Chris Rufo Thinks the Right Can Control This. I Don’t.

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You could really make a case. The Chris Ruffo is the most successful activist certainly on the right of the Sarah. He initially rose in prominence as the central strategist in the rights counter attack on DEI initiatives.

He's very much behind a lot of the demonization of critical race theory.

“Critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.”

He claims, CRT is actually a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the constitution. Any built that into a series of campaigns have actually changed policy. It's very influential in Ron DeSantis's governorship and kind of running, cladding gay out of Harvard. Pushing out, cladding gay, toppling the president of Harvard for a journalist like me is a big win. In Donald Trump's second term, quite a lot has come out of Ruffo's work for better and from my perspective from us from a lot of Trump's early executive orders.

We've entered the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. To some of the work that led to the ice and CBP deployments to Minnesota. This week, I published an exclusive story exposing the Somali fraud rings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which are stealing billions of dollars from American taxpayers. But I just want to say about him, Ruffo has quite significantly affected the world we live in. He's also, if you listen to him, and he's a very, very smart and often quite honest analyst of his own side, one thing I appreciate about Ruffo is he always says what he is doing clearly end in public.

He seems uneasy. Gone are the days when Tucker Carlson's nightly monologue set the agenda for the entire right. You can feel a sort of disquiet. A sense that maybe the right this right is not becoming what he hoped it would be. Now we find ourselves in an escalating war of influencers, trading conspiracies and counter conspiracies that its attentional and informational sphere is polluted.

Driving the right into all different kinds of rabbit holes and dead ends. The administration is not getting as much done as he had hoped intended. Try to help it do. As I wanted to have Ruffo on, not because we agree on things we obviously don't. You'll hear that.

Not because I'm trying to talk him into my way of seeing things. I'm not going to do that. But both to understand how he understands what he is doing and also to interrogate it. To ask if the tactics he is using are actually working or if he's scoring short-term victories at the cost of helping to seed profound long-term problems.

Ruffo is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory, the Manhattan Institute.

He's a contributing editor of City Journal. He is the co-host of the podcast Ruffo and Lomas and he's the author of America's Cultural Revolution. How the radical left conquered everything. As always, my email as a punch-o at nytimes.com. Chris Ruffo, welcome to the show. Good to be with you. So on to begin with a PC rod in early 2024 titled The New Right Activism, a manifesto for the counter-revolution.

And there are a lot of interesting things in there, but the one I want to begin with is you write no institution can be neutral. So tell me why. Yeah, I mean, that's an obvious reality if you think about it for longer than a minute.

“And I think it's important to say because there's this mythology that we have in the United States.”

And it's a small liberal mythology that institutions can be neutral arbiters that they could be valueless vessels that achieve some kind of pragmatic or instrumental ends.

And for those of us who are on the outside of many powerful institutions, there's a lot of value in simply revealing the underlying reality.

And in fact, political fights are at heart, the fights for who determines the values, what values are are installed in an institution. And then therefore what kind of decisions get made. So let's take a lot of the arguments about institutions, particularly within the broad philosophical tradition of liberalism. Target that they can have neutral treatment. They can have neutral rules and a lot of for better and worse procedure in these institutions. Everything from notice and comment periods to different ways that they have to create transparency are about trying to create that capacity for people to be neutrally treated.

Do you think that's positive?

“No, I think neutrals are on word. I think what we're looking for is impartial and I would agree with that.”

Everyone should be treated equally as an individual under law, but that's impartiality, not neutrality. So in a criminal case, if you sentence somebody to the death penalty, you're not treating them neutrally, you're actually taking their life. Because the underlying law is a kind of moral code. And so I think neutral and impartial are similar, but in this case, can critically different. So another argument you make in that piece is you say, the popular slogan that facts don't care about your feelings,

betrays similar problems. So it's slogan being Ben Shapiro slogan. In reality, feelings almost always overpower facts.

Reason is a slave of the passions. Yeah, that's true. And we love Ben Shapiro, we're Ben Shapiro fans, of course.

“But I think that he's very wrong on that. And I think conservatives have made a fundamental error in latching on to that.”

And really what it is, it's a rationalization for losing. It's like, yes, we may have lost a great political question, which operates on emotions or passions. But we have the facts on our side. And if only people would read our white paper, our conversion analysis, our rigorous logical argumentation, then we would be vindicated. But look, while we should have the facts on our side, while we should use logic by itself, it's insufficient. And in fact, politics operates on a deeper level, an emotional level, and politics occurs on the on the field of sentiment and public opinion, much more on the field of, you know,

a lot kind of abstract argumentation at the top. So, and then you go on in the same piece to make an argument for a adchaprop. So adchaprop, old Soviet Union term for agitation and propaganda. Yeah, mashed up together. And it doesn't have a great reputation. Adchaprop is usually not a term of endearment, but you say, adchaprop doesn't mean sacrificing the truth, but rather channeling the truth toward victory. So, how do you define what adchaprop is? And what are you trying to explain to your fellow conservatives about how to use it?

So, right, I mean, if you're obviously, if you're conducting, say, propaganda on behalf of a falsehood, or evil, or an unjust cause, it's bad.

My point is that that's not always necessarily true if you're pursuing cause that is good and true and beautiful, if you look at the word propaganda.

The original meaning comes from the Catholic Church, and it was the propagation of the gospels, the propagation of the truth. And so, these are concepts that we can recover, because the reality is that all politics and the age of the printing press and onward depends on propaganda. And how do you define what propaganda itself is? propaganda is simply the method of communicating a political narrative. Again, we're using neutral, I'm going to say a true narrative, to a mass audience through the means of modern media.

It's a rhetorical argument intended to persuade the majority of people to cobble together a majority of public opinion. And look, this is again, for conservative especially, not new, you know, the founding fathers of this country wrote to each other about this, they wrote in public about this.

“We seem to have forgotten some of these lessons of how politics actually works, you have to persuade people what is persuasion, it's rhetoric, what is rhetoric at an industrial scale, it's propaganda.”

And connecting the question of propaganda to whether or not the end is aimed at a truth. How do you think about when you have untrue propaganda unleashing intense passions that's bad towards a true aim?

Because it's like, the truth doesn't always prevail, we can look at history, we can look at history, you know, and sometimes lies prevail.

“I think in 2020, and to 2024, or in the Woke Era, many lies prevailed.”

But what is so interesting about that line is the truth has a tendency to prevail, what I take from it is that, therefore, you always want to be on the side of the truth, even for your own pragmatic political ends, you always want to be on the side of the truth. And so look, certainly there are untrue elements or narratives on the right and on the left, I think a political movement to succeed has to have the discipline and integrity to go after it, but always to remember that if the truth has a tendency prevail, that's where you want to be.

And then your piece builds to this idea that quote in order to realize the ultimate promise of the political, there also must be something higher, a tealus, which is the Greek word for something like an ultimate and a final cause, a final cause.

So one reason I've been focusing on this piece is to understand the way you do York and what your work is, so what is your tealus?

“Well, politically speaking, let's say, let's leave it there. Yeah, I don't mean your family. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I want to have a restoration of the principles of our republic.”

And so if you're thinking about our republic, you're thinking about those guiding principles where they have strayed over the last 250 years. And I want to have a restoration of that and so I'm constantly looking backward at the founding and trying to understand it better and understand how to bring those principles forward. And so you want to have the principles of liberty and equality, you want to have a functioning healthy republic and you want to have a culture that is organized according to virtue.

And in particular, you know, the virtues of our western Anglo-American civilization. And through my personal observations around the world, as well as my study of the past, I think the Anglo-American civilization principles that have animated our republic for the last 250 years are still the best that we could hope for. I'm not perspective, we're 17 months into Donald Trump's second term. Is that all? It feels like a longer tell me about it. It feels like longer for you guys from this administration building the kind of country you want to see.

“Yeah, I think so. And here's how I would, here's how I would assess it.”

On the elements within Article II, so the executive power, I think Donald Trump has done almost everything he could do great people within administration have done almost everything they could do to advance this kind of vision of the country. And liberty equality virtue. Yes. And I think that the momentum was strong year one, I think it's trailed off in year two and you know, could that be the executive has lost some of its energy. Yes, could it be that, you know, public opinion has has has has soft and yes, could it be some of the foreign adventures or misadventures depending on who you talk to have distracted focus. I think yes.

The problem is that the president has a majority in Congress, but not 60 votes in the Senate. And so fundamental transformative legislation that I would like to see is impossible.

Make the case to me, the Donald Trump is restoring virtue. This is a hard case because what you're going to say is that Trump does not exhibit the kind of Christian virtues and his personal life, right? I'm not even thinking about personal life. I'm thinking about public life. Okay. Well, you tell me, I didn't claim he exhibits virtues. So you said that they're doing a pretty good job. Yeah, back Liberty equality in virtue. Correct. Make the case to me. Sure. I'll make you the case. And I'll make it through the particular example that I'm most familiar with. So one of my big campaigns, the last couple years was the fight to abolish DEI.

And so DEI was this idea that had been kind of germinating in the 90s and the 2000s, but really exploded into public life with universal adoption by most large institutions after 2020. And it was this idea that's very simple. That there are oppressor groups and oppressed groups in the United States because of the historical realities of our country and therefore to achieve to move towards equal outcomes. You have to treat individuals unequally according to their group identity. And the president on day one issued an executive order that was very much in line with the work that we have been doing.

To go and kind of wipe out the DEI bureaucracy throughout the federal government. And so in that case, I think that you could argue that the principle of equality and impartiality as we were discussing earlier had been restored.

Just recently in the last couple of weeks, the Department of Justice has taken a buzz saw to so-called disparate impact doctrine. Same idea. If there are unequal outcomes, it must therefore by definition be because of discrimination, therefore you have to remedy it by treating people unequally.

“So in this case, I think because this is the issue I've worked on and have been passionate about. I think that you can make an argument that liberty, equality, virtue have been restored.”

Are there other problems? Of course. Are we all the way there? No. But on the issues that I personally care about that I personally have worked on, I think the country is in a much better place than it was two years ago. And I think about when I think about Donald Trump and virtue is corruption. So I see Trump taking luxury aircraft from Qatar. I see his family getting involved in all kinds of crypto schemes where the investors and their crypto schemes in many cases seem to be people who have business before the family business before the country.

