Transcription
The success of the Mammi administration relies on him not being able to do anything that he says he's going to do. You haven't held a real job your entire life. Your entire I have a more successful rap career than Zor on Mandi. Having grown up in the lap of luxury in a country to which his parents immigrate.
The socialist of America movement on the left. We also now are seeing a civil war on the right. He's hosted a whole number of people that clearly are pushing a particular world view. I think that's fair to say. What do you think he's up to with that? And I think that that is an easy path to ensuring they quote unquote don't lose people, but I don't think that it's a good path for not losing the country. If you are widely perceived in America as a pro-Nazi party, that actually is not a great electoral approach. The fact that it needs saying, right? No, that's that's where we are.
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Ben Shapiro, welcome back to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me, guys. There's not a lot going on right now to talk about boring. Just super boring. We we're sitting here in New York uh on the day after Zoran Mandani was elected. So, let's start with that.
Yeah, the purge is outside. Yeah, it's just chaos in the streets. Well, as you know, both France and I have some experience with communism, so it's good to be back. Uh but uh joking aside, uh what do you make of the fact that this has happened?
Uh I think that you know there there are cycles of history and people don't remember things that have happened in the past and so they tend to repeat the same mistakes. Uh I think that we are now in a cycle of politics where perennial dissatisfaction is going to be the the mode. Meaning that we have an entire political class who are very invested in saying that a thing is the problem and then saying that they are the solution without actually offering any solutions and then it turns out the thing they said was a problem is still a problem when they're done. And then people say, "Well, you didn't solve the problem. I'm going to give the other guy a shot to solve the problem." And I think that you're seeing that particularly with young voters. Uh yeah, there's been a lot of talk about this is the most right-wing young and then it'll be like no, this is the most leftwing young generation and all that can be true if you're just kind of shifting side to side. And so the fact that everyone's flattering momi by saying well you know he he did talk a lot about affordability. And what I keep saying to people is well affordability is not like Beetlejuice where if you just say it over and over it suddenly arrives. You actually have to pursue policies that are likely to alleviate an affordability problem. But if your solution is always give me more power and it does seem like that is the solution of the day from both sides actually uh then you're likely to just continue penduluming one side to the other because people don't want to learn the actual lesson which is if you if you actually want affordability then either you have to change policies or change locations. Those are really the only two things and and also I think more broadly it's not about affordability. We have trained an entire generation of people to believe that if their lives are not what they want them to be, it's the fault of systems as opposed to decisions that are in their own control. And politicians absolutely have a stake in selling that. A lot of people in our industry have a stake in in selling that. Makes people feel good about themselves and bad about the world. And the reality is if you want a better life, you should feel better about the world and worse about yourself until you actually, you know, go do the right things.
I I broadly, generally speaking, as a matter of principle, agree with you. But I mean, I was looking around at property prices, real estate prices in New York. I'm doing pretty well for myself. I feel kind of poor looking at those things.
Oh, no. It's unaf and I'm not saying it's not affordable. It absolutely is unaffordable. And if you wanted to make a political difference, what you would do is you would relieve the building regulations. You would you would make it easier for people to build, not harder. You wouldn't rent control because if you stop rent controlling, then that creates incentive for people to build. You would allow people to build up further. you would get rid of of many of the the code regulations that are kind of antiquated. Like there there are things you actually could do. And then if you're a young person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I mean, that is a real thing. Okay? I know that we we've now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up, but the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that. The history of America is you go to a place where there is opportunity. And if the opportunities are limited here and they're not changing, then you really should try to think about other places where you have better opportunities. Again, that's not saying that public policy can't change. I think it can. But I think that the solutions being offered are are untenable.
Well, I sort of see the the problem with what you're saying is that really doesn't sound nearly as good as free stuff. Correct. Correct. The the third grade presidential campaign continues to win. It's undefeated, right? free ice cream, free busing, free child care, and free money paid for by somebody else. Well, what's likely to happen if Mani were to get his way and he's not like I think that the success of the Mandani administration relies on him not being able to do anything that he says he's going to do. If those things happen that he wants to happen, he's going to empty out the city. It'll destroy the city. If he doesn't get those things, then it'll be really pleasant for him politically. He'll be able to blame the system for not being able to get done what he wants to get done. So the problems will stay the problems, but he'll just rail against the he'll he'll be a perennial outsider even as mayor.
Isn't that the kind of the default position of populism where if you can't get if you're saying that the problem are the elites and you can't get things done because of the elites, that just strengthens your position. 100%. Absolutely. I mean, and then then you say, "If only I were given more power, I could do this." And then you don't do it. You say, "Well, because I because I needed more power." Like if you' just given me more power, that would have been awesome. One of the things I find really amusing about Mam Donnie uh in kind of a cynical way is is when he does this the coalition of the dispossessed we're all going to come together those of us with the bruised knuckles and it's like my dude you haven't held a real job your entire life your entire life I have a more successful rap career than Zoron Mani and I'm not even joking that's true right like Zoran Mamani is a failed rapper he was a he was a person who didn't hold a real job he got elected to the assembly and ditched half of his votes and now he's mayor of New York having grown up in the lap of luxury in a country to which his parents immigrate like he's been given the best of America and his solution is America sucks and is terrible and so now I'm going to quote Eugene Debs and NU in my in my inauguration speech in my in my in my victory speech which is which is what he did which you know again that's that's a take but it it just underscores one of the sort of fascinating things about revolutionary movements is they are very rarely led by members of the proletariat they're very often led by I I would say unsatisfied members of the bgeoisi who then decide they must be the vanguard of the proletarian area.
