← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Best of 2025: Trump and Elon's CEO-Dictator Playbook w/ Gil Duran
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- [00:03]
Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar where every day casual Friday, that means Monday is casual. Monday, Tuesday, casual Tuesday, Wednesday casual Hump day Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, December 26, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live to tape steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America to downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, 2025 is wrapping up. Thus we have our best of ladies and gentlemen. And today we're still at the first part of the Trump administration. We have an interview with Gil Duran writing about Trump and Elon Musk's CEO dictator playbook in in February 11th of 2025. Emma Vigland here. Actually, neither one of us are actually here. We are, we are here only by the grace of a tape. Now, of course, people usually watch the show. The vast majority of people consume the show after the fact anyway. So I don't know why I'm so self conscious. But we are not live. But in many ways we are live in your hearts. Yes, we are still very much alive. And today we have Gil Duran writing about Trump and Elon Musk's CEO King Playbook. We talk a lot about Curtis Yarvin and much of the year was a function of, of this dynamic. And I have to say, sitting here in December and Emma, you tell me if it's different. I don't feel like it's as that. I feel like we are not at peak threat. There's still going to be a lot of horrible stuff that's happening and people are still being attacked, whether they're, you know, immigrants or people of color. I think we still have like a lot of economic problems, but it feels like at least, you know, now that we're on break, the threat of the entire thing collapsing into an authoritarian nightmare is less likely than it was, I want to even say like five months ago.
- [03:14]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, I don't want to count our chickens, but I do think, you know, I've been saying this, like the Epstein thing was a real turning point for Trump where he lost his grip on the Republican Party. He was unable to whip votes to protect his best friend from the past and also himself, really and the other powerful people that are implicated. Yeah, still talking about that. Oh, hello.
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Sam Seder
That was the show, folks. Enjoy yourself.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah, yeah, bye. We're. Our Internet was cut when we started talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Weird. No. So I do think like, at the very least, you see that he's lost his grip a little bit on the Republican Party. Now, the concerning thing is like the ICE stuff, that budget is just starting to kind of make itself felt and that we're going to still be seeing the implications of that for quite some time. But some of this stuff that we talk about with Gilderan, when we had him on, I think we were peak anxiety about this.
- [04:16]
Sam Seder
I actually got more peak anxiety. I would say like four months after we recorded this with him in February, I started getting really, really concerned, like in June, like after the. After that money was there and watching the sort of fecklessness of national Democrats. But we're going to get to the more like hopeful stuff next week. Let me just ask everybody, how was your Christmas? Christmas was yesterday. As people are listening. Was it good?
- [04:49]
Emma Vigeland
It was great.
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Gil Duran
It's good.
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Sam Seder
I got a Tonka truck. Well, do you got an old school Tonka truck? Nice, Matt.
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Matt
I'm sure it was wonderful.
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Sam Seder
Okay. I'm sure my family wasn't fighting at all.
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Gil Duran
Yeah.
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Emma Vigeland
I'm sure about the same.
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Sam Seder
The way I avoided Christmas with my girlfriend's family in the past was to have an emergency root canal. And so I'm hoping that, you know, maybe that has happened again. And as this is playing, you've got a string around a tooth and it's tied to a doorknob. Exactly.
- [05:29]
Matt
Since we're trying to get the side of his face hit by a bus mirror for like the last two days.
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Sam Seder
We'Ll see. We'll see how well I did. But I think today is Boxer day.
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Emma Vigeland
Boxing.
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Matt
Boxing day.
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Sam Seder
Yeah. I don't know what it means. All right, let's. Is it a thing? Do you guys celebrate Boxing Day?
- [05:52]
Matt
I think it's Canadian.
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Sam Seder
It's Canadian.
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Emma Vigeland
Canadian.
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Sam Seder
Oh, all right. I didn't know that. I don't follow this stuff. Did you think it was Christian? Huh? Did you think it was Christian? I thought that's what I thought it was.
- [06:04]
Emma Vigeland
I didn't know the 13th Disciple was Muhammad Ali.
- [06:08]
Sam Seder
Yeah, it was when Jesus fought Pontius Pilate for 12. Literally. About boxing.
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Emma Vigeland
I don't know either.
- [06:15]
Matt
I'm pretty sure it isn't.
- [06:16]
Sam Seder
No, it's about. It's about moving. I think it's like box. Moving boxes.
- [06:20]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, seriously?
- [06:21]
Sam Seder
Yeah, it's like moving day. Everybody moves.
- [06:23]
Matt
I think we should all just provide our best guesses.
- [06:26]
Emma Vigeland
I think so. So they have Boxing Day, but they put their milk in bags, not boxes.
- [06:31]
Gil Duran
In Canada.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [06:32]
Sam Seder
Oh, gross.
- [06:33]
Emma Vigeland
Confusing.
- [06:33]
Sam Seder
I had bags of milk at school, actually, but I'm basically Canadian. Oh, I don't get any of that. But I will say happy Hanukkah to everybody. Although I think Hanukkah's probably ended by now. I can't tell. I gotta look at the calendar.
- [06:46]
Matt
But that is when the wealthy give Christmas boxes. It has nothing to do with moving.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah, Hanukkah starts on the 14th.
- [06:53]
Sam Seder
I told you it was a Christmas thing. Yeah, well, Hanukkah is starting, so Hanukkah ended. I hope people had a nice Hanukkah.
- [07:02]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [07:03]
Sam Seder
Folks, before we get to Gilderan, just a couple of sponsors of today's program. This is a product that I was using for years and years before they came to us and asked us to sponsor. So when they did, I was like, sure, absolutely. I'm behind this product. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Of course I wanted to get my personal information offline because, you know, we do this show and sometimes people get mad about the things that we say. So Delete Me was really helpful for that. But you know, Delete Me is also really important if you just want to avoid phishing phone calls. If you want to avoid identity theft, the data brokers make a profit off of all your data. Your data is a commodity. Anybody on the web can buy your private details. You go to like one of these sites that sell this stuff, there's hundreds of them. And this can lead to identity theft because sometimes they'll pair it up with stuff they find on the dark web. Sometimes they'll have more sophisticated phishing attempts. Now they know your number, now they know your parents name and they send you an email. And obviously harassment. But now you can protect your privacy with Delete Me. What do data brokers do? Your name, contact info, Social Security number, home address, even information about your family members could all be compiled by data brokers and sold online. The New York Times wirecutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. Delete Me knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up, provide Delete Me with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Then Deleteme sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what the info they found, where they found it and what they removed. Deleteme isn't just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. Thanks to Deleteme for sponsoring the Majority report. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. You get 20% off your delete me plan. When you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority. Use the promo code Majority at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority. Enter the code Majority at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com/Majority. The code is Majority. We of course put that in the podcast and YouTube description as well. Also on the program. Folks, it is very close to being January. What are we four days away now? Five days. How does that work? You got your last hurrah on 1231, but it's time for you to start planning on your New Year's resolutions. New year is a great time to hit the reset button and focus on your health and get back on track with your wellness goals. Maybe you're planning to cut back on drinking and do dry January. Anybody? All right, I'll do that. Okay. All right. Well yeah, that has other plans.
- [10:27]
Matt
Or anti combustion January.
- [10:29]
Sam Seder
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- [13:52]
Gil Duran
Well, last year I started looking into something called the Network State, which is an ideology of tech supremacy that holds that tech CEOs should use their wealth and power in the 21st century to basically take control of the world. They believe that nation states and democracies are an outdated software for the planet and that they should take over existing governments and hollow them out or else start their own sovereign countries by taking territories around the world that they can buy with their vast wealth. As part of this ideology, they see a future in which nation states will collapse and democracies will be abandoned in favor of corporate dictatorships. And this is not something that I've dreamed up or found in a secret document. They write about this stuff in books, they talk about it on long podcasts, they make YouTube videos about it. You name it. They've been very, very loud about it, and no one was really taking them seriously. But I saw them getting very involved in trying to take over San Francisco city government. And after a certain while of watching them as editorial page editor of the San Francisco examiner at the time, I started to realize there's something deeper going on here. And what I did was take the time to look into that. And the work I did for the New Republic was based in that research.
- [15:03]
Sam Seder
All right, to that point, let's just. Because when, when you do articulate this, people are like, well, I mean, this sounds a little fantastical. We got a couple of clips that, you know, we have been playing on this show over the past year, and just they're rather short. But I think it's important to show this because these are some of the wealthiest people in the country, if not the world, and they were all standing right behind Donald Trump on Inaugural Day, or just about. Here is first Palantir CEO Peter Thiel, the, you know, maybe the, the ringleader of the PayPal mafia, as it's called sometimes. This is just him in April of 2024, just at a Mercatus center event. Mercatus center is the sort of libertarian think tank or one of those. Here he is sort of, you know.
- [16:00]
Gil Duran
One way, one way to think of.
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Sam Seder
The Weimar period was, I don't know, it's like the dwarves in Moria where.
- [16:06]
Gil Duran
They dwell too deep and, you know.
- [16:08]
Sam Seder
Finally they, they awakened the nameless terror of the Balrog. But, but I think, I think there are.
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Unidentified Contributor
And again, I don't think we're ever.
- [16:15]
Gil Duran
In a cyclical world, but there are.
- [16:17]
Sam Seder
Certainly certain parallels in the US in.
- [16:19]
Gil Duran
The 2000s to Germany in the 1920s where, you know, you know, liberalism is exhausted. One suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted. And, and you know, that, that we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window.
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Sam Seder
Okay, so there he is saying, like, we're like Weimar, Germany and democracy, whatever that means, has been exhausted. I want to get back. Is that, that, that notion of, like, whatever democracy means, who could tell? Nothing has mean is interesting now for people who don't know any history. After Weimar, we saw the rise of Nazism and Overton window means, like, we got to widen the scope of what we contemplate as being normal. Here is Marc Andreessen, the guy who, who created Netscape, another tech billionaire. This is him on the Chris Williamson YouTube channel. This is where and, and you will recognize this Gil from. This guy obviously reads some Curtis Yarvin or talks to him directly, but here.
- [17:32]
Unidentified Contributor
He is talking about this too, right? Which is like, okay, how do we actually, like, redo the system is, of course, much harder. The other lens on this that I think about a lot is Curtis Yarvin, who's also a good friend of mine. And the way he describes the American system that's running the people, the Way he describes it is we are living under FDR's personal monarchy 80 years later without FDR. Right? And the reason he describes that, he says, look, before fdr, the federal government was actually very small. Like tax rates were like super low. The federal government didn't do very much. The fdr, dramatically, by orders of magnitude, increased the size and scope of the federal government. He did that for two reasons. One was the New Deal, and then the other was World War II. And so the federal government that Franklin Roosevelt left behind in 1945 when he passed away was the government that he had built, which he had run the entire time from 1935 to 1945 himself, in which he had staffed himself and he had overseen himself and everything. And he built this basically this giant structure. And as Curtis basically says, as long as you had FDR running that it could run really well. And, you know, we won World War II and saved the free world and like it were, and pulled the US out of depression. Like the whole thing worked and it was great. But if you let an organization of that size and scope run without its founder, CEO for 80 years, you end up with what we have now, which is just like, basically an out of control bureaucracy, like an out of control system.
- [18:57]
Sam Seder
All right, So I just wanted to lay that out. And there was also one where Andreessen, I think, was on Joe Rogan basically saying that, you know, fdr, Hitler, whatever, you know, people are really in control of stuff. All right, so with that said, he cites Curtis Yarvin. Who is Curtis Yarvin?
