Sam Stein and Francis Fukuyama: A Coming Deportation Blitz?

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Welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are going to get real academic in segment two. We're going to get really deep, you know, talk about a lot of, you know, types of theories. You have to be well read on when it comes to history to really process. And so before we get to all that, I thought we do a little bit of rank politics with somebody who's a little bit more surface level, the managing editor of the Bullwark Sam Stein. How you doing? Good man. Thanks for sneaking me in before Francis Fukuyama and after Bill Crystal. Was Paul Wolfowitz not available? The sandwich that you always wished that you would be in the middle of, a Crystal Fukuyama sandwich. Yeah. What is your mother think? What does your doctor think about that? She's a little worried. This is not her sweet 2002 Samstein here. It is. It is the sweet Samstein. You're, you know, giving us a little bit of, I don't know, you know, kind of lefty sucker in between Frank and Bill. But we're going to get dark first. I want to talk about some immigration stuff with you. There's a Fox News report that is, I would say. Pretty alarming. It goes like this. Four senior DHS and Trump admin sources tell Fox that a mass removal of ICE leadership is underway. with up to 12 field office chiefs being replaced in an effort to increase deportation numbers. They're told the move is being spearheaded by stank breath, Corey Lewandowski. Among the cities that are going to have new ice leadership, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philly, Denver, El Paso, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, my home city of New Orleans. The report goes on. They're told they're significant friction within DHS with Tom Homan. On one side, preferring to prioritize criminal aliens and the worst of the worst, while Kristi Noem, the dog killer, Corey Lewandowski, and Border Patrol commander, Gregory Bovino, are preferring to use aggressive tactics to arrest anyone in the U.S. illegally. The latter group is winning out. How does it make you feel that Tom Homan is the moderate, the moderating force inside this administration right now? Speaks well of Kava. You have enough kava. It calms your worst impulses, I guess. Get some of that Tziki. Yeah, yeah. You don't have the blood loss of migrants anymore if you've had a good Taziki bowl. Yeah, you eat a little hummus. You say, you know what? Maybe immigrants aren't so bad. They created this great food. No, when I read this thing, I don't know if you had the same experience, but it was like a real journey. Because you start off, you're like, oh. They're changing things up. Clearly they think they've gone too far. And then you're like, oh, wait, Corey Lewandowski wanted this. Oh, shit. And then you're like, oh, it's actually going to get worse. They don't think they've gone far enough. It's hard to imagine how they can make it more inhumane than it currently is. I know you've been following this pretty closely. Every time I pop up on some social media platform, you see these videos that are just utterly heart-wrenching. The latest one was...

This woman who had gone into an elementary school, I followed her there. Her child is like holding on to her, her son is holding on to her, trying to stop her detention and likely deportation. And the agents are just like pulling them apart. It's like this incredibly tragic scene. You're like, what is the point? Did you see the one from yesterday with the ICE agent pointing the gun? Yeah. The person saying, you're dead, liberal. And so I had approached this thinking, well, that, you know, clearly things are getting out of control and they've been empowering these ICE agents. There have been reports that these people are not qualified and that they're not even physically capable of the job. And then you get this report from last night, which is I actually know. They think the ICE agents are not the right ones for the job because they're not doing... enough deportations and detentions that border patrol needs to take their place. And so you follow these immigration experts online and they're just very anxious about what's to come. And that makes me anxious, obviously. You know, I looked at it and I had a broadly similar kind of reaction. You do stop short when you read that Tom Homan is the person being like, let's chill out a little bit. If you know anything about Tom Homan. Hey, let's calm down. To me, I looked at it kind of, the more I thought about it, it kind of makes sense. When you look at really all the cities except Los Angeles and Portland. How so? It's unclear what's happening on those. But the other cities, I had been thinking about this. You see these videos, but they're all kind of coming from the same places, right? Like, we haven't seen a ton of videos in Phoenix, for example. I was thinking about Denver, particularly. Obviously, being from Denver, I consume a lot of Denver news. There's been a couple examples here in New Orleans. You know, to me, it seems like probably what is happening is. You have these offices, you have these regional offices, and in any organization, you have some people that are just like trying to do the job. Right. And like whatever you think about the choice of working for ice right now, something I would not do. Like you're obviously going to have a range of types of people. And you're going to have one people who's like, hey, I'm in charge of the whatever Seattle ICE office. And like we're focused on the job that we're given, which is going after criminals, going after the worst of the worst. I'm going to tell my agents to do that. We're going to try to keep some discipline in this office. Right. And then like in Chicago where you have Bovino and the Border Patrol people coming in, you have the behavior being completely different in Los Angeles. Actually, in one of these articles that I read, some of the reporting internally was that I guess supposedly there was like a struggle in the Los Angeles office. It was the border patrol agents actually that were more aggressive. And like who the ICE office was relatively speaking, like trying to, you know. to focus more on on actual named targets of criminals. And so you read it like that and you're like, oh, wait, no, what we're in for is like the bad things that we've seen in relatively, in a number of bad incidents, but like relatively isolated geographically, like they're bringing that to everybody. Like the worst shit you've seen in Chicago, like it's coming for you, Denver is basically the, I think, the message.

Well, I'm glad that you clarified you wouldn't join ICE in this moment. I think that eliminates a personnel option for the president that he was considering. Unless it's part of my twink filtration program. Have you heard about my twink filtration program? No. I'm looking for 22-year-old twinks around the country to join ICE, get the bonus, and then be agents from within reporting out. Kind of like a secret police inside the police. A twink police? Yeah, twink filtration of ice. It's just an idea. There's lots of types of resistance right now in this moment. And I don't know if people have thought creatively enough with... undermining eyes from within. But anyway, sorry, where are you going with that? It's a smart, it's a smart role, a play idea. You can see it not working. You see some potentials. I'm not going to, I'm not going to run that one out. Yeah, so I guess my basis, if what you say is right, and I kind of agree with you, I suppose, because we've been, you know, and you know this too, we've been hearing rumors about stuff about to happen in Denver for, months, right? Like you and I have been getting that and we've been chasing that. And It hasn't? I mean, I don't want to speak authoritatively. It's not Chicago. Let's put it that way. So, like, my basis for this is Adrian's reporting on the ground in Chicago, which is, you know, he's been there. And it's just like, it feels like, you know, not a nightmare, but it's like real deliberately manufactured civic unrest where the communities are pitted against the federal authorities because that's their only means for survival or at least protecting themselves. And it's like, You kind of step back and you think, how do we get to a place where community organizers are trying to educate community members about self-defense from the federal government? But that's where we're at. And I suppose if you play this out logically, that's where a number of different cities are going to end up. I don't know. Maybe you have different thoughts about this, but like anecdotally, when I talk to a lot of folks who have soured on Trump, one of the things they often mention is this stuff. Like they don't. I think people are generally discomforted by all the imagery, all those videos. They don't like it. I'm not sure why Trump and his basically Stephen Miller and Corey Lundas. You feel like this is something that they have to do. It doesn't seem to be. politically popper, and it doesn't seem to be good for business. So I'm not sure what the endgame is here other than rank philosophy and ideology around anti-immigrants. Yeah, I just think that he's motivated by two things ideologically. It's tariffs and immigration, right? Honestly, like a lot of the other stuff is more malleable. The one he's not motivated by ideologically is...