And it's so interesting the young people's obsession with socialism having seen socialism be implemented in Venezuela and then it being championed in lionized by particularly people of the British left the Jeremy Corbyn of the world etc etc and I've given up trying to explain the evils of socialism and communism to young people because I had a friend a Cuban friend who said Francis it's like a magic trick and until you see the reveal you ain't going to get the trick And you need to see the reveal. And that's kind of what it's like, isn't it?
I think that's right. Because it's so unthinkable. Like if you say to people, well, look at Venezuela. Say, well, it's not going to be like Venezuela here. Are you kidding? Like, how? Like, how? And and the reality is it happens pretty suddenly. It's like the the the transition from, you know, democratic capitalism to socialism, it does happen very quickly. I mean, once once the government has the power to do these things, they they do implement them very fast. And so, what was unthinkable becomes suddenly just reality. And so most Americans also don't understand how it is that we became wealthy. They don't understand how we became a very prosperous country. They tend to think that how things are is the natural state of being. That wealth and prosperity and the nice things we have and these great new products every year and being able to order things on Amazon. Like that's why, you know, the one of my favorite comedy routines is Louis C. Kay has this whole comedy routine about people complaining about flying in planes. He's like, you know, we're all complaining. Oh, it's just terrible the conditions. Like your grandparents would have had to travel for 3 months to get from point A to point B and you're doing it in 6 hours in a magical machine that flies in the sky and you're sitting here complaining about that and that's but that's kind of human nature. It's what you see in your daily life is what you accept as the norm. And we do have these things called you know airplanes that actively are time machines. You can fly to other places on Earth that don't have the things that we have and you can look at the systems they've implemented and you can see why they don't have those things. But everybody who's growing up, you know, listen, we're a spoiled society. Everybody who's been growing up, you know, with all of this nice stuff, we think that that's the norm and that there's no way that that norm is ever going to go away. And that's not true.
Well, look, I again, I agree with you broadly in principle. However, when you talk about your grandparents, yes, our grandparents would be amazed by the smartphone and all all of the other things you talk about, but our grandparents also could raise a family of four in a single income, have a house, have a car, and have a middle class life. So it's so I think there there are a few things that are that are slightly a misnomer about that. So I think that number one your your grandparents depending on when they grew up in say the 30s actually couldn't I mean your your grandparents were dirt poor if they grew up in in the great depression in the 1930s that was a very very bad decade and then if they lived from 1941 to 45 in this country then your grandfather was likely to be being shot at in in either Europe or the Pacific. So those are rough years you know turning those into sort of the golden age of what it was like to live in. So when people talk about this, what they're really talking about is a fairly short period of American history that existed essentially between the end of World War II and economically the rise of the rest of the world when the rest of the world was basically in ruins. And so America could send a bunch of money to Europe and then produce all the products here because literally there was no industrial base anywhere else on planet Earth. They'd all been destroyed by World War II. And then you could work one income and you could still do that. That was actually not the way that virtually all work was done in the United States ever. I mean, if you go back to the 1910s and 1900s when this was largely an agricultural society, mom was working on the farm, right? And and when you're talking about problems of, for example, industrial labor, women were were working in factories. And so this kind of brief period in American history, which was actually sort of a an outlier in terms of all world history and and treating that as like the norm, is not true. Second of all, the the housing affordability crisis, the average house in the United States is significantly nicer, significantly larger with central air. If you looked at the house that your grandparents were living in in 1952, you would say, "This place is box. This place is is bad." Uh, and and if you look at the job that your grandparents were working in 1953 at the Ford factory, you sitting in your comfortable office, your air conditioned office, you know, complaining about your sciatica from your uncomfortable office chair, and then you're like, "Oh man, I'm I'm really longing for those days of rivet riveting." That is not an easy job. And and by the way, it's not because we shipped it overseas because machines do it now.
And so like the again, this is not to say everything is perfect because it isn't. But I think that having a false picture of the economic past leads to bad conclusions about the economic present that are not supportable by the actual by the actual data.
Well, you make good points. I guess what I'm saying as well is like if you look at the other candidates in this election that Manish just won, you did not have the same level of speaking to people's concerns about some of those issues.
I agree. I mean the empathy sells in politics and also makes for very bad policy. Uh because as as many people have noted, empathy is is about the person in front of you and feeling what that person feels. And that's great politically, right? I mean that's that's that's what makes people magic in a room. But when it comes to making a broad public policy, then it's really what is the most effective policy for the greatest number of people. And and if you get empathetic about like this individual, you're very likely to make a bad policy that is specifically designated to help this individual at the expense of many other individuals because anybody who says they're empathetic toward all humanity is is lying. I mean, that's that's that's usually not true. You're empathetic toward others. You're like, it's it's a little it's a little selferving. And so, again, I'll give Manzani credit for magically shaking the hands of cab drivers and kissing babies and being very very good at that. Um, but I'm not sure why that makes for good policy in any way, shape, or form.
