Sam Stein (3:22)

Now speaks well of kava. You have enough kava. It calms your worst.

Tim Miller (3:28)

Get some of that tzatziki.

Sam Stein (3:30)

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Miller (3:31)

You don't have the bloodlust of migrants anymore. If you've had a good tzatziki bowl.

Sam Stein (3:35)

Yeah. You eat a little hummus, you say, you know what? Maybe immigrants aren't so bad. They created this great food. No, I, I read, when I read this thing, I don't know if you had the same experience, but it was like a real journey. Because you start off, you're like, oh, they're changing things up. Clearly they think they've gone too far. And then you're like, oh, wait, Corey Lewandowski wanted this. Oh, shit. And then you're like, oh, it's actually going to get worse. They don't think they've gone far enough. It's hard to imagine how they can make it more inhumane than it currently is. I know you've been following this pretty closely. Every time I pop up on some social media platform, you see these videos that are just utterly heart wrenching. The latest one was this woman who had gone into an elementary school. I followed her there. Her child is, like, holding on to her son, is holding on to her, trying to stop her detention and likely deportation. And the agents are just like, pulling them apart. It's like this incredibly tragic scene. You're like, why? What is the point?

Tim Miller (4:35)

Did you see the one with, from yesterday with the ICE agent pointing the gun at the person saying, you're dead liberal.

Sam Stein (4:41)

And so I had approached this thinking, well, clearly things are getting out of control. And they've been empowering these ICE agents. There's been reports that these people are not qualified and that they're not even physically capable of the job. And then you get this report from last night, which is actually, no, they think the ICE agents are not the right ones for the job because they're not doing enough deportations and detention that Border Patrol needs to take their place. And so you follow these immigration experts online and they're just very anxious about what's to come. And that makes me anxious. Obviously.

Tim Miller (5:14)

You know, I looked at it and I had a broadly similar kind of reaction. You do stop short when you read that Tom Homan is the person being like, let's chill out a little bit. If you know anything about Tom Homan.

Sam Stein (5:25)

Hey, let's, let's calm down.

Tim Miller (5:26)

To me, I looked at it and kind of the more I thought about it, it kind of makes sense when you look at really all the cities except Los Angeles and Portland. How so what's happening in those. But the other cities. I had been thinking about this. You see these videos, but they're all kind of coming from the same places. Right. Like, we haven't seen a ton of videos of in Phoenix, for example. I was thinking about Denver particularly. Obviously, being from Denver, I consume a lot of Denver news, so I've been a couple examples here in New Orleans. You know, to me it seems like probably what is happening is you have these offices, you have these regional offices, and in any organization you have some people that are just like trying to do the job. Right. And like whenever you think about the choice of working for ICE right now, something I would not do, you're obviously going to have a range of types of people. And you have one people is like, hey, I'm in charge of the whatever Seattle ICE office. And like we're focused on the job that we are given, which is going after criminals, going after the worst of the worst. I'm going to tell my agents to do that. We're going to try to keep some discipline in this office. Right. And then. And like in Chicago, where you have Bavino and the Border Patrol people coming in, you have the behavior being completely different in Los Angeles. Actually in some. One of these articles that I read, some of the reporting internally was that I guess supposedly there's like a struggle in the Los Angeles office where the. It was the Border Patrol agents actually that were more aggressive.

Sam Stein (6:47)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (6:47)

And like who the ICE office was relatively speaking, like trying to, you know, to, to focus more on. On actual named targets of. Of criminals. And so you read it like that and you're like, oh, wait, no, what we're in for is like the bad things that we've seen in relatively. In a number of bad incidents, but like relatively isolated geographically. Like they're trying, they're bringing that to everybody. Everybody. Like the worst shit You've seen in Chicago, it's coming for you. Denver is basically, I think the message.

Sam Stein (7:16)

Well, I'm glad that you clarified you wouldn't join ICE in this moment. I think that eliminates a personnel option for the president that he was considering.

Tim Miller (7:25)

Unless it's part of my twink filtration program. Have you heard about my twink filtration program?

Frank Fukuyama (7:30)

No.

Tim Miller (7:30)

I'm looking for 22 year old twinks around the country to join ICE, get the bonus and then be agents from within reporting out. Kind of like a secret police inside the police. A twinkle. Yeah, a twink filtration of ice. It's just an idea. Okay. There's lots of types of resistance right now in this moment and I don't know if people have thought creatively enough with undermining ICE from within. But anyway, sorry, where are you going with that?

Sam Stein (7:57)

It's a smart role play idea. You can see it not working.

Tim Miller (8:05)

You see some potential holes.

Sam Stein (8:06)

I'm not gonna, not going to run that one out. Yeah. So I guess my basis, if, if, if what you say is right and I, I kind of agree with you, I suppose because we've been, you know, and you know this too, we've been hearing rumors about stuff about to happen in Denver for months. Right. Like you and I have been getting that and we've been chasing that and it hasn't. I mean, maybe I don't want. Sure.

Tim Miller (8:29)

There have been like, Right.

Sam Stein (8:31)

Like it's not Chicago, let's put it that way. So like it, my, my basis for this is Adrian's reporting on the ground in Chicago, which is, you know, he's been there and it's just like, it feels like, you know, not a nightmare, but it's like real deliberately manufactured civic unrest where the communities are pitted against the federal authorities because that's their only means for survival or at least protecting themselves. And it's like you kind of step back and you think, how do we get to a place where community organizers are trying to educate community members about self defense from the federal government.

Tim Miller (9:07)

Government.

Sam Stein (9:07)

But that's where we're at. And I suppose if you play this out logically, that's where a number of different cities are going to end up. I don't know. Maybe you, maybe you have different thoughts about this. But like I, anecdotally, when I talk to a lot of folks who have soured on Trump, one of the things they often mention is this stuff. Like they don't, I think people are generally discomforted by all the imagery, all those videos. They don't like it. I'm not sure why Trump and his. Basically, Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski feel like this is something that they have to do. It doesn't seem to be politically popular and it doesn't seem to be good for business. So I'm not sure what the end game is here, other than rank philosophy and ideology around anti immigrants.

Tim Miller (9:55)

Yeah. I just think that he's motivated by two things ideologically. It's tariffs and immigration. Right. Honestly, a lot of the other stuff is more malleable. The one he's not motivated by ideologically is what's happening with the boats in Venezuela. Do you have any thoughts on that? Just like on the Venezuela side of this, I've been saying on the pod that, like, I've been trying to understand the rationale for this, and it's. And everybody, like, all eyes turn back to Marco. Like, this is like a Marco pet project issue. And one of the things I've said on the pod a couple times recently is, like, one thing that I haven't heard Trump say, which is kind of surprising, is that, like, I want the oil. And I'd say that. And I was reminded an audio of him on the campaign trail in 24, where he does say that, where he's basically like, biden had an opportunity, just sleepy Joe, and we should have gone. If it was me, I would have gone in there. We could have taken the oil, and I don't know, we're bringing the ship into the Caribbean. Now there's the story, apparently, about a CIA operation that may have went wrong in there, based on the Washington Post and Venezuela, I don't know. Like, it seems. All signs to me seem like they're pointing to war in Venezuela, regime change, war, and stealing the oil.

Sam Stein (11:06)

The oil was what caught my eye, too, because he talked about that in, like, various different capacities. So, you know, if you remember, it's like his main criticism of the Iraq war was that we left without taking the oil. Right. Like, he has this.

Tim Miller (11:20)

And I've been noting that he hasn't been saying that this time. And so I thought there was no way. And then I was. I'd forgotten.

Sam Stein (11:25)

He hasn't said it. He hasn't said it in recent months.

Tim Miller (11:27)

Not that I have seen. I mean, I don't watch every single Donald Trump clip. But, but, but this one, this one was sent from 2024, from the Campaign trail that I thought was noteworthy. That was on his mind.

