20:00

kinds of unforced errors now for 25 years. And

20:03

the only way to explain anything that has happened

20:05

in our politics for a quarter century is

20:07

that the other party was even worse than what

20:09

this party offered you. That's still

20:11

the case here. The Democrats may have an opportunity to

20:13

get out from under that cycle, but not in an

20:15

easy way. This is not where anybody wants to be.

20:18

And I think in the modern system, I mean,

20:20

we're just not in the old party system. There

20:22

is not a way out of this for some

20:24

group of people who are the party to make

20:26

some decision. Biden has a

20:28

nomination if he wants it. And

20:30

if he doesn't want it, I think he's

20:32

gonna have to be involved in picking who

20:34

does. The Democrats have a convention in August.

20:36

It's coming up pretty soon. And

20:39

if there needs to be a move that involves

20:41

somehow pushing aside the

20:43

vice president, I think that has to

20:45

be done by Biden and

20:47

some group of others with Harris

20:49

in some way, it's very hard to imagine. It's just very

20:51

hard to imagine. It's very hard to imagine. Who do they

20:53

need if they do it? I mean, I think

20:56

a global chart type would make sense. I

20:59

think a governor would make sense. Governors are

21:01

the only people in our politics who feel

21:03

any political pressure to seem normal now. And

21:06

so they are the only people who seem normal.

21:08

And we need a governor to run for president,

21:10

for God's sake, because that's the

21:12

only chance we have at this point of

21:14

ending up with a president who seems presidential

21:16

in any way. The Democrats have some decent

21:18

governors, but I don't think any of them

21:20

are demographically or politically in a good place

21:22

to make the kind of move you have

21:24

to make. So there's no easy way. Yeah,

21:26

I would love to see Shapiro from Pennsylvania

21:28

pick, but there would just be a lot

21:30

of really special stuff coming from Tucker and

21:32

Candace Ellins if they picked a Jewish guy.

21:34

Well, that would be good, but that would

21:36

be good for them. Yeah, yeah, that

21:39

would be good. One of the

21:41

lessons, we just had Jamal Bowman go

21:44

down in real spectacular fashion in New

21:46

York. It would take a heart of

21:48

stone not to laugh. Yeah, and with

21:51

his Mr. T shirt on, but

21:54

the arms out and cuss it. I

21:57

guess the thing is, I haven't. We didn't

21:59

really let people. know what I really think

22:01

about the Jews. And then

22:03

he got his blank handed to

22:05

him. The fear

22:08

of this is just a thing

22:10

that's rattling around in my head, which

22:14

is protests don't work. The

22:18

backlash against the

22:20

anti-Semitism, the backlash against all of this

22:23

stuff, I think, and I don't know

22:25

what you guys think, I think has

22:27

now far outweighed whatever

22:29

damage was done to

22:32

the cause of U.S.-Israeli

22:34

friendship, whatever damage was

22:36

done to support for Israel, I think

22:38

has now been far overtaken

22:41

by the backlash. When

22:43

you've radicalized Jerry Seinfeld,

22:47

when you've taken it to the point that people are like,

22:49

enough with you people. And I don't

22:52

know the correct answer, but I am

22:54

not familiar with any

22:56

protest movement since the civil

22:58

rights movement that ultimately was

23:00

effective, that ultimately succeeded. The

23:03

anti-apartheid stuff, I think you can make a case. In

23:05

the U.S. In the U.S. Okay,

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24:16

right, let's

24:18

move away from pure punditry.

24:22

One could make a case that

24:24

historians, 50 years from

24:26

now, looking back on this week, might

24:31

focus less on the debate and

24:34

what it wrought, and

24:36

more on the Supreme Court's decision today

24:38

to overturn Chevron, which is, I

24:44

mean, like, you guys

24:47

probably haven't been on like the second

24:49

floor of AI when that decision

24:51

came out, but like the

24:53

cocaine and champagne was just flowing. It was

24:55

a very exciting moment. Even

24:57

than usual. Yeah, that's right. And

25:01

so, Yuval, I understand

25:04

that you have a book out that

25:08

touches kind of directly on this. So what do you think

25:10

of the decision? I'm sure you've had time to read the

25:12

whole thing. And

25:15

why don't you explain for people who

25:17

may not exactly know what this Chevron

25:19

thing is. Yeah, so I was

25:21

teaching some of you, or learning

25:23

with some of you while the decision was... You

25:27

know, while the decision was announced. I

25:29

would say that again. Seriously.