But what it does show is the importance of charisma and how if somebody is charismatic, you know, we've had people on the right and I talk to people on the right person, they're like, "Oh, you know, M Donnie's this and he's that." And I'm like, can we just not accept that as a campaign politician, he is 100% undeniable. He he's he's he's terrific, particularly in shorts. So I think the debates the the last couple debates I didn't think that he did great because they're you know he was asked questions and he really couldn't defend himself but I don't think debates matter anymore because that's not how anybody consumes information right the podcast space may be the last space where people consume in long form information and even there it's clips from the show that are going to go viral on X right and so if you're Zoram Donnie and you're and you put on you know what I think is kind of a a smarmy grin for two hours but the thing that gets clipped out is 30 seconds of you grinning 30 seconds of grinning isn't smar me it's charming two hours of grinning is Rictusike and so I think that that the the shrinking of the attention span and the way people consume information. He's built for that. He's really good at that. You see certain politicians are AOC is terrific at this. Pretending she's not is not going to make her any less terrific at it. She she really is very very good at it. President Trump is really good at it. And if you go to a President Trump rally for like 90 minutes or two hours and he's kind of rambling by the end, everybody's like, "Oh man, this is taking a while." But then you watch it on social media and you're like, "Man, that's hysterically funny." Right? I mean, like those two minutes are amazing. and and so, you know, the way people consume information is going to determine, you know, who's capable of of speaking into that medium.
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So, we've got this uh increasingly democratic socialist of America movement on the left. I'm I'm sure we'll see more of that as time goes on. We also now are seeing a civil war on the right uh which exploded last week in particular over the fact that Tucker Carlson had this white nationalist called Nick Fuentes on a show. Uh and then there is a big debate now going on in which you're one of the participants about whether the right should turn a blind eye to the fact that its fringe is in becoming increasingly Naziish or whether there's a break that needs to be made to prevent what happened on the woke left or rather because of the woke left on the left where the extremists took over wore the skin of the entire thing and then were punished very severely electorally over a period of time. Uh give us your perspective on on that.
Sure. I mean I I've been arguing against this for for quite a while. I think that that last week was a a pretty good sort of indicator that that there is a bleed over from a series of terrible ideas into the more mainstream area. The problem is not of course that that Tucker Carl it's a it's a free country. He can interview whomever he damn well pleases. It is not in fact cancellation to criticize uh somebody's interview tactics. And and it's not even that he interviewed Fuentes. It's that he proceeded to massage Nick Fuentes. I mean he treated him with kid gloves. He did not ask him a single difficult question. He did not press him on any of his extraordinary statements about, for example, Tucker's friend Charlie Kirk or Tucker's friend JD Vance or his wife or any of that. He he simply brought him on and then proceeded to gloss him. And the fact that that was treated in some quarters as sort of normal is I think a a very serious problem. I think that it's a moral problem because frankly I do not think that you ought to be glossing people with terrible views whether or not they are your friends or whether or not you you go fishing together. Uh and as public figures, I think that people have a responsibility to actually say when bad things are happening on your own side. And and I also think that, you know, there is an attempt to not only pretend it away, but in some cases embrace it with this sort of no enemies to my right or our coalition, our coalition must stand together or we'll lose. And I think that's bad pragmatically. I don't think that's even true. I think that what we've watched here is yeah, everybody's celebrating Zaram Donnie winning in New York. In New York, okay, like this place is 127% Democrat. So like it's like when people say oh AOC is going to be a national maybe she will be or maybe she won in Brooklyn and maybe Abigail Spanberger is going to be a better candidate for the Democrats because she ran in Virginia and won and Virginia seems to be more representative of the body politic broadly speaking across America than New York which is a pretty a pretty closed circuit. You know, the the idea on the right that if you you must you must gloss Nazis in order to win vict if they start to become if the face of the Republican party continues to move in a direction that is racialist that is that is religiously exclusivist to the extent that that it seems to be moving. If if that is if that is the way that the Republican party decides to play it, that is not an electorally sound strategy. Just on a pragmatic level. I I don't see like these are these are not the American people do not like the politics of say Nick Fuentes and the the attempt to launder his ideas into the public view which is what I think Tucker has been doing with a wide variety of rather nefarious characters over the course of the last two years. I don't think those laundered views are particularly popular with the American people and so if the right wants to pretend like you know moving in that direction is going to win them additional votes not the number of votes you're going to lose by moving in this particular direction. People might say Tucker Carson's got the biggest conservative platform in in America. Uh, isn't that proof that actually these views are very popular? I mean, they are popular with a certain segment. Are they popular broadscale across America? I mean, I know many ambulatory psychotics who have very large audiences uh in the in the online space. I'm not calling Tucker an ambulatory psychotic. I think he's very actually coherent in what he's doing. Um, but the I know a lot of people who have a big audience. We should note that every big audience in the media, you're talking about three four million people. The electorate in the United States is generally about 160 million people. And so you can find, you know, you can it's a big country. You can find a niche for for anything. I think one of the mistakes politicians make is they look at X and they say this is representative of the American body politic. And that is just too online. It's just way too online. I mean, just to take one obvious example, Tucker Carlson was very much opposed to President Trump's strike on the Iranian nuclear facility and said that it was going to break MAGA. That was a 9010 proposition in the opposite way for President Trump by all polling data among the Republicans. Republicans were very much pro that. And so, like, but if you'd read Twitter, then you would have gotten precisely the opposite impression. And so, I think being too online is one aspect of this for sure.
Ben, but we talk about being too online and I take your point. However, what is undeniable is that the the online world bleeds into the real world. Absolutely. Which we saw with wokeism. And partly the reason that wokeism grew so powerful in my opinion is a der of courage and integrity on the left where they saw the extremists run rampant and nobody was going to say stood up and went hang on this is nonsense. Stop doing that. And now I'm seeing the same thing happen on the right with exceptions like people like yourself. And I'm going, are we not just seeing the mirror image of what happened in 2014, 2015?