The New Yorker sort of did a, I think a quite conservative tallying up of how much money that Trump family and Trump have made or how much a net worth has increased that has been connected to the presidency.

The number was about $4 billion in this term.

It doesn't when I look at it, look virtuous. Yeah, look, here's my general perspective and I'll lay it out to you as honestly as I can. There are these issues that I work on that I'm passionate about that I feel like I have some control over or influence over and there are these issues that I don't.

And I think I've been very straightforward in the areas where I think the administration is falling short.

And certainly the perception and we'll see over time. I'm sure that there will be, you know, inquiries, investigations, etc. Into these business enterprises is bad. You're not going to get me to defend it. I'm perfectly happy calling out the administration where I think it's strayed or aired.

“This is one of those places. I mean, I remember the crypto launch, it was during the transition, I think, where they launched the Trump coin, right? And it's like, I don't like this, I don't want to see this, they shouldn't be doing that.”

And yeah, you're not going to get me to defend it.

Well, one of the things I'm touching into here is I've been watching the show and I see a growing vein of discomfort from you on at least what parts of the writer becoming.

So in December, you tweeted, the rights media apparatus is how the right teaches its followers how to think. And it's currently getting consumed by conspiracy, psychodrama and tablet conflicts. If left unchecked, it will turn the audience into the equivalent of a third world click form. So what's tell me about that? What's been alarming you? Yeah, sometimes you hear your quotes back to your like, oh, that's kind of very, very, very lively language. Yeah, this is a huge problem. And I don't, okay, so I'll put it this way.

There's a growing split between the institutional right and the online right.

“The institutional right, I think actually deserves credit for gatekeeping some of these kind of bad tendencies out of our institutions.”

And, and I think that's good. However, the, on right being like Fox News and yes. To serve the thing tanks, you know, the Manhattan Institute, all of the kind of the institutional layer of the professional right, let's say, I think it's done a very good job at gatekeeping some of these bad psychological and political tendencies out of our institutions. The problem that we're grappling with though, is that the traditional way of thinking about political media is always as an outgrowth of institutions. So you'd have your magazines, your newsletters, your think tank, you know, policy papers.

The internet has created, you know, kind of benefits, it costs and benefits. One of the benefits is the kind of ease of communication with a large audience, but one of the negatives is that you have the proliferation of insanity madness cycle pathology. And on the right, I think this one into hyperdrive after the assassination of Charlie Kirk was bubbling up before then, but really then took a turn. You have this tendency on the right, historically, you have like a kind of bircher tendency in the post-war era, and then it kind of waxes and wands over time.

And right now you have, in the online right, someone like Candace Owens, who has like departed so far from reality and yet has a massive audience. And I think that it's doing a disservice to the public and even more say kind of self-interestedly doing a very grave disservice to the right, because if you can't teach your audience, your followers, your political base, how to think properly, they're not going to behave properly and you're not going to have proper outcomes.

You're not within the movement and this is a fight that is happening now, and I think given sufficient amount of time, I think we'll win.

Why do you think you win? Because I look at the right and I see Tucker Carlson is current guys, which is a much more conspiratorial guys, and he's had before, has become more and more dominant figure as you know Candace Owens success has been startling.

“I guess I had asked this question in two two dimensions. What is the audience demand that they are meeting, right? What is it that they are providing that people want? And then I guess the second question is why do you think you'll win?”

Yeah, great question. So first of all, the audience for conspiracy theories is enormous.

Before his kind of legal trouble, someone like Alex Jones was making apparently millions of dollars selling vitamins and survival supplies, and if you think about it, to generate that kind of revenue requires a massive, if kind of quiet under the surface audience, and so I think they're really tapping into that side of the audience. Right wing, but not exclusively right wing, and in fact, a lot of the people who have come over to these conspiracy theories are in that part of the horseshoe, where their politics are, you know, let's say sub-ideological. They're more of a feeling, a perception, a set of resentments.

Second, how to conspiracy theories work? Conspiracy theories work for people who want to forfeit agency, for people who do not see the possibility of constructive action in their personal lives or in public life, and therefore the conspiracy theory gives them the rationalization and justification for their nihilism.

“It's, you know, insert here, right? It's this group. It's that group. It's this other group that is that is controlling the world, making everything impossible, assassinating our, our heroes, and this gives them a psychological key, right?”

That is self-reinforcing, because a conspiracy theory for conspiracy theorists can never be debunked, right? It's just one layer of the onion that gets peeled, and I'll tell you why I think we're going to win, because I've noticed this, even for people, let's say, in my kind of one degree of separation, conspiracy theories, and I think in particular anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, eventually fry your brain. So I think that we'll see a lot of these personalities, a lot of these psychological tendencies, kind of burn out on their own, and on top of that, as a kind of extra layer of anti-Semitic view on the history of anti-Semitism right there.

Well, okay, I'm saying in the near term, these things kind of wax and wind, but I think what I've seen in the United States is a greater set of antibodies than you might find elsewhere, and then institutionally for our side on the right. I think that, look, the people who run institutions are aware of the problem, they're confronting the problem, we're dealing with it, and to me, this is inevitable political coalitions are going to have some kind of mixture of the good and the bad, and the question is, who's in a position of leadership, what kind of courage and integrity they have, and can they succeed.

“I think that when I look at the field as it is, I think this, say, faction is less powerful than it was six months ago, a year ago, and I hope that trend continues.”

I think there's an interesting question and institutions in the right here. You, I forget if it's just a DIN quote or a CS Lewis quote, but he says one of them says that, when men stop leaving God, they don't believe in nothing, when men stop leaving God, they believe in everything, and I do think there's a dimension of that around institutions, where the right has become much more anti-institutional, I think the view that institutions cannot be neutral and largely can't even be impartial as much more widely held,

and there's been a sort of coordinated attack on many of the institutions in American life, but sort of new ones haven't emerged, right?

Could imagine the right and the left having parallel institutions that have different core values, because I do agree with you, actually, that institutions almost, they do always have values at their heart, and when you don't think they do, it just means you don't know what they are. But I think when they're being deliberately obscured, but I think sometimes about, I think Tucker Carlson is an interesting figure here, somebody who came up institutionally, I think sometimes about this speech he gave at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference.

And I saw Conservatives create many of their own media organizations, and I saw many of those organizations prosper, and I saw some of them fail, and here's the difference, the ones that failed, refused to put accuracy first.

But in any way, going to take a second seat to anybody in this room, I will say, honestly, if you create a news organization whose primary objective is not to deliver accurate news, you will fail.

You will fail. The New York Times is a liberal paper, but it's also in it is to its core liberal paper, it's also a paper that cares about whether they spell people's names right. By and large. It's a paper that actually cares about accuracy. Conservatives need to build institutions that mirror those institutions that are, that's, that's the truth. You don't believe me? So put aside the special pleading for the New York Times here.

Carlson tried to build his own media institution, the Daily Caller. Sure, I would say it did not. My impression of it is that it did not become a place that put accuracy first and became a kind of conservative New York Times and did not become a conservative New York Times. Over time he went in darker and darker directions as he chased the audience and now he's fully without institution.

“And as I think emerged, I'll put it this way into a form, I think when I listen to you, you find more concerning and problematic.”

So what do you think went wrong there? Yeah, well, look, this is a long term trend. This didn't emerge in 2009 or 2020. I think of it this way. The left is over institutionalized and the right is under institutionalized. This is all the time, man. Left is over form by institutions, the right is under formed. Correct. And so we have kind of opposite opposite problems.

And I think of it also in, in this way, I wrote a piece about this, I don't know, a long time ago, and I think it really, it really holds up. The left is organized as a capital P party and the right is organized under a capital P prince. So you have Donald Trump essentially sets the direction of the right for better for worse. Through personal charismatic power and his relationship with the conservative base. There's really no mediating institutions in the kind of way that you would see elsewhere.

That's where conservatives have figured out this formula for at least the time being to achieve political victory. It has benefits, it has problems. The left has the opposite problem.

“The reason why I think you get like presidential candidates on the left that seem to be like devoid of traditional charisma is because it's organized as an institutional apparatus or a capital P party.”

And so conservatives have a problem with institutions, conservatives have a problem building institutions. And this is the deepest irony, right? Is that conservatives in a healthy republic would be the ones that are preserving the institutions, restoring the institutions, maintaining the institutions. But conservatives have found themselves on the outside of institutions. So when we're talking about this concept of counter-revolution, it's a paradox, right? Because a counter-revolution is not necessarily a conservative impulse on the top.

You can have a conservative mission or goal that drives it. That's why it's a counter-revolution rather than a revolution. But conservatives are in this really interesting position where you have a lot of people on the intellectual right. They attend the Black Thai gala as they attend the events at the country club, the eat the salmon dinner at whatever hilton ballroom.

And I'm always looking around at these events because I'm always looking around and saying, "You guys are out of your minds.

You guys are operating as if the elk's lodge was still the formative institution of the United States. You're living in a fantasy. You're living in a nostalgia that isn't actually grappling with the fundamental problems in the country. And it's totally out of step with the very voters that you claim to represent. And so, look, this is a problem. I can't say that there's a snap your finger solution.

“And so, you have to start where you start. You know, I work for an institution that I think is the best in the business, the Manhattan Institute. I think we do good work that has a high degree of accuracy and rigor and intelligence.”

And I think that we've put up practical, political victories in a way that few others have. Another version of this is a line I like, is that the personality type of the left is bureaucratic and the personality type of the right is autocratic.

And I don't think that was always true. I don't think so.

I don't think so. I think in the Trump paradise. Okay, well, it make the case. There's a falling in line behind Donald Trump. So here's my view of the two coalitions right now. The genius of Donald Trump in the 2024 election was he collapsed the multi-dimensional test of party loyalty that existed in the previous Republican Party where you, you know, prolife.

And certainly the multi-dimensional agenda test you see on the left, that to a single point of loyalty.

Did you support him personally? If you did, there was actually room for a wide variety of other opinions. You could be a technical future. A podcast. You could be a Christian traditionalist.

You could be a archive junior who'd been running as a Democrat just a year or two before. But also you could be Ted Cruz. And what held that together is that the line that you could not cross was Trump himself. But as long as you're useful to him, you could be on the team.

“Now, that has obvious issues when you move into governance and I think some of them have have emerged.”

