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The Rubin Report
Socialism Likely to Win in the Short Term, But There's a Catch | Christopher Rufo
00:48:06
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A
Seems like the big shift on the left over the last two years has been moving from culture to economic. I think the kind of woke ideology related to race and gender, for example, has lost a lot of steam. The left has a talent for metamorphosizing. Issues of Israel, Palestine, issues of affordability and inflation are really what is driving this new wave of left wing activism. You have my commitment, you have my word. And together on June 24th, we're going to win this race so that next
- [00:32]
B
year we freeze the prince.
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A
Even someone like Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, you notice during his campaign, Ghent was laser focused on issues related to economy, billionaires, Gaza, and that was enough to get him over the finish line, despite terrible evidence base for something like rent control. Rent control is actually very popular if you poll voters, especially in these big municipalities with high rents. And so there's a lot of work to be done on the right to persuade people to think more clearly and more effectively about how the economy works. We've been doing this reporting in California. It's kind of amazing because you have open air markets that have been decriminalized and for all intents and purposes, legalized. California is giving free solar panels to illegal aliens, free change surgeries to transgender migrants from Latin America. What they're doing is like a house of horrors that once you enter is so far beyond what you could imagine. I think someone like Candace is actually very intelligent, but there is a limit on that kind of personality. That personality eventually burns out. When you saw that Candace Owens was getting fired, million views per YouTube video, were you strong enough to resist the temptation to lobotomize yourself for clicks? Were you strong enough to resist it when it was most tempting?
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B
How afraid are you that there won't really be two years left because if the Republicans lose the midterms, Trump is lame duck, likely impeached potentially. There's really three months left. All right, I've been informed. I'm Dave Rubin and this is the Rubin Report. And joining me today is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of America's Cultural Revolution, how the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Christopher Rufo, welcome back to the Rubin Report.
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A
It's good to be with you.
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B
I called you Christopher, but it's Chris. Really? Does anyone call you Christopher? I guess your parents probably call you Christopher.
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A
Still my mother, my wife, you know, others. Yeah, that's about it.
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B
Just people trying to control you. All right, Chris Ruffo. It is good to see you, my friend. It's been a while since I've had you on you. Fair to say you are like the, you're the giant slayer when it comes to what's going on with the left these days, huh?
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A
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that and it's been interesting. It seems like the politics has shifted very quickly since Trump came back into power at the beginning of last year. And so it's a question of adaptation. And so my own work, I've been kind of moving in different directions. I'm focusing a lot on California right now. But, yeah, many giants have been slayed and it seems like, unfortunately, they keep popping up. So some slang maybe in the future as well.
- [03:22]
B
So. All right, we're going to talk about the left. We're also going to talk about some wackiness on the right, and you've had to do some slaying in that department as well. But let's, let's start with the left stuff. It seems to me that right now where we're at is that the woke thing is sort of morphing into its final stage, which is this sort of commie Islamist amalgamation. Like, we're almost in that thing, having fully burst forth. Do you think that that is a fair assessment?
- [03:57]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. And it seems like the big shift on the left over the last two years has been moving from culture to economics. And I think the kind of woke ideology related to race and gender, for example, has lost a lot of steam. It's severely underwater as a matter of public opinion. And the left has a talent for metamorphosizing, and that's what we're seeing now. And issues of Israel, Palestine, issues of affordability and inflation are really what is driving this new wave of left wing activism. And even someone like Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, who had previously, you know, repeated all of those woke slogans from the George Floyd years, you notice during his campaign, he kept his mouth tightly shut in all of that kind of rhetoric and was laser focused on issues related to economy, billionaires, Gaza, and that was enough to get him over the finish line.
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B
All right, so let's pause on the Israel, Gaza, Hamas, whatever you quote, unquote, Palestine stuff for just a moment. The economics shift, do you see this as their sort of most obvious cynical ploy? That's kind of what I see it as in that I agree with you. They've sort of realized the branding around gender and race, it's just old, it's not quite working. You can't beat so many people into submission with that anymore. Then the, the easiest one to hit people with is, oh, those are the bad guys because they've got more than you. It's sort of the most dim witted, obvious thing to gin up the base. Is that roughly how you see it?
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A
Not, not exactly, actually, because they could have done that two years ago, five years ago, or, or, or prior to that. And so it always.
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B
Well, I think they needed to soften brains first with some of the other stuff.
