna. This is an opportunity. If I can sway him even slightly, I should. They have a similar story in their head.
- [75:48]
A
No, they don't, because they lied and they kissed his ass and I contradicted him when he came out.
- [75:55]
B
Okay. I'm not.
- [75:56]
A
But that's the most important part of this.
- [75:58]
B
Yes.
- [75:58]
A
I did not get.
- [76:00]
B
You should get full credit for speaking truth to power. I've totally conceded that point. But I'm saying that this is. There's a similar. This is part of a larger picture of, quote, normalizing a guy who's not normal. He's president, but he's not normal. But he's.
- [76:20]
A
When he's there, we have to work with the normal. Whatever.
- [76:24]
B
Normal we. Now you sound like Jeff Bezos. Right. Within that purview. Right. I'm not. Flattery aside, we have to work with the president. We've got.
- [76:34]
A
Jeff Bezos, gave him a documentary. I didn't give him anything. I didn't give him anything except shit. When he said, you know, I'm upset that, you know, you made fun of my father and said by fucked an orangutan. And I was like, yeah, I don't apologize for that. That's because that was satire. That was satire in response to you saying that Obama.
- [76:58]
B
But I'm saying when you came back
- [77:00]
A
on your show was racist.
- [77:02]
B
And when you came back on your show and said, this is not as scary as you thought, he's a different guy.
- [77:07]
A
That's my opinion.
- [77:08]
B
Okay. It's understandable to me that you got pain for that. Again, there's unfair pain, and then there's genuine moral confusion about what should. How to navigate this moment.
- [77:21]
A
And that's not my job. And that's. I made very clear. I was not saying that was my job. I saying, I'm just. It was called a book report. I'm just reporting to you what happened, you make of it. And people did not have the agency to do that for themselves because it's just too tempting to just hate. I get it, and that's fine. But if you keep raising this point about pain, I didn't feel a lot of pain. The people who don't understand this, I don't respect anyway. And also, they also left the building a long time ago. Those are not the. This is, you know, there's two wings of the Democratic Party, which this race in Texas the other day was absolutely all about. You have the Jasmine Crockett wing. You have the wing that says, go, no contact. Go, no contact. This is the beef I had with Jimmy Kimmel. You know, I mean, which I actually didn't follow.
- [78:13]
B
I didn't.
- [78:13]
A
I was very respectful. But I just quoted his wife who went public saying, you know, she wrote her relatives a letter saying why you should never vote for Trump, and some of them did not. And so, you know, Thanksgiving, I'm sorry, we just can't do it. And got very mad at him.
- [78:31]
B
So he broke up with half her family.
- [78:33]
A
Something like that. I mean, this is, again, by her words, I'm not on that page. I'm not in that wing of the Democratic Party that you go no contact, that you break off contact. It just does not work. It doesn't make sense. It's just pointless.
- [78:51]
B
So is there anyone you've talked to on this show or on Real Time where you regret the contact, where you think that, that. Okay, that conversation probably shouldn't have happened.
- [79:01]
A
Which contact? Which conversation?
- [79:03]
B
I mean, no, I'm asking, is there anyone who you've brought on, you know, Matt Gaetz or whoever you've had Here.
- [79:07]
A
Oh, I see.
- [79:08]
B
And where you think. Yeah, that's probably. That served that guy's purpose in a way that was detrimental and it's not good for. If I could do it again, I wouldn't do it.
- [79:19]
A
Lance Armstrong was pretty boring.
- [79:21]
B
But boredom is the sin. Okay, I'm not talking about that sin.
- [79:26]
A
Yes.
- [79:28]
B
You know. Okay, that's worse. Boredom is worse. I'll grant. I'm talking about the fall of the United States. So,
- [79:36]
A
you know. No, I mean, I had Lara Trump here. Lara Trump. I had Charlie Kirk here. I mean, you've talked to some of these people. Matt Gae. No, none of them.
- [79:48]
B
No, none of.
- [79:49]
A
And you wouldn't.
- [79:51]
B
Well, I've talked to some. Who have I talked to? Well, back in the day I met.
