A Unified Theory of Trumpism

Summary

Pod Save America

Episode: A Unified Theory of Trumpism
Date: August 2, 2026
Hosts: Jon Lovett (main), Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark, guest), Tommy Vietor (briefly)

Episode Overview

This episode explores Jonathan V. Last’s "grand unified theory of Trumpism," dissecting the failures and psychology of the Republican Party and broader American culture in the face of Trump. Lovett and Last examine why discomfort so often leads to surrender, what Trump reveals about American society, the culpability and agency of voters, the crisis of virtue and political courage, and the challenges of rebuilding democratic norms after Trump. Notable for its frank, nuanced, and often darkly humorous discussion, the episode focuses on structural, psychological, and moral aspects of today’s political landscape—including what a path forward might require.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Grand Unified Theory of Trumpism

[02:48] Jonathan V. Last's theory:

• Essence of Trumpism: "The other side will always choose surrender over discomfort." (Jonathan V. Last)
• Trump’s insight was knowing how far many in politics and media will go to avoid discomfort, repeatedly leveraging this tendency.
• Example: White House Correspondents’ Dinner—reporters critical of Trump still shake his hand, and Trump openly mocks the superficiality of such gestures.

Quote:

"If forced to make uncomfortable choices, people normally choose comfort over, like, unpleasantness." – Jonathan V. Last [02:59]

2. Republican Weakness and Vanity

[06:57] The hosts discuss Senate Republicans’ responses to Trump’s demands and how even "lines in the sand" are hollow.

• Lovett and Last describe the cycle where GOP figures posture about ‘red lines’ only to accept meaningless assurances from Trump’s allies.
• Last argues this dynamic is driven by a need for self-image and vanity more than principle.

Quote:

"I think this is about them wanting to feel like they drew a line in the sand, but even their line isn’t a real line." – Jonathan V. Last [08:19]

3. The Shifted Baseline and ‘Negotiating’ with Authoritarians

[10:54]

• Lovett compares Republicans’ continual concessions to being in a toxic relationship where one's standards are continually eroded.
• The negotiation is not about meaningful guardrails, but about preserving vanity or the illusion of influence.

Quote:

"It’s true in relationships, you know, crazy will move your baseline, right?" – Jon Lovett [11:09]

4. The Myth of American Exceptionalism

[13:09]

• Last suggests Trump saw that America is not exceptional in resisting authoritarian drift; Lovett reframes this as a generational elite failure rather than a uniquely American one.
• The problem, for Lovett, is a lack of active virtue in elites across sectors; many see threats but refuse to be the one who calls "911."

Quote:

"He was smart about understanding that America is not exceptional." – Jonathan V. Last [13:10]
"It’s an indictment of this generation of elites." – Jon Lovett [14:50]

5. Voter Culpability and Agency

[18:15] – [21:56]

• Many avoid concluding that voters chose Trump with their eyes open, inventing elaborate rationalizations (e.g., economy, misinformation).
• Last highlights the unsettling reality: "Some large portion of that 77 million voters…wanted this."
• Lovett and Last agree this is a "dark place" but a necessary reckoning.

Quote:

"To avoid coming to the conclusion that voters wanted what they chose, you’ve got to start creating a whole bunch of Rube Goldberg contraptions." – Jonathan V. Last [19:11]
"That’s tough...You’re now saying...we’ve got like, 25 million voters in the country who are fascist." – Jonathan V. Last [20:19]

6. Authoritarian Strains in American History

[24:00]

• Last recognizes his previous blind spot: the deep historic roots of authoritarianism in America, predating Trump and even the Cold War.
• What seems like a shocking new phase is more a reversion to older American patterns.

Quote:

"It’s much closer to a reversion to a strain of American political thought which actually ran for a very, very long time." – Jonathan V. Last [25:17]

7. The Role and Limits of Right-Wing Media

[27:00]

• Debate on whether right-wing media leads or follows voter preferences, or if both co-evolve.
• Lovett: Fascism isn’t just ideology, but "permission" to give in to the darkest parts of human nature; right-wing media acts as a continuous permission structure.

Quote:

"A lot of what we’re seeing is a result of a kind of permission." – Jon Lovett [27:27]

8. Erosion of Party Gatekeeping and Republican Appetite for Trumpism

[31:01]

• Strong parties once blocked figures like Trump; now structural weakness lets them in.
• After Trump, Republican voters now demand this style and substance—other figures, even DeSantis, can't compete.
• Lovett: Even when wrong, there's still a "moment of corrective" possible in group psychology—Americans look to others' cues even now.

Quote:

"You wind up in a sour spot. And voters have a taste…because they were offered Trumpism." – Jonathan V. Last [32:44]

9. Rhetoric, Aesthetic, and the Slide toward Fascism

[35:24] – [41:13]

• Last highlights growing Nazi-like rhetoric among top Republicans (e.g., Rubio, Miller), focusing on "normal vs. deformed" and "beauty vs. ugliness" as justifications to dehumanize political opponents.
• Lovett discusses the aesthetics of fascism and how Trumpism requires supporters to also deny their own pain or mortality, demanding a type of self-abnegation.

Quote:

"Not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They're all deformed..." – Read by Jonathan V. Last from Stephen Miller’s speech [37:56]

10. Democratic Responses: Reform, Accountability, or ‘Normalcy’

[43:04]

• Last: Biden's theory that "going back to normal" would heal the country was "a lot wrong."
• If Dems regain power, do they try big reforms, accountability for Trump-era crimes, or focus on future/kitchen-table issues?
• Likely, Dems will choose the latter, despite systemic risks.

Quote:

"Biden’s theory of the case was wrong…It wasn’t a little bit wrong. It was a lot wrong." – Jonathan V. Last [44:06]

11. American Democracy as a ‘Simple Complex System’

[52:41]

• Last uses the analogy of "simple complex systems" (engineered, brittle, lacking redundancy):

"The American experiment is a simple, complex system, not a truly complex system. The guardrails are not real guardrails…if the people go rotten…they will get it." – Jonathan V. Last [54:02]

12. The Crisis (and Hope) of Virtue

[55:03] – [62:56]

• Lovett laments the decline of virtue in public life ("the sitcom character who’d drive $20 back to the bank"), noting politicians and officials rarely trust or level with the public, and voters reciprocate with mistrust.
• Last extols kindness as a universal virtue, suggesting reconnecting politics with such simple principles could rebuild trust and resilience.
• Both agree that moral commitments must return to the center of politics for real hope.