25:32

So I haven't read all

25:35

of it. I've tried to make my

25:37

way through the key parts of it. I think

25:40

it's wonderful. Chevron

25:42

deference is a judicial

25:44

doctrine that tells a kind

25:46

of ironic story of recent American history.

25:48

It began, it was the

25:52

brainchild of Antonin Scalia, a great hero

25:54

of ours at AI, and of conservatives

25:56

who think about the Constitution in general.

26:00

that you waited for his son to leave here when

26:02

he brought that up. I mean, this is, yeah. It's

26:05

a bittersweet day for Chris Scalia. And

26:09

ultimately, what Chevron says is that

26:11

administrative agencies should be given deference

26:13

by the courts in determining what

26:15

the laws under which they operate

26:18

mean. It

26:20

was a way of restraining judicial power

26:22

by handing over some of it to

26:25

administrative agencies. In a

26:27

moment when conservatives understood themselves in very

26:29

presidentialist terms, after 40 years where the

26:32

Democrats had controlled Congress, for

26:34

most of which, Republicans had actually controlled the

26:36

presidency. And the sense was

26:38

that the courts were advancing a progressive

26:41

agenda that was emanating from Congress, and

26:43

that presidents were too weak to resist it.

26:47

You have to sort of wrap your brain around

26:49

that sitting in the 21st century, because everybody's changed

26:51

their mind about everything, in every

26:53

part of what I've just described to you. But

26:56

Chevron has become a way in which, first

26:58

of all, Congress avoids doing

27:00

its job by writing very vague

27:02

legislation on the premise that the

27:05

agencies that administer it will then decide what

27:07

it means. And

27:10

the administrative agencies are not doing their job.

27:12

Their job is not to interpret the law.

27:15

And the courts are not doing their job,

27:17

because their job is to interpret the law.

27:19

And by overturning Chevron, the court has created

27:21

an opportunity and some pressure for

27:24

everybody in the system to do something more

27:26

like their job. First of all,

27:28

judges take control of determining what the

27:30

law means, which is their role in

27:32

our system. Administrative agencies will

27:34

be looked to for expertise on the

27:36

subject matter that they know, rather than

27:38

on the meaning of the laws that

27:40

they have to work under. And

27:43

Congress may feel a little pressure

27:45

to actually write legislation that

27:48

actually specifically instructs the

27:50

executive branch regarding what Congress wants it

27:52

to do. That would look a

27:55

little more like the American constitutional system. And

27:57

so I think overturning Chevron is a

27:59

very important step. in the direction of enabling

28:01

that system to work in the way that it ought

28:03

to work. And at the

28:05

core of that is a functional Congress that

28:08

makes decisions about policy direction

28:11

through a process of bargaining and

28:13

negotiation. That is how our

28:15

system is ultimately meant to move public policy. And

28:18

the weakness of Congress is really the big problem

28:20

to fix in the system now. I think the

28:23

court has created some space to fix that problem.

