Ben Shapiro vs Destiny Debate: Politics, Jan 6, Israel, Ukraine & Wokeism | Lex Fridman Podcast #410

1. 0:00 – 1:36

   Introduction

   1. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:00

      Something has to happen with Iran. There has to be some diplomatic-

   2. BSBen Shapiro0:02

      Well-

   3. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:03

      ... bilateral communication there.

   4. BSBen Shapiro0:04

      Mm, no. What has to happen is the containment of Iran.

   5. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:06

      History moves in one direction, right?

   6. BSBen Shapiro0:08

      Why?

   7. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:09

      Because of time?

   8. BSBen Shapiro0:10

      Communism, Nazism, all of that was a regression from what was happening at, for example, the beginning of the 19th century and the 20th century.

   9. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:16

      What, in what way?

   10. BSBen Shapiro0:17

       Do you think that today Donald Trump knows that he lost the election?

   11. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:20

       Absolutely.

   12. BSBen Shapiro0:21

       So I, I don't.

   13. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:22

       This is one of the areas where when we get into this, I don't understand, um, if there's like brain braking happening or what's going on. I don't know what world we can ever live in where we say that Trump is less divisive for the country than Biden.

   14. BSBen Shapiro0:33

       Joe Biden literally used the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration to try to cram down vax mandates on 80 million Americans. That's insane.

   15. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:41

       What about Supercalifragilistic- and then you're done.

   16. BSBen Shapiro0:43

       What about new ultramicroscopic-

   17. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:44

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the science terms.

   18. BSBen Shapiro0:45

       Yeah, exactly.

   19. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:46

       Or what about the 7,000-letter thing that's from part of, uh-

   20. BSBen Shapiro0:48

       (laughs)

   21. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:49

       ... biochemistry?

   22. LFLex Fridman0:49

       I got my education in the Soviet Union, so we just did math.

   23. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)0:52

       (laughs)

   24. BSBen Shapiro0:53

       That's why you're a useful person.

   25. LFLex Fridman0:54

       Does body count matter? The following is a debate between Ben Shapiro and Destiny, each arguably representing the right and the left of American politics, respectively. They are two of the most influential and skilled political debaters in the world. This debate has been a long time coming, for many years. It's about 2.5 hours, and we could have easily gone for many more. And I'm sure we will. It is only round one. This is The Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Ben Shapiro and Destiny.

2. 1:36 – 6:49

   Liberalism vs Conservatism

   1. LFLex Fridman1:36

      Ben, you're conservative. Destiny, you're a liberal. Can you each describe what key values underpin your philosophy on politics, and maybe life in the context of this left-right political spectrum? You wanna go first?

   2. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)1:50

      Yeah. So I think that we have a huge country full of a lot of people, a lot of individual talents, capabilities. Um, and I think that the goal of government, broadly speaking, should be to try to ensure that everybody's able to achieve as much as possible. So on a liberal level, that usually means some people might need a little bit of a boost when it comes to things like education. Um, they might need a little bit of a boost when it comes to providing certain necessities, like housing or food or clothing. But broadly speaking, I mean, I'm still a liberal, not a communist or a socialist. I don't believe in the, you know, total command economy, total communist takeover of all of the, uh, you know, economy. But I think that broadly speaking, the government should kind of like kick in and help people when they need it.

   3. LFLex Fridman2:32

      And that government can and should be big.

   4. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)2:34

      Not necessarily. Uh, I notice that when liberals talk about government, or especially taxes, it seems like they talk about it for tax's sake or big- bigness' sake. So people talk about taxes sometimes as like a, like a punishment, like, "Tax the rich." Uh, I think taxing the rich is fine insofar as it funds the programs that we want to fund. But Democrats have a really big problem demonizing success or wealth. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Uh, I don't, I don't think it's a bad thing to be wealthy, to be a billionaire or whatever, as long as we're funding what we need to fund.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:03

      Ben, what do you think it means to be a conservative? What's, what's the philosophy that underlies your political view?