- [79:58]
A
You didn't think Charlie Kirk was worth talking to?
- [80:00]
B
No, I would have. No, I wouldn't say that. I was just wondering if there's anyone you. If you ever. If this has ever been falsified, this notion that conversation's always good. Because I've had a few podcasts where
- [80:13]
A
there are people who I wouldn't have conversations with. Yeah, but the head of the Klan. Right. I mean, there's no middle ground there. There's no explaining.
- [80:22]
B
Except when somebody gets bad enough, then it suddenly becomes fuente safe. So you wouldn't talk to Nick Fuentes?
- [80:28]
A
I would not.
- [80:28]
B
Right. Okay.
- [80:29]
A
No. Yeah. And I did Kanye. And wouldn't.
- [80:32]
B
Eric, would you. Oh, interesting. Would you speak to Tucker?
- [80:39]
A
I would have to because he's too influential and I'm too curious as to my ability to possibly expose what the scam is with him, because it can't be that he really thinks this.
- [80:56]
B
Yeah. Did you watch it?
- [80:57]
A
What is your assessment of that? I'm talking about the Jew hating.
- [81:01]
B
Yeah. I don't know.
- [81:03]
A
Is it just that everybody has this? Not everybody, but so many of the people. We just never thought of it. Candace Owens and Kanye and Megyn Kelly and lots of these. Is it that the Jew hating was always living right below the surface? It's a little like the herpes virus. You know, you get it as a kid when you get chickenpox. It lives in your body. It doesn't come out. It cannot come out until you get shingles later in life. And then the Jew hating, just like the shingles, it's the same virus. Is that what it is? Because, like, the permission that people have in the world today to hate Jews openly is so different than even a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. It just seems. It's Literally, like, I hated Jews before it was cool. Yeah, in some quarters you must.
- [81:53]
B
Tucker is very. I mean, he's a very interesting case because he's. I mean, have you watched. Have you watched all these interviews? Have you watched. Did you watch the Nick Planet interview
- [82:05]
A
and never seen anything?
- [82:07]
B
Yeah, did you.
- [82:08]
A
I just read. I just read the news.
- [82:09]
B
Did you watch him with Huckabee? You didn't watch that suck now. Okay, but I read about it. So the Huckabee.
- [82:15]
A
I can read the quotes. I have to see him.
- [82:16]
B
Yeah. So I don't know if this was brought out in any of the coverage, but the most fascinating thing about that interview from my point of view, is that Tucker found in his just die hard commitment to attacking Israel, he found a kind of theology, which it may be well subscribed that I'm just not aware of, that puts significant daylight between him and evangelical Christianity, or what is generally considered, you know, fundamentalist Christianity in America. He attacked Huckabee for defending the Old Testament in any way. So in the Old Testament, I think in Genesis 15, it says that the Jews should get the land between the Euphrates and the Nile, which is like everything in the Middle East.
- [83:01]
A
Right.
- [83:03]
B
And so Tucker said to Huckabee, you mean to tell me you'd be okay with Israel conquering Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and part of Egypt? Yeah. And Huckabee's like, well, they're not intending to do that now. And he said, yeah, but if they did it, would it be okay? And Huckabee said, well, you know, yeah, I mean, it's in the Bible. And so just hung himself on the Bible. But Tucker knew he had to do that. He knew he couldn't say, oh, yeah, the Old Testament's bullshit. Right. But Tucker was really saying, the Old Testament's bullshit. I'm a believing Christian. I'm a Bible. I'm just as much of a Bible thumper as you. But my theology is different. My theology is pure New Testament. The Old Testament, it's got genocide in it. It's just insanity. Kill the Amalekites. That's barbarism. This is just. But it's from that frame that he can say, I got nothing in common with the Jews. The Jews just killed Christ. I mean, to leave aside the fact that Jesus was Jewish and the Virgin Mary was Jewish, all the apostles were Jewish, Leave that aside. The Jews are just, you know, homoseating Christ killers. And maybe they killed Charlie Kirk and, you know, but it was amazing. I mean, it was either Amazingly cynical or I don't know if it was heartfelt. But what was fascinating to me is that he knows his audience. He's got an audience that is ready to say, fuck the Old Testament. Right. And fuck you, Mike Huckabee, and fuck all you evangelicals who care about the Old Testament and Israel. We don't like any of this. It's all, Christ is king and that's all we need to say. And it's America first.