what's happening with the boats in Venezuela. Do you have any thoughts on that? Just like on the Venezuela side of this, I've been saying on the pod that like, I'm trying to understand the rationale for this. And it's, and everybody, like, all eyes turn back to Marco, that like this is like a Marco Pet Project issue. And one of the things I've said on the pod a couple times recently is like one thing that I haven't heard Trump say, which is kind of surprising is that like I want the oil. And I'd say that. And I was reminded, I sent an audio of him on the campaign trail. in 24 where he does say that where he's basically like you know there Biden had an opportunity just sleepy Joe and we should have gone I would if it was me I would have gone in there we could have taken the oil and I don't know we're bringing the ship into the Caribbean now there's the story apparently about a CIA operation that may have went wrong in there based on the Washington Post and Venezuela I don't know like it seems all signs to me seem like they're pointing to war in Venezuela regime change war and stealing the oil the oil was what caught my eye too because he talked about that in like various different capacities so you know if you remember it's like his main criticism of the Iraq war was that we left without taking the oil right like he has this and I've been noting that he hasn't been saying that this time and so I thought there's no way then I was I forgot he hasn't said it he hasn't said in recent months I don't watch every single Donald Trump club but um But this one was sent from 2024 from the campaign trail, and I thought it was noteworthy that it was on his mind. So my general view of this was that this was a Marco project, and there's been contemporaneous reporting that not everyone's on board, right? If the Rick ornell faction who thinks that they can maybe resolve this differently, the fentanyl stuff, I think, is bullshit, honestly, because if you just look at it, fentanyl's not coming from Venezuela, it seems like that's pretextual. But then I grapple with the ideas, does he really want to do kind of 1940s, 1950s-style regime change in Venezuela? Is that really what he wants to do? And if he does, why is he doing it so overtly? The one thing that he's been, the one thing that he has been consistent about for a long time is... He wants to kill the drug dealers, and he's been saying that for a long time. And I think maybe... But he also talked about, like, bombing cartels in Mexico, and he hasn't done that. So why Venezuela drugboats? I think this is why, because he thinks that he can just do it. Right? Without repercussions. Yeah. Probably. Right. And it's like, okay, he can get his killing drug dealers fix. And remember he used to praise Duterte about this? Oh, yeah. Like in the first term about how he just kills the drug dealers. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's that, like, his answer to Phil Wegman on this was pretty like much just blunt. He's just like, I just want to kill the drug dealers. I feel like that. Explanation could live in concert with Marcus being a Marco ideological project, where Marco's like, hey, grandpa, you know, like you can identify an elephant on a piece of paper. You're extremely smart. You want to kill drug dealers. I believe it was a giraffe. You can identify the giraffe. And I also want you to kill.

You can get your rocks off killing the drug dealers, and I can get my regime change. Anyway. Sorry, can we talk about the cognitive test for a second? Sure. It's like it starts out really easy. You know, it's like lying giraffe, camera. And then it gets hard. Person, man, camera, TV. Is that really how it starts out? I do. I want one time for a reporter when he says that to be like, if it's so easy, would you just... You know, take one in public. Yeah. Something like that. I want to see it. Let's do an LSAT. Let's see how that goes. All right. I want to talk to you with you about the Democrats. We'll go deeper on this on the next level tomorrow, but I did want to mention it. For some folks who want to get really dorky on this memo, the memo's called deciding to win. So a group of center-left Democrats who are offering what they think was the problem with the party. Fairly non-controversial name for the memo. Deciding to win. Deciding to win. Yeah. So anyway, there are a few things that were noteworthy about it that I liked. Should we go with lose? Yeah. Obviously, in all these things, it's like people. put out memos that advance their factional priorities. It's like these guys obviously want the party to move to the middle. But if you're taking that at face value, there are a couple interesting things that cut my eye. I'm curious to cut your eye. The number one was they looked at like platforms and website, issue websites and like names that are mentioned. Here are the words that have been up over the last 10 years. This is different identity terms like white, black, you know, climate. guns, justice, democracy, equity. Word usage that's down. Jobs, economy, middle class, work, veteran crime. That seems bad. That seems like a mistake in retrospect. Regardless of where you are ideologically, whether you're a socialist or a free market capitalist centrist, Frank Fukuyama. I think it seems bad that they're talking more about justice and equity and climate than middle class and work and crime. For sure. I mean, so let's just make it clear. It's the percentage increase that's up. I'm not sure it's like the aggregate total. It's up, I mentioned. But that's bad. And I think Josh Barrow's been pointing out obsessively that they keep opening these meetings and platforms with land acknowledgments. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that, but I don't think you need to lean into it so aggressively if you're the Democrats, just a piece of advice. I think this memo, okay, there's a few thoughts I have about the memo. One is that... I think it's valid 100%. People have to understand it's the perceptions of Democrats that have changed. People view Democrats as more liberal. They believe that Democrats' priorities are more liberal. It might not be that Democrats are prioritizing more liberal stuff, although I think they are. But it's the perception of the party that has changed in a very bad direction if you want to win elections. And frankly, the perception of voters is really what matters. It's like it doesn't really matter necessarily if you are.

emphasizing certain things, it's if voters believe you are emphasizing those things. And that's the distinction I think this memo really gets at. But there is something kind of ironic, I suppose, if you think about it, which is, you know, to say the party, the state of the parties that it's perceived as too liberal. But then if they break down the sort of prescriptions that they offer or at least the analysis. The kind of approach that they're offering is a little bit actually more Bernie Sanders-ish, right? It's like, oh, look what's really popular. Emphasize economic issues, emphasize economic justice. You know. 2015 Bernie Sanders. Bernie gets away. There's some shorthand on the internet. Dave Weigel called him out about those where people are like, Bernie had it right, focusing on economics and being more in the middle on immigration and crime and energy. He moved left on immigration. Bernie did the same thing as everybody else did about decriminalize the border and everything in 2020. So, 2016, Bernie. 2015, 2016, Bernie. That's a super liberal. dude, right? But that is the kind of emphasis that this memo gets at. He was to the right of Hillary on guns and immigration got attacked for it. He was kind of a classically liberal skeptic of immigration, which is you want. you know, type border control because you want to give jobs to Americans. There's two other things I just would add. One is that there's like this Dobbs fallacy here. And by that I mean that what happened in my estimation is that after 2022 and the success that the party enjoyed running on Dobbs in that election, it became this belief among Democrats that they really should and had to lean into abortion rights as a matter of electoral, you know. significance, right, as something that could actually win them campaigns. And I think that just sort of petered out. I noticed a data point where it was 13% of respondents said it was in their top three parties, abortion, but 31% believed Democrats had it in their top three parties. That's a huge golf right there. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that I want to be generally accepting of the memo, but I do think there's parts where you can criticize it. They attribute to the Democrats some positions that I don't actually think Democrats actually held. So they say one of the most unpopular positions Democrats held was to abolish the police and to abolish prisons. That's not actually what Democrats argued. It's not. I mean, they said abolish private prisons. Some of them did, but not all prisons. So I just want to just couch a little bit there. Like I said, I'll go deeper in the next level. I do think that what they write that I like about what it does and does not mean to be moderate. It's something I just do want to call out because I feel like a lot of times when they're moderate, right? Now, people use the word moderate to describe, like, Democrats who are establishment, who are moderate in temperament, who are moderate in tone. And the authors of the memoir are like, none of that helps at all.

