Why Smart People Don't See What's Wrong With Trump

Key Takeaway

Practice a “steelman-and-disconfirm” check before sharing political content: name the strongest evidence against your preferred conclusion, then seek a credible source outside your usual media ecosystem. The conversation argues that rationalization thrives when identity, social belonging, and algorithmic entertainment all point in one direction. A small daily habit of comparing claims with primary reporting and principled criticism from your own side can make it harder to compartmentalize inconvenient facts.

Episode Overview

Sam Harris speaks with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller about why intelligent people can continue supporting Donald Trump despite conduct they view as plainly disqualifying. They examine partisan rationalization, media incentives, audience capture, conspiracy-based infotainment, and the reinforcing relationship among voters, right-wing media, and elected officials.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Smart People Don't See What's Wrong With Trump from Making Sense with Sam Harris. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

The most insane version of the person you're talking about, Sam, isn't the people who voted for Trump in his first term and went along with it. These are the people who supported Trump after January 6th . Can you imagine a scenario in which Barack Obama loses to Mitt Romney? There is a crowd of Black Panthers in the capital and they start beating up the police, and some police officers die as a result. My memory serves me right. All Obama needed to do was wear a beige suit that day and we would have had a controversy.

I'm here with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller. Sarah, Tim, thank you for joining me. It's great to be here. Sorry. I've been waiting for this invitation for years, and I have to share it with Sarah. Well, yes. It's very difficult for you. Well, you're in good company. First of all, I need to say that I'm a huge fan of both of you. Tim, you interviewed me on one of your podcasts. I don't know how long ago that was, but I don't think I'd ever heard of you before that interview.

I have n't watched it again, but I really did n't realize I was in the company of important people when you interviewed me. Oh my God. But you two are attacking Trump and Trumpism, so you're just having fun with the hammer and pincers. Well, um, I mean, you guys have been doing this longer than I thought, but in the last year or so, I've been watching you closely. And I'm really tempted to just leave the studio right now and let you guys record an episode of the Bull Work podcast here.

But how many podcasts do you have? I mostly watch you and your colleagues on various shows, but feel free to mention your main strengths so people can find you. Wow. Okay. So, Tim's main group is Bull Work, and that's the only good thing I'll ever say about Tim, but when Tim took over the podcast, we didn't know he would be as good as he is. Like, he was, you know, Charlie Sykes, who was the host of the original group when we started, he retired and we thought, well, Tim will take over the group and he killed it, he doubled the audience, so that's the main group that you always see in the top 10 of the charts.

And then, not far below that, Tim, JBL, and I have our weekly roundtable discussion called The Next Level. And then we do Takes, which was a more recent invention, in which we all participate all the time. And then I have the podcast The Focus Group, where I listen to voters and play the sound back so people will believe me, because that's what Americans sound like. And we have several others . I don't want to leave anyone out, but we have a great team right now at Bull Work and everyone is excellent.

So, you should listen to all of them. Yes. So, Bill Crystal is there and JVL and you guys have other colleagues and it's really fantastic. What is the origin of the name Bull Work? I know, but tell people how you started. Okay, I'll do that too, which is when I had a really silly idea a long time ago, around 2017, maybe 2018, when I thought, "Hey, we should have an aggregator where we take all the Republicans and conservatives who don't like Trump and create, like, some kind of aggregator that brings them all together on one website." Drudge Report, kind of like a Drudge Report, never Trump.

" That's right. That's what I did. It was going to be the same Drudge Report that I presented and I got some initial funding, which is now just the Drudge Report, by the way. The judges show up. But anyway, yes, that's true. That's true. And we were trying to find, you know, the name 'bullwork,' a lot of people didn't like it at first because they were like, what is that? But of course, a bullwork is the thing that stands upright. It's a nautical term. But it 's like the thing that stands between you and the bad thing.

Like if you build a bullwork, you build a fortress, a fortification between you and the bad thing. Maybe cannon fire. And that's what one of our junior members named the aggregator. But then, when the Weekly Standard was summarily shut down or taken off the air because it wasn't pro -Trump enough. Hmm, I thought the aggregator was a stupid idea. I'll get a bunch of people from the Weekly Standard. Bill and I were doing several other things together at that time. I'll give them jobs." And let's get this real going.

And then my friend Tim, who I 've known for a long time, was in Oakland at the time and he was very sad and angry. And I went to him, you know, like in that scene from the movie Hooers where they dunk someone in the tank and he's dunking the guy in the tank and saying, "Get a grip." And I said, "Tim, come do this with us." And then he showed up and he was like a S. Thompson hunter who was never Trump. I thought, "Where's this guy?" That's amazing!

And then we all started rolling around. Sadness and anger are good fuel. They burn easily if you let them. So, before we get into the topics that we might all be sad and angry about. Hmm, give me your summarized biographies. I mean, how... I mean, I know you guys were never Trump supporters, but how did you get into politics? Because, I mean, what I love about talking to people who were, you know, generally classified as Trump supporters is that the claim of partisanship simply ca n't be made, right?

I mean, if I'm talking to you, longtime Democrats like myself, well, then a lot of people might get off the train immediately thinking: well, everything you're saying about Trump is a symptom of your own tribalism and partisanship. Hmm, but you know, obviously, when I'm talking to David and other people who saw Trump for who he really was from the beginning, that goes out the window, and the same goes for you two. So, what is your political background? Yes, I was just a campaign gypsy, a campaign hacker since high school.

I started volunteering for a guy named Bill Owens when he was running for governor of Colorado. He 's a Republican, and that's only because I had a neighbor who was basically his friend. I had a lucky guesthouse, and the neighbor knew I was obsessed with politics, and I'd show up to be an intern. And when I was 16, I looked like I was 11, and most people would ask, "Where's your dad? " And I'd say, "My dad's home. I'm here, I'm here, I'm working, I 'm the spearhead of this campaign." Oh, and after that, I just loved political campaigns.

I worked on a million of them, everywhere from Virginia, New Hampshire, and Florida to Iowa. I did McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, John Huntsman's in 2012, and then Romney's and Jeb's in 2016. And in between, I consulted for Scott Walker and Nikki Haley on their gubernatorial campaigns. So, you know, I was a campaign gypsy, most of the time. And after Jeb lost, my plan was to go back to Miami, hang out on the beach, read gay fiction, and get drunk all day for a few weeks before getting back to life.