- [84:41]
A
How do you deal? I mean, you're the mind guy. How do you deal with this sort of cognitive dissonance where, I mean, if you get into the stuff we read about and hear about and podcasts and this, it does seem like the world is completely insane and spinning out of control. But your actual life, I imagine, is quite good.
- [85:01]
B
Yeah. That's a very weird.
- [85:02]
A
I mean, you did you almost split screen situation. You almost got burned out of the fire with the power. Is that right?
- [85:09]
B
It was close, yeah.
- [85:10]
A
Yeah, close. Like everybody beside you died.
- [85:15]
B
Not quite died, but. Yes. No, many houses close to us burned. Yeah.
- [85:19]
A
Right.
- [85:19]
B
On three sides of us.
- [85:20]
A
Yeah.
- [85:21]
B
Wow.
- [85:21]
A
Have any been rebuilt?
- [85:25]
B
No, no, I think they're. I mean, one hasn't even been cleaned up. That's another story. But we've since moved. I mean, it was, it would, you know, we're not back there.
- [85:33]
A
But that does say something about bureaucracy, democratic government. California.
- [85:39]
B
Yeah.
- [85:40]
A
Don't you think a year later, there's
- [85:42]
B
a fair amount of dysfunction there.
- [85:43]
A
Yeah. Something should have been, I mean, don't you think, a functioning society.
- [85:48]
B
But to your original question, you and I share this. I mean, we spend a lot of time meditating on how fucked up the world is and how this risk mounting.
- [85:58]
A
Yes.
- [85:59]
B
You know, to terrifying degrees in various ways. And yet our lives are amazingly good. So there's a very high level of well being and a very high level of concern.
- [86:10]
A
Right.
- [86:10]
B
For everything.
- [86:11]
A
I mean, this is. I always say, the people who come up to me at restaurants, bill, what are we going to do?
- [86:16]
B
Yeah.
- [86:16]
A
And I'm like, go back and finish.
- [86:18]
B
800 is on you. Yeah.
- [86:22]
A
I was literally at a party where they were having something. I think it was chicken sticks that were glazed with caviar. And someone said, what are we gonna do? I'm like, have another thing glazed with caviar. That's what you do. But what is. As the mind man, what is your advice? What should I say to the people who say, what are we gonna do?
- [86:43]
B
Instead of being so smart, we're doing what we can do. I mean, I Think there's a connection, there should be a connection between personal well being and public responsibility. I think you and I have a responsibility to try to use our platforms and our connections in whatever good ways we can to make the world a better place. And I think to be purely selfish and to be in a bunker just, you know, eating yet more caviar, that would seem like a moral failure.
- [87:13]
A
Is it harder to meditate when, like, there's a lot of shit going on in the world? Is it like, is it harder to clear no matter what's going on? It's the same level of ease to clear your mind.
- [87:25]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, for me it's. I mean, honestly, suffering is kind of like a meditation alarm. Like, so when I get anxious or worried, whether it's a personal situation or a public one, it's kind of like a mindfulness alarm that goes off. So the place where I can be more reliably asleep is when everything's fine and I'm just figuring out what I want to eat in this restaurant that I want to be.
- [87:53]
A
So it is, it's easier when shit isn't hitting the fan.
- [87:56]
B
No, it's easier to be. So when things start to get uncomfortable, then I recognize, okay, it's time to wake up and pay attention.
- [88:06]
A
No, again, I'm not the one to talk about meditation. I certainly have tried it. I've certainly listened to you. I mean, I think, do you have to admit, some people, it's harder to have a harder time. Some people go easy with it. I've heard it said that the people who can't be hypnotized are the same people who have trouble meditating. And I could not be hypnotized and I wanted to be. We were doing a bit for religious, but it didn't happen. Okay, so like, when you clear your mind, like, if there's nothing really troubling in my life, I feel like it's easier. And when there's been something very troubling, like, I don't even try because I figure, oh my God, I can't. But, you know, I got a great idea for you, by the way. I thought of this, that I knew you were coming. You know they have microdosing. Micro meditating?
