Chris Rufo Thinks the Right Can Control This. I Don’t.

Summary

The Ezra Klein Show — June 30, 2026

Episode: “Chris Rufo Thinks the Right Can Control This. I Don’t.”

Host: Ezra Klein

Guest: Chris Rufo (Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute; right-wing activist and author)

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Overview

In this searching and combative conversation, Ezra Klein speaks with Chris Rufo, arguably the most influential right-wing activist of the Trump era, about the logic and consequences of the Right’s recent political ascendancy. Klein probes Rufo’s philosophy, media tactics, and what he sees as the epistemic and moral rot threatening the conservative movement. Together, they wrestle with questions of propaganda, conspiracy, Trumpian autocracy, the role of institutions, the weaponization of memes, rising “racialist” energies, and the dangerous passions being unleashed on the American right.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. Chris Rufo’s Activist Strategy and Philosophy

(00:57–14:08)

• Rufo’s Impact:

  • Ezra Klein opens by outlining Chris Rufo’s rise: architect of anti-DEI and anti-CRT campaigns, influential on Trump and DeSantis, central in high-profile political events (e.g., campaigns against university presidents).
    • “Whatever else you want to say about [Rufo], he has quite significantly affected the world we live in.” — Klein (02:27)

• Institutional Values:

  • Rufo argues that no institution is truly neutral; institutions always encode certain values, explicitly or otherwise (04:37–05:31).
    • “Institutions always have values … political fights are at heart, the fight for who determines the values, what values are installed in an institution.” — Rufo (05:01)

• Impartiality vs. Neutrality:

  • He distinguishes between neutrality (mythical) and impartiality (aspirational and possible under the law) (05:57–06:26).

• On Agitprop and Propaganda:

  • Rufo openly recommends “agitprop” (agitation and propaganda) and effortfully reframes propaganda as simply “mass persuasion.” He links legitimacy of tactics to the truth-value of one’s aims (07:47-10:03).
    • “Politics occurs on the field of sentiment and public opinion, much more than on the field of … argumentation.” — Rufo (06:37)
    • “Propaganda is simply … communicating a political narrative … to a mass audience.” — Rufo (09:00)

• Telos, or the Right’s Ultimate Purpose:

  • Rufo’s political telos: restoration of Anglo-American republican principles — liberty, equality, virtue, and a culture “organized according to virtue and in particular, the virtues of our Western Anglo American civilization.” (11:30–12:27)

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2. Trump’s Second Term: A Restoration of Virtue?

(12:27–16:05)

• Restoration of Principles:

  • Rufo credits Trump as having done nearly all he can through executive authority, but is frustrated by congressional gridlock (12:41–13:41).
  • On “restoring virtue,” Rufo points to anti-DEI and disparate impact doctrine rollbacks as concrete wins.

• Corruption and Trump:

  • Klein presses Rufo on Trump family corruption (crypto schemes, personal enrichment); Rufo admits problems but separates such issues from his own advocacy:
    • “You’re not going to get me to defend it. I’m perfectly happy calling out the administration where I think it’s strayed or erred. And this is one of those places.” — Rufo (16:45–17:45)

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3. The Crisis of the Right’s Media and Online Conspiracy

(17:45–30:17)

• Polluted Information Sphere:

  • Klein describes sensing disquiet from Rufo about what the Right is becoming: “media apparatus consumed by conspiracy, psychodrama, and tabloid conflicts … turning the audience into the equivalent of a third world click farm.” (17:56–18:17 quoting Rufo)

• Institutional vs. Online Right:

  • Rufo identifies a growing split:
    • Institutional right (think tanks, Fox, etc.) attempts to “gatekeep” bad tendencies; the online right is awash in conspiracy, “insanity,” and “psychopathology” — exacerbated after the assassination of Charlie Kirk (18:17–20:58).
    • “If you can’t teach your audience, your followers, your political base how to think properly, they’re not going to behave properly and you’re not going to have proper outcomes.” — Rufo (19:58)

• Audience Demand for Conspiracy:

  • Rufo candidly notes that conspiracy theories fulfill psychological needs (forfeiture of agency; pseudopolitical rationalization for nihilism) (21:29–23:28).
    • “A conspiracy theory for conspiracy theorists can never be debunked, right? It’s just one layer of the onion that gets peeled.” — Rufo (22:02)

• Why Think He’ll Win Against It?

  • He expresses optimism, believing “these psychological tendencies … kind of burn out,” and that U.S. “institutional antibodies” will prevail (23:28–24:20).

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4. The Right’s Anti-Institutional Drift and ‘Prince vs. Party’

(24:20–34:55)

• Prince (Right) vs. Party (Left):

  • Rufo and Klein both argue: the Left is “over-formed” by institutions; the Right is “under-formed.” The modern right is organized around “the Prince” (Trump) rather than around a durable party or institutional structure.
    • “That’s the deepest irony, right, is that conservatives, in a healthy republic, would be the ones that are preserving the institutions … but conservatives have found themselves on the outside.” — Rufo (27:23–28:15)

• What Is Lost in Autocratic Organization:

  • Klein articulates the “falling in line behind Donald Trump” as collapsing multidimensional loyalty tests into a single point: personal loyalty — which has downstream effects post-election (30:35–32:33).

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5. The Tucker Carlson Paradox & Mainstreaming of White Identity Politics

(36:28–44:59)

• Tucker as Unifying/Dividing Force:

  • Rufo sees Fox-era Tucker as a nightly “shelling point” uniting the right-wing message; after Fox, the centrifugal media dynamic dominates, and message discipline is lost (38:29–40:09).

• Accusations of White Nationalism:

  • Klein points to the “great replacement” narrative frequently advanced by Carlson as fundamentally white nationalist, noting overt celebrations of his messaging in white nationalist circles (40:22–45:45).

• Debating Definitions & Contested Boundaries:

  • Rufo disputes the fairness of labeling skepticism of “large scale demographic change” as white nationalism:
    • “Can you be concerned about mass demographic change without being racist? I think the answer is yes.” — Rufo (43:18)

• Platforming the Fringe:

  • The discussion turns to figures like Scott Greer and Nick Fuentes—Klein presses the point that right-wing media, especially Tucker, has made white identity politics far less fringe and increasingly dangerous.

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6. Polarization, Online Racialism, 'Hyperreal' Figures, and Political Spectacle

(47:59–82:41)

• Speech Policing vs. Real Worries:

  • Both acknowledge excesses of left-wing speech policing, but Klein argues the alt-right has moved from fringe to “close to the center” (50:44–52:32).

• Rising Anti-Semitic, Racialist Trends on the Young Right:

  • Rufo offers a “reverse polarization” narrative: that anti-white rhetoric and DEI in institutions during formative years radicalized some young white men into racialized backlash (62:55–66:32).
    • “…they were programmed by the kind of George Floyd hysteria into thinking racially... [but] reversed the polarity” — Rufo (63:13)
  • Klein agrees that identity politics invites countermobilizations, but warns that right’s epistemological habits make it easy for such energies to run wild.

• The Perils of Unleashing Passion Without Guardrails:

  • Example: “Haitians eating cats and dogs” rumor — Klein notes how such stories gin up uncontrollable passions, are taken national, and lead to dangerous overreactions.
    • “There’s been a kind of consistent—this idea that you could unleash … terrible passions and then hold it ... controllable. And what you’re seeing with Candace Owens, with the new Tucker Carlson ... is that there wasn’t a way to stop that move.” — Klein (71:50)

• Rufo’s Defense and Worry About Under-institutionalization:

  • Rufo admits viral tactics can be manipulative and uncontrolled, but argues the right lacks the institutional infrastructure to channel/discipline these energies (73:39–105:30).

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7. Fraud, Scandal Politics, and Weaponized Narratives

(87:43–113:05)

• Somali Fraud in Minnesota:

  • Rufo details reporting on Somali welfare fraud, ties it to terror finance; Klein challenges the logic and the mass scapegoating of innocent individuals, and the fact that Rufo’s stories often move beyond facts to meme-level vilification and policy overreach (93:53–106:41).
    • “To take a crime committed by a limited number of people, then say this is something about an entire group … to get Donald Trump to deport people who are unrelated to the crime, that is a bad thing to do.” — Klein (96:44)
  • Rufo concedes the ICE raid response was a “bad strategic decision.”
    • “…you have to change banking regulations … because the idea that you could deport people by sending in armored cars with ICE agents is delusional. It’s never going to happen.” — Rufo (108:38)

• Right-Wing Anti-Fraud Campaigns vs. Trump’s Own Corruption/Deconstruction:

  • Klein observes a contradiction: Rufo spearheads anti-fraud activism while Trump pardons fraudsters and guts federal anti-fraud oversight (109:24–114:06).

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8. The Right’s Unraveling Standards — Institutional Weakness and Passions Unleashed

(114:26–122:04)

• Concerns About Institutional/Impartiality Failure:

  • Klein’s critique is that that the Right has abandoned institutional and epistemological standards, with Trump at the center:
    • “…what the right is accepting that Donald Trump is doing is insane. And the epistemological standards and Nick Shirley stuff is … offensive in the weaponization of.” — Klein (115:26)

• Virtue vs. Virtu (Means vs. Ends):

  • Rufo distinguishes between Aristotelian/Christian virtue (ends) and Machiavellian virtu (practical power-seeking means):
    • “Politics is always a conversation between virtue and virtu. And you are essentially reconciling means and ends.” — Rufo (122:04)
  • Nevertheless, he sees high integrity among his “compatriots”:
    • “Those … that I am fighting alongside … are high integrity people, very smart people, conservative institutionalists, who … understand that we need to deliver tangible political victories.” — Rufo (124:10)

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9. Looking Forward: Can the Right Solve Its Own Problems?

(118:34–125:32)

• Recognition of Crisis, Hope for Institutional Recovery:
  • Both agree that the right’s “attentional sphere is pathological,” and its ability to rein in Trumpism or conspiracy is weak—but Rufo expresses hope that the institutional right will prevail and that this period is solvable once “charismatic leadership” passes.
• Klein’s Ultimate Worry:
  • Klein’s final word: the right risks being destroyed by what it’s unleashed unless it reclaims standards of virtue and informational discipline.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “Politics occurs on the field of sentiment and public opinion, much more than … argumentation.” — Rufo (06:37)
• “Institutions always have values … [and] political fights are … for who determines the values.” — Rufo (05:01)
• “I don’t think it is right to say that someone concerned about rapid and large-scale demographic change is a white nationalist. That seems like the … conflation game … [that’s] dishonest.” — Rufo (41:54)
• “There’s been a kind of consistent — this idea that you could unleash … terrible passions and then hold it … controllable. And … what you’re seeing with Candace Owens, … with Nick Fuentes … is that there wasn’t a way to stop that move.” — Klein (71:50)
• “Right-wing media … is turning the audience into the equivalent of a third world click farm.” — Rufo, quoted by Klein (18:17)
• “The left is over institutionalized and the under institutionalized.” — Rufo (27:18)
• “Political leaders are not your priest. Political leaders are kind of blunt instruments. … In my mind, the game is simultaneously to improve our own capacity but also to win in the arena.” — Rufo (123:44)
• “I think the right likes to talk about virtue and doesn’t insist on it. … The people who are leaders on the right, Donald Trump very much included, are not virtuous often. And if they have enough power … that is fine.” — Klein (120:26)
• “What I’ve tried to do … is bring a lot of those conversations into the open. … The epistemological machine of the right has some real weak spots, some real flaws, some real vulnerabilities … The question is: [can we] solve it?” — Rufo (118:34–120:26)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:15–05:31 — Rufo’s institutional critique and the impossibility of neutrality
• 07:47–09:49 — Open embrace of propaganda and agitprop (“rhetoric at an industrial scale is propaganda”)
• 12:27–16:05 — Measuring Trump’s second term and the challenge of restoring virtue
• 17:56–24:20 — Online conspiracies and the dangers of the Right’s polluted information ecosystem
• 30:35–34:55 — “Prince vs. Party” and the Right’s organizational psychology under Trump
• 36:28–43:09 — The Tucker Carlson Question and white identity narratives
• 62:55–68:12 — Online racialism and how left identity politics spurred a right-wing backlash
• 87:43–106:41 — The Minnesota Somali fraud, viral media, and their real-world consequences
• 109:24–114:06 — Contradiction of the Right’s anti-fraud posture vs. Trump’s own pardons and corruption
• 114:26–115:49 — Critical summary of the Right’s epistemological and institutional failures

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Closing: Book Recommendations (125:32–127:30)

Rufo’s Conservative Canon:

1. Unmasking the Administrative by John Marini
2. The Revolutionary by Stacy Schiff (biography of Samuel Adams)
3. Three by James Burnham: Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, Suicide of the West
   • “I would start with Managerial Revolution…he’s describing the world we live in.” — Rufo (127:07)

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Final Takeaway

This episode is a rare public reckoning, as the right’s most effective activist is pressed to answer for the passions and epistemic pathologies his own tactics have helped unleash. Both Klein and Rufo share a sense that the American right is at an inflection point — between charismatic, ungovernable energies and the institutional rigor necessary for genuine, lasting victory. The conversation is a portrait of activism, power, moral ambiguity, and the paradox of achieving short-term wins at the risk of long-term destruction.