- [19:18]
Gil Duran
Curtis Yarvin is a software programmer from San Francisco who in the early 2000s, started writing a. A weird blog under the name Mincha Smallbug. And in that blog he outlined a lot of these ideas for getting rid of democracy in favor of a corporate monarch or dictator and running territories instead of by government, by corporation. For example, his idea for San Francisco was something called Friscorp, which would be a corporate run San Francisco where you need a special card to swipe it and swipe out at every moment. In Friscorp, you're under constant and total surveillance. They know every single thing you're doing, even if you're in your house. And this is what guarantees the safety of the populace. He's only reinvented the totalitarian government of Orwell's 1984. But one thing you find with these guys is they think all the villains of science fiction and speculative fiction are the heroes and they seek to emulate them. So I often hear from people that this is snow crash, this is parable of the sewer, etc. They're all right. And that's the basic idea here. You get a lot of gobbledygook from guys who think they're really smart but are actually saying really dumb and dangerous things and now are sadly, very close. They're in control of the federal government in Washington. And that's what's kind of shocking about it. When I started this work last year, I felt like a lot of people, even people I've known a long time, viewed it as sort of a conspiracy theory. You know, if Kamala had won, I would look like a guy who had way overreacted to a few weirdos in tech. Even billionaires were criticizing me, saying, nobody takes these guys seriously. This is just a journalist trying to be in the New York Times someday. And I wish that had all been true, because what's happening now is even scarier and worse than I thought. And so Yarvin's idea is that Americans have to get over their dictator phobia. He said, and the way that we do that is by installing a CEO to be like the shadow president and to destroy American government from within through something he calls rage. R A G E, Retire all government employees. And that's very much what you see happening right now through Doge. Doge. Destruction of government by Elon in Washington as we speak.
- [21:22]
Emma Vigeland
And he lifted it.
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Sam Seder
I mean, honestly, I think, like, you know, it is. You were just ahead of the curve here. Here is New York Times. Is David Marchese interviewing Curtis Yarvin? And this is the longest interview I've seen with him, and it's about an hour long, and there's sort of two, actually two segments. And I was struck by how exactly what you're saying. It's a lot of gobbledygook, and this guy's not that bright. It's fascinating. He's asked.
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Gil Duran
Why.
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Sam Seder
Why do you think FDR was a dictator or a CEO or a king, whatever?
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Gil Duran
They.
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Sam Seder
They sort of. They play around with these terms as more or less the same type of thing. And he doesn't seem to really have an answer except for a strange anecdote. But let's just listen to this for a minute or two. This is Curtis Yarvin being interviewed at the New York Times. This came out about three weeks ago, I guess.
- [22:26]
Unidentified Contributor
No Mark Indrease. And so I sent this piece to Mark Indreys, and it's an excerpt from the diary of Harold Ickes, who's FDR's Secretary of the Interior. And it's a little diary entry describing a cabinet meeting in 1933. And what happens in this cabinet meeting is that Francis Perkins, who's the Secretary of Labor, comes in to this meeting and is like, here, I have a list of the projects that we're going to do. FDR personally takes this list, looks at the projects in New York and is like, this is crap.
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Gil Duran
This is crap.
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Unidentified Contributor
Aren't you doing like, humiliates Francis Perkins in the Oval Office or wherever they're having their cabinet meeting. And then at the end of the thing, it's like everybody agrees that the bill will be fixed and then pass through Congress. This is just a picture of FDR acting like a CEO. And so the question of, was FDR a dictator? What does it mean to be a dictator? What does this pejorative word mean? I don't know. What I know is that Americans of all stripes, Democrats, Republicans, and everyone, you know, except for a few right wing Republicans, basically revere fdr. And FDR ran the New Deal like a startup.
- [23:46]
Sam Seder
Okay, okay. I don't know. I honestly like a startup. Like I'm, I'm, you know, waiting. Like, what, what made FDR a dictator in your mind? And he was rude to Francis. Perspective Perkins. The first time she came in and everybody liked fdr, he ran it like a startup.
- [24:10]
Emma Vigeland
Well, she was a DEI hire.
- [24:12]
Sam Seder
What is, what, what's going on here? Like, I mean, I, you know, like I don't want to spend too, too much time, you know, sort of diagnosing Curtis Yarvin. Although I did note that it seems like every reactionary wears a leather coat on some level. Like it's their way of saying, I want to take us back to the, you know, the 14th century, but I'm wearing a leather coat. So this has got to be all new and rebellious. But what? There doesn't need to be a there there.
- [24:44]
Gil Duran
Yeah, well, these are people who are used to talking in rooms where nobody challenges them. So your stupidity gets accepted and you get more competent in it. The other way to look at it is this is a disinformation for dumb people who don't know anything about what he's talking about. And so his cherry picked anecdotes are used to convince all of these young wannabes in Silicon Valley that, oh, wow, it was a dictatorship, et cetera. There's one quote Yarvin has from a few years back where he says, you can go into a bar and say, you know, I think the British should have won the American Revolution and people Will say, yeah, that's cool. Well try that shit in Boston or somewhere where actually people know about some of these things and see what happens in a bar. So this is a guy who's sort of making up this universe from cherry picked anecdotes and trying to prove this point. I mean, if I worked in government, I come from government. I spent a lot of my career there. I worked for Governor Jerry Brown. I worked for Senator Dianne Feinstein when she was chair of the Intelligence Committee. I come from mainstream democratic politics. I'm not on the far left. And everything in politics is a negotiation. Everything is a test of egos and wills that's designed that way from the Greeks and the Romans. There's a long history of how this works. There are checks and balances. If Roosevelt had been a dictator, then why did we go and elect a bunch of Republicans who hated his whole project in intervening decades? I mean, it makes no sense, but it's not supposed to. We're not the audience for it. The audience is people who don't know history, who don't know what to think and might fall prey and victim to this revisionist vision that is only designed to convince them that we're already in a dictatorship. It's just a matter of which dictator you want.
- [26:14]
Sam Seder
That's what Andreessen was basically saying. We've been living under a dictatorship without the dictator here. And that's why things are going awry on some level 90 years later. I mean, it's, it's insane stuff. And I want to get to the plan. We got some, a lot of questions about that as well. But just one more thing that, that strikes me when you, because you have delved into his writing and from what I've read and heard from him speak, the fascinating thing is he is trying, when he responded later in that interview to like democracy, he defined it where you heard Peter Thiel say, whatever that means. He defined it as, you know, a desire for the common good, which is not what democracy is. Democracy is not about. I mean, I think everybody wants that, but democracy is about the participation in the decision making as opposed to a desire for what the ends is. And I just, I want you to talk about how slippery they are about what democracy is. And because there seems to be with this sort of cohort of conservative thought, the way they strip this, the way they lay this bare is it's all sort of like focused on some type of outcome and they try and I guess flatten the differences, erase meaning, erase the meaning of everything prior to that, on some level, I would add also, he used an example, and I'm sure you've heard him say this about if, you know, why would we want, you know, Apple's run by a CEO. Could California, the government agency of making computers, make an Apple computer? Of course not. But that's a very, very narrow.
- [28:14]
Gil Duran
Sort.
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Sam Seder
Of like, I guess, job assignment for government. It's not just we're going to make good computers. There's a whole host of addressing a bunch of different concerns, which is fundamentally about democracy. Will you just talk about that element of it?
- [28:30]
Gil Duran
Yeah. These guys only view reality through their own lens of tech and wealth and power. Having been in government, you have to view it through the eyes of vast constituencies of people, many of whom have different needs or maybe at cross purposes. Politics is a tough art to master. A lot of good people fail at it. And so when they talk about things like democracy, etc. You know, a lot of their problems could be cured by a Poli Sci 101 class. You know, the common good, through history, has come to be defined as something that the public must participate in defining. What they are trying to say is that, well, there were times where there were monarchs or there were dictators, and the common good was defined as whatever they decided it was. And, you know, they claim things worked better or whatever under those systems, which I think history will prove that they don't. So all of this is pointed toward complete ignorance of actual history, of political theory, of how we got to the system that we have, toward a return to something that doesn't work, always gets overthrown, usually through violent revolution or war. And that would only benefit the richest guys in the room, which is them. So I think, you know, if anybody who's familiar with the basics of political science can see the very juvenile and sophomore mistakes they're making. But again, these are guys who don't get challenged in the rooms that they're in. And even when they get interviewed by, say, the New York Times, it's a pretty softball interview. You know, this is a guy who's called for a dictatorship and laid out a plan that appears to be being followed. And he gets this glow up, black and white smoldering photograph in the New York Times. I mean, this is a really bizarre time to be living in. You know, you couldn't get these guys to cover this stuff before, you know, three days before the inauguration, they dropped the Yarvin interview. And believe me, I was talking to people and urging them to do this. And, you know, again, I was out there in weirdo land, and now we're all in weirdo land. So.
- [30:17]
Emma Vigeland
Yes, but they, they, they covered Project 2025. Right. I mean, and that, I guess, is like, well, let's.
- [30:23]
Sam Seder
Before we get to Project 2025, will you just lay out the plan for us? Because then I think it, like it overlays over Project 2025.
- [30:30]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Gil Duran
Oh, you're talking about the plan in, in the blueprint that Yarvin.
- [30:35]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [30:36]
Gil Duran
Had. Well, in 2022, Yarvin updated his plan to a second Trump administration, and it's called the Butterfly Revolution. He did this on his substack and he said that the basic plan would be. And he said, oh, this is all imaginary scenario, a harmless thought exercise. But the idea would be to install a CEO style dictator while keeping Trump as the figurehead to then purge career government employees, basically carry out rage, retire all government employees to weaken these institutions. Get rid of any people who are loyal to democracy. Replace them with loyal ninjas who would answer to the CEO dictator, not to the democratic process or to Congress or anybody like that. Then start centralizing executive power under the executive branch, rebutting the courts, refusing to go along with the laws, just challenging every aspect of the system to break it, and then, you know, and also bypassing congressional oversight. And then use this new centralized power to start seizing the other centers of power in society, media power, academia. Establish complete control over the information sphere, because in order to have this experiment last, you have to make sure it controls information because it needs to control future elections. It does no good if in two years we get the Congress back or in four years we get the White House back. So that was the scary vision he laid out in 2022. And as far as I can tell, that sounds impossible. Yeah, everything that Musk is doing, again, it could all be a vast coincidence. You know, I'm a skeptical person myself. I'm a journalist, I come from mainstream politics. But it seems to me that they're doing everything on their list so far. And I've come to a point where I'm not going to underestimate these guys anymore. I am going to underestimate all of the people whose job it is to be telling people what's going on. I think if most of the American people knew what was happening right now, they would be very much against it.
- [32:30]
Sam Seder
But that no one is saying it, that it's systemic. I mean, that's the thing is that I think there is this sense out there that, like, stuff is happening willy nilly, but this is part of a plan.
- [32:40]
Emma Vigeland
But, but, but no. I mean that was my question and it's really just, it's fascinating to see how this pairs with the lack of meaning that they're trying to engender and the fact that these tech bros have control over our communications platforms. They're able to make that a reality. I mean everybody's a blue check and what information is true and what is not. I mean I think I saw Yarvin saying that this is the prime opportunity for our plan to come into place or go into place because right now we're in a very irony pilled or a high irony time essentially saying that there's such little education that our ideas sound okay. I mean it's the same with the anti vax stuff. That's where we're at right now.