- [88:56]
B
Yeah. Well, that's a thing.
- [88:57]
A
It is a thing. Yeah. Like.
- [88:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. Just very short moments. Yeah, I mean, we actually, in my app.
- [89:04]
A
Well, not moments. My idea is in meditating, you're trying to clear your mind of all thoughts here. Just like six items or less. Just, you know, a few thoughts. Can get in, but not most.
- [89:18]
B
Well, so first of all, in some styles of meditation, you're trying to get rid of thoughts, but in what I consider the most important styles, you're actually not. You're just trying to recognize thoughts as they arise. There's a wider context in which thought is appearing.
- [89:35]
A
I've heard you say it a million times.
- [89:37]
B
So thought is not, it seems like the enemy in the beginning, but ultimately it's not the enemy. And you don't, you're not trying to. I mean, you wouldn't want a mind without thoughts. You know, you need your thoughts.
- [89:48]
A
Should I do it sober?
- [89:50]
B
You can do it anyway, any way you'll do it.
- [89:53]
A
Is this helping or hurting?
- [89:55]
B
When I meditate, we'll know in a minute. Yeah, it's.
- [90:03]
A
No, I've heard that.
- [90:05]
B
I mean, real meditation isn't really something you're doing. I mean, like in the beginning you have to learn, you want to do it. You realize this is a thing you're not doing. And now you need to get some instruction. But the instruction really is teaching you how to do less of what you're doing in each moment rather than more. You're not actually adding anything. You're just so in every moment you're experiencing something. You're seeing, you're hearing, you're smelling, you're tasting, you're touching and you're thinking, you're feeling emotions. Everything is appearing all by itself. I mean, you're not producing any of this. Your visual field is appearing, your eyes are open. It just appears. You're hearing my voice, you're not doing anything to hear it, it's just coming. You feel the sensations in your body and the next thought is just going to appear all on its own. You don't author it before it appears, it just appears. So the movie of your life is already playing, right? And when you're meditating, all you're recognizing is clearly what's appearing in each moment as it appears without being distracted. So it is simply just non distraction. And our usual state is to be distracted by thought in every moment. Thought sort of sneaks up on us. We're identified with it. There's kind of a voice in our head. Like the voice could be saying, what the hell is he talking about? That feels like me, that feels like self. And you didn't see it as a thought and it just felt like you in the state of meditation, you've paid close enough attention so that when thoughts appear, they just. You recognize that you're simply the context in which they're appearing. And that is a. I mean, it turns out that's a very, you know, even drug like, wonderful, peaceful place to be. And it is. It's like you're suddenly. You're the screen on which the movie of your life is being played in that moment.
- [92:07]
A
No, I mean, I've heard you say that a million times. And I feel like it's a little like taking an acid trip. You know, you could describe it a million times. And until you get there, that's when you. Oh, okay. That's what they meant by that.
- [92:26]
B
But you've had. I think people are getting there in many moments in their lives, but they're not recognizing it doesn't become salient for them. It's like you're constantly losing your sense of self by paying attention to something. Something gets your attention. You're fully locked onto it. And it's only sort of in retrospect that you sort of come back to this feeling of self. The feeling of self is being interrupted all the time. Meditation is simply the practice of being able to interrupt it on demand. I mean, you actually can just notice that it's not there.
- [93:04]
A
When I'm trying to fall asleep. Not meditating, just sleeping. The main thing I go to, to remind myself is whatever thoughts are bombarding my head, I just go, well, you know, you're not going to care about that in a week.
- [93:21]
B
No.
- [93:22]
A
Or a month or a year. Like, it's very, very rare that a thought that's like bombarding my brain is going to be relevant to me in such a short time later. So why. So what the fuck? And why are you. Why even think about it?