Sam Stein (11:38)

So my, my general view of this was that this was a Marco project. And there's been contemporaneous reporting that not everyone's on board. Right. If the Rick Renell faction, who thinks that they can maybe resolve this differently. The fentanyl stuff, I think is honestly because if you, if you just look at it, fentanyl is not coming from Venezuela. It seems like that's pretextual. But then I grapple with the ideas. Does he really want to do kind of 1940s, 1950 style regime change in Venezuela? Is that really what he wants to do? And if he does, why is he doing it so overtly?

Tim Miller (12:13)

The one thing that he's been, the one thing that he has been consistent about for a long time is he wants to kill the drug dealers. And he's been saying that for a long time. And, and I think maybe he also.

Sam Stein (12:25)

Talked about, like, bombing cartels in Mexico and he hasn't done that. So why Venezuela drug boats?

Tim Miller (12:31)

I think this is why. Because he thinks that he can just.

Sam Stein (12:34)

Do it right without repercussions, probably.

Tim Miller (12:38)

And it's like, okay, he can get his killing drug dealers fixed. And remember he used to praise Duterte about this.

Sam Stein (12:44)

Oh, yeah.

Tim Miller (12:45)

Like in the first term, about how he just kills the drug dealers.

Sam Stein (12:48)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (12:48)

I don't know, maybe it's that his answer to Phil Wegman on this was pretty, like, much just blunt. He's just like, I just want to kill the drug dealers. I feel like that explanation could live in concert with Mark as being a Marco ideological project, where Marco's like, hey, Grandpa. Mr. President, like you can identify an elephant on a piece of paper. You're extremely smart. You want to kill drug dealers.

Sam Stein (13:11)

I believe it was a giraffe.

Tim Miller (13:12)

You can identify the giraffe. And I also want you to kill. You can get your rocks off killing the drug dealers and I can get my regime change.

Sam Stein (13:20)

Anyway, sorry, can we talk about the cognitive test for a second?

Frank Fukuyama (13:23)

Sure.

Sam Stein (13:24)

It's like, like it starts out really easy, you know, it's like lion, giraffe, camera, and then it gets hard person, man. Is that really how it starts out? I do. I want one time for a reporter when he says that to be like, if it's so easy, would you just, you know, take one in public? Yeah, something like that. I want to see it.

Tim Miller (13:46)

Let's do an lsat, see how that goes. All right. As the weather cools and boys are getting chilly here in New Orleans, only a high of 72 today. I'm swapping in the pieces that actually get the job done. Something warm, durable, and built to last. And Quince delivers every time with wardrobe staples that'll carry you through the season. Quince has the kind of false staples you'll actually want to wear on repeat, like 100% Mongolian cashmere from just 60 bucks. Classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middlemen to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands. I've got a new Quince item, a new fall item. I don't like to brag, I don't need to wear it right now because I'm in a very temperate climate. But I have to go up to New York and D.C. over the coming month. And the last time I was in New York I was wearing a cable knit sweater that I've had for a long time. Is looking a little ratty and I got a lot of compliments. A friend's girlfriend texted to say I look gayer than ever in that cable knit sweater. And I took that as a compliment and so I went ahead and got another one from Quince. Tried that on. It's looking nice. You can keep an eye out for that next time you see me in studio at msnbc. Maybe you need a cable knit sweater in your life or something similar. Go check it out. Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. What's UP Canada? That's Q U-I-N-C-E.com the Bulwark Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the Bulwark all right, I want to talk with you about the Democrats. We'll go deeper on this on the next level tomorrow. But I did want to mention it for some folks who want to get really dorky on this memo. The memo is called Deciding to win. It's from a group of center left Democrats who are offering what they think was the problem with the party.

Sam Stein (15:44)

Fairly non controversial name for the memo.

Tim Miller (15:47)

Deciding to win. People do want to win. Yeah. So anyway, there are a few things that were noteworthy about it that I like.

Sam Stein (15:52)

Should we go with lose?

Tim Miller (15:53)

Yeah, I mean obviously in all these things it's like people put out memos that advance their factional priorities. It's like these guys obviously want the party to move to the middle but if you are taking that at face value, there are a couple of interesting things that caught My eye. I'm curious what caught your eye. Number. The number one was they looked at like platforms and website issue websites and like names that are mentioned. Here are the words that have been up over the last 10 years. This is different identity terms like white, black, Latino, climate, guns, justice, democracy, equity, word usage, that's down. Jobs, economy, middle class, work, veteran, crime. That seems bad. That seems like a mistake in retrospect. Regardless of where you are ideologically, whether you're a socialist or a free market capitalist centrist. Frank Fukuyama I think it seems bad that they're talking more about justice and equity and climate than middle class and work and crime, for sure.

Sam Stein (16:48)

I mean, so let's just make it clear. It's the percentage increase that's up. I'm not sure it's like the aggregate total. It's up on mentions, but that's bad. And I think Josh Biero's been pointing out obsessively that they keep opening these meetings and platforms with land acknowledgments. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that, but I don't think you need to lean into it so aggressively if you're the Democrats. Just a piece of advice. I think this memo, okay, there's a few thoughts I have about the memo. One is that I think it's valid 100%. I think people have to understand it's the perceptions of Democrats that have changed. Like people view Democrats as more liberal. They believe that Democrats priorities are more liberal. It might not be that Democrats are prioritizing more liberal stuff, although I think they are, but it's the perception of the party that has changed in a very bad direction if you want to win elections. And frankly, the perception of voters is really what matters. It's like it doesn't really matter necessarily if you are emphasizing certain things. It's if voters believe you are emphasizing those things. And that's the distinction I think this memo really gets at. But there is something kind of ironic, I suppose, if you think about it, which is, you know, say the party, the state of the party is that it's perceived as too liberal. But then if they break down the sort of prescriptions that they offer, or at least the analysis, the kind of approach that they're offering is a little bit actually more Bernie Sanders ish, right? It's like, oh, look what's really popular. Emphasize economic issues. Emphasize economic justice.

Tim Miller (18:22)

You know, 2015, Bernie Sanders, Bernie gets away. There's some shorthand on the Internet Dave Weigel called him out about this, where, like, people are like, bernie had it right focusing on economics and being more in the middle on immigration and crime and energy.

Sam Stein (18:34)

He moved left immigration.

Tim Miller (18:35)

Bernie did the same thing as everybody else did about decriminalize the border and everything in 2020.

Sam Stein (18:39)

So 2016, 2015, 2016. Bernie, that's a super liberal dude, right? But that is the kind of emphasis that this memo gets at.

Tim Miller (18:48)

He was to the right of Hillary on guns and immigration, got attacked for it.

Sam Stein (18:52)

He was kind of a classically liberal skeptic of immigration, which is, you want tight border control because you want to give jobs to Americans. There's two other things I just would add. One is that there's, like, this Dobbs fallacy here. And by that I mean that what happened in my estimation, is that after 2022 and the success that the party enjoyed running on Dobbs in that election, there became this belief among Democrats that they really should and had to lean into abortion rights as a matter of electoral significance. Right. As something that could actually win them campaigns. And I think that just sort of petered out. I noticed a data point where it was. 13% of respondents said it was in their top three priorities, abortion, but 31% believe Democrats had it in their top three parties. That's a huge gulf right there. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that. And I want to be generally accepting of the memo, but I do think there's parts where you can criticize it. They attribute to the Democrats some positions that I don't actually think Democrats actually held. So they. They say one of the most unpopular positions Democrats held was to abolish the police and to abolish prisons. That's not actually what Democrats argued. It's not. I mean, they said abolish private prisons. Some of them did, but not all prisons. So I just want to just couch.

Frank Fukuyama (20:11)

A little bit there.

Tim Miller (20:12)

Like I said, I'll go deeper in the. In the. In the next level. I do think that what they write that I like about what. What it does and does not mean to be moderate is something that I just do want to call out, because I feel like a lot of times when they're moderate right now, people, like, use the word moderate to describe, like, Democrats who are establishment, who are moderate in temperament, who are moderate in tone. And the authors of the memo are like, none of that helps at all, Right? Like, they're like, when we're telling you to be moderate, we're saying, take some heterodox positions. And go after the establishment. Yeah.