I mean, I think we are. And I and it's very, very concerning to me. I mean, I'm encouraged that I think there are a lot of people who have been coming out and and saying that this is not appropriate, that this is not something that you can quote unquote side with or unify with. Uh, and I think that's good. But I but I do agree that one of the polarized aspects of American politics is this idea that as long as you're quoteunquote on my side, we don't actually define what on my side means based on say principle. We instead define it based on what we supposedly oppose, but even then we don't necessarily oppose the same things, but we kind of broadly just throw up our hands. They're on my side. They're on my side. and and that dynamic leads to polarized sides where I mean the the future of this if if the more radical wings were to win on the right and the more radical win wing continues to win on the left you end up with an electoral future that looks essentially red versus brown.
Right and and and that's not an electoral future I think that's good for for any American especially because the vast majority vast vast vast majority of Americans are neither of those things and don't like either of those things.
And look, we did we can dress it up oh they're on my side. But let's talk about what it really is. It's about you not wanting to be ostracized by your own team. It's about you not wanting to lose viewers, followers, influence, so you take the path that is easy for you, but ultimately destructive not only for the conservative movement, but America as a whole.
I mean, I I think that that is right. I do. I And I think that that is an easy path to ensuring they quote unquote don't lose people, but I don't think that it's a good path for not losing the country. And I think that if you if you lose your soul, then you end up losing the country. Again, the things that I've fought for, let's put it this way. I've been doing this for a very long time. I started writing a syndicated column when I was 17 years old. I don't know that there's anybody who's been following me for any period of time who's ever said I whatever happened to the views that bench. He's really morphed. He's really changed. Well, what what happened? Like I don't get that question ever, but I don't think you can say the same about Tucker. I mean, I think that's one of the most common questions about Tucker. It's like, what changed? What happened? And so I think you know that's that's a relevant question and and pretending that people haven't morphed or that that shouldn't have any impact on the public discourse of course it does the things that I mean we're that's literally our job is to talk about these issues and if you talk about the issues in a different way it seems to me that that earns a different response.
One of the people that seems to disagree with I don't know if this is exactly true but seems to be based on what I'm reading is Matt Walsh who of course is your colleague at the Daily Wire.
How are you going to negotiate that situation? I mean, listen, at the Daily Wire, we have a wide variety of views on a wide variety of of subjects. Um, you know, Matt Matt is free to have his opinion. I think he's wrong. I'm sure he thinks I'm wrong and and that is what it is. I also noticed that Matt is not glossing. Nick does.
No, he's not. And this is what I was going to ask you about as well. Where does this idea come from? Because look, I I completely agree with you. Anyone is entitled to have anyone on the show that they want. We've invited Nick Fuentes on the show. We would treat him very differently, I think, than Tucker would. we would have a conversation with him and push on on some of the things that he's said. We haven't heard anything back. But where does this idea come from that if I say the person you had on your show is someone whose values I don't agree with and I don't like the way you conducted the interview, that is cancellation.
Yeah. I mean, when did that happen? I think it's a it's a really lowresolution response to what probably was a lowresolution description of cancellation in the first place. I think that if you were going to look at sort of the etmology of of what happened here, it seems to me that the left shut the Overton window so unbelievably tight that if you said, for example, a man is not a woman, this meant that you had to be socially ostracized. And I think that's what people mean when they say cancellation. Cancel the free speech concerns typically are about being banned from from platforms. Cancellation is the idea of social ostracism that you must be invited to the party. And and so for a while it was like you couldn't be invited to any party or people would attempt to go after your career if you said things that were kind of baseline normaly and and the response on the right was not let's let's broaden the overton window. It was let's eviscerate the overton window. Now all almost a morally relativistic response. All views are now to be treated as perfectly equivalent. And if you act with scorn at any view then that must be a form of cancellation. That must be a form of social ostracization that is unjustifiable. And and so what you end up with is this sort of bizarre this bizarre math where the the right has taken to the idea that if you get a lot of flack, it's because you're over the target.
And also that if you criticize, then that's a form of cancellation. That that's a form of social ostracization. Well, if you add those two things together, what you come up with is it is probably better to be a Nazi than to criticize a Nazi. Because if you're a Nazi, then you're taking a lot of flack, which must mean that you're over the target. And if someone criticizes you, then they're engaging in the same sort of politically correct cancellation that the left was engaging in. You must be right. They must be wrong. And they're cancelelling you and they're violative of of sort of basic first amendment principles. So I think that's a really low resolution view. I think the the argument about cancellation was not that nobody should ever be socially ostracized. It was that the the idea set that was being socially ostracized was a very normie mainstream set of views. And I'm not a moral relativist. I don't believe all views are equivalently moral or decent or or worthy of or even worthy of response. I think this idea that you're not allowed to have scorn for views that you believe are damaging or deeply immoral, like truly bad. Like for example, I don't even not even arguments, just statements. Like, you know, Nick V is calling JD JD Vance's wife a jet. Like that's not an argument. Or that J or like how are you supposed to respond to the argument that that he has made, for example, that JD Vance is a fat gay race trader who shouldn't be president of the United States because he's in an intermarriage. Am I allowed to respond to SC? I feel like scorn is a pretty good response to that and that that doesn't actually deserve a debate or a wholesome discussion and that in fact treating that as though that is a rational idea is a disservice to rationality.
