This Is BIG: Podhoretz, Ferguson, and Olsen Discuss the Meaning of the Election and What’s Next

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
Journalists Andrew Ferguson, John Podhoretz, and
Henry Olsen, three mellow proson Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson.

(00:22):
A longtime journalist and columnist anda graduate of Occidental College,
Andrew Ferguson is now a fellow atthe American Enterprise Institute here
in Washington.

His work has appeared everywhere: Commentary, the Washington Free Beacon, (00:30):
undefined
the Atlantic, the New Republic,the Washington Post, the New York Times.
You can't go into a dentist's officewithout finding work by Andy Ferguson.
And of course, the Weekly Standard,where he served as a senior editor for
more than two decades.
In 1992, Andy served as a speechwriter forPresident George H.W Bush.

His books include (00:52):
Crazy U,
One Dad's Crash Course inGetting His Kid Into College.
He is now working ona book on Richard Nixon.
The journalist and political analyst HenryOlsen is now a senior fellow at the Ethics
and Public Policy Center herein Washington, a columnist for
the Washington Post, anda lecturer at Hillsdale College.

(01:12):
Henry holds an undergraduate degree fromClaremont McKenna and a law degree from
Chicago, which the three of us have totreat him with great deference for.
Henry's books include the WorkingClass Republican: Ronald Reagan and
the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism.
Henry is famous most recently forpredicting Trump's victory almost

(01:32):
exactly right, although even Henry wassurprised that Trump won Michigan.

>> Henry Olsen (01:38):
I have to admit that.

Another longtime journalist and columnist, John Podhoretz,
is the editor of Commentary Magazine andhost of the daily Commentary Podcast.
John began his career asa journalist here in Washington with
the Washington Times and later became oneof the founders of the Weekly Standard.
John has a regular column in the NewYork Post, he served as a speechwriter

(02:00):
in both the Reagan and George H.W.Bush administrations, and

his books include Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White House Follies. (02:04):
undefined
All right, boys, what just happened?
This election two quotations.
Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosiin an interview with the New Yorker mag,
I beg your pardon with the New York Times.
"I don't see this election as an outrightrejection of the Democratic Party.
Some of the Democrats are stating,we abandoned the working class.

(02:26):
No, we didn't.
We are the kitchen table,working class party of America.
The fact is, we're set up forwhat comes next".
Henry Olsen on a recent ricochetpodcast: "what we've been
seeing in voter registrationdata is historic.
People have been moving tothe Republican Party and
abandoning the Democratic Partyin record numbers.

(02:48):
This was an R+4 election,that makes it an R+ election for
the first time since 1932".
Nancy Pelosi says it was a little bump,Henry disagrees, Henry, explain yourself.

This is historic, is that we've had for over 90 years.
Every election, the Democratshave more people behind them.
Republicans have been fightinguphill since Franklin Roosevelt beat
Herbert Hoover.
That's not the case anymore, andthat's why Kamala Harris lost, is that for
90 years, all the Democrats hadto do was rally the base and

(03:23):
split the independents andthey win the presidential election.
She rallied the base, she won theindependents, and she lost by a point and
a half, why?
Because there are moreRepublicans than Democrats.
And why are there moreRepublicans in Democrats?
Because for the last decade they've seenthe Democratic Party doesn't represent
them and that the Donald Trump ledRepublican Party might, that's a secret.

Okay, so, this is not the nation rising up to reject lawfare,
it's not a one off,there's something more substantive and
more permanent that just took place andit was very, very big.
Correct?

Yes. >> Peter Robinson
how do you calculate, by the way,after talking to you on Rick and
Shea podcast, I thought to myself,wait a minute.
When you say it was an R+4 election,that means there's data that
indicates, you were speaking,>> Henry Olsen: The Exit poll says that
35% of Americans who voted say they'reRepublicans, 31% say they're Democrats.

It's as simple as that?

It's as simple as that.
The Fox AP poll says it's R +5.
So, they both agree that there'ssubstantially more Republicans
than Democrats and that's the first timesince the 1930s that that's the case.

Now, I'm gonna stick with Henry for just a moment.
The other aspect of this that we discussedon that Ricochet podcast that I'd like to
follow up on.
I have you here to myself, Henry, fromboys, I'll call you when we're ready for
when Henry and I are ready for you.
So, voter registration and R+ election forthe first time since 1932,

(04:52):
huge, not a one off,not entirely based on the personality and
trials and travails of Donald J Trump,something deeper happening.
You also made the point that the changein ethnicity in people who now consider
themselves Republicans is again one ofthese subterranean tectonic shifts.

(05:14):
Starr county,am I remembering that correctly?

Yes.

On the Rio Grande, right,
one border of the county is the RioGrande, it's between Laredo and Matamoros,
97% Hispanic, and Trump carried it by,>> Henry Olsen: I don't know exactly
the number, but he did carry it.
And this is a place that was historicallyDemocratic, it was a Democratic vote sink.
These counties on the Rio Grande werehistorically Hispanic, they were

(05:37):
the place where LBJ stole the 1948Senate election with his bag of votes.
And not only did they move directlytowards the Republicans in 2020,
they moved even more.
And now they're not a Republican votesink, but now these are Republican areas.
And you saw the change in Hispaniccommunities across the country.
Yuma, andpeople talk about the Texas border.

(05:59):
Well, the other crossing point is Yuma.
Yuma had the largest swing,
in Arizona had the largest swing towardsRepublicans of any county in Arizona.
It's also massively Hispanic.
Imperial county,right next door to Yuma in California.
Largest swing in Californiato a Republican candidate.

(06:21):
Hispanics of all ethnicitiesswitched on a dime.
And eight years ago, we were told DonaldTrump and the Republican Party is going to
lose Hispanics forever becausethey're gonna hate him on immigration.
Actually, immigration andhis desire to control it and restore jobs
to their households and order to theirneighborhoods is the number one issue.
Why Hispanics said, I'm gonna givethis guy and his party a chance.

(06:43):
What happened to the Jewish vote?

Jewish vote, we have very unreliable data.
Some Exit polls say it didn't move towardsthe Republicans, others say it did.
But if you look at anycongressional district or
county that has a significant Jewishpopulation, you saw a big move.
Rockland county is the largest,>> Peter Robinson: Rockland
County, New York.
Yeah, Rockland County, New York,
30% Jewish went from basically 50/50in 2020 to 14 points for Trump.

(07:09):
That's got to include a moveamong the Jewish population and
not just the ultraOrthodox Jewish population.
You're talking about normal, non Hasidic,reform, conservative, even some
secular Jews who have moved to the rightinferentially during the Trump election.

Black vote.

Black vote was a small increase, but still, when you get 13%,
as the Exit poll said, that'sthe largest share of the black vote for
a presidential candidatesince Gerald Ford in 1976.

Okay, boys, I put it to you, we will come to Donald Trump because
we have no choice butto come to Donald Trump.
And then of course,to what the administration,
all of this we will come to.
But here's what I found myselfthinking after this conversation
that I've just reconfirmed with Henry.
That for a quarter of a century,the central question in American politics,

(07:59):
The life of the nation as a democracyhas been whether identity politics
would trump the usual interests andprinciples on which people vote.
Would we, as George Will once wrote, wouldwe end up conducting not elections, but
censuses?
All the white people vote one way, allthe African-Americans vote another way,

(08:20):
all the Asians.
And that, to my mind, that representeda real threat to democracy,
to the functioning ofthe democracy in this republic.
In this election, we got an answer.
Identity politics will not, in anypermanent way, trump people's ordinary
calculations of their personal interests,the principles they want to advance,

(08:44):
the kind of lives they want fortheir children.
So again, we come to Donald Trump,
but something remarkable and important andquite glorious just happened.
Did it not, Andrew?