Sam Stein (20:44)

Take moderate positions.

Tim Miller (20:46)

I think that's a noteworthy.

Sam Stein (20:47)

Let me ask you. Can I ask you a question about that?

Frank Fukuyama (20:48)

Yeah.

Sam Stein (20:49)

Because I'm not. It's totally noteworthy. I get it and I appreciate it. But, like, what good does it do to take, like, heterodox positions if you can't break through and convince the public that you are a heterodox? Right. Like, doesn't some of this really come down to. I mean, like, again, it's all about the perceptions of the party and perceptions really matter. And you could be the most heterodox moderate Democrat. But if you can't reach people and convince them that you're genuine, you're going to get painted by a conservative and the conservative media complex as a liberal. No matter what. No matter what.

Tim Miller (21:22)

Yeah. Right. So you have to demonstrate that you're genuine. I mean, this is why you have to annoy the Democrats sometimes, which is, I think, the key thing that people miss. Like Jared Goldin. It works for Jared Goldin in Maine because he annoys the Democrats sometimes. He annoys me sometimes with some of the stuff he does. But, like, okay, so I can't get inside his soul and tell you whether or not it's genuine. I'm just saying that, like, he bought his presentation and the way he looks, but also the way he talks at times. Says, like, I'm against the party in this and that.

Sam Stein (21:46)

I guess, put it this way. Let's say Andy Beshear were to announce tomorrow he's running for president. Most like, middle of the road Democrat, you can imagine. Right. There's no doubt in my mind that he's gonna get painted as like a pro trans. Release the criminals, open the borders Democrat. Right. And it's just gonna happen.

Tim Miller (22:03)

Might be something that I should propose to him. I don't know. We might have a chance to talk about Andy Beshear more later. But I would say this my advice to answer your answer to this question. If Andy Beshear called me or if I can tell you this, because I get these calls a lot from Democrats in the United States. They're like, what should I do? And I say the same thing. I'm like, pick something that you're on the side of MAGA on. Culturally, I don't care what it is. I genuinely don't. And talk about it a lot. Like, don't just, like, don't just, like, put it on your website. Like, talk about that a lot. Like, have three things that you talk about and have two of Them be how Trump is hurting working class people and how Trump's and how everything's too expensive and it's Trump's fault and it's the tariffs and then have the third thing be I don't care you love automatic weapons or like whatever you think that gay people are bad. You can attack me if you want. I don't care. Whatever. I'm not saying I support those policies. I'm just saying that's the way to do it is to you convince people you're genuine by being genuine. Talking about it a lot.

Sam Stein (22:57)

I think that's right. I think the only addendum I would add is that you better include a land acknowledgement before you do that.

Tim Miller (23:04)

Last thing on the memo is that one thing that they mentioned and we'll put a link to it in the show notes if people want to read all of it unpopular GOP policies which speaks to your point on Dobbs. It speaks to both of our pet issues at the moment. So I'm sure we're happy to talk about it. The three most unpopular GOP issues dumps should talk about. One is ban birth control. Three is ban ivf. And then there are a bunch of other abortion related ones in the top 10. The number two issue launch a national Trump branded cryptocurrency. People do not like that the President has his own fucking currency. And the Democrats should talk about it. Everybody should talk about it. It's outrageous and people don't talk about it because. Because the Democratic officials and journalists don't understand what it is. So they don't talk about it. But people don't like it. It's corrupt, it's bad, it's gross and everybody should talk about it. One more thing on the Democrats want to talk about our friend friend of the show Karine Jean Pierre was on last week. She did a interview with Isaac Chotner of the New Yorker yesterday that has been. We'll also put that link in the show notes if you want to read it for themselves. Her answers are not that compelling. Isaac is very left a lefty and asking her about the arguments that she's making. I'm wondering what you've made of this, her book tour and what it says about if it says anything. Is there anything that actually matters about it besides just kind of like looking at a car crash. No, I think there is, but go ahead.

Sam Stein (24:32)

I'm curious what you think. I mean it's first of all, if you haven't, if you read the Isaac Chotner thing, what I would recommend is Press control F and then type in the word wait because she says it about, you know, 14 times. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But you know, it's not a really good sign for the, the state of the interview. I, I know Karine and I've worked with Karine prior to her time entering public service when she was sort of a commentator. Look, I think some of the perception of her is off, right? Like she's, she's smart, she's thoughtful. This iteration of her I, you know, clearly is, you know, hitting some real roadblocks because it's kind of an indefensible position. Right. It's like we all saw with our own eyes what Joe Biden was going through. And if you believed in your heart of hearts that he was capable of doing the job and that he was up to the task, as you are arguing in your book and as you are now defending on the book trail, you do have to answer for why you didn't make that case more forcefully, why you didn't put them out more regularly, why you couldn't answer basic questions about it in real time after the debate stumbles. That was her job. And frankly, I know this sounds like a little harsh, but it's true. Like, a lot of people believe she failed miserably at it. And I think when she's on this book tour and as she's going through this stuff, I think people want to see more accountability and self reflection around this stuff rather than just the defensiveness that she exhibited to Isaac.

Tim Miller (26:04)

Yeah, so we basically agreed. So this is what the part that matters not. I don't. Her book tour. And I don't, you know, she's making argument and I don't, I don't think it's that compelling. But people can decide for themselves about, like whether, you know, they think the Democrats have been unfair to black women, queer people, and then Joe Biden. To me, like the ineffectiveness of it matters in this sense. Objectively speaking, the Biden administration's communications was horrible from the President on down. And I say this also as somebody who has been on campaigns where we had horrible communications, I was in charge. Sometimes it's not the communications director's fault. Like, sometimes you have limitations, but like, even still you have to acknowledge it. Right? Like, and I've always said many times I don't think I'd be a very good press secretary because of my facial reactions. I'm like, you know, there's not everybody, every job is for everybody. And like, for two years she was the press secretary for an administration that was really struggling to communicate its successes from the president to the vice president to her. And during that time, from Basically January of 23 through the debate, CNN debate, like most of the Democrats just kind of whispered that they thought it sucked behind the scenes and didn't do anything about it. Right. Like there are a couple of examples like Axelrod would talk about on cnn, talk about it. But like, and to me that is a cultural problem where you feel like, oh, we can't, you know, whatever, we can't just be honest about our own failings because you cannot succeed in something if you cannot accept when you're not, when you're failing. And I think that people were afraid to criticize the administration and afraid to criticize her for various reasons. And I just think this should be a big lesson is that like, you know, probably in retrospect there should have been a five long fire much earlier than the CNN debate about how the Biden administration was communicating. And I think this tour just like it just lays that bare is all I'm saying.

Sam Stein (28:13)

It becomes self evident at a point that the reason they couldn't survive the Biden debate performance was because they had failed at communicating and presenting him prior to the debate. Had this really been a one off, we would have known it, right? Because he would have been out there more, he would have been doing more interviews, he wouldn't have skipped the super bowl interview, things like that and that. And that's on him and it's on people like Kareem who were in the comms department because they didn't create enough faith, trust, transparency in the administration.

Tim Miller (28:45)

And apparently they didn't even believe that. They believed their own bullshit. Right again, which is why this stuff needs to be, this stuff needs to be crazy, right? Like this idea that, like what she was expressing to me, that he was out there a lot, it's just like, come on. Like that's just not true. And so either you're lying or you believe that. It's scarier if you believe it.

Sam Stein (28:59)

And I will just say this, and this is obviously self serving, so take it for what it is. But there are so many more benefits that go unstated for a politician of any variety to be out there in the public doing interviews all the time, it hones your skill. It gets a familiarity with the voters and the viewers with you. It makes you a better politician. It means that the stumbles don't matter as much as we know with Trump because everyone knows they seem stumble all the time. And about Bullshit. And we just move on. I just think the age where you can micromanage and protect a politician and just skirt the public are so clearly in the past, and people need to just get with the program.