They're like when we're telling you to be moderate, we're saying take some heterodox positions and go after the establishment on certain things. Take moderate positions. I think that's a noteworthy. But let me ask you, can I ask you a question about that? I'm not. It's totally noteworthy. I get it and I appreciate it. But like what good does it do to take like heterodox positions if you can't break through and convince the public that you are a heterodox, right? Like doesn't some of this really come down to? I mean, like, again, it's all about the perceptions of the party, and perceptions really matter. Yeah. And you could be the most heterodox, moderate Democrat, but if you can't reach people and convince them that you're genuine, you're going to get painted by a conservative and the conservative media complex as a liberal, no matter what, no matter what. Yeah, right. So you have to demonstrate that you're genuine. I mean, this is what you have to annoy the Democrats sometimes, which is I think the key thing that people miss. Like Jared Golden, it works for Jared Golden in Maine because he annoys the Democrats sometimes. He annoys me sometimes sometimes. He knows me sometimes sometimes. He knows me sometimes. I guess put it sometimes. Let's say Andy Beshear were to announce tomorrow he's running for president.

most like, you know, middle of the road Democrat, you can imagine, right? There's no doubt in my mind that he's going to get painted as like a pro trans, release the criminals, open the borders, Democrat, right? And it's just going to happen. It might be something that I should propose to him. I don't know. We might have a chance to talk about Andy Beshear more later. But I would say this. My advice to answer your answer this question, if Andy Mishir called me or if I can tell you this because I get these calls a lot from Democrats in red states, like, what should I do? And I say the same thing. I'm like, pick something. that you're on the side of MAGA on culturally. I don't care what it is. I genuinely don't. And talk about it a lot. Like don't just like, don't just like put it on your website. Like talk about that a lot. Like, have three things that you talk about and have. Two of them be how Trump is hurting working class people and how everything's too expensive and it's Trump's fault. That's the tariffs. And then have the third thing be, I don't care. You love automatic weapons or like, whatever. You think that gay people are bad. You can attack me if you want. I don't care. Whatever. I'm not saying I support those policies. I'm just saying like that's the way to do it. You convince me or you're genuine by being genuine talking about it a lot. I think that's right. I think the only add is that you better include a land acknowledgement before you do that. Last thing on the memo is that one thing that they mentioned, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes, people want to read all of it. Unpopular GOP policies, which speaks to your point on Dobbs. It speaks of both of our pet issues at the moment, so I'm sure we're happy to talk about it. The three most unpopular GOP issues that Demp should talk about. One is banned birth control, three is ban IVF, and then there are a bunch of other abortion-related ones in the top 10. The number two issue, launch a national Trump branded cryptocurrency. People do not like that the president has his own fucking currency and the Democrats should talk about it. Everybody should talk about it. It's outrageous. And people don't talk about it because the Democratic officials and journalists don't understand what it is. And so they don't talk about it. But people don't like it. It's corrupt. It's bad. It's gross. And everybody should talk about it. One more thing on the Democrats want to talk about. Our friend of the show, Corrine Jean-Pierre, was on last week. She did an interview with Isaac Chautner of the New Yorker yesterday that has been. We'll also put that link in the show notes. We want to read it for themselves. Her answers are not that compelling. Isaac is very left, a lefty. And asking her about the arguments that she's making. I'm wondering what you've made of this, her book tour and what it says about, if it says anything. Is there anything that actually matters about it besides just kind of like looking at a car crash? No. I think there is. Okay. Go ahead. I'm curious what you think. I mean, it's, first of all, if you read the Isaac Chartner thing, what I would recommend is press Control F and then type in the word wait. Because she says it about, you know, 14 times. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But you know, it's not a really good sign for the state of the interview. I know Kareen, and I've worked with Kareen prior to her time entering.

public service when she was sort of a commentator. I think some of the perception of her is off, right? Like she's smart. She's thoughtful. This iteration of her, I, you know, clearly is, you know, hitting some real roadblocks because it's kind of an indefensible position, right? It's like, we all saw. with our own eyes what Joe Biden was going through. And if you believed in your heart of hearts that he was capable of doing the job and then he was up to the task as you are arguing in your book and as you are now defending on the book trail, you do have to answer for why you didn't make that case more forcefully, why you didn't put him out more regularly, why you couldn't answer basic questions about it in real time after the debate stumbles. That was her job. Frankly, I know this sounds like a little harsh, but it's true. Like a lot of people believe she failed miserably at it. And, you know, I think when she's on this book tour and as she's going through this stuff, like, I think people want to see more accountability and self-reflection around the stuff rather than just the defensiveness that she exhibited to Isaac. Yeah, so we basically agree. So this is what the part that matters. Not I don't, you know, she's making an argument. I don't think it's that compelling, but people can decide for themselves about like whether, you know, they think the Democrats have been unfair to black women, queer people, and then Joe Biden. To me, like the ineffectiveness of it matters in this sense. Objectively speaking, the Biden administration's communications was horrible. from the president on down. And I say this also as somebody who has been on campaigns where we had horrible communications where I was in charge. Sometimes it's not the communications director's fault. Like sometimes you have limitations, but like even still, you have to acknowledge it. Right. Like, and I've always said many times. I don't think I'd be a very good press secretary because of my facial reactions. I'm like, you know, and there's a job, not everybody, every job is for everybody. And like, For two years, she was the press secretary for an administration that was really struggling to communicate its successes, from the president to the vice president to her. And during that time, from basically January of 23 through the debate, CNN debate. Like, most of the Democrats just kind of whispered that they thought it sucked behind the scenes and didn't do anything about it. There were a couple of examples. Like, Axelrod would talk about it on CNN. Some people would talk about it. But like, and to me, that is a cultural problem where you feel like, oh, we can't, you know, whatever. We can't just be honest about our own failings because you cannot succeed in something if you cannot accept. when you're failing. And I think that people were afraid to criticize the administration and afraid to criticize her for various reasons. And I just think that there should be a big lesson is that like, you know, probably in retrospect, there should have been a five long fire much earlier than the CNN debate about how the Biden administration was communicating. And I think this tour just like.