But on the first day, some rich guys called and said, "Do you want to be the spokesperson for this group we're starting?" At the time, it was called Our Principles Pack, which is a sort of prototype for the Lincoln Project, but long before the Lincoln Project. And you're going to be the spokesperson for that? And I said, "Yes, of course, yes." "Both Jeb and my dad thought it was a terrible idea. They said, 'Trump is a vindictive guy.' And I was like, '[ __ ] him.'" I don't understand , I don't care.

Hmm, and, you know, at the time, I don't think I was as in tune with his appeal as I could have been, being a political junkie. I knew the appeal was there, but I thought he could be defeated in 2016, either in the primaries by Marco or in the general election by Hillary, and that ended up not being the case. After that, I became an indignant person in Republican politics. Then I felt sad and angry, and Sarah called me. So, that's the idea. Yes. And, unlike Tim, I wasn't exactly from the political world.

I was a political person, and Tim and I worked together at a Republican company that did a lot of communications. I was a...Tim and I have experience in communication. But what happened was basically in 2016, when I watched Trump's rise to power . It was just one of those things where my hair was on fire. I was thinking, "I can't believe this is happening, right?" It was just that surreal experience with Trump in the first few days, but I wanted to do something. And I had a lot of freedom.

I had been with the company for about 15 years. I was senior vice president. I was going to take over the company when, you know, the director retired. So I started building things and went into a room. There were these gatherings that used to happen back in the days of the sad Republicans, and we'd all get together and be sad together. It was like an AA meeting, but perhaps less cheerful. I don't know, after that, I met Bill in those rooms and Bill and I decided: " Okay, here's what we're going to do." Let's go to the primaries with Trump.

And we had this plan. So, we were going to see Kinzinger and Larry Hogan. Larry Hogan was my greatest treasure. I was sitting with Larry Hogan and I was saying something like, "You have to do this, man. Your dad would want you to do this." Well, because his father was the kind of guy who went to Nixon and said, "You have to resign." And I thought, "This is your moment." Hmm, we spoke with Mark Cuban. And, in fact, to make a long story short, everyone told us no.

But in the process, I started doing focus groups to see if there was interest from the Republican base, because I had this strong theory that, of course, Trump was an accident of history. People didn't really want that. The second I stepped into voter rooms conducting focus groups, I said, "Oh, wait. I got something very, very wrong." Hmm, and I just realized I spent a lot of my career in DC. You know, it's so far removed from how voters actually think about things. And when I started listening to the voters, I really couldn't stop.

And I ended up leaving, leaving my company, starting a bunch of new projects, starting the manual labor, and that's where we are now. Okay. Okay. So, since this is a difficult question, I think I personally have never even thought of an answer to it. But how do you explain to yourself that intelligent people you know, people who may have, who may even be friends in certain cases, or family members certainly, but, um, many may be ex-friends, do n't see anything wrong with what's happening, right? I mean, even if they admit it, maybe the most they'll admit is that, well, they don't like Trump's style.

Obviously, it's abrasive. He broke some rules that we might want to keep in place in the future . But nothing really out of the ordinary or dangerous, and you know that nothing that is truly ruinous for American democracy is happening, is likely to happen. They are prone to saying things like, "Well, all politicians lie." Right? I mean, is this how the three of us, and many other people we could mention here, are experiencing this " Invasion of the Body Snatchers" moment, where we do n't know what the hell happened to people who seem to be the same people as yesterday, but they simply don't make sense to us?

How do you explain that? And there are... I mean, maybe there are different versions of this problem, but I'd love to know how you processed it. Fortunately, I wrote about this in my book. So, if you want to know the whole story, it's about 300 pages long. But here's a summary. I think that brain rationalization is a real drug, and the brain is very powerful, and people manage to rationalize things up to the point, or sometimes even after the point, when it's causing them real harm and damage.

And I think some of the rationalizations included simple things like tribalism in team sports, you know, like, you know, I, as an LSU fan, would convince myself that Nick Sabin was the devil. People became convinced that Joe Biden was the devil. Well, you know, and I think you see this very clearly when watching sports, and I think politics and sports have merged and transformed a bit. Hmm, I think some people wanted to have close access to power, and that's a story as old as time, I'm not exactly an analyst of that .

Hmm, I think, and I'll let Sarah enter into her triangle of doom, but I think there's a propaganda element to it, as if some people didn't even know, didn't get good information. I think there are many people who are blocked from good information. I think this is different from the elite class. It's more common among ordinary people, perhaps within the family category. But, um, you know, in the friends category, one of the things in the book, I tried to only include people in my life who voted for Trump.

But I made some exceptions for people to talk off the record. And in one instance, the guy told me, "Tim, the problem is that maybe a year or two after Trump's first term, in 2017 or 2018," he said, "My wife's friends think I'm racist. People talk badly about me. Like, my kids can't tell people what their dad does for a living." And I realize that Trump does bad things. But to deal with this, I just need to hold on to one or two things he 's right about and really focus on that and think about how, you know, I can use that to motivate myself.

And my reaction to that was like, you're not going to be recorded in this book, but I'll know you said it. This is so embarrassing. Like, that's such an embarrassing admission. But I thought it was very revealing. I think a lot of people kind of get caught up in nightclub atmospheres and into their careers or social circles and find ways to rationalize really bad things. And, and I think Trump, this is a story we've seen throughout history, and like, I think the only new part of it is just, and this isn't even that new, but like, the only new part of it in the modern media age is the sheer absurdity of it.

Hmm, you know, I think that's why it blows the minds of some of us, we could understand if it were a more sophisticated evil, I think, but it's not . So that's my opinion. I do n't know, Sarah, what you could add about that. I mean, I'm going to talk about the Republican triangle of doom, which is something I talk about a lot, which is the toxic and symbiotic relationship between voters, the right-wing infotainment media, and Republican-elected officials . And they work together as a sort of reinforcing mechanism, right?

So, um, and look, democracy is still about the voters. And the fact is that Donald Trump caught the entire country off guard when people thought that nobody would vote for him because he's an idiot. And instead, they realized what I realized when I started listening to voters: Trump was in people's living rooms and on page six and had been part of their cultural firmament for so long that they were so tired of it, if you even remember the... 2016 election, the Clintons, the Bushes, they were fed up with it all.