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A
Okay, maybe that's true, but, but I think actually a good way to look at it, in addition to that is it's smart politics because it, it does touch on an underlying problem that people feel. And so most of politics is identifying a problem, channeling the public emotion, splitting between, you know, the, the, you know, the good and the bad, creating a story with drama. And while I don't think their economics is sound, the fact is, during the Biden years, continuing into the first part of the Trump term, inflation is a huge problem. We printed tons of money, everything is more expensive. Housing feels impossible for many people. And so they're, they're, they're taking what is a real serious economic issue that has real pain and public sentiment, and then they're layering on their socialist economic narrative, which again, doesn't work. It's, it's, the math doesn't pencil out. But they're taking their political agenda and they're matching it to public sentiment. And so far, the right hasn't figured out how to respond very well. And consequently the left is able to mobilize a huge number of people on this economic anxiety, economic fear, economic pain.
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B
So if you were advising people on the right, because I think most people watching this probably agree with you. It's like, where is the better messaging? Yeah, we can say capitalism is better. We can all argue for free markets. It doesn't have like the emotional thing that they've got on the left, which is their, you know, the bad guys over there. I mean, what type of messaging do you think Trump should be doing that he isn't? Is it just Trump? Is it the administration all the way down? I mean, what, what else could be done to explain to people that, I don't know, capitalism is pretty okay or, or just some, some solution to any of the things you just mentioned?
- [07:38]
A
Well, I think part of the, so there's, there's a problem and then maybe there's a potential solution. The problem is that Trump has really muddied the waters as well on issues of economy. So Trump is not a doctrinaire. Milton Friedman style, free market, supply side guy, you know, he's kind of protectionist related to trade. He's certainly, you know, can press for lower interest rates which would lead to inflation. He hasn't done anything to cut spending. In fact, he's increased spending, especially military spending. And so they can't make those traditional supply side economic arguments. And I think consequently, and look, some of them are, some tariffs I think is actually fine. There's a good argument for that, especially for issues of national security and otherwise. But you have a muddied economic picture on the right. No one is quite sure what the right's economic arguments are. And I just don't think that replaying Milton Friedman clips, you know, 247 is really going to get people. And the reality is that I think the right needs to come up with real answers to some of these real problems. So get out of the kind of economic theory, kind of supply and demand curves and actually get into these issues of, you know, college, college tuition, housing, groceries. And remember to always bring those economic arguments which I still think are correct to the tangible issues that people understand. Because if you're talking about the elasticity of demand, you're going to lose people to say groceries are expensive, we're going to pay for them, for you. And so they have to figure out how to make an economic argument that actually speaks to the economic framing that most people, most people understand their lives through.
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B
So to the extent that's right, I mean, why do you think they haven't done that?
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A
I mean, look, they've tried. And so you have this interesting thing where you have are, you have supply side efforts to deregulate industry. The Trump administration has done a good job trying to go after needless regulation. That's good. You have the one big beautiful bill which tried to reduce taxes so put more money back in people's pockets. But then you have the Trump administration, you know, kind of playing into the populist sentiment, you know, with, with executive actions like we want to prevent Blackstone or blackrock or black whatever from buying single family homes. And it's like, well, you look at the math, it's like it's a tiny fraction of homes that are being bought by these massive private, private equity firms. It's not clear that it would actually make any meaningful difference if a positive difference at all. And so I think they're not quite committed, A and then B, they don't actually know what to do in some sense because economic policy is really difficult. And if your problem is inflation, you have to raise Interest rates. Well, if you raise interest rates, it causes macroeconomic problems in housing. You could have another recession. You have political considerations going into the midterms now, you know, with our foreign policy, looks like a spike in gas prices. So, you know, economics is tough and, and you know, for better or for worse, unlike the Reagan term where you had Paul Volcker come in and kill inflation by jacking up interest rates and engineering a small recession, there's really no appetite that appetite for that on the right, really no appetite that for that in the country. And so we've had this very strange, for my entire adult life, post college life since the Great Recession of 2008, 2009, we've been in a bull market. If I have the, if they have from memory the numbers, right, Maybe the longest bull market in the modern period. And it seems like everyone wants to keep it going and nobody's willing to do what it, what it might take in order to deal with some of these fundamentals.
- [11:28]
B
So to that point, I mean, do you think that we are just at the version or we're at the stage of the narrative where the Communists might just get some more major wins, that we just might be in the place where as you talk about, they've marched through the institutions, they've set up their foot soldiers, they seem to, they have like a little bit of, it's gross to us, but like they've got some of the cool factor in, you know, culture wise, that it might just be their moment.