28:25

It can't force Congress to do it. Nobody

28:28

can force Congress to do anything. But

28:30

there's a little more pressure now and a

28:32

little more of an opportunity for Congress to

28:35

take law writing seriously. So I think it's

28:37

a great day for the American Constitution. So

28:39

Chris, do you now anticipate

28:41

just a mass breakout

28:43

of fiduciary responsibility

28:46

and legislative accountability

28:48

from Congress? Any

28:50

moment now, Jonah, any moment that

28:53

distant rumble you hear is

28:55

that policy wonks rolling up to

28:57

Capitol Hill and throwing all of

28:59

the tweet-baiting

29:03

comms directors out of their offices so

29:05

that the rise of the LDs. So

29:09

Merrick Garland will

29:11

probably not be clapped in irons

29:13

and put into George Washington's crypt

29:16

in the basement of the Capitol

29:18

for being in contempt of

29:21

Congress. He probably will not. And

29:24

part of the reason why lawmakers

29:26

or public lawmakers are saying he

29:29

should or failing to hand

29:31

over the audio tapes of

29:33

the Robert Herr investigation. By the way,

29:35

speaking of people with egg on their

29:37

faces, the people who were like, the

29:40

media coverage about the Robert Herr report

29:42

talking about characterizing Joe Biden

29:45

as with an elderly man with

29:47

memory browns, how dare you, sir?

29:50

These keep the poli-side jargon to a minimum. Yeah,

29:52

yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a little bit wrong. So

29:56

they want the House has

29:58

voted to hold Merrick Garland. in contempt for

30:00

refusing to turn this over. Now, this is,

30:02

of course, facile because they know that this

30:05

is a matter that is going to have

30:07

to be resolved by the courts. Can Joe

30:09

Biden claim executive privilege over an audio

30:12

version of this thing that a written version has

30:14

already been put out? And I would say no.

30:17

So Dan Crenshaw, smart

30:19

person and capable

30:21

of thoughtful stuff, joined the parade

30:23

of Republicans and said, yeah, let's

30:25

arrest Merrick Garland. Now, by the

30:27

way, I would

30:30

love, I would pay to see

30:32

the House Sergeant at Arms walk

30:35

down to the Kennedy Building and

30:39

say, I'm here to arrest.

30:42

You're picturing a guy like Bill, like me walking down

30:44

there. He's got a set of

30:46

150-year-old handcuffs. I'm

30:49

here to take in the attorney general. As

30:52

1,000 drones from the FBI

30:54

hover over this person and 12

30:56

laser sights are on his head.

30:58

But anyway, how

31:00

much dumb, goofy stuff that

31:03

you say? So there's a lot of

31:05

waiting for freebies when

31:08

you can say or do inconsequential things to

31:10

suck up to your base. Where's

31:13

a freebie? Where can I go? And both parties

31:15

look for it. Everybody's looking for

31:17

the chance where I'd be like, I need to

31:19

cover my flank and give a

31:22

little red meat over here. I've got to give a

31:24

little red meat over here so that I can get

31:26

away with. If I do that, if I say that

31:28

Mayor Garland ought to be manacled, then

31:31

maybe I have the opportunity to work on

31:33

immigration legislation, or then maybe I have the

31:35

opportunity to do this other stuff. And so

31:37

we're going to buy the opportunity

31:40

to do the right thing by doing

31:42

wrong things or saying foolish things. It

31:46

does not work. It has not worked. Because

31:48

what happens is the foolish things and the

31:50

wrong things fill up all of

31:52

the space. It just takes up all

31:54

of the space. And finding

31:57

that split between the performatives formative,

32:02

it has profoundly failed. I

32:04

mark it, there's a lot of

32:06

mild markers down the road to

32:09

this, the perniciously weak

32:11

Congress. In 2009,

32:13

2010, Barack Obama, the administration said,

32:20

we will not submit a budget

32:22

and we will not submit it on time. And

32:25

Republicans in Congress said, how dare you,

32:27

how dare you not do this?

32:29

The law clearly says you have to submit

32:31

a budget. And do you know what the

32:33

Obama administration said? So what? Where's

32:35

your army? What are you going to arrest us? Well,

32:38

no, it's not that kind of illegal, but that's what the

32:40

law says that you have to do. And we can go

32:43

back further and further. You've all,

32:45

well, no, I do not know.