And then, the voters were like, "Yeah, give me that different guy." And this power, when the conservative media realized that there was this appetite among voters, created a whole new incentive structure, right? What happened to Lindsey Graham? Well, Lindsey Graham realized there was a lot of interest in flattering a group of people he didn't like and didn't respect. And they, entire parties, slowly realized that if they simply fed that machine , that you could... there were many people who desperately wanted someone to be tougher on the Democrats, to fight harder, to burn, burn the Democrats to the ground.

And then they adored Trump, and the Republicans realized, again, what I realized, that there wasn't really a great appetite anymore for the things they were selling, like limited government, free markets, American leadership in the world essentially, when George Bush left office and then there were eight years of Obama. When he left office, he had a 32 % approval rating, and that created a world in which the Republican party developed a huge appetite during the Obama years for complete change. Hmm, and I think the smartest ones realized this because they were all with us, like the issue against Trump that the National Review raised, as if we were all friends.

There were many more people who never supported Trump at the beginning, but even JD Vance, I don't know if he was in the middle, but you know, if you 're calling Trump, you know, something between a jerk like Nixon or the Hitler of America, it seems like, uh, you should have a seat at the table with those who never supported Trump. That 's not a compliment. I would add just one more phrase from popular psychology. People don't want Stephen Miller. There are a handful of people, maybe JD Vance, I don't know, who enjoy being mean, who enjoy other people's pain.

And many of these other people you're asking about, Sam, who know more and who agreed with this, aren't like that. People want to feel like they're on the side of good. And that's how they convince them. This brings me back to that guy I told you about anonymously, how people really do things. When you ask people, like when I'm having a few beers with my ex-friends, I'm like, "What's it really like?" They'll say, like, I think closing the border was a good thing, or they'll say, they'll say, it's support for Israel if you will, you know, for some people, or but even I can say that, right?

So, yes, exactly. The awakened things you've been following for 10 years have been pernicious, right? And then, they'll cling to those things and thank them, and say, "I'm on the side of the good guys," and focus on them, and almost ignore or compartmentalize the things that challenge that narrative in their brains. But what do these people think of a Liz Cheney or an Adam Kizinger? I mean, like, how do they explain that? They hate them. They hate them and they hate us. But that 's because we're an alternate version, right in their face, of what they could have done.

And to be confronted with people who say, "No, you see what I see. We're all looking at the same thing." And frankly, all the things you and I learned as young conservatives about personal responsibility, about the importance of character, you're the only ones who gave all of that up. You're the only ones who betrayed their principles because there's an even more insane version of the person you're talking about, Sam , isn't it the people who voted for Trump in his first term and went along with it?

It's the people who, even after January 6th ... there are a lot of new people who came to Trump posting that... that they decided on Joe Biden, like, and they have to exaggerate, that's why the Epstein thing and the child predator narrative were so important, because what's worse than trying to steal a free and fair election? Pedophilia is perhaps one of the only ones. And then they became obsessed with this idea that there was a conspiracy of left-wing elites that was harming children, and they could tell themselves that to feel morally good about Trump.

We need someone like that. Hmm, but of course, as we see now, all of that was fiction. Yes. They think Liz and Adam have reached an agreement. Okay. It's a worldview totally distorted by war . So, once you've convinced yourself that, like, the woke movement is the big threat or something, on any of the lists of things that are legitimate threats coming from the left, right? So, you, or in Adam's case, see that in his family . If you become convinced that the left is atheist and pagan, you tell them: "Well, you're on your moral high horse, wagging your finger in my face for agreeing with this, but you're agreeing with this anti-Christian movement, and..." I think in many ways Liz Cheney and Adam are seen as an almost greater evil than the actual left, and that's why the trans issue really matters.

That's why , when it comes to child protection, if you listen to their responses when you challenge them about Trump and his morality, they'll say, "Well, you believe in chemically castrating children ." Yes. Right. That's more or less what they're trying to say—that they have a moral basis to stand on. Okay. Okay. Okay, so if you're going to trade something for something, I mean , you take all the people who cared or pretended to care about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, right? Because it signaled all the corruption and self-harm that the Biden family would be capable of.

I mean, that's worth a few million dollars. Criminal family, criminal family. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yes. So, I mean, that's really something worth worrying about. We care about corruption, right? We care, we don't want a, in this case, a vice president and former vice president, much less his family, deceiving based on their access to power and tarnishing the reputation of our good country. Right? We care about these things. Now Trump comes in and does a thousand times worse and they don't care one bit. Right? So, like, that's just a kind of hypocrisy.

But the craziest thing is that this center-right is almost as if hypocrisy doesn't even exist. Right? It's as if the physics of reputation management has completely changed. And there's no management to be done. It's as if Trump can do anything. Their facilitators can do anything. They can break any norm that someone pretends to care about. I mean, you cared about the Twitter archives, right? You cared about this, you know, a Biden candidate asking for nude photos of his son to be removed from Twitter. That was just an Orwellian exaggeration on the part of the powers that be, you know, in the media sphere.

And yet, you know, Don Lemon being arrested for doing journalism doesn't matter, right? So, once again, you have much more direct contact with these people than I do. Is there any effort to resolve these strange cognitive fluctuations, or is it simply outright failure? You can't solve cognitive oscillations with Trump. I mean, Trump doesn't have any redeeming values ​​and virtues, right? So it's not like, it doesn't matter if you choose a question, you know, where this is going to end up, right? Again, we 're entering the realm of armchair psychology.

But as Sarah mentioned in the post from January 6th, right? Like, once you've already decided that, "Okay, I know that this person instigated a violent attack in the capital to overthrow our democracy and end it so that he could remain in power," and I didn't like that because none of them liked it at the time, you saw them, um, but you have to do it for whatever that other reason is, you know, Israel, trans , awakened, you know, whatever you can rationalize. Well, now that you've rationalized that, how is your brain supposed to compute and start criticizing various hypocrisies from here on out , right?

Like, you think, "He's already smeared you, as if you were already involved," and then there's nothing to gain by doing it. So when you see people doing it, they're usually people who have a genuine political vision, genuine principles, you know? Whether it's libertarians like Tom Massie, or even Rand Paul, you have to yell at them about the Caribbean bombings, so there are a handful of people who can pick things they have a specific interest in and maybe just pick one thing. But aside from that, you know, once you make the decision to point out one of Trump's horrible hypocrisies, well, now you're on a slippery slope to getting into the work of lying, right?