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A
Yeah, it's going to be their moment with some qualifications. It will be their moment in a limited number of geographic areas. So where they can actually have functional power, not just having five seats among, you know, among, among 400 and so, you know, representatives in Congress, but actually they can have operational control over say a municipality, like a majority on the City Council in New York or Minneapolis or San Francisco or la. That's kind of where they're putting in most of their energy, I think look like something in la you have a communist versus a Communist running for mayor of Los Angeles. So the Communists are likely to win. And despite, you know, terrible evidence base for something like rent control. Rent control is actually very popular. If you poll voters, especially in these big municipalities with high rents, they like rent control even though it's economically nonsensical. And so there's a lot of work to be done on the right to persuade people to think more clearly and more effectively about how the economy works. And the right has just not made those arguments for a very long time. The heyday of Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell. You know, clips still circulate of these two guys, but they don't hit like they did even, you know, in the early 2000s, mid 2000s. And so the right is going to have to relearn economic arguments and then apply them in an economic moment that is quite distinct. But to answer your question, yes, I think we're going to see more victories because look, if the median home price is more than a million dollars in Los Angeles or $2 million in San Francisco, and then the voting demographics are such that you have a lot of single under 40s that have, you know, no obligations besides doing politics, you're going to have a lot of organized people that are going to defeat a lot of a small number of disorganized people. And look, as we've seen, these policies eventually do damage, but the delay or the lag on the timeline is such that they're not going to deal damage that's perceptible to people for a long time and therefore they have a Runway, let's say, where they can take control of these municipalities, shovel out millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to all their friends, to all their NGOs, and then at that point hope that the voters, you know, don't catch on to what's happening.
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B
So do you think it'll be something like the cities, mostly Democrat controlled cities, but blue cities will just be hyper controlled and go the way of communism or socialism, whatever you want to call it, and that basically the rest of the country that the more rural areas and suburban areas, that will be the last bastions of freedom. So we'll just sort of have two different countries, sometimes even within the same state.
- [14:55]
A
Yeah. And this is not a new process for American life. So in the 1960s you had a similar situation unfold in Detroit. And so Detroit had a number of race riots in the 40s. And then in the 60s there was a heavy political conflict where you had unions and, you know, civil rights groups and, and, and corporations that were duking it out. And then at some point when the left really won major control over the city of Detroit, they put in a mayor named Coleman Young, who's an incredible character, was like that era's version of a BLM activist. There's a video clip of him broadcasting in from an interview in Hawaii for whatever reason. And he says at some point, and we're gonna, you know, language warning, he says, he answers the, the interview cost. He says, aloha. It's just an amazing, like this is the mayor of the richest city in the United States, and in the late late 50s, the richest city in the world. Fast forward, whence the version of kind of proto BLM movement takes over Detroit, fast forward 50 years and it goes from being the wealthiest city on planet Earth, more or less, give or take, to one of the poorest cities in the United States. And so this politics does have an impact, but it can, it can, unfortunately, it can proceed over a much longer time horizon than we, than we expect. And so I'm, I'm kind of bearish on a lot of these cities. I think it's going to get more unpleasant and then they're going to start trying to harvest cash from its wealthiest people. And look, I was in California recently and I talked to some of our friends of ours who are, let's say in the upper, upper, upper income bracket, and they say that about 70% of billionaires in California, for example, are already making exit plans or at least have a backup plan. And capital can move. You know, it's not a Ford factory, it's not a million square feet building, you know, the, the Caprice Classic for Chevrolet or whatever. No, actually these are software companies where, and, and you know, finance companies. And they can move. And so I think we're going to see flight of capital, flight of talent if these, if these socialist takeovers continue.
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B
Do you think we know what the floor is with these cities? You've been writing a lot over the last couple weeks about what's going on in Cali with these open air sex markets. And when I saw your piece on it, I was like, of course, of course this is happening. Like, of course, suddenly there'll be prostitutes on every corner and there's already drugs on every corner. And it's just like obvious. Do you think I'd like you to talk a little bit about what's going on with these sex markets, but also like, what do you think that floor actually looks like? Or is there no floor there?
