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Making Sense with Sam Harris
#405 — "More From Sam": Tariffs, SignalGate, Trump, Elon, Douglas Murray, & Joe Rogan
00:20:19
By far the most common feedback we hear from you guys is the following: “We want more from Sam.” More of his thoughts on current events, more frequently. So that’s what we’re trying here, with this new exploratory series we've creatively...
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Transcript20 lines
- [00:07]
Unknown Host
Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
- [00:09]
Sam Harris
This is Sam Harris.
- [00:10]
Unknown Host
Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe@samharris.org there you'll also find our scholarship program where we offer free accounts to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
- [00:45]
Sam Harris
Welcome to the Makin Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris. We're trying something new here today. In this episode I'm answering questions based on the topics that many of you submitted over on Substack and if this goes well, we'll do more of this in the future.
- [01:02]
Jaron Lowenstein
The voice you hear is that of.
- [01:05]
Sam Harris
My manager and business partner, Jaron Lowenstein. Jaron sat down with me to discuss the questions we fielded from the community chat at Substack. I think There were some 4,000 comments, so this is just the tip of the iceberg. But many of you have been calling for me to respond more quickly to topical events. So that is the experiment we are performing for you today. This is audio from the video that we recorded and subscribers can watch the full video and comment and submit further topics over on my Substack page.
- [01:38]
Unknown Host
Enjoy.
- [01:45]
Unknown Guest
So let's start with what the hell is going on. How's your stock portfolio, Sam?
- [01:52]
Jaron Lowenstein
Well, this is looking expensive. I just looked at the Economist cover story editorial which was about as withering as you could imagine. They called the day of liberation the day of ruination. And yeah, I mean, obviously I'm not an economist. I just know that the vast majority of economists think this is an insane self inflicted wound. I guess time will tell, but it certainly seems that way. It's just crazy that one person's fixation on tariffs can accomplish this for us. I don't know who really wanted this, but we seem to be running a global experiment on the economy and yeah, I mean, could he be proven right in the end? I guess it's possible, but it's against the grain of seemingly all of economic understanding of the last hundred years.
- [02:51]
Unknown Guest
Well, that's interesting you said that because one of the things that we're hearing is this idea that wait. You just have to wait. Especially from the MAGA people that are now into Buy the Dip. And this is all going to Be okay. I mean, they were griping about the price of eggs, right? And now they'd give anything to pay $12 for eggs again. Maybe that's the move. But what do you. I mean, it sounds like you actually have a glimmer of optimism that.
- [03:21]
Jaron Lowenstein
No, no, zero optimism. I think it's very likely to be a disaster. I mean, Trump is a fake businessman, right? He's a fake business genius. He's a game show host. And somehow the country decided. I mean, he was not even a prominent. He's a famous for being famous, nearly fake real estate developer, right, who just had a great talent for going bankrupt and losing other people's money and then getting sued and not paying his subs, et cetera, et cetera. Right? The least ethical businessman anyone's ever met and not a successful one. The irony is now he's probably a legitimate billionaire, at least for the next five minutes, because of the meme coin he sold to a credulous hoard of people who bought it simply to support him. And now we have foreign governments that will be buying it to support him in an exercise in corruption the likes of which we have never lived through, at least to my knowledge, in this country. I mean, it's completely insane that this person's ideas about the economy are operative. But is it conceivable that all the economists are wrong and that tariffs are going to work, or that this thing that he could pull back from the brink and away and look like a winner because he just shocked all of our allies and enemies simultaneously with how irrational he could be? I mean, that's totally possible. I mean, the irony for me is that it seems like an economic catastrophe is the only thing that stands a chance of convincing his culture that they made a bad decision. And I think it's legitimate to worry whether would even convince them in that case. I mean, a global depression might not convince the 30% of Americans who are truly in the cult. But among the people I know who voted for Trump, who really imagined that he, at a minimum, would steward the economy in ways that would be, if not advantageous for all of humanity, advantageous for them, I can imagine them recognizing that we all made a bad decision or they made a bad decision in supporting him if there's a sufficient economic downturn. The painful irony for me is that that's not the reason to have recognized how insane it is to have promoted this guy to the highest position of responsibility of anyone in our society. I mean, what's insane is that just before he shuffled out to the Rose Garden to announce these lunatic tariffs. He was meeting with Laura Loomer about national security in the Oval Office. That's what's insane about the Trump administration. We have grifters and lunatics and conspiracy theorists advising the President on how to manage risk of nuclear annihilation with Russia and China and our other adversaries. I mean, it's just, I mean, to say nothing of the fact that you've got RFK Jr. In there promoting anti vaxxers and firing half the staff of the FDA and who knows who else he's going to fire is madness. That's the thing to be agitated about. And the fact that there could be an associated price tag with it is all too foreseeable. But in my mind, if you're going to come to your senses just because your 401 took a nosedive, you still haven't pulled your head out of your ass. This is disaster on a hundred fronts. And in two months, Trump has accomplished the unthinkable. He's ruined the reputation of our country, perhaps for a generation. He's convinced our allies that they can't possibly trust us because they can't trust us. We elected a moral lunatic to the office and he's rescinded all of our treaty obligations effectively single handedly. And he's acting like we lost a war with Russia. Right. Like last I looked, we had won the Cold War. It seems like we've lost it now, or we switched sides at the 11th hour and now he's doing the bidding of a dictator who at the time we're recording this, seems to be playing him for a fool in the negotiations vis a vis the war in Ukraine, but who knows how that's going to come out? But the fact that we have announced to the world that we no longer stand with freedom loving democracies that aspire to live the way we do in the developed world. We no longer stand with open societies against naked aggressors. We stand with aggressors because the guy covered in orange face paint may want a hotel deal in Moscow one of these days. It's mortifying. Right? That's the thing to be agitated about. And yeah, so it's just going to be an extra level of annoyance to see an economic calamity convince people finally that maybe this was a bad decision.