- [33:27]
Gil Duran
Definitely. Everything is considered negotiable and there's no opposition that's organizing to really counter what these guys are doing. Instead, the Democratic Party's stance seems to be that well, we're just going to let them do it as much bad stuff as possible and everybody will be against it. We're starting to see some people stand up and resist it. We've got people like AOC and others. Jamie Raskin said the other day that they're trying to install a tech monarchy. People are creeping toward it. But I think what people need to understand is that this is not random chaos. This is a strategy. And it's a strategy they've been talking about and writing about and bragging about for years. And once you understand that, then it takes on a different meaning. You can make more sense of what's happening. And basically we've got an unelected foreign born billionaire up in our government destroying it and defying our laws. This is exactly the kind of nightmare our Constitution was designed to prevent. And we need to be very aware of that because we can stop it, but not if we stay asleep for too long. These guys are trying to do as much damage as they can as quickly as possible because that's their key to keeping power. And I don't mean keeping power for four years, I mean keeping power in general. And to see the Democratic Party largely silent, to see the major media outlets not really getting it, is pretty scary. That to me is the scariest thing of all people should. This is an advanced conversation. Catch up, get your pants on, get your boots on and get out the door. It's time to go. And I don't really see that happening from the party that again, I worked for for very mainstream politicians for most of my career.
- [34:57]
Emma Vigeland
And so how does that work with Project 2025 then? They're, they, they really meet together nicely because it's both involves the dismantling of the administrative state, does it not?
- [35:10]
Gil Duran
Yeah, there does seem to be. You know, back in September there was a big conference in San Francisco called Reboot, which by the way is the name of the speech that Yarvin gave in 2012 where he called for the destruction of the federal government. And Reboot was a conference between the Silicon Valley tech types and the Heritage Foundation. And there was all these speeches, people from Anderil Palantir, you name it, all coming together at a talk. And I wrote a piece about it. Then I'm like, well, this seems to be a convergence of the right wing, far right Republican sphere, the religious aspect of it, the religious zealots who want to impose a theocracy, the far right tech guys, the Peter Thiel universe, Elon Musk's of the World and maga. Right. They're all kind of coming together. They have a lot of commonalities. There are some key differences, but a lot of commonalities. And I think the thing that I was trying to write about last year that I think a lot of the media missed was these guys have gotten together on a project here and they're going to focus on their commonalities, Destroy the government, shrink it down, privatize it, end rights for people of color, for women, et cetera. And they're going to focus on that for the next few years. So I think this convergence is something that was largely missed, but that was again happening in plain sight. The Heritage foundation and the Tech Bros had a thing called Reboot in San Francisco in September. Right. They were open about it. It wasn't a secret.
- [36:38]
Sam Seder
There's a, there's a real quality. This, this convergence reminds me of Paul Wolfowitz testifying in front of, I think the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 20 some odd years ago saying, you know, weapons of mass destruction is what we could all agree on. And it brought in various disparate sort of constituencies to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It has that quality where, you know, Russell Vogt I don't think has these notions of a CEO, you know, these sort of like futuristic visions. He just has a vision of a destroyed administrative state, which is sort of a, this sort of mechanism is a perfect overlay. Yarvin's, you know, sort of like means to that end is a perfect overlay on Project 2025.
- [37:35]
Gil Duran
It seems yeah, I think what they share in common is a desire for a set hierarchy in the world. Men, white men, wealthy white men, should be in control, period. End of story. Men, wealthy white Christian men, should be in control, period. And, you know, I do a lot of work with George Lakoff, the cognitive linguist who categorized many decades ago how the right wing ideology works. And that's what they have in common, right? They have this. That's where their commonality is. Now, there are some differences when it comes to, you know, for instance, God above man is a traditional conservative belief. Well, these tech guys don't really believe in God. I think they believe they are God. They believe they are creating God in the form of AI. And the only person who's outlining these very weird and bizarre beliefs of the Silicon Valley guys that are completely anathema to Republicans, to traditional Republicans, is Steve Bannon. Unfortunately, he's been going to town, hitting them in all their weirdness and their bizarre beliefs in the danger they pose. And Democrats should really categorize all of his main arguments and start making ads based on those and targeting them at MAGA, people and swing voters on YouTube, because only Steve Bannon is doing that work right now. And it saddens me to say that I despise Steve Bannon. I do not view him as an ally. He just wants a different flavor of dictatorship. He has a personal beef against some of these guys, and he's saying, here's all the weird stuff that people should be talking about that are completely going to scare the hell out of maga.
- [39:02]
Sam Seder
Talk more about this because this is something we've been observing. You know, I guess it was about a month or so ago that Bannon came out and said, well, what are these three South Africans? He was talking about Sachs and Musk and Teal. What are these three South Africans all racist? What are they doing? You know, telling us what our government's going to be. And then he also seems to be backpedaling a little bit because he realized, like, oh, shoot, I lost that battle.
- [39:26]
Emma Vigeland
And in the New York Times, he was like, throwing subtle shade at Moss, saying he's the Edison of our time. And if you're not familiar with, like, Tesla fanboys, that's a dig at Musk. But anyway, so.
- [39:39]
Gil Duran
But what.
- [39:39]
Sam Seder
Where is the ideological split there between a Bannon and the, you know, a Yarvin in that respect? And how, how does that play out? I mean, if we were talking about we were going to start producing those ads or that content to show, you know, as a Wedge issue. I also despise Bannon, but what. Where exactly is that? That. Where is that wedge?
- [40:08]
Gil Duran
Well, I think it's in. Well, first of all, I think what Bannon is trying to do is force a negotiation with these tech bros. He sees that Elon's come in, he's like, hey, I bought the Republican Party. I'm now the star of the show. I think Bannon understands that that's dangerous, that that could turn people off. We already see Elon Musk's popularity plummeting in the polls with Republicans. It already is dead with Democrats for the most part. So Elon has a necessity of taking everything too far and not pacing himself at all. And so I think it's a negotiation. What Bannon has said is that, yeah, you deserve a place at the table. You spent all this money, and we could use that money to take over Europe and turn Europe fully right and have this global right wing project. But he wants him to not be at the head of the table, is what he has said. And so I think there's that tension. Part of it is that I think Bannon views himself as a populist, as someone who is representing his people, a mass of voters who have been with him on this journey to getting Trump to office. And I think he sees he's jealous to some degree, perhaps, of the role that Elon has bought for himself. But also I think he understands that Elon and these guys don't care what people think. They are not populists. They are anti populists. They want to be dictators. They want to establish a system where the people do not have a voice. And that is a very dangerous project to push. So I think in a way that Bannon is trying to give some strategic advice here. Don't go full dictator in full view. You get a lot farther making things subtle in politics. You kind of want to boil the frog here. Start off slow and go up. What Musk is doing is throwing everybody into the boiling water all at once. And so that's how I view it. If you were to look at the thing that I think Bannon focuses on most, it's weird stuff like transhumanism, meeting humans with machines, putting chips into people's brains, and this idea that AI will be God, because apparently God doesn't already exist. And there are these cultural and religious issues that if you examine the beliefs of these tech guys, are going to make, you know, the grandmas and the MAGA grandpas out there think, who are these guys? Should I be supporting this, but no one's telling them that except for Steve Bannon. And he's even hedging because he doesn't want to be. You know, I think it's a negotiation more than anything.
- [42:18]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, Yarvin's an atheist, right? And Thiel is godless. He's gay. Right, Whatever. But, like, I guess this is a good way, I think, to bring it back to the concept of the network state. And you bring up San Francisco a lot. I'm wondering if you view. Where you view the origination of this idea and the fact that they're clearly sprinting to try to implement it. Because there's been a lot of talk over the past few years about how crime is out of control, particularly in cities when we know that crime has been declining since the spike in the pandemic. And you see the elevation on these platforms that are owned by these guys of highly racialized crime content as well. And when you hear about these efforts like Praxis and these other private city enterprises that these guys are investing in, it seems clear that they want to create private fiefdoms around the world. But now they're almost using this as an experiment with the entire United States. Like, does. Do you. Do you see a connection between the elevation of this, like, crime, hysteria and panic on the right and an effort to privatize our public spaces?
- [43:36]
Gil Duran
Oh, definitely. They're trying to polarize public opinion across a range of issues, usually using the scapegoat tactic. Everything that's possibly wrong, even if it's actually not wrong or it's better than it used to be, is the fault of Democratic governance with a small D and a big D. And we have no choice except to throw out these progressives or Democrats who are ruining everything and replace them with people who are approved of by tech. We saw that with the LA fires, where it became a story framed around issues of DEI or Democratic incompetence or water supplies that have nothing to do with the water in la. They just kind of flexed their muscle there and showed how they'll get on TV and say that anything is about anything and that'll get covered, that'll get repeated. Whereas you didn't have Democrats on TV saying, this is climate change and this is going to get worse, and here's going to be our policy for dealing with it. Only the Republicans seem to be framing these things. And I started covering this in San Francisco because I thought last year this was a local story. This network state cult is going to try to take over the city Government of San Francisco, a very liberal progressive city on the west coast and go from there. That was what Gary Tan of Y Combinator, who's a part of the Network State idea, said, if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere. What happened was that the collapse of the Biden campaign plus the ascension of J.D. vance to the ticket opened up this opportunity to, instead of experimenting in San Francisco and I thought, hey, I'll write a series that warns everybody these guys are going to do to the country what they're doing to San Francisco. Instead they accelerated to use one of their favorite words to the national level now, and now we're all in it. So I did not foresee this happening this quickly. I thought maybe four to 10 years we're going to see these tech guys taking over federal government. And so that's very much what we're going to see. A constant polarization and scapegoating who is the out group that everybody can be united against. And you know, so called wokeism dei. Anything progressive which they depict as something all Democrats believe in has become the scapegoat target for them.
- [45:44]
Sam Seder
So that's fascinating. They were about to do the 10x investment and then they were like, wait a Second, we've got 100x that just shows up for us. Talk about that in terms of ants. Because Elon Musk announced his he was going to do 45 million. It turned out to be about $300 million that we know of, like directly supporting Trump's campaign right after Trump's assassination. But that was right when the Trump administration, the Trump campaign, knew that Vance was going to be the nominee. And was that, was that basically like was Vance essentially the signal to the, these tech bros, whether it's, you know, Musk or the PayPal mafia, the Sachs, all of these guys that like, okay, Trump's bought into the plan now.
- [46:43]
Gil Duran
Yeah, I think Vance sealed the deal. Right. J.D. vance is a creation largely of Peter Thiel at every step of the way. Peter Thiel has been there, even when he wrote his book, it was while working for Peter Thiel in San Francisco.
- [46:56]
Sam Seder
You know, has he ever made professionally a dollar that wasn't from Peter Thiel money?
- [47:02]
Gil Duran
I think he did like less than a year at a law firm in Ohio before he moved out to California. But he has been on the payroll for a very long time. Teal got him elected to the Senate until got him on the ticket because remember, JD Vance had compared Donald Trump to America's Hitler, called him all kinds of names and he had to repair that damage. And he did. So when you can get a guy who called you Hitler on your ticket, something big has happened there. And that's when we saw this whole convergence. All the tech guys realized, again, here's 100x opportunity to absolutely maximize and accelerate and take over the country instead of San Francisco. In fact, Gary Tan, who was here trying to mastermind this takeover, recently said, I'm going to spend less time on local politics. I'm going to Washington to focus on things there. This is a guy who claims to be a Democrat, by the way. You know, all Democrats are rushing to Washington to be a part of the exciting new era there, of course. But yeah, I think that's kind of, that's my view on what happened, is that they realized there was an opportunity to scale it much more quickly. And that explains the rush nature of it. But again, this isn't all happening. This is all happening so quickly that I mean, I think people thought, well, how could they have planned it if it's all happening so quickly? But I just think that they move very, very fast. I think they're moving at the speed of AI and in fact trying to, you know, feed everything through AI And I think they just made a deal and they're running with it right now.