Transcript

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[Ezra Klein]

You could really make a case that Chris Ruffo is the most successful activist so certainly on the right of this era. He initially rose in prominence as the central strategist in the right's counterattack on DEI initiatives. He's very much behind a lot of the demonization of critical race theory.

[Chris Rufo]

Critical race theory has become in essence the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people. He claims CRT is actually a revolutionary

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

program that would overturn the principles of

[Ezra Klein]

the Declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution. And he built that into a series of campaigns have actually changed policy. It's very influential in Ron DeSantis's governorship and kind of running Claudine Gay out of Harvard.

[Chris Rufo]

Pushing out Claudine Gay, toppling the president of Harvard for a journalist like me is a big win.

[Ezra Klein]

Then in Donald Trump's second term. Quite a lot has come out of Rufo's work for better and from my perspective, remorse from a lot of Trump's early executive orders.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

We've ended the tyranny of so called diversity, equity and inclusion policies across the

[Chris Rufo]

entire federal government and indeed the private

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

sector and our military to some of

[Ezra Klein]

the work that led to the ICE and CBP deployments to Minnesota.

[Chris Rufo]

This week I published an exclusive story exposing the Somali fraud rings in Minneapolis, Minnesota which are stealing billions of dollars from American taxpayers.

[Ezra Klein]

Whatever else you want to say about them, Rufo has quite significantly affected the world we live in. He's also, if you listen to him and he's a very, very smart and often quite honest analyst of his own side. One thing I appreciate about Rufo is he always says what he is doing clearly and in public he seems uneasy.

[Chris Rufo]

Gone are the days when Tucker Carlson's nightly monologue set the agenda for the entire right.

[Ezra Klein]

You can feel a sort of disquiet, a sense that maybe the right, this right is not becoming what he hoped it would be.

[Chris Rufo]

Now we find ourselves in an escalating war of influencers trading conspiracies and counter

[Ezra Klein]

conspiracies, that its attentional and informational sphere

[Chris Rufo]

is polluted, driving the right into all different kinds of rabbit holes and dead

[Ezra Klein]

ends, that the administration is not getting as much done as he had hoped, intended, tried to help it do. And so I wanted to have Rufo on not because we agree on things we obviously don't. You'll hear that. Not because I'm trying to talk him into my way of seeing things, I'm not going to do that. But both to understand how he understands what he is doing and also to interrogate it, to ask if the tactics he is using are actually working or if he's scoring short term victories at the cost of helping decede profound long term problems. Rufo is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute. He's a contributing editor of City Journal, he's the co host of the podcast Rufo and Lomez, and he's the author of America's Cultural how the Radical Left Conquered Everything. As always, my email Ezra kleinshowytimes.com. Chris Ruffo, welcome to the show.

[Chris Rufo]

Good to be with you.

[Ezra Klein]

So I want to begin with a piece you wrote in early 2024 titled the New Right Activism A Manifesto for the Counter Revolution. And there are a lot of interesting things in there, but the one I wanted to begin with is you write, no institution can be neutral. So tell me why.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, I mean, that's an obvious reality if you think about it for longer than a minute. And I think it's important to say, because there's this myth that we have in the United States, and it's a small l liberal mythology that institutions can be kind of neutral arbiters, that they could be valueless vessels that achieve some kind of pragmatic or instrumental ends. And my point is that no, in practice, institutions always have values, whether they're implicit or explicit. And for those of us who are on the outside of many powerful institutions, there's a lot of value in simply revealing the underlying reality. And in fact, political fights are at heart, the fight for who determines the values, what values are installed in an institution, and then therefore what kind of decisions get made.

[Ezra Klein]

So I just take a lot of the arguments about institutions, particularly within the broad philosophical tradition of liberalism, to argue that they can have neutral treatment, they can have neutral rules, and a lot of for better and worse procedure in these institutions. Everything from notice and comment periods to different ways that they have to create transparency are about trying to create that capacity for People to be neutrally treated. Do you think that's possible?

[Chris Rufo]

No, I think neutral is the wrong word. I think what we're looking for is impartial, and I would agree with that. Everyone should be treated equally as an individual under law. But that's impartiality, not neutrality. So in a criminal case, if you sentence somebody to the death penalty, you're not treating them neutrally. You're actually taking their life because the underlying law is a kind of moral code. And so I think neutral and impartial are similar, but in this case, kind of critically different.

[Ezra Klein]

So another argument you make in that piece is you say the popular slogan that facts don't care about your feelings betrays similar problems, that slogan being Ben Shapiro's slogan. In reality, feelings almost always overpower facts. Reason is a slave of the passions.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, that's true. And we'll caveat. We love Ben Shapiro. We're Ben Shapiro fans, of course. But I think that he's very wrong on that. And I think conservatives have made a fundamental error in latching onto that. And really what it is, it's a rationalization for losing. It's like, yes, we may have lost the great political question which operates on emotions or passions, but we have the facts on our side. And if only people would read our white paper, our regression analysis, our rigorous logical argumentation, then we would be vindicated. But look, while we should have the facts on our side, while we should use logic, by itself, it's insufficient. And in fact, politics operates on a deeper level, an emotional level. And politics occurs on the field of sentiment and public opinion, much more on the field of kind of abstract argumentation at the top.

[Ezra Klein]

So. And then you go on in the same piece to make an argument for agitprop. So agitprop, old Soviet Union term for agitation and propaganda. Yeah, Mashed up together. And it doesn't have a great reputation. Agitprop is usually not a term of endearment. But you say agitprop doesn't mean sacrificing the truth, but rather channeling the truth toward victory. So how do you define what agitprop is? And what are you trying to explain to your fellow conservatives about how to use it?

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So.

[Chris Rufo]

Right. I mean, if you're obviously, if you're conducting, say, propaganda on behalf of a falsehood or evil or an unjust cause, it's bad. My point is that that's not always necessarily true. If you are pursuing a cause that is good and true and beautiful. If you look at the word Propaganda, the original meaning, it comes from the Catholic Church, and it was the propagation of the Gospels, the propagation of the truth. And so these are concepts that we can recover, because the reality is that all politics in the age of the printing press and onward depends on propaganda.

[Ezra Klein]

And how do you define what propaganda itself is?

[Chris Rufo]

Propaganda is simply the method of communicating a political narrative. Again, we're using neutral, I'm going to say, a true narrative to a mass audience through the means of modern media. It's a rhetorical argument intended to persuade the majority of people to cobble together a majority of public opinion. And look, this is, again, for conservatives, especially, not new. You know, the founding fathers of this country wrote to each other about this, wrote in public about this. We seem to have forgotten some of these lessons of how politics actually works. You have to persuade people. What is persuasion? It's rhetoric. What is rhetoric at an industrial scale? It's propaganda.

[Ezra Klein]

You've been connecting the question of propaganda to whether or not the end it is aimed at is true. How do you think about when you have untrue propaganda, unleashing intense passions, that's bad. Towards a true aim?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, look, I don't think that that's good. I think that Aristotle has a great line in his book on rhetoric where he says the truth has a tendency to prevail. I love that. I love that. Because it's like the truth doesn't always prevail. We can look through history. We can look at history, you know, and sometimes lies prevail. I think in 2020 into 2024, during the woke era, many lies prevailed. But what is so interesting about that line is the truth has a tendency to prevail. And what I take from it is that, therefore, you always want to be on the side of the truth. Even for your own pragmatic political ends, you always want to be on the side of the truth. And so, look, certainly there are untrue elements or narratives on the right and on the left. I think a political movement to succeed, has to have the discipline and integrity to go after it. But always to remember that if the truth has a tendency prevail, that's where you want to be.

[Ezra Klein]

And then your piece builds to this idea that, quote, in order to realize the ultimate promise of the political, there also must be something higher, a telos, which is the Greek word for something like an ultimate end, a final cause. A final cause. So one reason I've been focusing on this piece is to understand the way you do your work and what your work is. So what is your telos?

[Chris Rufo]

Well, politically speaking, let's say. Let's leave it at that.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

I don't mean your family. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Rufo]

I mean, I think I want to have a restoration of the principles of our republic. And so if you're thinking about our republic, you're thinking about those guiding principles where they have strayed over the last 250 years. I want to have a restoration of that. And so I'm constantly looking backward at the founding and trying to understand it better and understand how to bring those principles forward.

[Ezra Klein]

Forward.

[Chris Rufo]

And so you want to have the principles of liberty and equality, you want to have a functioning, healthy republic, and you want to have a culture that is organized according to virtue and in particular, the virtues of our Western Anglo American civilization. And through my personal observations around the world, as well as my study of the past, I think the Anglo American civilization, the principles that have animated our republic for the last 250 years, are still the best that we could hope for.

[Ezra Klein]

So from that perspective, we're 17 months into Donald Trump's second term. Is.

[Chris Rufo]

Is that all? It feels like longer.

[Ezra Klein]

Tell me about it.

[Chris Rufo]

It feels like longer for you guys.

[Ezra Klein]

Is this administration building the kind of country you want to see?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, I think so. And here's how I would. Here's how I would assess it on the elements within Article 2. So the executive power, I think Donald Trump has done almost everything he could do. Great people with the administration have done almost everything they could do to advance this kind of vision of the country.

[Ezra Klein]

Liberty, equality, virtue.

[Chris Rufo]

Yes. And I think that the momentum was strong. Year one. I think it's trailed off in year two. And could that be the executive has lost some of its energy? Yes. Could it be that public opinion has softened? Yes. Could it be some of the foreign adventures or misadventures, depending on who you talk to, have distracted focus? I think. Yes. But ultimately, the problem is that the President has a majority in Congress, but not 60 votes in the Senate. And so fundamental, transformative legislation that I would like to see is impossible.

[Ezra Klein]

Make the case to me that Donald Trump is restoring virtue.

[Chris Rufo]

This is a hard case, because what you're going to say is that Trump does not exhibit the kind of Christian virtues in his personal life. Right.

[Ezra Klein]

I'm not even thinking about his personal life. I'm thinking about his public. Public life.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, well, you tell me.

[Ezra Klein]

I didn't claim he exhibits virtue. So you said that they are doing a pretty good job bringing back liberty, equality and virtue.

[Chris Rufo]

Correct.

[Ezra Klein]

Make the case to me.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Sure.

[Chris Rufo]

I'll make you the case, and I'll make it through the particular example that I'm most familiar with. So one of my big campaigns the last couple years was the fight to abolish dei. And so DEI was this idea that had been kind of germinating in the 90s in the 2000s, but really exploded into public life with universal adoption by most large institutions after 2020. And it was this idea that was very simple, that there are oppressor groups and oppressed groups in the United States because of the historical realities of our country. And therefore, to achieve, to move towards equal outcomes, you have to treat individuals unequally according to their group identity. And the president on day one, issued an executive order that was very much in line with the work that we have been doing to go and kind of wipe out the DEI bureaucracy throughout the federal government. And so in that case, I think that you could argue that the principle of equality and impartiality, as we were discussing earlier, had been restored. Not totally. We still have some problems with the underlying statutory law. Just recently, in the last couple of weeks, the Department of Justice has taken a buzzsaw to so called disparate impact doctrine. Same idea. If there are unequal outcomes, it must therefore, by definition, be because of discrimination. Therefore, you have to remedy it by treating people unequally. And so in this case, I think, you know, and because this is the issue I've worked on and have been passionate about, I think that. But you can make an argument that liberty, equality, virtue have been restored. Are there other problems? Of course. Are we all the way there? No. But on the issues that I personally care about, that I personally have worked on, I think the country is in a much better place than it was two years ago.

[Ezra Klein]

I guess one thing I think about when I think about Donald Trump and virtue is corruption. So I see Trump taking luxury aircraft from Qatar. I see his family getting involved in all kinds of crypto schemes, where the investors in their crypto schemes in many cases seem to be people who have business before the family, business before the country. The New Yorker sort of did a, I think a quite conservative tallying up of how much money the Trump family and Trump have made or how much their net worth has increased that has been connected to the presidency. The number was about $4 billion in this term. It doesn't, when I look at it, look virtuous.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah. Look, here's, here's my general perspective, and I'll lay it out to you as honestly as I can. There are the issues that I work on that I'm passionate about that I feel like I have some control over or influence over. And there are the issues that I don't. And I think I've been very straightforward in the areas where I think the administration has fallen short and certainly the percept. And we'll see over time, I'm sure that there will be, you know, inquiries, investigations, et cetera, into these business enterprises is bad. You're not going to get me to defend it. I'm perfectly happy calling out the administration where I think it's strayed or aired. And this is one of those places. I mean, I remember the crypto launch. It was during the transition, I think, where they launched the Trump Coin. Right. And it's like, I don't like this. I don't want to see this. They shouldn't be doing that. And yeah, you're not going to get me to defend it.