- [08:27]
Unknown Guest
I want to go back to the signal situation with Hegseth to me, and I want to get your thoughts on this. To me, that was such an easy opportunity for integrity. They could have still lied. They could have Said there was nothing classified, but there was a fuck up and we're looking into it and one of us did this and that shouldn't happen. That's embarrassing. And we do better, we know better. As you said, anybody would have been fired for that. Why is that. And going back to the Trump prerequisites that you talked about, Is it possible I'm purely making this up? Although Griffin said that it was in his movie, I guess the Apprentice, that there's a scene that he was talking about this. Is it possible that in Trump's pre meeting he tells everybody, listen, if you fuck up, just double down. Like, don't ever, like the media will kill you. Don't ever apologize. Just fucking lie, lie, lie and stay through it and just believe your story and you'll get through it and I'll back you up, but no need to, you know, admit that. And then on that too, I mean, I saw what's her name, Tommy Lauren had come out who's. She's a right wing or Republican pundit had come out and said, listen, guys, just take the fucking L on this. This is easy, just take the L. Like, why couldn't they do that? Like, what's, why was that such an easy opportunity? And we watched them on the other side ask for the same thing. Why is that so hard to have just one area where you could fuck up and just say, okay, it wasn't confidential. Again, you keep your lie. But why is it, why couldn't they? Is it just. I mean, I don't think these people all lack integrity. There must be something.
- [10:08]
Jaron Lowenstein
No, no, you can be sure they do. I mean, that's what he's selected for. I mean, no one passes through that Steve with integrity. Well, I mean, it's a famous piece of advice that has been talked about. I'm sure it's in actually some of Trump's fake autobiographies that he didn't write, where Roy Cohn gave him the advice that you do never admit a mistake. That's the. And you just lie and change the subject and move on, but you never apologize and you never admit that you were wrong about anything.
- [10:44]
Unknown Guest
You.
- [10:45]
Jaron Lowenstein
Even when it's obvious to everybody and it's part of a generic authoritarian or fascist playbook, paradoxically, the harder the lies are to believe. I mean really, the impossible lie functions even better in this kind of environment because it functions like a loyalty test. Right? This is code for being in the cult. And, and what it does is it nullifies everybody's efforts to even understand what is going on in the world. I mean, this is Steve Bannon's point of flooding the Zone with bullshit. It was Hannah Arendt's point in the Origins of Totalitarianism that a sufficient amount of lying, it's not designed to get people to believe these falsehoods. It's designed to get people to believe nothing is to get them to declare epistemological bankruptcy so that they just realize, okay, who knows what's going on in the world? It's not my job to know what's going on in the world. I'm just going to be obedient to keep my head down. I'm just going to put a sign in the window claiming to believe the big lie so that no one drags me out of my shop and beats me to death on the sidewalk, right? I mean, that's where this heads when there are no checks on it, right? This is the history of fascism. And there's no question that Trump is an authoritarian. His every inclination is to govern as an authoritarian, and his line is a principal part of that. He just lies about everything. And he lies in ways that are clearly not meant to successfully deceive anyone. It's crucial to realize the difference, right? When Lance Armstrong is lying about doping in the Tour de France, he is really trying not to get caught, right? He is just kind of doing the cognitive math, trying to remember what he said last time. He's applying pressure to people covertly. He's trying to keep secret whatever he can keep secret, right? He's having conversations behind closed doors. He is trying to get away with it and to be believed. And then finally, it all kind of smashes into an obstacle that he can't navigate, which is the fate of many frauds and many liars. That is not what Trump is doing, and that is not what Trump has done for decades now. He lies in ways that are totally transparent, right? He'll tell you a building he built is 10 stories taller than it is, in fact, right? All you have to do is stand outside and count the floors. It's all bullshit, right? And this is a fascist style. It doesn't matter when you're a fucking game show host, but when you bring it into a government. This is why people are worried about fascism, because the fact that you can have half of a society claiming to believe the unbelievable is terrifying. This is so upside down. The right wing has been complaining about George Soros funding things that are of interest to people on the far left. Now, that seemed worth complaining about, but now look at what Elon is doing. Who's complaining about that? And what Elon is doing is so much more intrusive, so much more corrupt, so much more a matter of self dealing. I mean, he's getting regulators fired who are regulating his companies, right? I mean, it's not even on the same part of the map as what George Soros has been accused of. And I'm not even sure that all the accusations leveled at Soros are true. But assuming they are true, it's nothing like what Elon is involved in.