But it gave him and them a freedom of movement across other issues where, you know, a Kamala Harris, a Tim walls, Joe Biden,

or much more box checking, right? This sort of multi-dimensional loyalty test that the left uses. And so, on left you end up with, and I mean here the left, not like the Democratic social stuff, but the left coalition in this country, broad Democratic party. You end up with people who have sort of all of the right views and have an institutional personality, right? That are some at risk of us are worried about getting in trouble to meeting. And on the right, you have people who, they'll go crazy in a meeting. You can be Bill Pulti.

But as long as the boss likes you, you're safe. Okay, yeah, I think that there are elements of that that are true. It prints versus party. It's a method of political organizations, psychological organizations, certainly one of Trump's kind of the great litmus test for him is personal loyalty. We've seen that. With Trump, he's with you, you cross him and he'll attack you. You can be Kim Jong-un.

They were fighting against you. They were fighting against you. It's like a nice buddy comedy. Yeah, I feel like there would be a buddy comedy. You like Kim Jong-un, more like Mark Carney.

Yeah, well, you know, fair enough, and as personal chemistry goes.

“But yeah, I think there's some truth to that, but I wouldn't, therefore, I think your conclusion is overdrawn.”

I don't think you could say that right has autocratic personalities. I mean, I do with conservatives all the time. I don't see that as a psychological tendency. But the people I work with, the people I talk to, my friends and neighbors. But so, yeah, I think it's overdrawn.

I think this is just a question of political organization from the top. And I don't think it's total just loyalty, personal loyalty. I mean, Trump wants immigration restrictions, strong national borders, build a wall. He wants kind of American national interspace foreign policy, although that is kind of a little bit on the outs. And then he represents, or at least championed a lot of the causes that I cared about, care about.

You know, on DEI, on higher education, on cultural institutions. You know, and a whole host of other sub issues that he really grabbed onto. And look, this is good. You kind of have to work with what is there.

You want to, you always want to plan for the future, build for the future,

but ultimately you're faced with decisions in the moment.

“And look, on the whole, I think in those areas where we have had more freedom of movement,”

more ability to execute policy, I think things have been going quite well. [Music] I'm Peter Baker. I'm Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. I cover the president of the United States and I've covered every president since 1996. The pressure on an independent press today feels greater than any time I've seen it in four decades as journalists.

All that pressure, though, is just a reminder of why journalism matters. Our job is to bring home facts, help our readers understand what's happening, regardless of what the consequences may be to us. And if the punish us so be it, we will still go out there and report as honestly and aggressively and fairly and truthfully as we can. I mean, if the New York Times were not at the White House asking the hard questions, looking for stories behind the stories,

trying to understand what's going on, it's possible these questions don't get asked. Independent reporting requires resources. You can support it by subscribing to the New York Times at nytimes.com/subscribe. [Music] Go back to Tucker. So I've seen you talk about your take on his evolution.

that in that era, they were a unifying script for the right.

That Fox News was this institutional structure around him. He contained him to a certain point, and that created a unity coherence that has now dissolved, not just around him specifically, but around the right more broadly. Now the liberal take on Tucker in the Fox News era, is that he was beginning to bring a white national strain into centrality in the Republican Party, but you know, there were all these daily stormy articles about how much he was saying exactly what they thought he was talking about

great replacement theory. And you've got to ask yourself, as you watch the historic tragedy that is Joe Biden's immigration policy, what's the point of this? They are flooding this country with immigrants in order to change the demography to maintain political power for themselves, to change the racial mix of the country. That's the reason to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here

and dramatically increased the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the third world. Now I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if he used the term replacement.

“But they become hysterical because that's, that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it. That's true.”

He had already in our view become quite conspiratorial and that what he is now and what he is then are a straight line from each other. And that the sort of passions he was unleashing, right, reason of course being a slave of such passions,

that it was always going to go in one direction and that celebrating what he was at that moment,

and then being confused by what he is at this moment, is a kind of, like a strange unwillingness to either grapple one or the other. So tell me how you see it. Yeah, I don't see it that way. I mean, when Tucker was on Fox at that 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. a Western time for me. It really did feel like a shelling point for the right. It was like a quarterback calling the plays every night at 8 o'clock and that first, you know, five to 10 minutes,

where Tucker kind of condensed the opinion, represented the opinion, reflected back the opinion. And then everyone had a central point, a central coherent point to think about, to talk about, to mobilize on. And it was very effective.

So even in my own experience, when I first started reporting on critical race theory in the institutions,

when on Tucker gave a kind of opening monologue with Tucker, President Trump was watching it. Got a call from the White House the next morning. Hey, the president saw you on TV. He wants to take action on critical race theory. Come to the White House. Let's get this thing done. And so that mechanism that even in my personal experience, the loop on that was, like, less than 12 hours.

Very tight loop. And I think also what I've learned about Fox News is that Fox News has, and this is to, to its great credit, Fox News has kind of disciplinary function.

“And I think especially after 2020 has become even more cognizant of, okay, message discipline is important,”

moving the message forward is important. Here's the kind of guardrails for, for the narrative. This is a function of, of institutions, a function of technology. Yes, but what I'm talking about is what the narrative itself is. I agree with you. The Tucker played this role when he was on Fox News. But the thing that many of us who, I mean, I knew Tucker before many of us who had watched him for a long time from,

a good time libertarian. But what, what's specific, you're invoking, like the daily, it's like, I don't know anything about the daily stormer beyond, you know. He talked a bunch about greater place, but they're, I mean, this has been, this has been exhaustively documented. I mean, there are bargaries of the guy that times did a bunch of work on this. The bringing in of a macro narrative that there was a function of, it's called a cabal of elites,

importing brown voters to replace you, that you are being betrayed by elites representing foreign interests and foreign people to sort of alter the culture of this country to their benefit. With something he hammered all the time. Fox News is reporting cited that the administration awarded 107,000,000 to a George Soros linked organization, which exists to quote, "help young border crossers avoid deportation."

“Now, why is some foreign-born billionaire allowed to change our country fundamentally?”

That's the big question. Right, a relentless focus on crime from immigrants, a relentless focus on George Soros. And so to me, I see Tucker now, I see Tucker then. And I agree, the shockers are awful little bit, but I see him calling the same play.

I don't think that's right.

“And I think it, let's take the, you're presenting it in a way that is very charged.”

I don't think quite fair, but let's take the numbers of charges. But let's take the narrative that you're referring to, I don't think that that's exactly how I would put it certainly. But the underlying facts are either true or not true.

And in this case, demographic change has been and is a reality in the United States.

And I think it's fair to talk about that politically. We've been talking about it politically for 10 years. And you could do it in a way that is exemplifies a bigotry or discrimination, of course. But you can also do it in a way that isn't an expression of bigotry or discrimination. But in fact, it's just a basic question.

A question that people in the United States have been asking since the 1770s. Who are we? What is an American? And if we are a sovereign nation, we have the, not just the right, but really the obligation to determine these great questions of who comes in, who doesn't come in.

And so I don't think that it is right to say that someone who is concerned about rapid and large scale demographic change is kind of a white nationalist.

“That seems like the kind of, I'm saying that the reason I think Tucker is a white nationalist is due to all the white nationalism.”

Well, let me ask a question on them. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I mean, that is a huge charge. And I just, again, what is the evidence of that? Can you be concerned about mass demographic change without being racist? I think the answer is yes. I do find a white nationalist.

Well, you, you make the charge you define it and substantiate your point. So I think that Tucker's view is that the tick ticker out of it, just making an in general argument. I think that there is a straightforward view in white nationalism that there is such a thing as a white race that race is fundamentally European came here and founded this country. That race has depending on the variant of white nationalism we're talking about genetic advantages or cultural advantages and that that race deserves to have should have dominance, particularly over this country.

There are harder and softer versions of this, right, in some versions Jews are included in that white race, sure, in some versions they're not included in that white race. In some versions we are talking about something I would describe primarily as a kind of nationalism, right, the, you know, if you have too much of a country, not sharing a common heritage, you lose solidarity. In some cases we're talking about something much darker than that, right, there are people who just don't like the way their community is changing and there's the KKK, right, everything exists on a spectrum.

But would you say someone who is, like, for example, hesitant about rapid large scale demographic change is just a kind of one person white nationalist because that would be like the majority of the country. Yes, I don't think it is a problem or unfair or even wrong to worry about large scale rapid demographic change. So to maybe to be more specific about Tucker, so you just had on the right wing writer Scott Greer, he's got a book coming out on the online right called white pill. So Greer was a former deputy editor at the Daily Caller.

He left in 2018 after pass writings for white national site were dug up and he once said of Tucker, so this is Greer speaking, Tucker is ultimately on our side. He can get millions and millions of boomers to not along with talking points that would have only been seen on v-dair or American Renaissance a few years ago, these are both white national sites. So I guess what do you make of that? Yeah, so I'll tell you what I make of it and here's what I think is really interesting about some of these figures who were on the once kind of fringe elements of the right who have in some ways seen the errors of that way of ideological thinking.

To me, you always want to leave people room to grow up, room to leave bad ideas behind room for kind of critical self reflection and then to integrate back into the kind of mainstream thinking.

“And I think Scott Greer is interesting one of the reasons why we interviewed him was to kind of chart out this trajectory, which there's a lot of people that had more radical politics and then they moderate over time.”

So I was very interested in understanding that process of kind of ideological development and growth and then and then really scrutinizing you want to actually try to figure out all right well what's the way out of that.

So I'm not against you talking to him at all right what I'm saying is not that you should interview Scott Greer sure.

“I think many people change their politics dramatically and one of the big problems that the left actually has is not giving people space to change sure and putting people into a.”

A box where they're held in who they were as opposed to who they may become my problem is not with the younger. I'm saying that I looked at Tucker in that period and thought he's going in this direction that I understand this to be.

The argument of you know a v-dair of a and they all celebrated him but I guess the question is whether to phrase a question precisely which maybe I haven't yet whether.

One of the lessons of where he has gone and where some of the right has gone is that people like you on the right were a little insensitive to when something wasn't just. A breaking of a liberal taboo but was a movement towards a politics that was much more let's call it white identity focused. Look okay huge point I would break it down in a couple ways one I don't think that's that's quite accurate I actually think that the the the statement you're reading and you could probably read it from a number of other people right if you remember in 2016.

Richard Spencer famously held like some sort of conference or group and he said I guess Trump has has adopted you know Trump is a creation of the alt right it was completely delusional.