- [48:25]
Emma Vigeland
But that's, that's Silicon Valley to move fast and break things. So they're just taking that model to the US Government.
- [48:31]
Gil Duran
Move fast and break America.
- [48:33]
Emma Vigeland
Yep.
- [48:34]
Sam Seder
Let's talk a little bit about Trump's role. Cuz, you know, there was this idea which I never bought. I mean, you don't show up with $300 million Donald Trump. There was a lot of like people saying that he's going to be, his ego is going to be hurt by Elon Musk. He's going to have a problem with Elon Musk running things. But I think the central sort of incentive structure that Donald Trump responds to is power and money and protection. And Elon Musk shows up and this is a guy who's not only paid for Trump to be in office, but is now essentially the paid enforcer for everyone in for, you know, Trump has basically arranged now and I think this was like a Russell vote project from Project 2025. I'm not going to have anybody in office, anybody who's working in my cabinet, who's going to challenge me, and I'm going to take out all the inspector generals. We're just going to have no friction there. And Musk is the guy who's in charge of making sure there's no friction in the Senate and the House and he doesn't have to show up there. He just basically says, I'm bankrolling anybody who wants to run against any of these people. Don't do what we say. Give me your sense of, like what. Where Trump is in all this. Is he now just the chairman of the board and just sitting back and going like, this is great. I can, I can golf more.
- [49:58]
Gil Duran
That's the, I think, the basic idea, right? He's been paid off in his meme coin money. I'm sure there are many more scams being planned that will keep his pockets well lined with money through various tech ventures enriching his family. This is a general autocratic model. The problem these guys have is that there is a cult of Trump that is very powerful. But Trump is 78 years old. He won't be around forever. How do you build what comes after Trump? I'm not sure that J.D. vance has that charisma. He pulled pretty low. And so they have to find a way to keep Trump happy because he's right now the power that they have. If Trump were to turn on them, it would be catastrophic. He still does have the power to get rid of them to some degree, though. Who knows now what leverage they might have given, you know, how much money he's suddenly made off of tech ventures. But I think he's mostly the figurehead right now until something happens that forces Musk out of government. And even then he can still exert a lot of control behind the scenes. What's surprising to that? He insists on being in front of the camera right now. That's a very dangerous. You know, people can burn out on you pretty fast. The pendulum tends to swing. People don't want what they wanted a few months ago or a few weeks ago. So I think right now we're in a situation where Trump is wholly, a wholly captured subsidiary of these Silicon Valley guys. Whether you want to call them the network state or something else, it's all the same idea, tech authoritarianism. And so basically they acquired maga and that's what Bannon is complaining about. These guys think they bought the MAGA movement and now Musk is going to be the head of it. But there are some pretty serious complications there. One of them being that Musk is foreign born. Though I wouldn't be surprised to see some sycophantic Republican introducing a bill to allow foreign born billionaires to run for president someday. I mean, we haven't seen anything yet in terms of what they're going to try.
- [51:42]
Sam Seder
Well, there's another problem that Musk has, and that is a total lack of charisma. I mean, and I'm not being, you know, sort of, like, glib with this. Like, you know, if you wanted to go back, you often have authoritarians. I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't seem too sort of direct comparison, but you have authoritarians who match up with business interests. These authoritarians will often either have the plan themselves and the electoral, the sort of, like, charismatic appeal, or they could outsource it like Trump has in many respects, either to the Heritage foundation or to, you know, the reboot, sort of like coalition, as it were. But they don't have anybody for that charisma. Like, you know, and they've been operating in they got two years, and then, you know, maybe the Democrats take the House. But none of this seems to be playing out on the legislative field for the most part. What do they do, you know, in three years or four years, assuming Trump doesn't run again?
- [53:02]
Gil Duran
Yeah, that's the problem they have to figure out. And I think, you know, I'm not very religious myself, but it does seem like the good Lord has taken away the tongues of these men. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk. They can't give a speech to save their lives. And it's a big advantage we have. So we need the people who are powerful speakers on the Democratic side of the spectrum to get out there and frame this and to challenge these people. You know, you can't put Peter Tyrell, Elon Musk on the stage with an articulate and smart person. They'll look like they'll melt. You know, they can't speak. And so the way they express their power in other dangerous ways, and I think that's a great advantage that we have right now. This is largely, right now, a communications war about defining for people what is happening and what they can do about it. We still have a lot of power. Their plan depends on people being complacent and people not realizing what's going on until the last minute. And we do have to build toward 2026. These guys can be defeated. They want us to feel like they can't. They want us to feel like they're all powerful. But they're very vulnerable right now. And you have to remember that it is a very serious thing to try to destroy the government of the United States of America. And there will be accountability one day, but only if we wake up and start fighting it right now. I've heard from some people in the Democratic establishment, some big donors who are like, this is not the time to do this. And I'm like, absolutely wrong. There is time, actually was last year.
- [54:21]
Sam Seder
Yes.
- [54:21]
Gil Duran
We should have had a plan for this. You know, you have to have a plan for losing, even in a low level campaign.
- [54:27]
Sam Seder
That's what I want to ask you. I mean, there's a perfect segue into that one. I like. It's one thing, okay, Our plan to deal with this is to have Kamala Harris win. Then like on November 8th, you're like, okay, we got three months. It doesn't feel like. It feels like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer woke up yesterday and we're like, wait, what's going on? And I mean, you are in Democratic politics. You worked, you know, establishment Democrats. What, what is your assessment of the way that they've been responding? Because I looked at a speech from Hakeem Jeffries yesterday when he was talking, you know, saying we don't have any leverage. And ostensibly he's talking about reconciliation. And I'm like, this is a speech that could have been given. This is a press conference. It could have been given at literally any other time when Democrats didn't have the House. Like, how is what's going on now not fundamentally unique and deserving of a different response?
- [55:34]
Gil Duran
Democrats don't understand the role of morality in politics. What we have right now is moral leverage. Our government is under attack. Our Constitution is under attack. These institutions, sacred institutions that every American, whether you're on the right or the left, has been taught are important, are foundational to who we are as a people, are being destroyed. And you have to talk about it in that way. And instead, I think what's happening is you've got all these Democrats chasing that billionaire tech money. Hey, we'll make a deal. Hey, we'll give you what you want. We'll just not do it in that way. And I think what we're seeing is that Silicon Valley and capitalism in general are very open to authoritarianism if it's in their best interests. You know, where are all the corporate leaders standing up to say this is wrong, to say we're not going to go along with this. Everyone is just complying. And so we're learning a lot right now about the role of billionaires in our society, about the cowardice of our establishment leaders and corporations. And I think that in my optimistic hope is that we'll come out of this era understanding the dangers that were created when we allowed these situations to get out of control and to challenge the very moral foundations of our entire country, our entire reason for being. And I think that unless we seize that moral high ground and start talking directly about the morality of it, we're going to lose. And I think there's, there's time to change that reality. But again, this idea that of begging crypto and other people to, to do the right thing, they're not going to do the right thing. They think this is the right thing. And we have to tell people that's what they believe. Because if they start getting unpopular, if there is unrest, if the polls show a massive dramatic shift, these guys are going to get scared. Remember these billionaires, these tech companies, these corporations, they're cowards. They're going to shift to where the population shifts. We have to shift the population and rapidly.
- [57:22]
Sam Seder
Is that where you see their vulnerability? Is that there is a, a populist, an economic populist resent that can be flamed.
- [57:35]
Gil Duran
Yeah. Americans deciding they don't want to live under this corporate dictatorship, that they're not ready for the Constitution and democracy to end because of one election.
- [57:44]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [57:44]
Gil Duran
I think that, but I think people aren't telling anybody that. Instead they see their leaders meeting with Silicon Valley guys saying everything's going to be okay, we're going to find a way to, to reconcile and kind of go along with most of it. What you have here is the Overton window being shifted all the way to the extremist authoritarian. Right. And we're, we're going to. The Democratic Party is going to be what, what the centrist Republicans were a few years ago. You know, there's, what's the political theory here? And I think a lot of these guys are maybe scared, these leaders. I saw someone saying they're getting death threats, etc. But if, if you're not willing to die for your country, don't put your hand up and take that oath. You know that's supposed to mean something.
- [58:23]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and Altman, Sam Altman went on tv, I guess it was a few hours ago, and was making fun of Elon Musk because you know what, he's mad that he's not getting in on the looting of the federal government. That's what he wants. And he's not in the in crowd, cuz they hate each other. But. And I wonder if that's who Hakeem Jeffries was meeting with and speaking to, by the way. But like, you've talked a little bit about crypto and its role in this kind of anarcho, capitalist tech vision, crypto was supposed to be outside of fiat currency. That was its initial selling point. But a lot of these guys got in super early and hold a ton of cryptocurrency. There's discussions about putting our payment system on the block chain. Like, what does that. What does crypto mean in this context? And what are some of the potential outcomes that could be very terrifying if they actually get their way and incorporate crypto and this kind of speculation into our government?
- [59:23]
Gil Duran
Definitely, crypto is about money, and money is about power. And remember, their goal is to control the centers of power and information. Government, police forces, media, academia, religion, and money. And their stated goal is to replace existing institutions and things with parallel versions, new versions that serve the interests of these tech guys. And so I think a key part of this whole plan is to replace the dollar's power in the world with the power of crypto, in particular, bitcoin. Balaji Srinivasan, a former Andreessen employee, and Thiel associate, a guy who Musk regularly interacts with on Twitter, has been very explicit about this. It's about going to a bitcoin standard, which would make all of these guys fabulously wealthy and put them in control of a great deal of monetary policy. Of monetary policy. And so I think, you know, Doge says it best you coupling the destruction of government with a crypto coin that has gained a lot because of Musk's antics. That's kind of, in a way, a perfect expression of what's going on here. And I think we're going to see nonstop crypto scams and crypto moves. AI and crypto are the two main technologies by which these guys see the future being controlled. And so we're going to see this massive rush to control AI, to control crypto. And if you can combine those in the American government somehow, then you also have one of the most powerful governments in the world at the helm of that experiment. And, you know, I don't have every particular detail there. There's some good writing coming out from other writers. I posted an essay today on the Nerd Reich by a writer going into what all of the AI stuff means. And it's an AI coup is what Eric Salvaggio calls it. So there are other people who are really tuning into some of these details, and I think it's great. But that's what it's about. It's about controlling the technologies that will allow them to have more wealth and more power. And crypto is at the Heart of this crypto spent a lot of money in these elections to take out Democrats or to put in place crypto friendly Democrats. Any politician taking money for crypto or speaking well of crypto is one of the bad guys, just to be clear. I think at this point, at this day and age.
