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- [00:00]
Fareed Zakaria
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Mike Pesca
It's Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. The theme at the top of yesterday's show was that cruelty might not be the point. Incompetence might be the modus operandi to make a fine point on this point. Lack of attention to detail is the mode. It might also be the median and the mean of this very mean cruel government. I direct you to the recent ruling by a federal court that Texas's redistricting plan is unconstitutional. I do not know how this will all end. I do know the first court to look at the preliminary redistricting plan said, nope, it violates the law, especially the components of the law that guarded against racist racial specific redistricting. Some context is a 2:1 decision. It might be eventually decided on by the Supreme Court. The justice that gets the first crack at it because it's his job to overlook Texas is Samuel Alito. This all does not bode well or does not bode permanent, let us say for this ruling. But it is a 2:1 ruling and right now Texas, all of their redistricting which prompted California to redistrict, that's all up in the air, if not as of this moment, not allowed. But I looked at Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee who was part of the two of the two one, I looked at his decision and he wrote he focused on a letter that the federal government sent to Governor Abbott and he said that this letter from Harmeet Dhillon was so bad, offered such poor guidance that it was his explanation for not just his ruling but why Texas went down the path they did. He said that the letter contained so many factual, legal and typographical errors that it was challenging to unpack its legal basis. Typographical errors. So I got the letter and I looked it up. Now I have to say the spacing was weird if not off. But from what I understand the sometimes that happens. I will also say that the name of the letter seems to contain or plausibly contains a typo, a typographical error. It is called unconstitutional race based Congressional district, not district district.PDF but you know, you name a PDF, not everything's going to be perfect. I delved further into into what could be called the typographical errors and there were some and it was kind of embarrassing. It's a two page memo but like I said, there are a lot of spaces so it's really less than two pages. And of the typographical errors there Were some concerning relaying specific codes? Was it 556 of US Code 1 or 556 US 145? Sometimes the 45 was left off. But here are some other areas where sick. The designation sick showed up in the judge criticizing this letter. The letter, very short letter, remember, from the federal government to a judge shouldn't contain mistakes like it is well established that so called coalition districts run afoul the Voting Rights Act. You got to have of there, you just got to have an of in another place. They talk about a past ruling that was Thornburg v. Gingals. But when they write it the second time, gingals, which is a proper name, becomes gingell. Apostrophe s the possessive gingals like the beloved San Diego department store gingals. I don't know, maybe it was all a pretext and the federal government was doing it just for shits and gingals. I will say that the dissent which hasn't got as much attention as this fiery, fiery throwing out of the congressional districts also displays a lot of fire. The dissenting judge starts off by quoting it's going to be a bumpy night and says in the end, this order, replete with legal and factual error accompanied by naked procedural abuse, demands reversal. Darkness demand descends on the rule of law. A bumpy night indeed. Battle lines are drawn and I don't think many people will be giggling in the end. On the show today, I bring you a very enjoyable and very, very informative interview with a man who can be described as such. He is the host of CNN's GPS show which airs on Sundays. His Farid Zakaria. His book, which is out now in paperback, the Age of Revolutions, describes our current period and we talk about that and go a bit far afield to talk about other issues of the day. Farid Zakaria, up next. When you are, say 52 or 53, I don't know how old you think you are. I don't know how old you think you are. I think I'm maybe in my 40s. I was thinking about, oh, I was in my 40s back then and I couldn't quite put my finger on what I look like, what I felt like. I told myself a story, it was the same, but you know, it wasn't the same. It's the, the creakiness of the knees, it's the recovery after, say, doing what I thought was a pretty normal thing. It was the diet or the lack of dieting and used to be a little leaner than now it's, this is a big one. The energy crashes at 2pm like it's just supposed to, but it didn't used to. All right, you know what we're talking about? We're talking about testosterone. And we've been thinking about ways to get your testosterone up. 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When you use gist at men, go to mars.com that's mengotomars.com and use code gist at checkout. After your purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. It's very important to say the gist. Please support our show and let them know our show sent you. Owning a home's amazing. It's a dream. A dream that people strive so much of their lives to achieve. One day you're luxuriating and sipping coffee. Iced for me, a warm cup of joe for my honey in the backyard. Then boom. Burst pipe. Boom. Why is hail coming through the skylight? Boom. The floor is buckling. Repairs. Much like the honey badger, they don't care. You know, you protect your health, your car, your phone. What about your home? Your biggest investment? When things go wrong, the cost can hit hard and hit fast. That's what happened to me. And that's where homeserve comes in. Regular homeowners insurance doesn't cover a lot, a lot of the day to day. In fact, the insurance kind of exists not to cover the day to day. 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Fareed Zakaria is the host on CNN of gps, a show I watch, I have to be honest listen to At Double Speed almost every week. And he is the author now out in paperback almost of the Age of Revolutions. Welcome to the gist.