>> Andrew Ferguson (08:56):
Well, that depends on your point of view, Peter.

Well, what is your point of view [LAUGH]?

You need context, you need historical background.
The old cliche,there are no permanent victories-

Yes.

In politcs,
I still remember the despairamong Democrats in the late 80s,
early 90s, we were never gonna winan election in the Electoral College.
And then this governor comesout of Arkansas, Bill Clinton,
who actually understood what hadhappened to the Democratic Party and how

(09:35):
it had started to peel away from its baseand become this sort of elite bastion.
And he figured that out, andhe won two consecutive terms and
had a very successful presidency,if you don't count the impeachment.

That's right, [LAUGH] aside from that bit.

So, and people started to think, well,
if you're a Democrat,Democrats were thinking,
hey, we've made it and we've pickedthe lock, and it didn't happen.
And so, I'm a little skeptical ofany kind of long range speculation.

John, you take heart from this, however?
Well, I do.

>> John Podhoretz (10:14):
I mean. >> Peter Robinson
the pessimistic->> John Podhoretz: So,
I think there's a broader story here,which is Democrats were
the majority party in the United Statesfor- Almost a century.
For almost a century.
But of course,that was a very loose definition.

(10:34):
Being a Democrat was somethingthat had a very loose definition.
How do we know that?
Because from 1968 until 1992,
one Democrat was elected president in,what is that, six elections?
And that was the result of a crisis insidethe Republican Party owing to Watergate.

(10:57):
Post Watergate, right.
So when Ronald Reagan was elected,winning 40 states in 1980 and
49 in 1984, if you ask that questionof pollsters in the exit poll,
Democrats were 44% of the electorate andRepublicans were 22% of the electorate.

(11:17):
So explain to me what it meantto be a Democrat in 1980?
It meant that you could voteRepublican with almost nothing.
You were a Democrat becauseyou were a Democrat,
it did not have pull on you necessarily.
And structurally,the House of Representatives and

(11:38):
the gerrymandering that was done forthe House institutionally kept
the House of Representatives inDemocratic hands for four decades.
But that was not true of the Senate,which, of course,
can't be gerrymandered sincethere are two senators per state.
And so in 1980,you could have this wholesale,
12 senators coming in with Ronald Reagan.

(12:01):
Ronald Reagan has the Senate until 1986,loses the Senate,
Republicans regain the Senate in 1994,they kind of lose it in 2000,
then they get it back in 2002,then Democrats take it back in 2006.
The whole point that I'm trying tomake is that partisan definition was

(12:25):
a very loose thing.
Over the last 20 years,
it has become a tighter thing and more->> Peter Robinson: The parties
have sorted themselves out ideologically?
Yes. >> Peter Robinson
you'd like?>> John Podhoretz: Yes, and
I would say in terms of identity,it means something,
it means way more to be a Republican or aDemocrat now than it did for our parents.

(12:48):
It is one of the definingqualities of who you
are that you say you are a Republican orthat you're a Democrat.
And as that has happened, I think ithas been a necessary adjunct that
the Republican Party has risen andthe Democratic Party has fallen.

Why is it necessary, why do you say necessary?

Because the Democratic Party is the party of the center
to the left, Republican Party isthe party of the center to the right, and
this is not a left wing country, andit has never been a left wing country.
And there was a->> Peter Robinson: The country finally,
to paraphrase one of yourmom's wonderful phrases,
the country finally joined its own side?

(13:28):
Right, well, thank you, and thank you for
quoting my blessed mother.
What I think is thatover the last 20 years,
the breakthrough book on this topicwas The Big Sort published in 2004.
Which said, people were literallyphysically gravitating to

(13:49):
places where they lived withpeople who were like them.
Now, that has always been true, right?
I mean, people lived in ethnicneighborhoods cuz they needed Italians
live with Italians, Jews live with Jews,Irish people live with Irish,
Polish people live with Polish people.
But as those identities faded,the idea that it was intolerable to live

(14:10):
in a liberal community if you werea conservative, rose, but why was that?
That was that the identityof being a liberal
started defining you waymore than it used to.
In other words, you could be a liberalDemocrat, but you were a Catholic,

(14:31):
you lived in Boston,you still went to church every Sunday.
And the Reagan voter in Macomb County,Michigan, who was a Catholic and
nominally a Democrat, voted forReagan, was your next door neighbor.
And you had way more in commonwith him than you had differences.

(14:52):
And over the two generationsthat followed them,
America's cultural changesbegan to define the country.
And those cultural changes sortedpeople into ideological categories, and
then they wanted to live in places wherethey were not confronted with lattes.
[LAUGH] or they wanted to live inplace where people go to church.

Henry, what do you make of this notion that the country,
John points out that the countryis fundamentally center right.
And as the Democrats become moreconsistently homogenously liberal,
of course,they separate themselves from the country.
And that what happened in thiselection was that the country, again,
to quote Mitch Dector,the country joined its own side.

(15:39):
Is that sensible?

I think it depends on what you mean by center right.
There are a lot of people inthe Republican establishment who
always took that to mean economically.
And there's not a clear sense that what->> Peter Robinson: Reagan was center
right.
Reagan was center right, not right of center,
which is to say that within the context.

What's FDR to you?

FDR is one of the great disruptors of American politics.

But is he center right?

No, FDR was left of center.

Okay, all right.

What FDR did was change America's understanding of its
relationship of the citizen to government.
What Ronald Reagan did was interpretthat to readmit ideas of liberty and
self government into the conversation asopposed to the reigning narrative from
1932 to 1980, which was,if there's a problem,
we can trust on government to solve it.

(16:30):
Government experts can solve poverty.
Government experts caneradicate prejudice.
Government experts caneliminate the business cycle.
And Ronald Reagan said,no, they can't do that.
But we're not gonna go back to 1928 wherethere's no such thing as Social Security,
there's no such thing as environmental.

What happened two weeks ago?

Two weeks ago?
What the Democratic Party has beendoing is moving farther to the left,
particularly on culture,but also across the board,
than the American people want it to go.
They don't want a culture ofCambridge University quads shoved down
their throat in their schools.

(17:09):
They don't want a government that istrying to bring about a green revolution
that's going to put their jobs andtheir standard of living at risk.
They don't want a government that caresparticularly more about foreigners through
trade, immigration, and foreign warsthan they do about their own citizens.
So they've said no tothat Democratic Party.

(17:31):
What gets created in its place?
Well, if you think that this isa return to classic Reaganism,
you will see a waste of that opportunity,
just like Obama wasted hisrealigning opportunity after 2008.

We're talking about the Hispanic vote.
Yes, so we look at this,we say, okay, Hispanics-

Excuse me,
you're onto something.
Okay, don't we all wanna takesome heart from the notion
that the Hispanic vote moved?
Identity politics don'tdefine our democracy.

But that's the point that I was trying to make.

Go ahead.

There's all this talk about the Hispanic vote,
they're more conservative andthey go to church and
they don't like trans issues andthings like that.
And I accept that.
But on the one hand, one ofthe things identity politics is that
it erases the essentialAmericanness of everybody.

(18:31):
So what was the experience thateverybody had over the last four years?
Inflation, everybody inthe United States experienced
inflation because inflation,it is inescapable.

Everybody buys groceries.

Who escapes inflation as a deep personal cost?
Well-to-do people, the wealthier you are,the less effect inflation has,
the more middle class to lower middleclass to working class you are,
the more inflation is a confiscatorytax on your paycheck.

Right.