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A
There's no floor. Well, there is a floor, but the floor is so many feet underground that it is not perceptible and it's barely imaginable. It can get so much worse. And in fact, I tell people things are going okay right now. Things are going pretty well. And it can get so much. You have no idea how much worse it can really get. But yeah, you know, we've been doing this reporting in California. It's kind of amazing because you have open air sex markets that have been decriminalized and, and for all intents and purposes legalized. You have women in kind of bathing suits strolling the streets selling, selling themselves for cash. You have Gavin Newsom's California budget, where you know, perhaps up to a hundred billion dollars a year is just being stolen and huge numbers, huge billions of dollars being sent overseas. California is giving free solar panels to illegal aliens, free sex change surgeries to transgender migrants from Latin America. I mean, what they're doing is like a house of horrors that once you enter is so far beyond what you could imagine that some of these things almost seem like they're not real. And then you look through the documents and lo and behold, they're quite real. And so what I think what I've learned about California, and as ex Californians, you and I can perhaps understand this, California voters just either don't know what's happening or they, they, they just can't process it. So they have to just deny its existence. And that force of denial is extremely strong. And I think it's going to take a lot of work to break through that, that kind of psychological barrier that's been, that's been erected over the brains of so many Californians for the purposes
- [19:17]
B
of algorithmic and monetization reasons. I will not mention, although you have written about breakdown of what these prostitutes are charging for what. Because it's here. But I'll just let people, we'll link to your piece and people can figure that out if they want to visit Cali. Let's talk before we do some of the stuff on the right. Let's talk a little bit about what has become the sort of catch all for everybody on the left. This thing that has morphed into the, the number one thing for them, which is quote unquote, Palestine. It has combined the Marxists and the communists and the jihadis and the gender furry queer people and all of these things. How did this happen?
- [19:56]
A
Well, this is an incredible thing once again where just like Coleman Young and the proto BLM takeover of Detroit, you have a proto, you know, Free Palestine movement in the 1960s in the west, in Europe and in the United States. And what you had at that time were left wing communist radicals from the United States, from Western Europe that they said that in order to achieve revolution in the west, you needed to achieve revolution everywhere. They identified the Palestinians as the kind of uber oppressed of the world. And they actually in many cases flew to Arab North, Muslim North Africa to make common cause with the old plo, which was the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They planned terrorist attacks, they planned atrocities In Europe, they planned the kind of liberation of the Palestinian people. And the idea was that communism was the. The layer or the kind of flag layer that would unite all of these disparate revolutionary movements. And so when you look at the kind of Free Palestine movement with the keffiyehs and the, you know, the. The costumes and the chants, none of this is new. They've been doing this for 60, 70 years, and they're just reviving it, cynically reviving it, or rather opportunistically reviving it, because this conflict is back in the news. But if we read history or watch great films like Car, there's a Carlos miniseries that touches on this. It's a great film. You'll realize, okay, we've been through this before, and these people, in a way, are just LARPing and. And in. I have like, a strange respect for the radicals in the 60s, where at least they were going and training on weapons and building bombs and, you know, being real, you know, terrorists. It's like strange new respect for these people because what we have now is like LARPers and college kids at, you know, at the Princeton undergraduate quadrangle setting up matching tents that were bought for them by some ngo. It's less heroic. It's a total. It's a total larp. It's a total, you know, civil war reenactment kind of. Kind of enterprise. And I just find it so. So pathetic. It's really hard to put into words.
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B
What do you think. What do you think we should be doing on the funding side of this? In that, yes, they are not paying for these things. It's largely coordinated. We know what's going on with the NGOs, et cetera, et cetera. It seems like we just are not. I would say the administration is simply not doing enough on this. I know there are some investigations, but still happening.
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A
Well, some of it. So you have to figure it out. You have to figure out the two pathways. So some of this is legal, First Amendment protected, you know, political, intellectual, journalistic activity. So people have a right to protest. People have a right to agitate for causes. But people don't have a right to, for example, deprive others of their civil rights. They don't have a right to trespass on private property or disrupt the function of a university. And they certainly don't have a right to occupy buildings, to commit acts of vandalism or provide material support for terrorism. And so in that second category, the administration has a number of ongoing investigations. They're trying to disrupt the Flow of funds. And I think what another significant thing they're doing is they're requiring 501c3 organizations to provide greater granularity of detail related to their financing and related to so called fiscal sponsorships where they serve as a pass through for other entities. And if the irs, and we know Scott Besant, amazing, you know, leader of the Treasury Department, I know that they're looking into this, that's publicly available. And if they can get that information, they can use a lot of that information to strip these organizations of their 501C3 status and in some cases initiate prosecutions. And so we need to see that. And again, separating out protected activity from unprotected activity, we always recommend protected activity here. But if you are breaking the law, you need to see consequences. And my only fear is that we're running out of time. There's two years left. We have to get some of these groups off the board. We have to see people, you know, mug shots and we have to see people suffer the consequences.
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B
How afraid are you that there won't really be two years left? Because if the Republicans lose the midterms, Trump is lame duck, likely impeached, you know, even the Republicans start jumping ship that in essence we'd like to believe there's two and a half years left, but that potentially there's really three months left.