It just lays that there, is all I'm sorry. It becomes self-evident at a point that the reason they couldn't survive the Biden debate performance was because they had failed at communicating and presenting him prior to the debate. Had this really been a one-off, we would have known it, right? Because he would have been out there more. He'd have been doing more interviews. You want to skip the Super Bowl interview. Things like that. And that's on... him, and it's on people like Corrine, who were in the comms department because they didn't create enough faith, trust, transparency in the administration. And apparently they didn't even believe that. They believe their own bullshit, right? Again, which is why this stuff needs to be, this stuff needs to be propped, right? Like, this idea that, like, what she was expressing to me, that he was out there a lot. It's just like, come on. Like, that's just not true. And so either you're lying or you believe that. It's actually scarier if you believe it. And I will just say this, and this is obviously self-serving, so take it for what it is. But. There are so many more benefits that go unstated for a politician of any variety to be out there in the public doing interviews all the time. It hones your skill. It gets a familiarity with the voters and the viewers with you. It makes you a better politician. It means that the stumbles don't matter as much. As we know with Trump, because everyone knows they see him stumble all the time and it's about bullshit and like we just move on. I just think the age where you can micromanage and protect a politician and just skirt the public are so clearly in the past and people need to just get with the program. Final topic. Donald Trump, the president, has lost UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell. This one was weird. This guy seems psychotic. I don't know. I don't know. Everyone could judge for themselves. I would like to listen to Bryce's explanation for why he's off the Trump train. I want to let you all know I'm not with Donald Trump no more. I don't support him. I don't like him. I think he's a corrupted later. And I agree. Yeah, it took me a while to come to that conclusion, but I finally am coming to it. I do not like the guy at all. Me neither. The first thing for me was he didn't release the Epstein files. They're even acting like they didn't exist. And, of course, they're sending Israel and Ukraine, all of our tax dollars, just like the numb nuts before him did. putting a miracle ass and now he's blaming the beef farmers for the price of beef hey i'm not biased man he talked a good game he tricked me i was fooled i admit it good for you rice let me tell you how bad i think this is though this is really this bad guys i want you if you're a christian uh i want you to get into revelation 13 3 and i want you to read that verse Yeah, about the Antichrist, about the one who was fatally wounded in the head. Then he was miraculously healed and the whole world marveled at him and said no man can make war with him. Yeah, I do think that Donald Trump is that beast of Revelation 133.

Okay. I mean, I was with him. He was making a good argument. You know, he's my compelling case. Hard turn there. The dog shows up and then Trump is the Antichrist. He's the beast of revelations. Sam. I'm more of an Old Testament guy, so I can't really. way in this guy has some fairly uh controversial statements in his past i do i was going to bring this up so now you mention it yeah i think it's worth mentioning in case you're getting too excited about bryce's comments yeah he has being an old testament guy this this might bother you he uh he has suggested um that Hitler had some points. He was saying that greedy Jews were destroying Germany and turning everyone there into gays. They were ganging out the kids. Did he say gang out? Did they say gang out? They were gaying out the kids. They were queering out the women. They were queering out the dudes in Germany. Heather was gang out the kids? Oh, no, Hitler took care. The Jews were ganged out. The Jews were ganged out of the kids. This is like our twink filtration in three Nazi Germany. The Jews are gang out of the kids. So some hits and some misses, I guess, for Bryce Mitchell. I'd say a few misses there. I'm going to go to a couple of misses. No, so you don't, you know, I think here's what I want to bring up. Okay. Trump. And this was not in the deciding to win memo, and it should have been. Trump got all of the psychopaths on his side in 2024. Like the craziest loons in the country, like all aligned. You know, there was a crank alignment. There was a psychopath alignment behind Donald Trump. There were some, I guess, far left cranks that decided to vote for Jill Stein. But like if you took the psychopath, like pie of the country is like 90% Trump, 8% Jill Sign, third party, 2% Kamala Harris. And it's important to kind of get that pie back towards even. You know, you want to have an even disbursement of psychopaths. And so it's encouraging the brace, I think, is getting off the train, I think. Well, you didn't, I don't think you read the full deciding to win memo because right here under voters want Democrats to prioritize, they have Revelations 13.3. It's at 47%. Yeah. They actually cut to this. There was the horseshoe theory, right? I mean, like the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. cranks, like, you know, all these weirdos and the Tulsi Gabbard fan girls and boys were just gravitating to Trump. And. I will just say, again, to tie this back to my last point, I think part of the reason they gravitated to the guy is because he just went and appeared on their platforms and talked to them and hung out with him. They're like, okay, cool. I like this guy.

Or at least he's open to me. And I'm not saying, look, I'm not advising anyone in the Democratic Party to go and sit down with our dear friend Bryce Mitchell and talk revelations or anything like that. I think maybe platforming someone who doesn't like my people that much is a bad thing. But, you know, be open to different platforms. Okay, I'm not platforming, but I would just throw it out there. My final thought is, hey, if you're a listener and you're like, Boy, how do I get through to? Bryce Mitchell? Nephew Tristan, who has been sending some pretty weird things on the family group chat and has gone full mega. Maybe just shoot him over Bryce and be like, hey. I got so. It might be possible that you've been fooled and Trump is the antichrist. No, not throwing, not saying for sure, but you might want to consider that. Sorry, what's the nephew's name again? Tristan. Tristan, I want you to check out this, this Instagram from Bryce, but don't Google anything else he said, okay? Just keep it at this. Promise me to not Google. But check this one out. That's how I would appreciate it. Pretty good. All right. That's Sam Stein. I appreciate you, brother. Up next, hard right turn from trumping the Antichrist and gang out our children to Frank Fukuyama. Stick around.

All right, he's a senior fellow at Stanford Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law, host of the Frankly Fukuyama podcast. He also writes the frankly Fukuyama column at Persuasion on Substack. His most recent book is liberalism and its discontents. It's Frank Fukuyama. What's up, Frank? Well, my little world is fine. The world around me is boiling. But, you know, other than that, everything's great. Yeah, that's a big other than that. That's a big caveat. But we're doing the best that we can in this world, you know? My interest was piqued. We talked a while ago about your last book. I mean, shit, I was living in San Francisco then. Liberalism is discontents. I went and re-listen to that yesterday. And so I'm interested in getting back into a conversation about liberalism and why it's out of vogue. But first, my interest was piqued about your article, The Real Cause of Populism. And you went through the various different explanations for the recent global wave of populism and came to an answer of some sort of what you think it was. And just for folks who haven't read it, I just want to read through. You basically listed nine explanations that you hear for why. Trumpism is on the rise everywhere. And here they are. I'm just going to go through real quick. One, economic inequality brought by globalization. Two, racism, bigotry on the part of the population that have been losing status. Three, broad sociological change that have sorted people by education and residence and resentment against the dominance of elites and experts. Four, the special talent of individual demagogues like Trump. Five, the failures of mainstream political parties to deliver growth, job, security, and infrastructure. Six, dislike or hatred of the progressive left's cultural agenda. Seven, failures of leadership of the progressive left. Eight, human nature. Nine, social media and the internet. You went through all of those and settled on social media and the internet, which I find. appealing to my priors but before we get that i want to kind of just go through some of the ones you eliminated what why do you not think it is I'll combine two and three. This is this idea of racism, nativism on the behalf of people who are losing status. Why'd you like that? Well, look, there's no question that racism and nativism plays a role in the MAGA coalition. It's really founded on wanting to close off the United States to immigration. So there's no question that. So just to back up a little bit, all nine of these factors are there. I'm not saying that they're not important, but the question is, what's the relative priority of these different ones? You know, what struck me is the way that African-American young men and Hispanic young men switch to voting for Trump in the last stages of last year's election. And, you know, he actually disguises his racism, you know, and he has black supporters. And I think that you've got to explain why this.