But if you treat all forms of that response as cancellation, that's probably how you get to this math.
And of course, one of the other things that happened and I think the woke left deserves all the scorn and blame for this is what they've done to words. I see people now saying, "Well, how dare you call Nick Fuentes Nazi?" I'm go, "Well, it's I'm not insulting him. I am describing his views."
Correct. I mean, there's been an attempt because the left has overused all of these terms, they've now become meaningless. And that means that when you do that in the rhetorical space, you actually end up destroying the systemic immunity that people have to bad things. Exactly. So, if you if you call everything racist, then the response typically is, okay, nothing's racist. But that's not true. We know that some things are actually racist. If you say that that black people are innately inferior, that's racist, right? That's a that's a racist statement. But if I say racist, there's a group of people who will immediately say, well, no, you're just using racist as a club in order to shut down conversation because the left used it in that way. And and so a sort of Pavlovian response is developed where if you use a term the way it's properly supposed to be used, then it's treated the same as if you were improperly using the terms. The term itself loses all meaning. And then you know, I guess what we have to reargue that that issue. I mean, I guess that's the idea. But again, some of these are not arguments. Some of these are are impulses or emotional outbursts or insults and or trollery and and so that's not an honest conversation. That's not a discussion.
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We talked about Tucker and uh one of the things is quite clear that as you say there's been a direction of travel change very significantly since he left Fox and started doing what he's doing. He's hosted a whole number of people that clearly are pushing a particular world view. I think that's fair to say. What do you think he's up to with that? Um, you know, I I don't like to attribute inauthenticity to people. So, I will assume that it's reflective of his actual world views. Uh, I I think that, you know, just looking at the guests that he's had and and sort of the views that he has laundered because that that seems to be his mode of of doing business is that he he very rarely says the thing that he wants to say out loud. A few times he will. Like, for example, in the Fentes interview, he'll say that Christian Zionists have a brain disease, right? That's him actually saying the thing that he thinks, then sort of trying later to half by it back as he realized he crossed a politically inconvenient line for him.
I mean, all people I know personally who I've seen like be seized by this brain virus and they're not Jewish. They're most of them are self-described Christians and and then the Christian Zionists who are well Christian Zionists like what is that? And I can just say for my self, I dislike them more than anybody, you know, because like what because it's Christian heresy and I'm offended by that as a Christian. Um, but mostly what he does is he has on people and then he that's fascinating. That's very interesting. Now, of course, Tucker is perfectly capable of carrying out a very adversarial interview as he did with, for example, Ted Cruz. And so pre pretending that he's not doing that thing is I think insulting to the intelligence and and the right would not accept in any other context. If if a reporter has on Kla Harris and asks her zero difficult questions except how brat she is, then we are rightly going to assume that that reporter is pro Kla Harris, right? It's not doing their actual journalistic job and you can sort of intuitit views that way. Guest selection is is definitely a big one. How you treat your guests is a big one. We can we can sort of intuitit the views. You know, I think that that Tucker's general belief from from looking at his the way he has done his sort of foreign policy talk is that it's not just that America's overextended. The America is a sort of nefarious force in the world and wherever American support for allies happens then it must be the result of domestic manipulations and that the most important thing right now is to essentially go uh to bring I think this is the most charitable read uh to to bring you know American resources home to not be involved in the world in any way and most importantly that anybody who opposes this agenda is a tool of a foreign agenda uh or is or is a malign actor uh which is the thing that that differentiates I think some of how Tucker does his business from from others. I think Tucker is very fond of using emotivism where he attributes motive to people uh in order to in order to not even debunk the argument but simply to just say you know they're a bad person. They hate you. They want to hurt your children. Uh and and I despise them. I despise them comes up a lot on his on his show which I've always found kind of strange. Like I you know I don't know why that's an argument that why why are your feelings even sort of relevant to the point that you're making. It's a sort of strange political take. I despise who cares and I despise lots of things. I mean broccoli is not my favorite. Like of what relevance is this?
Well it's interesting that you say that and whenever I I I hear Tuck or I listen to him. There does seem to be a kind of it kind of reminds me of like a failed romantic. You know, he had this romanticized idea of America and what America was. He's now fallen out of love. And like a guy who's gone through his first breakup, he looks at his girlfriend and goes, "Oh, she's a massive bitch."
I mean, I I think that you could you could I think that probably he would agree with that on America's foreign policy.
I think he he talks about this openly about, for example, the war in Iraq, but I think that he he's been critical of pretty much every American foreign policy decision since World War II, including World War II. I mean really including World War II, right? I mean he has on guests who have said repeatedly, not just one, more multiple guests who have said that either America took the wrong side in World War II or the true villain of World War II was Winston Churchill. He himself has said what did Churchill actually gain because now London is a terrible place which is sort of like saying that there's litter in the streets of New York, therefore the enlightenment was bad. It's like clearly he thinks something went fundamentally wrong with the West around the time that World War II happened. And you know why why he's saying that and what what is the viewpoint that defines that. I think he's he's sort of left that undefined. So, I'll leave that undefined. All I'll say is I think that it's it's um it's untrue. Uh I think that that some of the views uh many of the views of the people that that he brings on run counter to traditional American conservatism at the very very least.