- [61:34]
Sam Seder
Great. All right, lastly and thank you for indulging us for so long, but this is really fascinating, I think very important stuff when you're looking out 30, 60, 90 days, you know, maybe even 180 days. Like where, what, what's, what's next? What's the next phase? The it feels like, I mean, I have no doubt that Musk's people still have access to all this stuff. It's just a question of whether their access is going to be illicit after agreed upon as being illicit. Like at this point it's illicit. We don't know what's going to happen at one point when they keep ignoring what judges are telling them to do and not do you we're going to get to that inflection point. What do you anticipate happening at that inflection point and then what happens after that? Regardless of how that sort of like one source of friction plays out, because I'm convinced I, whatever reason I have trust that the 20 year old named Big Balls or whatever the guy's name is has been like, okay, I won't put some type of backdoor tunnel into this system or whatever it is. I mean, I just find it hard to believe they're like, well that would be a bridge too far to go. But assuming we have what society has agreed is illicit and what they can do, and then what they're going to do and one implicates the other. But what do you anticipate over the sort of the near to midterm, they're.
- [63:19]
Gil Duran
Going to go one by one, seizing power and destroying different institutions of government. I think the major thing we're going to see emerge, and we've seen this a bit already with the USAID conversation, is the rising of these new conspiracy theories and false narratives based on, oh look what we discovered was actually happening behind the scenes. A whole information stream designed to use the government to undermine people's faith in the government and to say the government has been doing all these bad secret things, maybe even stealing elections, and now we're going to put a stop to that. So I think you're going to see them use whatever power they have to start defining narratives like the Twitter files, right? Ostensibly based on the information we now have access to. And it's going to just pump all of these right wing anti government memes into the mainstream. And so I think that's the main thing to look out for. The creation of unreality. And making sure that people can't discern fact from fiction is very crucial to any fascist or authoritarian regime. And so they're going to turn the jets on for that. There's going to be a direct stream from the conspiracy theorists in our federal government to all of their media organs and people are not going to know what to believe and they're going to think that, wow, something really bad was happening and it's good that we have this dictatorship in place to clean this all up. That's what they're going for in my, in my opinion, based on my observation of them so far.
- [64:40]
Sam Seder
Lavo Giotto. I guess on some level.
- [64:43]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [64:45]
Sam Seder
Any, any.
- [64:46]
Emma Vigeland
No, no. I mean it's pretty bleak. But Gil, your work is awesome. People really should check you out on Ghost.
- [64:54]
Sam Seder
We'll put a link to.
- [64:56]
Emma Vigeland
We will put the Third Nerd Reich.
- [65:01]
Gil Duran
There we go.
- [65:01]
Sam Seder
We'll put a link to Nerd reich at Majority FM and in the podcast and YouTube description. Gil, would love to check in with you in a couple of months to see. I mean, if it's going to be six months from now, let's check back in with you. Really appreciate your time today.
- [65:21]
Gil Duran
Thank you.
- [65:22]
Sam Seder
This is amazing. We were, I wasn't going to play this. I'd forgotten about it. I saw at one point. And then I just like, I think this happened during my vacation, so I didn't pay that much attention to it. I don't remember. And then Larry David wrote what I thought was actually a pretty funny piece in the New York Times. He's a funny guy about his dinner with Hitler.
- [65:42]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [65:42]
Sam Seder
As if he was back in the 30s. Now, now, look, Well, let's listen to Bill Maher first before we talk about it. He, I think he responded to now the Larry David thing happened.
- [65:58]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, we should give just a little bit of a timeline for people who aren't caught up on this. So Bill Maher had dinner with Trump, then talked about it on his show like for I guess, 15 minutes or something like that about how he's actually pretty funny behind the scenes. He's a really nice guy. And so then Larry David takes out an opinion piece in the New York Times called My Dinner with Adolph.
- [66:19]
Matt
Can I just read the first couple lines?
- [66:20]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [66:21]
Matt
Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939, a letter arrived.
- [66:24]
Sam Seder
Oh, wait, let's know, let's do this afterwards. Okay?
- [66:26]
Emma Vigeland
Okay. Okay.
- [66:27]
Sam Seder
Because first we're going to do what Bill Mo did in announcing that he had done this.
- [66:31]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [66:32]
Sam Seder
And understand the tremendous whitewashing that's going on here of Donald Trump. Let's play this first, okay?
- [66:46]
Bill Maher
The guy I met is not the person who, the night before the dinner, shit, tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged asshole I was. I read it and thought, oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to your house. But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there. Now, does Trump want respect?
- [67:15]
Sam Seder
Of course.
- [67:15]
Bill Maher
Who doesn't? My friend said to me, what are you going to wear to the White House? I said, I know, but I'm not going to dress like Zelinsky, I'll tell you that.
- [67:26]
Sam Seder
Pause it for one second. Here's the thing, and this is sort of inside baseball, but back in the day, I did a lot of live sitcom tapings. I've been to a lot of shows. Like Bill Maher.
- [67:39]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [67:40]
Sam Seder
As an audience member, sometimes I've worked. I used to do little bits on Conan. That first person you hear laughing works on the show, and their job is to juice the laugh from the live audience because they don't want to use canned things.
- [67:55]
Matt
It's like my job here.
- [67:56]
Sam Seder
And if you. Exactly. But if you hear it like you do it well, this guy's going almost like it's, it's. It's probably. It could even be one of the writers just trying to push the stuff. But go back and listen. Just listen how forced the laughter is on this. I mean, it's just so. But then go ahead. I know this is petty.
- [68:18]
Bill Maher
What are you going to wear to the White House? I said, I don't know, but I'm not going to dress like Zelensky, I'll tell you that. Just for starters, he laughs. I'd never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including in himself. And it's not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.
- [68:52]
Gil Duran
Okay.
- [68:53]
Bill Maher
Example, in the Oval Office, he was showing me the portraits of presidents, and he pointed to Reagan and said, in all seriousness, you know, the best thing about him is that hair. I said, well, there was also that whole bringing down communism thing, waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door. But no, he laughed. He got it. I said to him at one point, Mr. President, you know, the dog. That's unusual in the White House. He said, said, well, a lot of the presidents ate a dog for political reasons. I said, no, people love dogs. That's what that is. Oh, yeah, okay.
- [69:38]
Matt
That's true.
- [69:45]
Sam Seder
I'm telling you what happened.
- [69:48]
Bill Maher
At one point, we were walking through his amazing, amazing tour.
- [69:52]
Sam Seder
We don't even hear about this. Because here's the thing. Who gives a shit? He is on. This is a political show.
- [70:04]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. I mean, come on, Sam. He's speaking his truth.
- [70:07]
Sam Seder
I know he's speaking his truth, but the fact of the matter is, is that all he's doing is saying that. Don't pay attention. There is another side to Donald Trump. You don't know. And I say, who gives a shit? Because he's the President of the United States. What's relevant to people is what he's doing. Do you think like Mahmoud Khalil cares that there's another softer side? He's a real human Donald Trump.
- [70:38]
Matt
He laughs.
- [70:39]
Sam Seder
He laughs. Or whether it's Palestinians in Gaza, whether it's, whether it's a scientist who's lost their jobs, whether it's, I mean, go across the entire board. Like this is specifically for his little project of pretending like, don't get that far engaged in politics. I'm okay, you're okay.
- [71:08]
Emma Vigeland
Right. And you're. And all those liberals that I've grown to detest because I'm an old rich guy. And this is kind of the standard trajectory. They have Trump derangement syndrome. Don't you know, he's actually a really nice guy. It's like it is the equivalent of the Hitler love dogs. And that's why, that's what Larry was obviously riffing off of. It seems like.
- [71:30]
Sam Seder
Yeah, let's, let's read some of this, of this Larry David piece. Because this is the point. It doesn't matter if Donald Trump is actually better, you know, up close because I mean, who cares? Who cares? It's completely irrelevant.
- [71:48]
Emma Vigeland
It's also irrelevant if he even believes in his ideology. Right. Like Donald Trump could be a secret liberal woke social justice warrior behind the scenes. Doesn't matter. What matters is what he says in public and his actions as president. I don't care about his as a person.
- [72:07]
Sam Seder
Bill, I want to show you something. Look underneath my shirt. I wear a Che Guevara T shirt.
- [72:12]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [72:12]
Sam Seder
Isn't that impressive?
- [72:13]
Emma Vigeland
Right?
- [72:14]
Sam Seder
Okay.
- [72:14]
Gil Duran
Shh.
- [72:15]
Sam Seder
Don't tell anybody.
- [72:16]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. And that would be irrelevant because it's all about his actions. But what Larry does so well in this, in this times Thing is nailing just the level of self involvement, the level of narcissism, of thinking that this is something that you should say publicly and two, like you should. He doesn't even make an attempt, Bill Maher does, to claim that he challenged Trump in any way.
- [72:44]
Sam Seder
I mean, listen, if Bill Maher wants to go to dinner as a comedian and have dinner with Trump, you know, that's his business. I could still think he's a piece of garbage, but who cares? The bottom line is he's going out there and he is whitewashing Trump. There was a reason why people had a problem with Jimmy Fallon mussing Donald Trump's hair. Because you are humanizing a person whose power is greater than any other human on the planet, and certainly at this time, greater than any other human on the planet, or maybe there's a handful of others to immiserate people and to create and to destroy structures that are crucial to feeding people, making people's lives better, et cetera, et cetera. Whether he's got a sense of humor or he laughs is wholly irrelevant and does nothing but try and make people who are critical of what Trump is doing and what his administration is doing, make them seem like they're the ones with the problem. But read this Larry David thing.
- [74:03]
Emma Vigeland
Imagine my surprise when, in the spring of 1939, a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the old Chancellery with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I know encouraged me me to go, he's Hitler. He's a monster. But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn't change his views, but we need to talk to the other side, even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity. Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room where a few of the Fuhrer's most vocal supporters had gathered. Himmler, Goring, Lenny Riefenstahl, and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward viii. We talked about how some of the most beautiful art on the walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews. But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard footsteps coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room. He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it Was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents. That was my favorite one because just like the narcissism of that, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back, I found the whole thing quite disarming. I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be be perceived as unfure. Like that amused him to no end. And I realized I'd never seen him laugh before.
- [75:29]
Sam Seder
He's just so fantastic.
- [75:30]
Emma Vigeland
Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was prepared to meet Hitler, the one I had seen and heard, the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a complete, completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic. Like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.
- [75:46]
Matt
I'm the guy who's impressed that someone seems more authentic in person than they do. Like at a Nazi ranch.
- [75:54]
Sam Seder
People get the idea. And Dave from Jamaica did. Sank. Right that. Right that. Okay. And then I like this one here. Hitler's joking around. Goring immediately grabbed a slice of pumpernickel, Whereupon Hitler turned to me, gave me an eye roll, then whispered, watch. It'll be done with his entire meal before you've taken two bites. That one really got me. Goring, with his mouth full, asked what was so funny. And Hitler said, I was just telling him about that time my dog had diarrhea at the reichstag. Goring remembered. How could he forget? He loved that story, Especially the punishment where Hitler shot the dog before it got back into the car. And then a beaming Hitler said, hey, if I can kill Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, I could certainly kill a dog. That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night. And believe me, there were plenty. And so Larry David, encourage me. We'll link to it. It's very funny. And then Bill Maher apparently takes offense to this.
- [76:58]
Emma Vigeland
It hurt his feelings.
- [77:01]
Sam Seder
Here he is sitting on. What's the name of his show?
- [77:05]
Emma Vigeland
It's.
- [77:05]
Gil Duran
It's actually Piers Morgan's.
- [77:07]
Matt
Piers Morgan's show, but filmed on club random premises.
- [77:09]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, I thought this was. What's it called? Alcoholic weekly. Sorry, Joke Bill. Oh, it's on Pierce's. Oh, okay, gotcha.