32:47

I don't think there's been a

32:49

normal budgeting process in Congress since

32:51

the 2007 or so. And it's,

32:54

and no one ever, the bill never

32:56

comes due. So maybe the answer is to

32:58

start locking people up in George Washington's crypt

33:00

in the basement. I don't know. But

33:03

we, this long slide is,

33:05

I recommend

33:08

to everyone you've all book. It's,

33:11

it is so important that we have, that

33:13

we actually do more than pay lip service

33:15

to this stuff. Because if

33:17

Congress doesn't assert itself, we

33:20

will not keep the Republic. I

33:23

think there's a, I very much

33:25

agree with all of that, especially about the book. By

33:27

two. I, I, Important part is

33:29

buying it. Yes. You can read it a

33:31

few minutes. You need to go read it. I think

33:33

the, a simple shorthand way to understand

33:36

the challenge is that Congress doesn't really

33:38

have to do anything. Right. The

33:41

constitution gives the executive and the

33:43

judiciary some obligations, some responsibilities and

33:45

duties. Congress has only powers. And

33:48

if it's members choose not to do their job,

33:50

it is very hard for anybody else to make

33:52

them do it so that we're talking

33:54

about creating pressures and incentives and all of that.

33:56

And as you see, I mean, I think the

33:58

example of the budget process is. shows

34:00

another point, which is that the basic processes,

34:03

the basic systems that are involved in the

34:05

separation of powers have not been working for

34:07

a long time. Congress has

34:09

made itself secondary to the president

34:12

on purpose, by choice, for a very

34:14

long time. And there's, I'll tell you a

34:16

quick story if you don't mind, General. 2006, 2005,

34:18

I was working at the White House under

34:22

George W. Bush, and there was

34:24

a bill moving through Congress to reverse

34:27

the president's policy on funding stem cell research.

34:29

It was an issue that was in my

34:31

purview. And the president had said, if

34:33

something like this passed, he would veto it. And

34:37

by using some leverage in the budget process,

34:39

Republicans got, the Republican speaker to put the

34:41

bill on the floor was gonna pass. We

34:43

had a brief meeting with the president just to make

34:45

sure he really meant it when he said he wanted

34:47

to veto it. So it was like a 15-minute conversation

34:49

in the Oval Office. And he said, yeah, I've said

34:51

this a thousand times, I'm gonna veto it. And

34:54

we all get up to leave, and the

34:56

president says, so, a veto, do

34:59

I sign something? Is there a public event? It

35:01

was 2005. So

35:03

he had been president at that point for an entire term

35:05

and then some. And my

35:07

first thought was, I don't know the answer

35:09

to that question, and I'm in big trouble here. My

35:12

second thought was, this is not good.

35:15

The president, in fact, had gone an entire

35:17

term in office without using his veto pen

35:19

once. And that bill did end

35:21

up being the first bill that he vetoed as president.

35:24

And the reason it happened is because a

35:27

Republican Congress decided not to send the

35:29

Republican president anything that he would not

35:31

like, which means that in thinking

35:33

about what they wanted to do, they were

35:35

first thinking about what he wanted to do. And

35:38

that is a kind of breakdown in institutional

35:40

responsibility and a sense of just pride in

35:43

the fact that they stand in a certain

35:45

place in the system that I

35:47

think we have seen now for the entirety of the 21st century. There's

35:50

plenty of vetoes when the other party controls Congress,

35:52

but it's actually just the same thing. They're just

35:54

sending him things that they want him

35:56

to be seen to be vetoing. They're not

35:58

actually engaging in the process. That's

38:00

the one issue that debate put to bed, right?

38:04

And unless that's him

38:06

on performance enhancing drugs, then we got even bigger

38:08

problems. But anyway, he was on ayahuasca, and they'll

38:10

come out and say that that'll be the explanation.

38:12

They would explain the bead Medicare thing. But

38:15

so he says, she

38:17

said, members of

38:20

the military have to take drug

38:22

tests. Why

38:24

shouldn't the president have to take one

38:26

too? And

38:28

I engaged, and I said, oh,

38:30

it's because Congress, this

38:33

place where you work, hasn't

38:36

written a law requiring that,

38:39

right? I mean, like, maybe it would not

38:41

pass separation of powers issues or something like that. But

38:43

I don't know that it wouldn't. Yeah, it might. But

38:47

you have these people who say things like,

38:50

I mean, I remember Cory

38:52

Gardner when a

38:55

different kind of Colorado Republican. Yes.