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A
Yeah, I'm not too worried about it because he has, he has all the personnel in place in the executive branch and so he's got people that are staffing the administration. He's got two years left in his presidential term. He might be impeached in the House, but he won't be convicted in the Senate. And in a sense he can achieve all of this through his Article 2 power. So the presidential or executive power. But what will come grinding to a halt without a doubt is Congress. And so getting legislation passed if they lose the House, which seems more likely than not at this time, getting legislation passed is going to become impossible with, with some exceptions for, you know, funding essential services, etc. So they'll have to come up with some compromises to keep the government moving, to keep the government open. They're not going to be able to do any big ticket items. But as far as it, as far as IRS investigations, Treasury investigations, FBI and DOJ investigations, they should still have really all the power that they need to execute. It's just a matter of time. And the problem is that a lot of these cases can sometimes take multiple years. Like you look at some of the RICO Cases for organized crime, the investigations take years, the prosecutions take years, the sentencing takes years. They don't have that kind of time. So if they want to start acting on some of these cases, they have to really get them moving now and again. Great people working on it. It's easy for us to criticize from the sidelines, but we're two years in, and what has happened already seems to me to be insufficient. And I hope there's a sense of urgency as we move into the end of this term.
- [26:11]
B
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I mean, I keep saying, particularly if the, if the Republicans hold in the midterms, like two years of Trump unleashed, never running again, just knowing he can do the things he wants to do, I think will be incredible. Hopefully, some of the protections you mentioned, even if they lose the House, still exist. Let's pause on the left for a second and talk about the right, because there has been a strange either fracturing of the right or we could say a complete online meltdown of the right. There's probably several ways we could describe this thing. What do you generally make of what's happening on the right? Is it mostly like an online thing? Is it a real world media thing? It doesn't seem like it has translated into Trump losing anyone electorally on the right. Broad question, go.
- [27:00]
A
Yeah, well, so you have to separate it out. You have to say the institutions on the right, the media personalities on the right, the President of the United States and then the voters or the audience. And there's a big overlap there. Look, Republican voters love Trump, and Trump can reverse his position one way or another, and his voters will follow him. He could do a 180 overnight and his voters will rationalize it and move over. That's because he has a charismatic connection with his voting base. They trust him, they want him to win. They'll follow him where he goes. A lot of those voters, though, simultaneously will indulge conspiracy theories from, you know, people like Candace Owens or Ian Carroll or whomever is the latest conspiracy star. And they can maintain even contradictions within their own worldview by compartmentalizing them, saying, yeah, I vote for Trump, but I'm kind of interested in, in Candace Owens conspiracy theory. But if Trump goes against Thomas Massie, then I'm going to bounce Massie, and I'm for Trump. And So it's a 3D model, not a 2D model. But here's the good news, because you, I think everyone knows at this point the bad news, the good news is that the conservative institutions have mostly resisted this way of thinking and this self destructive ideological shift. And so conservative institutions as a whole have done a good job at maintaining good epistemic hygiene and maintaining their sanity through this great online derangement. The danger is that the audience is starting to fragment and split. And I think that while you know, and I see this in real life, you go to events and you say, you know this someone will come up to you afterwards and say, yeah, I'm a real estate agent or an accountant or a business guy. And I really think that Israel killed Charlie Kirk. And so when that started to happen was when I realized, all right, it's moving offline to the audience in that way. But people who run the institutions have successfully immunized themselves against it. So to me it's really a matter of trying to bring those people back in, not the influencers. You actually just need to push those people out. You need to reimbursement position of some, some gatekeeping. But actually, but then to bring their audience back in to say, hey look, you don't spend all day thinking about this stuff. You're not a professional, you haven't equipped yourself with the immunization in order to resist some of the, these bad ways of, of, of, of processing reality. It's not serving you in your personal life, your political ambitions and so come back into the fold. And I think, well, I don't think someone like Candace Owens is like, she's gone, she's gone down the rabbit hole, she's not coming back up. There's that's just like, you know, you fill the hole and say good night. But a lot of these people are, have interest in conspiracy theories, but they're not a hardwired into their being, let's say into their mental patterns. And these are lightly held and in some cases they're held even with the knowledge that they're not true.
- [30:02]
B
Right.
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A
Just kind of a. And like, like people used to watch Jerry Springer and everybody knows that it's fake and it's staged and it's, it's sensational. People watch it, they kind of believe it, they kind of don't. And so I think for most I'm, I'm worried about it, but I think I'm less worried than the most pessimistic people because I know that, I know that most people can come back into reality and most people are not going to be kind of brain damaged forever by a lot of this online split. And then at the large scheme of things, it's something that can successfully be Contained, managed and, and, and, and move beyond by the people who are really running the institutions on the right as we move forward?