Quote:

"If you can fix kindness as your North Star, that cuts across…It just. It’s universal. Right. Everybody understands kindness." – Jonathan V. Last [61:12]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The other side will always choose surrender over discomfort." (Jonathan V. Last, [02:48])
• "You wind up making all of these things to avoid coming to the conclusion that no, people saw Donald Trump for who he was… and they said, I would like that." (Jonathan V. Last, [19:26])
• "That was virtue." (Jonathan V. Last, describing COVID frontline workers, [58:37])
• "Kindness is one of these values that sort of sands over vices, you know…" (Jonathan V. Last, [61:10])
• Lovett on Democrats’ struggle to look backward or forward:
  "We've just sort of lost a kind of muscle memory for the importance of making virtue a big part of our identity." ([55:11])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:48 – The unified theory of Trumpism: surrender over discomfort
• 06:57 – GOP’s hollow lines-in-the-sand over Trump’s demands
• 13:09 – Is Trump a symptom of deeper American tendencies?
• 19:08 – Voter culpability and psychology
• 24:00 – American authoritarianism's longstanding roots
• 27:00 – The role of right-wing media as "permission structure"
• 31:01 – Party weakness, the cat's out of the bag: voters want Trumpism
• 35:24 – Explicitly fascistic rhetoric emerges in mainstream GOP
• 43:04 – Debate: reform, accountability, or normalcy after Trump?
• 52:41 – American democracy as a fragile, engineered system
• 55:03 – Restoring virtue and trust in politics
• 61:08 – Kindness as political principle
• 62:56–64:04 – Lighthearted end: watch talk, show closing

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Tone & Style

Conversational, unsparing, often self-deprecating and darkly humorous. Both guests and hosts are candid about uncertainty, pessimism, and the limits of their own knowledge. Despite bleak assessments, the mood ends on an upward philosophical note about the power and necessity of basic virtues in public life.

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Summary Takeaway

The episode offers an incisive, wide-ranging diagnosis of the crisis of Trumpism—rooted not just in political structures or media, but in deep-seated moral and psychological deficits exposed (and exploited) by Trump. The discussion moves from the Republican Party’s structural failures to the mass psychology of voters, media complicity, and the challenge of recovering virtue, trust, and resilience in democracy. In the end, the hosts suggest that only a conscious recommitment to values like kindness, honesty, and civic virtue—modeled and demanded at every level—can offer real hope for a healthier political future.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

Hey, It's Tommy from Pod Save America and Pot Save the World. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CrookedCon for conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics to talk about how to fix this mess. Even President Obama made a surprise appearance. We're doing it all again November 5th to 7th in Washington, D.C. with even more podcasts, panels and workshops. Plus, there'll be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms. No matter which way they go, get tickets at CrookedCon. If you're a friend of the pod, you get a discount, too. See you there.

[Jon Lovett]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to POD Save America. I'm Jon Lovett. I just wrapped up a great conversation with Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark. It went all kinds of places to what went wrong inside the Republican Party, what a post Trump Democratic Party should be fighting for, and what it means to have a politics that centers virtues like kindness. And what happened to lead a country to a place where someone like Donald Trump could be president in the first place. I really appreciate the way Jonathan thinks and writes about politics, especially as one of the rare conservatives who understood from the beginning why it was so toxic to embrace someone as awful as Trump. I'm grateful to him for coming on the show and I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. So here it is. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Thanks for having me on. Finally, Jon, I, you know, I understand

[Jon Lovett]

that there is a text chain in which whenever Sarah Longwell or Tim Miller has been on the show, you note that you hadn't yet been invited. I'm sorry that it took this long to have you on because I am genuinely such an admirer of the way you think about politics, the way you talk about politics, and as I said to you on a substack, a compliment that you then wrote an essay about to kind of dispute. I appreciate the. I appreciate those who did something that is clearly harder than it looked, which is be honest and moral from the right or the center right in the face of Trumpism, when so many refuse to do that. And so I think you have a lot to say to help understand this moment. I want to talk about what you called a grand unified theory of Trumpism, which you summarized as, and I quote, the essence of Trumpism is that the other side will always choose surrender over discomfort. I want to use that to kind of help us understand a bunch of different stories. But just what do you mean by that and what are some of the salient examples to you?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, so I was writing about the White House Correspondents Dinner, and strikes me this is a lot of the way Trump has approached Waves hands, you know, all of it, and especially the way he approached the Republican Party. And I have to say this. I mean, Trump really did understand the Republican Party and the conservative movement much better than I did. You know, he. He saw those people for who they are. And one of the things he has found, even with not them, but just sort of mainstream culture, is that if forced to make uncomfortable choices, people normally choose comfort over, like, unpleasantness. And so this was, you know, the, the White House Correspondents Dinner. They invite up onto stage this group of Wall Street Journal reporters who did fantastic reporting about Trump and the Epstein stuff. And these people come up on stage and they're like, I guess I'm supposed to shake this guy's hand. And they shake hands. And then he. And he even, like, when he went and gave his speech afterwards, noted, he was like, yeah, can you believe it? You know, these guys up here, they kill me all the time. Then they just come up and shake my hand. It's like, yeah, it's a little weird, isn't it? And he does that again and again. He's doing that right now about Todd Blanche with Thumb Phyllis and John Cornyn. And they are saying, we're totally in on this Todd Blanche thing. Even though he's your personal lawyer and even though he aided and abetted the Epstein cover up, and even though it was his idea to do this slush fund. Um, the one thing is that we really would love. We know you said you won't do it, but if you could just write that down for us, that'd be great. And, and Trump's response to this is fuck you. You know, and, and when, when confronted with the fuck you, their response. I don't know if you saw this.

[Jon Lovett]

I was. This is literally where I was going next. I want to read Thom Till. So, yes, so John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have been the hold up in the Senate Judiciary Committee just for people that have been following that closely. Yesterday, Thursday, they were supposed to vote on the. On the Todd Blanche nomination. This Trump's former personal defense attorney, the guy that met with Ghislaine Maxwell, who wants to be a. The guy who said that the Attorney General is not independent, which was, by the way, Tillis's or Cornyn's or Tillis's red line that's now been crossed. Obviously, they have said they're not going to vote because they haven't received a guarantee that they won't pursue a fund to give millions of dollars to insurrectionists and other allies of Trump who have been, quote, unquote, persecuted by Biden. Trump puts out a stem winder of a statement defending the fund, justifying it completely, saying, I want this. This is good. Let's do the fund. Tillis quotes that statement and writes, and I quote, senator Cornyn and I have been working with acting AG Todd Blanche to end the anti weaponization fund. And he has been forthright, thoughtful and patient. It's a shame his confirmation has hit a snag. Only because an incompetent personal adviser to the President refuses to amend the bogus settlement. Once again, Stalin has been failed by the secretariat.

[Jonathan V. Last]

If only they would tell him, John, the Kulaks would never have been liquidated if Comrade Stalin had known what was happening.

[Jon Lovett]

All the wheat they would have had were it not for the. For these bourgeois farm. Farm owners even now. Right. Cornyn and Tillis, these are people that are. Have lost their seats in part because of Trump, who are ostensibly, I would say probably, you know, when they, when they're alone with their thoughts, believe they are actually doing something good right now. But we have allowed Trump to move our baseline so far that this is what. This is what kind of stands in for Republicans not going along. What was your reaction to that statement?

[Jonathan V. Last]

I mean, my reaction was befuddlement. I mean, I don't know about you, but I remember a time when people in Washington could be motivated by spite.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes.