Hispanic voters, not as well to do as the Democratic base,
let's say, of course,they voted to vote the bums out.
Their pay check was worth 20% lessin 2023 than it had been in 2019.
They were just acting as Americans.

You can't make a realignment case then because 20% increase
in groceries and the price of milk andstuff presumably is a one-off,
and we're not gonna see that again.
Question is, then do we have anotherresort after this huge calamity of
inflation is taken out of the equation?

(19:49):
The other thing that isn't mentionedenough is that the Republican Party
also moved to the left, which is itgot rid of abortion as an issue.
They tried to make it an issue,the Democrats did.
It's quite clear that Trump has nointerest whatsoever in abortion
as a moral issue or a political issue.

(20:10):
Gay marriage was completely seeded,which was as recently as 16,
18 years ago, was being used by peoplelike Karl Rove to gin up the base and
get the Republicans to the polls.
That's all gone.
So the Republicans had to move to the leftif they wanted to win an election.

But a theory, what was disproved and why we should celebrate
this is a theory of the electoratethat should be discarded,
which is that people alignthemselves with their identities
rather than with theirpersonal circumstances.

(20:53):
That they have a vowelat the end of their name
is more important than whatis in their bank account.
And that is something that isextraordinarily bizarrely, but
extraordinarily difficult forDemocrats and liberals to hear because
it has been their governing assumption forthe last generation.

(21:17):
And it was so prevalent that I thinkwe were all a bit hypnotized by it too.
He attacks a judge, he says the judgecan't be fair to him, Trump,
cuz he's a Mexican andhe's gonna do this [CROSSTALK].
Well, that's it.
Or Tony Hinchcliffe,
the comedian makes a joke aboutPuerto Rico being an island of garbage.
Well, you got 500,000 people fromPuerto Rico and Pennsylvania, he's done.

(21:42):
And it turns out thatthat idea is just wrong,
it is a misunderstanding of the voter.
The voter is an American and mostimportant, in terms of immigration and why
this is so hard for people to understand,including me, I don't really understand.
Every voter in the United States isa legal resident of the United States.

(22:06):
What is more important,does a person of Cuban origin from
Miami think that because somebodyspeaks Spanish in El Salvador
that they should be allowed to crossthe border and live here illegally?
That is illogical in the extreme,but somehow, again, we were so

(22:28):
marinated in this idea, culturally.

It's done.

I think it's done now.
It's not done for them, though.
The people that we don'tagree with on this,
it is gonna have to bewrenched out of them.
It's like they're like Stasi agents,they're gonna return to Stasi headquarters
after the Berlin Wall has fallen cuz theydon't know where else to go to work.

(22:54):
They don't have another understanding ofAmerica outside of identity politics.
They're gonna have to reconstruct it.

Andy, now we come, as we must,
to the person of Donald Trump himself.
This one is for Andy.
I'm gonna set it up as I did the lastsegment with a couple of quotations.
Trump as a political figure,this is Charles Cook,
our friend Charlie Cook inNational Review on policy.
Trump has some advantages over Harris,
especially in the realms of illegalimmigration and the judiciary.

(23:23):
But he is a long,long way from being a conservative,
and his egotism, poor discipline and
lack of attention to detail make theprospect of a second term an alarming one.
Trump is a man, this is Andrew Ferguson,you may have heard of him in the Atlantic.
He's up at 4 in the morning tweetingstrange and incomprehensible things,

(23:43):
giving answers 12 and 14 minutes long,
repeating himself at hisown press conferences.
I'm always astonished to discoverthat the President isn't a drinker.
Andy, how could a man who answers toCharlie Cook's description, and indeed
to your description Description possiblyhave won such a consequential election.

Well, that assumes that it's.

You're not granting.

That it was consequential in an epochal sort of.

How could he have won such an election that is deemed
consequential by two outof three of my guests?

You are asking the wrong person, because I simply don't know,
I mean, I find him just personally sorepugnant that I could, but that's.

Are you a Never Trumper?

Yeah, I'd say so.

You are. >> Andrew Ferguson
do I have to go now?
No, [CROSSTALK] but
now you become ofarcheological interest to us.

You make money off it, what's the matter with you?
You're sitting here,[CROSSTALK] if you're a Never Trumper,
you should be starting committees andraising a million dollars ahead.

I've been angry with that.

To attack Rupert Murdoch, that's what Rick Wilson is doing,
[CROSSTALK] Never Trumper is a.

I got internship at the Bulwark coming up.

Okay, there you go [LAUGH].
Okay.It's a cash category.

Here's a list of things that occurred within the first 72 hours
after the election.
My notes anyway, the stock market reachesnew highs, corporate executives announced
they will begin returning productionto this country from China.
Mexico begins discouragingcaravans headed toward our border,
Qatar evicts Hamas leadersfrom its territory.
Europe announces that it wouldbegin purchasing natural gas from

(25:23):
the United States instead of Russia.
While Putin announces that he's ready,
that's the way it got translated,ready to speak to the US,
and President Xi of China states thathe wants peaceful coexistence with us.
How can we not describe thisman as a consequential figure?

Well, the causality there,
[LAUGH] the causal chain that you'retrying to propose is kind of rickety.
I mean, I acknowledge that he's got a kindof idiot savant political genius and
a sensitivity to parts of the population.
That have either been totally ignored or

(26:03):
misunderstood by the establishmentof politicians in the country.
You're leaving a lot out there,in the same 72 hours,
he nominated Matt Gaetz to beAttorney General of the United States.
He's got another talk show hostto run the Defense Department,

(26:25):
a guy who, so far as we know has nevereven run a Kiwanis Club meeting.
And there's a long string of them, and
that is direct causality right there.
He did that himself, so we want to
make him a genius becausehe's a winner now.

(26:50):
He's been a loser in the past, he'll be aloser again, but I don't want to go over.

I mean, we could get mired in the person of Donald Trump,
of course we wanna move to policy,how will this affect this town?
But at the same time, everything you say,
I can't disagree with,on the other hand, look at the story.
This guy is dragged intoone court after another,

(27:20):
he's shot, he emerges, fight,
fight, fight, he feels apocalypse.

I wanna blend.

Go blend.

I wanna blend.
Be the great- I'm going to do the weave.

Be the weave.
Do the weave.
Here's my weave.
Be the Hegel at the time.

My weave is.

That means he's gonna talk for the next 45 minutes.

No [LAUGH] My weave is that.
These two things come together.

Okay.

This election was a rejection of the last four years,
which were in policy terms,disastrous across the board.
They were disastrous in domestic policy,they were disastrous in cultural policy,
they were disastrous in energy policy,they were disastrous in foreign policy.

(28:10):
And the public, very similar in this senseto 1980, looked at what the administration
and the presidency and the Democratsin charge of the House and Senate.
They weren't in charge of the House,but, okay, looked and said.

Not this.

We gotta get rid of these guys,
that dovetails with the move that Henry
has described to the right,to the Republican Party.
Biden's victory maybe likeCarter's victory in 76,

(28:47):
would therefore be a kind of outlieras a result of exogenous circumstances.
Nixon, Carter wins in partbecause of Watergate, and
Biden wins in part becauseof the coronavirus.
Not duplicable,everything that was done to Trump during
the period that he was out ofoffice had the perverse effect

(29:09):
of strengthening Trump firstwith the Republican Party.
Because in ways that I did notfully appreciate were gona happen,
it was implicitly makingthe case that he had made from
the beginning of his run forpresident in 2015.
That the system was rigged andit was rigged against him, and

(29:32):
if it was rigged against him,it would be rigged against you,
and then what happened?

They proved.