Because there are so many others, and all these people, especially in Washington, now you're on a slippery slope to becoming Liz Cheney or Jeff Flake, and that's the worst possible outcome, right? And then it becomes a challenge, you know? So there is no incentive to engage with any of the hypocrisies. That's my assessment. Yes, the short answer is yes, it's bankrupt. And Tim's point at the end about incentive structures. As if there were many people. You can see them making real-time decisions about how to protect their incentive structures, which is that Donald Trump created an appetite for a media ecosystem, an ecosystem of experts to say, "Hey, uh, no, Trump is actually good." And at this point, there are sunk costs in doing that.

If they challenged Trump now, Megan Kelly couldn't, Eric Erickson couldn't, Ben Shapiro couldn't. Ben Shapiro is one of those who rallied behind Trump after January 6th, starting to fundraise for him. Why? That's what his audience wants. That's the pressure. And that's why I talk about the Republican triangle of doom: there are incentives and pressure on these people, coming from voters, who say, "I don't want you to tell me why Trump is bad." I want you to tell me why Trump is good. And if you deviate from that, I'll complain and walk away.

Deb Shapiro is an interesting case, just to summarize, because he showed courage. I think, to be fair, he opposed some of the conspiracies. Coming from Candace and other sectors of the right-wing media. It's interesting. I watched his entire speech on TP USA, where he talked about the importance of truth, about the need to tell the truth, and about how Tucker and Candace don't do it, and about how, if you don't tell the truth , it's pernicious and starts to consume you. And then you think: "But why not?" Why doesn't this apply to Trump?

"And you see this in other people, even those who demonstrate that they aren't hypocritical and who have courage on specific issues; you find that they don't apply that to Trump. So, let's analyze this, addressing each of these people in turn. It started with Ben here, so let's go . He's going to be on the podcast in a few weeks, I think. I'm desperate for him to have them . So, speak well of him. Yes. Yes. Well, that would be good. That would be better. Maybe I'll ambush him with you.

He's going to be on this podcast. He'll see both your faces on the screen. Hmm, is that it? I mean, you explain his situation purely as a result of a pernicious business model? I mean, he has the Daily Wire and acknowledges that it would be an extinction-level event to admit what we're demanding. He admits about Trump. There's no changing the subject if you're Ben Shapiro. There's no way, because, obviously, he broke up with Candace Owens. That was a stressful factor for him, right? You know, he hired her for one reason and then fired her for another reason, and..." That was painful, and probably still is painful, but it could be done, right?

It was mandatory based on the distance between them. Do n't you think it's simply impossible, uh, at this late hour or late hour on January 7th, you know, to have realized: "Okay, conservatism has to be about something other than Trumpism at this point, and the Daily Wire is going to be a part of it." " I think it would be very difficult from a business standpoint. I think he has some genuine convictions, like, for example, I think he likes Trump's policy towards Israel, and probably others.

And, you know, maybe Ben is happy with the total deregulation and the fact that we're no longer investigating white-collar crime. I don't know exactly how happy he is with all this deregulation, but I think there's a bit of that. But look, Ben left Breitbart because of Trump. Like, he was...that's how the story of the day came about. Originally, it was a publication that never supported Trump, by definition, right? He thought Trump was morally corrupt and couldn't support him for that reason. And then, you know, I think he was quite friendly with Dantis during the primary last time and I think, obviously, he would have preferred Dantis to win.

But then, when he doesn't...you know, it has this end, a penny per pound. There's no business model for him to do otherwise. I mean, Ben is talented." He could go his own way, I think, and do whatever he wanted, but the Daily Wire would go bankrupt. Yeah, I think first you, Ben Shapiro, you both did Candace Owens. Yeah. And it's important to remember that. Like, he's tolerated, and this is where Ben's going to make some political arguments when he gets there. He's going to say, well, well, Trump protected the border and the woke movement stuff and the anti-free speech stuff from the left, and he's going to make a lot of criticisms of the left.

Some true, many of them exaggerated in their relative impact and the moral dangers they pose to society. Like, they don't come close to Trump. But I think if you look back, I think it was with Bill Maher, when Bill Maher kind of said, "Come on, Ben, why are you doing this?" "Or someone else on the panel did it, and he said, 'I sleep on a bed of money.'" And, uh, you know, he's a wizard, but here's the thing about someone like Ben Shapiro. Unlike Candace Owens, I'll always be there, like Tim, I think (and Tim can correct me if I'm wrong), I'll kind of side with Ben in that fight and say, "Look, he's getting up a little, like, let's give him a little shout-out." That's not how I feel.

I feel that Ben Shapiro knows more. Ben Shapiro knows what's wrong. Ben Shapiro has been working and creating arguments that contradict everything he used to stand for. One of his last major articles was in the Weekly Standard about how we cannot go down this path with Trump. He was pressured by his audience to get on board and by the group he built at the Daily Wire, which is why he's someone who, after January 6th, got on board with it. And he's smart enough to know more.

And I had a lot of contempt for the people who knew better and accepted it, because they created a framework of permission for a certain type of person who isn't entirely Candace Owen MAGA, but is actually someone who considers themselves a good conservative, and it gives them a way to sort of divide that morally, which is absolutely unsustainable for any objective observer. Yes. Yes, it also requires remembering the details of January 6th . I mean, not just what happened in the capital that day, but just, you know, the efforts, the all-too-obvious efforts to steal an election that he was all along claiming was being stolen from him, right?

I mean , it's a double crime against our policy here. Here. I mean, he simply weaponized this lie , which he weaponized even before the election was held, that it would be rigged if, you know, the mail and the ballots were, um, part of this fraud and that the election would be stolen from him. And this lie has always been a provocation to violence, to political violence. And that should have been enough to make this man ineligible and liable to impeachment, etc., forever. But, uh, so you had the actual efforts to steal the post-election election, uh, the attack on the capital ; And then you had people like Ben who publicly said to their own audience, "This is the worst, I think." Ben's words were as if this was the worst thing that had happened in American history, or since the Civil War or something like that.