[Jonathan V. Last]

And like, I don't know, that's just like, wouldn't there be a. Fuck me. No, fuck you. I'm not gonna confirm your. You know, you just cost me my Senate seat. I'm never gonna confirm your ag. Good luck. Hope the Democrats don't capture the Senate.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Jonathan V. Last]

And there's none of that.

[Jon Lovett]

There's none of that. And, you know, you're right about the other side choosing surrender over discomfort, but it's that there's a kind of. I think it comes from a place of decadence, which is some version of. I don't. I don't think these guys have really thought very deeply of what it is to use power via negotiation. Right. Because the idea that they're saying over and over again, I want to get to yes. On Todd Blanche, like Donald Trump, who is, at his heart, what he believes himself to be, is a negotiator. That's what he sees himself as. And, you know, obviously we can attack whether or not he's genuinely good at it, but the basics you know, set a crazy anchor, be erratic, whatever. He has those tools in his tool chest and these guys are such. They're just babies about it. It's unbelievable.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, they're. They're babies. But here's the thing. This is why I think it's vanity. I think this is about them wanting to feel like they drew a line in the sand, but even their line isn't a real line. Like, I am sorry if Todd Blanche signs a piece of paper saying that, you know, we won't do this one. What is that? That is a worthless guarantee. It is not worth any. It's not enforceable. You know, this is not a law. It's not something you have to go to the Supreme Court and have them overturn. It's just a piece of paper. You do whatever they. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Testified under oath that he wasn't going to do anything about vaccines. He said that thing under oath. He went and did it. It's not worth anything. And this is something that. Trump just signed a deal with Saudi Arabia. Did you see this?

[Jon Lovett]

Over.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Over nukes, like, two weeks ago. And the deal was signed. And then he was like, yeah, and I want them to recognize Israel, too. And the Saudis are like, hey, bro, what. What are you talking about? The paper's signed, bro. And he's like, yeah, no, don't. Don't care. You know, it's like this is this, like. So even the idea that, like, oh, well, we got him to sign this piece of paper is itself ludicrous and decadent, which is why I think it's all about self image. And it's what they've got to tell themselves. And I don't understand that. Like, I. I could understand. Here are the things I could understand, John. I could understand them just saying, I'm getting too old for this shit. Fine. Have your. Todd Blanche. I don't give a fuck. I'm out of here. Right. I would understand that. I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't respect it, but I'd understand it. I would understand the, you know. No, the spiteful. I don't care who you could nominate. Jesus Christ himself. And I would not, you know, vote to confirm him. What I can't understand is I'm going to look at the totality of this nominee. I'm gonna find one thing about it that I'm gonna set as a condition that makes it surmountable, and then I'm gonna pretend to hold out until you give me a meaningless assurance so that I can say I satisfied My one condition that is bizarre. Do you understand that? Like, just as a piece of human psychology.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't. Other than perhaps. Cause they're so solicitous towards Blanche himself. And I think they sort Blanche into the category as a guy we can work with, right? Like, you know. You know, he's a guy we can work. He's a serious guy, right? Yeah, he's Trump's personal attorney. He's one of the serious ones. You know, he's. He's one of the good ones. He's not one of the kooks, right? He's one of ours, right? And he's one of ours.

[Jonathan V. Last]

He's not like that Kraken lady, right?

[Jon Lovett]

And he's not, you know, he's not like. He's not like a Bill Pulte. He's a Clayton, right? We have the Bill Pulte's. Right? And we have a Clayton. Now, the fact that in practice, Pulte really believes what he says about Trump being persecuted and wanting to destroy his enemies, and Clayton just performs that way for the cameras, they still view that as having a distinction, as important, right? And so, because Blanche is their kind of guy, when they have that meeting and Blanche says, look, some version of. He can't admit it. He can't say it's bad. We're not pursuing it. There's no intention to pursue it. It's dead. But the more you press on it, you know him, the more he's gonna dig in, right? So I am giving you this assurance. It will never be something that I pursue as Attorney General. And. But beyond that, it is just very difficult. I just need room, right? I just need room to operate within this administration. And these, they've allowed, you know, there's a. Like, it's true in, you know, relationships, you know, crazy will move your baseline, right? You've been in a terrible relationship for a long time, and you're just trying to get through the day, and you just. You're just trying to kind of eke out a little wins, get things a little bit back towards normal. Meanwhile, what are we talking about here? We are negotiating over whether the President can take 1.776 billion in taxpayer money and just give it to his buddies, some of whom beat up fucking cops at the nation's capital in an insurrection that these guys all believed at the time was so destructive to. To Trump politically and to the country that they didn't have to worry about him ever again. So they didn't have to, per your theory, do something uncomfortable for the base, which is impeach him and remove him so that he couldn't run again. And they have never learned that lesson. Because if they learn that lesson, it requires something of them.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Remember, Mitch, like, they'll take care of this son of a bitch for us, right? We don't have to do anything on this. They'll do it. And this is. I don't know, maybe this is persistent. I mean, maybe this is a persistent trait of the human condition that we see in all times and all places. I'm sure if we were to look at the progress of authoritarianism throughout history, we would see a lot of this from people. But Trump is. Trump is very smart about human nature, I think, and he was smart about understanding that America is not exceptional.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, that's interesting. I don't agree with that. I think that is too, too many moves away from the way he sees these people. I think, like when he shakes the hands of those reporters on that stage, he's actually doing what was a criticism of the dinner that actually, in hindsight, wasn't as true as we said it was, which is, it's all a game to these fucking people. And that the original criticism of the White House correspondents dinner was these people are supposed to be antagonists, the press and the administration. And they have this cushy dinner. And both optically so, optically, it represents something that is like, ugly to the American people, but on a substantive level, it reveals something which is their commitments aren't real, they aren't serious. I actually, in hindsight, don't agree with that. I disagree with that. I actually think their commitments were real. And actually what that dinner, it turns out, was about and something we took for granted is, yes, they're on opposite sides in the game, but they're all believers in the game, right? They're in the stadium together playing the game of democracy. Trump's not in that, which is why it's so ugly, because it's not just that people aren't uncomfortable with discomfort. I think that what Trump. It's not that America wasn't exceptional or that we don't believe in America's sort of special virtues. It's that he understood that there's a lot of people who don't actually care about those virtues enough to do something. Right? That's true of the press in that room. That's true of the lawyers and at those firms that capitulated. That is true of the corporate media. That actually, that is that. That after 30 years of post history liberalism, there is A lack of understanding of. Of who you know, there's. There's a. There's been a gunshot in the courtyard. Someone's gotta call 91 1. We all can't look out the window and wait for someone else to call 911. Somebody's gotta call 911. And his great realization actually is, is that, that none of these people realize it's their job. Right. And I don't think that's an indictment of our view of America. It's an indictment of this generation of elites.

[Jonathan V. Last]

All right, I'll have to chew on that. I mean, I think it's certainly. I think that is certainly true. It may also be true that the rest of America is worthy of indictment. But I'll take that under advise.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, this is an old Hemingway quote.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes.

[Jonathan V. Last]

And many people are fascists and they'll find out when the time comes.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Something to.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I'm butchering this.