Inflation went up, and
Nancy Pelosi is eating icecream out of a $15,000 freezer.
She has a photograph takenof herself eating ice cream
out of a $15,000 freezeraround about the same time or
a couple a year after Gavin Newsom,having shut California down.
Goes andhas dinner at the restaurant that you and

(30:03):
I once laboriously went to in Napa Valleycalled the French Laundry [LAUGH].
We drove many hours together to go to thisrestaurant [CROSSTALK] and 20 courses.
And it was amazing, but there he isafter he shuts everybody else down,
and the idea that the systemwas rigged for these guys,

(30:23):
he was the objective correlative of that.
And that turned out though, it was goodfor him, we said, okay, well, that'll work
with Republicans, but it's not gonnawork with the general electorate.
And then, guess how the system is rigged,they're trying to run this senile guy,
we've been saying fortwo years that he's senile.

(30:44):
I've said it from January 2023on my podcast with no political
interest whatsoever, just,I'm watching him and they say, no.
And then end of June 2024,he has the debate and
they pull the switcheroo, andthen what does that say to the electorate?
It says.

It really is rigged.

It's all a game to them, they're just trying to hold onto
power, so these two go together,it's not therefore a realigning election.
The realignment, according to Henry, it'snot really a realignment cuz as I say,
part of the partisanship is not ismore defining than it used to be.
But not quite as defining, butit's not a realigning election,

(31:29):
but it is an election that confirmsthe idea that Democrats can
no longer simply run a competent campaign.
And assume that they have better thaneven odds of winning an election.

The person of Donald Trump, we have one view,
we have another view,where do you put FDR and
the realignment of the 30sis impossible without FDR?

Correct.

What happened in the 80s was not a realignment, but
Democrats began votingRepublicans Republican,
this is impossible without Ronald Reagan,the 80s, no Reagan, no 80s.
So it is of importance to thistown to questions of policy,
is this man a major figure,one of these large figures,

(32:16):
who seems to come along aboutonce every half century.
And if that's the case, you make one setof calculations if you're Jon Thune trying
to run the Senate majority, and
you make one set of calculationsif you're Speaker Mike Johnson.
But if he's a very flawed human being andthe country happened to unite behind him.

(32:39):
And he's already beginning tooverreach by nominating Matt Gaetz and
nominating Pete Hegseth andnominating Tulsi Gabbard and
over interpreting this electionresult as all about him.
Then if you're Jon Thune and Mike Johnson,you make different kinds of calculations.
So it is important to try to figureout how big is he and your view is.

He is clearly a historical figure, but
what remains to be written is whetherhe's a successful historical figure.
Is that he has done thingsthat no one thought possible
outside of the realm of fiction,that if you were in this town.

You want him graphic novel territory, aren't we?

Yeah, well, that's what I've described, I started calling for
a working class Republican Party in 2010,saying that this was our future,
we had to change on economics,we had to change on culture.
It was the only way to keep this countryfrom falling into the grips of the left,
and of course, I was met withrapturous applause, not, okay?.
Donald Trump is and
remains the graphic novel versionof what I've been calling for.

(33:44):
But at the heart of that is thatthis is what America needs.
And Donald Trump in his brusqueness, inhis rudeness, but also in his directness,
in his courage, which is what comesout in that grace under fire.
There is no denying that moment, is there?
No, it's just an unbelievable moment.

(34:07):
And you take a look at that andyou say he convinced the people who had
felt dispossessed fora long time that he was the man to trust.
12 years ago, the common wisdomin this town was that you either
had to become more libertarianon your economics and
more Christian in your social policy, oryou had to basically sell out to the left.

(34:31):
That's what the autopsy was.
And Donald Trump->> Peter Robinson: The autopsy is after
Mitt Romney loses,the Republican grandees get together and-
Right, and
they say that->> Peter Robinson: We called
the autopsies.
The autopsy is we need more of the Hispanic votes.
So we need to give them immigration,we need more of the youth votes,
we need to give them same sex marriage.
And Donald Trump actually doingthe best among Latinos in history,
no one would have thought that's possible.

(34:53):
But actually, if you understoodLatinos as opposed to your,
I've never met a Latino,never been to a community, but
I like tacos person here in Washington,you would have understood that.
And so you can't deny thatDonald Trump brought this.
And I would say Reagan was a semirealignment, because before Ronald Reagan,
there was no possibility that anyform of conservative Republican.

(35:16):
Or any form of Republican that wasconsistent could obtain power.
The Democrats had massive majorities inthe Senate, they controlled virtually
all of the states, they controlledthe House of Representatives.
And what you saw was that from that momentin 1980, when Reagan convinced his people,
the Republican Party ran partisan ads in1980 saying Vote Republican period for

(35:38):
a change period.
And the dual meaning was intended.
You go from a 22 point gap in1980 to a 3 point gap in 1985.
And the rest of our period is fought withthe Democrats having the upper ground but
not the commanding heights.
And that's what enables the Republicansto capture the House for
most of the last three decades.
That enables them to not bea one off in the Senate, but

(36:00):
a consistent force in the Senate.
That's what enables them to go fromvirtually having no power in the states to
dominating in the states.
It was a semi realignment, and
you could only get power as a Democratby interpreting Ronald Reagan.
That was what Bill Clinton learned.
And so Donald Trump has set us up forthe possibility of that.
But the realigning election is never thefirst election, it's the second election.

(36:23):
1932 set up 1936 Franklin Rooseveltscrews up the economy,
the realignment doesn't happen.
Ronald Reagan screws up 1984,the realignment doesn't happen.
Donald Trump has the chance to builda realigning majority for his successor.

But he needs to deliver.

He needs to deliver, but
he doesn't need to deliver inthe way the establishment expects.
His voters want change.
They're willing to break the system.
And that means unconventional ideaslike tariffs like deportations.

Wait, [CROSSTALK] these nominations that Andy mentioned of
Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz Tulsi, that'snot overreading the election results.
That's a correct readingof the election results.
The country returnedDonald Trump to break furniture.

The biggest problem with these people is that they may be
incompetent at breaking furniture becausehe's choosing the wrong type of disruptor.

Well, that I think is the important point,
which is,you know who wanted to break furniture?
Donald Rumsfeld,when he went to the Pentagon in 2001,
Donald Rumsfeld had an entire plan forthe complete overhaul of the pension.

The revolution in military affairs.

Right, that was halted by 911 when you actually had to
then fight a war andtherefore revolutionizing.
And he tried to do both at the same time,which was-

Didn't work.

Which was a fool's errand.
Bill Barr, whom Trump now reviles,
wanted to break furniture at justice, but
he's a phlegmatic but quietly, so
Gates is all I'll break furniture,now what?
It's like he's gonna break furniture buthe's.

Where's the furniture break, how do I do this?

That's why what Henry said is so important.
I do think this election was a judgmenton one of the worst presidencies in
American history judging by results.
Trump therefore has a kind of a low bar.
If he just doesn't screw it all up andthings remain
relatively even keeled the economydoes okay to pretty well.

(38:36):
He fulfills some of his promiseson deportations and immigration,
which by the way will bevery easy to fulfill.
So we're talking about deportations,right?
So there are 15 million peopletheoretically to deport.

15 million people here illegally.

Okay, so let's say.- >> Peter Robinson
Let's say that when all is said and done, he only,
this is gonna sound like,he only deports 500,000 of them.
There's no voice on the otherside that is gonna say-

Should have been more.

Yeah, you haven't done enough, you're a bum.
Come to me, I'll deport more people.
They're saying no humanbeing should be deported.
And sohis bar on immigration is stunningly low.
He can clear it with simplyby doing a couple of things.