- [93:37]
B
No, that's a very skillful use of thought. I mean, there are thoughts that can sort of reframe. That's called cognitive reframing. You think a thought which just sort of unlocks your current emotional reaction. I mean, you're reacting as though this thing really matters. Then you just have this overarching thought of, you've been in this situation a thousand times. You know that this never matters two days from now. So now just price that in and relax. That's actually. I mean, like stoic philosophy is a very good source of those kinds of reflections. Where, I mean, one very useful technique is called a negative visualization, where it's like you're suffering some problem, something bad has happened, and you're really pissed off or sad or disappointed or whatever. And then you think, okay, think of all the truly terrible things that haven't happened that are happening to Someone, somewhere right now. They haven't happened to me. Think of how much you would pay to get back to right where you are now with this measly little thing that you're suffering over. I mean, you'd pay everything. You haven't been diagnosed with cancer today. Your child did not get run over by a car. All these things have not happened to you. You're just pissed off about this thing. You would pay everything to get back here, to just have this little thing to be pissed off about if any of those things had happened. And so that's just that reframing can completely unlock your reaction.
- [95:03]
A
There's nothing more obnoxious than people who have 99% of everything you could ever want in the world and are obsessed.
- [95:10]
B
Caviar on their chicken fingers. That's where you jump the shark into something truly awful to eat.
- [95:17]
A
I mean, that's slightly different, although a cousin of what you're talking about. But people who are just like, I always think of the lead character in succession. Did you watch that show?
- [95:26]
B
Yeah, it was great.
- [95:27]
A
You know, Logan, Roy, just like, he's. He's up there. How long are we gonna be circling? You know, they're in their private plane, circling. That's a great show. It's. I know, but I. That guy is not uncommon in the upper echelons of business. I mean, maybe it's what gets people there, you know? I mean, your ex boyfriend, Elon Musk. I don't know what his situation is. I don't know what your situation is with him.
- [95:56]
B
There's no situation. But he's apparently still attacks me. I'm not.
- [96:00]
A
I feel like he's more Trump.
- [96:03]
B
Yeah, well, he's very Trump. Like, I mean, he's very. Yeah, his are very Trump. Like.
- [96:07]
A
Right. And again, like someone who is never going to be normal and not a little crazy or a lot crazy, but you kind of have to deal with. Not just because he's the richest man in the world, but, you know, he's got the Tesla thing, he's got the X thing, he's got the spaceships, he's got the telefingers and all that. He's got the thing that makes people who can't move pick things up, you know, I mean, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies. I don't think this is a guy we can just cut off.
- [96:40]
B
No, but you can give him the critical feedback that. I mean, if. If everyone in his life gave him the critical feedback he deserves, that would
- [96:47]
A
be a good Thing I love that you do. You think he hears it?
- [96:51]
B
He hears it, but he's not getting enough of it from. I mean, he's immunized, he's in. He's in a bubble, you know.
- [96:57]
A
But a great question I've stumbled upon in my capacity of being a totally stone toast who never thinks about what I'm going to say. What a great question. If you could have dinner with Elon Musk now, would you do it?
- [97:14]
B
I don't think it would go well. No, I don't think it would.
- [97:16]
A
Oh, come on.
- [97:17]
B
No, no, try.
- [97:18]
A
Isn't it better to be in there and be in the arena?
- [97:21]
B
Well, no. Well, no, because it's.
- [97:25]
A
You have a relationship.
- [97:26]
B
Again, this is a bit of a toss up, but I just think he has behaved like such a sociopath with respect to my relationship with him that it's just. I mean, I've tried, I've had private communication with him. Has not gone well.
- [97:39]
A
Just like me and Trump. Right. Okay. But like, you know, the thing about Trump, he said it once, he said, people don't get about me is I have no permanent enemies. And it's kind of true.
- [97:51]
B
Yeah. Well, he's interesting that way.
- [97:52]
A
When you think about it, if you
- [97:53]
B
bend the knee, he will accept or just.
- [97:56]
A
He just forgets or some. You know, I mean, I don't know if Corey Lewandowski. Maybe he did. Maybe they all did. They probably did in some way. I'm not going to.
- [98:06]
B
Well, Elon called him a pet, basically said he was implicated in Epstein's pedophile sex ring and was going to bring down his presidency. And then he still came back and had dinner with him.