Tim Miller (29:44)

Final topic, Donald Trump. The president has lost UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell.

Sam Stein (29:48)

This one was weird. This guy seems psychotic. I don't know.

Tim Miller (29:52)

I don't know you. Everyone can judge for themselves. I would like to listen to Bryce's explanation for why he's off the Trump train.

Bryce Mitchell (30:00)

I want to let y' all know I'm not with Donald Trump no more. I don't support him. I don't like him. I think he's a corrupted leader and agree. Yeah, it took me a while to come to that conclusion, but I finally am coming to it. I do not like the guy at all.

Tim Miller (30:17)

Me neither.

Bryce Mitchell (30:18)

The first thing for me was he didn't release the Epstein files. They're even acting like they didn't exist. And of course, they're sending Israel and Ukraine all of our tax dollars, just like the numb nuts before him did, putting America last. And now he's blaming the beef farmers for the price of beef. Hey, I'm. I'm not biased, man. He talked a good game. He tricked me. I was fooled. I admit it.

Tim Miller (30:44)

Good for you.

Bryce Mitchell (30:44)

Let me tell you how bad I think this is, though. This is really this bad. Guys, I want y'. All, if you're a Christian, I want you to get into Revelation 13:3, and I want you to read that verse. Yeah, about the Antichrist, about the one who was fatally wounded in the head, then he was miraculously healed, and the whole world marveled at him and said, no man can make war with him. Yeah. I do think that Donald Trump is that beast of Revelation 13:3.

Frank Fukuyama (31:12)

Okay.

Tim Miller (31:12)

I mean, I was with him. He was making a good argument. You know, he's making compelling case, hard turn there. The dog shows up, and then Trump is the Antichrist. He's the beast of Revelations.

Sam Stein (31:26)

Sam, I'm more of an Old Testament guy, so I can't really weigh in on that. This guy has some fairly controversial statements in his past.

Tim Miller (31:36)

I was going to bring this up. So now you mention it, I think.

Sam Stein (31:39)

It'S worth mentioning in case you're getting.

Tim Miller (31:41)

Too excited about Bryce's comments. He has, being an Old Testament guy, this might bother you. He has suggested that Hitler had some points. He's saying that greedy Jews were destroying Germany and turning everyone there into gays. They were gaying out the kids.

Sam Stein (32:02)

Did he say gang out?

Tim Miller (32:04)

They were gaying out the Kids, they were queering out the women. They were queering out the dudes in Germany. Hitler was gay of that.

Frank Fukuyama (32:16)

Oh, no.

Tim Miller (32:16)

Hitler.

Sam Stein (32:16)

No, the Jews were.

Tim Miller (32:18)

Jews were gang out the kids.

Sam Stein (32:19)

Like our twink filtration in pre Nazi Germany.

Tim Miller (32:23)

The Jews are getting out the kids. So some hits and some misses, I guess for Bryce Mitchell.

Sam Stein (32:27)

Let's say a few misses there. I'm gonna go with a couple misses.

Tim Miller (32:30)

No, so you don't, you know, here's what I want to bring up.

Sam Stein (32:36)

Okay?

Tim Miller (32:37)

Trump, and this was not in the deciding to win memo. And it should have been. Trump got all of the psychopaths on his side in 2024, like the craziest loons in the country, the brain, like all aligned. You know, there was a crank alignment. There was a psychopath alignment behind Donald Trump. There were some, I guess, far left cranks that decided to vote for Jill Stein. But like, like, if you took the psychopath, like pie of the country is like 90% Trump, 8% Jill sign third party, 2% Kamala. And it's important to kind of get that pie back towards even, you know, you want to have an even disbursement of psychopaths. And so it's encouraging that Bryce, I think, is getting off the train, I think.

Sam Stein (33:23)

Well, you didn't. I don't think you read the full deciding to win memo, because right here under, voters want Democrats to prioritize. They have Revelations 13:3. It's at 47%. Yeah, it's. They, they actually there was, there was the horseshoe theory, right? I mean, like the RFK Jr. Cranks, like, you know, all these weirdos and the Tulsi fan girls and boys were just gravitating to Trump. And I will just say again, to tie this back to my last point, I think part of the reason they gravitate to the guys, because he just went and appeared on their platforms and talked to them and hung out with them. They're like, okay, cool, I like this guy, or at least he's open to me. And I'm not saying, look, I'm not, I'm not advising anyone in the Democratic Party to go and sit down with our dear friend Bryce Mitchell and talk revelations or anything like that. I think maybe platforming someone who doesn't like my people that much is a bad thing, but, you know, be open to different platforms.

Tim Miller (34:23)

Okay, I'm not platforming, but I would just throw out there. My final thought is, hey, if you're a listener and you're like, boy, how do I get through to nephew Tristan, who has been sending some pretty weird things on the family group chat and has gone full maga. Maybe just shoot him over with Bryce and be like, hey, I got. Might be possible that you've been fooled and Trump is the Antichrist. No, not throwing. Not saying for sure. But you might want to consider that.

Sam Stein (34:52)

Sorry, what's the nephew's name again? Because I want to understand. Hey, Tristan, I want you to check out this Instagram from. From Bryce, but don't Google anything else he said. Okay? Just keep it at this. Promise me to not Google, but check this one out. That's how I would approach it.

Tim Miller (35:09)

Pretty good. All right, that's Sam Stein. I appreciate you, brother. Up next, hard right turn from trumping the Antichrist and gang out our children to Frank Fukuyama. Stick around.

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Tim Miller (36:40)

All right. He's a senior fellow at Stanford center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, host of the frankly Fukuyama PODC podcast. He also writes the Frankly Fukuyama column at Persuasion on Substack. His most recent book is Liberalism and its Discontents. That's Frank Fukuyama. What's up, Frank?

Frank Fukuyama (36:57)

Well, I'm. My little world is fine. The world around me is boiling. But, you know, other than that, everything's great.

Tim Miller (37:05)

Yeah, that's a big. Other than that. That's a big caveat. But we're doing. We're doing the best that we can in this world. You know, my interest was piqued. We talked a while ago about your last book. I mean, shit, I was living in San Francisco then. Liberalism was discontent. I went and re. Listened to that yesterday and so I'M interested in getting back into a conversation about liberalism and why it's out of vogue. But first my interest was piqued about your article the Real Cause of Populism, and you went through the various different explanations for the recent global wave of populism and came to an answer of some sort of what you think it was. And just for folks who haven't read it, I just want to read through. You basically listed nine explanations that you hear for why Trumpism is on the rise everywhere, and here they are. I'm just going to go through them real quick. 1. Economic inequality brought by globalization 2. Racism, bigotry on the part of the population that has been losing status. 3. Broad sociological change that have sorted people by education and residents and resentment against the dominance of elite experts. 4. The special talent of individual demagogues like Trump. 5. The failures of mainstream political parties to deliver growth, jobs, security and infrastructure. 6. Dislike or hatred of the progressive left's cultural agenda. 7. Failures of leadership of the progressive left 8. Human nature 9. Social media and the Internet. You went through all of those and settled on social media and the Internet, which I find appealing to my priors. Before we get that, I want to kind of just go through some of the ones you eliminated. Why do you not think it is? I'll combine two and three. This is this idea of racism, nativism on the behalf of people who are losing status. Why did you eliminate that?

Frank Fukuyama (38:57)

Well, look, there's no question that racism and nativism plays a role in the MAGA coalition. It's really founded on wanting to close off the United States to immigration. So there's no question that. So just to back up a little bit, sure, all of nine of these factors are there. I'm not saying that they're not important, but the question is what's the relative priority of these different ones? What struck me is the way that African American young men and Hispanic young men switched to voting for Trump in the last stages of last year's election. He actually disguises his racism and he has black supporters. And I think that you got to explain why this bundle of attitudes and policies is appealing to non white people. And so I don't think that the fundamental driver of this is that because I think actually Americans have grown fairly acceptance of the fact that they live in a multiracial society. And the hardcore people that really don't like that, they're going to keep hating. But I don't think that that explains why there's a sudden upsurge of this ST in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century.