- [30:46]
B
Yeah, well, I have to say I'm really glad to hear you say that because I, I'm largely with you on that and I'm kind of an optimist in that way. Otherwise I don't know how I could do this show. And I do think, you know, having come from the left where everything was collapsing around me and there were five of us trying to save the left, now that I'm on the right, I see exactly what you're talking about. I see the institutions trying to stand, I see a better set of influencers or whatever you want to say, calling out the bad guys and everything else. And I also, and I'm curious what you think about this. Do you think that some of it will just be. That there will be just like an exhaustion, There will just be a full on exhaustion of conspiracy theories that people just won't be able to take it anymore at some point. It's burned very hot for these last couple years and then it's just human nature. Things burn hot, but not forever.
- [31:32]
A
I think that's right. And I know this is, this is kind of the sub theme of our conversation, but this also happened in the 1960s where you had a kind of right wing conspiratorial mindset that was represented at the time by groups like the John Birch Society. I think the John Birch Society gets an unfair rap. And if you read their materials from that time, their, they're, you know, kind of mild by comparison with the, the kind of insanity that you see now. But there's an analog there. And the John Birch Society was the equivalent of the kind of online, you know, anti Israel conspiratorial right, where, where at least in the kind of function that they've made politically and the mindset or the patterns of thinking that they represented, not exactly, but, but let's say loosely. And the Birch Society was successfully managed, co opted and tamed by Richard Nixon as he went from figuring out how to do this from his 1960 campaign to his 1968 campaign. You see this evolution that, that kind of transcends this kind of politics. And then the Birch Society eventually did flame out. They went too far, too heavy, they got in too many, embroiled in too many controversies. People lost that. You can only maintain that fervent feeling for, for so long. And even psychologically these movements have a tendency to burn out. And so the question for all of us, and this is something we should keep tabs on for all the people in our sphere is were you strong enough to resist it when it was most tempting? When you saw that Candace owens was getting 5 million views per YouTube video or whatever, Were you strong enough to resist the temptation to lobotomize yourself for clicks? And if you were you, you, you deserve a special badge of honor and you will be with us as these things burn out and these personalities kind of recede back to the margins. And the people who are left standing, I think will be the strongest people in terms of character and also in terms of integrated intelligence. And look, I think someone like Candace is actually very intelligent. She's very charismatic. She's a immensely compelling broadcaster. And so it's not that these people are. Are dumb or evil or demonic. It's like. No, actually they're pretty smart and they're rational creatures responding to incentives and they maybe have the psychological profile where they're predisposed to this kind of thinking. But there is a limit on that kind of. That kind of personality. That personality eventually burns out. And the strong personalities that are and the high integrity personalities that are going to be successful over the long term are the ones that I think you should be really looking out for and connecting with and cheering on.
- [34:27]
B
Yeah. Wow. Well, amen to that. So. So you mentioned that you think over time we can bring back sort of, there'll be a sort of normalization of the people who are maybe a little lost at the moment. I can get. What do you think about the people. I'm not talking about Candace, in this case, the people that have been the influencers that have been just opportunistic with this thing. And I will call out two of them. Let's say Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson. I don't know that you fully agree with that assessment. Feel free to chime in. But the people who in my view did it purely. Megan's done this all for clicks. I don't think she believes a word of it. Which is why you can get videos of her flip flopping on everything all day long on Twitter. Like should they be welcome back in too? Or where does that. You mentioned gatekeeping before. It's not a word that the right likes. But where should that gate be?