bundle of attitudes and policies is appealing to, you know, to non-white people. And so I don't think that, you know, the fundamental driver of this is that because, you know, I think actually Americans have grown fairly acceptance of, you know, the fact that they live in a multiracial society. And The hardcore people that really don't like that, you know, they're going to keep hating. But I don't think that that explains why there's a sudden upsurge of this stuff in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century. What about the sorting? Because when I look at your answers... You know, something that I say a lot to people when I get asked about this, like, why the rise of Trump now? Why is it working is to the point of your article that like this is a global phenomenon. There are Trumps everywhere. There's a Trump and there's a Brazilian Trump and an Indian Trump and a Hungarian Trump and a French Trump. Like there are Trumps everywhere and, you know, at least directionally. And maybe this is just more about your kind of globalization and there's something that, you know, that the fact that the assorting between educated. urban dwelling elites versus, you know, less educated, you know, more rural or ex-urban or small town dwelling. you know, non-elites who are losing status. And that is really what is driving this. What would you say to that? Well, I don't think it's a driver. I think it's more of an effect rather than a cause that people have voluntarily sorted themselves, you know, based on their global attitudes. That may be driven by, you know, other deeper factors. So if you live in a big city, you're used to living in a multi-ethnic, you know, fairly diverse place. You've got lots of job opportunities. because most of the economic growth is being driven in large urban areas. And so I think you're naturally going to be open, more open, you know, to a liberal perspective than if you live in a small town where everybody is, you know, the same religion, the same ethnicity and the like. So I think that there's no question that there's a correlation between, you know, your place of residence. Population density is actually one of the biggest correlates of... you know, whether you're going to vote populace. And that's true. It's true in Russia. It's true in Hungary. It's true in India. You know, it's true in the United States. But, you know, as I said, it's more a reflection of an underlying kind of attitude and position in the world and your openness to, you know, a more diverse, globalized world. The other one that... You know, a lot of folks in my former world in the right will say the answer is just was basically your six and seven categories. Progressive left's cultural agenda, you know, went too far too fast. And this is just simply, you know, the populist right wave is just a backlash to that. What do you say to that? Well, again, in the last stages of the election, you know, when.

Trump was running all of those anti-transgender ads, you know, it definitely had an effect. So again, I'm not denying that that was important. And I personally know a lot of people that were kind of on the fence in the election that really hated that, you know, particular aspect of what the Democrats were offering. Really? You personally know people that looked at Trump and Kamala Harris and their choice came down to youth sports? Access for trans? No, no, no, no. The other way. I definitely know a lot of people that really hated, you know, what they thought the Democrats stood for on these cultural issues. So it's the other way around. But again, you know, why this issue ended up. being as powerful as it was, it seems to me, was not the intrinsic impact. So how many transgender people are there altogether? How many people that voted on that basis actually had transgenderism affect their lives? And so again, there's another factor that makes this stand out and go viral as a... you know, as something that motivates people to vote in a certain way. And that, again, brings you back, I think, to the Internet, which has this incredible ability to magnify certain issues that, you know, are really just understood anecdotally, but then all of a sudden they become, you know, big, overwhelming things that you read about and hear about all the time. So that takes us to where you landed. I mean, I guess. The most compelling answer to me that the phones have exacerbated all these other issues, right? And I guess that's really the point. It's not as if any of these other factors are not factors, but the phones were just an exacerbating effect. It is a point you make in the article, which is basically there were worse economic times than this last decade. There were times where racism was more acute than this past decade. There were times where, you know, the left. The cultural left was changing things more quickly than in the last decade. And like the only thing that is unique about the last decade is the phones. And so we have to consider that when trying to explain why right-wing populism reemerged now versus in 1970 or 80 or 90. Yeah. I mean, there's two things that you need to explain. So the first is timing. Right? That, in fact, for people that think that inequality and economic conditions are the drivers, I think that's a little bit crazy because in a certain sense, you know, we've never been better in terms of economic growth. You know, the last election happened at a time of very, very low unemployment. You did have inflation, but it was nothing like the inflation that everybody experienced back in the 1970s. And I just... Don't think that, you know, that's an adequate answer of why in this kind of prosperous, generally peaceful time, people adopt this extreme language. You know, if you listen to people on the right, like this Michael Anton Flight 93 article that got, you know, a lot of MAGA kicked off back in 2016.

He's saying we're in a civilizational crisis. Our way of life is, you know, is about to end. If we don't storm the cockpit and take over the plane, we're all going to die. You know, in 2016, why would anyone believe that you're in that kind of an extreme situation? I think that you have to kind of build up an alternative. world that really doesn't correspond to the empirical world in order to get to that level of hysteric. So the timing is important. The other thing that I think really needs to be explained is the particular character of right-wing politics today. It used to be, as you're... well aware that Republicans and conservatives have basically this Reaganite agenda, you know, low taxes, deregulation, privatization, but, you know, embracing globalization and internationalism. Today, that's completely off the table as far as the Republican Party is concerned. And if you say, what is it that binds? conservatives together today, it really is conspiracy thinking. It is this belief that if you take the red pill, you see that the world around you is not what it claims to be. All the legacy institutions, the media, universities, a scientific establishment are actually being manipulated. by elites behind the scenes. And I think that that's kind of the unifying characteristic of the right today. And again, how can you believe, you know, that vaccines are actually harmful? How can you believe, you know, I've heard conservatives say this, that more people died from the COVID vaccine than died from COVID. It's just totally... It's totally crazy assertion. But people believe it nonetheless. And I just don't think that that could have happened, you know, before the rise of the Internet and this ability of people to directly communicate with, you know, large masses of people in a way they couldn't before. You're around a lot of smart conservatives at Stanford, educated conservatives. It's the breeding ground of a lot of the kind of tech right thinkers. Hoover is out there. So you must talk to people that would bristle at this notion that the only thing that unites the right is conspiratorial thinking. Like what explains? I won't. I want to embarrass you and name any of the Stanford conservatives. What explains what some of the smart, temperate folks? How does that match your theory? How do they respond when you make an accusation like that? Again, you know, you have to fall back on some of the other causes. So a lot of the smart Stanford conservatives don't believe that there are tunnels in Washington, D.C., and the children are being tortured.