(39:26):
And the effect of that will be,there will be self deportation and
the flooding of the border will stop.
Because the idea will be the authoritiesare gonna come after you if you come
across the border, why bother?
He's set up for success there.
Tariffs is the big question forme with you, because tariffs is the thing,

(39:50):
that is the disruptive elementin modern neoliberal economic.
If he goes to tariffs,
he is breaking the chain of a kind of40 year consensus on how to approach.

There was some interview just before the election.
Sorry, I can't rememberexactly where it was.
Where he was pushed on tariffs,by the way to his credit, he sat down for
a lot of interviews inwhich people did push him.
Not in a directly confrontational MikeWallace of the old 60 minutes way, but
you sit down foran hour with a podcaster and
you get led into territory where youmight, okay, but he got pushed on tariffs.

(40:25):
And he said, no, no,there won't be any tariffs.
Wait a minute, you're calling no,no, there won't be any tariffs,
was Trump's answer.
I'm getting this, I'm paraphrasing.
Of course.
What do you mean therewon't be any tariffs?
Well, because all you have to do to avoida tariff is move your factory to this
country and that's what everybody will do.
So again, it's extremely hard to knowquite what he's pledged himself to do.

Or our enemies or our rivals or whatever will moderate their
behavior and stop stealingour intellectual property and
stop doing this, that and the other thing.
And therefore I won't impose tariffs.
They will self tariff [LAUGH] Orsome version of that so
that I don't have to do it.

(41:02):
But he has to for this realignment,for the 1936 election to happen for
J.D. Vance or whoever is his successor,
that's the election whereRoosevelt won 48 states, right?

Right, 46.

46, excuse me cuz there were only 48 then, right?
As goes Maine, so goes Vermont.
Was that it?
Interestingly not the states you would say
today would be the ones thatwould go the other way.
He has to succeed or be seen->> Peter Robinson: We come back to that in
a moment.
First, however, Andrew,the media again, two quotations.

(41:39):
Do you like this two quotation thing?
No, don't tell me, don't tell me.
The first comes from someone who believesin legacy journalism enough to have
purchased the Washington Post in 2013 andwho have subsidized it ever since.
In an essay the post published in lateOctober, Jeff Bezos, the owner and
of course the founder of Amazon.
In annual public surveys, journalists haveregularly fallen near the very bottom,

(42:02):
often just above Congress.
But in this year's Gallup poll,we have managed to fall below Congress.
Our profession is now the least trusted,all right?
Second quotation from venturecapitalist David Sacks.
Some who lives out in my neck ofthe woods in Northern California.
This is a bankruptcy moment forthe legacy media.

(42:23):
They shrieked Nazi, fascist, traitor andinsurrectionist at the top of their lungs.
And the country didn't believe it.
The spell is broken, close quote.
Well, the Washington Post,the New York Times, ABC, CBS,
NBC, the whole legacy media.
What does this mean?

(42:44):
Is the spell broken?

Well, I don't think the spell has been there for a long time.
You remember this beating up on the press.
It goes back to Nixon asa successful strategy.
And of course the pressended up winning that one.

Well, that's the point, and they also made a lot of money.
CBS, NBC, the New York, those were allprofitable enterprises in those days.

But I think this is simply an acknowledgement of
what's already happened.
There isn't a singular media anymore.
That doesn't mean thatthe establishment media,
the legacy media is withouta business model or anything.
You forget, I mean,
there were still 70 million peopleplus who voted for Democrats.

Yes, exactly.

And there is the New York Times is probably makes more
money now than it ever has becauseit wisely positioned itself as a,
not as the newspaper of record, but asthe newspaper of certain kinds of readers.

Of whom there are plenty.

Of whom there are plenty to make a living.
And now the Washington Post hasn't beenable to figure out how to do that.
And I'm kind of surprised.
I mean,they still lose money hand over fist.
The network news people are gonna diesimply by virtue of technological
changes that make it kind ofinconvenient to watch the TV news.

(44:09):
But there is still a market, a huge marketfor liberal leaning reporting in Congress.

Okay, so let me put it to you in a different,
slightly different way.
Journalism, broadly construed.
I visited my own alma mater,Dartmouth College last year, and
I spent an evening talking to the kidswho run the Dartmouth Review,
which is the conservativestudent newspaper.
And I said, very impressive kids.
Really wonderful, impressive kids.

(44:37):
And show of hands,how many of you wanna go into journalism?
And not only did not a single hand go up,but
I got blank faces as if to saywhat a strange question to ask.
And in my generation, Paul Gigault,
who's the editor of the editorialpage of the Wall Street Journal.
Paul andI were at Dartmouth College together.
In my generation,lots of us wanted to go into journalism.

(45:01):
It still felt like there was a careerto be had there and meaning and
fun and excitement, and it's gone.
And does this not A,break your heart and B,
worry you a little bit aboutthe nature of democracy.
Who's gonna be doinginvestigative reporting?

Yeah, there's a. >> Peter Robinson
am I overwrought about the whole process?
No, there's a real problem there, but
that's almost a- Isthat a separate matter?
A technical problem.
I mean, you really are notgonna have farm teams for,
at local news levels, forpeople who have to sit on their butts for
three hours at the local county boardmeeting and write down what it said.
Now, we're gonna have AI do that,evidently,

(45:40):
cover the high school sports team.
That's how you learn a lot, or
how people traditionally havelearned how to become reporters.
If all of that rung inthe ladder is stripped away,
journalism is gonna have a very hard time.
But again, that's not an ideologicalmatter or a political matter,
that's a technological thing.

Is your heart broken, boys?

My heart is so unbroken.
My heart swells.
Let me tell you a story, Peter.

All right, you tell me.
>> I've told a story,you tell a story John.

In 1982, when I was 21 years old, I wrote my first book proposal.
And the book proposal was onthe dishonesty of 60 Minutes,
then the most powerful,the number one television show
in the United States,ranked number one above MASH.

(46:35):
I mean, it was the most->> Andrew Ferguson: Not just the news
show, it was number one, full stop.
And if you remember, the 60 Minutes had a technique.
They investigated people.
They brought them in.
They sweated.
The people sweated.
They cut the interviews.

Up like the sweat on your forehead.

Right, and so I had this idea for
a book on writing aboutthe dishonesty of 60 Minutes.
And there was a conservativefoundation that wanted to support it.
And I went around to publishing houses andpeople said, we can't publish that.
There's no way on earthwe could publish that.
It's a very interesting idea, but

(47:14):
we can't be in that relation with CBS or60 Minutes.
It's too dangerous.

Why now?
Why do I mention this?

Because 42 years ago, people like me and Andy,
when he started writing forthe American Spectator.
Andy wrote a column for me for what,four years on the media, we have been
doing nothing but talking aboutthe depredations of the mainstream media.
Our entire careers as unconventionalpeople in the mainstream media.

(47:45):
I mean,I've worked in mainstream publications.
I worked at Time, I worked at US News,I've worked at Conservative publications.
I worked at the Washington Times,I've worked at the New York Post.

He has a hard time holding a job, this man.
It's terrible.

And I worked at, and Andy and I worked together.
Together at the Weekly Standard,which we helped start together,
which was a magazine of opinion buthad a lot of reporting in it.
And the topic that is the most enduring,because the Soviet Union disappeared and
abortion has disappeared andI don't know what else has disappeared.

(48:19):
The enduring topic of fascination forall of us is the misbehavior of
the liberal media and the degradationof it and the self destruction
of it is devoutly to be wished,now, all destructions, let's.

And now what are we gonna do?

Okay, but wait, all destructions, we,
I think all thought that Roev Wade was a disgraceful and
destructive constitutional atrocity.