38:57

When Jeff Sessions announced

39:00

some change on the

39:02

executive orders around marijuana stuff, right?

39:04

And Colorado is a lot

39:07

of sunk costs in weed. And

39:10

Cory Gardner was furious. I

39:12

remember. And I like Cory Gardner. He was a good guy, right? He's

39:15

just like, livid about how we

39:17

had assurances from the president that

39:19

this wasn't going to happen. And we had all these reliance

39:21

interests and all this, and he has to change it. And

39:24

you would get the impression that he was a

39:27

plumber who liked to indulge in doobies and

39:29

not a guy who could do this thing

39:31

called right laws. It was like no sense

39:33

that he could actually write a law to

39:35

clarify any of this stuff. And I think,

39:38

particularly on the House side, you have people

39:41

now, what half the caucus has

39:43

no living memory of actually being

39:45

legislators in any way. And that

39:47

creates its own cascade of

39:50

e-Medicare. Well, do you? The

39:54

two things that I would like to point out, number

39:56

one, if you

39:58

go to the Denver airport and you were Starmer

50:00

or anyone else to be Prime Minister.

50:02

They'll literally know who will vote for

50:04

Rishi Sunak. Right. But

50:10

because they will vote for, I assume,

50:13

a Welsh Corgi who

50:16

represents Twitford

50:18

upon Marmalade and then that person

50:20

will then go to Westminster and

50:22

they will form a coalition and

50:24

then those people from their number

50:26

will choose their leader and then

50:28

that person will become Prime Minister.

50:31

In the United States, and I hate

50:34

that we keep coming back to this,

50:36

but today's the day to talk about

50:38

it, we have much more direct democracy

50:41

and it relies on having two parties

50:43

that function because the

50:46

intermediate force, the thing that

50:48

interposes itself between whatever the

50:51

people want today, right, in

50:53

the American system, we up

50:56

front have the, before you can get

50:58

into the game, you're supposed to have

51:00

to run this gauntlet, you're supposed to

51:02

have to go through this stuff because

51:04

when we choose a president, we don't

51:06

do that same thing in the end

51:08

where everybody goes into a room and

51:10

chooses. And if we don't have functional

51:12

parties, that means that the feedstock that's

51:14

flowing into the decision making, right, there's

51:17

a lot that could be done about members of

51:19

Congress once they get to Congress to

51:21

make them better. And we could, like

51:23

a dormitory idea, there's term limits, there's

51:25

a lot of things that we could

51:27

do. But the thing that is

51:29

the most evident and obvious to me is

51:32

that if you improve the selection process at

51:34

the beginning, you're going to,

51:37

the place, the pinch point

51:39

to change the incentives in my mind is

51:42

in the primary election process, which right

51:44

now, if you get caught in

51:46

the United States doing

51:49

your job well in Congress, you will certainly

51:51

lose it because 7% of the electorate,

51:54

which would be to say a

51:56

majority of the primary electorate, will

51:58

vote you out The

58:00

parties as institutions tend to moderate our

58:02

politics. The Democratic

58:04

or Republican Party would

58:07

both like to win elections in the deep South and in the

58:09

Northwest. That means they've got to be pretty broad tense and attractive

58:11

to a broad array of people. But

58:15

individual politicians, first

58:18

of all, need to win a primary in one particular place, which

58:21

means they have to be intensely attractive to

58:23

a narrow segment of people. Those things are

58:25

just at odds with each other. And the

58:28

parties cannot do their jobs as long as

58:30

the logic of the primary

58:32

overwhelms the logic of the broader party

58:34

system. So I think our

58:36

system would work better as the two-party

58:38

system that it long was. It is not exactly that

58:41

now. It is

58:43

a system in which individual politicians

58:45

have to work through the primary

58:47

process to enter and populate offices.