- [09:56]
Fareed Zakaria
Thanks so much for having me, Mike. I am impressed by the double speed I I can only do. I kind of do 1.25, 1.3 and when people tell me they do double speed, I feel as though you're listening to a Mickey Mouse version of my.
- [10:12]
Mike Pesca
Voice because, well, the good technology, and you write a lot about technology, takes away the squeakiness. But with certain people, like say, the Qatari Prime Minister, it doesn't help. I will. It doesn't help. Diplomats are supposed to speak slowly and boringly for a reason. And I don't feel that getting through them twice as fast is of assistance. So I will say this, Freed I very much like the book, but I'm going to treat it as if I had many, many problems with it. You understand the Socratic method. You'll be asked to defend your thesis. Okay, of course. So we live in an age of revolutions. And as we look around us, this seems so very apparent, from the technological to the fracturing and polarization of soc. But by way of pushback, let me ask a couple of questions. When wasn't there an age of revolution? Certainly for our society, the post war peace up until the 90s was a period of growth and stability. But at the same time, as I don't have to tell you, during the 60s was the era of decolonization in Africa. And then in 1971 you have Bangladesh, and then by the late 80s, the entire former Soviet world is falling apart. So is it really so much of an exception not to have revolutionary fervor all over the world. We're just feeling it a bit more in the West.
- [11:34]
Fareed Zakaria
So it's a, it's a very good question because look, stuff is happening all the time. And depending on where you are, sometimes that stuff can look very important. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was sort of step back and say, what are, what are the broadest changes? You know, when, when, when do you feel like the whole world is being upended? Because those are the periods when you have the most consequential reactions and that's when you have the most consequential backlash. And so if you look at it just by one measure, which is truly transformative economic, technological change, most economic historians will tell you that for sure there were two periods, you know, essentially the first industrial revolution around the 1760s, the invention of the steam engine, when basically you start moving people, human beings who had lived for all of humanity since the settling of societies in agricultural conditions and peasants on farms start moving to factories and to cities, and you get this incredible transformation from peasants to workers. Then the second industrial revolution is basically probably the most consequential to date, which was the 1870s, 80s, you know, trains, electricity, telegraph, later on you start to get telephones. And that period explodes with economic change and disruption. And then you look at the present now what you note the present now it's a massive acceleration of globalization in the last 30 years, the creation of the information economy, information age, computers, Internet, now artificial intelligence. And what's striking about all three periods is that what you notice is the politics of societies gets totally upended. So if you take the 1880s, 90s, you have these big changes taking place. As I say, electricity, trains, telegraphs. And what you see is the rise of communism, the rise of socialism, the rise of, in short order, fascism, because the old structures of society are completely changed. And what I'm saying is that these last 30 years, the massive expansion of globalization, you know, just take China and India entering the system, as it were, that's 2, that's 3 billion people entering the global economy for the first time in the last 30 or 40 years. Take the dramatic transformation of women's roles, right? That's a change from thousands of years of settled history when women were second class citizens. And what I'm saying is these changes are, are on a scale of these previous big revolutions. And so we shouldn't be surprised that we seem to be everywhere living through this kind of political backlash. You know, it's not just happening in the United States, it's happening in Europe. And you can even see elements of it almost everywhere in the world.