“Totally self-serving and and a product of narcissism that I wouldn't take at face value and so I think a lot of the radical elements you're talking about overstate.”

This relationship because they desperately want it to believe it and I think that you know someone like Tucker I don't I don't think it's accurate to say that Tucker on Fox in you know 2021 was laundering in you know talking points from. That's true I think it's conflating a kind of maybe superficial opposition to immigration and and the conflation game is is really really I think dishonest and unfortunately for a lot of time it worked and so I think that in fact we're in a much better place than in the past and I remember some of these groups like.

I think it's a big deal SPLC media matters you know they came after me with many many smears trying to destroy my reputation trying to get me to platform from social media trying to to kind of eliminate me from the public sphere none of it worked thankfully they sell you I would also add. Back the arguments that they were making were were were preposterous and they only succeeded because people felt fear and so I'm glad that we don't live in that condition of fear anymore and today we can talk very reasonably across a table which I think is good.

“But I'm certainly not going to forget the emotional tone and the political vulnerabilities of that era and again the SPLC that was coming after me because of God knows what.”

Was at the same time giving money to neo nazis and white nationalists to keep them afloat and what that shows me is that the supply of racism in the United States and including racism on the right in the United States has dwindled to such a small degree in real life. But it took the SPLC to actually inject cash into that ecosystem merely to keep it alive and so I just I just don't yeah everything about persuasive well one way of thinking about that period that I think is how I think about it is that two things were sort of true at the same time.

One there was way too much speech policing there was too much cancellation there was too much that instead of being willing to have arguments people just try to make the arguments unhappy. And I don't deny any of it and on the other hand a lot of what people more on the left in that moment were afraid of or what they predicted also happened the alt rate moved much more from the fringe to the center. I always think about right was totally destroyed after Charlottesville I I think maybe different people what they all represent it which is enough but I think a lot of ideas that were very very very far from the center I think about Elon Musk and him writing I mean later hit like try to figure out how to apologize for this and but once I'm being said like the Jews have been funding.

You have spoken the truth and then he had to go for Auschwitz and things like okay the Auschwitz.

“So but you know even now Musk is very conspiratorial and where he is in 2026 now the world's first truly narrow owning you know what you should be Twitter.”

And the things he like kind of pumps into the.

I think we're true right I think there are many ways which left one too far and the thing the forces left were was worried were there.

Our much closer to the center yes are parts of the alt right that are not significant today Richard Spencer is not a significant figure Nick Fuentez has a bigger audience than Richard Spencer ever did sure and there is I mean when I'm on X and other places the amount of just constant. Anti-Semitism and anti-Indian racism I see just happening in people's mentions is wild to me and I mean I don't think he'll win but you look at fish back who's running for governor in Florida it's sort of almost unimaginable to.

Think of somebody like him being a figure in Republican party politics who would be commanding supportive part of anybody and I think the reason that people worry about him is they don't think he's going to win but he seems to be doing very well among the young right sure and so.

“I think you can hold your view which I at least partially share that there are many ways in which the left and the speech policing and the.”

Boundaries went too far and also a lot of the people who are most hair on fire in that period had a point and some of their more kind of.

Boundaries went too far and some of their own predictions I think about like if you had told me that Trump is going to make RFK junior HHS secretary and Tulsi Gabbard DNI and try to make the triumphant bipartisan and try to make Matt Gates attorney general I would have thought that was like an unhinged like the resistance substeck take and then it all happened so it's like the fact you can have these things be true at the same time. I think I think you're you're kind of understating kind of understating the dynamic on one side I mean it wasn't just about speech policing.

After 2020 the left maintained a kind of apparatus of social annihilation and I went through it myself I had the ACLU subpoena me and harass me with a law fair campaign that cost me a lot of money I had the espilc in the ADL put beyond some sort of hate list that was totally bogus trying to destroy my reputation and so I had people you know. Threats of violence against me that were very credible at the time and so you know people trying to get you know going after my family my kids I mean.

“We shouldn't forget just how awful that period was and how insane that period was and unfortunately well I think that many of the institutions on the left have learned after having suffered some consequences for enabling that.”

The movements that they have sparked are in fact alive and well and look I think the difference that maybe you're not seeing is that the radical nihilistic and violent left wing movements have the full support of the left institutions. What we're talking about is a radical nihilistic movements on the right do not have any institutional support and our bubble up in your Twitter comments which again don't agree. But it is different in kind not just in quantity and in the case of someone like James fish back I think it's a great test fish back is very charismatic I think we would all agree on that I talk with your colleague Michelle Goldberg about this.

But even with a kind of individual charisma if he's like the group or candidate for governor of Florida which is again like kind of a crazy thing that that is happening, I want to see the actual vote tally because that's going to show me where he is where he stands with the actual conservative population conservative vote or the conservative movement as a whole. I suspect that he's going to get absolutely trounced it happened with Vivek running against the guy Casey puts in Ohio he got blown out by I don't know 60 70 points and so by contrast you look at something like the the kind of trans ideological movement that I think is both kind of ally it's grounded and in a series of falsehoods maintain this.

Suppressive threatening, sensurious power in the kind of pre-Elon Twitter days and in the general kind of woke years and then look another uncomfortable fact per capita has committed more mass violence than any other group and so I am willing to indulge in and I think it's important to have a kind of criticism of let's say you know the elements of my own side.

Completely distraught for for weeks and again like while I don't support you know James fish back for governor.

Again, I think that that's kind of an empty symbolism where I was on the other side it feels like these ideologies have the support of the institutions they wielded power irresponsible in the past and still have the kind of ultimate political threat threat of violence that I know everybody in my world. You know has seen has experienced has has feared and so. I mean that crown's make us do not see that is I don't have the same view of it but let me hold as saying that your experience of it I understand right and as somebody who also you know.

“Sometimes heels with threats of violence and sure things of that nature. I think the way this often looks to people I'm left pretty looks right now is that.”

When you say. These nihilistic I think you call them ideals ideas are not held at high levels of the right they're only supported institution on the left. I see it the opposite way right I see the opposite way and I'll explain why.

I don't see the SPLC the southern poverty law center as like a powerful potent left wing actor not really they could 10 years ago they could new key like if they go under my thing.

80 L I don't even see is on the left which is a different question I understand but I see the Trump administration is powerfully and and we're going to use the power of the federal government from you know deploying ICCBP agents to different cities to directing the DOJ who to investigate and go after to after Charlie Kirk's murder trying to get people fired who are just sort of random people who had done shitty tweets. Do not see a world in which there is this huge separation between the extreme elements of the right and the administration I keep hearing from people like you.

“Right who I think is talked about this that there's a huge number of corporates working in.”

House and Senate offices in Congress that you know Bronze Age pervert is one of the most popular people to read if you're a Trump staffer and I see those things actually moving into things like. National security strategies you know about the civilizational suicide of of Europe now I recognize we're not going to agree on all this right this this part I'm not going to try to like bridge the. Sure gap what I will say is that the other thing I think people on left see has been a sort of movement from.

You know 2016 to 2024 where it's almost unbelievable how far things have gone right even Trump wanted Trump to are very very different beasts and so all of a sudden it doesn't look impossible to imagine.

“That front days in Carlson and fish back are the future not the fringe I think a lesson has been burned into many of us is it.”

It is dangerous to dismiss something that seems to have a lot of energy around it as a fringe because what is today's fringe is tomorrow's. Maybe not center but much more live and potent political force. And would you say that you saw that that happened on the left between you know 2014 and and 2024 absolutely yeah. Yeah in part I think you guys are about to learn some lessons we learned. Yeah I mean maybe so but I would argue that actually the right has done a better job at managing it and I think we'll see and I hope I'm right.

Something like the fish back campaign you know I think of James fish back as a human meme is like amazing he's like if you take the memetic energy from that corner of the online discourse and turn it into a human being it's like it would look and sound like James fish back.

But the reality is that once those ideas gained contact with the the people the culture the institutions on the right they're not going anywhere.

Let me try to frame this more and then let me try to frame this more in terms of arguments I've seen you making sure. And tell me if I get a chain in this wrong you tell me where I will right. I think you think you now have a problem with a racialist right.

There are scary for a lot of people on the right to watch people accusing Israel of it to eventually see people accusing turned points USA of it or some kind of plot from the people around him I think has been for major major figures on the right.

To be making those arguments has seemed to me to be a kind of shocking moment for a lot of you.

And then I've watched you and others you know on X and elsewhere like looking your mentions and be like oh shit there's a lot of racism here. Something's happening here tell me which part of this you don't agree with yeah well I mean. Here's how I see it and and your your general analysis is correct so there is a racialist right let's say I've been writing about this for a number of years.

“But I think a lot of it is something of an optical illusion where.”

And you see this on the on on let's say on the left where a small group of people that is very loud online appears to represent a larger share of political coalition or the general population.

Then it really does and so look.

I don't want a racialist right that is that is like a clear a clear position on my part. And I think to the extent that we have like antisemitic conspiracy theories bubbling up from the digital sphere it's a problem that we have to deal with and of untruth or falsehood that should be called out for what it is. And and what I think it is. At at heart is that. And I've talked to a lot of young right when guys so I sometimes I'll I'll have.

Launcher dinner when I'm in DC or elsewhere with younger guys and just say hey you know kind of walk me through like what's happening for people like we're older now. You know you and I are our our middle age now so say hey walk me through this thinking and then not kind of an on judgment will just kind of help me understand what's happening with some of the more kind of radical or racialist young young man and this is the the description that they give. They say you know. These are guys who hit high school during COVID they they kind of transitioned into an almost a purely digital life with all of their ass rabbit holes you could get into.

They came of age as a as a function of your kind of entering adulthood during the kind of George Floyd hysteria where their teachers at school their media.

“But you know institutions the government everyone was saying you know you're a young white man you're the problem you're the oppressor you're evil you should be denied opportunities because of your biology because of your your your your ancestry.”

And essentially that they were programmed by the kind of George Floyd hysteria into thinking racially and instead of what I think is the the the proper and the correct response which is to say. We've got to move beyond this we're going to fight this racialist thinking on the left on the right wherever it comes from they essentially psychologically submitted to it. But then reverse the polarity. I don't think that's a good way to pursue it I don't think on the kind of philosophical question it's it's it's right I don't think that from the practical political.