Look, the the the brilliant thing about social media and podcasting is that there's no gatekeepers. The terrible thing about social media and podcasting is there's no gatekeepers. And when you look at people like Tucker and you look at people like Candice, when they were in large organizations and they had to report to people, there were guard rails and they couldn't go off the reservation. Whereas now they can go off the reservation and we can and we've seen what's happened. I mean, again, I think that it's not even a matter of of gatekeepers as much as it is of a willingness to sort of be checked by people and and listen to maybe better judgment. Um, because I think that there's a case to be made that many of the gatekeepers have sucked and getting rid of some of the gatekeepers was was good. Um, but I think that what is required of consumers of information now is significantly more than was required of consumers of information 15 20 years ago.
You have to be your own gatekeeper now.
Yeah. And and most people are not really good at that. It's not even a matter of qualification. and they're not very good at it because again you're consuming information like a fire hose and it's coming at you on social media from an algorithm that I think is quite perverse in places like X uh or or on Reddit or wherever you are Tik Tok uh and and so unless you are a very informed person to begin with it's very difficult to know what sources to trust and that's when you get into a bit of confirmation bias and that's where we get back to sort of the original point that we were making which is the people who pander most strongly to your sensibilities which is that you have been wronged by some sort of conspirial cery of people who are aiming to crush you underfoot. That that that's a very flattering idea because then the idea is that you're not responsible for any of your own actions and that all solutions are just simple if only you had the power to to implement them.
And you also get incentivized to create this type of content because the more of this kind of conspiratorial content, let's just call it that, that you make, the more likely people are to engage with it because they're going they're thinking to themselves, "Oh, this is interesting. This is dangerous. I want to hear what these secrets being uncovered." Whenever a secret is being uncovered, that's much more interesting than somebody saying, "Hey, there's no secret. Everybody's bad at their job."
Which which by the way is actually significantly more accurate. In virtually all circumstances, people are just not good at things who think they were going to be good at things and then the results are bad. But it's much it's much more sexy if you say, "No, no, there's a nefarious secret. There's a group that meets in secret and they get together just to you." Right? That's and and that's that's flattering to your sense of self. It's flattering to to your sense of the world. And now you're part of a now you're part of an informed group of people who really know the thing that nobody else knows. Well, that's very true. And I think another piece and I wrote about this on my Substack. I don't know if you saw, but it was about what's happened to young men in particular over the last 1015 years where we had this woke period where you if you were a straight white man like there was like there was there was doctor and then straight white men like a lot of levels below that.
And particularly for a generation who neither created a system where men may have had some advantage or white people may have had some advantage nor benefited from that. If you were a 15-year-old Zoomer, you were being told the future's female, all men are trash, etc., while actually your life outcomes and the education system, which was overwhelmingly not favorable to people like you that you were going through. You can kind of see why they're angry and resentful. I mean, I totally agree why they're angry and resentful. And this again gets back to a point, diagnosis is easy. Prognosis and and cure is hard.
Yeah. Uh, and so I I totally agree that the the sort of wokeism of the past 20 years has created, for example, the Fuentes movement. I mean, I I talked about that openly on the show on on Monday and in the piece that I wrote for the Wall Street Journal is that basically the sort of woke left idea that white Christian men in particular were the scourge of the earth and thus had to be extrapated from public life or at least or at least disadvantaged in public life by the sort of Ibram X Kendi. The only way to to fix the injustices of the past is to
engage in injustices in the present. Like I can see why that would drive a sort of white Christian identitarianism. I think that in order for that identitarianism to take place, it can't really be a Christian identitarianism because Christianity, you know, last I checked and again I I'll let others who are more expert in this topic than I speak to this is a a system that distinguishes neither Jew from Greek nor slave from from master, right? I mean, the idea is that all are equal in like it's about individual equality was was one of the key functions of Christianity. you have to come up with kind of a pseudochristianity where you know certain people are superior to other people. Um and and I think that that's a really negative thing which is why you've seen some systemic immunity to it among more traditional Christian groups actually. Um but I I think that the the move that that you see it is understandable but the normal curative to woke should be meritocracy >> and that's a hard argument to make these days >> right? I mean again what because meritocracy has an inherent suggestion which is if you don't succeed maybe it's at least partially or largely your fault >> and that's a very hard sell to people that's a very hard cell >> do you think maybe I don't know if I believe this I'm genu I'm doing a tucker here but yeah I don't >> do you think that this might actually be quite a healthy thing for the right actually in that you had a kind of anti-woke coalition ition that included a lot of people that maybe didn't really know what it was for. And what's being negotiated now is what does it mean to be on the right? What does it mean particularly to be a conservative? What are the principles that you guys actually stand for and which are the principles that can't be included in that code?
>> Yeah, I mean I I think that the conversation has been ongoing as long as I've been alive, right? I mean these are battles that have been had between traditional conservatives or or neocons and realists and isolationists. I mean these are ongoing battles all the time. Uh but but I think that what is fascinating about the current moment is that typically you know movements tend to follow leaders. Uh if there's a conservative movement it turned into a Trump movement. President Trump is non ideological. President Trump contains multitudes. Uh he has sort of instincts and impulses in many cases rather than a thoroughgoing ideology. And so roing under the surface of the Trump presidency has been a lot of these divisions for a while. And you know, I think that there are a lot of people who are planning for the post Trump era and they're trying to make moves right now in order to sort of consolidate their viewpoint in the postrump era. So I think some of this is is absolutely natural. Um but you know, I I think that if we're going to have these conversations, we ought to be at least honest about what it is that we believe.