- [14:31]
Mike Pesca
Yes, and China probably was going through India, also going through something very close to the second Industrial revolution. They were taking an agriculture and farm economy and making it an industrial economy. Uh, there is some. There is some thought that economically speaking, that's really the only way. We only have one shot at remaking an economy, and that's it. And so what we're doing now in the west can fiddle at the edges, but can't have as fundamental a transformation as that. So I say it for a couple of reasons. One is, while the transformation in communication technology is going on in the west, you have this second industrial revolution type thing going on with those 3 billion people. But let's go back. Do you think that there can be as fundamental a change as a second industrial revolution, no matter how impressive or troubling AI is?
- [15:22]
Fareed Zakaria
So you're asking a really important question. And I would say that many historians, in fact, the leading economic historian of the last, you know, the period of the last hundred years, a guy named Robert Gordon, would argue. No, he would. He would say, you're right, that actually the 1880s, that period, electricity, trains, you know, cars, all that is bigger, that there's nothing that is quite, you know, because if you think about it, you're really changing the life of people who lived as settled farmers and peasants, and you're completely transforming it to the world of cities and, you know, modern economics and industry and all that. I think that it's true that that was seismic. And by the way, think about what it wrought, right? World War I, you know, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, communism, Soviet, you know, Soviet communism, all that. I think that what we are, what we have gone through now in a somewhat slower and more. Maybe not slower, in a somewhat more controlled fashion, is still seismic change. And I say in a controlled fashion because of this. Those societies were completely defenseless to the changes that were being wrought. We live, particularly in the Western world in societies with very large safety nets, with governments that understand that they have a responsibility that you don't just. You know, in the 1870s, the US had a Great Depression that lasted for close to 15 years. And, you know, the feeling was just, well, that's what happens, you know. And it was called a railroad recession because it was the collapse of the railway bubble. Now, we don't take that attitude, you know, and neither does do European countries and even places like China and India, the government steps in. So I think there's, you know, it's not going to have quite the effect. But I think when you look at artificial intelligence and then you add to it robotics and you add to it the Internet, these are pretty seismic changes. And as I say, if you think about globalization, you know, if you look at the period from 1945 to basically 1985, the global economy, the new entrants to the global economy were like, you know, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, you know, we're talking about maybe 150 million people over 45 years. And then you get, you know, India, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, boom. You know, suddenly you're talking about 3 billion people entering. So I do think there's a lot that history, you know, we've lived through it, Mike, so we don't appreciate it's really actually been quite world historically revolutionary what we've lived through.
- [18:16]
Mike Pesca
Right, right. We're the boiled frogs and we both know it's a metaphor. The frog will jump out. But do you think that going back to some of these old revolutions, they were met with populism and the populism showed up in different ways in America was William Jennings Bryant and the Cross of Gold. And the book has the good explanation about how the wizard of Oz maps onto the silver standard pretty well. Though I've also read a biography of L. Frank Baum who says, no, no, no, that wasn't it. He just hated feminists and suffragettes cuz his mother in law was one and she looked exactly like the Wicked witch of the West. But my question is, will a replay of what happened in the United States? There was this populist moment, but then it was met with the progressive moment and there was literally progress. Do you think that that's a likely outcome for what we're living through now?
- [19:08]
Fareed Zakaria
It's absolutely possible. Look, the challenge is you have this change, you have this forward movement and then you have a backlash. How you navigate the backlash is what determines where you will end up. And I would argue actually that the last this week's elections point an interesting way forward. Right. Which is that if you look at for the most part, I would argue the message that comes out of these elections is that the Democrats ran very stable, commonsensical, centrist candidates in difficult places like Virginia. Virginia is the really fascinating one. Right. This woman wins a landslide in a state that's purple, in a state that Trump won and in a state with a very popular incumbent Republican governor. And she wins by like 15 points. The Mamdani one, which is, you know, fascinating in many ways because he's just a brilliant campaigner and such a charismatic figure. But don't forget, his victory was actually quite narrow. He won by nine points.
- [20:13]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [20:13]
Fareed Zakaria
Eric Adams won his election by 39 points.