He, I mean , recognized at the time how terrible that was. But then you have this slow leak of understanding that has emerged. That is to say, there were several moments that made this concrete. I mean, one that I remember was when Tucker, we'll talk about Tucker in a minute, but just now, when Tucker aired on his show (maybe it was, I can't remember if it was his podcast or if he was on Fox at the time) footage of the Capitol police letting people in peacefully and through another door and that kind of uninterpretable footage.

I mean, I think it's interpretable by the fact that these guys are clearly scared and outnumbered, and they knew that the walls had already been breached, you know, all of that already. But you have this apparent collaboration that is presented as a collaboration between the police and the protesters, and it's all a matter of them taking a tour of the capital. So, nothing was as it seemed, and I think many people have now returned to that interpretation. And that's a combination of false flag, you know, laring, non-event, or you ca n't even reconcile those two, but, you know, a combination of those contradictory possibilities, but it wasn't a coup.

It wasn't anything that put anything at risk. No one's life was ever in danger. And you know , it was Ashley Babbot who was murdered that day, and that's all, and Nancy Pelosi, deep down, is probably to blame because she didn't put enough police officers there in the first place. But that's where Ben... I think Ben just forgot that he cared about January 6th. I do n't know. I don't think he's forgotten. I think he rationalized it. Look, again, we can imagine that I was one of the people who gave Ben half a round of applause, and I will continue to give it for fighting against Candace, even though he created her.

Just because I think the level of depravity coming from Candace and Tucker, which we can get to if you want, is so serious that I think it's important for someone in that world to speak out against it. But even if he isn't necessarily the best messenger, just thinking about how Ben acted during the Obama administration, that's what I'd like to talk to him about. If you came, maybe you could do it, Sam. Can you imagine a hypothetical scenario where Barack Obama loses to Mitt Romney and there's a crowd of Black Panthers at the Capitol, and Obama sends them to attack the Capitol ?

They go and attack the police. They go in and attack and start beating up the police, and some police officers later die. Yes. Yes. No, if my memory serves me right, all Obama needed to do was wear a beige suit that day and we would have had a controversy. Yes. I mean, like, I just do n't think it takes much imagination to think about the kind of rhetoric that would come out of Ben Shapiro, Fox, and others if that had happened . And it's very difficult to imagine that forgiveness will reach, you know, a point where it's as if he was wrong about it.

Like, and so I think thinking about it in that way reveals a lie. He hasn't forgotten. There was no , as you say, a leak of understanding. He knows, but eventually he made a different bet. He said, "I think a lot of people, actually not us, because I saw it, and Sarah, with her focus groups, and we started to see the Republican base clearly." A lot of people really thought he was finished, including Mitch McConnell and I think probably including Ben Shapiro and others, and so they made this bet at the time that they could speak against him , like, it was almost like taking a weight off their shoulders now.

Now I can speak freely for a few months because it's finally over. And so, for me, it's more like a slow crawl back, you know, uh, instead of, you know, starting to forget what they knew, it started with Kevin McCarthy, right? And that's when the triangle of doom started to work, right? Because right from the start, both voters and the elite and politicians knew that what he did was wrong and bad, and they called for his impeachment. And then they said, " Well, he's finished anyway.

Let's leave it to the courts to decide if we need to do that, so we're not going to charge him." Because they started hearing voters saying, "Don't you dare accuse our boy." And they got scared and thought, "Well, he's finished, but I do n't want to upset his base, so let's not go ahead with the impeachment ." "And then they told the false story first, right? The false story of these guys is actually anti-pheasants. It's not us. That was the first thing people latched onto. The second thing was: what happened?

And that's a very important characteristic because Black Lives Matter had just happened, and they were happening, they happened very close to each other, right? And then they could say that the Black Lives Matter people burned things and nobody was arrested, which is a lie and wrong, and they did n't understand what really happened. And they use that as a moral excuse to say that the FBI is overreacting in prosecuting these people. You know, they...and this is always like that, actually, it often follows a pattern with Trump voters.

We think it's bad, but it wasn't us, actually. It wasn't worse than what the other side did, it was good, actually, and we had to do it because the election was really stolen. Okay, Candace. I haven't heard from Candace in maybe...I haven't been paying much attention, but I used to hear about her." I've been talking about her all the time for a long time, and then I think maybe the Epstein file leak kind of took her off everyone's minds. Is Candace still out there saying crazy things?

And here's why I find Candace worrying. I had a period where I was worried she might follow in Trump's footsteps. Like Sarah in her focus groups, people cited her as someone they thought might be a presidential candidate in the future. And that was my initial concern. Which was a legitimate concern because Trump could be nominated. Who is this, who is this? Why is Candace crazier than that? Hmm, now I have a different concern, which is: I think she's really infecting young voters, even on the left.

And I see a fair amount of anecdotal evidence for that, plus some data that she was so anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, and how anti-Israel she was, that there are, you know, college students who found her in their TikTok feeds and their YouTube reels because they were watching anti-Israel material about The protests , and then they started following her, like they were following the "Real Housewives." Back in the day, we used to read the National Inquirer at the supermarket checkout, right? She's interesting, she's fun, but like, you get into a real channel of radicalization, and I'm talking about college campuses, and there are almost always people like Candace, and they're not who you'd expect.

Um, and she has a casual audibility, you know, she can make a hostile takeover of the Republican party like Trump did. But I think it 's extremely worrying that this exists, that she's kind of in the center of this horseshoe and that there are a lot of young people who are getting turned on by her material. You just said she's crazy. What's your theory of mind about her ? Is she actually suffering some kind of clinical episode, and is she so telegenic that she functions, or do you think she's in her area?

Yes, I...Yes, I'd like to know. I mean, I'm not a clinician, but I mean, I look at her and I don't see...I mean, besides the actual transcript of the words you claim came out of her mouth. From her, I don't see a crazy person. I see someone who is very good at the role she's playing. And I mean, like with Alex Jones, I see someone who clearly has some... I mean, there's some obvious role for medication in his life, right? He's simply not in control of his physiology on some level.

As for Candace, I see someone who, yes, could be playing a character, right? I mean, and it is... Apparently it's lucrative, right? There's a market for it. I'm not sure how lucrative it is, but maybe I don't know who's running ads against what she's doing. If it's a character, it's a great character because nobody would come to you with an argument like, "Hey, the real way to make a lot of money in the content space is to invest hours of content talking about how Emanuel McCroni's wife really has a penis." "Like, I don't think that would be anyone's argument in a pitch meeting.