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And one of the things that I think that we we're not really addressing at the moment, which I find very interesting, is the use of humor. Now, one of the things that the wokeism did is they clamped down on humor. Any type of humor that wasn't broadly in their worldview was seen as oppressive, racist, patriarchal. Pick the term and it you were probably accurate. But what people like Fuentes and other people have done so so well in my opinion is they've tapped into that where people felt like you couldn't laugh at this joke or that joke and Fuentes has just opened the door and gone you know what let's say the word as many times as we want and whatever else it may be and it's going to be a free-for-all. And when you've been constrained for that long that feels really invigorating. I do think that there's a transgressive side of of the conservative movement right now that's really just enjoying like flexing in the in the new freedom of the of the Trump era. I think that that's for sure true. The danger I think is that you know Chesterton I think was talked about the idea that that actual authentic belief systems can be destroyed with an ounce of cynicism and and basically trollery is a form of of cynicism very often. And so funny is funny but it is also true that funny doesn't build things.
Funny funny funny tends to destroy things. is funny. Funny does not tend to build things. And I think that the the impulse toward humor is it can be awesome. We all love to laugh. We all like a good joke. And there are many different types of jokes, right? I mean, there's there's jokes that poke fun at human frailty. And then there are jokes that are designed to legitimately tear other people down and and harm them. And and they're not all quite the same. Um, but I you know, I think that one thing that's that's happened is that terrible views very often are shielded with this sort of like, well, I am I joking? Am I trolling? Am I not really trolling? And and the answer is if the outcome is the same, then I'm not sure why I'm supposed to pretend that it's okay just because you're joking when you sometimes say it and sometimes don't.
>> And that's a really profound point because we've seen more and more comedians come on and give, you know, public opinions about subjects as complicated as the Middle East and and other and you know, the war.
>> There's a clown nose on clown nose off thing that's been going on with the entire comedian world really since John Stewart. And I I think that that's really I think that's bad. I think if comedians want to be comedians, they should be comedians. And then we should stop pretending that they are experts in foreign policy or domestic policy. And if you know somebody wants to like I make jokes on my show, I'm not a comedian. And so you should take seriously the views that I express as my own views. My problem is when I can't tell what is your view and what isn't. And when you hide behind the humor to say it's not really my view, it's just humor and then when when you're caught, the clown nose goes back on. Like it's like that that just seems fundamentally dishonest to
>> And do you think as well like you know Trump sort of ushered this in didn't he? Because the first time we saw him in 2016 I remember watching him in the debates going this guy's a comedian because the entire purpose of a comedian really is to be disruptive. It's to disrupt the status quo and that's very much what what Trump did.
>> I think for sure and and I think that that was the problem that many of us who were sort of traditionally in politics had with President Trump during his first presidential run and then he got to be president and you know you got to see what he did when he was actually president. And so what I used to say during his first term is, well, now that he's president, I can judge him based on the thing that he's doing, not just the thing that he's saying. And I think most Americans came to that conclusion, right? So now at the beginning of his presidency, do you remember how every evening news broadcast started with a Trump tweet? Like every single one. It's like, he tweeted this today and I just can't believe he tweeted this today. And within about six months, everybody's like, "Okay, so he tweeted a thing." Like, cool. And now we don't even pay attention when he tweets a thing, right? In fact, he has to have it like a sign off. Thank you for your attention to this matter so we know that he's not trolling, right? and and but like I I think that that's because we got to see him in practice. The problem is with with people who you know are in the business of viewpoint. You don't actually get to see what their practice looks like. All you have is the rhetoric. So now I'm supposed to judge whether when you know Nick Fent says team Hitler, does he actually like Hitler or is he just joking about liking Hitler? And what is the practical difference between joking about liking Hitler over and over and over and also espousing Hitlerian beliefs >> and actually just liking Hitler? like I and and at what point does the onus why why is the onus on the viewer as opposed to on him to clarify what it is that he thinks?
>> Well, speaking of judging people on on what they're doing, uh how do you feel about President Trump's term so far?
>> Uh I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, he's done a lot of things that I think are great. I mean, I I think that his foreign policy overall has been very very good. Uh I think that he has justified my my faith that he was going to be a peace through strength president and not a full-scale isolationist president as some people seem to think that he was which I thought was always projection based on his term one. I think that you know when it comes to domestic policy obviously closing the border is a massive accomplishment and he did it essentially the first day thus falsifying all of the talk about how you need a new piece of legislation in order to do that. Uh I've been very critical of the tariffs. I think the tariffs are unccalibrated and poor economic policy that that are not truly designed to achieve the effect that either he wants or that he is seeking. Um and uh and you know I think that we can go down the list of issues. Overall I think he's a very effective president in a way that I think many people didn't think that he could be. I mean he he's moving very quickly. He's doing many many things. Whether you like him or you hate him there's no question that he has been a transformative figure in American politics. and and so on an effectiveness level he's extremely effective on a policy level I would say I agree with probably 75% of of what he's doing and there's 25% I don't agree with and then there's stuff that I just don't think that he was ever going to do whenever like he should rhetorically unify the country where he been for 10 years I mean like come on or or you know he he should really be more statesmanlike like okay you know like these are these are now old debates and they're they're in the past do you have any concerns around I mean we had Sam Harris on the show recently that episode hasn't gone out yet but it will he talked a lot about the way some of the ICE operations have been conducted, people showing up in mass, not identifying themselves, arresting US citizens, etc. Did you have any concerns about that?