- [35:11]
A
Yeah, it's a great question and I'll answer it kind of in general terms. You have to gate. So. So political movements are always a question of addition and subtraction. So if you want to have the big. You're in it. We're in a democratic society. You have to have large scale political movements. You're always calculating, is this a net benefit? Does this help us get closer to our goals? Is this in line with our principles? And sometimes there is addition through subtraction, meaning, you know, someone might bring an audience or an issue or, or, or fundraising to your group, but then take away from your reputation whatever the calculation is. I think in, in, in each, in each case, people can kind of make a rational choice. And I think that you. Look, look, I don't know enough about every personality, everyone's statements, everyone's flip flops. I mean, people change their minds. But I think you have to figure out who is kind of maliciously undermining what we're trying to do, the goals we're trying to accomplish, and who is, you know, maybe someone made a mistake, but they're otherwise, you know, a good voice. They have, they. They can be reintegrated into a broader movement and bring some benefit. So I don't know. It's in some ways not only my decision. We all have to make this collective and multidimensional decision, but I think that you have to have. You have to draw a fine line. And again, Richard Nixon was really, I think, a great inspiration on this point, where in his calculation with the Birch Society, he came up with this ingenious strategy that he first failed on when he was running for governor of California and then succeeded with when he ran for President in, in 68, which was, you don't want to directly antagonize the Birch Society or the Birch Society leadership or, or villainize the, the, the, the followers of that movement. You want to create healthy boundaries and you want to thread the needle then to bring in all of the good people who have maybe indulged in a conspiracy theory but are otherwise an important constituency, can bring energy, can bring. Can bring in, bring in votes, can bring in whatever. And you might deride that as cynical at Nixon's campaign strategy. But look, we're in a, again, a mass democratic society. You have to figure out how to get to 50% plus one. And so my general thing is you have to eventually come up with a character judgment. You have to say, is this person a kind of decomposed, disintegrated character that cannot be relied upon? Or is this person someone that has a character that could be reintegrated into some broader pursuit of principle? I mean, we could go down the list of names and make a snap judgment if you want. You tell me. I mean, you talk about this more
- [38:10]
B
than I have well, so, all right, well then, well, let's just do one just cause to really nail the point down. So Tucker, in that he wants to create a new political party. He has said that Donald Trump is the puppet of Netanyahu. We can go through the laundry list of crazy things he said about the Jews and Israel and it's every single show that he does that he'll never vote for a Republican. I mean, is that someone you think you can be in a tent with as you are trying to, as you said, you like that the, the Republican or the conservative institutions have stood. I think you broadly like the things that Trumper's doing. Like is that someone that you think can fit in this thing. So we'll just do, we'll just do one. But you invited this on yourself, my friend. Good, good.
- [38:49]
A
Okay, let's, let's do it and let's tease it out. And here's the thing. I don't actually have a pre programmed answer. So we're going to find out what the answer is by talking about it. And here's my basic question. A lot of things that Tucker said I obviously disagree with. The idea that we should run a third party is completely insane for reasons of political science. Duverge's law. You can't actually have a third party. It's always a torpedo mission. It's always a kamikaze mission to destroy one side to gain leverage. That said, I have a personal, I have a, and I think many of us on the right have this feeling like I really like Tucker. I've always liked Tucker. I feel grateful for Tucker. He, he lifted me up when I was just starting out in politics. He provided me with these opportunities. I want to believe that Tucker can be brought back into the fold. I want to believe that some of the rabbit holes that he's dug into that he will come to regret and see that, hey, this is not productive. Actually, no, this is not accurate, actually I'm going to change my mind. And maybe that is naive, maybe that's foolish, maybe that's because I have a personal bias in relation to Tucker.
- [39:59]
B
But, well, I hear a lot of that and I feel a little of that myself. Right. Like I used to go on his show all the time. He blurbed my first book. Like so many of the people that are in our world say the exact same thing. Usually they just say it privately like, oh, but he was nice to me and he went on my show and he promoted in my book. But now you got to give me the other version of it. Is, do you think any of that reformation is possible? And I, I personally just don't see any evidence of it, but I would love to. I'm not looking to create enemies. I'm looking to, to build a nice wide 10 with strong polls as, as I think you are.
- [40:29]
A
Yeah. And so look, and, and, and, and I mean, I think, you know, I've been in touch with a lot of, a lot of these, a lot of, a lot of folks. I try to keep in touch with a lot of different people and certainly with a, with someone in kind of Tucker's world who has really gone heavy on the kind of anti Israel politics. It's not my politics. I disagree with that. I still hope, and maybe this is naive, maybe this is foolish, I still hope that someone like Tucker could be persuaded where you could say, hey, even if you are a reasonable, even if you want to have a reasonable skepticism about our foreign policy commitments vis a vis Israel, I personally was also very skeptical of the Iran intervention that we've been and still seem to be, still seem to be embroiled in. I think there's a reasonable politics to arrive at. But Tucker has gone, I mean, right. He has gone way beyond that. Like, way beyond that. And maybe the argument is on the other side. And, and, and look, it's a fair argument worth considering is that it's so far beyond that. Whatever goodwill he has created over his many decades in politics, has he burned all of that goodwill? Is he beyond goodwill into ill will, into doing real damage to America's interests at home and abroad? It's like an ar. I don't want that to be true. I really, truly don't want that to be true.
- [41:50]
B
No, same here.
- [41:53]
A
But many people in these behind the scenes conversations that you and I have both been involved in, I'm sure people, there's many people who make the argument, yeah, this is too far for too long on too many issues. And I guess I'm like still holding out hope a little bit like, no, actually he could still be rationally persuaded on the merits without engaging in smear campaign or villainization campaign, but actually say, hey, come back in into this conversation and could be a productive force once again.