- [20:16]
Mike Pesca
Right. And also don't forget that mom Donna was running against Andrew Cuomo, which is a.
- [20:20]
Fareed Zakaria
Well, he was, but that tells you about. There was a division in the Democratic Party. Right. Like more people voted for Andrew Cuomo than voted for Eric Adams in the last election. 850,000 to 750. So the, all I'm saying is the really fascinating story is these, is these big states, particularly Virginia, because it went for Trump. And what you see there is you run stable, centrist, commonsensical candidates who are able to talk the Democrats winning message, which is about economics, which is about affordability, and to a certain extent, against the kind of authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration. But they're able to do that because they are not viewed as culturally alien elitists who come from a different planet. That is the great challenge for the left, which is if you get seen as culturally alien, you're dead. Because at the end of the day, people vote from the gut. And if they feel that you are culturally alien to them, even if you have an economic message that they believe in, they're not. You know, Bill Clinton said this to me. He says, the way you think about it is they may agree with you, but they can't hear you because all they're noticing is all this cultural stuff. So you've got to find a way to not make that cultural stuff dominate. Then they can hear you on the economy.
- [21:48]
Mike Pesca
Yes. You have to connect to them. A famous basketball coach once said to me, it is kind of a cliche that they don't care about how much you know until they know about how much you care. And so at least Mamdani was talking about concerns that the voters had as opposed to.
- [22:02]
Fareed Zakaria
And he was very disciplined, Mike. He would, when, when people would ask, try to, I mean, he, he was authentic. And so he didn't try to backpedal on a bunch of stuff that, like Israel and all that, which, what. Whatever he believes. But his focus. And if you asked him a question, 90% of the time what he was talking about was affordability. You know, he was very disciplined, that his message was really about affordability. Now, if you want to ask him about some other stuff, yes, he's culturally progressive, but I think he won mostly because of that relentless focus on affordability.
- [22:35]
Mike Pesca
Yes. So if we were to be. We are living through a populist moment, if it were to be met with a progressive, a constructive, progressive moment, it would depend on our institutions still being up to the task. Are they?
- [22:50]
Fareed Zakaria
That's a great question. Look, I think what we are witnessing right now is something that is an important thing we should understand, which is that the American democratic system is more fragile than we realize, because a lot of it depends not on laws that have been written carefully to make sure that we have a stable democratic system that's not corrupt and it doesn't allow self dealings, but because of norms, of traditions. And some of these traditions have built up even recently. So, for example, during the Cold War, the presidency grew to a kind of imperial presidency, in Arthur Schlesinger's words. And when Nixon and Watergate happened and Vietnam happened, we reign it back, and we reign it back with a whole set of. Some of them are norms, some of them are customs. A perfect example would be the role of the Attorney General. In most Western democracies today, that department is independent of the prime minister or the president. In ours, it is part of the administration. So after Nixon, we developed norms before him. The president could appoint his brother as John F. Kennedy did. He could appoint his campaign manager, as Richard Nixon did, to be to the post of Attorney General. After it became much more of a sense. The president does not direct the Justice Department to prosecute people, does not interfere with cases, does not even ask about cases there. And that became so strong that there was really a sense that the president should not be, should not get on a phone call with the Attorney General unless it's about some procedural matter. Right, Right. Trump has destroyed all this. Trump has really exposed that all of this was just norms. Or take the pardon power. Right. The pardon power is something presidents use sparingly. And unfortunately, both sides have then abused it in the last 30 years, I would say. And now it's just become a pay to play scheme. And what is a better example of disregard for norms and traditions and democracy than Trump to 60 Minutes saying, I don't even know the person's name you're talking about whom I pardoned.
- [25:12]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [25:14]
Fareed Zakaria
Arbitrary, you know, royal power to say, I am so powerful I can pardon these people. I don't even know who they are. I don't even know their name. Somebody told me he was a good guy. Like that seems to me the most disrespectful thing he said in that interview to the. To American democratic traditions.