Um, that's what she decided to do and it worked, so maybe it's a character or that matters, I guess it's a question, but to me that seems like some kind of psychosis, but I leave that to your experience. I have a slightly different view on this, which is, um, so there's a if we, as rational people, tried to segment these different content creators in the Republican universe. You have your Trump critics first and foremost, and those are Candace, Tucker, and Marjorie Taylor Green. There's a common thread running through all of them that is anti-Israel and, certainly, in Candace's case, absolutely anti-Semitic.

Would you put Nick Fuentes in that category? I would put Nick Fuentes in that category. Exactly. And that Nick is actually a big component of that because the people, especially for Candace, her audience are young women and MAGA, so they 're there for that and that's why you call it infotainment? Neither of them gets news exactly from..." Candace. They might even get news from Ben Shapiro or something. But then they want Candace's touch because it's fun and funny. The number of young people who tell me they listen to Nick Fuentes and say, "I don't agree with everything he says, but he's funny." "And if you listen to these guys for a long time, Nick Fuentes spends half the time self-deprecating, saying he can't get anyone to go out with him.

He's so ugly. He's so useless. And then he starts his anti-Semitic rant. But young people are like, it's part comedy, part community, part joke and joke, but then you absorb a little bit of it. And there is, and this is true for Candace. Um, and then when Tim talks about it being pernicious, it's pernicious in the sense that, but Alex Jones was kind of like that in the vanguard, it was like entertainment, because he freaked out about gay frogs. He just freaked out about frogs. They were making the frogs gay.

And people thought it was funny, but they also did some political analysis from it, the real stuff. And they love to delve into conspiracies. Conspiracies are nothing new in America. The new thing is that we have a president who promotes conspiracy theories and platforms and platforms, right? Yes. Exactly. But she and Tucker represent a different wing of the..." There are cheerleader types, like Benny Johnson and Megan Kelly, and groups of people who are just there to say Trump is good, the left is bad, the left is bad .

And both are finding different types of audiences within a broader MAGA coalition. And the recruiters are the ones who put America first. I think that's what I mean. They're recruiting new people into the business, right? Like, someone who wasn't political and, you know, might have some conservative sensibilities from when they were in college. Like, they're not being recruited into Trumpism anymore by Laura Ingram's program. You know what I mean? But they might like someone like that, like, finding Candace's TikToks or Tucker's or Nick Fentes's. They're all talented.

Like, I suffer through all their TikToks because I just want to see what's out there. They all make really interesting two-minute short videos . And you can understand how someone might be drawn to them, and they all talk about stuff besides politics and Trump. You know, they talk about dating or gender roles. They They talk about celebrity gossip, right? Like, and I think that's another way to attract people and they fight with each other. They created soap opera conditions for the types of MAGA content, people who just want to live that.

And that's where the right wing built a lot of the world, where people exist in that ecosystem and follow the fact that these people fight with each other and get mad at each other and that's a form of entertainment now, a political entertainment that's different from what there used to be. I'm desperate for a fight. I keep trying to get into a fight. I fight with you all the time. I know it's not enough. That's okay. So, there are a few moments that really surprised me in that part of the scenario.

Um, one with, more or less, one was around the America Fest conference, where you just referenced Ben Shapiro's speech there, but, the fact that Candice can claim that Kirk's murder was, in a way, if not actually carried out by TPUSA, was being covered up by TPUSA and maybe even by his widow. I mean, you Correct me if I'm wrong. I mean , how explicit were her allegations? But some similarity in that allegation was that TPUSA killed or allowed to be killed its founder and now, you know, patron saint Charlie Kirk and even possibly his widow Erica were somehow guilty of it, if not the murder, then the cover-up.

She could allege all that and it still wouldn't be enough to make her radioactive to the TPUSA audience, right? I mean, or at least half the audience , half of that audience seemed to look at Tucker's performance on that stage where Tucker said, "Look, I 'm not here to cancel anybody." "Right? So, you have Ben Shapiro, this whiny Jew who wants us to cancel everyone, but he's the one who, you know , put it on his pedestal, right, morally, right? Like, who is he to judge that this allegation against Erica Kirk is outside our Overton window.

Um, and the fact that he basically had, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like, I mean, he probably won the day at America Fest with regard to not canceling a direct allegation of a conspiracy theory involving America Fest attendees. Like, these people are so hungry for conspiracy theories that if you tell them they murdered their favorite person on Earth, half of them will want to hear more about it. Yeah. That's pretty sick, because, like, that actually explains why you hear among the right, and Candace is really into this, and it started coming up in MAGA-type youth focus groups , that there is, uh, the controversy is about how Erica Kirk is or isn't suffering in a way." Efficient.

And, um, and that's what they're doing, and, and you have to understand this also in the context of, and this is true for many, uh, they understand that Trump isn't forever. And they're maneuvering, especially after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for more public supremacy. Right? There's a battle going on right now between Wing Tucker and Candace of America First and Marjorie Taylor Green with the MAGA establishment. And there's a reason why Erica Kirk felt that, amidst all of this, she needed to sit down and talk with Candace about the flashing light issue.

Uh, because they recognize the power of this public and try to kind of reconcile it and create it so that everyone can fight and get mad at each other, but kind of live under the same broad tent where the enemy is the left, but now while they're in power, but aren't you fundamentally surprised by that? I mean, how is it that, uh, how is it that just 99% of the sympathy isn't just by default with Erica Kirk and her straightforward Christian response to the terrible assassination of Her husband?

And why don't people see Candace as a lunatic con artist who is causing manifest damage to the movement and to this woman who has already been harmed, uh, more than anyone can imagine? I have to admit I'm surprised. In a way, this goes back to that other Candace thing from before. Is this an act or is it genuine? I don't know. But , again, before all this started, if you were trying to be a con artist, would you have thought that the best way to get an audience would be to accuse the French and maybe Israel and maybe Charlie's own wife of killing him?