Conception it's it's it's fruitful but in a certain way it's like I get it understand it young people are. You know kind of in a position of growing up and having a chip on your shoulder I think it's extremely destructive and what I see as. The the antidote to this at least within my political coalition. Is to be you know an older brother figure to say hey I could get why you think that however the actual path to success is this other way so I don't think that. I don't think that this is like predetermined I actually think that young people have have.

You know they're they're brain is instead they're brain is it locked in in its ways and so I think you you want to bring people who are frustrated. Towards a better path and and I think that someone like can to someone who's just like driving people into a ditch.

“You have to kind of guide them away from that so I think first there's truth to that narrative I do think that one of the things that happened over the past decade or so.”

And this is you know somebody I talk about my first book why we're polarized is there is a huge upsurge in.

Telling people that the right way to understand life America is all through the lens of identity groups. And when you tell people look at identity groups they will form a more coherent sense of their own. And then a line I have in that book is identity activates under threat sure and so the more you tell people that their identity is a problem. The more they're going to begin to defend that identity and feel that identity and begin to self define around that identity.

The and I think that you would also can you would also agree perhaps that you know the institutions the legal system the prevailing narrative.

University's corporations etc. I was explicitly anti white for a number of years that for these young people were formative.

“I think it's sometimes moved into being anti white.”

I would not say it was all. I mean I did do hundreds of reports on this for institutions. I don't say there was thanks corporations. I will say it is white man bad if you wanted to just put it into kindergarten language white man bad. And I was the dominant position. I remember telling people I remember telling people around me that.

This thing where people are putting out like papers on. What are the. Negative traits of whiteness. Was a disaster right.

So I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think there's truth to it.

And if we can legally performative action DEI was institutional government back discrimination against one racial group. So. The thing that I'm interested in though here is that you're now in power and a lot. You call it on a farm in Washington state. You're not your executive orders get past the whole thing.

And these things can all go in better or worse directions. These are all longstanding energies in American life. The sort of argument I'm going to make to be, you know, cards on the table about what I'm doing. Please.

“Is it I think the empirical and epistemological structures on the right.”

And the habits they took on in order to win are playing with passions at a very dangerous. Like a, I'll give a good example this sure. You can believe what you want about whether or not the immigration of Haitians. In the Springfield, Ohio was good or bad. The people that city had mixed views on it.

I mean, the mayor and others were very pro and it had been good for the economy. And Springfield had been in a period of decline and then you had a large Haitian influx. And then you get into this thing that happened in 2024 about Haitians eating cats and dogs. Where there's a Facebook post and the right all the way up to Donald Trump and one of the debates. Because adopting it, you sort of go on a quest to try to figure out if it's true.

And, you know, to shorehand a long story. Maybe in Dayton, Ohio. There was somebody who wasn't Haitian. Correct. Who maybe somebody thought, but other people didn't think had eaten a cat.

What somebody and other people is quite is quite important. People can read your piece. They can read the drop site news article. I'm not going to convince you. But the drop site news article, they went out to debunk my story.

And they ended up finding another independent corroborating witness. So it's not how I read it now. I read it. But I am on some level. I'm not even focused on that.

What I'm saying is that when you get very into moves like we are going to accuse broad communities of eating cats and dogs, which I think we can all agree. Haitians are not in general eating cats and dogs. You are going to unleash forms of anger and hatred and fear that are not controllable. And I think one of the mistakes the right has made.

And frankly people I give made is thinking these passions can then be crawled again. This idea that you can find these really high passion like mimetic containers. The thing you say, well, the real issue here is just we want to have a conversation about how much is the appropriate level. Of Haitian immigration into Springfield, Ohio, but that the way you get people to care about it, J.D. Vance of this very explicitly, is it well people really care about the cats and dogs.

The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat means. If I have to, if I have to, if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,

“then that's what I'm going to do data because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

Which, again, I think my view is that there has never been any heart evidence of that happening in the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio.

Nobody has suggested that and nor have you. Correct. Right. I haven't met in so many. In fact, I've said, look, there's no evidence of this particular claim.

We should be more careful. And so there's been a kind of consistent, like, this idea that you can unleash, like, really, I think quite terrible passions, and then hold it to a level that is controllable and what you're seeing with Candice Owens, what you're seeing with the new Tucker Carlson or the old Tucker Carlson, everyone to call it. What you're seeing with Nick Fuentes and the rise of Nick Fuentes, who we've not really talked about,

but I think is a, a necessary figure of thinking in the way we think about this, is that there wasn't a way to stop that move.

to to stop it that the place that's going on the right, when you talk about it becoming a third world click farm,

is quite dangerous and quite grim. And now I will say everything. Okay. Oh, man. All right.

Where do I start? A couple, a couple. I gave you a lot there. A couple, a couple huge problems. I mean, one is that, you know, and I'm doing reporting California right now,

that has, that has stories that have a similar kind of, let's say shock value. For example, we did a story on migrants from Mexico and Honduras who come to San Francisco, get free sex change surgeries from the California State medical system. This is a kind of explosive story that is true that represents,

“I think, a lot of these underlying questions about homelessness policy,”

about immigration, et cetera. Look, if it's true, it's fair game and there's a way to handle these stories in a responsible way that you ensure the facts that you present it fairly and that you use it as a method of changing public opinion. But that's how it's supposed to work. And so I think that the idea that there are taboos that cannot be crossed because they will unleash these kind of unspecified or vague dangerous passions.

I think this is a problem in two regards. One is that if you're, if you're going for a truth seeking, if you're playing a kind of responsible rhetorical game, no, I don't think that these questions are out of bounds at all.

But second, the predictions have always been, you know,

that it's going to unleash some kind of horrible, nativeist violence, et cetera. But the only example of an ideological driven assassination that we've talked about today is this assassination of Charlie Kirk, this kind of prophecy of political violence is really comes from the institutional ideologies on the left, not the institutional ideologies on the right. And I think that that fact has been hammered home over and over and over these last few years.

And look, like those of us on the right who are in this business, you know, probably have to have like, you know, a little bit more firmness to say, no, the facts are not on your side in this argument. So let me be more specific about what I'm saying, because I'm not making a vague prophecy of political violence. And I'm also not saying that there are these taboos you shouldn't touch.

“I think what I'm disagreeing is to say that there actually isn't truth seeking here.”

There isn't enough truth in these arguments. There's too much of an attractive argument. So the, I mean, arguments like the Haitian cats and dogs will talk, we'll talk about others in this time. Yeah, yeah. And the thing I'm worried about has arrived, right? I'm not talking about an unspecified future in which I am concerned.

The right will increasingly be taken over by conspiratorial racist misogynistic elements. I'm looking at a world where Nick Fuente is a major figure on the American right. Well, you guys are doing a great job at raising his profile. Yes. Yes.

And as a guy who raised his profile, which I think was a mistake. I think it was legitimate to say Tucker is the biggest figure in right wing media. And he brought Nick Fuente is because and gave him such a gentle kind interview. And Tucker, here's one thing I don't underestimate with Tucker. He's fucking good.

He's a good interviewer.

He is incredible talent as a media figure.

“If you want to cut that guy apart, he could have as he did to my cuckoo be when he wanted to do that.”

Or to dead crews when he wanted to do that. Those who bless Israel will be blessed. And those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of thing. Those who bless the government of Israel.

Those who bless Israel is what it says. Don't say the government of it says the nation of Israel. So that's in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that. Where is that?

I can find it. I don't have the the description off the tip of mind. You pull out the phone and use this in jail. It's in Genesis. But so you're quoting a Bible phrase. You don't have context for it.

You don't know where the Bible it is. But that's like your theology. I'm confused. And he did it. Because I think Tucker understands quite well where the passions are and where the energy is.

And when I hear you sometimes, I hear you being more concerned about this. You're a little chiller in in this. And I recognize you're talking to, you know, in New York Times podcast studio. But what I'm saying is I actually don't think the balance is right. That I think for some time people've been, you know,

There's a view to, you know, it's you all take him seriously, not literally.

Sure. View that. Yeah, the thing that is being said maybe doesn't. I'm hoping that you can give me a little bit more though.

“Because I'm saying, well, what are you actually saying?”

Or give, and give you a little bit of interest was on a podcast. I mean, are you saying the point is not a big figure now, And it's not influential among young people on the right. Is that really, would you really make that argument? No, I would make a slightly different argument.

I think that Nick Fuentes is not a fundamentally political figure.

He's a hyper real figure of spectacle.

That, again, is you can make sure that you're in a different relation. You're going to read my writings on this on this exact question. I think he's, I think he's a bad influence. What I've cautioned people on the right about that genre of personality is that When someone goes on a video and says, you know, I love Hitler.

Obviously, we don't love Hitler. We're not neither of us are our fans of Hitler.

“But you should resist the temptation to be scandalized.”

And shock and lose your capacity to reason and perceive it correctly. Because what this is, it is a hyper real spectacle, Optimized for digital algorithms, to harvest attention and to harvest clicks.

It's not actually political in that sense.

It's not optimized towards any political outcomes. I just reject this idea that, you know, some dumb kid that has, you know, hijacked the algorithm with, like superficial ideological spectacle is somehow there, therefore a symbolic of where people, where the right is going as a whole.

I think hyper real is doing work in this argument that is not actually connected to what hyper real means. I can imagine somebody sitting in front of me. You're sitting in front of me here in 2015. And a stronger handsome man. And you tell me this about Donald Trump.

Tell me what, tell you what, listen, you all are being easily provoked. You're looking at a hyper real algorithmically oriented, attentional spectacle and treating it like it's a serious political force. And then maybe if I had been wiser about what Donald Trump represented, and the way in which the hyper real and the real we're going to converge in the life that we actually lead here.

I would have said, no, attention is the fundamental currency of modern American politics. Sure. Things that are, we have actually fewer defenses against things that feel fundamentally ridiculous. Things that are, this is an era of the trickster spirit, not the, the earnest energies. And many people like me, I mean, you may remember this,

Huffington Post initially would only cover Donald Trump's campaign in its celebrity and entertainment news structure. I don't remember that. Because he was a ridiculous hyper real spectacle and to treat it as a serious thing would have been absurd. I think many of us were perfectly willing to say Nick Funtase is a marginal absurdist figure. And then it became clear in the Tucker Carlson moment and given where Tucker has gone,

that there's like a conveyor belt of these ideas. And they go from the fringe to the far right to the slightly less far right to Donald Trump. Okay. Well, here's where I would, here's where I would, where I would disagree. And you actually have a real world test, right? These kind of ideological media figures are playing a very different game than Donald Trump was playing.