1973 Supreme Court decision establishing creating a right to
abortion.

Right, that the decision was a constitutional atrocity and
that the proper treatment of itby the Supreme Court ultimately
would be that it would be overturned,and that happened.

Years ago in 2022.
Dobbs, correct.

Okay, then it's a total crap show because this happens and
then you have to figureout what comes next.
Like you said, Trump is uninterestedin abortion, Trump's claim is, hey,
you all wanted me to get rid of Roe v,Wade, I appointed three justices,

(49:31):
we got rid of Roe v Wade.
Salute me, celebrate me, now it's up toyou, as for me, I think some of these
restrictions you wanna put on are too,that's my opinion, they're too severe.
But that's what you wanted from me andthat's what I gave you,
similarly with the media, the slowmotion destruction of the structure

(49:53):
of the media over the last centuryhas created nothing but chaos.
And out of that chaos willcome something better,
something better,not worse, less self worth.
I'm sorry that people aren't gonna gowork on the paper in Springfield, Ohio.
So that there's no paper in Springfield,Ohio, so that the local guy could cover

(50:16):
whether or not the dogs are beingeaten by the Haitians or not.
One of the things that would have happenedhad there been a paper in Springfield,
Ohio, maybe there is a paper inSpringfield, Ohio, I don't even know.
But there used to be a whole systemof training journalists that
will not take place anymore, butthe system created a funnel.
And the funnel, like all funnels,like all funnels in corporate,

(50:40):
the worlds of corporate were who couldslither their way up through the funnel,
not who was best at it, not who was.
Who was the one who could be the leastoffensive to the greatest number of people
to get themselves highlighted and
spotlighted by the people who shared theirpriors and believed the same things.
That they believed andtherefore made things like the rise

(51:02):
of Trump not only invisible to us all,but shocking.
And I submit to you that Donald Trumpfrom 2010 onward was preparing long
before Obama insultedhim at the White House.
Correspondence, which was,Trump started going on media
that were invisible to us,he was going on Alex Jones,

(51:23):
he was appearing at UFC fights andtalking to the commentators.
He was going on local talk radio, RogerStone was booking him on these shows.
He spent five yearsbuilding up a constituency
in a world that I calledproletarian media.
So that the minute that he actually pulledthe trigger and started running for

(51:46):
president, he was at 15% inthe polls in the Republican Party.
Name another person that would have,you could say, well, he was Donald Trump,
so he was on the Apprentice.

I can name another person that's Ronald Reagan's weekly radio
talks that were ignored inall the media capitals.
Nobody in New York ever paidany attention to it, but
they were listening to Ronald Reagan andMoline and Des Moines.
Henry, you on the media,
do you have anything to addto these two August figures?

Look, do.

You share John's schadenfreude, the best Freud of them all?

Yeah, look, the liberal media brought it on themselves,
they brought it on themselves bystopping to be journalists and
starting to be partisans and mouthpieces.
And it's true in the television stations,it's true in the elite radio stations,
it's true in the elite newspapers andin many of the non elite newspapers.
But they had to deal with somethingthat is something none of them had to

(52:43):
think about, which is that the high day ofmodern media is a technological accident.
Of limitation of spectrum space fortelevision and the elimination of what
used to be the case in America,which is multiple competing dailies.
Washington D.C,had four competing dailies in the 1930s.

New York had 11.

New York had 11, so
what happens is everybody looks at thisrosy period, which was in accident.
Now you have competition,what they were from the 1960s to
the 1990s was the media versionof the department store.
You used to have a department storethat would be the entity in each

(53:27):
local area together.
You get your housewares, you get yourfurniture, you get your clothes,
everything together, andthey would make the selections for you and
the scale would produce cheaper prices.
What happens?
Affluence destroys the model,you can go out and
you can buy exactly what type of thingsyou can want at a boutique clothing
store or at a boutique furniturestore on the higher end.

(53:50):
So the higher end departs the departmentstore, the lower end, fine, well,
Walmart can get somethingthat I can afford better,
that I like better at a better price.
The department store isdestroyed by competition and
it's still being destroyed by competition.
The legacy media was the department storethat is destroyed by high end competition
and low end competition.
And the New York Times has adaptedby basically becoming a boutique,

(54:13):
a boutique forprogressives and people who.
I may not like the politics,but I like the arts and.

They like cooking and they like games.

Which the New York Times also sell.

No, it's not separately also, it is, it's not separately.
You can get cooking, you have to.
Okay, but the game people,2 million people a day
do the time spelling bee,2 million people a day.

That's my wife, she's doing it 2 million times.

But that's what I'm,
saying is in that sense you'reexactly right that what happened.

Hold on, hold on, let me ask closing question about the media
because I want to get back to Trump forjust a kind of closing.
It's occurring to me now, Michael Baronemakes the point that in from the founding
of the country through much ofthe 19th century, the point you make.
That every small town in the country hadtwo or three different newspapers and

(55:09):
the newspapers tended to be quitepartisan, the so and so Democrat,
the such and such Republican.
And the country was fine,the country was fine, the economy grew,
the democracy was boisterous,but the country was fine.
You are fundamentally not worried whateveris a borning is gonna be okay with
regard to media and journalism,I can't even bring a tear to your eye.

No, I think we're gonna miss it when it's gone.

I'm gonna miss it, but I miss a lot of things,
I miss the old Hollywood,I miss publishing better books,
I miss a lot of the cultural,the things that I had that were the.

My point is slightly different,
it's going to make our jobs harder, I meanyou go through past issues of Commentary,
National Review, the American Spectator,all of right wing media is.
Absolutely, parasitic in a way.
I mean, that's a bad word touse on the mainstream media and
The New York Times, CBS News andthe Washington Post.

(56:11):
What's gonna happen to all of thatinfrastructure when you take that central
organism away from it?

I think that the reason to be optimistic is
that there was a lot ofchaff in that wheat and
a lot of that chaff was poisonous.
And that a lot what we need withthe wheat will be repurposed in ways that
we don't entirely know yet, butthat there'll be different chaff.

(56:40):
And we already know what the chaff is now,the chaff is Tucker,
the chaff is Tucker Carlson,the chaff is Alex Jones, is Alex Jones.
But I mean, the chaff is people whoare peddling not only lies, but
kind of their own version of whatI would consider the demonization
of the United States andthe west and things like that.
But there's gonna be a lot of wheat,

(57:02):
it's just that we're living through thecommentary podcast, thank you very much.

You take over a storied magazine as editor, and
now you've launched a commentary podcast.
But I don't know how manylisteners you have, but
you've got one at thistable that I know of.

Thank you, yes.

Okay, so, boys, you touched on a point, last questions,
last round of questions.
Although we could, well, who knows?
Let's go talk for two hours more,
we'll let the editors worry aboutcutting the show down to length.
Why are you cutting the show?

It's online.

It's good point, people can cut it themselves.

Joe Rogan's like four hours.

Please. >> John Podhoretz
Start bring out.

Where's your joint?
Let's all smoke a joint, we'll.

Thank you John, please get him under control.
What do you miss?

Get him high.

This is not the last of the last questions,
I was thinking about this the other day.
Well, as I was making thesenotes ask you guys, and
I thought to myself, I miss working forpeople who had served in,
or at least had vivid memoriesof the Second World War.

(58:07):
Ronald Reagan did not do combat duty,his vision relegated him to a morale, but
he still served.
He wore a uniform,he produced morale films.
George H.W Bush served ina perfectly heroic fashion,
58 missions,one of which he was shot down.
And I realized these men for whom theywere large figures to us, of course, but

(58:27):
we knew them, we worked for them.
And looking back on it, I think to myselfthat we were surrounded by figures,
who at Some ultimate viscerallevel understood the stakes.
They'd seen what could happenwhen it all slid off the table,
do you think that's true?