- [77:19]
Matt
They're just in the club Random.
- [77:20]
Emma Vigeland
Okay.
- [77:21]
Matt
Oh, I mean, does it. Does Bill leave the complex?
- [77:24]
Emma Vigeland
I don't think so. But this set is bizarre and weird looking.
- [77:28]
Sam Seder
But anyway, Larry David, because you're friends, aren't you? Were you friends?
- [77:35]
Bill Maher
Of course. I mean, this wasn't, you know, my favorite moment of our friendship. But, you know, look, I don't Want to get in too much into that. But I think the minute you play.
- [77:46]
Sam Seder
The Hitler chorus, that's what I think.
- [77:47]
Bill Maher
You lost the argument.
- [77:49]
Gil Duran
Yes.
- [77:49]
Bill Maher
And also, I must say, you know, come on, man. Hitler Nazis. Nobody would spin harder about and on. And more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don't need to be lectured on who really is. Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that. And the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either. But, you know, to use the Hitler thing, I. First of all, I just think it's kind of insulting to 6 million.
- [78:23]
Gil Duran
Yes.
- [78:24]
Bill Maher
Dead Jews. You know, like, that should kind of be.
- [78:28]
Sam Seder
You gotta be effing kidding me. Are you effing kidding me? He's now policing comedy. Use of Hitler. Why don't you bring Mel Brooks over?
- [78:41]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [78:42]
Sam Seder
Ask him about Springtime for Hitler.
- [78:44]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [78:44]
Sam Seder
Why don't you bring over. What do you want? Why don't you bring over every Jewish comedian who has plowed the road for you to even have, like, any semblance of a career and ask them, like, you know, you joking about Hitler. I don't know if that's. That doesn't seem appropriate. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding? Like, how dare he?
- [79:04]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [79:05]
Sam Seder
His entire career has been politically incorrect. We can't police God. And now he's saying this. This is the. One of the most. And I've been doing this for 20 years. One of the most hypocritical, disingenuous. Like, I can't believe that no one in his life said, bill, wait a second. You shouldn't say that.
- [79:31]
Emma Vigeland
But that's the problem. Who is in his life? Like, he doesn't have a family.
- [79:36]
Sam Seder
There you go. I mean, honestly, there must be nobody like. Bill, do you really want to criticize Larry David for a satirical piece bringing up Hitler?
- [79:45]
Unidentified Contributor
Yeah.
- [79:45]
Matt
Bill, are you sure you maybe just didn't get a big rush off your first socialization in four years when you went to Mar a Lago? Are you sure it was Trump?
- [79:52]
Sam Seder
And this is the thing, too. Like, aside from that being just, I mean, so delicious and frankly nutritious that I feel like someone living on a desert island could live for years off of just how incredibly, like, the amount of chutzpah on that, I think honestly could.
- [80:11]
Emma Vigeland
And to say that to Larry, too. I mean, like, Larry David is a Jewish man. This is absurd.
- [80:16]
Sam Seder
It's just such a disgrace to make a joke about the Hitler to the Jews.
- [80:21]
Matt
The Hitler card.
- [80:22]
Sam Seder
Okay? Like, he just played the Hitler Card in an incredible way. But to say that you honestly reported. Like, let's. If you really want to honestly report. I think there are probably some things in Bill Maher's personal life that he could honestly report on that would be genuinely honest. I mean, there's a lot, lot of stuff that I. Escapades that Bill Morris had.
- [80:50]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, certainly.
- [80:51]
Sam Seder
Is he reporting now on his personal trips to. To eat out with people? He should really broaden that. There's probably a lot of interesting personal story reporting that he could do.
- [81:06]
Bill Maher
There's like so much I would love to know about being a 21 year old girl.
- [81:12]
Sam Seder
I mean, I am sure there's a of lot, a lot of really interesting. But he was just. Is that all he was doing?
- [81:18]
Emma Vigeland
We should go back, people. We covered this on the Thursday, maybe like six or so months ago. People should go back and watch our coverage of him bringing on a bunch of children onto the club random set and asking them about pornography and Stormy Daniels.
- [81:31]
Sam Seder
Oh, I think he has even more interesting stories. Probably not on camera. But since he's just gonna do. That's his job now, honestly report his experiences. I mean, give me a break. Take some responsibility for the garbage that you spew on everybody. That is, that is really impressive.
- [81:55]
Emma Vigeland
He's clutching his pearls now. I thought the left wanted to make comedy illegal.
- [81:59]
Sam Seder
Comedy's legal now, isn't it?
- [82:01]
Emma Vigeland
I thought so. You say the R word apparently under Trump.
- [82:05]
Sam Seder
That is amazing.
- [82:06]
Emma Vigeland
And that's what comedy can't make fun.
- [82:08]
Sam Seder
Of anything, I'm sure. Yes. Paste. Lowell, why wasn't Bill Maher outraged about this soup Nazi episode? Oh, I'm sure he was. I'm sure he really, really was. I seem to remember that, yes, I'm Politically Incorrect, where he stopped the show and said, I can't believe. How dare Larry David and Seinfeld say this about 6 million Jews.
- [82:37]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, maybe, maybe if Larry had said that the Nazis were courageous, that would have been okay with Bill Maher.
- [82:44]
Sam Seder
The chances, and I will, I don't want to go too far on a limb here, but the chances that Bill Maher has never used the word Nazi to describe someone less than a Nazi, I would put somewhere around zero, maybe zero. Somewhere between zero and zero, I would say. But the bottom line is, is that, yes, the Hitler Trump is not Hitler. But there is this literary technique where people use analogies and sometimes what they'll do is they'll use the most extreme version of something to show how actually outrageous it is. Like that is a often used technique. In fact, in even the jokes that he's telling. UK had fond sitcoms about Nazis. Yes. I remember a sitcom about Hitler being, being in the next door neighbor. I can't remember. It was like, Heil, honey, I'm home, I think it was called. Yeah, something like that.
- [84:04]
Gil Duran
Oh, yeah.
- [84:05]
Sam Seder
I mean, it's just absurd. It's just absurd. I mean, the Three Stooges. I mean, like, this goes back decades. Decades. Unbelievable.
- [84:23]
Emma Vigeland
His feelings were hurt.
- [84:24]
Sam Seder
His feelings were hurt. Someone held me to account for what I did on my show. The hundreds of thousands of dollars I made that night don't feel as comfortable as they did before. Amaz. That is, I just the idea that he's complaining about.
- [84:55]
Matt
Last year he complained, he compared folks who I believe may have vandalized or there are some protests about the Brooklyn Museum. And he compared them to Nazis.
- [85:04]
Sam Seder
Oh, my God.
- [85:05]
Matt
Says the Nazis used the yellow triangle. So I guess they just changed their colors and the language.
- [85:10]
Sam Seder
Oh, my God. Is that true? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Ramona Frankenstein. Sam, your criticism. Bill Maher is making me think you're an anti Semite. Bill Maher being so brave, sticking up for Defer, and you're teasing him. Bill Maher. I'm only anti Semitic towards Bill Maher for half of him. The other is my anti Catholic streak. I'm torn. That is just fascinating that he could say that. That is just fascinating. Can we bookmark that? Can we save that?
- [85:50]
Matt
I got that in the hard drive.
- [85:51]
Sam Seder
For the 5,000 other times in the future that he's going to. Unbelievable. People at the, the Brooklyn library are Nazis.
- [86:02]
Emma Vigeland
But, but Larry's beyond the pale.
- [86:05]
Sam Seder
Beyond the pale.
- [86:06]
Matt
The pro Palestine protesters.
- [86:08]
Gil Duran
Yep. Amazing.
- [86:16]
Sam Seder
Heil. Honey, I'm home. Someone just sent the theme. I mean, it was a funny show, like the Their Next Door. I think it was like the next door neighbor was Hitler.
- [86:27]
Matt
Like an undercover Nazi sort of thing.
- [86:30]
Sam Seder
I, I don't think he, I think he was like, in uniform. It was from like the 90s, and I think I saw like one or two episodes. It was, I don't think it was on for very long. I just saw a Daily beast headline.
- [86:43]
Gil Duran
From 2016 that says Bill Maher compares Donald Trump's children to Nazis.
- [86:50]
Sam Seder
Put it up where you go. Pop that up. Oh, my God. Really?
- [86:55]
Emma Vigeland
It's beyond the pale.
- [86:56]
Sam Seder
I, I, I'm worried about seeing that.
- [87:01]
Emma Vigeland
Really, really Doing the Hitler thing.
- [87:03]
Sam Seder
Are we really doing that?
- [87:04]
Emma Vigeland
We're doing the Hitler thing. Now.
- [87:06]
Sam Seder
Hold on. You save this. Actually, let's hear somebody else whine about It. Let's go to clip number nine. Let's go to clip number nine. Look, folks, you should really. It is wrong for comedians to be shut down when they. If you can't make fun of people who have mental challenges and use the R word and you can't make fun of trans people, then America, it dies in the darkness. But to. For a comedian to use Hitler as a joke, my God. Oh, let's watch this.
- [87:47]
Emma Vigeland
My biggest issue is critics of Trump's need to come up with new material. Like, the Hitler thing is getting a little played out, to be honest with you. Like, that's, that's such a tired, you know, parallel to draw. And, yeah, he was comparing Trump to Hitler. I'm not stupid. Like, if you read the piece, that's clearly what he's doing here.
- [88:06]
Gil Duran
Yeah.
- [88:07]
Unidentified Contributor
I mean, even if it's an analogy, it's an analogy to Hitler.
- [88:10]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [88:11]
Sam Seder
And.
- [88:11]
Unidentified Contributor
And he's less criticizing Trump than he is criticizing Bill Maher for talking to Hitler, the equivalent of Hitler. But nevertheless, it is a Hitler reference. There's no question about that. So, I mean, Larry David is a super smart guy. So don't insult our indulgence and don't be patronizing. If you're going to say something, say it.
- [88:27]
Gil Duran
Right.
- [88:28]
Unidentified Contributor
And so look.
- [88:34]
Sam Seder
Do these guys think that it was, like, unclear what Larry David was saying?
- [88:38]
Matt
He's trying to be sneaky with the My Dinner with Adolf piece in the New York Times.
- [88:42]
Sam Seder
That was a little subtle. That was a little subtle. I mean, Larry David is satirizing.
- [88:51]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [88:52]
Sam Seder
Someone in his comedy community, but it seems a little. What was he trying to get at here? I mean, honestly, just say what you mean.
- [89:00]
Unidentified Contributor
Larry.
- [89:03]
Sam Seder
Can'T you write. Can't you write a comedy piece that is not so, like, like literary comedy? Here's the problem I had with the, the Larry David piece. It seemed too ironic. You know what I mean?
- [89:19]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [89:20]
Sam Seder
Like, just come out.
- [89:21]
Emma Vigeland
And perhaps he was using Hitler, an example of one of the most evil people to ever live, as an exaggeration for emphasis because it was a piece of satire.
- [89:31]
Matt
Also, Musk is doing Nazi says. Did they have that up in the side of it? Like, why? Or is that added by whoever clipped this?
- [89:39]
Emma Vigeland
I think it's pro shadow. I think it's Hank. Hank clipped this. So Hank must have added it.
- [89:44]
Matt
Yes, yes, that's a good contrast.
- [89:46]
Unidentified Contributor
Yes.
- [89:46]
Gil Duran
Yeah.