Tim Miller (40:16)

What about the sorting? Because when I look at your answers, something that I say a lot to people when I get asked about this, like why the rise of Trump now, why is it working, is to the point of your article that this is a global phenomenon. There are Trumps everywhere. There's a Brazilian Trump and an Indian Trump and a Hungarian Trump and a French Trump. There are Trumps everywhere, at least directionally. And maybe this is just more about kind of globalization and there's something that, the fact that a sorting between educated urban dwelling elites versus less educated, more rural or exurban or small town dwelling non elites who are losing status and that is really what is driving this. What would you say to that?

Sam Stein (41:05)

That?

Frank Fukuyama (41:05)

Well, I don't think it's a driver. I think it's more of a, an effect rather than a cause that people have voluntarily sorted themselves, you know, based on their global attitudes that may be driven by, you know, other deeper factors. So if you live in a big city, you're used to living in a multi ethnic, you know, fairly diverse place, you've got lots of job opportunities because most of the economic growth is being driven in large urban areas. And so I think you're naturally going to be open, more open, you know, to a liberal perspective than if you live in a small town where everybody is, you know, the same religion, the same ethnicity and the like. So I think that there's no question that there's a correlation between, you know, your place of residence. Population density is actually one of the biggest correlates of, you know, whether you're going to vote populous. And that's true. It's true in Russia, it's true in Hungary, it's true in India, you know, it's true in the United States. But, but as I said, it's more a reflection of an underlying kind of attitude and position in the world and your openness to a more diverse globalized world.

Tim Miller (42:18)

The other one that a lot of folks in my formal world on the right will say the answer was basically your six and seven categories. Progressive left's cultural agenda went too far too fast. And this is just simply the populist right wave is just a backlash to that. What do you say to that?

Frank Fukuyama (42:38)

Well, again, in the last stages of the election, when Trump was running all of those anti transgender ads, it definitely had an effect. So again, I'm not denying that that was important. And I personally know a lot of people that were kind of on the fence in the election that really hated that particular aspect of what the Democrats were offering, really.

Tim Miller (43:01)

You personally know, people looked at Trump and Kamala and their choice came down to youth sports access for trans.

Frank Fukuyama (43:10)

No, no, no, no. The other way. I definitely know a lot of people that really hated, you know, what they thought the Democrats stood for on these cultural issues. Right. Yeah. So it's the other way around. But again, you know, why this issue ended up being as powerful as it was, it seems to me, was not the intrinsic impact that, you know, so how many transgender people are there altogether? How many people that voted on that basis actually had transgenderism affect their lives? And so, again, there's another factor that makes this stand out and go viral as a, you know, as something that motivates people to. To vote in a certain way. And that, again, brings you back, I think, to the Internet, which has this incredible ability to magnify certain issues that are really just understood anecdotally, but then all of a sudden, they become big, overwhelming things that you read about and hear about all the time.

Tim Miller (44:12)

So that takes us to where you landed, I guess the most compelling answer to me that the phones have exacerbated all these other issues. And I guess that's really the point. It's not as if any of these other factors are not factors, but the phones were just an exacerbating effect is a point you make in the article, which is bas. There were worse economic times than this last decade. There were times where racism was more acute than this past decade. There were times where the cultural left was changing things more quickly than in the last decade. And the only thing that is unique about the last decade is the phones. And so we have to consider that when trying to explain why right wing populism reemerged now versus in 1970 or 80 or 90.

Frank Fukuyama (45:02)

Yeah, I mean, there's. There's two things that you need to explain. So the first is timing. Right. That in fact, for people that think that inequality and economic conditions are the drivers, I think that's a little bit crazy because in a certain sense, you know, we've never been better in. In terms of economic growth. You know, the last election happened at a time of very, very low unemployment. You did have inflation, but nothing like the inflation that everybody experienced back in the 1970s. And I just don't think that, you know, that's an adequate answer of why in this kind of prosperous, generally peaceful time, people adopt this extreme language. You know, if you listen to people on the right, like this Michael Anton Flight 93 article that got, you know, a lot of MAGA kicked off back in 2016. He's saying we're in a civilizational crisis. Our way of life is, you know, is about to end. If storm the cockpit and take over the plane, we're all going to die, you know, in, in 2016. Why would anyone believe that you're in that kind of a extreme situation? I think that you have to kind of build up an alternative world that really doesn't correspond to the empirical world in order to get to that level of, of hysterics. So the timing is important. The other thing that I think, think really needs to be explained is the particular character of right wing politics today. It used to be, as you're well aware, that Republicans and conservatives have basically this Reaganite agenda, you know, low taxes, deregulation, privatization, but, you know, embracing globalization and internationalism. Today that's completely off the table as far as the Republican Party is concerned. And if you say, what is it that that binds conservatives together today? It really is conspiracy thinking. It is this belief that if you take the red pill, you see that the world around you is not what it claims to be. It all the legacy institutions, the media, universities, the scientific establishment are actually being manipulated by elites behind the scenes. And I think that that's kind of the unifying characteristic of, you know, of the right today. And again, how can you believe, you know, that vaccines are actually harmful? How can you believe, you know, I've heard conservatives say this, that more people died from the COVID vaccine than died from COVID It's just totally, it's totally crazy assertion, but people believe it nonetheless. And I just don't think that that could have happened, you know, before the rise of the Internet and this ability of people to directly communicate with, you know, large masses of people in a way they couldn't before.

Tim Miller (47:58)

You're around a lot of smart conservatives at Stanford, educated conservatives. It's the breeding ground of a lot of the kind of tech right thinkers. You know, Hoover is out there. So you must talk to people that would bristle at this notion that the only thing that unites the right is conspiratorial thinking. Like what explains. I won't embarrass you and name any of the Stanford conservatives, but what explains what some of the smart, temperate folks, how does that match your theory? How do they respond when you make an accusation like that?

Frank Fukuyama (48:34)

Again, you have to fall back on some of the other causes. So a lot of the smart Stanford conservatives don't believe that there are tunnels in Washington D.C. and the children are being tortured and, you know, sacrificed this sort of thing. Obviously they don't believe that. I think that a lot of them were initially Reagan Republicans and they were kind of shocked by the tariffs and a lot of Trump's policies, but they're, they've made their peace. I would say that it's probably that cultural issue that has driven a lot of them and they just don't trust the Democratic Party and they really dislike, you know, what the Democrats have to offer. And they made their peace with Trumpism as the, you know, the lesser of two evils.

Tim Miller (49:20)

But do you think they've been brain poisoned by the Internet or is there something else at play?

Frank Fukuyama (49:25)

Well, it's, it's interesting how many of them are not willing to say in a full throated MANNER that the 2020 election was actually a legitimate, free and fair election, you know.

Tim Miller (49:37)

Yeah.

Frank Fukuyama (49:37)

And then if you query them, you know, they'll say things like, well, there were a lot of questions about, you know, the way that the polling was. I mean, the polls were manipulated and so forth. They kind of satisfy what's left of their intellectual integrity by pointing to discrepancies. And we're not completely sure whether this was the case, but they're much more open to it than they would have been, I think, before the Internet.

Tim Miller (50:04)

Here's the most depressing thing about this thesis, which is kind of why I don't want it to be right, is that if it's true, like things are only getting worse, not better. Right. With AI because there's no. To the degree that the Internet or phones or social media are a reality distortion machine. And they are in a certain way. And what's coming with AI and what's already here is that on steroids. And I think that a lot of people are going to struggle to literally know what's real and what's fake.