- [42:25]
B
Yeah, I think the only, the real problem with that is if I said to you right now, give me 10 good things that you think this administration has done, you could name 10 without flinching. I have no doubt. And then what I would say is, so, okay, so if you disagree with the Iran war at the highest possible level, how does that negate all of those things. And you said it yourself, a third party just torpedoes the Republicans. We know which way it's going to send the torpedo. It's not to destroy the Democrats, it's that it's his goal is to splinter the Republican Party so. Well, in that you didn't give me much to hang the hat on on the other side of that. I think we're pretty much in line on that, but we'll see. I think we'd both like to be pleasantly surprised. That would be the point. However, I'm not holding my breath.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah, yeah it is, it's an interesting question. And look, you know, politics always has a time horizon, right? And so the time horizon in politics is set by electoral cycles, by media cycles, by conflict cycles. And so how many of these cycles have to occur before we can make judgments? I guess this, I'm trying to like suspend ultimate, you know, some people like without a doubt, hey, too much, too far, not contributing anything. So someone like Candace Owens or Ian Carroll or some of the podcast guys, I, I don't know, I don't know that world as well, but you know, the kind of crate, you know, okay, that's like bringing nothing, has no previous goodwill. They're not even really conservatives, right? These are all recent converts that have came over in the last couple years. They're not even recognizably right wing. In fact, someone like Ian Carroll is a left wing archetype down to his self presentation, his style of dress, the you know, the costume that he wears. That's like the guy that I would have Met in Berkeley, California in about 2009. He'd be telling you about energy crystals and inviting you to a nudist resort up in Calistoga. And then you know, when you, you know, ate some magic mushrooms, would then like go in this like crazy cycle about, about the Jews or whatever. So these are like left wing archetypes that have been smuggled into the right. I have no problem saying, nope, you're not welcome here. But with people who have a lot of goodwill like Tucker, I, I, I do still want to believe and, and, and you might be on the other side of this one, but I, I,
- [44:47]
B
no, no, listen again, I maintain some
- [44:49]
A
hope, I maintain some hope.
- [44:51]
B
I, I think you're a little more bullish on the hope there. But yes, my think would be best for the country is that yeah, he would come back. It's going to take a hell of a mea culpa, but we shall see. Let me ask you one other thing, Chris. And don't worry, I'm not mentioning any other people that we both know. As you know, I'm about to head off the grid for August. This is where I get to reset the brain and let go a lot of this nonsense and everything else. So I'm trying to end all of these shows on just what, what the positive, affirming vision of, of the future for the country is. So if we are to get some of the wins on the things that you've been fighting for, what do you think in America over the next next five, ten years could look like if we can defeat some of these bad forces and create that wide tent that still makes sense and everything else?
- [45:35]
A
Well, okay, great. And I'll, I'll frame it as some advice to people who are watching that are asking these questions. I think you always have to operate on two tracks simultaneously. There's the political track, which is more abstract. It's about elections and ideas and power and the flow of money in our society. Ideologies that travel through institutions. And all of us should be. And you and I have been involved in this fight to reform those ideologies and reform those institutions to try to have political victories that are meaningful at the collective level, at the national level, at the, at the level of, of the political politics. At the same time, I think it's important for all of us, especially for conservatives and especially for people of faith. Faith, to remember to not neglect the personal. And so if it takes checking out for a month, detox from the, from digital politics, I think that's very wise. But it's always, ultimately, life is lived at a human scale. And in an enormous society with 24, 7 kind of social media frenzy, it's sometimes easy to mistake your digital life for your, your personal, organic human life. And I think that ultimately America, at the human level, if you make smart decisions about where you live, what institutions you participate in, the kind of people you surround yourself with, a good life is still more than possible in America. It's still more possible here than almost anywhere else. And so don't forget that your actual life is. It's possible to have a good life. And what's happening in politics is a threat to that. And we have to fight it.
- [47:12]
B
It.
- [47:13]
A
But also, don't neglect to kind of tend the garden in your immediate vicinity. And that's ultimately the secret to happiness. And look, people have achieved happiness under, under the most horrific circumstances imaginable, in prison, in war, in famine, in, in genocide. And so it's still possible for us. Don't take the black pill. Don't be a doomer. Don't be a pessimist. Live your life. And as our. As our friend Jordan Peterson. Peterson would tell you, you know, if things are disorganized, clean your room, get back to business, and everything is possible.
- [47:52]
B
10 out of 10 on the closing. Man, that's what we were going for. Chris, it was great seeing you. We'll pick this up in the fall.
- [47:58]
A
Have a good break.