- [98:16]
A
Okay, so that's it, you know, like he just.
- [98:19]
B
But I don't think. I think this is. That's like the sociopathy lane. I mean, these guys are not normal ethical actors.
- [98:28]
A
No, they're not. No, they're not. And that's the reality of what we have to work with. Right. So as a member of the human race who would like to see it succeed? If I got a vote, I would say yes, get Sam in there with Elon Musk. That is somebody. Elon Musk. He may hate you. He may have said horrible things. He still respects you. You have a history with him.
- [98:52]
B
Oh, I think he does agree with him. I don't think he's reachable. I just don't think. I mean, something would have to change in him for him to be reachable by me. Now,
- [99:01]
A
how would you know if you didn't try?
- [99:03]
B
I Know the guy's calling me pure evil on X. I've been off X for three years and he'll still tweet
- [99:08]
A
that I'm pure evil one's right up on the wall. I can read you where I'm. That's what they do. They're on the spectrum or whatever they are. They just lash out and then. That's just it. You're paying too much attention to that.
- [99:23]
B
Well, I'm not. I just occasionally hear that this has happened. I mean, it's amazing how much once you're off social media, it's amazing how much it is. Not a thing.
- [99:32]
A
But he's apparently social media just bad medium, as we both have, I think, come to the same conclusion. But meeting in person, having dinner. One of my arguments with the Trump dinner crowd was, you know what the MAGA people hate the most about the left? That they don't respect them. They see them as flyover people and they're just deplorables and they're not worth even breaking bread with. We wouldn't have dinner with you. We don't breathe the same air as you. That fucking shitty attitude that they have that really bugs them. I don't blame you.
- [100:09]
B
But here's the other side of it.
- [100:10]
A
Make you cry your liberal tears.
- [100:12]
B
Okay, but here's the other side of this. There is another side of this. I feel like some of my socializing with people who either were odious or later turned out to be odious corrupted my being able to respond in real time to what they were doing to our culture. So for. I mean, so as a fan, I
- [100:39]
A
didn't see that well.
- [100:40]
B
So, I mean, I've gotten a lot of shit for not recognizing. I mean, this is a fairly long list, but what someone like. Someone like Dave Rubin. For years, I was getting Dave Rubin's hate mail, and I was not. And he was a friend, but he became a fairly unprincipled full MAGA guy who was cutting lots of corners journalistically and just not being an ethical guy.
- [101:11]
A
Friend of mine.
- [101:12]
B
And I was very slow. I was slow to see maybe drinking his tequila. I was slow to see it.
- [101:18]
A
Huh, James?
- [101:19]
B
And I was slow to see it because we had a friendship. Similarly with Joe Rogan. I think Joe Rogan was a friend. He was somebody who I made many efforts to maintain as a friend. I think he's done a tremendous amount of harm, which I didn't comment on for a long time because he was a friend and I didn't want. I couldn't figure out how to touch it until I thought, okay, I just have to talk about this. And honestly, I don't think he's a friend anymore because I've tried to privately engage him and it hasn't worked out well.
- [101:54]
A
That's on him.
- [101:55]
B
Yeah, but I feel like there's something. I mean, you and I have. I mean, we have friends, but we also have a job to do. Right. And it's hard to do it if you're just schmoozing with Gaddafi. Right. Like, I mean, like, there's, there's gotta be some limit to who you're going to have dinner with and have that affect your.
- [102:19]
A
But it can't be the President of the United States.
- [102:21]
B
Well, it could be a bit. But I think it's Tucker Carlson. I think it's Candace Owens. I think it's.
- [102:25]
A
But he's in a different category. The President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. The man who doesn't seem to have any really fixed ideas except tariffs, and seems to very often go by whatever the last person he talked to said. Yeah, that's a person I do want to talk to.
- [102:44]
B
In an alternate reality, he was basically like the white OJ like, he should have just disappeared, you know, into Florida. It just become totally irrelevant and we should have all just withdrawn our attention in this world. Perversely, I think you can say of him he's getting more of what he wants than anyone in human history.