you know, sacrifice, this sort of thing. Obviously, they don't believe that. I think that a lot of them were initially Reagan, Republicans, and they were kind of shocked by the tariffs and a lot of Trump's policies, but they've made their peace. I would say that it's probably that cultural... issue that has driven a lot of them. They just don't trust the Democratic Party and they really dislike, you know, what the Democrats have to offer. And they've made their peace with Trumpism as the, you know, the lesser of two evils. But do you think they've been brain poisoned by the internet or is there something else at play? Well, it's interesting how. many of them are not willing to say in a full-throated manner that the 2020 election was actually a legitimate free and fair election, you know? Yeah. And then if you query them, you know, they'll say things like, well, there were a lot of questions about, you know, the way that the polling was, I mean, the polls were manipulated and so forth. You know, they kind of satisfy their, their. what's left of their intellectual integrity by pointing to discrepancies and we're not completely sure whether this was the case. But, you know, they're much more open to it than they would have been, I think, before the Internet. Here's the most depressing thing about this thesis, which is kind of why I don't want it to be right, is that if it's true, things are only getting worse, not better. Right, with AI? Because there's no, I mean, to the degree that the internet or phones or social media are a reality distortion machine, and they are in a certain way. And what's coming with AI and what's already here is that on steroids. I mean, I think that a lot of people are going to struggle to know, to literally know what's real and what's fake. Yeah, unfortunately, that's true. And I think that there's been this struggle to try to regulate the Internet that has been a losing battle so far. When Trump was first elected, there was a lot of pressure on the big Internet platforms to moderate content, to downplay, disinformation, hate speech, and so forth. They tried to do that, but it produced this furious reaction that actually affected us here at Stanford. We used to have a Stanford internet. that observatory that was actually a bunch of academic researchers and a lot of graduate students looking at things like vaccine denialism and election denialism and how that spread. And then the moment that the Republicans got the House in 2022, Jim Jordan was authorized to run a committee that it claimed was looking at weaponization of the internet. But in fact, they were the ones that were weaponizing. And effectively, they shut that whole operation down. You know, the university didn't want to have to deal with getting its faculty and a lot of students subpoenaed and dragged to Washington to testify. It's a totally fake charge. But, you know, the result is that...

Nobody can do content moderation, at least not in the United States. Europeans continue to try to do a little bit of that. And I think the prospect of that is going to be more necessary, as you say, with the rise of fake videos and kinds of stuff that AI can do. And so again, we're back to protections offered by these internet providers that really are not going to be adequate to protect American democracy. So do you have a hope for that? Do you have a plan or a hope? Because I don't really. And the only hope is this kind of blind faith. Like, well, the next generation will be able to adapt in ways that people have adapted in the past to other technological advances. But I just, I find that to be kind of wishcasting, really. Yeah, I think it is. Back in 2020, I ran a working group, Stanford Working Group on Platform Scale. And we had this idea for something we called Middleware. So the problem is not just fake news. I think given our First Amendment, you really can't regulate the quality of speech. I mean, you've got two choices right now. Either you can let the big tech platforms do the regulating. And their main interest is not American democracy, or you can let the government do it. And I think nobody wants the government to declare what's true and false. And so what we thought was that the main problem is the concentration of power in these big platforms and that you've got to dilute that power in some way. And the idea of middleware is that you'd have a third party. provider that would actually do the content moderation, and you, the user, could actually turn the knobs and dials to tailor your feed to what you preferred. So it doesn't get rid of fake news, which I don't think you can do, but it actually allows you to, you know, to reduce the power of the platforms to decide what it is you hear. You know, the thing that's going on that I think is really scary is the concentration of power. in these platforms. So Elon Musk bought Twitter not because it was a great business proposition. He saw it as a route to political power. And that's exactly the way he used it. He changed the political orientation, moved it way to the right, and then used that to, you know, help Donald Trump win the election. What's going on, I don't think has received nearly enough attention is what the two Ellison's, Larry Ellison and his son, David, are doing. to amass another empire. This time, they're going to, you know, they're bidding on TikTok. And they've already got Paramount. They're trying to get Warner Brothers Discovery, which means HBO, CNN, a lot of other media channels. And I think that... And they're going to have TikTok, I mean, some control over TikTok at least as part of that group. Yeah. It's kind of an unbelievable level of media power. We don't know exactly how they intend to use that power, but it's just not a good idea to have it in the hands of people whose views are probably quite conservative and, you know, leaning towards MAGA. And so I think that you've got to think about that concentration of power issue, you know, as one of the first agenda items if you really want to reduce the threat. But again, that's not going to get rid of fake news and it's not going to get rid of conspiracy theories.

Yeah, right. And I hear that the media, I mean, I'm for some sort of mediation idea and giving people options and dials to control, you know, what they receive. But to me, that like, like a lot of the answers to AI, whenever I asked me to be with this, I was asking Cuban about this kind of stuff too. And it's like, all of the solutions feel like stuff that the top 20% of the country that is most capable, highly educated, that is younger, that understands the platforms, they'll be able to use the dials. the less educated, you know, the folks who come from, you know, not as privileged backgrounds, older people, like won't know how to do it. And so, you know, you'll end up kind of with a bifurcated issue. The one weakness in the phone argument that I just wanted to ask you about and I want to move on is I periodically over the past few years have been paging back through Umberto Echo's or fascism book, basically that, like, you know, that looked at what the... attributes of Mussolini's fascism are. And ironically, I didn't know this before you're to be on. Today, Bill Crystal's writing about Mussolini and our morning newsletter and the parallels to now. Obviously, there were no phones then. And there are quite a lot of parallels between, you know, not... Again, not like outcomes, but like the appeal of fascism then and now. And I'm just wondering how that intersects with your argument. Yeah. So technology played a role in the rise of European fascism. You know, the new technology at that time was the radio. And both Mussolini and Hitler made extensive use of the radio to reach mass audiences in a way that the older types of technology like daily newspapers really couldn't. And so there was an analog to what's happening. But again, you know, my argument is not that there aren't other discontents that are driving the rise of this kind of political movement. It's the particular character and the timing. Like, why now? You can understand Italian and especially German fascism perfectly well in economic terms. Germany had suffered this catastrophic defeat in the First World War. Then it had hyperinflation. Weimar was a very weak political system. It didn't seem to address any of the economic grievances that German citizens had. You know, the economic argument was so much more powerful as a driver of why Europe turned to the right in the 1930s. And we just don't have anything remotely comparable to that explaining why you're getting Donald Trump in the 2020s. You mentioned the discontents. I want to go back to your book, liberalism and it's discontents. So just stepping back, I think it's important to do definition of terms here when we're talking about liberalism because, you know, I grew up thinking I hated liberalism because it was defined in my brain in the American sense as like tax and spend big government leftist or whatever was synonymous with liberalism. And that is, you know, not.