Frank Fukuyama (50:35)

Yeah, unfortunately that's true. And I think that there's been this struggle to try to regulate the Internet that has been a losing battle so far. When Trump was first elected, there was a lot of pressure on the big Internet platforms to moderate content, to downplay disinformation, hate speech and so forth. They tried to do that, but it produced this furious reaction that actually affected us. Here at Stanford, we used to have a Stanford Internet Observatory that was actually a bunch of academic researchers and a lot of graduate students looking at things like vaccine denialism and election denialism and how that spread. And then the moment that the Republicans got the house in 2022, Jim Jordan, you know, was authorized to run a committee that it claimed was looking at weaponization of the Internet. But in fact they were the ones that were weaponizing and effectively they shut that whole operation down. You know, the university didn't want to have to deal with getting its faculty and a lot of students subpoenaed and dragged to Washington to testify. It's a totally fake charge. But, you know, the result is that nobody can do content moderation, at least not in the United States. Europeans continue to try to do a little bit of that. And I think the prospect of that is going to be more necessary, as you say, with the rise of fake videos and, and kinds of stuff that AI can do. And so again, we're back to, you know, protections offered by these Internet providers that really are not going to be adequate to protect American democracy.

Tim Miller (52:11)

See, so do you have a hope for that? Do you have a plan or a hope? Because I don't really, I. And the hope, the only hope is this kind of blind faith that like, well, the next generation will be able to learn, you know, adapt in ways that people have adapted in the past to other technological advances. But I, I just, I find that to be kind of wishcasting. Really.

Frank Fukuyama (52:35)

Yeah, I think it is. Back in 2020, I ran a working group, Stanford Working Group on platform scale.

Tim Miller (52:42)

Yeah.

Frank Fukuyama (52:42)

And we idea for something we called middleware. So the problem is not just fake news. I think given our First Amendment, you really can't regulate the quality of speech. I mean, you got two choices right now. Either you can let the big tech platforms do the regulating and their main interest is not American democracy, or you can let the government do it. And I think nobody wants the government to declare what's true and false. And so what we thought was that the main problem is the concentration of power in these big platforms and that you've got to dilute that power in some way. And the idea of middleware is that you'd have a third party provider that would actually do the content moderation and you, the user could actually turn the knobs and dials to tailor your feed to what you prefer heard so it doesn't get rid of fake news, which I don't think you can do, but it actually allows you to, you know, to reduce the power of the platforms to decide what it is you hear. You know, the thing that's going on that I think is really scary is the concentration of power in these platforms. So Elon Musk bought Twitter not because it was a great business proposition. He saw it as a route to political power. And that's exactly the way he used it. He changed the political orientation, moved it way to the right and then use that to, you know, help Donald Trump win the election. Yeah, what's going on, I don't think has received nearly enough attention is what the two Ellison's, the Larry Ellison and his son David are doing to amass another empire. This time they're gonna, you know, they're bidding on Tick Tock and they've already got Paramount, they're trying to get Warner Brothers Discovery, which means hbo, cnn, a lot of other media channels. And I think that they're going to.

Tim Miller (54:37)

Have tech time, some control over Tick Tock, at least part of that group.

Frank Fukuyama (54:40)

Yeah, it's kind of an unbelievable level of media power. We don't know exactly how they intend to use that power, but it's just not a good idea to have it in the hands of people that, you know, whose views are probably quite conservative and you know, leaning towards maga. And so I think that you got to think about that concentration of power issue issue as one of the first agenda items if you really want to reduce the threat. But again that's not going to get rid of fake news and it's not going to get rid of conspiracy theories.

Tim Miller (55:11)

Yeah, right. And I hear that the media, I mean I'm for some sort of mediation idea and giving people options and dials to control what they receive. But to me that like a lot of the answers to AI whenever I asked anybody about this, I was asking Cuban about this kind of stuff too. And it's like all of the solutions feel like stuff that that the top 20% of the country that is most capable, highly educated, that is younger, that understands the platforms, they'll be able to use the dials and the less educated, the folks who come from not as privileged backgrounds, older people won't know how to do it. And so you'll end up kind of with a bifurcated issue. The one weakness in the phone argument that I just wanted to ask you about and then I want to move on is I periodically over the past few years have been paging back through Umberto Eco's ur fascism book basically that looked at what the attributes of Mussolini's fascism are. And ironically I didn't know this before you were going to be on today. Bill Kristol's writing about Mussolini in our morning newsletter and the parallels to now obviously there were no phones then and there are quite a lot of parallels between no, not again, not like outcomes but like the appeal of fascism then and now. And I'm just wondering how that intersects with your, with your argument.

Frank Fukuyama (56:33)

Yeah, so technology played a role in the rise of European fascism. You know, the new technology at that time was the radio. And both Mussolini and Hitler made extensive use of the radio to reach mass audiences in a way that the older types of technology, like daily newspapers, really couldn't. And so there was an analog to what's happening happening. But again, you know, my argument is not that there aren't other discontents that are driving the rise of this kind of political movement. It's the particular character and the timing, like, why now? You can understand Italian and especially German fascism perfectly well in economic terms. You know, Germany had suffered this catastrophic defeat in the First World War. Then it had hyperinflation. Weimar was a very weak political system. It didn't seem to address any of the economic grievances that German citizens had. And so, you know, the, the economic argument was so much more powerful as a driver of why Europe turned to the right in the 1930s. And we just don't have anything remotely comparable to that. Explaining why you're getting Donald Trump in the2020s.

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Tim Miller (58:48)

You mentioned the discontents. I want to go back to your book Liberalism and its Discontents. So just stepping back, I think it's important to do definition of terms here when we're talking about liberalism, because I grew up thinking I hated liberalism because it was defined in my brain in the American sense as tax and spend. Big government, leftist or whatever was synonymous with liberalism. Liberalism. And that is certainly not how it's meant in the global sense. And I think increasingly, because those on the left are adopting the term progressive, the word liberal is kind of coming back to its original roots. And so I'm trying to reclaim it. Personally, I've gone from being an anti liberal to a radical liberal, an extremely pro liberal at the moment that I'm trying to take it back is when it's maybe the least popular, the most out of vogue. It's been this weekend, actually, videos with some younger folks who are on the left and they were using liberals like a slur. They were attacking me for being a liberal. I was like, that's a bad thing. Obviously we have this rise of liberalism on the right that we've just been talking about. How do you explain that right now, this question of why there is so much discontent over liberalism in this moment? So define the term and then explain why you think there are discontinued, intense.

Frank Fukuyama (60:06)

So, yeah, I'm completely with you on this attempt to reclaim the term liberal and to wear it proudly. Yeah, but you have to define it very carefully. So my definition of classical liberalism is that it is a system that limits state power, and it does that through a rule of law, which means that the rulers can't just do whatever they want, does it through constitutional checks and balances that put obstacles in the way of the unbridled use of power. So, so that's really the core. You can have all sorts of different social policies. You can do more redistribution, more Social Security, more healthcare, as long as the government is fundamentally limited. And I think that the thing that holds all these populist groups together is actually opposition to liberalism, defined in that sense. Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump all get up and say, I was elected, I have legitimacy, I'm trying to do what the people want. And here are all these judges, these rules that are holding me back. You know, this is particularly true in the case of a builder like, you know, Donald Trump, who's had to deal with this mountain of rules and regulations, and I'm just going to blow this whole system up. So they're not contesting the democratic part of liberal democracy, they're contesting the liberal part that says that they ought to operate within a framework that limits their power. They don't want to limit their power. And if you define liberalism in that way, I think that you'll get more buy in from people who, I mean, there are people on the left, for example, who think that global warming is such a big crisis that we basically have to have a kind of dictatorship to impose Pro climate policies, but that's a pretty small part of the progressive coalition.

Tim Miller (61:59)

The illiberal insert I worry about on the left is so maybe just kind of reframing what you're saying. A big part of liberalism for me is just accepting that you live in a society with people who have different views and priorities as you. Right. That you all live together in one society. There are basically rules and frameworks, and so if someone breaks a rule or breaks a law, they should be punished. But otherwise, as long as they're acting within the rule of law, then you just accept people with different religions, values, views. I think that there's an increase of people on the left that don't really like that. Actually, too obviously on the right, the people that don't like that are running the country. So it's more acute. But I notice it at least here, hearing from folks in the left, and I think that is the part that worries me.