And you know that because Donald Trump actually played the game. He announced for president and he against the odds against many of the institutions he won.

“And so you have to say, yeah, Trump also uses media.”

That's like, you know, that's a superficial comparison. You have to say, what is the actual goal and the goal for like the streamers is not to pass legislation. It's not to win elections. It's not to cobble together a majority. But it's in fact, it's kind of a narcissistic endeavor to get personal attention.

And so, but that's the end point. There's no actual bridge that that can go over. And look, that's, but because it changed minds, there can't have changed people's politics. It could change minds, but like, you know, not to the extent that you think because people look at it more as a form of entertainment, soap opera, personality drama than an actual viable political move.

And so, yeah, I think that you're kind of conflating the media spectacle with the, the fundamental political arena. And I think that boundary is not as permeable as you're suggesting. And in fact, to make that boundary more explicit is better in my view for my own kind of political desire, but also better for the country. And so, when I see, you know, when I see the online, right, and the, and the New York Times, both doing like tough pieces on the latest,

This is a stock character in American discourse, and I just refuse to take the bait.

I don't think David Duke is a marginal figure. I mean, I, I, well, you don't think David Duke is a marginal figure.

“There's what I mean, I think John Gans, who's a sort of, he's a great subject and is a sort of interesting,”

history-based theorist of American politics. He's got this book about the 90s called, when the clock broke, I believe. And I've had him on to talk about the book, and the argument he would make about David Duke about a bunch of figures who rose in that period, Patrick Buchanan, same of Francis, is that if you look at what they were figuring out about politics, I mean, David Duke, by the way, we should know, Rand for office. He did not come that far from winning for Louisiana governor. Yeah, in the 90s.

And, you know, there was a style of politics that they got kind of quite good at figuring out, and Gans is view,

and I agree with this view, is it much of what the populist right is today is built on that often quite explicitly with Samuel Francis and others. Okay, make your, make your case. Absolutely not. I mean, look, for those of us who are, look, I'm in the institutional right. I know the people, I know the personalities, I know the organizations, that figure is a pain in the ass. Nobody wants it, nobody likes it, nobody believes in it.

And in fact, that figure, as we found out recently with the revelations about the southern poverty law center, is not only a useful tool for institutions on the left, but in many cases, was actually secretly funded by the kind of left wing civil rights outfit,

known as the SPL treatment, David Duke, not David Duke in particular who knows,

but I'm saying that same David Duke is maybe a left wing plant. Yes, I think that's ridiculous. I'm not saying that I'm not saying that in the sense of totally holy created, but certainly used by, right, the whole idea was this kind of smear effect where the media would go out and say, "This bad person supports your campaign and then you'd have to disavow and go through this whole,

this whole kind of routine." But the point I'm kind of interested in here is, I mean, my view,

“and I think this is a fairly wide-held view,”

is my worries that the institutional right is getting steamrolled. I am, by, well, one, in many cases, in order to survive, it is dramatically changing what it is, like the heritage foundation. Sure. In other cases, by Donald Trump, Donald Trump was not the candidate of the institutional right.

In the institutional right, had its way Jeb Bush would have been the nominee. I mean, the idea that the institutional right has been rackin' up victory after victory, is ridiculous. I mean, Republicans all speak her after speaker after speaker until they got one who was more like properly compliant. Sure.

The institutional right has not had a strong winning record, and, again, part of my argument here is that,

“I think this is because it keeps thinking it can maybe control these forces in it can't.”

I'm Peter Baker, I'm Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. I've covered the President of the United States and I've covered every president since 1996. The pressure on an independent press today feels greater than any time I've seen it in four decades as journalists. All that pressure, though, is just a reminder of why journalism matters. Our job is to bring home facts, help our readers understand what's happening,

regardless of what the consequences may be to us. And if they punish us so be it, we will still go out there and report as honestly and aggressively and fairly and truthfully as we can. I mean, look, if the New York Times were not at the White House asking the hard questions, looking for stories behind the stories, trying to understand what's going on, it's possible these questions don't get asked.

Independent reporting requires resources. You can support it by subscribing to the New York Times at nytimes.com/subscribe. You asked me earlier to sort of be more specific on a story, so I want to talk about a story you did. In November you wrote a piece with a title, the largest funder of Alshabab is the Minnesota taxpayer. Tell me what the piece was about.

Sure, so this was a feature investigation that we did in Minnesota looking into organized Somali fraud. And so we spent a number of months on this piece, we went out to Minnesota, we reviewed court documents, we interviewed law enforcement, both on the record, on background, and then our story.

Was that in fact Somali fraudsters were exploiting Minnesota and federal welfare programs, autism programs,

“daycare programs, Medicaid programs, and looting billions of dollars from American taxpayers.”

And this was the story that really blew open the Somali fraud story on the national stage. And then since then, as sometimes happens when you report on an explosive story, it kind of ricocheted into an entire movement, really looking at large scale fraud in American public institutions. So there's a couple pieces of this. So as you note, the fraud had been reported elsewhere at the start to view. And it had been essentially, there bits and pieces.

There were prosecutions, right, which is where a lot of the information came from. The began in 2022 under the Biden administration.

The big sort of move you made in this was to say, this is financing foreign terrorism.

What was that argument?

“Sure, I mean, the argument is is pretty simple and the mechanics of it are this.”

So we have billions of dollars being stolen by by Somali fraudsters in Minnesota. We then have huge amounts of money being transported out of Minneapolis airport, Seattle airport, in cash, in actual physical currency, in suitcases that goes to Mogadishu. And then when in Mogadishu, it is distributed through various parts of the country through what is called the Hawaii network. The Hawaii network is the the name for kind of informal cash-based clan-based financial institutions.

They don't have a strong formal banking system in Somalia, it's a rough part of the world.

And so they have these careers that that that move money and cash.

And all kinds of think tanks, military, US government, Department of Justice, public and the Democrats, have made have have have essentially made the case that Alshabab is taking a cut of Hawaii financing. And so when we talked with federal law enforcement agents and investigators who have been working on this case, they told us that the flow of funds was this from the taxpayer out of the airport in suitcases to the Hawaiian networks in Somalia, and therefore to the Alshabab terror networks taking their cut, essentially.

We have visa that takes like 3% of your credit card transactions in parts of Somalia, Alshabab takes a cut. Not exactly sure how much that is, and federal investigators say, "Hey, once it exits the country into the Hawaii system, you can't claw that money back, there are no written receipts or banking transactions, but the scale of that money that was that was remittances from fraud was so enormous, that over time we're talking about huge sums of money."

So I want to take a beat on whether or not this turned out to be true. So the key named source in your story was a retired terrorism investigator named Glenn Kerns. He later came out, claimed that he was misquoted. He said later the store was bullshit, and that he didn't know on the ground investigating in Minnesota. But the two top prosecutors of the fraud in Minnesota said the perpetrators were motivated by greed.

“There's no evidence of terrorist financing. Do you still stand by that?”

Of course I do. Yeah, and a couple of things. So the Glenn Kerns detectives are very odd. We have him on the record. We have a transcript of his interview. I'm not sure what happened.

My suspicion is that when this story blew up into a huge national story, he got spooked or scared or scared. But the paper in Minneapolis tried to go through our peace, and with a criticism, couldn't lay a glove on it, didn't debunk or even really contradict any of our points. You had one source who knows, don't know what, don't know his personal circumstances. But he was the only named source.

I don't think he was the only named source in the peace. He was the only named source, making this terrorist market. It will incorrect. So we had multiple, multiple high-level federal officials who confirmed to us the flow of funds. We substantiated it with contextual reporting from foundation for defensive democracies from the United States Military Academy from the Department of Justice. We were saying simply, logically, if we know from a variety of sources that Alshabab is skimming off the Hawaiian network.

And we know from a variety of sources that money is moving through that network from fraud committed in the United States. It's a logical syllogism, right? A, B, C, and so we know that this to be true. And I think that idea that because they weren't motivated by terrorism is not something we alleged.

Your piece is actually quite careful, right? I've read the piece I've read carefully.

And you write you don't alleged that the point of this is to fund terrorists. And when you sort of promote the piece, your tweet is, "Smollies are stealing billions of dollars from American taxpayers and sending cash to terrorists back home." It's time for At Will Donald Trump to revoke temporary protected status for all small nationals in the United States. It's time for them to go home. And I think two or three issues here.

Two or three, all right? Let's go there one by one. Yeah, we'll do them, I'll give them to you all. You have a limited number of people, right, committing crimes. They're being prosecuted, right?

The prosecutions begin under Biden. This is not like a swept under the rug.

Correct. Thank you guys did not come up with this. You didn't find it yourself. And they are, they were stealing a lot of money. I mean, that part is true. The sending cash to us back home, as you say, you have a more complicated view. So you're retortable. And then, and then, and then, none of the people, as far as I get out, we're doing this, we're under temporary protected status, which is only about 750 people, right?

So there's this move to say, it's not just like some criminals, it's some alloys. And it's not just some money is being scammed because of a weak banking sector. It's their funding terrorism. And then it's to get Donald Trump to deport people who are unrelated to the crime. Okay. So a couple of points on that on that particular argument. So the point of the piece broadly, it raises the question of immigration, cultural compatibility.

And if you talk to people with an expert in Somali culture, as we did, and the history of Somalia, as we did, you get the clear sense that in Somalia, there is a kind of kinship and clan-based culture that is prevalent, for variety of historical and social reasons. And because there has been a weak central government, contested central government in Somalia in the modern period, there is a feeling that exploiting the central government is permissible.

And I think the underlying point which is very uncomfortable, not just for people who are small liberals, but even for many conservatives, is that actually all national culture, all national cultures are not equal. And in fact, because immigration is a group-based or national border-based system,

“you have to be prudent in which nations of origin you prioritize in immigration.”

And so I think the record on Somali's and United States and elsewhere on many of those metrics is not good. You have low levels of education, high levels of welfare dependency, and you have these cultural incompatibilities, let's say. And so again, in a prudent, national interest-based immigration policy, I would put Somali's down lower on the list. And I think that's perfectly defensible. I don't have a problem saying that American immigration policy should serve our interests.