Right, that you all live together in one society. There are basically rules and frameworks. And so if someone breaks a rule or breaks a law, they should be punished. But otherwise, as long as they're acting within the rule of law, then you just accept their people with different religions, values, views. I think that there's an increase of people on the left that don't really like that, actually, too. Yeah, I mean, obviously on the rights, the people that don't like that are running the country. So it's more acute. But I notice it, at least, hearing from folks in the left. And I think that is the part that worries me. Yeah. So the. The fundamental virtue in liberal societies right from the beginning was the virtue of tolerance. So as you said, we live in a diverse society. People are going to be different from you and you have to allow them to be different up to the point where they're using violence or attacking the liberal framework as a whole. And I think that one of the distortions of liberalism is that many progressives wanted to put the power of the state behind. a kind of aggressive tolerance. Like, you have to accept, you know, trans people. And if you don't, you know, we're going to punish you. And that's the point where, you know, it's no longer tolerance of difference. It's actually kind of enforced conformity. And that's the cake. Bake me the cake. You know, that I want. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's legitimate to dislike that and say, you know, the power of the state should not be. used to enforce these kinds of social norms. And that's something that progressives need to back away from. Why do you think, and this goes to kind of your book, what is undergirding why liberalism is out of vogue right now in the manner in which you defined it and why it's being attacked from both sides? And is there, is it something that harkens back to your more notable, more famous work about the end of history? Is it just, is it the people are? are bored and decadent, want something to fight against, right? I forget, you might remember your quote better than me, but something about, you know, if people can't struggle for something, they'll struggle against it. Is it that? Is it boredom and decadence? Or is it some failure of liberalism that has caused the discontent? I guess there are a couple of different answers to that. I'm going to publish a memoir next year. The title of that is, in the realm of the last man, a memoir. The Last Man refers back to my first book, The End of History and The Last Man. And the Last Man is the creature who emerges at the end of history when you have a liberal democracy that produces peace and prosperity. And I think our liberal democracy in the United States, those in Europe, you know, Northeast Asia have all done pretty well. They've produced peaceful, secure societies overall, right? There may be a little more inflation, a little bit more, too much immigration, various things that people complain about. But, you know, basically life has been pretty good under liberal democracy. And I think that a lot of people...

Don't find that enough because there's something deep inside the human soul that wants to struggle, that a world without struggle, without higher aspirations, produces a life not worth living. And, you know, you look at the encampments that we had in American universities after October 7th a couple of years ago. So there's all of these very privileged kids, like, you know, the ones here at Stanford. Harvard, Columbia, other places. They're kind of the most privileged people in the society. And they want to live in tents, you know, and stop going to classes to protest on behalf of a people that are half the world away from them. They have really no organic connection to. And you say, why are they doing this? And I think it really... has to do with the fact that in their lives, apart from getting into Stanford or Harvard, they've not struggled for anything. They don't have a vision of a better world, a much brighter future that used to animate people on the left who at one time believed in the, you know, the Marxist promise of a communist utopia. So there are no more utopias left. And so I think that that energy has gone into... creating artificial struggle. And that's true on the right as well. Just really quick, just to get that, right? So you're not suggesting that, I mean, obviously, you know, the folks that are in Gaza are experiencing real struggle. So that's not artificial struggle. You're saying that people are creating an artificial, are trying to find things to struggle against because liberal democracy has like basically worked. I'm not saying anything about Gaza. You know, I mean, it's a horrible situation for them. But I think that the question is why American students at elite universities have taken up this one issue as their own. And that, I think, really does have to do with the, you know, the absence of bigger aspirations and struggles in their lives. And I think a lot of the people on the right that dress up in camo, you know, and carry AK-47s around. also want to believe that they're revolutionaries, you know, like the original American patriots and that they're struggling to preserve a way of life that they think liberals are taking away from them. And so I'm thinking on both ends of the political spectrum, you get this, you know, desire to break out of... peace and prosperity, you know, that we really want a kind of higher vision of what our society ought to look like, and it's not providing us outlets for doing that. So that argument is just more of a generational cycle argument. I mean, I now have your exact quote in front of me. I do want to read it for folks, which is experience suggested if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they'll struggle against the just cause. They'll struggle for the sake of struggle. The argument then is basically... you know, a combination of civil rights, right for man, you know, women's rights, gay rights, right? Like, you have, that there was a success that was achieved. Not a total success, not equality for everybody, not a perfect world, but like a basic success of those efforts from whatever, mid-1960s through Obama, basically. So once it felt like those things had been achieved.

people then start grasping for, okay, well, there's, I have to fight against something. And the only something to fight against was basically the liberal world order. And you have to come up with a reason why that was actually not good and not sufficient. You have to oppose it. I think that's right. But based on that, then it's kind of like, well, there's not really anything that we could have done. Like, had the liberal world order been a little bit more fair and done a little bit more to fight against economic inequality, that probably would not have impacted just this more human reaction. at least as you're in your frame. What would you say to that? Well, that generational explanation actually leads to a kind of pessimistic conclusion. Great. The people that are most eager to live in a liberal society, you know, as I've described it, are people that live under a dictatorship. Right. That live in poor, you know, corrupt, tyrannical countries. And so in Eastern Europe. You know, in 1989, everybody had been experiencing that for a couple of generations, and they were desperate to join Europe because for them, that represented individual freedom. And they celebrated, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, you've had another couple generations go by where they've experienced peace and prosperity. I mean, Poland is a great example of this. There's no country in the EU that has been more economically successful than Poland. It's... Per capita GDP is now higher than the average for the EU as a whole. And it's been peaceful up until the Ukraine war started. And yet you have the rise of this right-wing law and justice party that, you know, was complaining about the EU as a dictatorship that had been imposed on them. And it's just crazy. But I think you have to see it in terms of the fact that you now have. a couple of generations of young Poles that have grown up with no experience of communism. They don't understand what the alternative to the European Union is, and therefore they can have fantasies that there's a better world, you know, after the EU is abolished. Okay, so we just need a full... mega dictatorship, and then we need to overthrow it. Yeah. And then the light will come at the end of the tunnel when I'm a grandfather, as long as I'm alive and avoided the gulag. All right. Well, that's typically bulwark uplifting material. Well, okay, but Tim, just before you get off that, I mean, I think the major hope in this country is that a lot of MAGA policies are actually going to be very, very counterproductive. You know, tariffs and cutting off, you know, any flow of outsiders into the United States, it's going to lead to a much poorer, less innovative, you know, less creative country. And at a certain point, you know, people begin to realize that there's a cause and effect relationship between those policies.

outcomes that are not as disastrous as living under a communist dictatorship, but, you know, the country just isn't working as well. Yeah. So let's hope for that. Okay. Yeah. A little AI bubble pop and some failed tariff policy and we can turn this thing around. I'm just curious. I referenced your kind of Stanford conservative friends earlier. I've had you and Bill Crystal now on back-to-back days, both outflanking me on the left on various things. And do they think that you've lost your mind? Like, do you get that from conservatives? Because everything you're saying to me makes sense and seems almost obvious, like, based on what's happening. But it's important to challenge your priors. And I'm wondering if you have anybody in Stanford from the right who thinks you're, you've got internet pilled yourself. Blue pill. I'm sure that there are, but nobody's made a compelling counter case to you? Yeah, by and large, the people that have really gone after me are the genuine MAGA types. And I think that the sort of educated conservatives, you know, I think that they've been conflicted over the past few years because they really... recognize that Donald Trump is not fit to be president and so forth. They just think that, well, we don't have a choice right now because, you know, the Democrats and the left are so bad. So that's not a reason for, you know, going after me. Well, we'll test that theory right now then. I don't really have a question. I just kind of want to put a quarter in the machine and hear what you think about Zohran Mamdani. Well, I think his rise is unfortunate because I think that for the Democrats, a correct reading of the 2024 election is that they needed to move to the center. that the problem was not that they were insufficiently redistributionist, but that they were perceived as being too much in that direction. And so, you know, you need somebody more like an Abigail Spanberger, you know, to... carry the torch for the party. But I think that the energy in the party to the extent there is energy is really, you know, being borne by people like Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, even Bernie Sanders still are headlining, you know, a lot of the big rallies. And I sort of worry that the Democratic Party is going to repeat the cycle that the British Labor Party went through when, you know, their first... candidate to oppose the conservatives was Jeremy Corbyn, you know, somebody from the far left of their party. And they had to lose another election before it's sunk in that they actually needed to move to the center rather than further to the left. Yeah, they had to get slaughtered. Yeah. Who would you vote for if you were in New York?