[Jon Lovett]

I know. I was afraid. I'm afraid I'm falling for a brainy quote. Like Gandhi once said, live, laugh, love. But the gist of it, I think, does apply a point you've made repeatedly, which I think there's very little equity to in politics is you can blame Trump, you can blame misinformation, you can blame Republicans. But, and this is a paraphrase of something you've written, 77 million Americans who voted for Trump are some combination of unserious, decadent or weak. Now, it's a lot cheaper in politics to blame the powers that be. That's true on the left, that's true on the right. There's not a lot of discussion about the culpability of the actual voters and their agency in this. So can you, just as somebody that has been an observer of conservatism from the inside for a long Time. What have you learned about the voters themselves through this period?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Well, so, I mean, I can tell you my impressions. I can't tell you that they are facts that I've learned. What I have seen suggests to me, though, that you. To avoid. To avoid coming to the conclusion that voters wanted what they chose, you got to start creating a whole bunch of Rube Goldberg contraptions. And the minute you push on any of these constructs, even a little bit, they start wobbling, and so you have to build another one, right? And so, you know, when people say something like, oh, they really. They only care about the economy. And you're like, well, but the economy was terrible when Trump left office. Oh, well, they. That was just the last 18 months of the economy. And they really, they. They think about the first, you know, two and a half years, and. And you're like, well, wait a minute. America's always say, what did you do for me late dilly? They say, well, yes, but then they really understood that the COVID was an exogenous event and that you can't blame the president for exogenous events. You're like, what the fuck are you talking about? You think, what percentage of the country could spell the word exogenous, right? And so you wind up making all of these things to avoid coming to the conclusion that no, people saw Donald Trump for who he was. They heard what he was saying. They heard the things he was saying, and they said, I would like that. And I. And I think the reason people don't want to go there is because that's a dark place, right? I mean, if the conclusion you end, you wind up with is some large portion of that 77 million voters, maybe not all of them, maybe not even a majority of them, maybe it's only like a third of them wanted this. Like this. This is what they understood Trump to be. To be promising, and they wanted it. That's tough, right? You're now saying, well, hold on. So that means we've got like, 25 million voters in the country who are fascist, like, who. Who want a strong man and who are not sold on the liberal order. Because the reality is, like, you don't need a majority, right? If you have a. I mean, how many. How many Bolsheviks were there, right? When for the Russian Revolution, it wasn't like there were 50 million of them. You know, they had like 50,000 guys. If you've got a core group of people committed to illiberalism, you will eventually get illiberalism. And I. That's the sort of stuff that, you know, it just keeps me up at night because I don't know if there's an answer to it other than maybe the culture heals itself. Well, that's not very satisfying.

[Jon Lovett]

Or there has been, you know, forever. Because I do think that the. How many matters, right? Whether it's a drug, Because I don't think it is. You know, I don't think it is. You know, there's. There's a big difference between weak, unserious, and decadent. And the distinction between them does matter. But even if there is this. This group of people. And look, Trump's approval rating always remains. You know, we've. We've never gotten below 30, right? Like, let's say it's in the mid-30s on a good day, that's. Of the country that's like, I'm still good with this. Which tells you something. Whether some combination of loving it or actually kind of not getting really good information about it and not yet willing to walk away. I do think, though, like, you know, to get dark and to think about, like, how many, you know, how many does he have? There is something about the blood and soil Trumpism. It may appeal to 25 million people, but there's not that many that are willing to kind of put a lot of blood onto the soil. Like, it is an online movement, right? It is a lot of people on Facebook and Instagram and social media and TikTok and wherever and watching television. I think it's, you know, not as many on TikTok as they would like, but it's an online movement of people riling each other up based on kind of narratives about cities and places they're not at and people they don't really observe or talk to, but they see through television, whether it's an AOC or trans people or whatever. And when Push claims to show, you know, he put a good show on at the insurrection, that is a dark day in our history for which Trump is responsible. It could have been stopped with a little bit of planning by security officials if they had taken it more seriously, right? Like. Like this wasn't exactly a. This wasn't a mass mobilization that could have shut down the capital, prevented traffic. That kind of things that have been traditionally part of what a true, like, whatever revolution or counter revolution would look like. So maybe they just don't have the guys.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Totally possible. Totally possible. And I, you know, I look at it and it's. It's just hard to know. And I would say it's not new. This is the Other thing that I've really come to, I mean, so I talk a lot about like my, my blind spots and my biggest is always been race. Right. And part of this is just because of the Kanye. I grew up in a very middle class suburb where it was normal and race wasn't a problem. And, and you look at, you know, like, oh, we have all these authoritarians. Well, you know, before the civil rights movement, we had a whole swath of the country that was committed to authoritarianism. Right before the Civil War, we had half the country that was committed to a form of authoritarianism. And so there was, I mean, for people of our age who came of age in the post civil rights era, there is a sense of like, oh, so everybody was sort of aligned by the Cold War. And so once you get in that 20 year period, post civil rights, before the end of the Cold War, it looks like you've got this vaguely liberal monolith. This isn't to say that there aren't racists in the country and whatnot, but just sort of broadly speaking, both Democrats and Republicans were against the commies. And there was the last two years of the Carter administration's approach to the Cold War were indistinguishable from Reagan's approach to the Cold War. And so there was this like, hey, we're all in on liberalism. We don't like this authoritarianism stuff. And I, because of when I was born and my political upbringing just thought, okay, so that's America. And so this Trump stuff is new and different, but it's not really, it's much closer to a reversion to a strain of American political thought which actually ran for a very, very long time. It just happened to have come to an end right before I was born. Does that make sense?

[Jon Lovett]

Yes. Well, no, it does make sense. You know, whether it's the ways that, and you know, I think there was downsides to this version of a liberal consensus. The kinds of topics that were acceptable. Right. The kinds of people that were considered respectable. Like, there was a, there were real downsides to this actual strange period in which also in the media there was a real narrowing of kind of the bounds of the debate. And there are positive aspects to what happens when an entire culture is built around a kind of narrow debate, that there's not as much difference. It's not as much. In fact, all of that is certainly true. But you see kind of an emergence of right wing media during this time that slowly starts building power and influence, in part because there is this, you know, There is this sort of darkness in us, in people, right? In our culture and in people. And there was clearly, whether it's, you know, Coughlin and then to Limbaugh, right. Like there were people that realized, like, there's a need that's not being met in a pretty broad way.

[Jonathan V. Last]

How much causal effect do you give the sort of right wing media ecosystem as it evolved in where we are now? Because I'm never sure. Like, clearly there's some. It has some effect, right? I wouldn't say it has no effect. It has some effect, but I don't know how much. Like, if you snapped your fingers and it all went away, would things be a lot different? I don't know. What are your thoughts on this?