- [89:48]
Unidentified Contributor
Bill Maher for talking to Hitler, the equivalent of Hitler. But nevertheless, it is a Hitler reference. There's no question about that. So, yeah. So don't insult our indulgence I'm sorry.
- [89:59]
Emma Vigeland
It's a Hitler reference. The title has Hitler in it.
- [90:02]
Sam Seder
Yeah, well, that's. I think we picked up on evidence number one. I would give that. It's a code.
- [90:07]
Matt
It's a secret code.
- [90:08]
Gil Duran
Yeah.
- [90:09]
Sam Seder
And it's like he's insulting our intelligence by. By what? By doing it in comedy. You know, listen, folks, when you're gonna do satire, one of the things that you learn very quickly.
- [90:21]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [90:22]
Sam Seder
Is you put an asterisk, like, at the top and say, incidentally, this piece is a satirical knock on Bill Maher. Now, also understand, caveat, parenthetical. I'm exaggerating a little bit for effect. That will give it a comedic. What we call flair.
- [90:45]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [90:45]
Sam Seder
Like a comedic je ne sais quoi. And then another parenthesis. Je ne sais quoi is like. I don't like French way of saying saying, like a pizzazz or something. I don't know what.
- [90:59]
Emma Vigeland
Right. Honestly, maybe James just still smarting from the fact that Francesca Fantini put together that video with Curb youb Enthusiasm music in the background on the Gulags. Right. Where Cenk was laughing at the idea that there would be concentration camps for immigrants. And Francesca put that Curb music behind it, which was the reason that she was banned from TYT and all TYT shows. He seems to maybe have a bit of a Larry David problem.
- [91:27]
Unidentified Contributor
So don't insult our indulgence.
- [91:29]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [91:29]
Unidentified Contributor
And don't be patronizing. If you're gonna say something, say it.
- [91:32]
Gil Duran
Right.
- [91:32]
Unidentified Contributor
And so he said it. Look, I just think that they're on the wrong track.
- [91:38]
Gil Duran
And.
- [91:39]
Sam Seder
And the thing that I keep going. Wait a second. Like the left.
- [91:42]
Matt
Like Larry David.
- [91:43]
Sam Seder
Larry David. You know what this sounds like to me? Someone's deep, desperately trying to get on to real time. That's what's going on here. I guarantee you.
- [91:55]
Emma Vigeland
You can go and look and I remember these conversations. You can go back and look. And Cenk was always very upset that Bill never invited him on the show.
- [92:06]
Sam Seder
Okay, let's continue. Oh, I'm sure they're still pitching it.
- [92:09]
Emma Vigeland
Yep.
- [92:10]
Unidentified Contributor
While they think they're on the moral high ground, folks like Larry David. Oh, they're all Hitler. Don't talk to Hitler, et cetera. And I think that they're being deeply counterproductive, because by not, I should also.
- [92:21]
Sam Seder
Tell you, they're all Hitler. I think he's being specific about a person.
- [92:25]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. And again, not drawing a one to one comparison, saying Trump is exactly like Hitler. Using a historical example to underscore the Narcissism of Bill Maher's position.
- [92:38]
Sam Seder
And I also have to say, like, the issue isn't that you went and had dinner with him and you taught it was a personal dinner. It's not like you're going out there and, and in lobbying him to save like, you know, to, you know, release prisoners or to stop the attack on Social Security. Like, what did Bill Maher lobby in his like, conversation? Like, oh, I'm the one who actually got Donald Trump to try carpaccio. I'm the one who like, the reason why Donald Trump, Trump now, you know, likes carpaccio is because I got him to try it. Like, you need, we need to talk to each other.
- [93:21]
Emma Vigeland
And also what happened to the critique of like corporate media and access journalism? This is. Bill Maher is a member of the media. I mean his show is on cnn. On occasion he delves into politics. He may not be a journalist, but he went to Donald Trump's to have dinner with Donald Trump and seemingly just engaged in, in like flattery and chit chat as opposed to holding the most powerful person on the planet accountable. Isn't that just kind of basic journalistic ethics at this point?
- [93:50]
Sam Seder
Keep playing this or ethics as a.
- [93:51]
Unidentified Contributor
Member of the media, don't talk to Hitler, et cetera. I think that they're being deeply counterproductive because by not talking, by not trying to influence people, by not getting involved in the conversation, you're letting the, you know, in his analogy, you're letting the brown shirts, the ss, the Gestapo run wild with no opposition. How does that help?
- [94:13]
Emma Vigeland
What?
- [94:14]
Sam Seder
At least Bill Maher went in there.
- [94:15]
Unidentified Contributor
To try to help and you're trying to push him in the right direction.
- [94:18]
Emma Vigeland
What? Wait, but where's the evidence of that?
- [94:22]
Sam Seder
Why didn't Bill Maher tell us about how he advocated for not cutting Medicaid or like what? I really, really think that it's the bad idea for you to be, you know, having your ice people snatch people off the ground.
- [94:40]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, well, the brown shirts are right.
- [94:42]
Matt
Like so Trump is the brown shirts, the brown shirt. This metaphor is, it's odd.
- [94:46]
Sam Seder
Also doesn't know why isn't he being more explicit? What is he saying with brown shirt? I don't understand. I don't get it.
- [94:53]
Emma Vigeland
But it's also bizarre because what difference.
- [94:55]
Sam Seder
Does the color of people shirt shirts maker.
- [94:57]
Gil Duran
Right.
- [94:57]
Sam Seder
So confused.
- [94:58]
Emma Vigeland
But if you are using that and saying like, oh, we have to defeat them, what you mean you have to defeat them by going to dinner with them and getting into their inner circle.
- [95:07]
Matt
And flattering people accepted Hitler's invitations. The Brown shirts wouldn't have been able to run around doing all that.
- [95:14]
Emma Vigeland
If only there was a historical example of what appeasement did to the Nazis that we could basically draw on.
- [95:19]
Sam Seder
I don't even think those people got dinner. Good.
- [95:23]
Unidentified Contributor
How does that help?
- [95:25]
Sam Seder
At least Bill Maher went in there.
- [95:26]
Unidentified Contributor
To try to help, and you're trying to push him in the right direction. I don't see Larry David doing that, so, you know, he's perfectly clever. But, Larry, show me how you helped. Because now for the first time, I see how Bill has helped. So I scored one for Bill Maher and shine. Because normally I love Larry David, and I take Larry David over Bill on almost any other issue, but on this, no, sorry, Larry, I think you're definitely wrong and you're being counterproductive and let the brother try to do some good in the world.
- [95:56]
Sam Seder
What good did he do? Oh, he's building bridges. He's building bridges.
- [96:02]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, that's right.
- [96:03]
Matt
I have to be stepping on rakes all the time, telling everyone else they're on the wrong track.
- [96:10]
Sam Seder
Oh, here, put up. What did you find? Where? Bill Maher in. Yeah. Bill Maher compares Donald Trump's children to Nazis.
- [96:19]
Emma Vigeland
Oh.
- [96:21]
Sam Seder
Oh, Bill, why would you have done that? There was so much. There was so much. We had such an opportunity. Oh, and look at that. Back in March, Louis CK Penned a passionate screed against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, labeling Hitler and the American public to Germany in the 30s. And then HBO, Bill Maher took it upon himself, himself, to compare the Trump children to Nazis. Oh, Bill, you missed an opportunity to. To reach out to Trump. Maybe that's why Trump did all those things the first time around. Yeah, go to that video. I just. That someone just sent us in the. In the ims, which I am. I just. I put it in the. In our DMs there to. Oh, to executive producer. Wait, what? I put it into the wrong place.
- [97:14]
Gil Duran
Who?
- [97:16]
Emma Vigeland
Ross's executive producer.
- [97:17]
Sam Seder
No, that. That. That should not be open.
- [97:20]
Gil Duran
That one.
- [97:20]
Emma Vigeland
Okay.
- [97:24]
Sam Seder
Here, put it into Geraldo.
- [97:27]
Emma Vigeland
Geraldo.
- [97:28]
Gil Duran
Yeah.
- [97:28]
Sam Seder
Go to 619. I just put it in there. Go to 619. This is apparently where I think Geraldo may have had. Here we go. 619 there you there. Good.
- [97:42]
Bill Maher
Sleazy crime family.
- [97:45]
Sam Seder
Sleazy and crime aren't necessarily the same thing. No, they're both. You know, Trump is my friend. I've known Trump for 40 years. I don't have.
- [97:55]
Gil Duran
I don't have.
- [97:55]
Sam Seder
He didn't.
- [97:56]
Bill Maher
So did Trump, he didn't remain my friend when I first felt he had a certain moral lapse.
- [98:03]
Sam Seder
Well, in my family. My wife agrees with you. She doesn't like his policies on so many things that I already listed, so she just can't stand the guy. I'm different. I can separate the man who's always been gracious to me, always been nice to my family. You know, we were on Celebrity Apprentice together. Every day for six weeks I've known him, really, through every.
- [98:26]
Bill Maher
Shit.
- [98:26]
Sam Seder
He's.
- [98:28]
Bill Maher
What does that matter that he was nice to you at Thanksgiving? I'm not trying to be a. I'm not trying to be an.
- [98:35]
Gil Duran
To you.
- [98:35]
Bill Maher
I'm just. You're a smart guy. This befuddles me. I looked up to you, you know.
- [98:43]
Sam Seder
I mean, I don't think I could have said it any better than Bill Maher said it.
- [98:47]
Emma Vigeland
Yes. Thank you, Bill.
- [98:48]
Matt
You say that's what's insulting to intelligence.
- [98:51]
Gil Duran
Exactly.
- [98:52]
Matt
I feel like that stuff is at all relevant.
- [98:54]
Sam Seder
Exactly. You have a private relationship with them and keep it to yourself. Tell your friends when you're off tv. But TV is a communication medium, and you're blasting out to millions of people. What you do has an impact. And if you deny that you're the one. You're the one who's insulting people's intelligence. You're the one who's hiding the ball, essentially. And at one point, Bill Maher understood that until he gets invited to the White House, and then all of a sudden, comedians aren't allowed to talk about Nazis.
- [99:32]
Matt
I kid. The Trump children. Don't you love them?
- [99:34]
Sam Seder
Perfect.
- [99:35]
Matt
Ivanka and little Tiffany and Eric. Don Jr. They're like the von Trapp family. You know, the Sound of Music. Instead of running away from the Nazis, they joined.
- [99:45]
Emma Vigeland
There you go.
- [99:46]
Sam Seder
How could you?
- [99:48]
Gil Duran
Well.
- [99:53]
Sam Seder
That sound signifies the end of the portion of our program. Yeah.
- [99:58]
Gil Duran
Which never began.
- [99:59]
Sam Seder
Never began.
- [100:02]
Gil Duran
Damn.
- [100:03]
Sam Seder
That is impressive. All of those people are impressive to me. The.
- [100:07]
Unidentified Contributor
The.
- [100:08]
Sam Seder
The. The level of sick of. Like, it just the. And it's all. All of it. For. For the sake of their audience, you know, to build an audience. Like, I think, you know, Jake and Animus realize, like, oh, we gotta. Gotta maintain this. Gonna maintain this audience now.
- [100:33]
Matt
I think at some point you should realize you're maybe pissing into the wind on some of this stuff. But what do I know?
- [100:38]
Emma Vigeland
Well, it doesn't seem like there is much of an audience for it, which is a bizarre. Which is part of what's bizarre about this.