58:50

The parties have handed over their fundamental

58:53

purpose to a sliver of the

58:55

electorate that is least interested in the system working

58:57

as it's meant to work, which is by facilitating

58:59

coalition building. If you take the

59:01

people in America who least want that to

59:03

happen, we now start every election process by

59:06

asking only those people what they want. That's

59:09

a very bad idea. And I think

59:11

to begin by addressing that would help

59:13

us to have a more functional two-party

59:15

system, which I think ultimately is

59:18

better for us than a multi-party system. And

59:21

we do have an effect

59:23

from smaller parties, right?

59:26

This year, let's

59:28

say 8% of the

59:30

vote is going to go not to – I mean,

59:33

I'll be writing in George Will. I don't know.

59:36

If it catches on, let me know. It could

59:38

be big. He's old enough to be president. He's

59:40

old enough to be president. A

59:44

significant number of Americans will not vote

59:46

for either of the two main candidates.

59:50

And minor parties have their effects.

59:53

Who balanced the federal budget in

59:56

the late 1990s? It

59:59

wouldn't have happened if it hadn't. had not been

1:00:01

for Ross Perot and his successful emphasis in the

1:00:03

1992 campaign, which created a

1:00:05

pressure point on Bill Clinton that he knew

1:00:07

when he needed to run to the middle,

1:00:09

where to rot? Where do I

1:00:12

have to run to on the middle? Well, let's balance

1:00:14

the budget, knowing that Perot would be back in 1996.

1:00:18

Third parties, minor parties do have the role

1:00:20

that they play. John Anderson

1:00:22

in 1980 had a role to

1:00:24

play about where were these

1:00:26

voters going to go park themselves? Who's

1:00:29

in the coalition of the sitting out? And

1:00:31

of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we

1:00:34

know the effect that he will have, which is

1:00:36

that there will be trained ravens living at the

1:00:38

White House going forward.

1:00:41

Whoever wins, they're going to be into

1:00:43

falconry and they'll be, what

1:00:45

do you call a group of ravens? I know

1:00:47

it's a murder of crows. What's a? I don't know,

1:00:49

a group of ravens. Okay. Well, when

1:00:52

you guys are learning together this afternoon, that's what

1:00:54

you can learn together on. Yes,

1:00:57

I just want to bring it back to the point that

1:00:59

we were talking about at the very beginning about democracy

1:01:02

requiring some distance from the people.

1:01:04

Right. Part of the problem with

1:01:07

what's happened to the parties is that

1:01:09

in the early 70s, when there was

1:01:12

some knock on effects from political scientists in

1:01:15

the 1950s, but basically in the 1970s, there's

1:01:19

this idea that the political

1:01:21

parties are in the democracy business,

1:01:23

therefore they should be democratic. The

1:01:26

problem with that is that functioning

1:01:28

institutions rarely

1:01:30

are democratic, certainly not ones

1:01:33

at scale. Right. So

1:01:35

like we all think democracy is good.

1:01:37

I think democracy is good, but it used to be

1:01:39

the cliche used to be with political scientists that democracy

1:01:41

was the stuff between the parties, not the stuff inside

1:01:43

the parties. And so think of

1:01:46

almost any business, right? You would

1:01:49

not say, you know,

1:01:53

the CEO or the board or the

1:01:55

managers, they shouldn't be making the decisions.

1:01:57

Let's put up all the major questions. to

1:02:00

a vote of the entire payroll. So

1:02:02

the janitors vote, the cashiers vote, the

1:02:04

guys who make the widgets vote, everybody

1:02:06

votes, right? You would not ask a

1:02:08

Marine platoon to vote

1:02:11

on which hill to take, right? You

1:02:13

would not, imagine your college campuses

1:02:15

if all of the serious decision making

1:02:17

was done by popular vote of the

1:02:19

entire campus. Think about

1:02:21

who would, the nerds who would show up

1:02:24

all the time to vote and the people

1:02:26

who didn't wanna show up how their vote

1:02:28

wouldn't, their input wouldn't matter.