- [25:32]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. But part of me worries that if you were to go back 12 years and say a president would do what Trump has done with directing DOJ officials to do his bidding, and when they wouldn't, just firing them, I would have made a somewhat confident prediction of, well, we've been through this before. It was the Saturday Night Massacre, and Archibald Cox and Nixon had to go through a few people before they would have executed his wishes. But here's the thing. We called that the Saturday Night Massacre. It was seen as a massacre, it was seen as a scandal. We didn't have to convince people just how out of bounds that was. And now it's just seems a small part of a bigger picture that it's very hard to pay attention to in the Trump administration.
- [26:20]
Fareed Zakaria
So the most dispiriting part about all this is, you know, when you bring up things like that is that you realize that probably about you tell me if I'm right, but about 40% of the country just doesn't care. They support him no matter what. They, they don't anything you say, they have a counter narrative to any fact you have. They don't accept as fact. Any claim you make is regarded as biased and suspicious, and that's that, you know, so when you remind the Sand Massacre, everybody reported as fact, that is what happened. It is unprecedented right now. These things all become. Well, there's a deep state. You have to, you know, there's a whole counter narrative presented. And that means that we're not actually living in the same political universe.
- [27:07]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And was that because mostly we had gatekeepers. And the downside of this is saying we didn't have enough opportunity for alternative sources of news to get out there. There's. There's a positive and a negative with all of it. And I don't. We can never go to a world with three networks or the fourth cnn, let's even posit that world. But I wonder if it was just inevitable once we got the technology to allow everyone to have a substack, there was going to not be a shared truth. And Trump is maybe the first guy to come along to advantage of that. But that is the world we're living in.
- [27:45]
Fareed Zakaria
I think you're exactly right. The technology fragmented the, the, you know, the culture, it fragmented news. You begin to. You can pick your own silos. And so we have to deal with the reality we're in. So how do you rebuild? I don't want to rebuild gatekeepers, but I do want to rebuild truth. I do want to rebuild the idea that there are facts and there aren't Facts, you know, that the 2020 election was in fact correctly decided. There wasn't widespread fraud, that kind of thing. So I feel like maybe this is a hope, Mike. But as the revolution continues to spin even more madly and we get AI and we get massive amounts of fake news and fake videos and fake this and fake that, that people will start needing some sense of adjudication of like what's right, what's not, you know, so even Elon Musk, who's at the head center of all this, keeps, you know, pushing his, his idea of Grok. Let Grok tell you this, okay? Maybe, you know, use AI, but the problem with that stuff is AI is just reading what human beings have said about these topics and then packaging and how good are those sources, right? So you, you, you hope that there will be some appreciation that people start to get like, we need, we need somebody whom we can trust or some group of people, some group of, you know, some set of AI, some standards. Because otherwise I do think self government is very hard in a situation where there is no truth and there is no lie, where it's all just, you know, one. And that is in effect what Orwell was describing in 1984. You know, people forget the most pernicious part of the 1984 world that Orwell describes is this collapsed distinction between truth and falsehood. It's not, you know, it's not that. I mean, he doesn't describe great torture. It's mental. It's the mental anguish of losing the distinction between fact and fiction.