I think that look.

In other words,
that there's something that the peoplehaven't been through with those people.
We work forguys who came up during the depression and
then went off to fight a war andthen came home to rebuild the country.
That sort of epic is missing now.

Well, the epic is missing in part because of the great success of
the United States since 1945.

Well, that's right.
It's missing because they didn'twant us to live through it, right?

Yeah and people who live through the excitement of the Reagan
administration has the closestthing to the epic.
When I was growing up,
I never thought that we were gonnawin the Cold War without a fight and
instead we win the Cold Four withouta shot, much less without a fight.

[CROSSTALK] The economy gets. >> Henry Olsen
would take the House.
[LAUGH]. >> Henry Olsen
that was when we were growing up,nobody talked about mutual funds,
nobody talked about entrepreneurship.
And suddenly you've got this dynamic,
innovative economy that did notexist when we were growing up.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan.
We have this peaceful Americanprimacy world that is fading because

(59:52):
primacy is unnatural in human affairs.
But it gave us a period of peace anda lack of stakes in global affairs.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan I think Iunderstand why people who worked
during that era looknostalgically at the greatness.
But no,we have not lived through great times,
we are about ready to go intochallenging and great times.

(01:00:14):
And when we come through them, which wewill, the people who are in their 20s will
look at the people in their 40s, throughtheir 60s and say they're walked giants.

>> Peter Robinson (01:00:23):
Okay, here comes, you have just set it up.
This is going to be the last question,and here's how it's gonna work, Henry,
John, Andy.
This means that whilethe two of them are talking,
you can make notes surreptitiously ifyou'd like, ere's the last question then.
Again, I was thinking this over and
I thought my mind was running in exactlythe grooves you just laid out for us.

(01:00:44):
92 decades, 1970s stagflation,reversal in the Cold War,
as the Soviets advance in Asia andLatin America and Africa and
the collapse in national morale.
I looked this up, Jimmy Carter In Juneof 1979, the famous Malaise speech.
I'm quoting him now, this is the Presidentof the United States, "the threat

(01:01:07):
is a crisis of confidence It strikes atthe very heart of our national will." and
in 1979, the Soviets invade Afghanistanand Iranians take Americans hostage.
One decade later,which in historic terms is nothing.
It's the blink of an eye,one decade later, by 1989,
we undergo a renewal, economic expansion,

(01:01:30):
rebuild the military,recapturing national morale.
That 1984 reelection slogan,mourning again in America,
sounds hopelessly corny to my kids, but
it rang true enough to voters to giveRonald Reagan 49 out of 50 states.
1979, the Soviets invade Afghanistan andthe Iranians take Americans hostage.

(01:01:52):
And 1989, the Berlin WAFF.
Are we capable?
What I find so
riveting about your analysis of thiselection that we just went through,
is that it almost suggests to my limitedmind that the political predicate for
a period of really sustainedrenewal has now fallen into place.

(01:02:16):
Are we capable?
Is there some possibility that we standat the beginning of a renewal today
like the one we went through in the 80s?

>> Henry Olsen (01:02:25):
Of course, because we're Americans.
It's the American heritage, what itrequires is leadership and political will.
I think that's what Americans yearn for,I think they've been given people who have
promised leadership and they have beengiven fecklessness for 20 to 30 years.
And Donald Trump promises that sort toa large number of people, shocks and

(01:02:49):
offends a number of people who wouldbe open to a different type of leader.
But I think he has broken the systemenough so that real dramatic.
Just like Ronald Reagan failedin the 60s and the 70s, but
when the time met the man in 1980,he was capable of stepping up.
I don't know if Trump is capable ofstepping up, I know his vice president is.

John, renewal.

>> John Podhoretz (01:03:12):
I think when people look back at this period 100 years from
now, they will look back on thisperiod the way we looked back
at the end of the 20th centuryto the end of the 19th century.
By which I mean the periodbetween 1875 and

(01:03:33):
1900 was the worst period inAmerican political history,
in the sense that we had extraordinarilyundistinguished Presidents.
We had.>> Peter Robinson: 50, 50 country.
We had a 50, 50 country, we had assassinations,
we had the Grover Cleveland in, out,in that Trump has now duplicated

(01:03:55):
massive amounts of immigration,incredible disruption.
Corruption, rise of populism,the populist party, Tom Watson,
the fight over the gold standard andall of that.
Corruption, corruption.And nobody remembers any of those people
unless you were a historian or somebody.

(01:04:16):
What do they know about 1875 to 1900?
It was the period in whichthe United States became the richest
country in the world,it built the railways, telephony,
the automobile, andeventually a 1903 flight.
And what we know about America was it wasthe most innovative country on earth.

(01:04:39):
It was the revolution thatchanged everything for
the next hundred years, andthe politics are inconsequential.
And it's my view thatwhat will matter in 2124
is Elon Musk catching the rocketthat was shot up and down.

(01:04:59):
The development of the completelyinterconnected communications
world that is causing somuch difficulty and so much disruption and
teenage suicides becausesocial media is so terrible.
And all of that stuff that theserevolutionary periods like

(01:05:20):
the Industrial Revolution caused.
Living through the disruption is awful,you think that the world is coming to
an end, and in fact you are just intransit from one period to another.
So if I'm right about this,no one will remember Barack Obama,
except that he wasthe first black president.
No one will remember Joe Biden will bea trivia question, and Donald Trump will

(01:05:42):
be this kind of, boy, that was weird, thiscrazy guy came in and did crazy things.
And that was one of the marks thateverything else was happening elsewhere,
that the people who might have been theleaders that you're talking about might
have gone into publicservice after World War II.
They didn't go into public service.

The kids who didn't raise their hand at Dartmouth because they
didn't wanna be journalists,they're all headed off to venture capital.

Venture capital or they wanna create, so that's the joke.
[CROSSTALK] When I was a kid,people wanted to go to Hollywood,
now they wanna make an app.
But the person who wants to make an app,
who knows what that app will be orwhat that means?
So I have this terrificoptimism that politics.

(01:06:28):
Now, the problem is,in the 1870s and 1880s,
the federal governmentwas a tiny- Was tiny.
Little nothing, and now we're->> Peter Robinson: And
there was no Xi Jinping,there was no Vladimir Putin.
Right. >> Peter Robinson
No, but there was Karl Marx, there were the revolutionaries
throughout Europe- Well, not until the.

Who were going to destroy.

And we were gonna end up in World War I.
Not we, America, but the world wasgonna end up in World War I, which was.
So all I'm saying is that my feeling isthat with the exception of the fact that
we're gonna somehow have to paydown this national debt and
we're about to hit this fiscal cliff thatis going to destroy the entitlement.
Can I just?

I love the argument, but I can't quite, I just can't.
The federal government is just too big andtoo much in hock and
too much in our lives to.
All right, go ahead.

Elon Musk bought Twitter for $54 billion and
didn't go broke.
Explain to me how that's possible,why would you-

>> Andrew Ferguson (01:07:27):
He has a lot of money.

[INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] That's what it is.

Andrew Ferguson, national renewal or
do you find the question->> Andrew Ferguson: Well,
it's->> Peter Robinson: Or
have I framed it in a hystericalmanner in the first place?