Okay, I'll just say I'm a big fan of the abundance movement, right? I think you need to have a positive agenda for how the country is actually going to look if you're in power. And one of the big problems of all the Democrats up to this point is that they haven't articulated that. I think someone like Josh Shapiro could. take on that mantle. You know, the way he fixed I-95 after the tanker truck blew up, you know, represents, I think, this feeling that, you know, the existing rules are too constraining. You need a leader that's willing to bend the rules when, you know, there's a real cause for doing that. But so far, nobody has really stood up. In fact, there's a Build America caucus in the house. That's led by Josh Harder from California. It's bipartisan, but a lot of Democrats in it. But no big candidate has actually taken up that agenda because it's become toxic to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And so they're not even willing to use the word abundance. You know who is an exception to that? Zohran Mamdani. The interesting thing about Zohran Mamdani to me. And I noticed you didn't tell me if you're going to vote for, so I'm not letting you know off the hook on that. But the interesting thing to Zohran Mamdani for me is that I was literally just before I got on today watching some clip of him from two years ago, like not a long time ago from September 2023. And he like, Sounds like he's in Zuccotti Park or something. You know, he's like using very kind of activist left rhetoric about the global struggle. He used the word struggle actually in this thing about the global struggle against imperialism and the IDF and all this sort of stuff. And the contrast between the way he talks about all that stuff then, two years ago versus now. It's pretty noteworthy to me. And like when he came on my show, he specifically talked about abundance and talked about how if you're going to be a left populist. government has to work. And if government can't work, if there's too much red tape, and if government, you know what I mean? If we're not giving people services they want. And so he's like, I want to steal some stuff from Ezra and Derek. And it just is savvy to me. How will he actually be mayor? Because he's going to win. I have no idea. Will he be the socialist lefty, Bill de Blasio? Or will he try to do practical, you know, abundancy. What is it? Sewer socialism type stuff. You will all find out, I think, inevitably. But, um, It's interesting that he's made that progression. I wonder if you've, what you think about that. Well, so.

It's nice that he's rhetorically taking that position. The problem is a structural one in the Democratic Party. The real core of the party are in what they call the groups, meaning they're advocacy groups that often are at a community level. A lot of them are environmentalists, feminists, you know, so forth. And they, it's a thicket that is a real problem for any. Democrat that wants to move to the center, right? They send around questionnaires saying, on our particular issue, you know, do you stand with me? And up to this point, you know, every major Democratic candidate has had to check off. Yes, I'm pro abortion. I'm pro this. I'm pro that. And the test for Zohran Mamdani will be, if he's serious about abundance, he's going to have to go up against these groups. There's going to be a huge fight. If you want the government. to do big things, you have to go up against all of these local community action groups that don't want to have to listen to the government. You know, they've sharpened their teeth on resisting mandates coming from above. And I think, you know, that's going to be a problem for any Democrat that tries to go down the abundance route. So you're saying you're a Curtis Sliwa voter. The Barre. Just saying you're the Bahrain, man. It's okay. You live in San Francisco. We'll let you off the hook, I guess. I lied. I will let you off the hook. It's a tough one. It's Zohran Mamdani for me. It's with the closing my eyes, I think, is how it does just because, I mean, Andrew Cuomo. It's kind of hilarious to me that they've left Andrew Cuomo as the alternative, you know, given how horrific of a job he did as governor of New York. One of the worst Democrats is now the one that's supposed to appeal to the center right. All right, last topic. On the internet, I noticed that there's been some interest. And I don't know in what venue you said this, but you said your favorite movie was Blade Runner. And I saw several tweets about this. Young people were happy to learn that. And so I want you to give them a little more. What is it about Blade Runner that makes out your favorite movie? So Blade Runner is based on a story from the 1930s actually about, you know, basically Androids. And in the original story, do Androids dream of electric sheep? That was a title. It was a darker future in which the androids actually didn't have empathy. And the movie Blade Runner actually reversed that, that these machines actually could develop. this very basic human quality of having empathy for other people. And that's kind of the tragedy of the fact that they're all destroyed, you know, by the end. And I always thought that that was a kind of hopeful vision of what technology might, you know, lead to in the future. Plus which I just thought that, you know, at the time that it was made. the whole setting of the movie, like it's in Los Angeles and it never stops raining. You never see the sun come out once. Everything is in Asian character. At that time, people worried about Japan rather than China. And everything has become Japanese, you know, because of the social transformation. I just thought that all of that was a brilliant, you know, commentary back when the movie was made, I guess, in the 1980s about the sort of changes that America was experiencing. Do you have a recent favorite?

Well, I like science fiction. My favorite writer is Neil Stevenson, who wrote one of the most brilliant novels, again back in the 1980s, about it's sort of a parody of the libertarian trends that were taking place then. But he's written a couple of recent ones, like Termination Shock in which a single rich oil guy in Texas takes on global warming. to the detriment of the country of India. You know, I guess what I like about science fiction in general is that it projects trends into the future and develops what the politics of that future would look like in speculative ways, but I think ones that actually are very useful in thinking about are present. The one thing I would say that I... feel bad about is that science fiction, when I was young, was all about space travel. You know, you have these big space odysseys, Star Wars, and so forth. It's much, much darker. The typical science fiction movie these days is some kind of apocalypse. It could be environmental. It could be, you know, viruses. You know, the whole zombie movie genre is about robot. Yeah. Robot apocalypse, this sort of thing. And I think it's a kind of... way of taking the temperature of people's attitudes towards technology and whether they find it inspiring or, you know, threatening. And I think right now everybody sees technological change as threatening. Right. Well, that leads me in my final question then. So, Frank Fukuyama, how likely do you think it is that we're going to have AI-driven apocalypse? Oh, yeah. So. That's something I've actually spent a lot of time reading a lot of the more apocalyptic views, Stuart Russell and Nick Bostrom and so forth. I think that a lot of those fears are really overdrawn because just the underlying technology is going to be, I just think it's going to be less powerful or at least it'll be less powerful for a very long time than they are positing. And so I think that the real thing we need to worry about is not autonomous robots, you know, leading a robot uprising against humanity. I think it's more bad people using robots to hurt other people. That's the real threat that we ought to be focusing on. The books are liberalism as discontents. The End of History and the Last May on there are a bunch of other ones. You can go check them out. And we'll have you back next year with the memoir. That's very exciting. Okay. All right. Thanks so much. Okay. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Our buddy Sam Stein and to Frank Fukuyama. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace.

by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.