[Ezra Klein]

Well, one of the things I'm touching into here is I've been watching your show and I see a growing vein of discomfort from you on at least what parts of the right are becoming.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

So in December, you tweeted, the right's media apparatus is how the right teaches its followers how to think. And it's currently getting consumed by conspiracy, psychodrama and tabloid conflicts. If left unchecked, it will turn the audience into the equivalent of a third world click farm. So what's. Tell me about that? What's been alarming you?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes, man, you hear your quotes back to. You're like, oh, that's kind of very. Yeah, Very, very, very lively language. Yeah, this is a huge problem. And I don't. Okay, so I'll put it this way. There's a growing split between the institutional right and the online right. The institutional right, I think, actually deserves credit for gatekeeping some of these kind of bad tendencies out of our institutions. And, and I think that's good.

[Ezra Klein]

However, the online right being like Fox News and.

[Chris Rufo]

Yes, yeah. Conservative think tanks, you know, the Manhattan Institute, all of the kind of the institutional layer of the professional right, let's say. I think it's done a very good job at gatekeeping some of these bad psychological and political tendencies out of our institutions. The problem that we're grappling with, though, is that the traditional way of thinking about political media is always as an outgrowth of institutions. So you'd have your, your magazines, your newsletters, your think tank, you know, policy papers. The Internet has created kind of benefits, costs and benefits. One of the benefits is the kind of Ease of communication with a large audience. But one of the negatives is that you have the proliferation of insanity, madness, psychopathology. And on the right, I think this went into hyperdrive after the assassination of Charlie Kirk was bubbling up before then, but really then took a turn. And so you have this tendency on the right histor, you have like a kind of Bircher tendency in the post war era and then it kind of waxes and wanes over time. And right now you have in the online right, someone like Candace Owens who has like departed so far from reality and yet has a massive audience. And I think that it's doing a disservice to the public and even more say kind of self interestedly doing a very grave disservice to the right. Because if you can't teach your audience, your followers, your political base how to think properly, they're not going to behave properly and you're not going to have proper outcomes. And so I think it's important for us on the right to have this internal fight which is to say if you think that Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk or whatever kind of handful of conspiracies you have, you're on the outside, you're not within the movement. And, and this is a fight that is happening now. And I think given sufficient amount of time, I think we'll win.

[Ezra Klein]

Why do you think you'll win? Because I look at the right and I see Tucker Carlson in his current guys, which is a much more conspiratorial guys than he's had before, has become more and more dominant figure. As you note, Candace Owens success has been startling. I guess I'd ask this question in two dimensions. What is the audience demand that they are meeting? What is it that they are providing that people want? And then I guess the second question is why do you think you'll win?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, great question. So first of all, the audience for conspiracy theories is enormous. Before his kind of legal trouble, someone like Alex Jones was making apparently millions of dollars selling vitamins and survival supplies. And if you think about it, to generate that kind of revenue requires a massive if kind of quiet under the surface audience. And so I think they're really tapping into that side of the audience. It's right wing, but not exclusively right wing. And in fact a lot of the people who have come over to these conspiracy theories are in that part of the horseshoe where their politics are, let's say sub ideological. They're more of a feeling, a perception, a set of resentments. Second, how do conspiracy theories work? Conspiracy theories work for people who want to forfeit agency, for people who do not see the possibility of constructive action in their personal lives or in public life. And therefore the conspiracy theory gives them the rationalization and justification for their nihilism. It's, you know, insert here, right? It's this group, it's that group, it's, it's this other group that is, that is controlling the world, making everything impossible, assassinating our, our, our, our heroes. And this gives them a psychological key, right, that is self reinforcing. Because a conspiracy theory for conspiracy theorists can never be debunked, right? It's just one layer of the onion that gets peeled. And I'll tell you why I think we're going to win. Because I've noticed this even for people, let's say in my kind of one degree of separation, conspiracy theories, and I think in particular anti Semitic conspiracy theories eventually fry your brain. And so I think that we'll see a lot of these personalities, a lot of these psychological tendencies kind of burn out on their own. And on top of that as a kind of extra layer of optimism.

[Ezra Klein]

That is an optimistic view on the history of antisemitism right there.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, well, okay, I'm saying in, in the near term these things kind of wax and wane, but I think what I've seen in the United States is a greater set of antibodies than you might find elsewhere. And then institutionally, for our side on the right, I, I think the. Look, the people who run institutions are aware of the problem. They're confronting the problem, we're dealing with it. And to me this is inevitable. Political coalitions are going to have some kind of mixture of the good and the bad. And the question is, who's in a position of leadership, what kind of courage and integrity they have and can they succeed? And so I think that when I look at the field as it is, I think this say faction is less powerful than it was six months ago, a year ago. And I hope that trend continues.

[Ezra Klein]

I think there's an interesting question on institutions on the right here. I forget if it's a Chesterton quote or a C.S. lewis quote, but he says one of them says that when men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. When men stop believing in God, they believe in everything. And I do think there's a dimension of that around institutions where the right has become much more anti institutional. I think the view that institutions cannot be neutral and largely cannot even be impartial is much more widely held. And there's been a sort of coordinated attack on many of the institutions in American life, but sort of new ones haven't emerged. Right. You could imagine the right and the left having parallel institutions that have different core values. Because I do agree with you, actually, that institutions almost, they do always have values at their heart. And when you don't think they do, it just means you don't know what they are.

[Chris Rufo]

Correct.

[Ezra Klein]

But I think a lot.

[Chris Rufo]

Or they're being deliberately obscured.

[Ezra Klein]

Right. Or they're being obscured. But I think sometimes about. I think Tucker Carlson is an interesting figure here, somebody who came up institutionally, I think sometimes about this speech he gave at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

And I saw conservatives create many of their own media organizations, and I saw many of those organizations prosper, and I saw some of them fail. And here's the difference. The ones that failed refuse to put accuracy first. This is the hard truth. And conservatives need to deal with this. I believe this. I'm as conservative as any person in this room. I am literally in the process of stockpiling weapons and food and moving to Idaho. So I'm not in any way gonna take a second seat to anybody in this room ideologically. But I will say, honestly, if you create a news organization whose primary objective is not to deliver accurate news, you will fail. You will fail. The New York Times is a liberal paper, but it's also, and it is to its core, a liberal paper. It's also a paper that cares about whether they spell people's names right. By and large, it's a paper that actually cares about accuracy. Conservatives need to build institutions that mirror those institutions that are. That's the truth. You don't believe me?

[Ezra Klein]

So put aside, put aside the special pleading for the New York Times here. Carlson tried to build his own media institution. The Daily Caller, Sure. I would say it did not. My impression of it is that it did not become a place to put accuracy first and became a kind of conservative New York Times.

[Chris Rufo]

It did not become a conservative New York Times.

[Ezra Klein]

It did not become a conservative New York Times. Over time, he went in, I think, darker and darker directions as he chased the audience. And now he's fully without institution and has, I think, emerged, I'll put it this way, into a form I think when I listen to you, you find more concerning and problematic. So what do you think went wrong there?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, well, look, this is a long term trend. This didn't emerge in 2009 or 2020. I think of it at this. The left is over institutionalized and the under institutionalized.

[Ezra Klein]

I say this all the time, man. Left is over formed by institutions. The right is under formed, correct?

[Chris Rufo]

And so we have kind of opposite, opposite problems. And I think of it also in, in this way. I wrote a piece about this, I don't know, a long time ago, and I think it really, it really holds up. The left is organized as a capital P party, and the right is organized under a capital P prince. So you have Donald Trump essentially sets the direction of the right, for better or for worse, through personal charismatic power and his relationship with the conservative base. There's really no mediating institutions in the kind of way that you would see elsewhere. That's where conservatives have figured out this formula for at least the time being to achieve political victory. It has benefits, it has problems. The left has the opposite problem. The reason why I think you get the, like, presidential candidates on the left that seem to be, like, devoid of traditional charisma is because it's organized as an institutional apparatus or a capital P party. And so conservatives have a problem with institutions, conservatives have a problem building institutions. And this is the deepest irony, right, is that conservatives, in a healthy republic, would be the ones that are preserving the institutions, restoring the institutions, maintaining the institutions. But conservatives have found themselves on the outside of institutions. And so when we're talking about this concept of counter revolution, it's a paradox, right? Because a counter revolution is not necessarily a conservative impulse on the top. You can have a conservative mission or goal that drives it. That's why it's a counter revolution rather than a revolution. But conservatives are in this really interesting position where you have a lot of people on the intellectual right. They attend the black tie galas, they attend the events at the country club, they eat the, you know, salmon dinner at the, whatever, Hilton, you know, ballroom. And I'm always looking around at these. If I, I, you know, don't like these events because I'm always looking around and saying, you guys are out of your minds. You guys are operating as if, you know, the Elks Lodge was still the formative institution of the United States. You're living in a fantasy. You're living in a nostalgia that isn't actually grappling with the fundamental problems in the country and is totally out of step with the very voters that you claim to represent. And so, look, this is a problem. I can't say that there's a snap your finger solution. And so you have to start where you start. You know, I work for an institution that I think is the best in the business, the Manhattan Institute. I think we do good work that has a high degree of accuracy and rigor and intelligence. And I think that we've put up practical political victories in a way that few others have.

[Ezra Klein]

Another version of this is a line I like is that the personality type of the left is bureaucratic and the personality type of the right is autocratic. And I don't think that was always true.

[Chris Rufo]

I don't think I can give you a response. Well, I don't think so.

[Ezra Klein]

I think in the Trump era it is.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, well it. Make the case. Make the case.

[Ezra Klein]

There is a falling in line behind Donald Trump. So here is my view of the two coalitions right now. The genius of Donald Trump in the 2024 election was he collapsed the multi dimensional test of party loyalty that existed in the previous Republican Party. Were you pro life? Did you believe in low taxes? What was your foreign policy, et cetera? And certainly the multidimensional agenda task you see on the left, down to a single point of loyalty. Did you support him personally? If you did, there was actually room for a wide variety of other opinions. You could be a techno futurist, a podcast, you could be a Christian traditionalist, you could be RFK Jr who'd been running as a Democrat just a year or two before. But also you could be Ted Cruz. And, and what held that together is that the line that you could not cross was Trump himself. But as long as you were useful to him, you could be on the team. Now that has obvious issues when you move into governance. And I think some of them have emerged, but it gave him and them a freedom of movement across other issues where a Kamala Harris, a Tim Walls, Joe Biden were much more box checking, right. This sort of multi dimensional loyalty test that the left uses and so on. Left you end up with and I mean here the left, not like the Democratic social stuff, but the left coalition in this country, the broad Democratic Party, you end up with people who have sort of all of the right views and have an institutional personality. Right. Are somewhat risk averse, are worried about getting in trouble to meeting. And on the right you have people who, they'll go crazy in a meeting. You can be Bill Pulte, but as long as the boss likes you, you're safe.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay. Yeah, I think that there are elements of that that are true. Prince versus party. It's a method of political organization, psychological organization. Certainly one of Trump's kind of the great litmus test for him is personal loyalty. We've seen that you're with Trump, he's with you, you cross him and he'll attack you.

[Ezra Klein]

You could be K and be a buddy.

[Chris Rufo]

It was like a nice buddy comedy. I feel like there'd be a buddy comedy.

[Ezra Klein]

He likes Kim Jong Un more than he likes Mark Carney. Yeah, well, you know,

[Chris Rufo]

fair enough. And as personal chemistry goes. But yeah, I think there's some truth to that, but I wouldn't, therefore, I think your conclusion is overdrawn. I don't think you could say the right has autocratic personalities. I mean, I deal with conservatives all the time. I don't see that as a psychological tendency. But the people I work with, the people I talk to, my friends and neighbors. But, so, yeah, I think it's over, overdrawn. I think this is just a question of political organization from the top. And I don't think it's total, just loyalty, personal loyalty. I mean, Trump wants immigration restrictions, strong national borders, build a wall. He wants kind of American national interest based foreign policy, although that is kind of a little bit on the outskirts. And then he represents or at least championed a lot of the causes that, that, that, that I cared about, care about, you know, on dei, on higher education, on cultural institutions, you know, and a whole host of other sub issues that he really grabbed onto. And, and look, this is good. You, you, you, you kind of have to work with what, what is there. You want to, you always want to plan for the future, build for the future, but ultimately you're faced with decisions in the moment. And look, on the whole, I think in those areas where we have had more freedom of movement, more ability to execute policy, I think things have been going quite well.

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[Chris Rufo]

I would be very interested in having separate logins for a shared subscription. I'm 35 years old.

[SoFi Advertiser]

I still share my parents New York Times subscription.

[Ezra Klein]

I think if my teenagers were to

[Chris Rufo]

have their own logins, we could share articles. It doesn't let us play the same games as each other.

[Ezra Klein]

I play the stoku, I do the

[Chris Rufo]

crossword, I do the spelling bee. I do the Wordle.

[Ezra Klein]

Please help. Having our own accounts would be amazing.

[Chris Rufo]

My mom could save her own recipes. My friends could save their recipes.

[Ezra Klein]

I want to get the weekly newsletter,

[Chris Rufo]

but they seem to always go to my husband and then he doesn't forward them to me. We both love cooking.

[Ezra Klein]

I'm a 30 minute and under dinner girly. My boyfriend is very elaborate. I think him having his own profile would be great.

[Chris Rufo]

We love the New York Times and we would love to love it individually.

[Ezra Klein]

Listeners, we heard you. It's why we created the New York Times.