I wouldn't have thought that would have worked. I'm sure there's an audience for everything, right? Hmm, people like conspiracies, but I wouldn't have thought that would be the most efficient way to get attention and gain an audience, and it has been for her. Hmm, and the numbers she gets are legitimate. YouTube and other platforms. So, I 'm not sure. I think there's something, I think my answer to you goes back to Alex Jones. And it's something I didn't appreciate enough when he was At its peak, there's something intoxicating about the conspiracy.

And it's almost like the details are kind of meaningless. Um, and there's something intoxicating about being a contrarian, being the one who's seeing reality, being someone who isn't a sheep, you know, being someone who has an element of choice in their own adventure in this. There's a discovery. It's interesting, right? Like, you know, you can just look at the numbers, right? Is the boring Trump apologist podcast doing well? How's Hugh Hwitt's show doing? You know, or the guys at National Review, you know what I mean?

Like, not great. And there's something appealing about that, and I, and I don't, and that's why I think, you know, they've capitalized on it. And I don't know, and I wanted to know what the bottom line is. Some of those moments reminded me of the moment when Trump, uh, scorned McCain, uh, you know, where, like, I, like, I forget the exact phrase, something like, "I like war heroes who aren't captured." "...or something like that. I mean, he just, just cursed out the army, you know, in the last ...

I don't know, that was a moment where you couldn't understand how a single member of the armed forces could have tolerated him from that point on, right? Like, how did that not go beyond touching the third rail politically and yet somehow it worked for him? So I think we're continually discovering the center-right; I mean, maybe there's a center-left analogy for this. I'm not sure what it is, but we're discovering that the things you think matter and that would be really fatal if touched seem not only not to matter and not to be fatal, but somehow you can use them to your advantage if you learn them the right way.

So, one of those answers to that is something that's happening culturally on the right, which I would basically categorize as addiction signaling. Um, it starts as ironic distancing and then kind of turns into something real. You know, there's this phrase I like to say, which I think about a lot, which is like we all use..." Masks, and over time our faces grow to fit them. And I feel like that's your answer to Candace, which is like it's entertainment in part, but as the feedback loop starts with people, she's like, "Oh, people like this McRoone thing." "Like," Yeah, I'll delve into that.

I'll delve into this further . To see how far people will go with me. "And at some point, you're kind of in it. The gay frogs, you're really upset with them and before you know it, you're like:" Actually, not all six-year-olds were murdered in New Town. "And you know, this addiction signaling is a new way. It's like an antidote to virtue signaling, which they see as a trademark of the left, but on the other hand, it's like a code by which they communicate. That's why when these text messages are sent and you see people responding with, 'Oh, put them in the gas chamber,' you know, these right-wing people, all these Republican-side officials , addiction signaling has become a cultural reference point for who people are on the right now.

I can only say that, because I think there's an element of human nature in it, um, and I don't think the version of the lesson I'm trying to bring is somehow the same or as pernicious, but like, use the ... the people on the left were also very happy to hear the conspiracies about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Like, that material did very well on left-wing YouTube. Um, just looking at our YouTube metrics, for example, if I make a video about Donald Trump's hands, people will be interested in that material.

That's legitimate. I'm not making it up." Things like Candace, but I, you know, I just look at it, I think the notion that the other side is losing power forever or that there's a secret , that kind of thing. There's a human element to it. I would have thought there was a limit to that, right? And who knows what the limit is on the left. I think maybe there's just a little bit of incursion sometimes into what I call blue online rhetoric, where there's just a feeling that they do n't really want to be told the truth.

They want to be told what they want to hear. There's a long way between that and, oh my god, you know, Charlie Kirk's wife was part of an inside job. You know what I mean? Like all the other crazy things you're saying on the right. But I don't know, it's just that, you know, as the media becomes more democratized and these algorithms come back to the platforms, you know, they control a lot of what people see. I don't think it's that surprising that a lot of the winners are people who are offering, you know, kind of exciting conspiracy theories, you know, or pornography.

Apocalyptic, etc. And I think you can see a bit of that on the left as well. So, what do you think of Tucker Carlson at this point? Obviously, he's a very different character from Candace Owens. Um, but they also have a lot in common. I mean, he's very different in the sense that, when you look at his past, you see, I think, a very talented magazine journalist who embarked on a very strange journey into the world of flattery, audience capture, and, you know, desperate attempts at...

Um, positions in new media that, you know, finally worked out into something that looks a lot like Candace, except that, given his past, it's even more reprehensible in some ways. I mean, with Candace, you know, when Ben Shapiro hired Candace, I knew it was a colossal mistake, you know, the moment I knew he'd made it, right? So, from afar, I could see that Candace would be a problem. But with someone like Tucker Carlson, he was a promising young man. And then a promising middle-aged man, and now he's an atrocity.

Hmm, what do you think of what he's doing and what he'll probably do next? Will we see a presidential run for Tucker Carlson or is that not so dystopian? I have two thoughts on Tucker. I'll let Sarah go. I just think the JD Vance connection Tucker is the master key to what he would want to do next and his son works for JD Vance. I think he was a key player in JD Vance getting the vice-presidential job. He said that now we have Donald Trump with good authority, that he thought the deep state would kill him if he chose a neoconservative like Marco Rubio to be his vice president.

Whether he believed that or not, I think it's kind of irrelevant, but he said that to Trump , not as a joke, but in a serious way, and in his defense of JD. So, I think if JD continues to have political success, I think Tucker will be happy to take advantage of that. If JD fails, I don't know. I think the doors are open. For anything. We live in strange times. My thing about Tucker that I would point out to people, his brother Buckley Carlson has been posting a lot more on social media lately.

I don't know if you've seen it. But I've heard he's a real conspiracy theorist on the level of Alex Jones and me, but I think this is very important because he's said in several interviews over time that Buckley is his best friend, and to me , I think there's a real radicalization and redpiling going on. Obviously, all of this is a little bit A-column, a little bit B-column. There's performance, there's audience pandering, but when you watch Buckley's feed, it's like the raw heroin of the Tucker Carlson show.

And I think that's quite revealing about whether Tucker plans to continue on this trajectory. And to me, what's written is that yes, he will. Yes. I mean, look, each of these people is trying to figure out what their path to more power is. And Tucker, look, I don't rule out a Tucker Carlson presidential run. I just think yes, but running for president. It's a terrible job. Yes. I wouldn't be surprised at all if, because part of... I see a split forming between the America First wing of the party and the MAGA establishment.