   6. BSBen Shapiro3:08

      So first of all, I'm glad that, Destiny, you're already coming out as a Republican. That's exciting. Um, I mean, I, I, w- we hold a lot in common in terms of, uh, you know, the, the basic idea that people ought to have as much opportunity as possible, and also insofar as the government should do the minimum amount necessary to interfere in people's lives in order to pursue certain functions, particularly at the local level. So a lot of governmental discussions on a pragmatic level end up being discussions about where government ought to be involved, but also at what level government ought to be involved. And I have an incredibly subsidiary view of government. I, I think that, you know, local governments, because you have higher levels of homogeneity and, and consent, uh, are capable of doing more things. And as you abstract up the chain, it becomes more and more impractical and more and more divisive to, to do more things. In, in my view, government is basically there to preserve certain key liberties. Uh, the, those key liberties pre-exist the government, uh, in, insofar as they are more important than what priorities the government has. The, the job of government is to maintain, for example, national defense, protection of property rights, uh, protection of religious freedom. These, these are, these are the key focuses of government as generally expressed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And, and I agree with the general philosophy of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Now, that doesn't mean, by the way, that you can't do more on a governmental level, again, as you get closer to the ground, which, by the way, is also embedded in the Constitution. People forget the Constitution was originally applied to the federal government, not to local and state governments. Um, but you know, if, if I were gonna define conservatism, it would actually be a little broader than that, because I think to understand how people interact with government, you have to go to kind of core values. And, and so for me, there, there are a couple of premises. One, human beings have a nature. That nature is neither good nor bad. We have aspects of goodness, and we have aspects of badness. Human beings are sinful. We have temptations. And what that means is that we have to be careful not to incentivize the bad and that we should incentivize the good. Human beings do have agency and are capable of making decisions in the vast majority of circumstances. Um, and it is better for society if we act as though they do. Uh, second, the basic idea of human nature, there is an idea, in my view, that all human beings have equal value before the law. And I'm, I'm a religious person, so I would say equal value before God. But I think that's also sort of a key tenet of Western civilization, being non-religious or religious, that every individual has equivalent value in sort of cosmic terms. Um, but that does not necessarily mean that every person is equally equipped to do everything equally well. And so it is not the job of government to rectify every imbalance of life. The quest for cosmic justice, as, as Thomas Sowell suggests, uh, is something that government is generally incapable of doing, and more often than not, botches and makes things worse. So th- those are a few key tenets, and that, that tends to materialize in, in a variety of ways. The, the, the easiest way to sum that up would the, the traditional kind of three legs of the, the conservative stool, although now obviously there's a very fragmented conservative movement in the United States, would be a, uh, a socially conservative view in which family is the chief institution of society, like the little platoons of society as, as Edmund Burke suggested, uh, in which-... free, free markets and property rights are extraordinarily valuable and necessary, uh, because every individual has to be creative with their property and to freely alienate that property. Uh, and, uh, and finally, I tend toward a hawkish foreign policy that suggests that the world is not filled with wonderful people who all agree with us and think like us. And those people will pursue adversarial interest if we, if we do not protect our own interests.

   7. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)6:46

      Can I ask a question then?

   8. BSBen Shapiro6:48

      Yeah, sure.

   9. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)6:48

      I'm so curiou- okay.

3. 6:49 – 23:06

   Education

   1. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)6:49

      Um, I'm excited for this conversation 'cause I consider you to be really intelligent. Um, but I feel like sometimes, there are ways that conservatives talk about certain issues that seem to defy logic and reason, I guess. So he- and I'm sure you feel the same way about progr- well, I feel the same way about progressives. Um, but even some, uh, l- liberals for sure. Uh, before I ask this question, it's gonna relate to education. We can agree broadly speaking that statistics are real and that not everybody could do everything. So for a grounded example, uh, my life was pretty bad. I got into streaming and I turned my life around, and that was really cool, but I can't expect everybody to do what I did, right? Like, everybody being able to join the NBA or to be, like, a streamer or-

   2. BSBen Shapiro7:27

      Well, of course.

   3. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)7:28

      Yeah. Sure, sure.

   4. BSBen Shapiro7:28

      Everybody has different qualities, sure.