- [103:07]
A
And it's also possible in 20 years, historians will be writing, nobody else had the balls to knock over Iran and Trump did, and now the Middle east is a much more stable.
- [103:18]
B
I sincerely hope that's the case. I am rooting for him.
- [103:22]
A
But you will admit that is a possibility?
- [103:25]
B
I will. Okay. I can't say I'm optimistic, but I'm hoping that that is the case.
- [103:32]
A
I'm tipping my Mitt or repeating my Mitt, depending on when you see this versus the show. But one thing I want to talk about with Iran is Iraq. Nobody talks about the fact that 20 years later it is a better country. They actually have a parliament. It's actually functioning democracy. Now, was it worth all that? I don't know, but you could at least make the case. And I see nobody really wants to touch that subject. And if in 20 years or 10 years, maybe I think it would be faster because it's a different population, as you pointed out, if Iran was like, what, Iraq is now a Muslim country but not causing problems and have actual elections and so forth, would that be okay? Would that have been worth it?
- [104:24]
B
Well, and then there's Afghanistan, where I think the Taliban just brought back slavery. That's not progress.
- [104:31]
A
I read that headline too, and I laughed out loud. Brought back. As if women there haven't been enslaved. I mean, if you are a social justice warrior and there is any issue on your agenda other than, or at least I should say above, gender apartheid in the Muslim world, you're just a joke. You're a joke. You cannot be taken seriously. We don't have to show a picture, but picture a woman in a full head to toe beekeeper suit burka. And then tell me, the people who hate oppression. Is there anything about this, anything, anything at all that you think might be oppressive? Because I remember hearing that woman on your show, I think she was Yasmin Mohammed maybe was her name from Toronto, and she described.
- [105:21]
B
Yeah, she had to wear a niqab. Yeah, she was.
- [105:24]
A
She gave a description of it that was like literally brought a tear to my eye. Oh yeah, like how you. You're erased as a person in every possible way. You can't be heard, you can't really see out of it. You just don't exist.
- [105:39]
B
And you're also. People are terrified by you. I mean, you see people's reaction. I mean, if you're living in the west, in a burqa or niqab, you see that this, that you're kind of leaving a wake of distress as you walk down the street because people rightly or wrongly, associate all kinds of awful things with your situation and they're just alarmed not to be able to see your face. Right. It's just not all cultures are equal. I mean, we have to admit, admit to ourselves that some cultures are better than others.
- [106:09]
A
And the fact that like, the people who consider themselves the most liberal just can look at this and not see it. I mean, what is the, you know, mind man's explanation for the human ability to do that?
- [106:28]
B
Well, it is. There's a kind of a master algorithm which you actually named earlier, which is this sort of oppressor, oppressed framing of everything, which as long as that's at the foundation of your morality and your politics. So colonialism, racism, those are the deepest sins that we can.
- [106:48]
A
Islamophobia.
- [106:50]
B
So Islamophobia leverages both of those notions, like your. Any criticism. I mean, Islamophobia is such a damaging meme because it makes voicing any concern about human rights or the rights of women and girls in the face of Islamic theocracy seem like bigotry or. And it genuinely seems like to the left, it seems like bigotry. Like, if you're worried, you're worrying about girls who are being women and girls who are not being educated being forced to live in bags and they're being beaten or killed when they try to get out of those bags. And your response is this is. It's racist. As though that made any sense. It's racist to express that concern. But that is. I mean, it is. I mean, I've had too many of these encounters to imagine that this is even a rare software flaw. It is like, it's just, it's omnipresent on the left and it's not going to age well.
- [107:54]
A
Well, you know, as always.
- [107:56]
B
And if we succeed in Iran, I mean, again, I can't say I'm hopeful,
- [108:00]
A
but
- [108:03]
B
I would love it. Even when you picture that aftermath, I mean, just a picture, there's a kind of a secular, sane renaissance, you know, with women celebrating in the streets. It'll be very interesting to see the reaction of all the people who oppose this war on moral grounds. I mean, this is just more colonialist awfulness, imperialism.