[Chris Rufo]

Family Subscription one subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out [e-mail] family

[Ezra Klein]

I want to go back to Tucker. So I've seen you talk about your take on his evolution. And something you've said is that the Tucker Carlson of the Fox News era, when he was given his 8pm monologues, that in that era they were a unifying script for the right, that Fox News was this institutional structure around him that maybe contained him to a certain point, and that created a unity, a coherence that has now dissolved not just around him specifically, but around the right more broadly. Now, the liberal take on Tucker in the Fox News era is that he was beginning to bring a white national strain into centrality in the Republican Party, that there were all these Daily Stormer articles about how much he was saying exactly what they thought he was talking about. Great replacement theory.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

And you've got to ask yourself as you watch the historic tragedy that is Joe Biden's immigration policy, what's the point of this? They are flooding this country with immigrants in order to change the demography, to maintain political power for themselves, to change the racial mix of the country. That's the reason to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World. Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement, but they become hysterical because that's what's happening. Actually, let's just say it. That's true.

[Ezra Klein]

He had already, in our view, become quite conspiratorial. And that what he is now and what he is then are a straight line from each other. And that the sort of passions he was unleashing. Right. Reason, of course, being a slave of such passions that it was always gonna go in one direction. And that celebrating what he was at that moment and then being confused by what he is at this moment is a kind of like A strange unwillingness to either grapple with one or the other. So tell me how you see it.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, I don't see it that way. I mean, when Tucker was on Fox at that 8pm Eastern Time, 5pm Western Time, for me, it really did feel like shelling point for the right. It was like a quarterback calling the plays every night at 8:00 clock in that first, you know, five to ten minutes where Tucker kind of condensed the opinion, represented the opinion, reflected back the opinion, and then everyone had a central point, a central coherent point to think about, to talk about, to mobilize on. And it was very effective. So even in my own experience, when I first started reporting on critical race theory in the institutions went on. Tucker gave a kind of opening monologue with Tucker. President Trump was watching it, got a call from the White House the next morning, hey, the President saw you on tv. He wants to take action on critical race theory. Come to the White House. Let's get this thing done. And so that mechanism that even in my personal experience, the loop on that was like less than 12 hours, very

[Ezra Klein]

tight loop, very Tucker in the White House.

[Chris Rufo]

And I think also what I've learned about Fox News is that that Fox News has, and this is to its great credit, Fox News has a kind of disciplinary function. And I think especially after 2020, has become even more cognizant of, okay, message discipline is important. Moving the message forward is important. Here's the kind of guardrails for the narrative. And this is a function of institutions, a function of technology.

[Ezra Klein]

Yes, but what I'm talking about is what the narrative itself is. I agree with you that Tucker played this role when he was on Fox News. But the thing that many of us who, I mean, I knew Tucker before, many of us who had watched him for a long time from a good time libertarian.

[Chris Rufo]

But what, what specific you. I can't. You're invoking like the daily. It's like, I don't know anything about the Daily Stormer beyond.

[Ezra Klein]

He talked a bunch about great replacement theory. I mean, this has been exactly.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Hold on.

[Ezra Klein]

This has been exhaustingly documented. I mean, there are biographies of the guy. The Times did a bunch of work on this. The bringing in of a macro narrative, that there was a function, I would call it a cabal of elites importing Brown voters to replace you. That you were being betrayed by elites representing foreign interests and foreign people to sort of alter the culture of this country to their benefit was something he hammered all the time.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Fox News is reporting tonight that the administration awarded $172 million grant to a George Soros linked organization which exists to, quote, help young border crossers avoid deportation. Now, why is some foreign born billionaire allowed to change our country fundamentally? That's the big question, right?

[Ezra Klein]

A relentless focus on crime from immigrants, a relentless focus on George Soros. And so to me, I see Tucker now and I see Tucker then, and I agree the shackles are off a little bit, but I see him calling the same play. He's just had to turn up the dial a little bit because he doesn't have Fox News.

[Chris Rufo]

I don't think that's right. And I think. Let's take the. You're presenting it in a way that is very charged and I don't think quite fair. But let's take the.

[Ezra Klein]

Tucker's a charged figure.

[Chris Rufo]

But let's take the. But the narrative that you're portraying, I don't think that's exactly, you know, how I would put it, certainly. But the underlying facts are either true or not true. And in this case, mass demographic change has been and is a reality in the United States. And I think it's fair to talk about that politically. We've been talking about it politically for 10 years. And you could do it in a way that exemplifies bigotry or discrimination, of course, but you can also do it in a way that, that isn't an expression of bigotry or discrimination, but in fact is just a basic question, a question that people in the United States have been asking since the 1770s. Who are we? What is an American? And if we are a sovereign nation, we have not just the right, but really the obligation to determine these great questions of who comes in, who doesn't come in. And so I don't think that it is right to say that someone who is concerned about rapid and large scale demographic change is kind of a white nationalist. That seems like kind of the, kind of.

[Ezra Klein]

I'm saying that the reason I think Tucker is a white nationalist is due to all the white nationalism. Well, let me ask a question, Let me ask a question fairly quick.

[Chris Rufo]

No, because I mean, that is a huge charge. And I just, again, what is the evidence of that? Can you be concerned about mass demographic change without being racist? I think the answer is yes.

[Ezra Klein]

How do you define a white nationalist?

[Chris Rufo]

Well, you make the charge, you define it and substantiate your point.

[Ezra Klein]

So I think that Tucker's view is that the.

[Chris Rufo]

Take Tucker out of it, just make an in general argument, general argument of

[Ezra Klein]

one and then you can share. And Tucker so I think that there is a structure, straightforward view on white nationalism, that there is such a thing as a white race, that race is fundamentally European, came here and founded this country. That race has, depending on the variant of white nationalism. We're talking about genetic advantages or cultural advantages and that that race deserves to have, should have dominance, particularly over this country. There are harder and softer versions of this. Right. In some versions, Jews are included in that white race. Sure. In some versions they're not included in that white race. In some versions we are talking about something I would describe primarily as a kind of nationalism. Right. The, you know, if you have too much of a country not sharing a common heritage, you lose solidarity. In some cases we're talking about something much darker than that. Right. There are people who just don't like the way their community is changing. And there's the kkk. Right. Everything exists on a spectrum.

[Chris Rufo]

But would you say someone who is, for example, hesitant about rapid large scale demographic change is just a kind of 1% white nationalist? Yeah, because that would be like the majority of the country.

[Ezra Klein]

Yes. I don't think it is a problem or unfair or even wrong to worry about large scale, rapid demographic change. So maybe to be more specific about Tucker, so you just had on the right wing writer Scott Greer. He's got a book coming out on the online right called White Pill. So Greer was a former deputy editor at the Daily Caller. He left in 2018 after past writings for white national site were dug up. And he once said of Tucker, so this is Greer speaking. Tucker is ultimately on our side. He can get millions and millions of boomers to nod along with talking points that would have only been seen on vdare or American Renaissance a few years ago. These are both white national sites. So I guess, what do you make of that?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, so I'll tell you what I make of it. And here's what I think is really interesting about some of these figures who were on the once kind of fringe elements of the right who have in some ways seen the errors of that way of ideological thinking. And to me, you always want to leave people room to grow up, room to leave bad ideas behind, room for kind of critical self reflection and then to integrate back into the kind of mainstream thinking. And I think Scott Greer is interesting and one of the reasons why we interviewed him was to kind of chart out this trajectory, which there's a lot of people that had more radical politics and then they moderate over time. And so I was very interested in understanding that process of kind of ideological development and Growth and then, and then really scrutinizing. You want to actually try to figure out, all right, well, what's the way out of that? What's the way to demystify, to defang, to kind of delegitimize that way of thinking. And I think it's interesting to talk to people who once had those ideas.

[Ezra Klein]

So I'm not against you talking to him at all. Right. What I'm saying is not that you shouldn't interview Scott Greer. Sure. I think many people change their politics dramatically and one of the big problems the left actually has is not giving people space to change.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

And putting people into a box where they're held in who they were as opposed to who they may become. My problem is not with you and being Greer. I am saying that I looked at Tucker in that period and thought, huh, he's going in this direction that I understand this to be the argument of, you know, a vider of a. And they all celebrated him. But I guess the question is whether to phrase a question precisely, which maybe I haven't yet, whether one of the lessons of where he has gone and where some of the right has gone is that people like you on the right were a little insensitive to when something wasn't just a breaking of a liberal taboo, but was a movement towards a politics that was much more, let's call it, white identity focused.

[Chris Rufo]

Look, okay, huge point. I would break it down in a couple ways. One, I don't think that's, that's quite accurate. I actually think that the statement you're, you're reading, and you could probably read it from a number of other people. Right. If you remember in 2016, Richard Spencer famously held like some sort of conference or group and he said, oh yes, Trump has adopted, you know, Trump is a creation of the alt right. It was completely delusional, totally self serving and a product of narcissism that I wouldn't take at face value. And so I think a lot of the radical elements you're talking about overstate this relationship because they desperately want to believe it. And I think that, you know, someone like Tucker, I don't think it's accurate to say that that Tucker on Fox in 2021 was laundering in talking points from American Renaissance. I don't think that's true. I think it's conflating a kind of maybe superficial opposition to immigration and the conflation game is really, I think, dishonest. And unfortunately for a lot of time it worked. And so I think that in Fact, we're in a much better place than in the past. And I remember some of these groups like, like adl, splc, Media Matters, they came after me with many, many smears, trying to destroy my reputation, trying to get me deplatformed from social media, trying to kind of eliminate me from the public sphere. None of it worked, thankfully. The aclu, I would also add. And in fact, as I look back, the arguments that they were making were preposterous, and they only succeeded because people felt fearful. And so I'm glad that we don't live in that condition of fear anymore. And today we can talk very reasonably across a table, which I think is good. But I'm certainly not going to forget the emotional tone and the political vulnerabilities of that era. And again, the SPLC that was coming after me because of God knows what, but was at the same time giving money to neo Nazis and white nationalists to keep them afloat. And what that shows me is that the supply of racism in the United States and including racism on the right in the United States, has dwindled to such a small degree in real life that it took the SPLC to actually inject cash into that ecosystem merely to keep it alive. And so I just don't.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, one way of thinking about that period that I think is how I think about it is that two things were sort of true at the same time. So, one, there was way too much speech policing. There was too much cancellation. There was too much that instead of being willing to have arguments, people just tried to make the arguments unhappy. That all happened. I don't deny any of it. And on the other hand, a lot of what people more on the left in that moment were afraid of or what they predicted also happened. The alt right moved much more from the fringe to the center. I always think about the alt right

[Chris Rufo]

was totally destroyed after Charlottesville.

[Ezra Klein]

I think maybe a different view of what the alt right represents it, which is fair enough, but I think a lot of ideas that were very, very, very far from the center, I think about Elon Musk and him writing and I mean, later he had to, like, try to figure out how to apologize for this. But when somebody basically said, like, the Jews have been funding the Grace replacement.

[Chris Rufo]

Did Elon say that?

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, no, Elon didn't say that. What he said was underneath that. He said to whoever had tweeted that, you have spoken the truth. And then he had to go to Auschwitz and things like that.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, the Auschwitz.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, the Auschwitz apology tour. But, you know, even Now, Musk is very conspiratorial. And where he is in 2026 now, the world's first trillionaire owning, you know, what used to be Twitter and the things he like kind of pumps into the attentional stream would have been considered incredibly marginal even in Trump's first term. So two things I think were true.

[Chris Rufo]

Right.

[Ezra Klein]

I think there are many ways which left went too far. And the thing the forces the left was worried were there are much closer to the center. Yes. There are parts of the alt right that are not significant today. Richard Spencer is not a significant figure. Nick Fuentes has a bigger audience than Richard Spencer ever did.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

And there is, I mean, when I'm on X and other places, the amount of just constantly and anti Semitism and anti Indian racism I see just happening in people's mentions is wild to me. And I mean, I don't think he'll win, but you look at Fishback, who's running for governor in Florida, it's sort of almost unimaginable to think of somebody like him being a figure in Republican Party politics who would be commanding the support of practically anybody. And I think the reason that people worry about him is they don't think he's going to win. But he seems to be doing very well among the young.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Right.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

And so I think you can hold your view, which I at least partially share, that there are many ways in which the left and the speech policing and the, you know, boundaries went too far. And also a lot of the people who were most hair on fire in that period had a point. And some of their more kind of wild predictions I always think about, like, if you had told me that that Trump was going to make RFK junior HHS Secretary and Tulsi Gabber DNI and

[Chris Rufo]

try to make the triumph of bipartisan

[Ezra Klein]

and try and try to make Matt Gaetz Attorney General, I would have thought that was like an unhinged, like, resistance substack take. And then it all happened. So it's like the fact you can have these things be true at the same time.