- [29:51]
Mike Pesca
And we'll be back with more Fareed Zakaria in just a moment. I'm going to quote the National Institutes of Health. I defer to the experts. As many as 30 million men in the US have experienced ED. It's more common than a bad night's sleep. I don't know that the National Institutes of Health has all the statistics on a bad night's sleep, but I'll also say that ED probably correlates to a bad night's sleep. We have good news about all of this. And it's not about NIH funding, it's about himss. HIMSS makes getting access to treatment for ED simple. So you can feel like yourself again without stress, without awkwardness. Confidence is really important. And through hims, you can skip the guesswork and get access to care that actually fits your lifestyle style. Going to say again, stress free, straightforward, designed around you. Through hims, you can access personalized prescription treatments for ed, like hard mints and sex RX plus Climax control if prescribed. It's not one size fits all. They have options ranging from trusted generics that cost 95% less than brand names to the aforementioned heart Mints. Think of HIMS as the digital front door that gets you back to your old self. 100 online access to trusted treatments for ED and more, all in one place. To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss and more, visit hims.com the gist that's hims.com the gist for your free online visit hims.com/the gist. Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan. Featured products include compounded drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness or quality. Prescription requires the website for details, restrictions and important safety information. And we're back with Fareed Zakaria of CNN talking about his book, now available in paperback, age of Revolutions, Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present. It's obviously true that all these populist movements and in many cases right wing movements are ascendant. And the question is why? And there are a number of competing explanations. And the economic explanation is one that a lot of people have reached for. But I don't know. I mean, as you point out in the book, the US Economy has grown so much more than the European economy in the and yet the US Political system. We hate each other more than the Europeans do and we're more fractured along religious lines. And even if Macron is barely holding on against Le Pen, he is holding on against Le Pen. And this is not what's going on in the United States. So I tend to go towards not the economic explanation. But maybe you have some great stats about, I don't know, maybe you do believe that a middle class person today doesn't have the reasonable expectation of earning more than his father and mother did. But I tend to go towards the communication explanation, the technological explanation. The things actually aren't so much worse. In some cases they're better. Just that these little bits of miracles in our pockets have convinced us they are. Where do you stand?
- [33:12]
Fareed Zakaria
No, your instinct is correct. Look, the economic explanation doesn't hold water. People need to understand. Of course, the economy is very important. The question is, what is the prism through which you view the economy? Right. And the prism through which we view the economy increasingly is culture and class. And those things tend to dominate our view. And you see this best when you know this is a recent phenomenon. But when Trump wins, all of a sudden all the Republicans who thought the economy was terrible under Biden suddenly think it's great. And all the Democrats who thought the economy was great under Biden think it's terrible. Right. So it's not the economy that's shaping our views of politics, it's our politics that is shaping our views of the economy. Look at something like income inequality, which is very real and obviously contributing. But when you widen the lens and say, okay, why then does northern Europe have this widespread right wing populism? Sweden doesn't have great income inequality. In fact, they've done amazingly well at keeping it. You're stamping it down. Denmark doesn't, Holland doesn't. Yet they all have right wing populism. You pointed at Macron. You know, no country protects its workers better than France. It's basically impossible to fire a French worker.
- [34:25]
Mike Pesca
And yet, yeah, even a Louvre security guard.
- [34:28]
Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, right, right. Le Pen is winning, you know, is 60% in the polls right now. So clearly it's something else. And what you notice almost everywhere, the rocket fuel is immigration. And what is that? It's sort of culture class much more than anything else. It's this sense of my world is going away and those people are to blame for it.
- [34:51]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, that's it. It is immigration. And I think that you mentioned Sweden. So their far right party is they got a majority, but they've been kept out of the coalition. And they do have fascist ties, certainly. But if a society is just not going to address such a fundamental problem or dismiss it or poo poo it, the people in a functioning democracy where their votes count, it's going to find expression somewhere. Now, luckily, I mean, the ADF is a troubling trend in Germany. Luckily there's been some other parties in Germany who are adequately addressing this. But it comes down to David Frum's formulation that when it comes to immigration, if the Democratic Party here in the United States won't address it, the fascists will. But I do think the progressive parties of Europe got that one wrong. Not just on what should our policy be, but how much salience the public will give it. I mean, if so, my theory is that they got it so wrong. But part of the explanation for the rise of these really ugly forms of populism is specifically a huge whiff on immigration.
- [36:03]
Fareed Zakaria
Look, there are two ways to show, to prove that you're right. The first is I like, I always.
- [36:09]
Mike Pesca
Like an interview where that's one of the answers.
- [36:12]
Fareed Zakaria
The first is look at the one advanced industrial society that has almost no right wing populism. It has a little that's begun recently. And that is, it has all the other problems of advanced industrial, you know, slowing growth, productivity, technological revolution, blah, blah, blah. Japan. Japan is still, the LDP is still in charge. They've been running the country for 75 years.
- [36:35]
Mike Pesca
Why?