[Jon Lovett]

Here's what I've been thinking lately. A lot of what we're seeing is a result of a kind of permission. Like, what is fascism, right? It's a hard thing to define for people. It's a little bit murky. And I think part of the reason it's so murky is, you know, there were a lot of people during Trump 1.0 be like, oh, stop calling him a fascist. That term doesn't apply. Look at. Everything's working right. And I increasingly just. I don't think it is best to think about it as an ideology, a goal. It is permission to a kind of evil that we all feel, which is, I will give into my ego completely. I will not accept any kind of injury. I will not have to admit to any kind of fault. I will not have to be wrong. I will not have to accept discomfort. I will not have to accept nuance. The reason there was a pandemic is because Fauci. The reason I was stuck at home is because of the liberals. The reason people died is because of China. The reason I'm not happy right now is because of AOC or Mamdani or whatever. And that is intoxicating. It is an intoxicating way to go through life. Forbearance, religious virtue, civic virtue is a bulwark against those ideas. We all feel them. Some are better than others as naturally showing a discipline against them. Some are, you know, when you say someone, oh, they don't have a bad bone in their body, it's actually very hard for them to go in that way. We're all on that spectrum. And decades and decades of media slowly telling people to just let go, just let go. It's fine. You can feel whatever you want to feel culminates in Trump. Did the media follow the people? Did the People follow the media. Is Trump a symptom? Is he? I don't know. But at root I think it is. I think it is that thing inside of us. It is as old as people and we will always have to fight it and it will come and go. Pod Save America is brought to you by Chime. Look, we all know someone who could use a quick reality check when it comes to their money. And hey, maybe that someone is you. But no matter where your finances stand, we can all agree on one thing. A good bank should offer great rewards without slapping you with hidden fees. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way people bank. They're not like a traditional bank that loves to gatekeep the best rewards and pile on hidden fees. Unless you have a massive balance. Chime offers the most rewarding fee. Free banking. All with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime Card in a category of your choice like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending. No credit check required. You can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, Spot Me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee. Join the millions who are already banking. Be free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.comcrooked that is chime.comcrooked Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime Card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits Required terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com disclosures for details.

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[Jonathan V. Last]

So this is I have a very similar view about the parties in that one of the things that the Republican Party was able to do when it was strong was prevent people like Donald Trump from ever being presented to voters, at least at the presidential level, right? And so even if voters would have wanted something like that, it wasn't on offer. They got Bob Dole, they got MITT Romney, they got guys like that. And once Trump appeared and it was like, you know, when you got big cats in captivity and, you know, like, they get a taste for live meat, and all of a sudden they won't, like, take the stakes that you throw them anymore. That's what it's like with Trump and Republican voters now that they have like, oh, I could have that. I could have the guy who talks about shooting illegals and says, only in the panhandle. I can have a guy who encourages political violence who says, go ahead and knock that guy out. I'll pay for your legal bills. Oh, yeah. You know, like, that's the real dope for them. And that's why I have a hard time seeing how we go back, because the parties aren't strong enough to prevent people like that from coming in anymore. I mean, just the structure of our party systems are too weak. They're both too strong and too weak.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

You know, they're too strong to be killed and to have a new party pop up in their place, but too weak to prevent things like these sorts of takeovers. And so you wind up in a sour spot. And voters have a taste on vote. Republican voters have a taste for this because they were offered Trumpism. And then you saw when. When they were offered Desantis, which was basically Trumpism without the violence, without the physical violence, they're like, that guy. What are you talking about?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, yes, also without Trump, which is. Who is a charismatic figure. And, you know, I think there's. Here's where I would say there's like, a little reason to be a little bit less pessimistic, because I think there's a little step.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Pass.

[Jon Lovett]

I think there's a step in there that's important as part of this, which. Because I. It's not. It's not this idea that Trump suddenly appears and they can have this kind of. You know, it's like, oh, I don't want to be on burger. I don't want. I want the red meat. Right. That's certainly true. But there is a moment, and it plays out during that first primary, 2016, where you see Trump doing what Trump's doing. You see Rubio is doing what Rubio's doing and Cruz doing what he's doing, and everybody kind of looks around first, and they look around at each other, and they're like, is it okay if I do this? Like, I want. I'm in. I'm kind of interested. This is attractive to me, but I know it's wrong. It's still by the. I know it's wrong is everywhere still to this day. It is the understanding that what we're doing is wrong. It, it is inside of it is the unspoken part of everything. It's everything across the media. It is about assuaging the people who know they're doing something wrong. You know, when you see that, you never see a liberal, you never see a liberal say some version of this is just a political disagreement. We should still treat each other as friends, right? Like that's something conservatives. There's a conservative effort to say versions of that to a kind of make what they've done be normal. But the reason I say all that is because that moment of looking around is a corrective that still exists. Like if, if you, there are, there are two, if you go, there can be two gates side by side at an airport and two different airlines operating that gate. And at one gate, everybody is obeying the rules of when you board. And at the other gate, nobody is. Why? It is a combination of the culture of the flyers, the expectations of the flyers, and the rules of the airline. Do they enforce, do they send anybody back if they come up with their boarding group that they're not in? And also, hey, is this an airline where everybody lines up or is this an airline where we all crowd the fucking thing? Like, like, like, like we're trying to storm the Bastille, right? Like, what kind of vibe is this? And people look around and maybe there'll be a transgressor and others will follow, maybe there won't. It's luck. It's a little bit of luck and happenstance. Somebody's got to throw the first brick. But that moment of corrective is still available even now. Or is that wrong?

[Jonathan V. Last]

I don't know. So I, yesterday I wrote a piece about, about this conference that the Trump administration did two weeks ago. So they did a conference on the resurgence of political terrorism. And it was all, I mean, it's about, of course, irony is dead, right? The people who reintroduced political violence into America after like a 30 year hiatus basically are now like all, oh my gosh, there's violence, right? But the only violence they care about is, is left wing violence. That's, that's the big thing. And you had Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio both give speeches which were, and I say this in a measured way, indistinguishable from something Goebbels or Hitler would have said in the 30s. And I just went and pulled quotes like from, from Hitler and Goebbels. Speeches. And they're talking about. This is Rubio and Miller, about the ugly people who. I mean, like, they're really getting into the. How do you say, is it physiognomy? Physiognomy. You know, like the calipers, like, you know, oh, you can tell the dysgenic types, the untermensch.

[Jon Lovett]

I am on record predicting a phrenology comeback five years ago.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Oh, yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Yep. I agreed. Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

So, you know, like. And this is. This is. So why is Marco Rubio. Rubio, who is supposedly the responsible one, who is the Secretary of State, giving a speech at a conference in which he is talking about Americans? This is what he's talking about. Americans, the protesters, you know, the left wing terrorists and all this as being ugly and deformed and who, you know, spiritually, all they can do is destroy the work of the great men and the great culture that the Aryans have built. And it just, you know, you. And I just think, I don't know, like, Rubio is a pretty shrewd diviner of what people want from him in any moment. He seems to think that this is what Republican voters want. I don't know, man. It was pretty. I was pretty worked up about this because, I mean, it's one thing to, like, rhyme with Nazis, it's another thing to, like, copy them.