>> I mean, I I I think that we'd have to look at each individual case, and I'm sure I could find cases where I would have concerns. Um, you know, I think that overall the detention of of criminally illegal immigrants, which seems to be largely the people who are being targeted, is a is a very good thing. Uh, I I think that you could certainly find cases, I'm sure, where where ICE acted badly or where they didn't provide properly for the rights of the people who they who they are taking into custody or they got it wrong and arrested somebody who's a citizen when they meant to arrest an illegal immigrant non-citizen, for example.
>> And very briefly, because we're running out of time, you have another media engagement we have to run to. We haven't talked about Israel.
>> Um, despite the fact that you're accused of only talking about Israel.
>> Yes.
>> Um,
>> always. Yeah. Uh I I was wondering we it we got to a point where I thought President Trump achieved an incredible thing which was the release of the Israeli hostages and that was based on the idea a much broader plan whose objective was to disarm and dismantle Hamas and secure peace in a very complicated structure that hasn't transpired. Are you optimistic that there will be some kind of long-term solution to the Middle East or is it just going to run for another 70 years?
>> Well, I mean, I think that, you know, conflicts between radical Islamists and others in the Middle East is likely to continue for, you know, the rest of human history. Um, but if you but if you're talking about like the explicit what happened in Gaza issue, um, I think that the triumph was stage one. Stage two was always sort of, you know, the the maybe phase of of the Trump plan. Uh the the reality is that what has happened with the freeing of those hostages, it means that that now you know Israel is not on tender hooks obviously about living people being held in tunnels and and beyond that there's sort of a yellow line that's essentially been established in the Gaza Strip that's currently being administered by the by the IDF and that eventually is supposed to be transferred over to the control of some sort of international security force. Presumably there will be vast humanitarian aid in that area. Rebuilding funds are going in. I know people who are actually actively working on construction in that area right now to build housing and all the rest and maybe turn that into like an actual decent place to live as far as the area that's sort of the interior of the Gaza Strip that is currently essentially a war between Hamas and a wide variety of sort of clans. Uh, you know the the thing that's that's kind of ridiculous about this whole war is that the yelling at the IDF about human rights violations and it's it's only the IDF is terrible. It's just awful. Well, I noticed that the minute that the IDF pulled out of those areas, Hamas just started pulling people out of their houses and shooting them in the head and everybody went completely silent about all of that and now they're saying, "Well, we certainly can't allow the IDF to go back in there. We we have to have an international security for Well, cool. I mean, I think that the Israelis would love nothing better than for the UAE and and the Saudis and the Indonesians to put a security force in there. The question is why precisely those countries would want to do that.
>> Well, they wouldn't because they'd all be killed, right? Well, not all, but they would they would end up in the same position.
>> That's right. So, I think that one of the things that's been exposed by the the sort of deal at the end of the war is the harsh reality of the Middle East, which is if there is no police force in areas that are governed by terrorists, then terrorists tend to govern those areas. And and this bizarre idea that if you just pull out magically, things are going to spring up and and replace them. You know, we'll see whether that happens or not. But certainly the Middle East is is in a significantly better situation and position than it was before President Trump's latestage intervention in in in the Gaza war.
>> Have you been surprised but Ben events and what's happened in the UK surrounding the pro Palestine demonstrations and the just general anti-semitism? Let's be honest.
>> Um I mean I'm I wish I could say that I was surprised. I feel like that that's been a long time in in exploding. The the Islamic population particularly in areas like London or Manchester where you have very high levels of Islamic immigration. U the history of Europe tends to show that when you have very high levels of Islamic immigration in particular areas those areas tend to become more lawless, more violent, more anti-semitic. And that's true across Europe. It's not just true in Britain. It is true in France. It is true in the Netherlands. It's true legitimately everywhere. And the one area where apparently it's safe to be Jewish is Hungary, where they decided that they weren't going to allow mass Islamic immigration into the country and are currently paying, I believe, a million euros a day in fines to the EU in order to maintain their current border status. So, no, I'm I'm not surprised by that at all. Uh I continue to be you know I would say beused at best um by the fellow traveling of the left with this this sort of red green alliance uh that has happened in which it's like well you know we're all on the same side because we oppose the system together and well that that may be a convenient coalition for the moment but I promise you that at the end of this road uh there's going to be some pretty significant disagreement. Uh
>> absolutely Ben it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I think we actually talked about it. I I think that the the generalized lack of political voices speaking to the vast opportunity available to young people in America and in the West and their capacity to actually get ahead if they make good decisions. That that lack is being direly felt and it's having its ramifications across all of politics, foreign and international.
>> Well, there was one person who did do that very effectively and he was taken from us. Uh, do you see somebody else stepping up? Because I guess Charlie was Charlie was the person who was holding this whole groping thing at bay in many ways. Um, and he needs to a new person needs to emerge for that role. Surely
>> I mean I think a lot of people need to emerge for that role. I think one of the big mistakes is thinking that any one person can replace one for one any one person. But it's going to require a lot of voices to push back what I think are evil and nefarious views.
>> Ben, thank you very much. Thanks so much. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where you'll see this.
>> I worry that activists have been successful in disguising their anti-Jewish sentiments behind a critique of Zionism. Where should we draw the line between criticism of Israel's policies and anti-semitism? [Music]