Sure, sure not just be on the directional. What I am saying is that to take a crime committed by a limited number of people, then say this is something about an entire group of people.

“And you should deport these unrelated people. That that is a bad thing to do, and to yoke this sort of larger argument you're making to this much more kind of tendentious.”

Well, some of the money that goes because of this fucked-up system back in Somalia can get taken by Alshabab. That to finish the thought of that, and they'll let you take it where you want to take it. That that is, and that's part of this larger point I'm trying to make to you, which is that you are not putting like passion and service of reason.

You're unleashing things here, that are like, first going to really harm people who did nothing wrong, right?

These Somali temporary protected studies, I mean, as you say, Somalia is a tough place. Many people flee it for completely reasonable reasons, and we, you know, honor them for doing so, and trying to make a better life for them and their families, like they did nothing wrong. I think you actually do believe for many things you've written in, like, the primacy of thinking about the individual.

“If you want to say that our immigration policy should not favor Somali. It's fine, fair enough.”

But our immigration that the temporary protected status is based on group designations, and in fact, Somali's Haitians.

We agree on that part, right? Hold on, well, let me take it, let me take it in pieces. A couple of kind of factual problems here, you said, "A limited number of people committed these crimes."

“I'm actually not sure that that's true, and I'll explain it why I believe that.”

If you look at the actual schemes committed by Somali's, for example, for autism services, you had members of the Somali community opening up fake clinics with fake patients that were receiving, you know, kind of fake treatment. And what we're looking at is actually a non-insignificant number of people that were involved or had knowledge of these schemes as they were unfolding. Because you're talking about thousands of patients, you know, larger family sizes. And secondarily, prosecutors told us over and over and over, we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg.

We don't have the prosecutors, we don't have the investigators, we don't have the demand power.

To actually unravel all of these fraud schemes. And though, so let's just say the median estimate, kind of responsible estimate is $5 billion.

Well, they've only uncovered fraud schemes and maybe $300 million. And so that would indicate that actually the vast majority of the schemes were simply kind of vanishing through your fingers. And so you're actually getting what I believe is because also the small community is very concentrated and geographically, tightly integrated and kinship networks. I actually think you're getting the complicity or knowledge of action and non-insignificant part of this community are most semallies.

But you don't assert that. I think it's just, it's just logical.

“And I think that we can make this, we can make the argument with the high degree of certainty based on the court documents,”

based on the total of fraud committed and based on how these things are structured. And then look, this is a mass fraud committed in Minnesota committed now in other states that we're uncovering. And, you know, one West Coast police detective who has been looking into this said, you know, I've been looking into this for 30 years and organized fraud rings. And his experience are committed to a massively disproportionate amount by foreign nationals and groups of, you know,

and groups of originating from micro groups. So this is a fact. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. I didn't argue.

This is how it is. And so the question. I'm not, I've not done my own reporting on this, but.

“But hold on, but the question then is how do we respond to that politically?”

And so I actually think, why want to talk about how I got responded to politically? So Donald Trump did what you wanted him to do. He, he put up a true social post on Thanksgiving day, but you call it, you know, as you call that iconic. In which he says, you sure did.

All right, let's hear. It which he says. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the one-screen state of Minnesota. Somalia and gangs are robbing the streets looking for prey. As are wonderful people, city locked in their apartments and houses, hope that they will be left alone.

But, but then it kind of moves on from there. So then, next shortly, right wing influencer launches his own investigation of Somali fraud in Minnesota. He starts going to daycares and walking on them and being like, hey, is there, are there kids here? And these women come out and they don't speak English and they're like looking in him strangely.

This gets, I think, like 130 million views across the country goes crazy viral.

But I want to play this clip. You did this podcast conversation with Richard Hennani where you guys were talking about this. And I think, I think what you say is interesting. Sure. If you look at the Nick Shirley video and you really dig into it, there are two things happening. Okay. On the surface, he is raising, he's shining a spotlight on something that is very real.

That is a kind of, an endemic form of corruption. And he's bringing it to life through kind of zoomer style, YouTube, kind of gonzo video production. Okay. It draws attention to a real issue. It's driving politics in the right direction.

And it's, I think, overall beneficial. Granted, your critique of what's happening under the surface is also true. I mean, I couldn't publish the conclude. You know, Nick Shirley gets in there, sees a building as empty.

And then assumes, oh, they're committing $70 million of fraud or whatever.

As a journalist, as someone who has to go through fact-checking, legal review, kind of peer scrutiny, I kind of clam up and I'm like, oh, wow, man. You're going to about to get sued because what you're saying is just not defensible as a, as a journalistic process. So the reason I found that to be such an interesting quote is it, I feel like both sides of what we're talking about are in there. You know this video is not strong.

Let's put it that way.

You can't go and be like, show me your kids. So when they don't shave in kids, be like, this is a fraud. You don't have any kids. On the other hand, you have this contrary feeling that, well, it may not be true, but it puts attention towards something real.

It's like in line with where I want politics to go. It does become a huge issue. We'll talk about what it leads to. And I can feel this tension. So I mean, how do you balance that?

Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, it's a free country.

Everyone has the first amendment right. And so therefore, you can't say, I don't like this for these reasons, therefore, you shouldn't be able to do it.

“But I think this is just another instance, an example of the right being under institutionalized.”

And so what I would say is that an ideal say outcome or method would be to take someone that has charisma, that has courage, that has curiosity, someone like Nick Shirley, and then integrate that person into an institution to put up those guardrails, to refine and really improve the product itself. And then to use that attention toward product events.

And so that would be like the ideal. That's the kind of thing that I think would be good.

But the reality is that on the right, the media is so fragmented.

And the media institutions are not that strong, not that well developed. And in many cases, you know, highly risk averse for obvious reasons. And therefore, there's an entire territory that is seated to people. I don't even know if Nick Shirley is right wing. I'm not sure I would even categorize him as that.

“I think the story landed in that particular manner.”

But you have people independent. He's not left wing. Let's say citizen journalists, I think that was the phrase for a while. There was great hope in the citizen journalist. You know, love citizens, love journalists, citizen journalist is one of those things.

It sounds good in theory, but in practice, there are some real limitations. And so it is what it is. What are you going to do about it? You know, this is the kind of thing where as an individual. My only reaction is to say, you can put out a kind of remedy suggestion for remedy.

But it's not within my direction. I guess the thing I'm asking, not as an individual, but as an activist and an analyst and somebody influential in the administration that responds to these stories. For as his by deploying a giant ice and border patrol deployment to Minnesota, that deployment ultimately and the fighting around it leaves Renee Good and Alex pretty dead.

Minneapolis, quickly, the economic impact of the raids at least around $700 million.

Joe Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota, who is leading the fraud investigations. He was quoted quite a bit in your original piece. He resigned in anger after Trump's Department of Justice demands his office investigate Renee Good's wife. So to me, I look at all this and I say, that wasn't beneficial. This was catastrophic.

I mean, it harmed people's lives. It led to people dying. It was bad for the Minnesota economy. It led to the fraud stuff getting, you know, completely sideline. And the person who is pushing it, resigning.

The, this did not go in a good direction, apart because it wasn't based on good information. But like now, like looking back at the whole thing, do you disagree with that? Yeah, I would disagree. So, so, well, I would agree with certain points, but I would refine them and disagree with others. So, I mean, the fraud work is continuing. Vice president is now chairing an anti fraud task force.

They've significantly increased the manpower to look into fraud. That said, it was a bad strategic decision to deploy force. Customs and Border Patrol, Ice Agents. With that kind of force posture, it's a no-in situation. And I was advising against it from even the previous summer.

And so, in that particular case, I would say it was ill-advised. And I think that finally, the administration has learned that they reshuffled DHS, they reshuffled Customs and Border Patrol.

“And if you want to, if you want to create deportations at scale of illegal immigrants, you have to do so.”

And what I have kind of called an invisible manner, an impersonal manner. You have to change banking regulations, financial transfers, remittance fees, employment verification to incentivize self deportation. Because the idea that you could deport people by simply sending in armored cars with ice agents on the side is delusional.

I think there's part of the right that wants that kind of macho imagery.

“But if you look at the underlying substantive policy that you want to enact, I think it's detrimental.”

And in fact, the situation in Minneapolis, again, you know, in that sense was did not achieve the stated objective for reasons that I and others had predicted. We pick up on the front. And to me, it's also, it's annoying to me personally, because I think fraud, huge winning issue, no one wants fraud, it's a huge problem in the country.

If you had, if you could just focus on that, you could rally not only Republicans who are traditionally kind of, you know, a small government,

but you could also bring into the coalition moderate Democrats who want good governance.

“And so to me personally, I found it very, you know, very upsetting, because it's like, hey, we have this winning issue, focus on the issue, execute the policy at scale, save the taxpayer's money.”

You know, you're given someone a nicely rapid gift and you just wish that they would take it in this case, it didn't happen that way. It feels to me like the fraud problem for you all as bigger than this. According to a Times analysis across two terms, Trump is granted clemency to more than 70 allies, donors and others convicted in fraud cases, including

Philip S. Formus, who stole $1.3 billion for Medicare and Medicaid in a fraudulent billing scheme. It was the FBI's largest ever criminal health care fraud case against individuals.

Trump commuted his 20 year prison term. You're not going to get me to defend it. I would, but I would see you really attacking it either. I'll attack it right now. Okay. Shouldn't have done that. And in fact, you know, if if if these people were convicted of fraud at that scale 20 years seems like a light prison sentence, I would double it personally. And so yeah, this is the push that making I recognize you're not going to defend this, but there is this movement on the right right now to focus on fraud. You've been very much leading this.

Well, I look at Trump and he's gutted the machinery of anti fraud enforcement all across the federal government gutted it at the IRS was a tremendous amount of fraud and tax returns. We all know that. And huge amounts of money are being stolen under those terms, because now you the the audit capacity has gone way down. He gutted inspectors general across the federal government. People seeing what is happening inside these organizations. He destroyed the consumer financial protection bureau, which is a lot of anti fraud work debatable.

I recognize we would debate it, but what I don't think is debatable is that Trump and this administration have sort of systematically gone across the federal government and taken apart parts of the government that are supposed to watch if the government itself is committing fraud. And if you know taxpayers and others are, I just I look at the country right now. And I see Donald Trump has like you like using piracy around the smallies.