   5. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)7:29

      Okay. So I used to be a lot more libertarian, um, when I was 20, 21. And one of the things that dramatically changed kind of my view on government, uh, manipulation of things in the, I, I guess in society came, uh, when it came time to deal with my son and the school that he went to. And one of the things that I noticed was, when it came time to send my son to school, I could either do a private education or I could do public. Uh, personally, I did 12 years of Catholic private education. Um, however, the public schools in Nebraska, depending on where you lived, were very, very, very good. And I opted for a certain district, I bought a house there. I moved there, and then my son was able to go those schools. Um, and he's been going through those schools, and the difference of availability of, like, technology, like, these kids are taking home iPads in, like, first grade. Uh, they've got, like, huge computer labs and everything. Do you think that there is some type of, I don't wanna say injustice or unfairness, 'cause I'm not even looking at it that way, just pragmatically, that there might be children that are in certain schools that if they just had better funding or more, uh, access to technologies or things available to them, that those kids would become more productive members of society, that with, like, a little bit of a help, they, they could actually achieve more and do better for all of society?

   6. BSBen Shapiro8:39

      So I think that on the list of priorities, when it comes to education-

   7. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)8:42

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BSBen Shapiro8:42

      ... the availability of technology is actually fairly low on the list of priorities.

   9. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)8:46

      Sure, the two-

   10. BSBen Shapiro8:46

       Meaning that-

   11. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)8:46

       ... things I've heard are, uh, food availability and I think air conditioning, I think are the two biggest ones that I hear, but sure.

   12. BSBen Shapiro8:51

       Well, I mean, the, the, the biggest thing in terms of education itself, not just the physical facilities that we're talking about-

   13. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)8:55

       Mm-hmm.

   14. BSBen Shapiro8:56

       ... would actually be two-parent family households-

   15. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:00

       Sure.

   16. BSBen Shapiro9:00

       ... communities that, that have fathers in them-

   17. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:02

       Sure.

   18. BSBen Shapiro9:02

       ... is actually the number one decider, according to Roland Fryer and, and many studies done on th- this particular topic.

   19. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:06

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BSBen Shapiro9:07

       And the idea that, that money alone, that investment of resources is the top priority in schooling is belied by the fact that LAUSD, which is where I went to school when I was younger-

   21. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:16

       Mm-hmm.

   22. BSBen Shapiro9:16

       ... uh, they pour an enormous amount of money into LAUSD. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars very often per student.

   23. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:22

       Mm-hmm.

   24. BSBen Shapiro9:22

       And it does not result in better schooling outcomes. And so when you say, "If we could give every kid an iPad, would you give every kid an iPad?" The question is not if I had a replicator machine from Star Trek, would I give everybody in a ma- enormous amount of stuff? Sure, I, I would.

   25. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:36

       Mm-hmm.

   26. BSBen Shapiro9:36

       Every, every resource is finite, every resource is limited, and you have to prioritize what are the, what are the outcomes that you seek in terms of the means with which you are seeking them.

   27. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)9:46

       Mm-hmm.

   28. BSBen Shapiro9:47

       And so again, I think that the question is, is... I, I, I quibble with the, with the premise of the question, which is that, again, the, the chief injustice when it comes to education on the list of, of injustices is lack of availability to technology or that it's a funding problem. I, I just don't think that's the case.

   29. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)10:02

       Sure. And I can half agree with you there, but I don't think any amount of changes in the schools will create two-parent households, right? We can't bring it back, but-

   30. BSBen Shapiro10:10

       I, I, I totally agree with you.
4. 23:06 – 43:31

   Trump vs Biden

   1. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)23:06

   2. LFLex Fridman23:06

      As we descend from the heavens of philosophical discussion of conservatism and liberalism, let's go to the pragmatic muck of politics. Trump versus Biden. Between the two of them, who was, in their first term, uh, the better president, and thus who should win if the two of them are in fact our choices, should win a second term in 2024? Ben?