Frank Fukuyama (62:44)

Yeah, so the, the fundamental virtue in liberal societies right from the beginning was the virtue of tolerance.

Tim Miller (62:52)

Yeah.

Frank Fukuyama (62:53)

So as you said, we live in a diverse society. People are going to be different from you, and you have to allow them to be different up to the point where they're using violence or attacking, you know, the, the liberal framework as a whole. And I think that one of the distortions of liberalism is that many progressives wanted to put the power state behind a kind of aggressive tolerance. Like you have to accept, you know, trans people, and if you don't, you know, we're going to punish you. And that's the point where, you know, it's no longer tolerance of difference. It's actually kind of enforced conformity. And that's bake me the cake, bake.

Tim Miller (63:33)

Me the cake, you know, that I want. Yeah, yeah, right.

Frank Fukuyama (63:36)

And that's, you know, it's a legitimate to dislike that and say the power of the state should not be used to enforce these kinds of social norms. And that's something that progressives need to back away from.

Tim Miller (63:49)

Why do you think, and this goes to kind of your book, what is undergirding why liberalism is out of vogue right now in the manner in which you defined it and why it's being attacked from both sides. Is it something that harkens back to your more notable, more famous work about the end of history? Is it the piece people are bored and decadent want something to fight against? Right, I forget exactly. You might remember your quote by the me. But something about, you know, if people can't struggle for something, they'll struggle against it. Is it that? Is it boredom and decadence, or is it some failure of liberalism that has caused the discontent?

Frank Fukuyama (64:27)

I guess there are a couple of different answers to that. I'm going to publish a memoir next year. The title of that is in the Realm of the Last Man Man Memoir. And the Last man refers back to my first book, the End of History. And the last man. And the last man is the creature who emerges at the end of history when you have a liberal democracy that produces peace and prosperity. And I think our liberal democracy in the United States, those in Europe, you know, Northeast Asia have all done pretty well. They produced peaceful, secure societies over overall. Right. There may be a little more inflation, a little bit more too much immigration, various things that people complain about. But, you know, basically, life has been pretty good under liberal democracy. And I think that a lot of people don't find that enough because there's something deep inside the human soul that wants to struggle, that a world without struggle, without higher aspirations, produces a life not worth living. And, you know, you. You look at the encampments that we had in American universities after October 7th a couple of years ago. So there's all of these very privileged kids, like, you know, the ones here at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, other places. They're kind of the most privileged people in the society, and they want to live in tents, you know, and stop going to classes to protest on behalf of a people that are half the world away from. From them. They have really no organic connection to. And you say, why are they doing this? And I think it really has to do with the fact that in their lives, apart from getting into Stanford or Harvard, they've not struggled for anything. You know, they don't have a vision of a better world, a much brighter future. That used to animate people on the left who at one time believed in the, you know, the Marxist promise of a communist utopia. So there are no more utopias left. And so I think that that energy has gone into creating artificial struggle. And that's true on the right as well.

Tim Miller (66:36)

Just really quick, just to get that right. So you're not suggesting that. I mean, obviously the folks that are in Gaza are experiencing real struggle, so that's not artificial struggle. You're saying that people are creating an artificial. Are trying to find things to struggle against, because liberal democracy has basically worked. Worked.

Frank Fukuyama (66:56)

I'm not saying anything about Gaza. You know, I mean, it's a horrible situation for them. But I think that the question is why American students at elite universities have taken up this one issue as their own. And that, I think, really does have to do with the, you know, the absence of bigger aspirations and struggles in. In their lives. And I think a lot of the people on the right that dress up in camo, you know, and carry AK47s around also want to believe that they're revolutionaries, you know, like the original American patriots, and that they're struggling to preserve a way of life that they think liberals are taking away from them. And so I think on both ends of the political spectrum, you get this, you know, desire to break out of peace and prosperity, you know, that we really want a kind of higher vision of what our society ought to look like, and it's not providing us outlets for doing that.

Tim Miller (67:54)

So that argument is just more of a generational cycle argument. I now have your exact quote in front of me. I do want to read it for folks, which is, experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They'll struggle for the sake of struggle. The argument then is basically a combination of civil rights, right for man, women's rights, gay rights. There was a success that was achieved. Not a total success, not equality for everybody, not a perfect world, but like a basic success of those efforts from whatever mid-1960s through Obama, basically. So once it felt like those things had been achieved, people then start grasping for, okay, well, I have to fight against something, and the only something to fight against was basically the liberal world order. And you have to come up with a reason why that was actually not good and not sufficient. You have to oppose it.

Frank Fukuyama (68:54)

I think that's right.

Tim Miller (68:56)

Based on that, then it's kind of like, well, there's not really anything that we could have done had the liberal world order been a little bit more fair and done a little bit more to fight against economic inequality that probably would not have impacted just this more human reaction, at least in your frame. What would you say to that?

Frank Fukuyama (69:17)

Well, that generational explanation actually leads to a kind of pessimistic conclusion. The people that are most eager to live in a liberal society, society, you know, as I've described it, are people that live under a dictatorship, right. That live in poor, you know, corrupt, tyrannical countries. And so in Eastern Europe, you know, in 1989, everybody had been experiencing that for a couple of generations, and they were desperate to join Europe because for them, that represented individual freedom. And they celebrated, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today you've had another couple generations go by where they've experienced, experienced peace and prosperity. I mean, Poland is a great example of this. There's no country in the EU that has been more economically successful than Poland. Its per capita GDP is now higher than the average for the EU as a whole. And it's been peaceful up until the Ukraine war started. And yet you had the rise of this right wing law and justice party that you know, was complaining about the EU as a dictatorship that had been imposed on them. And it's just crazy. But I think you have to see it in terms of the fact that you now have a couple of generations of young Poles that have grown up with no experience of communism. They don't understand what the alternative to the European Union is, and therefore they can have fantasies that there's a better world after the EU is abolished.

Tim Miller (70:43)

Okay, so we just need a full mega dictatorship and then we need to overthrow it. And then the light will come at the end of the tunnel when I'm a grandfather, as long as I'm alive and avoided the gulag. All right, well, that's typically bulwark uplifting material.

Frank Fukuyama (70:58)

Okay, but Tim, just before you get off that, I mean, I think the major hope in this country is that a lot of MAGA policies are actually going to be very, very counterproductive. Tariffs and cutting off any flow of outsiders into the United States. It's going to lead to a much poorer, less innovative, less creative native country. And at a certain point people begin to realize that there's a cause and effect relationship between those policies and outcomes that are not as disastrous as living under a communist dictatorship. But the country just isn't working as well. So let's hope for that. Okay.

Tim Miller (71:38)

Yeah, a little AI bubble pop and some failed tariff policy and we can turn this thing around. I'm just curious. I referenced your kind of Stanford conservative friends earlier. I've had you and Bill Kristol now on back to back days, both outflanking me on the left on various things. And do they think that you've lost your mind? Like, do you get that from conservatives? Because everything you're saying to me makes sense and seems almost obvious based on what's happening. But it's important to challenge your priors. And I'm wondering if you have anybody in Stanford from the right who thinks you've got Internet pilled yourself, blue pilled.

Frank Fukuyama (72:17)

I'm sure that there are, but nobody's.

Tim Miller (72:19)

Made a compelling counter case. Do you?

Frank Fukuyama (72:22)

Yeah, but by and large, the people that have really gone after me are the genuine maga types. And I think that the sort of educated conservatives, you know, I, I think that they've been conflicted over the past few years because they really recognize that Donald Trump is not fit to be president and so forth. They just think that, well, we don't have a choice right now because, you know, the Democrats and the left are so bad, bad. So that's not a reason for, you know, going after me.

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Tim Miller (73:55)

Well, we'll test that theory right now then. I don't really have a question. I just kind of want to put a quarter in the machine and hear what you think about Zoran Mamdani.