- [14:47]
Unknown Guest
And you think there's no way to steel man Elon for at least his intentions at all at this point?
- [14:52]
Jaron Lowenstein
Not at this point, because I know what he does when you point out his obvious errors, right? Errors that are really harming people's lives. He does nothing about it, right? He doesn't apologize, he doesn't correct them. He just tells you to go fuck yourself and he moves on. If we ever have a full eruption of antisemitic intolerance in America or Western Europe again, if we really descend into something awful, much of the responsibility will be on Elon at this point because of what he's done on X, because how he's turned X into a platform for the world's anti Semites. And it's not just anti Semitism, it's white supremacy, it's fascism, it's every species of bigotry and awfulness. He has made it the preeminent platform for all of that. Not just the sentiment, but the conspiracy thinking and the lying and the distortion of reality that turbocharges all of it. And not only has he done that as a matter of tuning the algorithm and bringing the worst actors back on with great fanfare, bringing Nick Fuentes back on and Alex Jones, but he's done it in the way he's personally interacted with these accounts and passed on misinformation personally to over 200 million followers. And when any of this gets pointed out to him, he does not care. Right? And so it's in that context that you have to see his Hitler salutes that no one thinks are Hitler salutes, right? I don't even think they're Hitler salutes. Right? It's crazy to think that he really was invoking that reference when he zig heiled twice, but the guy is always, if only by accident, promoting Nazis and far right lunatics and conspiracists and liars, right? He's not accidentally amplifying trans activists and far left conspiracists and liars. So to ascribe it to error seems pretty far fetched. I mean, the error he's never making is to criticize the Chinese Communist Party. Right. If he's just a bull in a china shop making mistakes everywhere, well then he would make errors of that kind. He never makes those errors. Right. He's only amplifying right wing intolerance. And it's completely irresponsible. It's unforgivable at this point. And yeah. So what could people do in response? The vandalism and violence directed at Tesla is obviously the wrong thing to be doing. I mean, one, it's illegal. Two, it victimizes innocent people who just bought a Tesla because they thought it was a great car. And it is a great car. Right. It's like I say, just think of someone who stretched to buy a nice car and love the car until yesterday and now people are hurling abuse at them or keying their car or worse. It's awful. That's a. And whoever's doing that, I mean these are almost certainly far left dummies. It's totally counterproductive. But what would not be counterproductive is a full on boycott of Tesla. That would be, insofar as that's happening, I think that's an entirely good thing. It sounds like it's happening in Western Europe. I would love to see Tesla stock get beaten down to a plausible price to earnings ratio which is 110 of its current value. Because I think that's, you know, I think that would be a totally appropriate ethical response to what Elon is doing in the world. Right. I mean, and it seems to be the only signal that could conceivably matter to him or anyone close to him. Right. I mean, if you're going to imagine what it would take to rein him in, you know, to have his board of directors, one of his board of directors reign him in. It would only be something like that. And I'm not even sure he would care at this point. He's got obviously many other irons in the fire beyond Tesla. Right. He's got SpaceX, he's got other, you know, he's, he'll be spectacularly wealthy even if Tesla goes to zero. But it's still, it's the only lawful mechanism we have to resist his obviously unethical and I think probably unlawful behavior at this point.
- [19:07]
Unknown Guest
Well, I want to talk about somebody who's responsible for that in large part and somebody who may have gotten Trump elected and somebody who I actually believe that you do believe has good intentions and is doing well and means well, and I wonder. I know that your friendship, and I'll tell you it is in a second, but one of the things we're thinking about is would you ever have Rogan on your podcast?
- [19:33]
Jaron Lowenstein
Yeah, I mean, you know, it hasn't occurred to me.
- [19:37]
Unknown Host
Frankly, it would be a hard conversation at this point. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe@samharris.org Once you do, you'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The podcast is available to everyone through our scholarship program, so if you can't afford a subscription, please request a free account on the website. The Making Sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now@samharris.org work.