[Chris Rufo]

Yes. I think you're kind of understating, kind of understating the dynamic on one side. I mean, it wasn't just about speaking speech policing. After 2020, the left maintained a kind of apparatus of social annihilation. And I went through it myself. I had the ACLU subpoena me and harass me with a lawfare campaign that cost me a lot of money. I had the SPLC and the ADL put me on some sort of Hate list that was totally bogus, trying to destroy my reputation. And so I had people, you know, threats of violence against me that were very credible at the time. And so, you know, people trying to get, you know, going after my family, my kids. I mean, we shouldn't forget just how awful that period was and how insane that period was. And unfortunately, while I think that many of the institutions on the left have learned after having suffered some consequences for enabling, that the movements that they have sparked are in fact alive and well. And look, I think the difference that maybe you're not seeing is that the radical, nihilistic and violent left wing movements have the full support of the left's institutions. And what we're talking about is a radical, nihilistic movements on the right do not have any institutional support. And our bubble up in your Twitter comments, which again, don't agree, but is different in kind, not just in quantity. And in the case of someone like James Fishback, I think it's a great test. Fishback is very charismatic. I think we would all agree on that. I talked with your colleague Michelle Goldberg about this. But even with a kind of individual charisma, if he's like the groiper candidate for governor of Florida, which is again like kind of a crazy thing that is happening, I want to see the actual vote tally because that's going to show me where he is, where he stands with the actual conservative population, the conservative voter, the conservative movement as a whole. I suspect that he's going to get absolutely trounced. It happened with Vivek running against a guy, Casey Putsch in Ohio. He got blown out by, I don't know, 60, 70 points. And so by contrast, you look at something like the, the, the kind of trans ideological movement that I think is both kind of a lie, it's, it's grounded in, in a series of falsehoods, maintained this suppressive, threatening, censorious power in the kind of pre elon Twitter days and in the general kind of woke years. And then look, another uncomfortable fact. Per capita has committed more mass violence than any other group. And so I am willing to indulge in and think it's important to have a kind of criticism of, let's say, the elements of my own side. But I also think that if we were to just measure it out, to put it on a scale, it's looking a lot more like this assassination's attempt against President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the kind of security posture that's required for conservatives just to go on a college campus that's how I measure it. It's like I'm looking at it, I'm feeling it, I'm seeing it with my colleagues. After Charlie Kirk was killed, I called all the people, friends and colleagues in the business and I just was completely distraught for weeks. And again, while I don't support James Fishback for governor, again, I think that it's kind of an empty symbolism. Whereas on the other side it feels like, like these ideologies have the support of the institutions, they wielded power irresponsibly in the past and still have the kind of ultimate political threat, threat of violence that I know everybody in my

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

world,

[Chris Rufo]

you know, has seen, has experienced, has, has feared. And so, I mean, that grounds me, do you not see that?

[Ezra Klein]

Is that I don't have the same view of it. But let me hold as saying that your experience of it. I understand. Right. And as somebody who also, you know, sometimes deals with threats of violence and other things of that nature, I think the way this often looks to people on the left, particularly looks right now, is that when you say these nihilistic, I think you called them ideals, ideas are not held at high levels of the right. They're only supported institutionally. On the left. I see it the opposite way. Way, really. I see it the opposite way. And I'll explain why. I don't see the splc, the Southern Poverty Law center, as like a powerful, potent left wing actor. They're not really.

[Chris Rufo]

They could, 10 years ago, they could nuke you.

[Ezra Klein]

I'll go through my thing. ADL I don't even see is on the left, which is a different question, I understand, but I see the Trump administration as powerfully and potently extreme and willing to use the power of the federal government from, you know, deploying ICE and CPP agents to different cities, to directing the doj, who to investigate and go after to after Charlie Kirk's murder, trying to get people fired who are just sort of random people who had done shitty tweets. I do not see a world in which there is this, this huge separation between the extreme elements of the right and this administration. I keep hearing from people like you, right, who I think has talked about this, that there's a huge number of groipers working in House and Senate offices in Congress that, you know, Bronze Age pervert is one of the most popular people to read if you're a Trump staffer. And I see those things actually moving into things like national security strategies, you know, about the civilizational suicide of Europe. Now I recognize we're not going to agree on all this, right? This part, I'm not going to try to bridge the gap. What I will say is that the other thing I think people on the left see has been a sort of movement from 2016 to 2024, where it's almost unbelievable how far things have gone, right? Even Trump 1 to Trump 2 are very, very different beasts. And so all of a sudden, it doesn't look impossible to imagine that Fuentes and Carlson and Fishback are the future, not the fringe. I think a lesson that has been burned into many of us is that it is dangerous to dismiss something that seems to have a lot of energy around it as a fringe, because what is today's fringe is tomorrow's, maybe not center, but much more live and potent political force.

[Chris Rufo]

And would you say that you saw that happen on the left between 2014 and 2024?

[Ezra Klein]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

In part.

[Ezra Klein]

I think you guys are about to learn some lessons. We learned, yeah.

[Chris Rufo]

I mean, maybe so, but I would argue that actually the right has done a better job at managing it. And I think we'll see. And I hope I'm right, that with something like the Fishback campaign, I think of James Fishback as a human meaning. It's like amazing. He's like, if you take the memetic energy from that corner of the online discourse and turned it into a human being, it's like it would look and sound like James Fishback. But the reality is that once those ideas gain contact with the people, the culture, the institutions on the right, they're not going anywhere.

[Ezra Klein]

Let me try to frame this more in terms of. Let me try to frame this more in terms of arguments I've seen you make.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Making sure.

[Ezra Klein]

And tell me if I get a chain in this wrong, you tell me where I will. Right. I think you think you now have a problem with a racialist. Right. I think watching the takeover of conspiracies after Kirk's murder has been sobering or scary for a lot of people on the right. To watch people accusing Israel of it, to eventually see people accusing TurningPoint's USA of it, or some kind of plot from the people around him, I think has been for majority major figures on the right to be making those arguments has seemed to me to be a kind of shocking moment for a lot of you. And then I've watched you and others, you know, on X and elsewhere, like, look in your mentions and be like, oh, shit, there's a lot of racism here. Something's happening. So tell me which part of this you don't agree with.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, well, I mean, here's how I see it. And your general analysis is correct. So. So there is a racialist right, let's say I've been writing about this for a number of years, but I think a lot of it is something of an optical illusion where, and you see this on the, on, on let's say on the left, where a small group of people that is very loud online appears to represent a larger share of a political coalition or the general population than it really does. And so look, I don't want a racialist right that is like a clear position on my part. And I think to the extent that we have like anti Semitic conspiracy theories bubbling up from the digital sphere, it's a problem that we have to deal with untruth or a falsehood that should be called out for what it is. And what I think it is at heart is that. And I've talked to a lot of young right wing guys, so sometimes I'll have lunch or dinner when I'm in D.C. or elsewhere with younger guys and just hey, you know, kind of walk me through like what's happening for people. Like we're older now, you and I are middle aged now. So say, hey, walk me through this thinking and kind of non judgmental, just kind of help me understand what's happening with some of the more kind of radical or racialist young men. And this is the description that they give. They say, you know, these are guys who hit high school during COVID They kind of transitioned into an almost a purely digital life with all of the various rabbit holes you could get into. They came of age as a function of your kind of entering adulthood during the kind of George Floyd hysteria where their teachers at school, their media institutions, the government, everyone was saying, you're a young white man, you're the problem, you're the oppressor, you're evil, you should be denied opportunities because of your biology, because of your ancestry. And essentially that they were programmed by the kind of George Floyd hysteria into thinking racially. And instead of what I think is the proper and the correct response, which is to say we've got to move beyond this, we're going to fight this racialist thinking on the left, on the right, wherever it comes from, they essentially psychologically submitted to it, but then reversed the polarity. I don't think that's a good way to pursue it. I don't think on the kind of philosophical question it's right. I don't think that from the practical Political conception, it's fruitful, but in a certain way it's like, I get it, I understand it. Young people are kind of in a position of growing up and having a chip on your shoulder. I think it's extremely destructive. And what I see as the, the antidote to this, at least within my political coalition, is to be, you know, an older brother figure to say, hey, I could get why you think that. However, the actual path to success is this other way. So I, I, I don't think that, I don't think that this is like predetermined. I actually think that young people have, have, you know, their, their brain isn't still, their brain isn't locked in, in its ways. And so, so I think you want to bring people who are frustrated towards a better path. And I think that someone like Candace Owens, who's just driving people into a ditch, you have to kind of guide them away from that.

[Ezra Klein]

So I think first there's truth to that narrative. I do think that one of the things that happened over the past decade or so, and this is something I talk about in my first book, why we're Polarized, is there is a huge upsurge in telling people that the right way to understand life America is all through the lens of identity groups. And when you tell people to look at identity groups, they will form a more coherent sense of their own. And a line I have in that book is identity activates under threat.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

And so the more you tell people that their identity is a problem, the more they're going to begin to defend that identity and feel that identity and begin to self define around that identity. So I think all of that happened

[Chris Rufo]

and I think that you would also agree perhaps that the institutions, the legal system, the prevailing narrative at universities, corporations, et cetera, was explicitly anti white for a number of years. That for these young people were formative.

[Ezra Klein]

I think it's sometimes moved into being anti white. I would not say it was all expensive.

[Chris Rufo]

I did hundreds of reports on this from institutions.

[Ezra Klein]

I won't say there was banks, corporations,

[Chris Rufo]

universities, white man bad. If you wanted to just put it into kindergarten language, white man bad. And that was the dominant position.

[Ezra Klein]

I remember telling people, I remember telling people around me that this thing where people are putting out like, like papers on what are the negative traits of whiteness was a disaster.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Right.

[Ezra Klein]

So I don't necessarily disagree with that.

[Chris Rufo]

I think there's truth to it and, and legally affirmative action DEI was institutional government backed discrimination against one racial group.

[Ezra Klein]

So the thing that I am interested in, though here is that you're now in power and a lot you personally,

[Chris Rufo]

I live on a farm in Washington state.

[Ezra Klein]

And your executive orders get passed, the whole thing. And, and these things can all go in better or worse directions. These are all long standing energies in American life. The sort of argument I'm going to make to be cards on the table about what I'm doing, please, is that I think the empirical and epistemological structures on the right and the habits they took on in order to win are playing with passions that are very dangerous. I'll give a good example of this. Sure, you can believe what you want. About whether or not the immigration of Haitians into Springfield, Ohio was good or bad. The people that city had mixed views on it. I mean, the mayor and others were very pro and it had been good for the economy and Springfield had been in a period of decline. And then you had a large Haitian influx. And then you get into this thing that happened in 2024 about Haitians eating cats and dogs, where there's a Facebook post and the right, all the way up to Donald Trump in one of the debates begins adopting it. You sort of go on a quest to try to figure out if it's true and you know, to shorthand a long story. Maybe in Dayton, Ohio, there was somebody who wasn't Haitian, correct. Who maybe somebody thought, but other people didn't think, had eaten a cat.

[Chris Rufo]

What somebody and other people is quite important.

[Ezra Klein]

People can read your piece. They can read the drop site news article. I'm not going to convince you, but

[Chris Rufo]

the drop site news article, they went out to debunk my story and they ended up finding another independent corroborating witness.

[Ezra Klein]

It's not how I read it, not how they read it, but I on some level am not even focused on that. What I'm saying is that when you get very into moves like we are going to accuse broad communities of eating cats and dogs, which I think we can all agree Haitians are not in general eating cats and dogs, you are going to unleash forms of anger and hatred and fear that are not controllable. And I think one of the mistakes the right has made, and frankly people like you have made, is thinking these passions can then be corralled. Again, this idea that you can find these really high passion mimetic containers that then you say, well, the real issue here is just we want to have a conversation about how much is the appropriate level of Haitian immigration into Springfield, Ohio, but that the way you get people to care about It JD Vance said this very explicitly, is that, well, people really care about the cats and dogs. The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes if I have to. But it wasn't just a meme. Create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people. Then that's what I'm gonna do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast. Which, again, I think my view is that there's never been any hard evidence of that happening in the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio. Like, nobody has substantiated that and nor have you.

[Chris Rufo]

Correct. Yeah, I haven't made. And in fact, I've said, look, there's no evidence of this particular claim. We should be more careful.

[Ezra Klein]

And so there's been a kind of consistent, this idea that you could unleash really, I think, quite terrible passions and then hold it to a level that is controllable. And what you're seeing with Candace Owens, what you're seeing with the new Tucker Carlson, or the old Tucker Carlson, however we want to call it, what you're seeing with Nick Fuentes and the rise of Nick Fuentes, who we've not really talked about, but I think is a necessary figure of thinking in the way we think about this, is that there wasn't a way to stop that move. Like, once people began to move in that direction and there weren't sort of institutions that were strong enough and respected enough to stop it. That the place it's going on the right. When you talk about it becoming a third world click farm is quite dangerous and quite grim. And now I will let you say everything you think.

[Chris Rufo]

Oh, man. All right, where do I start?

[Ezra Klein]

A couple huge. I gave you a lot, though.

[Chris Rufo]

A couple huge, huge problems. I mean, one is that, you know, and. And I'm doing reporting in California right now that has. That has stories that have a similar kind of, let's say, shock value. For example, we did a story on migrants from Mexico and Honduras who come to San Francisco and get free sex change surgeries from the California State medical system. This is a kind of explosive story that is true. That represents, I think, a lot of these underlying questions about. About homelessness policy, about immigration, et cetera. Look, if it's true, it's fair game. And there's a way to handle these stories in a responsible way that you ensure the facts, that you present it fairly, and that you use it as a method of changing public opinion. That's how it's supposed to work. And so I think that the idea that there are taboos that cannot be crossed because they will unleash these, these kind of unspecified or vague dangerous passions, I think is.