- [108:29]
A
And to be clear, I'm not saying long term whether this will be a success or not. I'm just saying I think the revolution will happen from this. I do. I think what Israel is doing right now is taking, trying to. Now that there's basically no defense that Iran has. They're trying to take out the kind of thugs that are the ones who shoot the people in the street. They're going after those kind of barracks and those kind. Now, can you do that from the air? I don't know. But I just think that people get it, that this is the moment and they've had it. Imagine having it your whole life or two generations. I mean, it's been since 1979. Yeah, I mean, I think they've just had it. It's the moment. I think they will seize it. And I do think there will be a revolution and the country will not be in the hands of the people. It's been in the hands of the crazy religious fanatics. The unholy marriage that we also saw for a long time in Saudi Arabia between the religious fanatics and the, you know, let's be honest, the fascistic police, whether you call it the revolutionary, whatever you want to call it, those people make common cause. The religious fanatics need the police to keep the people in line. And I think that will fall in Iran. But I don't know. I mean, look, I got off the road Last year. I'm really glad I did because of issues just like this that I. I mean, I think. I mean, you're like on the road. You like, you did the on the road. You went out there. I mean, aren't you a little nervous? It's just like they can get you from either side is what I thought.
- [110:20]
B
I mean, they've been very well behaved audiences. You know, obviously I take security seriously,
- [110:26]
A
but until they're not.
- [110:27]
B
Yeah, I mean. Yeah. I mean, I was. I had started my tour the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I was. That was my first event. And Live Nation called us and said, hey, if you want to cancel this event, by all means. And it's understandable that people were worried. But no, I mean, you put people through metal detectors. You do what you can. That's sane. And I mean, he had security, but he didn't have metal detectors. Right. So, like, that was an open air situation that I wouldn't put myself in for security reasons.
- [111:03]
A
Right. That's.
- [111:04]
B
Yeah.
- [111:05]
A
A lot of it can be handled by just doing it in a smart way. That's true.
- [111:09]
B
But.
- [111:10]
A
But you know, you're one of the few people. I mean that as an ultimate compliment that if you do get shot, I would not know from which side.
- [111:17]
B
Right. That's right. Yeah. Yes.
- [111:20]
A
A great feather in your cap. But you're enjoying.
- [111:22]
B
I'm not sure which side I would prefer, but I think. I think the marksmen are probably better on the right. So I think I'll go with the left on this. But.
- [111:31]
A
So you're. But you're enjoying that, being on the road?
- [111:33]
B
Yeah, I mean, I've done it in a. Very. Well, actually, you may have spent some time this way. I've done it like two dates a month. So I'm just out of town for four days and then. So it's really a nice way to do it.
- [111:46]
A
Four days? Are you kidding? I would go out on Saturday, right. Morning, come back Sunday night, do two cities.
- [111:53]
B
Right? Yeah, you know, it depends where it is. And it's like.
- [111:57]
A
And you're not really. You're only playing like where you played. I've seen I hear the Beacon in New York. Yeah. You're not playing the sticks.
- [112:05]
B
No, no, no, no, no. I would just it just because I think the furthest the field. I'm going to Texas. I haven't gone to Texas. I'm going to go to Dallas and Austin.
- [112:13]
A
Texas had a lot of sophisticated people and a lot of sophisticated places.
- [112:17]
B
Yeah.
- [112:17]
A
I mean, Austin is not Texas y enough for me.
- [112:20]
B
Right. I'm doing Dallas and Austin.
- [112:22]
A
Might as well go to New York.
- [112:24]
B
Yeah.
- [112:25]
A
Yeah. All right. Well, I appreciate you here, as always. And as I said, you know, Sam, there can be no daylight between us.
- [112:40]
B
If there is.
- [112:41]
A
If this is a schism, let's bridge it. Let's bridge it. Because then we're just breaking off such narrow splinters. And I don't want to be the Chelsea.
- [112:50]
B
I've lost Elon and a dozen other psychopaths. I'm not going to lose.
- [112:54]
A
You're never going to lose me. Thank you.
- [112:55]
B
Appreciate it.
- [112:56]
A
All right. Club Random. Get you home for dinner, kids. Club Random.