- [36:36]
Fareed Zakaria
They don't have immigration. They have tiny amounts of immigration in Japan. And the second is, look at what elected Trump 2.0. If Joe Biden had not completely mismanaged immigration to the point where it is absolutely true that millions of undocumented immigrants were coming, illegal immigrants were coming in, people seeking asylum were coming in in a completely chaotic manner, I don't know that Trump would have been able to win. That is the single issue on which the Democrats exposed themselves. Bizarrely, given that it was the issue that got Trump 1.0 elected, you know, they kind of weirdly did it again.
- [37:17]
Mike Pesca
And so these European and in America, the Democratic Party had their whiffs. However, you can't be Japan. I was, I heard a quote from Robert Kaplan, and I think this is true. He said that at the beginning of the 21st century, our century now, there was one African for every one European. At the end of the 21st century, there's going to be seven Africans for every European. And the Mediterranean Sea isn't that big. So I don't know if there is a right way to handle immigration, if the dislocations of immigration always lead to this sort of populism.
- [38:00]
Fareed Zakaria
Look, you have to. First of all, you have to find a way to control your borders. Otherwise, you know, I hate to sound like Trump, but you don't have a country if you have no control over your borders, if you have no system by which they can come in now, you can say it should be more or less, and how you take them in and what you do, that's all fine. But you cannot give up. You cannot have a fatalism about it. And look, to be truthful, Trump has shut down the southern border. There are ways to shut these borders down. Now, the larger answer has got to be, and this is where Trump is 1000% wrong, is you have to help these societies develop, because ultimately, that is going to be the way you deal with the problem. And weirdly, it is how we dealt with what used to be our biggest immigration problem, which was Mexico. The funny thing is, despite Trump badmouthing the Mexicans for 20 years now, net Mexican migration into the United States is zero. In other words, as many people as come in, those many people leave America to go back to Mexico.
- [39:09]
Mike Pesca
Why?
- [39:09]
Fareed Zakaria
Because really, Mexico, and particularly the Northern half of Mexico is close to being a middle class society. It has gone from being a very poor country to being a place where people can make a living. And then the pressure to migrate is lowered as a result of that. So one of the things that Europe has to do is figure out, of course you've got to enforce your borders, patrol them, all that tough stuff I support. But you've also got to figure out what can you do to help these societies so that they, you know, they move up enough that you take some of the pressure off.
- [39:48]
Mike Pesca
Are you a first generation, second generation immigrant?
- [39:50]
Fareed Zakaria
I'm an immigrant. So the technical way it goes is I'm the immigrant. My kids are first generation.
- [39:55]
Mike Pesca
All right, so you're an immigrant. Do you think there is just baked into human nature, which is changeable, but not totally upendable, an inherent animus, an inherent xenophobia, even maybe anthropologically speaking, a logical xenophobia to the other? And so we'll never get a situation where immigrants are as readily accepted into our country or any other country as maybe the most progressive among us would wish.
- [40:28]
Fareed Zakaria
You know, I think that you're probably right in general, in a kind of broad statement about humanity. My own experience in the United States has been completely welcoming and benign. I have found Americans to be incredibly open. I am, in my experience, never felt discriminated against, never felt like I was being treated in a way that was mean spirited. I came in 1982, a very different period of American politics. And I came to, you know, New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts. And I don't know if I've been in different states, whether it would have been different, but I think Americans are, you know, I mean, I'm going to sound like an immigrant now, but I think America is special and Americans are special because, you know, everybody at some level is an immigrant or descended from immigrants. Everybody knows that there is a special quality to this country where people are more interested in your destination than in your origins. I think that there's a backlash going on right now. It's obvious. And, you know, but I think that I wouldn't count out the possibility that, you know, we will still move forward and 25 years from now, what America will have shown the world is you can genuinely create a multiracial, multi ethnic democracy where everyone feels like they have a place. You know, and for that, look at Mamdani's election. Yes, it's New York City, but I think it speaks to something about America.
- [42:06]
Mike Pesca
And as you also point out, look at the heads of all The American tech companies, half of their names might be unpronounceable to a fella in Iowa.