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[Chris Rufo]

Is. Is a problem in, in two regards. One is that if you're, if you're going for truth seeking, if you're going. If you're playing a kind of responsible rhetorical game, no, I don't think that these questions are out of bounds at all. But second, the predictions have always been, you know, that it's going to unleash some kind of, of horrible nativist violent sentiment, et cetera. But the only example of an ideological driven assassination that we've talked about today is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This kind of prophecy of political violence really comes from the institutional ideologies on the left, not the institutional ideologies on the right. And I think that fact has been hammered home over and over and over these last few years and look like those of us on the right who are in this business probably have to have a little bit more firmness to say, no, the facts are not on your side in this argument.

[Ezra Klein]

So let me be more specific about what I'm saying because I'm not making a vague prophecy of political violence and I'm also not saying that there are these taboos you shouldn't touch. I think where I'm disagreeing is to say that there actually isn't truth seeking here. There isn't enough truth in these arguments. There's too much of an attraction.

[Chris Rufo]

Arguments.

[Ezra Klein]

I mean, arguments like the Haitian cats and dogs. We'll talk about others in a second, which is fine.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

And that the thing I'm worried about has arrived. Right. I'm not talking about an unspecified future in which I am concerned the right will increasingly be taken over by conspiratorial, racist, misogynistic elements. I'm looking at a world where Nick Fuentes is a major figure on the American right.

[Chris Rufo]

Well, you guys are doing a great job at raising his profile.

[Ezra Klein]

Tucker Carlson is the guy who raised

[Chris Rufo]

his profile, which I think was a mistake.

[Ezra Klein]

I think it is legitimate to say Tucker is the biggest figure in right wing media and he brought on Nick Fuentes because. And gave him such a gentle, kind interview. And Tucker, here's one thing I don't underestimate with Tucker. He's fucking good. He's a good interviewer. He has incredible talent as a media figure. If you wanted to cut that guy apart, he could have, as he did to Mike Huckabee when he wanted to do that or to Ted Cruz when he wanted to do that.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of thing of the. Those who bless the government of Israel. Those who bless Israel is what it says, doesn't say the government of. It says the nation of Israel. So that's in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that. Where is that? I. I can find it to you. I, I don't have the, the scripture

[Chris Rufo]

off the tip of my.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

You pull out the phone and use the. It's in Genesis. But. So you're quoting a, A Bible phrase. You don't have context for it. You don't know where in the Bible it is. But that's like your theology. I'm confused.

[Ezra Klein]

And he didn't. Because. Because I think Tucker understands quite well where the passions are and where the energy is. And when I hear you, sometimes I hear you being more concerned about this. You're a little chiller in this, and I recognize you're talking in a New York Times podcast studio. But what I'm saying is I actually don't think the balance is right. That I think for some time people have been, you know, and Donald Trump himself is like the king of this. There's a view to, you know, it's the old take him seriously, not literally.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

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[Chris Rufo]

That.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, the thing that is being said maybe doesn't. Hold on.

[Chris Rufo]

I'm hoping that you can give me a little bit more, though, because I'm saying. Well, what are you actually saying?

[Ezra Klein]

All right, so I'll give you a little bit more.

[Chris Rufo]

Nick Fuentes was on a podcast. I mean, are you saying Nick Fuentes

[Ezra Klein]

is not a big figure now and is not influential among young people on the radio? Right. Is that really. Would you really make that argument?

[Chris Rufo]

No, I would make a slightly different argument. I think that Nick Fuentes is not a fundamentally political figure. He's a hyperreal figure of spectacle. That, again, is. You can read those questions. You can read my writings on this exact question. I think he's a bad influence. What I've cautioned people on the right about that genre of personality is that when someone goes on a video and says, I love Hitler, obviously we don't love Hitler. Neither of us are fans of Hitler. But you should resist the temptation to be scandalized and shocked and lose your capacity to reason and perceive it correctly. Because what this is, it is a hyperreal spectacle optimized for digital algorithms to harvest. Harvest attention and to harvest Clicks. It's not actually political in that sense. It's not optimized towards any political outcomes. I just reject this idea that, you know, some dumb kid that has, you know, hijacked the algorithm with like, superficial ideological spectacle is somehow there, there therefore a symbolic of where people, where the right is going as a whole.

[Ezra Klein]

I, I think, I think hyperreal is doing work in this argument that is not actually connected to what, what hyperreal means. I can imagine somebody sitting in front of me, even sitting in front of me here in 2015, and us. Younger, handsomer.

[Chris Rufo]

Ah, yes, yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

And you tell me this about Donald Trump.

[Chris Rufo]

Tell me.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Tell you what?

[Ezra Klein]

That. Listen, you all are being easily provoked. You're looking at a hyperreal, algorithmically oriented attentional spectacle and treating it like it's a serious political force. And then maybe if I had been wiser about what Donald Trump represented and the way in which the hyper real and the real were going to converge in the life that we actually lead here, I would have said no. Attention is the fundamental currency of modern American politics.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

Things that are. We have actually fewer defenses against things that feel fundamentally ridiculous, things that are. This is an era of the trickster spirit, not the earnest energies. And many people like me. I mean, you may remember this Huffington Post initially would only cover Donald Trump's campaign in its celebrity and entertainment news section.

[Chris Rufo]

Is that right? I don't remember that because he was

[Ezra Klein]

a ridiculous hyperreal spectacle. And to treat it as a serious thing would have been absurd. I think many of us were perfectly willing to say Nick Von Dase is a marginal absurdist figure. And then it became, became clear in the Tucker Carlson moment and given where Tucker has gone, that there's like a conveyor belt of these ideas and they go from the fringe to the far right to the slightly less far right to Donald Trump.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, well, here's where I would disagree. And you actually have a real world test, right? These kind of ideological media figures are playing a very different game than Donald Trump was playing. And you know that because Donald Trump actually played the game he announced for president and he against the odds, against many of the institutions, he won. And so you have to say, yeah, Trump also uses media, but that's like, you know, that's a superficial comparison. You have to say, what is the actual goal? And the goal for like the streamers is not to pass legislation, it's not to win elections, it's not to cobble together a majority. But it's, in fact, it's kind of a narcissistic endeavor to get personal attention. And so, but that's the end point. There's no actual bridge that that can go over. And look, that's.

[Ezra Klein]

Can't it change minds? Can't it change people's politics?

[Chris Rufo]

It could change minds, but like, you know, not to the extent that you think, because people look at it more as a form of entertainment, soap opera, personality drama than an actual viable political move. And so, yeah, I think that you're kind of conflating the media spectacle with the fundamental political arena. And I think that boundary is not as permeable as you're suggesting. And in fact, to make that boundary more explicit is better in my view, for my own kind of political desire, but also better for the country. And so when I see, you know, when I see the kind of online right and the, and the New York Times both doing like puff pieces on the latest like kind of right wing figure, right, it was David Duke and then it was Richard Spencer and now it's Nick Fuentes. This is a stock character in American discourse. And I just refuse to take the bait.

[Ezra Klein]

I don't think David Duke is a marginal figure. I mean, I will say this.

[Chris Rufo]

You don't think David Duke is a marginal figure.

[Ezra Klein]

I mean, I think John Gans, who's a sort of, he's a great substack and is a sort of interesting history based theorist of American politics, he's got this book about the 90s called when the Clock Broke, I believe, and I've had him on to talk about the book and the argument he would make about David Duke, about a bunch of figures who rose in that period, Patrick Buchanan, Samuel Francis, is that if you look at what they were figuring out about politics, I mean, David Duke, by the way, we should note, ran for office. He did not come that far from winning for Louisiana governor. Yeah, in the 90s and you know, there was a style of politics that they got kind of quite good at figuring out. And Ganz's view, and I agree with this view, is that much of what the populist right is today is built on that, often quite explicitly, with Samuel Francis and others. Okay, make your case.

[Chris Rufo]

Absolutely not. I mean, and look for those of us who are, look, I'm in the institutional right. I know the people, I know the personalities, I know the organizations. That figure is a pain in the ass. Nobody wants it, nobody likes it, nobody believes in it. And in fact, that figure, as we found out recently with the revelations about the Southern Poverty Law center, is not only a useful tool for institutions on the Left, but in many cases was actually secretly funded by the kind of left wing civil rights outfit known as the splc, which we were talking about David Duke, not David Duke in particular, who knows. But I'm saying that you're saying David

[Ezra Klein]

Duke is maybe a left wing plant.

[Chris Rufo]

Yes, 100%.

[Ezra Klein]

I think that's ridiculous.

[Chris Rufo]

I'm not saying that in the sense of totally, wholly created, but certainly used by right. The whole idea was this kind of smear effect where, where the media would go out and say this bad person supports your campaign and then you'd have to disavow and go through this whole kind of routine.

[Ezra Klein]

But the point I'm kind of interested in here is, I mean my view, and I think this is a fairly wide held view is my worry is that the institutional right is getting steamrolled.

[Chris Rufo]

Boom.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

Well, one, in many cases, in order to survive, it is, is dramatically changing what it is. Like the Heritage Foundation.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

In other cases by Donald Trump. Donald Trump was not the candidate of the institutional right. The institutional right had its way. Jeb Bush would have been the nominee. I mean, the idea that the institutional right has been racking up victory after victory is ridiculous. I mean, the Republicans all speaker after speaker after speaker until they got one who was more like properly compliant.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

The institutional right has not had a strong winning record. And, and again, part of my argument here is that I think this is because it, it, it keeps thinking it can maybe control these forces and it can't.

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[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

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[Chris Rufo]

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[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

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[Chris Rufo]

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[Chris Rufo]

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[Ezra Klein]

variable supplies last not available on third party ordering platforms. Tax extra. You asked me earlier to sort of be more specific on a story. So I want to talk about a story you did in November. You wrote a piece with the title, the largest funder of Al Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer. Tell me what the piece was about.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure. So this was a feature investigation that we did in Minnesota looking into organized Somali fraud. And so we spent a number of month on a number of months on this piece. We went out to Minnesota, we reviewed court documents, we interviewed law enforcement, both, you know, on the record, on background. And then our story, and this had been kind of bubbling up in local press and bits and pieces, was that in fact, Somali fraudsters were exploiting Minnesota and federal welfare programs, autism programs, daycare programs, Medicaid program programs, and looting billions of dollars from American taxpayers. And this was the story that really blew open the Somali fraud story on the national stage. And then since then, as sometimes happens when you report on an explosive story, it kind of ricocheted into an entire movement really looking at large scale fraud in American public institutions.

[Ezra Klein]

So there's a couple pieces of this. So as you note, the fraud had been, you know, reported elsewhere at the start tribute. And it had been in national abuse. Yeah, there are bits and pieces. There was prosecutions. Right. Which is where a lot of the information came from. That began in 2022 under the Biden administration. The big sort of move you made in this was to say this is financing foreign terrorism. What was that argument?

[Chris Rufo]

Sure. I mean, the argument is pretty simple. And the mechanics of it are this. So we have billions of dollars being stolen by Somali fraudsters in Minnesota. We then have huge amounts of money being transported out of Minneapolis airport, Seattle airport, in cash, in actual physical currency, in suitcases that goes to Mogadishu. And then when in Mogadishu, it is distributed through various parts of the country through what is called the hawala network.

[Ezra Klein]

Network.

[Chris Rufo]

Hawala network is the name for kind of informal cash based, clan based financial institutions. They don't have a strong formal banking system in Somalia. It's a rough part of the world. And so they have these couriers that move money in cash and all kinds of think tanks, military, US Government, Department of Justice. Republicans and Democrats have essentially made the case that Al Shabaab is taking a cut of hawala financing. And so when we talked with federal law enforcement agents and investigators who have been working on this case, they told us that the flow of funds was this from the taxpayer out of the airport in suitcases to the hawala networks in Somalia, and therefore to the Al Shabaab terror networks taking their cut. Essentially, we have visa that takes 3% of your credit card transaction in parts of Somalia. Al Shabaab takes a cut. Not exactly sure how much that is. And federal investigators say, hey, once it exits the country into the hawala system, you can't claw that money back. There are no written receipts or banking transactions. But the scale of that money that was remittances from fraud was so enormous that over time we're talking about huge sums of money.

[Ezra Klein]

So I want to take a beat on whether or not this turned be out to, to, to be true. So the key named source in your story was a retired terrorism investigator named Glenn Kearns. He later came out, claimed that he was misquoted. He said later the story was bullshit and that he did no on the ground investigating in Minnesota. The two top prosecutors of the fraud of Minnesota have said the perpetrators are motivated by greed. There's no evidence of, of terrorist financing. Do you, do you still stand by that?

[Chris Rufo]

Of course I do. Yeah. And a couple things. So the Glenn Kearns detective is very odd. We have him on the record. We have, you know, a, of his interview. I'm not sure what happened. My suspicion is that when this story blew up into a huge national story, he got spooked or scared. But the paper in Minneapolis tried to go through our piece with a kind of criticism. Couldn't lay a glove on it. Didn't debunk or even really contradict any of our points. You had one source who, who knows, don't know his personal circumstances, but you

[Ezra Klein]

know, he was the only named source.