No, I think you're, you're, it's a- It's a fair question.
It's a serious, real question.
And my sort of fatuous,trite answer is you just
never bet against America,it's just stupid.
And I think it will, butit's based on a couple of things.
One is a free economy in whichthe labor markets are kept free,

(01:08:01):
capital is allowed to go where it needsto go to be most usefully deployed,
you've got that on the one hand.
And then you havethe character of the people,
because this is one of the thingsthat John is referring to,
is you need good character to takeadvantage of the free economy.

(01:08:22):
And the free economy depends onthe good character of the people.

Hard work, personal sacrifice, family.

And this is why, as silly as some people think my never
Trumpism is,is actually very important to me,
I think because he is the president,we look at presidents in different ways.
He is a man of manifestly terriblecharacter, I'll grant you the physical,
courage, and he is surroundinghimself with people of bad character.

(01:08:53):
And that has to have some kind ofinfluence on the second part that I was
talking about, which is the characterof the country itself, of people.
Maybe I think we'll survive him,
I think he's kind of silly enoughthat he won't have any long lasting
effect in that regard, but->> John Podhoretz: Can I speak to

(01:09:14):
that because, soyou're talking about freeing the economy.
I think one of the things wehaven't even talked about,
the main issue people talked today on mypodcast for an hour about transgenderism.
The most important issue inthis election dealing with,
aside from inflation, in my view,given where the votes

(01:09:37):
were that Trump needed to win,was fracking, was energy.
Energy was the hiddenissue of this election
and the story of the last->> Peter Robinson: Did it drive
Pennsylvania?

>> Henry Olsen (01:09:49):
No, I mean, it helped, but
Pennsylvania is not dependent on frackingoutside of a few small counties.
What drove Pennsylvania was the samething as it drove elsewhere.
He gained dramaticallyamong Puerto Ricans.
For all in Philadelphia andReading, he increased vote share in
non-fracking areas across the boardamong blue collar voters.

What I mean is that in 2007,
the United States begandoing hydraulic fracturing.

Correct. >> John Podhoretz
important geopoliticaldevelopment of the 21st century,
it has->> Peter Robinson: Because
within five years.
[CROSSTALK]>> John Podhoretz: We're energy
independent, energy exporters,we killed the power of the Gulf states.
There would have been a timewhen what happened in Venezuela,
which was the fourth largestoil exporter in the world-

(01:10:41):
Would have mattered.

Everything that happened in Venezuela would be front page
news because Venezuela was soimportant to the world economy.
And now Venezuela,which just had another stolen election,
does anyone even know the name of the guythat the election was stolen from?
We don't pay any attention.
Part of the story has been a fight betweenthe Republican Party to unleash fracking,

(01:11:05):
to take the handcuffs off fracking,and the Democratic Party desperately
attempting to handcuff frackers andto retard the advance.

Right.

Okay, so if I bring this up only to say that the character
issues here are,are we unleashing the American people or
are we attempting to control andcontain the American people?
And the character of the presidentmatters because in this case

(01:11:35):
that's a different form of handcuffing.
If we have morally compromised leadership,
it makes the job of America'sadvance harder because it does
say you can gull your way through things,you can lie, you can cheat.
He did it, it's okay,there are no consequences for

(01:11:56):
your actions as long asyou get powerful enough.
These are terrible lessons forpeople to learn.
But they're a form of moral,
they're a form of bad restraint.
They unleash bad things asopposed to good things.
And so I do think Andy's right, we can'tjust say it's fine that Trump was,

(01:12:18):
it doesn't matter that he'sa person of bad character.
But I think it's one of thesethings that you have to cope with,
the way you have to cope with and fightthe people who wanna say it's terrible.
That we are making America the mostimportant country in the world when it
comes to producing natural energy andgas, which still runs the world.

Okay, the question Andy said he's surrounding himself,
the President elect is surroundinghimself with bad people,
you put it more eloquently.
But about half of the nomineesare actually quite impressive people,
aren't they, Marco, Ruben?
So how do you balance thisquestion of character?
You're a political analyst, you talk aboutpolls, characters a little bit out of

(01:13:04):
your usual Bailey work, butyou'd grant that it's importance?

>> Henry Olsen (01:13:08):
No, I mean, it's one thing to study.

Who's the man who just got, so
it's Doug Burgum at the Departmentof the Interior and Chris,
Sean Duffy is gonna be Energy->> Andrew Ferguson: Transportation.
Transportation, who just got named Energy.

>> Henry Olsen (01:13:23):
Right, Fracking guy.

A fracking guy, and
Trump has established a National EnergyCouncil, all these very impressive.

Under Bergam.

Under Bergam, all those guys are [INAUDIBLE].

>> Henry Olsen (01:13:33):
Former energy exec.

These are all tremendously impressive.
Okay, so question of character,sorry, how do you weigh?

>> Henry Olsen (01:13:40):
Look, question of character,
I think we put too much importanceon the character of one person and
not enough importance onthe character of the people.
That one of the things I keep hearingabout is I talk about the possibility of
American renewal,I say we're not capable of it.
The American people are debauched,the American people are this.

(01:14:01):
No, the American people are not.
Do I wish that Donald Trump were moreof an upstanding, honest person?
Absolutely, do I think thatthe flip side of his ruthlessness
is a degree of determination thathas taken on the most concerted,
detrimental, ill intended onslaughtof elites since Franklin Roosevelt?

(01:14:27):
And taken them to task?
Unfortunately, yes, look,no one looks at Franklin Roosevelt and
says his private life was a matter of thisis a guy who had multiple affairs and
was known forbeing notoriously duplicitous.

He was not a saint.

>> Henry Olsen (01:14:45):
He was not a saint, and he was a man who could say in 1936
that his opposition wereunited in their hate for him,
and he welcomed their hatred.
Donald Trump, if he were more eloquent,could say that, and
he would have everyjustification of doing so.
I think the American people are ready forrenewal.

(01:15:06):
I think the American people hunger forrenewal.
And I believe that if Trump is successful,
he will set up JD Vance to bethe that Trump will be Moses.
He will lead America to the renewal andVance will provide it.

Andy, Hallelujah.

I heard him compared to King David in the first term.
This is the first time I've heard himcompared to Moses, so I gotta say [LAUGH].

He's much taller, last question for you.
We came here, the three of us,you were in politics, you fit.
But we knew each otherall these years ago.
We came to Washington inthe 80s because we wanted in.
We felt there was something big andexciting happening and we wanted in.
I don't know about you, butI work at the Hoover Institution,

(01:15:54):
which is in the middleof the Stanford campus.
And I have receivedemails from kids saying,
how do I get my resume in front ofsomebody in the Trump transition team?
What's your advice to some 22 or 23 or
24 year old kid who's ustoday who says something
big is happening,I wanna move to Washington.

I hate to say this, but I've had that conversation.

You must have.

I would wave them off because I think that
Trump is a bomb thatcould go off at any time.
And you never know whatthe collateral damage is gonna be.
If Trump succeeds, one of the greatthings that will happen is

(01:16:44):
a devaluing of the importanceof politics and
government, sort of alongthe lines that you were saying.
And if that's the case, you're betteroff going out into the country.
And even though it hurtsmy property values,
you're better off goingout into the country and
trying to build a business or starta soup kitchen or something like that.

(01:17:09):
I think it's dangerous to behere with him at the top.

All right, you get the last word, Andrew Ferguson,
Henry Olsen, John Podhoretz,all three of you very close friends.
I'm grateful for the chance to jabber,thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and
Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson.
[MUSIC]

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}This Is BIG: Podhoretz, Ferguson, and Olsen Discuss the Meaning of the Election and What’s Next

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

This Is BIG: Podhoretz, Ferguson, and Olsen Discuss the Meaning of the Election and What’s Next

On Purpose with Jay Shetty