1:02:31

You get this very skewed thing.

1:02:33

And so when people say it's the

1:02:36

fault of the two party system,

1:02:39

no, it's the undermining of the two

1:02:41

party system that came from democratizing these

1:02:43

institutions. This

1:02:48

gets into stuff that you've also written out a lot as well, but

1:02:52

transparency is another one of these concepts

1:02:54

that everybody loves. We need

1:02:56

more transparency, we need more democracy, we need

1:02:58

more transparency. You cannot

1:03:00

have functioning institutions that are on C-SPAN

1:03:02

all day long. Like

1:03:05

you cannot have negotiations where

1:03:07

the people that you need to throw under

1:03:09

the bus that get a good compromise piece

1:03:12

of legislation are watching in real time. And

1:03:15

you cannot have congressmen

1:03:17

and senators have serious debates

1:03:20

and conversations when they

1:03:22

know they're on camera and anything they

1:03:24

say is going to be used

1:03:27

by their opponents or put on the local news.

1:03:30

Transparency of results, really

1:03:32

important. What did congress do? But

1:03:34

transparency of process corrupts

1:03:36

process. And

1:03:40

this is part of the problem of the followership

1:03:42

problem we have. We have problems with leadership, but

1:03:45

a lot of the bad leadership we have stems

1:03:48

from our bad followership. People

1:03:50

are demanding, getting to Yuval's point about

1:03:53

desires, people are demanding the wrong things

1:03:55

from their leaders. More democracy, more

1:03:58

transparency and. Trump

1:08:00

in that debate talk about what a

1:08:03

terrible place the United States of America

1:08:05

is, just a relentless

1:08:07

attack on the third world

1:08:09

country, the nightmare, how bad

1:08:11

the United States is, over

1:08:15

and over and over again, of

1:08:17

living in this terrible country, in this

1:08:19

terrible circumstance. And

1:08:23

I watched Donald Trump get indicted.

1:08:25

I was overseas when it

1:08:28

happened. And I got to tell you, as

1:08:31

the use would say, it hit different.

1:08:35

It was a really weird

1:08:37

experience to be overseas and

1:08:40

watching international coverage of Donald

1:08:42

Trump being not indicted, but

1:08:45

convicted, and

1:08:47

watching that happen. And

1:08:51

I will tell you, my theory

1:08:53

of the case with the United States is that

1:08:55

we are always either coming together or falling apart.

1:08:59

Just like you will find in your own

1:09:02

lives individually, there is no such thing as

1:09:04

stasis. You never get to a point

1:09:06

in your life where you go, right there, perfect.

1:09:09

We're going to keep it this way forever. Things

1:09:11

are always either getting worse or

1:09:14

getting better, or both. But yes,

1:09:16

at the same time, obviously. Yes, yes, yes, very

1:09:18

much so. For the United

1:09:20

States, we went through a period

1:09:22

from November 1963 to April 1975, and it was

1:09:25

the pits, man. It

1:09:30

was the pits. We could rehearse all of the bad

1:09:32

things that happened, many bad

1:09:34

things, political violence, assassinations,

1:09:38

the calamities around the Vietnam War.

1:09:40

The president and vice president both resigned from

1:09:43

the same administration under separate scandals. It was

1:09:45

a catastrophe. The

1:09:47

period from 1976 to the

1:09:49

turn of the century, somewhere near the turn

1:09:51

of the century, was pretty remarkable. We

1:09:56

invented the internet. We defeated Soviet communism without

1:09:58

ever having to drop a nuclear bomb. on

1:10:00

anybody, the world got richer, the

1:10:02

world got freer, things got better and better and

1:10:04

better. It's not a crust pizza. Stuff

1:10:07

crust pizza. Again, it'll be years

1:10:09

before they come up with another place to

1:10:11

put cheese in a pizza. That's right. And

1:10:14

to echo what my friends and colleagues

1:10:17

said before, it will fall to you,

1:10:19

it will fall to the

1:10:21

people of your cohort, of your generation

1:10:23

to decide that

1:10:25

the coming together is beginning.