- [42:15]
Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, yeah. And, and, and I don't find even when you go into places like that, because I done, you know, I've done my share of public speaking and things like that, but you go into these places, people are not instinctively hostile, you know, because this is not a blood and soil country where people feel like this is my village and it's, it's where my tribe has been for 2000 years. This is not a country like that. Everyone's moved, everyone's come from somewhere else. Everyone understands that process. And I think everyone, often a lot of people at least try to welcome this. The stranger.
- [42:53]
Mike Pesca
I just want to ask you about the current policies on immigration. Do you think Trump is playing it right? If we said that the Democrats got it wrong and we also said, and this is true, that Trump has basically shot immigration at the southern border to zero, those would seem to be two points in his favor. And I'll give the steel man case, which is what he's doing now or what he's authorizing his agents to do you is terrifying. Not because it's the cruelty is the point, but because Americans don't want to face the realities of what's necessary to do to deliver to them the country that they're asking for. Just like Americans want low taxes, but high services. We'd like some version of low immigration, but not to have any upsetting visuals of a guy in a mask and tear gas and someone yelling on the street.
- [43:46]
Fareed Zakaria
Street.
- [43:46]
Mike Pesca
So that is my question though. How much do you think, Cuz during the election we heard that, my God, he's so underwater on things like immigration, it helped Democrats. How much is he misplaying his hand on immigration?
- [43:58]
Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, I think it's a very good question. And my own sense is I don't trust the opinion polls where, you know, he's, he's underwater even on immigration. I think that's very temporary. I think the public is broadly speaking with him on, on immigration. I think people feel like it was complete chaos and he stabilized it. I think they don't like the method of ICE rounding up. But if they believe there was a slightly less public in your face way of doing it, they would still support the rounding up of and the deportation of illegal immigrants who they believe and technically correctly have broken the law. I think that you can find obviously stories that will tug at people's heartstrings. But I think in general, the idea that I don't think it's a good idea for the left to stake its ground on the defense of illegal immigration. I think what the left should stake its ground on is we need a better system, we need a reform system. And what Trump is doing on the legal immigration side with trying to essentially end the H1B program in making everything more onerous and difficult for people to come, making it hard to get foreign students in, these are terrible ideas. The source of American innovation has been our amazing university system that is regarded everywhere in the world as the absolute world leader. People pay crazy amounts of money to come and get bachelor's and master's degrees, not at the Harvard, Yale and for instance, but at the Rutgers, at Cleveland State. And we get an infusion of incredibly smart people, a bunch of them, the smartest and brightest of them stay and work in research labs and found tech companies. That ecosystem Trump is very significantly damaging. And to me, that makes no sense. The Democrats should be talking about how we can reform it so it's a win win for the American people by creating more jobs, creating more growth. Why is he doing all this? Focus on that. Don't focus on people who most people think they came in illegally, they broke the law, they shouldn't be here. And yeah, we feel a little bad that ISIS is doing what they're doing. I don't think that's a winning issue.
- [46:24]
Mike Pesca
Fareed Zakaria is the author of now out in the Age of Revolutions, and he's the host of Fareed Zakaria gps, which I'll give it a specific compliment. Yes, he'll have the Iraqi foreign minister on and do a lot of segments on Gaza, but every once in a while he'll unplug things, have people on like Gene Twenge and Jonathan Haidt and Robert Bolling alone Putnam. Because obviously he's very worried, as you might be, about where we're going as a people, not just as a world and a collection of nation states. So I like those episodes and I like the show and I like the book. Thanks for joining me, Fareed.
- [46:57]
Fareed Zakaria
Mike, what a pleasure. Thank you.
- [47:04]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist. Jeff Craig is our social media manager. Leah Yan is production coordinator. Kathleen Sykes helps me with the Gist list. And Michelle Pesca makes the trains run on time, but doesn't make the Verizon guy repair the Internet on time because really that's a job for everyone mentioned and maybe even James Patterson and all his collaborators improve do Peru. And thanks for listening.
- [47:42]
Fareed Zakaria
Sam.