[Jon Lovett]

It is. There is a difference between, like, the Miller rhetoric is as fascist and as. As. As you could imagine, even where it's sort of like, you know, what is good and beautiful and true. Right. There's a kind of. I don't even know what.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Can I read the passage? I've got it in front of me.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's hear.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Because it's. It's really amazing. It's not a coincidence that when you look at these violent antifa demonstrations and you see any photograph of those who are assembled, to be blunt, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They're all deformed in some way in their appearance, in their dress and their mannerism. Why is that? Why? If you look at two photographs and you see a normal American in the street and you see an antifa protest, why do the people that are violently demonstrating, why is there not one normal looking person among them? Every one of them, through the course of their life and their decisions, has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways, to the point where their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred. Trust your instincts to all people and across all civilizations, you know what normal is. You know what beautiful is. You know what good is. You know that families are right, you know that children are precious and beautiful, must be protected. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is so much deeper than issues about taxation and regulation. It's about normal, healthy, ordered living.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, this is. You can you see it?

[Jonathan V. Last]

It's like vermin, dysgenic types. It's all right there.

[Jon Lovett]

You could see, like, Goebbels looking at that and being like, hey, I think we gotta turn this down a little bit. I think we're getting a little bit. Kai. Hey, guys, I know, I know we're the Nazis, but this is getting a little crazy. Yes, but so what's interesting about that, I saw that passage. And if you turn on Fox News at many points during the day, you will see a kind of brightly colored, over the top aesthetic, including facework and changes to the body that are all meant to be. Like, there is that. You stop and you read that and you're like, what are you talking about? Exactly? What are you saying exactly? Because when you look, there is the other side of that is an aesthetic to fascism, right? Like with what a kind of extreme aesthetic to what it means to be beautiful. Right? And it does flow from this idea of. Which is like one of the lies at the core of fascism itself, which is in the same way, you do not need to admit to any flaw or fault or mistake, and you can dominate. And actually, to lose is always embarrassing. To concede is always embarrassing. One place where we all must concede is to time and death itself, right? Like we must concede to the fact that we are all not if Peter

[Jonathan V. Last]

Thiel has his say in that.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, the techno fascist, for sure. But like that. Like that we all have bodies, right? And that actually we all experience pain and we all experience loss. And part of, like, that rhetoric is around convincing a bunch of people to deny their own kinds of pain, right? To like, to model a kind of a strength in which the reason it's okay to support Trump, even though he actually does nothing to improve the country, is that your dissatisfaction, your pain doesn't matter because you. You actually are. Are sort of a tool of this operation. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, there's a kind of. Like there's a. There's a. An. There's a kind of ask that they make of. Of their own people to kind of like, deny themselves, like, their. Their own humanity and how they kind of approach the world.

[Jonathan V. Last]

During Trump 1.0, there was a New York Times piece written. It was like There was some storm down in Florida, and Trump had, like, done jack shit for people. And the Times reporter is, like, down, interviewing Trump supporters who had been, like, you know, hurt by. By the storm. There's a quote from a woman who says that she was disappointed in Trump because she said, he's not hurting the people he's supposed to hurt. And to me, this was like the Rosetta Stone of Trumpism. Like, this is, as you say, like, they can't stop their own mortality, can't stop their own pain, but Donald Trump promises to hurt the people that they hate. That's really good.

[Jon Lovett]

There's a lot of debate about what Democrats should be calling for, what reforms should look like, how we resolve a tension, which is if we are able to retake power, there will be a great incentive to use the new executive powers to fix what Trump has done, while at the same time collectively understanding that limiting the power of the presidency, returning some prerogatives to the legislature and the courts is a good thing. Pete Buttigieg, I think, said something interesting about this that you wrote about, which is basically some version of. There's places where we need to strengthen the presidency. Basically, we need to strengthen it on the stuff you want me to do, and we need to weaken it on the stuff you don't want me to do. Like, we have to be stronger going after inequality and fighting the corporations and. But we need to be. The president should be weaker when it comes to invasions of privacy and violations of the rule of law. Okay, fine. I agree with that. How are you thinking about executive power and, like, and what it means sort of post Trump to kind of protect the country from another one?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't know the answer. I. You know, I. There are. You can see, like, three different pathways for this, and it's not clear to me which is wisest. There was a bunch of debate about this when. When Biden took office, and he chose to try to, like, hey, look, Trump was an aberration. That's not who we are. And what we're gonna do is we're just gonna go back to being normal, and we're gonna fake it till we make it. You know what? That wasn't a crazy view. That was not a crazy view. It was totally defensible. It was a real theory of the case. It did turn out to be wrong, though, and we just need to say that, like, it was wrong, and it wasn't a little bit wrong. It was a lot wrong. Biden had a successful presidency he had a pretty good economy. Unemployment was below 4% almost the entire time he beat Covid. We had about a 13 or 14 month period with very high inflation, but then he achieved a soft landing. I mean, this is as good as gets. We did not have a recession. We did not have a big unpopular foreign war. And at the end of it, people chose Trump again.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Even with the fellow. I mean, so, so Biden's theory, the case was wrong. What could Democrats do if they take power again? Well, they could try some version of, we're going to reform everything, and so we're going to go after the big institutional problems which led to Trumpism. Things like the Supreme Court, things like the Electoral College, things like the Senate. They could, instead of that, they could pursue accountability. They could say, look, the system is what the system is. But we're going to make sure that everybody who broke any law during that period that just happened, whether they were a member of the government doing things that were illegal, or whether they were private corporations who were participating in illegal things with doing frauds and whatnot, and everybody pays a price. So that people see going forward that if you get another strongman, if you go along with him, there will be consequences. Right. That's one thing. Or they could say, hey, you know what? People don't care about process. People don't care about all that stuff. They care about the bottom line, kitchen table issues, John. And you know what? We're not going to get, we're not going to get distracted by worrying about the past and fighting the old fights of the old generation. We're going to look forward to building something new, something that really matters to people's lives. And look, you know more about Democrats than I do, but my sense is they're going to pick door number three if they ever get into power again. And I'm like, great, good luck.

[Jon Lovett]

Part of it is like, I worried about that. I worry that there is going to be polling that says very clearly, you know, some version of do you want to look backwards or do you want to go forwards? And people are going to say, gosh, I want to go forward always.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yep.

[Jon Lovett]

And that will be a real. There will be a lot of pressure on Democrats to say this. And, and then you will have the Democrats that are the smart messengers who say some version of we got to walk a chew gum at the same time, you know they're going to say it on this show. They've said it before. They say it again, John, we got to walk a chew gum at the Same time. So we've got to look forward, but also we have to fight for accountability. But all of it, to me is avoiding what I think. I think in like, in the Democratic heart, right? Like what, what is what a Democrat. What would, what would the, the kind of engaged Democrats who have kind of been part of this debate for a long time, what are they really, what are they really saying that they want what they want or what? I imagine some version of this is what people think we need, but find it hard to articulate, is we need a period in which we have some version of another founding, right. Like we've been through several foundings in which we kind of have a big debate about authority and limits. In that period of friction, there's a lot of room to operate, and then laws and norms kick in and it gets constrained and you get stuck in that for a long time. Right? That's what happens after the revolution, the Constitution, the Civil War and the Civil rights movement. And we're kind of, we're maybe we're due. And what that looks like, right, is to the buttigieg point, you kind of want a period where you can have a president who can operate like Trump tear down the ballroom, kind of remove all the executive orders.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Oh, you've all come around. You've all come around with me on the ballroom.