Frank Fukuyama (74:03)

Well, I think his rise is unfortunate because I think, I think that for the Democrats, a correct reading of the 2024 election is that they needed to move to the center, that the problem was not that they were insufficiently redistributionist, but that they were perceived as being too much in that direction. And so, you know, you need somebody more like an Abigail Spanberger, you know, to carry the torch for the party. But I think that the energy in the, in the party, to the extent there is energy is really, you know, being borne by people like Mandani, aoc, you know, even Bernie Sanders still are headlining, you know, a lot of the big rallies. And I sort of worry that the Democratic Party is going to repeat the cycle that the British Labour Party went through when, you know, their first candidate to oppose the Conservatives was Jeremy Corbyn, somebody from the far left of their party. And they had to lose another election before it sunk in that they actually needed to move to the center rather than further to the left.

Tim Miller (75:14)

Yeah, they had to get slaughtered.

Frank Fukuyama (75:15)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (75:16)

Who would you vote for if you were in New York?

Frank Fukuyama (75:19)

Okay. I'll just say I'm a big fan of the abundance movement. Right. I think you need to have a positive agenda for how the country is actually going to look if you're in power. And one of the big problems of all the Democrats up to this point is that they haven't articulated that. I think someone like Josh Shapiro could take on that mantle. You know, the way he fixed i95 after the tanker truck blew up, you know, represents, I think, this feeling that, you know, the existing rules are too constraining. You need a leader that's willing to bend the rules when you know there's a real cause for doing that. But so far, nobody has really stood up. In fact, there's a Build America caucus in the House that's led by Josh Harder from California. It's bipartisan, but a lot of Democrats in it. But no big candidate has actually taken up that agenda because it's become toxic to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And so they're not even willing to use the word abundance.

Tim Miller (76:21)

You know who is an exception to that? Zoran Mandani. The interesting thing about Zoran Mand to me, and I noticed you didn't tell me who you're going to vote for, so I'm not letting you off the hook on that. But the interesting thing to Zoran, for me, is that I was literally just before I got on Today, watching some clip of him from two years ago, not a long time ago, from September 2023. And he sounds like he's in Zuccotti park or something. He's using very kind of activist left rhetoric about the global struggle. He used the word struggle, actually in this thing about the struggle against imperialism. And he's on the IDF and all this sort of stuff. And the contrast between the way he talks about all that stuff then two years ago versus now is pretty noteworthy to me. And when he came on my show, he specifically talked about abundance and talked about how if you're going to be a left, populist, government has to work. And if government can't work, if there's too much red tape, and if government. You know what I mean, if we're not giving people services they want. And so he's like, I want to steal some stuff from Ezra and Derek. And it just is savvy to me. How will he act? How will he actually be mayor? Because he's going to win? I have no idea. Will he be the socialist lefty Bill de Blasio, or will he try to do practical, you know, abundancy? What. What's. What is it, sewer socialism type stuff? Yeah, we will all find out, I think, inevitably. But it's interesting that he's made that. That progression. I wonder if you've. What you think about that.

Frank Fukuyama (77:49)

Well, so. So it's nice that he's rhetorically taking that position. The problem is a structural one in the Democratic Party, that the real core of the party are in what they call the groups, meaning they're advocacy groups that often are at a community level. A lot of them are environmentalists, feminists, so forth. And it's a thicket that is a real problem for any Democrat that wants to move to the center. They send around questionnaires saying, on our particular issue, do you stand with me? And up to this point, you know, every major Democratic candidate has had to check off, yes, I'm pro abortion, I'm pro this, I'm pro that. And the test for Mom Donnie will be if he's serious about abundance, he's going to have to go up against these groups. There's going to be a huge fight. If you want the government to do big things, you have to go up against all of these local community action groups that don't want to have to listen to the government. Government, you know, they've sharpened their teeth on resisting mandates coming from above. And I think, you know, that's going to be a problem for any Democrat that tries to go down the abundance route.

Tim Miller (79:02)

So you're saying you're a Curtis Lewa voter. The beret. You're saying you're the beret man. You live in San Francisco. We'll let you off the hook. I guess I lied. I will let you off the hook. It's tough one. It's Zoran for me. It's with closing my eyes, I think, is how it is just because, I mean, Andrew Cuomo. It's kind of hilarious to me that they've left Andrew Cuomo as the alternative, you know, given how horrific of a job he did as governor of New York. One of the worst Democrats is now the one that's supposed to appeal to the center. Right. All right, Last topic on the Internet. I noticed that there is. There's been some interest and I don't know in what venue you said this, but you said your favorite movie was Bleeding Runner. And I saw. I saw several tweets about this. People, young, young people were happy to learn that. And so I want you to give them a little More. What is it about Blade Runner that makes that your favorite movie?

Frank Fukuyama (79:54)

So Blade Runner is based on a story from the 1930s, actually about, you know, basically androids. And in the original story, do androids dream of Electric Sheep? That was the title. It was a darker future in which the androids actually didn't have empath. And the movie Blade Runner actually reversed that, that these machines actually could develop this very basic human quality of having empathy for other people. And that's kind of the tragedy of the fact that they're all destroyed, you know, by the end. And I always thought that that was a kind of hopeful vision of what technology might, you know, lead to in the future. Plus, which I just thought. Thought that, you know, at the time that it was made, the. The whole setting of the movie like it's in Los Angeles and it never stops raining. You never see the sun come out once. Everything is in Asian car. At that time, people worried about Japan rather than China, and everything has become Japanized, you know, because of the social transformation. I just thought that all of that was a brilliant, you know, commentary back when the movie was made, I guess, in the 1980s, about the sort of changes that America was experiencing.

Tim Miller (81:12)

Do you have a recent favorite?

Frank Fukuyama (81:14)

Well, I like science fiction. My favorite writer is Neil Stevenson, who wrote one of the most brilliant novels, again back in the 1980s, about. It's sort of a parody of the libertarian trends that were taking place then. But he's written a couple of recent ones, like Termination Shock, in which a single rich oil guy in Texas takes on global warming to the detriment of, you know, the country of India. You know, I guess what I like about science fiction in general is that it projects trends into the future and develops what the politics of that future would look like in speculative ways. But I think ones that actually are very useful in thinking about our present. The one thing I would say that I feel bad about is that science fiction when I was young was all about space travel. You know, you had these big space odysseys, Star wars and so forth. It's much, much darker. The typical science fiction movie these days is some kind of apocalypse. It could be environmental. It could be, you know, viruses. It. You know, the whole zombie movie genre is about, yeah, robot apocalypse, this sort of thing. And I think it's a kind of way of taking the temperature of people's attitudes towards technology and whether they find it inspiring or, you know, threatening. And I think right now everybody sees technological change as threatening. Right.

Tim Miller (82:49)

Well, that leads me to my final question then. So Frank Fukuyama, how likely do you think it is that we're going to have AI driven apocalypse?

Frank Fukuyama (82:58)

Oh, yeah, so. So that's something I've actually spent a lot of time reading a lot of the more apocalyptic views, Stuart Russell and Nick Bostrom and so forth. I think that a lot of those fears are really overdrawn because just the underlying technology is going to be. I just think it's going to be less powerful, or at least it'll be less powerful for a very long time than they are possible depositing. And so I think that the real thing we need to worry about is not autonomous robots, you know, leading a robot uprising against humanity. I think it's more bad people using robots to hurt other people. That's the real threat that we ought to be focusing on.

Tim Miller (83:45)

The books are Liberalism and Discontents, the End of History and the Last Man. There are a bunch of other ones. You can go check them out and we'll have you back next year with the memoir. That's very exciting.

Frank Fukuyama (83:54)

Okay.

Tim Miller (83:54)

All right, thanks so much.

Frank Fukuyama (83:55)

Okay. Thanks, Tim.

Tim Miller (83:56)

All right, y'. All. That was a banger double header. Giving you plenty of content today. Covered a lot of ground. Thanks so much, my buddy Sam Stein and to Frank Fukuyama. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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