“I think of the Trump and the Trump family is pirates. I think that they are looting the country for their benefit. I think that that's what the category plain is.”

I think that's what the crypto investments are. I think that's how Trump and Assembly of Increaser network by billions of dollars. And I'm not saying you support it, but I don't understand how you think you're going to have like a right that is doing good governance. And that is taking these things institutionally seriously and have that be what is happening at the very top. And let's take let's take part in as the most concrete example. Yes, I agree. I think you and I would agree and you know, I'm political, but in a sense not partisan in that way. I'm not going to reflexively defend every decision by someone in my camp or the president of the United States.

In fact, a lot of those partis, it ill-advised shouldn't have done it. And because in the reporting that I've read a number of those individuals had also been putting money into various lobbies and various attempts to influence and various, you know, pain funds or committee funds or however the finances work. You create the perception of corruption that is not good and does in some ways undercut the the good work of combating systematic social service fraud as a whole. From my point of view and how I have to look at it is okay you live in an imperfect world. You don't have ultimate control my influence is great on the things I care about on DEI, on higher education,

defunding NPR whatever like go down the list of of of you have been very functional every of but the the kind of implicit premise of your criticism which again, I take seriously and I think it's a fair criticism is oh therefore, you know, you should give up you should turn against the good work that's being done.

Where there's necessary criticism I'll create I'll give the criticism but I'm not going to stop to work in that little sphere of influence that I have to do good and so you know I'm kind of walking the line right where.

“I will issue the criticism as necessary and if that reduces my influence in a certain regard I'm willing to accept it and while I would certainly you know speak out against. I think the crypto thing was was was just you know and is ongoing.”

Yeah. The crypto players are ongoing world liberty and all the stuff is ongoing sure yeah and and and and at the end of the day when I you know when I sit down in my office. You know at 7.30 a.m. every morning.

I'm like all right how can we win how can we move the ball forward how can we do good policy and ultimately the end of the day.

That's all that's within my control and and that's the that's the attitude that I bring to the fight I think you underestimate yourself. The point of view is I will point when making is actually a little bit even larger than you look the one reason I have you here for this conversation. Is I think you're very very good at what you do I think you're probably the most successful activists certainly right wing activists of this era but maybe overall you're saying huh maybe overall maybe left in right in general maybe right I'll take it and.

“Like you and I are not going to agree on a million things right my point is not to convert you to my politics I'm not going to do you should try I mean why not I'm trying to convert you we talk.”

Yeah, but. I think that the rights. Inability to hold itself to certain. Epistemological or institutional standards standards of let's not call neutrality let's call it impartiality at the institutional level at the federal government. Level what the right is accepting the Donald Trump is doing is insane in my view okay and the epistemological standards and actually stuff.

Is and some of your things in my view which go again I think you're careful in like the the the the body and then not always in the promotion in the weaponization of it.

“I think it careful and the I think you're is that are defensible and I think I take the rhetorical flourish too far and then beyond you I think there's a generalized view that.”

We need to unleash these passions there's been too much that has been unsayable and we need to make sure we can say it all again and the result of this is like a like a hydraulic process not like some future result but a current result when I look at the spotify rankings the. Right of center figures on the top have become highly conspiratorial and you know they're figures like fun days rising and we need a. Strong right in this country I would so I'd ask you a question then has the has the New York Times editorial line right the editorial line has it moved more in my direction since 2020 or if I move more in its direction since 2020.

I'm not sure the way you have moves in 2020. I have a move did all okay so if I'm the baseline so I think you're saying it's moved in your direction of course okay. You look at the big piece on D. E. I you know you had editorialist saying that I was you know some sort of villain on the yeah. Let's agree once it moves back let's agree once and fight yeah. I am saying that they're like the right in my view right as somebody who I think actually is a good record of criticizing my own right I was Joe Biden to you know when that was like a much more dangerous thing for me to do.

I agree I wrote a bundle which is entirely critique of democratic governance and. Where the right has gone I think is not going to work and what's interesting to me about you right now is I'll watch your show and I can see you and your co-host. Wrestling with these questions sure right I don't think you're comfortable but.

Ultimately there's like two problems that I see the right having that it really does not know to solve one problem is it's intentional.

It's intentional sphere. Yes is pathological parts of it are parts of it are and it doesn't have a lot of institutional strength there. And the second is that. You cannot challenge Donald Trump you can sort of say some things he's doing you don't like you know maybe wouldn't fully support. But Donald Trump is the sun king and he has to be obeyed or you get if you go too hard I mean I don't know this building to do it. If you go too hard you get like pushed out in a way maybe you can't come back and those two things are allowing a tremendous amount of.

Bad ideas of actual corruption of. Just institutional and non institutional rock to occur and like we're all going to pay for it because right now we're all living under right wing governance.

Has some real issues.

I would agree that the right has some real.

Challenges and this is universal right there's no entirely virtuous effective discipline political movement.

“Every political movement has a certain fermentation a certain amount of internal conflict you have to figure out how to resolve disputes settle questions and what I've tried to do especially in the last say.”

And I have sense Trump has become president again is bring a lot of those conversations into the open and I think that while there are these real challenges the epistemological machine of the right. Has some real weak spots and real flaws and real vulnerabilities. Well Trump's kind of highly individualized charismatic presidency that is charismatic rather than legal rational or or traditional the max Weber you know triangle of of of legitimacy and authority. The reality is that okay then let's solve it we this is the conversation we need to have these are the problems we need to grapple with the charismatic leadership has enormous benefits it also has it also creates a series of underlying.

The problems to solve but I think that all of these can be resolved productively I think the people in charge of the conservative institutions still in general have good epistemological judgment intuitions attitudes and I think that politics moves forward and I think actually after you know Trump is is in his last term. Depending on how things go to house this might be the really last kind of truly effective moment for for for the Trump presidency and then we ask the next question and so the reality is that you have to move forward you have to work with an imperfect conditions.

One of my critiques of the right right now and I'm my own of the left and I've talked about many of them but.

“I think the right likes to talk about virtue and doesn't insist on it.”

And virtue to go back to what we were talking about around a teelos and your teelos is very much impart about restraining the passions and channeling them productively. There's a lot of talk about virtue but the people who are leaders on the right don't much I'm very much included are not virtuous often and if they have enough power. So look past if they have enough strength to their passions that is fine and similarly informational sphere in the attention whole sphere. There is a lot of playing with stories that are designed like mathematically constructed to arouse very very very very base passions so stories are often much more complicated if they're true beneath them.

A view that that can be channeled in the right direction and I think the opposite is happening that in fact the people who are restrained are really losing out in the right attention sphere because it's as constant you like you can't get hurt. You're not now playing the scheme of incredibly weaponized like explosive allegations which of course is going where that ultimately always goes which is towards anti-Semitic conspiracy theories like the the oldest potential to move in the book.

“You're raising I think a really important philosophical question and the conservative tradition offers a lot of good debate discourse on this question the question is this you have what we might say Aristotelian virtue or Christian virtue.”

Machiavellian Virtu, which is a totally, it's the same word, but a totally different conception. And for Machiavelli, Virtu, the political virtue was the virtue of how to win power, how to maintain stability. And in his book on republics, how to have a flourishing republic, which often requires cunning, ambition, design.

And so politics is always a conversation between Virtu and Virtu.

And you're essentially reconciling means and ends. And there are people who will argue academics in particular, even those on the right. Well, we need to have deontological principles that you can make, you know, the ends, the means, always have to be 100% pure towards 100% pure ends. And I laugh, it's like, well, only an academic could really, you know, make such a case,

because the reality is that in politics, it's an imperfect world and you're constantly balancing

means and ends. You're constantly taking the measure of Virtu and Virtu. And so you have to figure that out.

that your work is justified.

“And then as a movement, as a whole, this is a constant negotiation.”

And look, in my mind, political leaders are not your friends. Political leaders are not your priest. And political leaders are kind of blunt instruments. Political leaders are means to an end. And there's no easy answer there.

There's no immediate answer there. But what I would say is that those are the people that are my compatriots, the people that I'm fighting every day alongside and along with are high integrity people. Very smart people, conservative institutionalists who understand the moment, who understand that we need to kind of deliver tangible political victories.

We can't retreat just to abstract speculation. And who, you know, look, we're playing the game. And in my view, the game is simultaneously to improve our own capacities, but also to win in the arena. So I often times, and this conversation is interesting, because you're often times you're

moving forward. All right, what are we going to do, how are we going to hit this, where are we going to push necks, what kind of victory is available.

“And you have to do that knowing that the system you're operating in is littered within”

professions, and again, at the end of the day, what I, my calculation is, I'm very mindful, I'm even trying to be, somebody wouldn't believe it's trying to even be humble as to the little part of the world that I can influence. And I think I've changed it for the better. I think institutions that I'm working with are improving over time.

And I think this epistemological question and the individual charismatic question are questions that can be and will be resolved in the, say, short to medium term. I'll leave it there. I really appreciate you doing this conversation.

Always our final question, but if you book, you recommend to the audience.

Okay, so we're going to do three books from the, kind of, Rufo's personal conservative can. And the first, I would recommend is a book by my mentor, John Morini, Claremont Institute, scholar, called unmasking the administrative state, which I think has helped me more than anything understand the deeper philosophical and political underpinnings of our modern dilemma.

The second book that I think all conservative should read and all liberal should read is a biography by Stacy Schiff called the Revolutionary, which is a biography of the American Founder Samuel Adams. And Adams is the most political founder. I think he kind of, kind of clarifies, through example, all the questions that we've been talking

about, about propaganda, about passion, about institutions, about political change. He's the kind of key and, and the forgotten founder really, he's been downgraded for centuries

“now, but I think he's actually the most important founder.”

And then, you know, third, I would recommend a number of books by the, the kind of conservative,

journalist, former NYU professor, James Burnham, wrote a book called Manager of Revolution, another called the McEvellians, another called suicide of the West. And for me, Burnham is someone who has the kind of sophisticated analysis that helps illuminate these questions, his, his work is quite good. And might even be interesting for people who don't share, you know, my book which is

what you start with. I would start with manageral revolution, again, because it, it just, it kind of describe, it's in the 1940s, it's unbelievable, you read it now and he's describing the world we live in, but he's describing it from a point of, of, of, kind of, optimism, American optimism, but he already saw some of the problems that were starting to emerge.

Chris Ruffo. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ Music ]