   3. BSBen Shapiro23:30

      Sure. So, i- in terms of actual job performance, you have to separate it into a few categories. Uh, in terms of actual performance in foreign policy, I think Trump's foreign policy record is significantly better than Biden's, the world being on fire right now being a fairly good example of that. Uh, and we can get into each aspect of the world being on fire and where the incentive structures came from and how all of that happened in a moment. When it comes to the economy, I think that Trump's economic record was better than Biden's. Doesn't mean he didn't overspend. He did, he wildly overspent. Uh, but he also had a very solid record of job creation. A huge percentage of the gains in the economy went to people on the lower end of the economic spectrum, actually. Uh, the gross income to the average American was about $6,000 during his term. The unemployment rates were very, very low before COVID. You know, it... I think that you almost have to separate the Trump administration into sort of before COVID and during COVID, because COVID obviously is a sort of a black swan event. The, the most signal, uh-... change in, in politics in our lifetime. Uh, and so, you know, ha- governance during COVID is almost its own category, which we can discuss. Um, but, you know, in terms of foreign policy, in terms of domestic policy, I think that Trump was significantly better, uh, than, than Biden has been. And that's on the upside for Trump. On the downside for Biden, obviously you're talking 40-year highs in inflation. You're talking about savings being eaten away. You're talking about everything being 20 to 30 s- 30% more expensive. Uh, you're talking about massive increases to the deficit, even at a rate that was unknown under Trump. Uh, the deficit under Trump raised by about a little under a trillion dollars every year up until 2020. Again, 2020 was a COVID year, so everybody decided they were gonna fire hose money at things. Um, but, uh, then Joe Biden continued to fire hose money at things in '21, '22, and '23. Uh, you know, that obviously is, uh, in my opinion, bad economic policy. Uh, and then you get to the rhetoric, and you get to the stuff that Donald Trump says. And as I've said before, my view is that on Donald Trump's epitaph, on his gravestone, it will say, "Donald Trump: he said a lot of shit." Uh, I, I think that Donald Trump does say a lot of things. I think that that is basically baked into the cake, which is why everyone who's bewildered by the polls is ignoring human nature, which is at the beginning when you see something very shocking, it's very shocking. And then if you see it over and over and over and over for years on end, it is no longer shocking. It is just part of the background noise, like tinnitus. It just becomes, you know, something that your brain adjusts for. Uh, and so do I like a lot of Donald Trump's rhetoric? No, and I never have. Do I think that that is dispositive as to his presidency? No, I do not. Uh, when it comes to Biden, again, I think he's underperforming economically. I think that his foreign policy has been really a, a, a problem. Even the things I think he's done right are, I think, Band-Aids for things that he created by doing wrong. (laughs) Uh, and when it comes to his, his own rhetoric, you, you can argue that it's grading on a curve because Trump was coming in with such wild rhetoric that just the maintenance of that wild rhetoric doesn't really change again the baseline. For Biden, he came in in the same way that Obama did on this sort of soaring rhetoric of American unity, "I'm the president for all A-" Like, Trump came in, he was like, "Listen, I'm the president for, for what I am, and, you know, I'm, I'm gonna say the things I wanna say. I'm gonna be on the toilet, and I'm tweeting." We were like, "Okay," you know? So that's what it is. With Biden, he came in with, "I'm a president for all Americans. I'm trying to unify everybody." And that pretty quickly broke down into a lot of oppositional language about his political opponents, in particular, an attempt to lump in, for example, huge swaths of the conservative movement with the people who participated, for example, in January 6th or who are fans of January 6th. Um, and, um, you know, the, the, the sort of lumping in of everybody into MAGA Republicans who wasn't personally signed on to a- an infrastructure bill with him, th- that sort of stuff I think has been truly terrible. I thought his Philadelphia speech was truly terrible. A- and again, I think that you do have the problem of he is no longer capable of, certainly rhetorically, unifying the country when every speech from him feels like watching Nik Wallenda walk across a volcano on a tightrope. I- it, it really is like you're, you're just sort of waiting for him to fall. (laughs) I mean, it's, it's sad to say. I mean, the other day he was speaking for what was in effect his campaign kickoff, and this was in Valley Forge. Uh, and I mean, Jill rushed up there, like, off the, off the, uh, as soon as he was done. Jill rushed up there, uh, you know, like she'd been shot out of a cannon to, to come and try and guide him away so he didn't become the Shane Gillis Roomba, and, you know, that- that's not really, you know... Uh, I, I, let's put it this way. It d- it does not quiet the soul to watch Jo- Joe Biden rhetorically. Again, that's a different problem than, than Trump's problem. But that- that's my analysis.