1:10:28

You're members of the Greatest Generation, Generation

1:10:30

X. We know that the people... You're

1:10:33

welcome. The people... Exactly, you're

1:10:36

welcome. There

1:10:39

are not enough of us to

1:10:41

deal with what's going on, right? Our numbers are too

1:10:44

small. We are great, but our numbers are too small.

1:10:47

It will fall to you, right,

1:10:49

to decide that we are coming

1:10:51

together, that this is actually happening,

1:10:53

and that another American century is

1:10:56

going to happen. And I

1:10:58

don't blame a lot of people who

1:11:00

are a little bit older than you guys who

1:11:03

look at the first two decades

1:11:05

of this century and say, really?

1:11:08

Oh, wuss. But

1:11:11

I believe, I believe in

1:11:13

you people, and I believe in the fact

1:11:15

that the opportunity is still there, and that

1:11:17

you will have learned the right lessons from

1:11:20

this two decades of real

1:11:22

trouble that we've had. Yeah, I'll

1:11:24

just add, because I told you I have a hardout

1:11:26

at four minutes. One

1:11:29

small answer, one not as

1:11:31

mythopoetic and wonderful as these guys, a

1:11:33

larger answer. By

1:11:37

all means, the Republican Party should be

1:11:39

ashamed of itself and how it's behaved in the

1:11:41

last 10 years. Truly

1:11:43

ashamed of itself. And

1:11:46

so should a lot of people who know better

1:11:48

and just practice the

1:11:51

classic advice of there go the people, I must go with

1:11:53

them for I am their leader, OK? But

1:11:57

I just want to, so I'm not doing this

1:12:00

as a partisan score, a

1:12:02

point scoring thing, the Democrats should be ashamed

1:12:04

of themselves too. If they actually

1:12:06

believe, and I think many of them do, that

1:12:10

the Republican Party is a fascist party, that Donald Trump

1:12:12

will end democracy as we know it, I don't think

1:12:14

he'll end democracy, he will bruise it, but

1:12:16

he will not end it. If

1:12:19

they believe that the Republican Party are the forces

1:12:21

of white supremacy and all that kind of stuff,

1:12:24

it's candidates and policies that

1:12:26

will get you elected. Instead,

1:12:30

you have this thing, first of all,

1:12:32

they're still clinging to Joe Biden. When

1:12:34

they know it's a

1:12:37

problem, like if Joe Biden truly believes that

1:12:40

Donald Trump is this massive existential

1:12:42

threat to democracy, he should

1:12:44

do everything he can to get out of the

1:12:46

way, but he can't let his own

1:12:49

personal thing about being president, let

1:12:51

himself do that, or the people around him won't let

1:12:53

him do that. In the primaries, in the last cycle

1:12:55

in 2022, the

1:12:58

Democratic Party poured scads

1:13:00

of what did Haley Marbury used to say,

1:13:02

enough money to scald a wet mule into

1:13:06

election deniers and MAGA candidates

1:13:08

because he thought they would be easier to beat. They

1:13:11

were right, but again, that's

1:13:14

fine in hardball politics that's happened before,

1:13:17

but if you sincerely believe these people are

1:13:19

Nazis and fascists, maybe

1:13:22

what you should be doing is working a little

1:13:24

bit to make sure that Republicans who

1:13:26

are not Nazis and fascists win their

1:13:29

primaries. Instead, they

1:13:31

have aided and abetted, they've hastened, the

1:13:33

takeover of the GOP by the very

1:13:35

forces that they think are a fundamental

1:13:38

dagger to American democracy. And this is

1:13:40

one of these examples about just the

1:13:42

incentive structure and the collective action problem

1:13:44

that we have overrides things, which

1:13:46

gets me to the broader point, which is simply

1:13:49

that I like people to

1:13:51

be idealistic, idealism is good, idealism

1:13:53

about ends is vital, but

1:13:56

pragmatism about means is

1:13:58

how you get closer to the end.