And, um, JD Vance, the reason I think people kind of assume he's the future of the party is because he stands out in that world in a slightly better way. The problem is, he might win the influencer game, but voters kind of hate him. They think JD Vance is an idiot, like, he annoys them , including megavoters. Um, and that's a small problem. But I think Tucker looks and says, how can I continue to consolidate my power? And he said that's why he does a buddy thing with Candace.

He knows that if they can continue to unite their audiences, they can collectively build a significant wing of the party that's really influential in the future of Republican politics. That's why we invited Fed Quentis and gave him an easy interview, you know, kind of a foot massage. Same. Reason. Yes, that was another surprising moment . And I think we're still in that moment. The fact that even the people in power, I mean, even, you know, JD Vance, even Trump himself at some level, can't convince themselves that they don't need the anti-Semites and white supremacists in the Republican Party.

As if they have to, it's like, "stand back and stand idly by," you neo-Nazis, because, um, let's not say anything too critical about Nick Fuentes here because we might need every single one of them. It seems like you'd think there would be more concern about all the people in the middle, some of the many people who voted for Trump this time but voted for Biden last time but voted for Trump this time. They wouldn't be worried about losing all those people because they're welcoming neo-Nazis and Stalin and Hitler fans, they have RZ and I mean, that's what they're associated with now.

I think they know, they know they need those people, although because there's a fundamental part of the base. I mean, I wish To point out that I'm sure you've had Orin Cass on the show? Do you know that guy? No. He's like a MAGA political expert. Um, and do you know who passes for MAGA smart? Yes. Is it like Orin Cass running for president in 2028 has any chance? As someone who tries to do, you know, serious, white-paper populist nationalism? Absolutely not. Like there's no market for that.

There are some people, there are a handful of people, but the people who are in power in their base and in their movement are conspiracy theorists, some of them are white nationalists, they're eccentric and have very strange and heterodox views. There are also a lot of mainstream people who voted for Trump, but I mean the engine that drives them requires those voters. Do you think there are more of those voters than mainstream voters who voted for Trump and Hispanics who converted to Trump? No, but you can't control the party without controlling those.

You can't control the party of those who are going to hurt you. And look, Ronda Santos and Nikki Haley tried to do the other thing, right? Like, to varying degrees, like Ron, you know, kind of from a more conservative standpoint, Nikki from a more center-right standpoint, and there wasn't a market for that. So I 'm not sure, like, overall, there are more traditional people who voted for Trump because of inflation, sure , than white nationalists, like, yeah, there are more people who are influential within the party's power structure , I don't think so.

I don't know, sir, do you disagree with that? Well, no , no, I agree. But part of what's interesting about listening to voters is that there are a lot of points of division among voters. One of them is generational. So, like, a lot of young people are listening to Tucker and Candace, and like, there's still a whole set of normie Republicans who...like, kind of don't know what these guys are saying, don't know anything about them, and just kind of listen to the news. Maybe they watch Fox News, uh, but maybe not.

I mean, to what extent are people getting carried away by the vibes now and rolling the... screen, but like, I don't know. I said this before the election about a million times. My podcast buddy JBL and I were arguing about this all the time. Like, to what extent were people frustrated with the economy and with Joe Biden's age and felt they were being attacked by Democrats because Joe Biden was old and shouldn't have run again. People were very, very angry. And I don't think my anger is really with Ben Shapiro because they gave people permission to say, "Yeah, Trump is fine, despite the fact that he tried to steal an election." And that allowed a lot of people to say, "You know what?" I know Trump is a bad guy.

I hear that all the time. As if I wouldn't invite him to dinner. I just want the economy to improve. And he is a businessman . He has all those businessman stereotypes, but he does well on TV. No one should confuse my analysis with my own views, but I listen to voters all the time and I understand how they live in their own world, both algorithmically and in terms of what they hear and know. Some people are very fond of Candice, while others say, "Oh, I've heard of her," or "No, I've never heard of Nick Fuentes." "Like, there's a whole world of Republicans out there who barely know who Nick Fuentes is.

Um, and then understanding the differences, the different segments needed to build a political coalition and how they come together. Um, and generally there's something like you're swimming in the soup of Trumpism, largely. Then again, things are geographically divided. So, you live in central Pennsylvania, where I'm from, and it's always been Republican and no, it's not that you 're listening to Candace, but like the smartest person you know listens to Candace and says she's deeply involved in politics and is like," Yeah, she says some interesting things and tells me what I know and you're like , "Wow, like while you guys are working together or something." But this resonates in such a way that we arrive at a place of social normalization, like Trump, who has made a certain type of person the social norm for us.

Not for us, not for super attentive observers, but for people like me ... I tweeted this before the Super Bowl because I was thinking about how I knew nothing about either team and I'm just a superficial football observer trying to get into the subject. But I thought: millions of people are now going to a Super Bowl party and they're thinking: who's going to play? Who should I be rooting for? What strange information will I need to consider when making this decision? You are talking to one of those people.

Yes. Right. So, it's you. That's how most Americans conduct elections, right? Okay. Yes. That's a good analogy. Hmm, worrying. So, that 's worrying. Okay, let's talk about JD Vance for a moment because, again, I don't really have a clear theory about him. He has come a long way and he is obviously intelligent. Hmm, he obviously isn't...hmm, he might, if you go back to footage of his life, at one point he seemed quite normal and ethical and had his head on straight and had a lot of interesting things to say to America about a part of America that, um, has been, you know, very much ignored.

Hmm, so is it just pure opportunism or some kind of McAvel-esque unmasking of their, um, you know, deeper ideological commitments? He has now become...he really seems like a very sinister figure to me. Like, I don't know what he's capable of, other than ultimately striving to collaborate with his desire to simply maintain, grow, and gain more power. Hmm, how would you feel if Trump, um, didn't wake up tomorrow morning for whatever reason and suddenly we had President Vance, would that be a good thing? Considering everything or just one bad thing?

Hmm, would you be more or less worried about the future of America? Donald Trump is the person who broke all the norms, all the moral codes, who created all the conditions, who unleashed the toxic forces in our politics. I wish Trump would n't become president. I think he's particularly dangerous, but I do n't think any of these other people are a sigh of relief at all . Epstein believes that Donald Trump protects the elites, his wealthy friends, while his own life is not improving. And how concerned are you about the midterm elections?