   4. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)27:47

      Uh, this is one of the areas where when we get into this, I don't understand, um, if there's like brain breaking happening or what's going on. I don't know what world we can ever live in where we say that Trump is less divisive for the country than Biden. I think it is so patently obvious. Trump is so divisive. Like, not only does Trump make an enemy out of every person in the opposition party. He makes an enemy out of his own party and every single person around him. Like, we all watched him bully, uh, you know, Jeff Sessions. We all watched him bully his own party on Twitter. We all watched, like, all of these people walk away from him. Um, even recently, I think, um, his, uh, th- uh, Secretary of Defense Esper and, um, John Kelly, the chief of staff were, you know, saying, "I think Trump is a threat to democracy." Uh, you know, you've got all of his prior people that were around him, some of his closest allies. You've got Bill Barr that won't co-sign a single thing that he says. Um, you've got all these people that he used to work with that all say Trump is a horrible, evil person. He is ineffective as a leader. He doesn't accomplish anything, and he didn't. You know, to say that Biden has failed at bipartisanship when, you know, we've gotten the CHIPS Act, we've gotten the IRA. We've gotten the, uh, ARP. We've gotten the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. When we've gotten, like, all this major legislation that is working in this historically divided Congress as opposed to Trump that got us tax cuts and deficit spending. Um, I- I- I don't understand where we ever are in this world where Biden is somehow more divisive than Trump. Even the speeches that Ben is bringing up, I... They, they always bring up... I remember that one, um... I think we might have even done it on our episode, though. The one speech that Biden gave where at one point that, like, the background is red-

   5. BSBen Shapiro29:15

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)29:16

      ... and Republicans were like-

   7. BSBen Shapiro29:16

      Yeah, it was the Philly speech I referenced, yeah.

   8. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)29:17

      Yeah, they're like, "Oh my God, it's over. This is the end." And then meanwhile you've got Donald Trump, you know, coming into office saying things like, "If you burn the flag, you should have your citizenship revoked," or talking about MSDNC that, "I'm gonna investigate every single one of these, uh, media organizations for corruptness. I'm gonna open the libel and defamation laws, and I'm gonna take all of these guys to court." Um, you've got this weird Project 2025 stuff where, um, is it Jon Paschal, I think, uh, is talking about, uh, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna investigate all of these people, and we're gonna try to throw crimes on all these people. Uh, Trump is like the most divisive president I think we've ever had in- in, uh, at least in, in my lifetime of being, um, an, an American citizen. And the rhetoric from him is just, it's on a whole other level in terms of the demonization of political opponents. I mean, this is a guy that's known for giving his political opponents bad nicknames, (laughs) right? Like that's what Trump does. Um, you know, like it- it's funny, but even as a resident of Florida, if Florida had another natural disaster, do you think Trump would withhold aid? Because you had... Uh, I think that was one of the few nice things that DeSantis actually said about Biden was that like, "Hey listen, you know, when the buildings collapsed in..." I think it was-

   9. BSBen Shapiro30:23

      Syracuse idea.

   10. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)30:23

       ... Miami Beach, yeah, that, um, you know, for the hurricane stuff, that Biden was there. He was saying, "If you guys need aid, however many billions, you can have it." Meanwhile, Trump, I think, was threatening to withhold federal funding from blue states that wouldn't, um... I think it had to do with the National Guard stuff, the deployment of the National Guard, that they weren't, like, doing enough for the riots, and, and, uh, Trump was threatening to withhold aid from some of these blue states. Um, yeah, Trump is literally the most divisive person in the world. I don't see how on any metric he is ever succeeding in the divisive category. In terms of the economy-I do think it's funny that Republicans are very keen to say that like, "Well, we can't really grade Trump, you know, post-COVID because obviously COVID messed everything up," which is fair, but pre-COVID, what did Trump do? Yeah. He did, he did deficit spending tax cuts. He presided over historic low interest rates and an economy that was already like all, like blazing past the final years of Obama. We were posting all-time highs in all the stock markets in 2013 onwards. Um, you know, unemployment rates were falling. Now under Biden, unemployment rates are even lower than they were under Trump. But uh, it, it sucks that for Trump we can say, "Well, we can't really hold him accountable for 2020. That was COVID." Well, all we have for Biden is post-COVID. We don't have any pre-COVID Biden, uh, you know, economy, and it was the same thing for Obama too coming in right after the housing collapse as well. And it sucks that Republicans are able to walk out of office, you know, having burned the entire American society to the ground economically, and now we've got to try to evaluate, okay, well, what did Obama do during his first two to three to four years just trying to recover from where, uh, the housing crash left it? And then we look at Biden now who's trying to recover from COVID, and now we're grading him on a, on a totally different scale than what Trump is being graded on. Yeah. That, that sucks, I think. Uh, we can go into-

   11. BSBen Shapiro31:57

       Can you comment on the foreign policy?