[Chris Rufo]

He was, I don't think he was the only name source in the piece.

[Ezra Klein]

He was the only name source making this terrorism argument.

[Chris Rufo]

Well, incorrect. So we had multiple, multiple high level federal officials who confirmed to us the flow of funds. We substantiated it with contextual reporting from foundation for Defensive Democracies, from the United States Military Academy, from the Department of Just Justice. We were saying simply, logically, if we know from a variety of sources that Al Shabaab is skimming off the hawala network. And we know from a variety of sources that money is moving through that network from fraud committed in the United States. It's a logical syllogism, right? A, B, C. And so we know that this to be true. And I think that idea that because they weren't motivated by terrorism is not something we alleged and is essentially irrelevant. The facts as they played out were that the Al Shabaab terror network benefits from fraud in the United States that has passed through their financial system.

[Ezra Klein]

Your piece is actually quite careful, Right? I've read the piece. I've read it carefully. And you're right. You don't allege that the point of this is to fund terrorists. Then when you sort of promote the piece, your tweet is, somalis are stealing billions of dollars from American taxpayers and sending cash to terrorists back, back home. It's time for at real Donald Trump to revoke temporary protected status for all Somali nationals in the United States. It's time for them to go home. And I have, I think, two or three issues here.

[Chris Rufo]

Two or three. All right, let's go there one by one.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, we'll do them. We'll do them. I'll. I'll give them to you all. You have a limited number of people, right, committing crimes. They're being prosecuted. Right. The prosecutions begin under Biden. This was not like a swept under the rug thing. You guys did not come up with this. You didn't find it yourself. And they were stealing a lot of money. I mean, that part is true. The sending cash tariffs back home, as you say, you have a more complicated

[Chris Rufo]

link to the peace. And then you could, like your rhetorical.

[Ezra Klein]

And then, and then, and then none of the people, as far as I could tell, were doing this were under temporary protected status, which is only about 750 people. Right? So there's this move to say it's not just like some criminals, it's Somalis, and it's not just some money is being skimmed because of a weak banking sector. It's. They're funding terrorism. And then it's to get Donald Trump to deport people who are unrelated to the crime.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, so a couple points on that, on that particular argument. So the point of the, the piece, broadly, it raises the question of, of immigration, cultural compatibility. And if you talk to people with an expert in Somali culture, as we did, and the history of Somalia, as we did, you get the clear sense that in Somalia, there is a kind of Kinship and clan based culture that is prevalent for a variety of historical and social reasons. And because there has been a weak central government, contested central government in Somalia in the modern period, there is a feeling that exploiting the central government is permissible. And I think the underlying point, which is very uncomfortable, not just for people who are small l liberals, but even for many conservatives, is that actually all national cultures are not equal. And in fact, because immigration is a group based or national border based system, you have to be prudent in what, which nations of origin you prioritize in immigration. And so I think the, the, the record on Somalis in the United States and elsewhere on many of those metrics is not good. You have low levels of education, high levels of welfare dependency, and you have these cultural incompatibilities, let's say. And so again, in a prudent national interest based immigration policy, I would put Somalis down lower on the list. And I think that's perfectly defensible.

[Ezra Klein]

I don't have a problem saying that American immigration policy should solve our, should serve our interests.

[SoFi Advertiser]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

Should not just be omnidirectional. What I am saying is that to take a crime committed by a limited number of people, then say this is something about an entire group of people and you should deport these unrelated people, that is a bad thing to do. And to yoke this sort of larger argument you're making to this much more kind of tendentious, well, some of the money that goes because of this fucked up system back in Somalia can get taken by Al Shabaab to finish the thought and then I'll let you take it where you want to take it. That's part of this larger, larger point I'm trying to make to you, which is that you are not putting like passion in service of reason. You're, you're unleashing things here that are like first gonna really harm people who did nothing wrong. Right. These Somali temporary protected studies. I mean many, as you say, Somalia is a tough place. Many people flee it for completely reasonable reasons. And we, you know, honor them for doing so and trying to make a better life for them and their families. Like they did not nothing wrong. I think you actually do believe from many things you've written in like the primacy of thinking about the individual. If you want to say that our immigration policy should not favor Somalis, fine, fair enough.

[Chris Rufo]

But, but our immigration, the temporary protected status is, is based on group designations and in fact Somalis, Haitians.

[Ezra Klein]

But the people you're going did not do this crime. Right, we agree on that part, right?

[Chris Rufo]

Hold on. Well, let, let me take it, let me take it in pieces. So a couple kind of factual problems here. You said a limited number of people committed these camps. I'm actually not sure that that's true. And I'll, and I'll explain it why. I believe that if you look at the actual schemes committed by Somalis, for example, for autism Services, you had members of the Somali community opening up fake clinics with fake patients that were receiving, you know, kind of fake treatment. And what we're looking at is actually a non insignificant number of people that were involved or had knowledge of these schemes as they were unfolding. Because you're about talking, talking about thousands of patients, larger family sizes and secondarily, prosecutors told us over and over and over, we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg. We don't have the prosecutors, we don't have the investigators. We don't have the manpower to actually unravel all of these fraud schemes. So let's just say the median estimate, kind of responsible estimate is $5 billion. Well, they've only uncovered fraud schemes and maybe $300 million. And so that would indicate that actually the vast majority of the schemes were simply kind of vanishing through your fingers. And so you're actually getting what I believe is, because also the Somali community is very concentrated, geographically, tightly integrated in kinship networks. I actually think you're getting the complicity or knowledge of actually a nation, non insignificant part of this community are most Somalis. And you don't have that. I, I think it's just, it's just logical and I think that we can make this, we can make this, we can make the argument with a high degree of certainty based on the court documents, based on the total of fraud committed and based on how these things are structured. And then look, this is massive mass fraud committed in Minnesota, committed now in other states that we're uncovering. And you know, one, one west coast police detective who has been looking into this said, you know, I've been, I've been looking into this for 30 years. And organized fraud rings in his experience are, are committed to a massively disproportionate amount by foreign nationals and groups of, you know, and groups of originating from migrant groups. So this is a fact. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable.

[Ezra Klein]

I didn't, I didn't argue, I didn't argue with it. And so the question, I'm not, I've not done my own reporting on this.

[Chris Rufo]

But, but hold on. But the question then is, how do we respond to that politically? And so I actually think, well, I

[Ezra Klein]

want to talk about how it got responded to politically. So Donald Trump did what you wanted him to do. He, um, he put up a true social post on Thanksgiving Day, which you called iconic.

[Chris Rufo]

Is that right?

[Ezra Klein]

You. You know this. You called it iconic? Um, did I? In which he says, you sure did.

[Chris Rufo]

All right, let's hear it.

[Ezra Klein]

In which he says, refresh. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for prey as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses, hoping against hope that they will be left alone. But. But then it kind of moves on from there. So then Nick Shirley, right wing influencer, launches his own investigation of Somali fraud in Minnesota. He starts going to daycares and knocking on them and being like, hey, is there, are there kids here? And these women come out and they don't speak English and they're, like, looking at him. Strangely, this gets, I think, like 130 million views across platforms. It goes crazily viral. But I want to play this clip. You did this podcast conversation with Richard Hanania where you guys were talking about this. And I think, I think what you say is interesting.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure. If you look at the Nick Shirley video and you really dig into it, there are two things happening. Okay. On the surface, he is raising. He's shining a spotlight on something that is very real, that is a kind of endemic form of corruption, and he's bringing it to life through kind of Zoomer style, YouTube, kind of gonzo video production. Okay. It draws attention to a real issue. It's driving politics in the right direction. And, and it's, I think, overall beneficial. Granted, your, your critique of what's happening under the surface is also true. I mean, I couldn't publish the conclusion. You know, Nick Shirley gets in there, sees a building as empty, and then assumes, oh, they're committing $70 million of fraud or whatever. Whatever. As a journalist, as someone who has to go through fact checking, legal review, kind of peer scrutiny, I kind of clam up and I'm like, oh, wow, man, you're going to about to get sued. Because what you're saying is just not defensible as, as a. As a journalistic process.

[Ezra Klein]

So the reason I found that to be such an interesting quote is that I feel like both sides of what we're talking about are in there. You know, this video is not strong, let's put it that way, that there's a lot. You, you can't go and be like, show me your kids. And when they don't show the kids, be like, this is a fraud. You don't have any. On the other hand, you have this contrary feeling that, well, it may not be true, but it puts attention towards something real. It's in line with where I want politics to go. It does become a huge issue. We'll talk about what it leads to and I can feel this tension. So I mean, how do you balance that?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, it's a free country. Everyone has a First Amendment right. And so therefore I can't say I don't like this for these reasons, therefore you shouldn't be able to do it. But I think this is just another instance, an example of the right being under institutionalized. And so what I would say is that an ideal, say outcome or method would be to take someone that has charisma, that has courage, that has curiosity, someone like Nick Shirley, and then integrate that person into an institution, to put up those guardrails, to refine and really improve the product itself and then to use that attention toward productive ends. And so that would be like the ideal. That's the kind of thing that I think would be good. But the reality is that on the right, the media is so fragmented and the media institutions are not that strong, not that well developed, and in many cases, you know, highly risk averse for obvious reasons. And therefore there's an entire territory that is ceded to people. I don't even know if Nick Shirley is right wing. I'm not sure I would even categorize him as that. I think the story landed in that particular manner. But you have people independent. He's not left wing, let's say citizen journalists, I think that was the phrase for a while. There was great hope. And the citizen journal journalist, you know, love citizens, love journalists. Citizen journalist is, is one of those things. Like it sounds good in theory, but in practice there are some real limitations. And so it is what it is. What are you going to do about it? You know, this is the kind of thing where as an individual my only reaction is to say you can put out a kind of remedy suggestion for remedy, but it's not within my direction.

[Ezra Klein]

Sure thing. I'm asking not as an individual, but as an, an activist and an analyst and somebody influential in the administration that responds to these stories, yours his, by deploying a giant ice and border patrol deployment to Minnesota. That deployment ultimately, and the fighting around it leaves Renee Good and Alex Peretti dead. Minneapolis calculated the economic impact of the raids at at least around $700 million. Joe Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota who was leading the fraud investigations, he was quoted quite a bit in your original piece. He resigns in anger after Trump's Department of Justice demands his office investigate Renee Goode's wife. So I mean to me, I look at all this and I say like, that wasn't beneficial. This was catastrophic. I mean it harmed people's lives, it led to people dying, it was bad for the Minnesota economy, it led to the fraud stuff getting completely sidelined and the person who was pushing it resigning that, that this did not go in a good direction in part because it wasn't based on good information. But like now, like looking back at the whole thing, do you disagree with that?

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah, I would disagree. So, so, so, well, I would agree with certain points, but I would refine them and disagree with others.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

So

[Chris Rufo]

I mean the fraud work is continuing. The Vice President is now chairing an anti fraud task force. They've significantly increased the manpower to look into fraud fraud. That said, it was a bad strategic decision to deploy force Customs and Border Patrol ICE agents with that kind of force posture. It's a no win situation and I was advising against it from even the previous summer. And so in, in that particular case, I would say it was ill advised. And I think that finally the administration has learned that they reshuffled dhs, they reshuffled Customs and Border Patrol. And if you want to create deportations at scale of illegal immigrants, you have to do so in what I've kind of called an invisible manner, an impersonal manner. You have to change banking regulations, financial transfers, remittance fees, you know, employment, employment verification to incentivize self deportation. Because the idea that you could deport people by simply like sending in, you know, armored cars with ICE agents on the side is delusional. It's never going to happen. I think there's part of the right that wants that kind of macho imagery. But if you look at the underlying substantive policy that you want to enforce act, I think it's detrimental. And in fact the, the situation in Minneapolis again, you know, in that sense was, did not achieve the stated objective for reasons that, that I, I and others had, had predicted.

[Ezra Klein]

Let me pick up on the, the

[Chris Rufo]

front and to me it's also, it, it's annoying to me personally because we, I, I think fraud, huge winning issue. No one wants fraud. It's a huge problem in the country. If you had, if you could just Focus on that. You could rally not only Republicans who are traditionally kind of, you know, small government, but you could also bring into the coalition moderate Democrats who want good governance. And so to me personally, I found it very, you know, very, very upsetting because it's like, hey, we have this winning issue. Focus on the issue, execute the policy at scale, Save the taxpayers money. You know, you're giving someone a nicely wrapped gift and you just wish that they would take it. In this case, it didn't happen that way.

[Ezra Klein]

It feels to me like the fraud problem for you all is bigger than this. According to a Times analysis, across two terms, Trump has granted clemency to more than 70 allies, donors and others convicted in fraud cases, including Philip esformis, who stole $1.3 billion from Medicare and Medicaid in a fraud fraudulent billing scheme. It was the FBI's largest ever criminal health care fraud case against individuals. Trump commuted his 20 year prison term.

[Chris Rufo]

You're not going to get me to defend it. I would, in fact, but I don't

[Ezra Klein]

see you really attacking it either.

[Chris Rufo]

I'll attack it right now.

[Ezra Klein]

Okay.