[Jon Lovett]

You know what? I'm gonna put your values to the test right now. Would you tear down the new Dulles?

[Jonathan V. Last]

There's a new Dulles.

[Jon Lovett]

He wants to build the new Dulles airport. He wants to get rid of the people movers. You're going to tear that down, too.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I mean, to what end? To what end is this.

[Jon Lovett]

It would. To fix the fact that Dulles sucks.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Is this an infrastructure thing?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes.

[Jon Lovett]

He announced, he announced this week a giant plan to. He personally has approved the designs for new terminals at Dulles, which include getting rid of the people movers and a 32,000 foot parking structure. Now, should the president be walking through the details of a new parking structure when we're at war with Iran and have no control of the Strait of Hormuz? No, he should not. But he did do that.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, that's closer to like highway planning infrastructure, though. Like, I am not in the, like, Donald Trump built a. Donald Trump's transportation department built a bridge in West Virginia, and so we have to tear that down. That's not where I am. I'm in the ornaments and the personal monuments to himself, which are things like the arch, the ballroom.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes.

[Jonathan V. Last]

The name on the Kennedy Center.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, that's that we gotta get.

[Jonathan V. Last]

My view is that anything that looks like a presidential palace gets pulled down.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, anything, Anything.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Because you have to show that there's no throne there. You know, show the next guy anything

[Jon Lovett]

that any part of his infrastructure where you could imagine Uday and Kuse walking out.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yes.

[Jon Lovett]

To say hello, I think you gotta tear it down. But, but back, back on this, that, that you want to do a court expansion, get rid of the filibuster, pass some sort of, you know, repeal the big beautiful bill, taxes. There's a lot of sort of big, strong executive leading the Congress towards a singular goal. But then, and by the way. But then at some point, you also want to reassert the Justice Department as an independent body, which I think we, at this point, depending on the court, you have to do through law or constitutional amendment. You want to reassert Congress's prerogatives over the national security state, which requires legislation, maybe at this point, also a constitutional amendment. There's a, there's a bunch of ways in what you want is a period of time where the Democratic president operates like Trump before a whole set of rules kicks in in which there can never be a Trump again, which is exactly the kind of thing that dictatorships are made of. Right. Like that. Like that's what that, you know what I'm saying? Like that is what people want. And yet what. That is the problem.

[Jonathan V. Last]

That is the problem. And that's the tension.

[Jon Lovett]

That's what they think they got with Trump.

[Jonathan V. Last]

That's, that's the tension. And the other, I mean, there is also a false sense of security here, which is that if the, if the people in a democracy want a Trump, they will get a Trump, regardless of what Democrats build in the guardrails. Right. Because the guardrails are people. And if America wants authoritarianism, it's going to get authoritarianism. It's going to get a strongman. So you can't fix that part of it. Right. And so that. Honestly, that does. I was making fun of the, you know, Democrats who just want to look toward the future. Maybe that is the answer. I say I don't come to you with answers, John. Maybe the answer is you do have to look to the future so that you build something so that people don't think, yes, I want a strongman. Maybe that's, I don't know. To me, that doesn't feel like satisfactory, but that doesn't mean it's not the right answer.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, there's also, I think, your story of Biden And I am a great critic of Joe Biden is a little, I think it's a little bit over determined in that if Joe Biden, Joe Biden's theory, right, was we have to demonstrate what a democracy should look and sound like. We have to reassert some normalcy. We have to achieve some big policy goals to demonstrate that government can work. And because there was an insurrection and he's such a pariah, the Republicans will move on and they will have a primary that sits where you end up with someone somewhere between Trump and. And what Rubio sounded like in 2014. And you kind of muddle through, right? Like, you know, there have been plenty of cases with history where the kind of charismatic leader goes away and everybody kind of, you don't go back to where you were. But it mattered that there was one charismatic leader. And without them, people kind of go back to old habits. The problem was, to me, two things. One, Joe Biden was way too fucking old. And as a result, kind of became very. Couldn't communicate and his weaknesses as a leader became evidence of his age. His age became evidence of his weaknesses and became a downward spiral. Kamala, for her, for her best efforts, was unable to get out of that for various reasons. The other is you could have had Joe Biden doing exactly what Joe Biden did, and you put Adam Schiff at DOJ instead of Merrick Garland, or somebody gave Merrick Garland, you know, some Adderall in his oatmeal every day without his knowledge. And suddenly you have some prosecutions happening faster. Trump is unable to run for office, and the world looks very different.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Possible. And I mean, I should say in all this, it is also possible that everything just kind of fixes itself on its own, right? It's possible that none of the things that we have talked about happen. And yet a decade from now, things aren't worse than they are right now. They may not be a ton better, but like, we haven't continued sliding into authoritarianism. We're only like a third of the way there, the way we are now. So, like, that's also possible. I'm, you know, I am open to that. I'm open to all possibilities. John. We often find ourselves in the trap of saying, well, what was the real reason? And that what I use is like murder on the Orient Express. Who did it? All of them did it, right? And it is, it's. Biden was too old and Trump was charismatic and Merrick Garland didn't act, you know, with enough, enough impetus. Like, it's all of those things together. But it's also like, and the Supreme Court was pretty clearly going to try to make sure Trump could run again like that. They wanted Trump to be able to run again. They were going to do whatever they could to do that. Right? And so you are in this physics, people call it a simple, complex system. It's not a fully complex. Complex systems are like ecosystems. They're gigantic and they're incredibly resilient. But a government is a simple, complex system, which is to say it's like an engineered biosystem and those sort of things. Simple, complex systems are actually really delicate because they don't have all the redundancies and self governing features built into them that true complex systems have. And I think one of the things we've learned over the last decade is that the American experiment is a simple, complex system, not a truly complex system. The guardrails are not real guardrails in that if the people go rotten or lose their minds temporarily or decide they want something bad, they will get it. And you know, maybe you don't need all the people, Maybe just need 47% of them distributed in the correct way or something like that, but you know, they're going to get it. And so I, I wish I knew what the answer was to all this. Virtue. The answer to this is virtue.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's, let's end, let's end, right? Let's end by talking about virtue for a moment. Because I, I, it's, it does seem to be like you step back from all of this and it is just a collective, like you can blame the elites, you can blame the voters, whatever you want to do. There is a, there is a sense in which we've just sort of lost a kind of muscle memory for the importance of making virtue a big part of our identity. Right? Just like I remember when I, there was something that would happen on sitcoms when I, that was just a part of sitcoms all the time, which was there was a character who would drive back to the bank with the 20 bucks. Oh, they got an extra 20 bucks. And that character would always drive back to the bank with 20. And even in that it was a cheesy thing. It's obviously a cheesy thing about. But like there is a, like kind of. And maybe Trump is a reflection of it. He also makes it worse, I think about Fauci, when public health officials said you don't need masks, right? They were doing it because they wanted health in a crisis. They're worried about the health system coming apart they're worrying about first responders dying of COVID They're desperate to get those people masks. And public health had a choice, and the choice was between trusting the American people with the truth or doing a kind of nudge because you want to make sure that the PPE gets to the hospitals. They chose to lie because they didn't,