   12. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)31:59

       On the foreign policy, I'm gonna be honest. I am a, um, I am very liberal and very not progressive. Uh, I'll probably come off as more hawkish than others, uh, because I'm not a big fan of this. I- which also if, I mean if Ben agrees, like I think, uh, people like, people like Trump are gonna be the most dovish, isolationist people ever. They don't want to do anything, uh, internationally. They just want to, you know, protect America, be at home, protect our economy, don't do anything, uh, internationally, which is why he was constantly undermining NATO, uh, and constantly, you know, attacking all the, the European Union and, you know, cheering on the UK for Brexiting away from the EU. I think that being said, um, I think that Biden's done a phenomenal job, uh, when it comes to foreign policy. I think that the coalition building was so important for Ukraine-Russia, and I'm so happy that he decided to go to our European allies and our NATO allies and try to build a coalition of people to help Ukraine so that that wasn't only the United States. Um, personally, especially after doing a whole bunch of research, I do tend to side with Israel over, um, Palestine and a lot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. I'm glad that Biden, while remaining a staunch defender of Israel, is trying to rein in some of the more aggressive posturing towards, uh, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. I'm, I'm proud that Biden said, "Hey, listen. We're going to delay some of these attacks. Hey, listen. We are going to allow humanitarian aid here. Hey, listen. We are going to try to, uh, you know, not kill as many Palestinian people down there," while still, you know, signaling that he would be a staunch supporter of, um, of Israel in, in the conflict, assuming the civilian casualties don't go too high. Um, for foreign policy, I mean, blemishes, I mean, like the, the biggest one you can give to Biden is Afghanistan and the pullout there, but man, are we gonna talk about, you know, the, uh, inspector general report that says that one of the biggest reasons why the Afghanistan pullout was so disastrous was because of the Doha Accords where Donald Trump headed talks that didn't even include the Afghanistan army? Uh, I mean, like these were disasters. W- like when, when Biden took office, we had 2,500 troops left in Afghanistan. Like what was the options even, uh, afforded to Biden at that point? Um, obviously you've got the abandonment of the Kurds in northern Syria to, you know, for the Turkish armies to lay waste to. Um, we could talk about Iran and North Korea, although I'm not sure where, uh, Ben would land on those, but yeah, that's a broadly... Yeah, no.

   13. BSBen Shapiro34:10

       That's, that's a lot from both of you.

   14. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:11

       That's real high. Yeah.

   15. BSBen Shapiro34:12

       You wanna pick, pick at something where you disagree with here? Well, I mean, the- there's a lot. So- Mm-hmm. I mean, so I wanna ask a few questions on each one of these.

   16. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:19

       Yeah, sure.

   17. BSBen Shapiro34:20

       Uh, so let's, let's talk about divisiveness-

   18. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:22

       Mm-hmm.

   19. BSBen Shapiro34:23

       ... for a second. So I... There's no one who can make the case that Donald Trump is not divisive.

   20. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:26

       Yeah.

   21. BSBen Shapiro34:26

       Of course, he's incredibly divisive. It's a given.

   22. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:30

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BSBen Shapiro34:31

       Do you treat Biden's rhetoric with the same level of seriousness that you treat Trump's rhetoric? Or sh- I should probably put that the other way around. Should we treat Trump's rhetoric with the same level of seriousness as Joe Biden or say Barack Obama's rhetoric?

   24. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)34:42

       Um, I'm gonna try to be concise when I say this. Broadly speaking, especially in studying Israel-Palestine and Ukraine-Russia, I try not to take politicians at their word 'cause sometimes they just say stuff to say stuff. I understand that. But broadly speaking, I'm gonna look at the rhetoric and the actions, and I am gonna grade them the same. So yes, I would hold Biden and Trump to the same standard.

   25. BSBen Shapiro35:00

       Right. So m- my feeling is, and this is one area where for clarification we're gonna have a division-

   26. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)35:05

       Mm-hmm.