[Chris Rufo]

Shouldn't have done that. And in fact, you know, if, if, if these people were convicted of fraud at that scale, 20 years seems like a light prison sentence. I would double it personally. And so, yeah, this, this is the push I'm making.

[Ezra Klein]

And I recognize you're not going to defend this, but there is this movement on the right right now to focus on fraud. You've been very much leading this. Meanwhile, I look at Trump and he's gutted the machinery of anti fraud enforcement all across the federal government. He gutted it at the irs. There's a tremendous amount of fraud in tax returns, we all know that. And huge amounts of money are being stolen under those terms because now you, the audit capacity has gone way down. He gutted inspectors general across the federal government. The people seeing what is happening inside these organizations. He destroyed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which did a lot of anti fraud work.

[Chris Rufo]

Debatable.

[Ezra Klein]

I recognize we would debate it, but what I don't think is debatable is that Trump and this administration have sort of systematically gone across the federal government and taken apart parts of the government that are supposed to watch if the government itself itself is committing fraud and if taxpayers and others are. I look at the country right now and I see Donald Trump has like you like using piracy around the Somalis. I think of the Trump and the Trump family as pirates. I think that they are looting the country for their benefit. I think that that's what the Qatari plane is. I think that's what the crypto investments are. I think that's how Trump and his family have increased their net worth by billions of dollars. And I'm not saying you support it, but I don't understand how you think you're going to have a right that is doing good governance and that is taking these things institutionally seriously and have that be what is happening at the very top.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure. And let's take pardons as the most concrete example. Yes, I agree. I think you and I would agree, and I'm political, but in a sense not partisan in that way. I'm not going to reflexively defend every decision by someone in my camp or the President of the United States. And, and in fact, a lot of those pardons, ill advised, shouldn't have done it. And because in the reporting that I've read, a number of those individuals had also been putting money into various lobbies and various attempts to influence and various, you know, campaign funds or committee funds or however the finances work. You create a perception of corruption that is not good and does in some ways undercut the good work of combating systematic social service fraud as a whole. But from my point of view, and how I have to look at it is okay, you live in an imperfect world. You don't have ultimate control. My influence is great on the things I care about, on dei, on higher education, defunding npr, whatever, like, go down

[Ezra Klein]

the list of, you've been very influential.

[Chris Rufo]

But the, the, the, the kind of, the implicit premise of your criticism, which again, I take seriously and I think it's a fair criticism, is, oh, therefore, you know, you, you, you should give up, you should turn against the good work that's being done. It's kind of canceled out or invalidated because of something that's happening over here. And my personal policy is where there's, where there's necessary criticism, I'll create, I'll give the criticism, criticism, but I'm not going to stop to work in that little sphere of influence that I have to do good. And so, you know, I'm kind of walking the line. Right. Where I will issue the criticism as necessary. And if that reduces my influence in a certain regard, I'm willing to accept it. And while I would certainly, you know, speak out against, I think the crypto thing was, was, was just, you know, and is ongoing. It's ongoing. Yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah. Their crypto plays are ongoing. World Liberty and all this stuff is ongoing.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Sure.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah. And, and, and, and at the end of the day when I, you know, when I sit down in my office, you know, at 7:30am every morning, I'm like, all right, how can we win? How can we move the ball forward? How can we do good policy? And ultimately, at the end of the day, that's all that's within my control. And, and that's the, that's the attitude that I bring to the fight.

[Ezra Klein]

I think you underestimate yourself. The, the point I'm making is.

[Chris Rufo]

Explain it to me.

[Ezra Klein]

I will. The point I'm making is actually a little bit even larger than you. Look. One reason I have you here for this conversation is I think you're very, very good at what you do. I think you're probably the most successful activist, certainly right wing activist of this era.

[Chris Rufo]

But maybe overall you're saying, huh, Maybe overall, maybe left and right in general.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Maybe.

[Ezra Klein]

Maybe right.

[Chris Rufo]

I'll take it.

[Ezra Klein]

And look, you and I are not going to agree on a million things, right? My point is not to convert you to my politics. I'm not going to do that.

[Chris Rufo]

You should try. I mean, why not? I'm trying to convert you.

[Ezra Klein]

Listen, we're, we talk, but I think that the right's inability to hold itself to certain epistemological or institutional standards, standards of, let's not call it neutrality, let's call it impartiality at the institutional level, at the federal government level, what the right is accepting that Donald Trump is doing is insane. And my view.

[Chris Rufo]

Okay.

[Ezra Klein]

And the epistemological standards and Nick Shirley stuff is. And some of your things, in my view, which go again, I think you're careful in like the, the, the, the body and then not always in the promotion and the weaponization of

[Chris Rufo]

being careful in the.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

I think you are.

[Chris Rufo]

That are defensible. But I think I take the rhetorical flourish too far.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Is that.

[Ezra Klein]

And then beyond you, I think there's a generalized view that we need to unleash these passions. There's been too much that has been unsayable and we need to make sure we can say it all again. And the result of this is like a, like a hydraulic process. Not like some future result, but a current result where when I look at the Spotify rankings, the right of center figures on the top have become highly conspiratorial. And you know, they're figures like Fuentes Rising and we need a strong right in this country.

[Chris Rufo]

I would. So I'd ask you a question then. Has the New York Times editorial line right. The editorial line, has it moved more in my direction since 2020 or have I moved more in its direction since 2020?

[Ezra Klein]

I'm not sure. The way you have moved since 2020,

[Chris Rufo]

I haven't moved at all.

[Ezra Klein]

Okay.

[Chris Rufo]

So if I'm the baseline.

[Ezra Klein]

So I think you're saying it's moved in your direction.

[Right-wing Commentator/Guest]

Of course.

[Ezra Klein]

Okay.

[Chris Rufo]

You look at the big piece on dei, you know, you had editorialists saying that I was some sort of villain on dei.

[Ezra Klein]

Let's agree, let's agree.

[Chris Rufo]

One moves, moves back.

[Ezra Klein]

Let's agree you've won some fights.

[Chris Rufo]

Yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

I am saying that they're like the right, in my view. Right. As somebody who I think actually has a good record of criticizing my own right, I pushed Joe Biden to, you know, when that was like a much more dangerous thing for me to do. Agreed. I wrote Abundance, which is entirely critique of democratic governance. And where the right has gone, I think is not going to work. And what's interesting to me about you right now is I'll watch your show and I can see you and your co host wrestling with these questions.

[Chris Rufo]

Sure.

[Ezra Klein]

Right. I don't think you're comfortable. But ultimately there's like two problems that I see the right having that it really does not know how to solve. One problem is its attentional sphere.

[Chris Rufo]

Yes.

[Ezra Klein]

Is pathological. Parts of it are, parts of it are. And it doesn't have a lot of institutional strength there. And the second is that you cannot challenge Donald Trump. You can sort of say some things he's doing you don't like, you know, maybe wouldn't fully support, but Donald Trump is the Sun King and he has to be obeyed. Or you get, if you go too hard and he's shown his ability to do it, if you go too hard, you get like pushed out in a way. Maybe you can't come back. And those two things are allowing, allowing a tremendous amount of bad ideas, of actual corruption, of just the institutional and non institutional rot to occur. And like we're all going to pay for it because right now we're all living under right wing governance. So I have a, I have a lot of worry about this. Right. I, I don't need just like my point is not you should become a liberal, but the right has some real issues.

[Chris Rufo]

I would agree that the right has some real challenges. And this is universal. Right. There's no entirely virtuous, effective discipline political movement. Every political movement has a certain fermentation, a certain amount of internal conflict. You have to figure out how to resolve disputes, settle questions. And what I've tried to do, especially in the last, say, year and a half, half since Trump has become president again, is bring a lot of those conversations into the open. And I think that while there are these real challenges, the epistemological machine of the right has some real weak spots, some real flaws, some real vulnerabilities, while Trump's kind of highly individualized, charismatic presidency that is charismatic rather than legal, rational or, or traditional, the Max Weber, you know, triangle of, of, of, of legitimacy and authority, um, the reality is that, okay, then let's solve it. We, this is the conversation we need to have. These are the problems we need to grapple with. The charismatic leadership has enormous benefits. It also has, it also creates a series of underlying problems to solve. But I, I, I think that all of these can be resolved productively. I think the people in charge of the conservative institutions still in general have good epistemological judgment, intuitions, attitudes, and I think that, you know, politics moves forward. And I think actually after, you know, Trump is, is, is in his last term, if, depending on how things go, the House, this might be the really last kind of truly effective moment for, for, for the Trump presidency. And then we ask the next question. And so the reality is that you have to move forward. You have to work within imperfect conditions.

[Ezra Klein]

One of my critiques, the right right now, and I have my own of the left, and I've talked about many of them, but I think the right likes to talk about virtue and doesn't insist on it. And virtue, to go back to what we were talking about around telos and your telos, is very much in part about restraining the passions and channeling them productively. There's a lot of talk about virtue. But the people who are leaders on the right, Donald Trump very much included, are not virtuous often. And if they have enough power, that is, look past, if they have enough strength to their passions, that is fine. And similarly, in the informational sphere, in the attentional sphere, there is a lot of playing with stories that are designed, like, mimetically constructed to arouse very, very, very base passions. Those stories are often much more complicated if they're true beneath them. And there's a view that that can be channeled in the right direction. And I think the opposite is happening, that in fact, the people who are restrained are really losing out in the right attentional sphere because it's this constant you like, you can't get heard if you're not now playing this game of incredibly weaponized, like, explosive allegations, which of course is going where that ultimately always goes. Which is towards anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Like the oldest intentional move in the book.

[Chris Rufo]

You're raising, I think, a really important philosophical question. And the conservative tradition offers a lot of good debate discourse on this question. The question is this, you have what we might say, Aristotelian virtue or Christian virtue. And then Machiavellian virtu, which is a totally. It's the same word, but a totally different conception. And for Machiavelli, virtue, the political virtue was the virtue of how to win power, how to maintain stability, and in his book on republics, how to have a flourishing republic, which often requires cunning, ambition, design. And so politics is always a conversation between virtue and virtu. And you're essentially reconciling means and ends. And there are people who will argue, academics in particular, even those on the right. Well, we need to have deontological principles that you can make. The means always have to be 100% pure towards 100% pure ends. And I laugh. It's like, well, only an academic could really make such a case. Because the reality is that in politics, politics, it's an imperfect world and you're constantly balancing means and ends. You're constantly taking the measure of virtu and virtue. And so you have to figure that out. You have to figure out where you're personally comfortable, where you personally can feel that your work is justified. And then as a movement, as a whole, this is a constant negotiation. And look, in my mind, political leaders are not your friends, ends. Political leaders are not your priest. Political leaders are kind of blunt instruments. Political leaders are means to an end. And there's no easy answer there, there's no immediate answer there. But what I would say is that those are the people that are my compatriots, the people that I am fighting every day alongside and along with

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are

[Chris Rufo]

high integrity people, very smart people, conservative institutionalists, who understand the moment, who understand that we need to deliver tangible political victories. We can't retreat just to abstract speculation and who, you know, look, we're playing the game. And in my view, the game is simultaneously to improve our own capacity, but also to win in the arena. And so I oftentimes, and this conversation is interesting because you're oftentimes you're moving forward. All right, what are we going to do? How are we going to hit this? Where are we going to push next? What kind of victory is available? And you have to do that knowing that the system you're operating in is littered with imperfection, actions. And again, at the end of the day, my calculation is I'm very mindful and even try to be. Somebody wouldn't believe this. Try to even be humble as to the little part of the world that I can influence. And I think I've changed it for the better. I think institutions that I'm working with are improving over time. And I think this epistemological question and the individual charismatic question are questions that can be and will be resolved in the, say, short to medium term.

[Ezra Klein]

I'll leave it there. I really appreciate you doing this conversation, always. Our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

[Chris Rufo]

Okay, so we're going to do three books from Rufo's personal conservative canon. The first I would recommend is a book by my mentor, John Morini, Claremont Institute scholar, called Unmasking the Administrative, which I think has helped me more than anything understand the deeper philosophical and political underpinnings of our modern dilemma. The second book that I think all conservatives should read and all liberals should read is a biography by Stacy Schiff called the Revolutionary, which is a biography of the American founder, Samuel Adams. And Adams is the most political founder. I think he kind of kind of clarifies through example all the questions that we've been talking about, about propaganda, about passion, about institutions, about political change. He's the kind of key and the forgotten founder, really. He's been downgraded for centuries now, but I think he's actually the most important founder. And then third, I would recommend a number of books by the kind of conservative journalist. Former NYU professor James Burnham wrote a book called Managerial Revolution, another called the Machiavellians, another called Suicide of the West. And for me, Burnham is someone who has the kind of sophisticated analysis that helps illuminate these questions. His work is quite good and might even be interesting for people who don't share my political book of his.

[Ezra Klein]

Would you start with.

[Chris Rufo]

I would start with Managerial Revolution again, because it's it, it just, it kind of describes. It's in, in the 1940s. It's unbelievable. You read it now and he's describing the world we live in, but he's describing it from, from a point of, of kind of optimism, American optimism. But he already saw some of the problems that were starting to emerge.

[Ezra Klein]

Chris Ruffo, thank you very much.

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