[Jonathan V. Last]

because they not lie heavily. Lawyered. I would say this, so I've done the Fauci thing a whole lot. Fauci didn't lie. What Fauci did was a very lawyerly depends on what the definition of his is.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes. So I want to be clear. Anthony Fauci was somebody that devoted his life to public health. He's being smeared to be blamed for the entire pandemic because these people are being fundamentally dishonest. Donald Trump was president. He was lying the whole time. He was a man that did his best in a massive emergency. And I'm not just saying him. Collectively, the goal was to convince Americans that they did not need masks when they did. Because, and I think rightly they knew that. If you said to the country, don't buy masks right now. They're life saving and we need to save them for the people that are in the shit right now. I don't think that they were wrong. Right. I don't think they were wrong.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Agree.

[Jon Lovett]

And to me, that is at the root of this, that sort of politicians, not politicians and officials not trusting the voters, the voters not trusting those people in return. I just don't know. The question is, what does a virtuous cycle look like in which you're kind of getting back to a common sense of high trust, society versus low trust.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I wish I knew. Honestly, I wish I knew, John, because it. I think you're right about the general public, but at the same time, the general public is made up of all of those nurses and orderlies and techs and docs and who showed up to hospitals taking care of people. Especially like in New York. I mean, I don't know if people remember. Everybody is like this, this mass, you know, forgotten. This mass forgetting about COVID because, like, nobody wants to remember it. But New York looked like fucking doomsday, you know, like they were just like mobile refrigerators with bodies just stacked in the alleys outside hospitals. It was like seeing one of these virus movies. And the hospitals were full of people who just went in and tried to save lives and put themselves at risk anyway. You know, all these essential service workers who were like people who worked at just delivery and logistics, people who worked in grocery stores, you know, checkout lines and stocking things. Like, that's true, too. Like, those people did that. That was virtue. And so it's become so hard to understand, well, why is it that these people will exhibit such true virtue at the individual level? But then when we ask, do you think people respond collectively in the right way, or would they have run out and just, like, hoarded, you know, like hoarding toilet paper every time there's a warning, snowstorms, and I don't know how to square the circle there. And I, you know, maybe. Maybe the answer is, like, you just have to trust people, and if they make the wrong choice, so be it. And everybody lives with radical candor. I don't know the answers, and I wish I did.

[Jon Lovett]

I think part of it is, I do think it matters that Donald Trump had been president for several years, and, like, he makes these. These kind of. He makes mistrust and cynicism more true of us. And I do think maybe the answer, like, in the same way, why do I think you and Sarah and Tim and others who have had, you know, profound disagreements over the years stepped up when others didn't? Well, I think part of it is these virtues aren't just something you believe in. I think everybody would claim to believe in them. They're. They were part of your identity. Right? They were part of your identity. And a politics in which Democrats find a way to make those kind of virtues central to how we talk about ourselves, how we talk about what it means to be an American, I do think is kind of points to the way out, because I think the difference, I do genuinely think the difference is, is what are you? Are you a Republican? Are you a conservative? Are you a Texan? Are you an American? Are you moral? Are you righteous? Are you honest? Are you somebody that is good at. Are you fair dealing? Right. Like, do you cut lines? Or do you understand why you shouldn't, even when you see others doing it? Right? Like, these kind of simple things are, like, kind of, I think, part of what Trump makes less salient to people. And I think maybe that's part of the way, whether inside the Republican Party or in the Democratic Party, a return to that kind of moral language is maybe part of what has to happen next.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, and I wish, again, I don't have any of the answers on this stuff. I think a lot about kindness, because kindness is one of these values that sort of sands over vices, you know, like, if. If you can fix kindness as your North Star, that cuts across you don't have to be, you know, a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or an. Like. It just. It's universal. Right. Everybody understands kindness. And to the extent that we could try to just model that and be me talking about kindness, I know it's hysterical.

[Jon Lovett]

I. You're rumored to be a very kind person. That's what the rumor is.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Don't believe it.

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, whenever they let you out of that room you're in.

[Jonathan V. Last]

But I strive for it, right? I mean, it is something. I think it's something we could all. We can all strive. We can all be aspirationally kind, and maybe that collectively leads us back somewhere less terrible.

[Jon Lovett]

And I will also just note, too, that, like, in politics, these kinds of virtuous words aren't always going to be on the list of polling questions or the list of topics that rise to the top. But I will remember when Hillary Clinton was campaigning in 2016, and I know every losing campaign did everything wrong and every winning campaign did everything right, and we shouldn't have Pokemon went to the polls. But when she would say, what we need is love and kindness, it was electric. It was the most electric thing that came around her in a campaign that was kind of more in the kind of neoliberal language of kind of technocracy. That idea of kindness did kind of bring something out of people. So I do think it's a very good place to leave it. Jonathan Vlast, it has been so good talking to you, you know, and I hope you felt I was kind today.

[Jonathan V. Last]

This was so great. I loved hanging out. I would do a show with you every single week. You, me, and Alex Wagner. Wow, this is great.

[Jon Lovett]

Okay. Yeah, I gotta talk to my bosses. Oh, wait. We're an independent media company.

[Jonathan V. Last]

You mean Alex. What are we gonna do? We'll do a show about pinball. Let's show about comic.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's get her on the blow.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I'm into it.

[Jon Lovett]

Whatever you want. Yeah, we could talk about. We. By the way, we can talk about watches, too.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Are you a watch guy?

[Jon Lovett]

I'm a watch guy. I got a. I got a Grand Seiko going right now.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Oh, which one?

[Jon Lovett]

It's. I got. I got the. It's the. It's the. It's the cherry blossoms. It's the cherry blossoms.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Oh, the Shun Bun.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, it's a classic.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Grand Seiko is a. If you love Grand Seiko, then you really love watches.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm. I'm a nerd. This is for. For those. This is a. This is a nerds. This is a nerds watch and it and nerds stop me on street because they know. Because they know. But everyone's like, oh, that's a Seiko. No, no, no, no, my friends. It's a Grand Seiko.

[Jonathan V. Last]

And the story of Grand Seiko Zaratsu polishing, my friend.

[Jon Lovett]

And what people don't know is that there was a period of time where Seiko wanted to compete with the Swiss. And so they had two factories, Grand Seiko and King Seiko. And they said, fight to the fucking death, boys. And you know what they did?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Grand Seiko won. It's the Japanese way.

[Jon Lovett]

It's the Japanese way. Jonathan. So good to talk to you everybody. Go subscribe to the Bulwark. Go subscribe to the Triad, his newsletter, and subscribe right here on this channel. Help us build a pro democracy ecosystem to get good information to people. And that prize is kindness. How about that? Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Farah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hefco, Jordan K. Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelaviev, David Towles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.