   27. BSBen Shapiro35:05

       ... uh, is that I of course don't treat Trump's rhetoric in the same way that I treat Biden's or Obama's. He's utterly uncalibrated, and he says whatever he wants to at any given time, and it doesn't even match up with his policy very often. Uh-

   28. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)35:14

       Can I ask you, like, for our head of state, our chief executive, shouldn't rhetoric be arguably one of the most important things that he does?

   29. BSBen Shapiro35:22

       I mean, the answer would be yes, and now I've been given a choice between a person who I think in calibrated ways says things that are divisive and a person who in uncalibrated ways says things that are divisive. And so the evidence that Joe Biden is divisive is every poll taken since essentially August of, of 2021. He, he is by all available metrics incredibly divisive. A huge percentage of Americans are deeply unhappy not only with his performance but don't believe he's a uniter. They're, they're... That- that's just the reality, and that may just be a reflection. I mean, honestly, we may be putting too much on Trump or Biden personally. It may just be-

   30. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)35:56

       Mm-hmm.
5. 43:31 – 56:28

   Foreign policy

   1. BSBen Shapiro43:31

      on the, on the, on the foreign policy stuff, um, so the, the questions that I have-

   2. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)43:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BSBen Shapiro43:36

      ... with regard to, to Biden on foreign policy, uh, very, very simple question.

   4. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)43:42

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BSBen Shapiro43:42

      Do you think that the situation in the Middle East is better now than it was under Donald Trump?

   6. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)43:48

      Mm, uh, probably n- um, that's a hard one. The factors-

   7. BSBen Shapiro43:55

      Why?

   8. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)43:55

      ... that I'm making right now are, uh, like obviously you've got the Israel-Palestinian War that's going on right now, which is kind of bad. But like broadly speaking, I'm not sure how much that affects the Middle East as much as, like, the collapse of Syria. 2013 Syrian Civil War sent millions of immigrants throughout all of Europe, and that-

   9. BSBen Shapiro44:12

      Which was under?

   10. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:13

       Um, which was under Obama and continued-

   11. BSBen Shapiro44:15

       Right.

   12. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:15

       ... under Trump. Trump didn't do anything to alleviate any of the Syrian Civil War. Um, i- in term like-

   13. BSBen Shapiro44:20

       Why did Syria end up as a preserve of Russia again?

   14. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:22

       How did Syria end up as a preserve of Russia?

   15. BSBen Shapiro44:24

       Yes, why did it end up being essentially a client state of Russia?

   16. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:27

       Um, I know that Putin enjoys access to the ports down there. Um, I don't know, you tell me.

   17. BSBen Shapiro44:32

       I mean, the reason is because Barack Obama suggested that there was a red line that would be drawn in the face of chemical weapons use. Bashar al-Assad then used chemical-

   18. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:38

       Sure.

   19. BSBen Shapiro44:38

       ... weapons in Syria, and Barack Obama was un- unwilling to then essentially create consequences for Syria in the form of any sort of Western strike. And so instead he outsourced it to Russia. This is 2013, 2014.

   20. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:49

       (clears throat) Sure.

   21. BSBen Shapiro44:49

       Right, so they-

   22. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:49

       Do you think there might have been some hesitancy after, like, seeing how Libya ended up, that maybe us, like, intervening hardcore-

   23. BSBen Shapiro44:54

       Who, who was president during Libya?

   24. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:55

       Uh, Obama?

   25. BSBen Shapiro44:56

       Yeah. I mean, like, so the, the-

   26. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)44:57

       Sure, but what, what, what does that have to do with anything, though? I'm just saying-

   27. BSBen Shapiro44:59

       I mean, though there might have been like a mistake learned that, like, ah... The point that I'm making is that actually the Middle East, I mean just historically speaking, was historically good under Donald Trump. I mean, it's very difficult to make the case that either before or after Trump were better than during Donald Trump. Like, this is an area of-

   28. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)45:10

       Was it just... I mean, the Syrian... I don't think that, that Trump contributed to the Syrian situation im- improving much. Um, I think that he caught a lot of-

   29. BSBen Shapiro45:18

       I mean, he wrecked ISIS.

   30. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)45:18

       What?
6. 56:28 – 1:11:25

   Israel-Palestine

   1. BSBen Shapiro56:28

      in the pudding.