- [100:44]
Sam Seder
Bill Maher obviously has one. He just like, you know, that notion of, okay, don't be crazy and go off and call Donald Trump a Nazi. He's a nice guy, you know, behind the scenes. That's all I'm saying. Unbelievable. Here's Bill Maher with his new rules about Thanksgiving. Did anybody really think that he spends it with family? I don't.
- [101:08]
Emma Vigeland
What family?
- [101:09]
Sam Seder
He has family. I don't think he does. I mean, honestly. But I don't think he would. I don't. I mean, like, I think he's probably like, his Thanksgiving is the, probably the least Thanksgiving that one can imagine. And I'm, you know, I'm not a traditionalist in this. I mean, I was like, there's nobody close to him that's not on a payroll. I was going to say.
- [101:30]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, that sounds right. And also for a guy that likes to think of himself as the cool hippie smoking weed, he's got the new rules thing. I mean, he's so far up his own ass. Like, you don't come off as the chill guy anymore, buddy.
- [101:41]
Matt
And that's the thing is we're skipping about five minutes into this new rule where it's sort of, again, complicated rule. The hacking thing about, like liberals.
- [101:48]
Gil Duran
Stop.
- [101:49]
Matt
Just turn, stop canceling your Republican friends from no contact.
- [101:54]
Emma Vigeland
Wait, so this isn't a rerun?
- [101:57]
Matt
Okay, you'll see.
- [101:59]
Sam Seder
This is current to this longtime Ann Coulter, buddy. Literally. They're good friends.
- [102:04]
Bill Maher
Thanksgiving for you, it's pretty hard to argue with. And I know, I know the President of the United States called a woman piggy this week. And you're a better person than me because you hate it more than I do. But I hate it too. Really? As well as a thousand other things about the Trump administration I never stopped pointing out on this show. But I'm an adult. And in the real world, there's some people you just can't stop talking to. Like your spouse or partner after a bad fight. Tempting as that is.
- [102:42]
Sam Seder
Sickening.
- [102:45]
Bill Maher
Like, you're the dick of a blow.
- [102:46]
Emma Vigeland
I'm sorry, but why are we comparing Donald Trump to people so spouses, as if people didn't make the active choice. Okay, and some people, like actually voted against Donald Trump. And even if you voted for him, you're not in the marriage contract. This is about democracy. But I think what he wants, no fault divorce for the first for the country, and Trump for the next four years.
- [103:11]
Sam Seder
I think what he's saying is that you should not, you should not let a major difference in politics impact your marriage. Incidentally, Bill Maher has never been married, has by his own admission probably rarely been in what he would call an age appropriate relationship because he has no interest in maintaining it for any period of time. So with him, the range of things that keeps him from actually being in a long term relationship is endless. But if you decide that, hey, I don't feel comfortable with this person I'm living with anymore because they don't seem to care that families are being ripped apart, that we have a massive kleptocracy, that millions of people are going to be immiserated, then you're being too prissy. But if she's 30, but if she's 30 and she's thinking about getting to be like 35, you're like, Whoa, hold on, you are going to age. We gotta end this. Go ahead.
- [104:24]
Bill Maher
Like your family and like the President of the United States. This is so childish, so purely emotional. The people who got all butt hurt because I had dinner with them, you.
- [104:36]
Sam Seder
Know, cause talking about so called the butt hurtness, which speaking of childish is a very sophisticated term, but he had that dinner what like 6 months ago. This guy has been unable to let go of the fact that he was criticized for going to dinner with Donald Trump. And what he really has been unable to let go is that Larry David wrote a satirical piece in the that didn't even mention him, but was clearly about him. This has eaten away at Bill Maher in a way that, that a. I think is unrivaled by anybody a lot. Like I'm sure there's some like, maybe some feuds that have taken place like.
- [105:26]
Matt
You wish you like under Marin skin this much.
- [105:28]
Sam Seder
Exactly. Even Marc Maron, right. Does not hold a grudge like, like a resentment this long. But the idea that he can't help but like what it's also indicative of. And I will tell you, if Bill Maher was married.
- [105:43]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [105:43]
Sam Seder
Or if Bill Maher had a family, this would be so far from his consciousness. But because his life is so empty of any type of real relationships, the idea that Larry David mocked him months ago is still in the forefront of his mind. And he thinks it is with his audience too.
- [106:05]
Emma Vigeland
And he thinks that it's like an own to keep bringing it up. If he did have a partner in his life, they might be able to say, hey honey, you know, it kind of looks like you're really obsessed with this when you bring this up ad nauseam over and over again. It doesn't make you look as unbothered as you think it.
- [106:21]
Sam Seder
I'm not mad about It. I just have one more joke I want to make about it. It's not really a joke and I just want more comments. It just fits here, that's all.
- [106:31]
Emma Vigeland
Honestly, Thanksgiving Gutfeld might be like better conservative comedy than this because all he's doing is just soothing the grandpas that are watching this who are mad that their woke granddaughter or something or that their niece or that they have a non binary, I don't know, son or something like that is a little bit upset with them for supporting a fascist.
- [106:53]
Sam Seder
I can't even say the N word when I say grace anymore because my.
- [106:55]
Emma Vigeland
Granddaughter, I mean God, like it's like, it's like adult daycare in the form of television. It just soothes them ever so slightly.
- [107:05]
Sam Seder
Go back a little bit. Let's just get him to talk about the, the complete war crime that was committed against him when people, not even.
- [107:16]
Emma Vigeland
Drake is this heard about what Kendrick?
- [107:18]
Gil Duran
Exactly.
- [107:24]
Bill Maher
Like your dick of a boss, like your family and like the President of the United States. This is so childish, so purely emotional. The people who got all butthurt because I had dinner with him, you know, because he's Hitler except he's not so unhelpful and dumb. Trump is the most supportive president Israel and the United States ever had. You know, every year I used to ask Larry David to do real time and he'd always say bill, I can't. I'm not smart enough about politics to do your show. Yeah, I get that now.
- [108:05]
Sam Seder
Incidentally, that Woo. Who Brian can tell us. Who was that? Woohoo. That was probably a line produced. Exactly.
- [108:15]
Gil Duran
That's something.
- [108:16]
Sam Seder
I did my job.
- [108:17]
Matt
I'm the first guy. They're clapping really loud.
- [108:19]
Sam Seder
That that is, I will tell you with 100% assuredness a paid member of the staff of the program trying to get everybody to hype it up. But let's go back and see how sort of like.
- [108:33]
Emma Vigeland
But don't yet. Oh, I want to just look at Donna Brazile looking at her hands because she can't even look up at how.
- [108:38]
Sam Seder
Embarrassing this whole months later he's still mad at Larry David. Now just remember this is in the context of saying don't be mad with your family members because of politics. However, you should hold a grudge for months and months and months about a satirical piece about something that I did that people felt was controversial. But listen to the. It's either the line producer or I would say like the second ad. Or it could have also been the guy they pay to do warmup, the warm up guy. He could still be there on the side going, woo, woo hoo.
- [109:20]
Bill Maher
You know, every year I used to ask Larry David to do real time, and he'd always say, bill, I can't. I'm not smart enough about politics to do your show. Yeah, I get that. Now.
- [109:36]
Sam Seder
Brazil is embarrassed for him because there.
- [109:40]
Bill Maher
Is no argument here. There's just the sugar rush that the no contact people get from never coming in second in a I hate Trump the most contest. Really? That's your strategy? To go full high school and tell the guy with all the power he can't sit with you at the lunch table? To borrow a phrase familiar to HBO viewers, you are not serious people.
- [110:06]
Sam Seder
Oh, my God. All right, first off, this is so pathetic. When Larry David said, I'm not smart enough about politics to come on your show, you'll notice they have a wide range of people on the show. That's Larry David's way of saying, I think you're a fucking schmuck.
- [110:25]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [110:26]
Sam Seder
And I don't want to be seen on the show. I don't want to lend any, any of my cachet to your show. Like, I don't want you to get one more viewer because I'm there. That's what that means. But he surely must understand that. But also, the metaphor of people are mad at me for going and having dinner with Donald Trump is like. Is like not allowing the most powerful person to sit with you at the cafeteria. That's not a metaphor. That is that it's like you're. You're just harping on your dumb ass, like, dinner with Trump. And that you didn't get to enjoy it, but had to feel somewhat. Some creeping doubt that, hey, wait a second. Did I do something really bad?
- [111:16]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, that's what it is.
- [111:17]
Sam Seder
Or, or no, handle it.
- [111:19]
Emma Vigeland
But that's not even. That's giving him too much credit to think that he's grappling with the morality of it. He's just dealing with the shame. Because Larry's rich as hell and is like, one of the most successful people in comedy in history and is way funnier than him. Do you know when that piece was written that he's doing this very timely monologue about my dinner with Adolf?
- [111:37]
Sam Seder
My assume.
- [111:38]
Matt
Oh, it was around March.
- [111:39]
Emma Vigeland
It was the end of March.
- [111:40]
Gil Duran
Yeah, yeah.
- [111:41]
Emma Vigeland
It's been seven months.
- [111:44]
Sam Seder
Seven months.
- [111:44]
Emma Vigeland
And he's telling the lecturer in the audience to get over your differences with your relatives or your loved ones about Trump. And he's doing a monologue about a satirical piece about him from seven months ago.
- [111:57]
Sam Seder
And I'll just say, like, we could actually, like, start a campaign to get Larry David to write, like, another piece. Like that time people wouldn't let me forget about my dude.
- [112:09]
Emma Vigeland
Dinner.
- [112:09]
Sam Seder
Shut up about my dinner with Hitler. Look at.
- [112:12]
Matt
This is the picture he cropped out Kid Rock, which. And. And what's that guy, Dana White, which I also think is funny, but it's.
- [112:18]
Sam Seder
Like, what are you gonna do?
- [112:19]
Matt
Just leave the guy with all the power? It's like, what did you do? What did you get out of this meeting?
- [112:24]
Sam Seder
Bill, he got a better understanding, which he's, like, now presenting to his audience like an adult. Matt.
- [112:33]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, that table. That table, like, the whole monologue also started off with Bill Maher being crit. That they're critical of Trump saying quiet, piggy to that female reporter. You know, I guess I'm just soothed when I see that photo, because it looks just like a table of people that respect women.
- [112:53]
Sam Seder
Dana White, famously. Woman, right on camera.
- [112:58]
Emma Vigeland
Trump. Yes, Trump. Trump knows how to respond to respect.
- [113:04]
Sam Seder
Yeah, but they are a bunch of pigs, though. I wonder, like, who Bill Maher wouldn't go have dinner with? I bet you. I mean, I bet you it would be like. Like, would he go have dinner with Nick Fuentes? Publicize that you think he would. He's taller.
- [113:22]
Matt
Well, he mentioned Fuentes. He did mention Fuentes. With Lara Trump.
- [113:30]
Emma Vigeland
He did.
- [113:31]
Sam Seder
Well, oh, yeah, Punk or whatever.
- [113:35]
Gil Duran
Your dad.
- [113:36]
Matt
Your dad should really say more against him. And she's like, maybe he should.
- [113:39]
Emma Vigeland
That's gonna be a good litmus test. Anybody who sits down with Fuentes is gonna be like, gotta be the most desperate people in media. That's what it's gonna be for relevance, because that's eventually happening. His normalization is already in progress.
- [113:55]
Matt
And from what I can tell, it doesn't necessarily help everything from certain people who recently sat down with Nick Fuentes and have their career sort of flames.
- [114:03]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, yeah, yeah.