   2. LFLex Fridman56:28

      Before we go to Ukraine, can I ask about Israel? So you're both mostly in agreement, but what is-

   3. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)56:34

      Well, I don't know if I'd say that, but...

   4. LFLex Fridman56:35

      Okay, but...

   5. BSBen Shapiro56:35

      (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman56:36

      (laughs) As I'm learning. What is Israel doing right, what is Israel doing wrong in this very specific current war in Gaza?

   7. BSBen Shapiro56:47

      Um, I mean, frankly, I think that what Israel's doing wrong is if I were Israel, okay, like again, America's interests are not coincident with Israel's interests. If, if I were an Israeli leader, I would've swiveled up and I would've knocked the bleep out of Hezbollah early.

   8. LFLex Fridman57:01

      What does that mean?

   9. BSBen Shapiro57:01

      Because I think that-

   10. LFLex Fridman57:02

       What does that mean?

   11. BSBen Shapiro57:02

       So I, I, I would've, I would've... Yoav Gallant, who's the defense minister of Israel, was encouraging Netanyahu, who's the prime minister, and the war cabinet, including Benny Gantz. So whenever people talk about the Netanyahu government, that's not what's in place right now. There's a unity war government in place that includes the political opposition. The reason I point that out is because there are a lot of people politically who will suggest that the actions Israel is currently taking are somehow the manifestation of a right-wing government. Israel currently does not have a quote unquote "right-wing government." They have a unity government that includes the opposition. In any case, Yoav Gallant was urging in the very early days of the war that Israel should turn north and instead of hitting Hamas, they should actually take the opportunity to knock Hezbollah out because Hezbollah is significantly more dangerous to the existence of the state of Israel than Hamas. I actually agree with that. Uh, as, as far as what Israel has been doing "wrong" in the actual war, I mean, I think that, again, from an American perspective, I think that Israel is, is doing pretty well. From an Israeli perspective, if I were Israeli, I would actually want Israel to be less loose about sending its soldiers in on the ground level. So Israel's attempting to minimize civilian casualties and the cost of that has been the highest military death toll that Israel has had since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I mean, I personally know through one degree of separation three separate people who have been killed in Gaza. And that's because they're going in door to door. It's because they're, they're attempting to minimize civilian casualties and they're losing a lot of guys in, in this particular, in this particular war. Um, you know, the, the problem that Israel has had, historically speaking, is that Israel got very complacent about its own security situation. They believed the technology was going to somehow correct for the hatred on the other side of the wall, that it very... "Okay, so our people have to live underground for two weeks at a time while some rockets fall, but at least it's not a war." And that complacence, you know, bred what happened on October 7th. So the, to, to me, what Israel did wrong was years and years and years of complacence and belief in an Oslo system that is, at root, a failure, because you cannot make a peace agreement with people who do not want to make peace with you. Uh, so tha- tha- that's what I think Israel is doing wrong. I have a feeling that there's gonna be wide divergence on this point.

   12. DBDestiny (Steven Bonnell)59:01

       Um, maybe. Uh, so, uh, in terms of, broadly speaking, um, I generally oppose settlement expansion. It's a thing that Israel does incorrectly that I think is kind of like provocative to at least all the Palestinians, uh, in the West Bank and it probably energizes hatred in the, uh, Gaza Strip for them as well. In terms of conducting, uh, in terms of conducting warfare, uh, the one thing that I always say to everybody, uh, especially Americans, is you can't evaluate things from an American perspective. It's very stupid. It happened a lot with Ukraine where people are like, "Oh, well, didn't they work with the Nazis?" and like, "Weren't the Soviets the good guys?" And it's like, well, in, in other parts of the world, it's not quite as simple. Um, and I think the same is true for Israel-Palestine, that a lot of Americans will analyze the conflict as just being one between only Israel and Palestine, which it's not. It's a conflict between Israel and then Palestine, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. Right now, it is. Um, I think that the... However, one area where I break with Ben is, is I think that minimizing civilian casualties and everything is very, very, very important, I think, on the Israeli side. I don't think it's important so that the US will stay with them 'cause I think the US is probably gonna stick with Israel as long they don't do anything crazy. And I don't even think it matters for the international community. It does- definitely doesn't matter for the UN because Jesus Christ.

Episode duration: 2:20:04