Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #454

1. 0:00 – 5:06

   Introduction

   1. SESaagar Enjeti0:00

      ... so people need to go back and read the history of the first 100 days under FDR. The sheer amount of legislation that went through, his ability to bring Congress to heel, and the Senate. He gets all this stuff through. But as you and I know, legislation takes a long time to put into place, right? We've had people starving on the streets all throughout 1933 under Hoover. The difference was Hoover w- was seen as this do-nothing joke who would dine nine-course meals in the White House and he was a filthy rich banker. FDR comes in there and every single day has fireside chats, he's passing legislation. But more importantly... So he, he tries various different programs, then they get ruled unconstitutional. He tries even more. So what does America take away from that? Every single time, if he gets knocked down, he comes back fighting. And that was a really part of his character that he developed, uh, after he got polio, and it was, uh, it gave him the strength to persevere through personally what he could transfer in his calm demeanor and his feeling of fight, that America really got that-that spirit from him and was able to climb itself out of the Great Depression. He's such an inspirational figure. I think of Johnson and of Nixon, of Teddy Roosevelt, even of FDR, I can give you a laundry list of (laughs) uh, personal problems that all those people had. I think they had really, really good judgment and, uh, I'm not sure how intrinsic their own personal character was to their exploration and thinking about the world. So JFK is... Actually, JFK might be our best example because he had the best judgment out of anybody in the room as a brand new president in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he got us out and avoided nuclear war, which he deserves eternal credit for that. And I encourage people out there, this is a, this is a brutal text, we were forced to read it in graduate school. Uh, The Essence of Decision by Graham Allison, I'm so thankful we did, it's one of the foundations of political science because it lays out theories of how government works. People really need to understand Washington. Washington is a creature with traditions, with institutions that don't care about you. They don't even really care about the president. They have self-perpetuating mechanisms which have been done a certain way and it usually takes a great shocking event like World War II to change really anything beyond the marginal. Every once in a while, you have a figure like Teddy Roosevelt who's actually able to take peacetime presidency and transform the country, but it needs an extraordinary individual to get something like that done. Uh, so the question around The Essence of Decision was the theory behind the Cuban Missile Crisis of how Kennedy arrived at h- at his decision. And, uh, there are various different schools of thought, but one of the things I love about the book is it presents a case for all three, the organizational theory, the bureaucratic politics theory, and then kind of the great man theory as well. So there's a... You know, you and I could sit here and I could tell you a case about PT-109 and about how John F. Kennedy experienced World War II and how he literally swam miles with a wounded man's life jacket strap in his teeth with a broken back and he saved him and he ended up on the cover of Life Magazine and he was a war hero. And he was a deeply smart individual who wrote a book in 1939 called Why England Slept, which to this day, is considered a- a, uh, text which at the moment was able to describe in detail why Neville Chamberlain and the b- British political system arrived at the policy of appeasement. I actually have a original copy. It's one of my most prized possessions because... And it- it- from 1939 because this is a 23-year-old kid, "Who the fuck are you, John F. Kennedy?" Um, turns out he's a brilliant man. And another just favorite aside is that at the Potsdam Conference, you know, where Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody. So in the room at the same time, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general, right, who will succeed him, 26-year-old John F. Kennedy as a journalist, and all three of those presidents were in the same room with Joseph Stalin and others. And that- that's the story of America right there. It's kind of amazing. I'm gonna give you one of the most depressing quotes, which is deeply true. Roger Ailes, who was a genius, shout out to The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman. That book changed my life too, um, because it really made me understand media. "People don't want to be informed. They want to feel informed."

   2. LFLex Fridman4:09

      The following is a conversation with Saagar Enjeti, his second time on the podcast. Saagar is a political commentator, journalist, co-host of Breaking Points with Krystal Ball, and of The Realignment podcast with Marshall Kosloff. Saagar is one of the most well-read people I've ever met. His love of history and the wisdom gained from reading thousands of history books radiates through every analysis he makes of the world. In this podcast, we trace out the history of the various ideological movements that led up to the current political moment. In doing so, we mention a large number of amazing books. We'll put a link to them in the description for those interested to learn more about each topic. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Saagar Enjeti.

2. 5:06 – 10:07

   Why Trump won

   1. LFLex Fridman5:07

      So let's start with the obvious big question. Why do you think Trump won? Let's break it down. Before the election, you said that if Trump wins, it's going to be because of immigration.

   2. SESaagar Enjeti5:18

      Mm.

   3. LFLex Fridman5:18

      So aside from immigration, what are the maybe less than obvious reasons that Trump won?

   4. SESaagar Enjeti5:25

      Yes, we absolutely need to return to immigration. But without that multi-faceted explanation, let's start with the easiest one. Um, there has been a wave of anti-incumbent energy around the world. Financial Times chart recently went viral showing, so the first time, I think, since World War II, possibly since 1905, I need to look at the dataset, that all anti-incumbent parties all across the world suffered major defeats. So, that's a very, very high level analysis. And we can return to that if we talk about Donald Trump's victory in 2016, 'cause there were similar, like, global precursors. The individual level in the United States, there's a very simple explanation as well, which is that Joe Biden was very old, he was very unpopular, inflation was high. Inflation is one of the highest determiners of people switching their votes and putting their primacy on that ahead of any other issue at the ballot box. So, that's that. But I think it's actually much deeper at a psychological level for who America is and what it is. And fundamentally, I think what we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about today is, uh, the evolution of the modern left and its collapse, uh, in the Kamala Harris candidacy, and eventually the loss to Donald Trump in the popular vote, where a... really is like an apotheosis of several social forces. So, we're gonna talk about the great awakening or so-called awokening, which is very important to understanding all of this. There's also really Donald Trump himself, who is really one of the most unique individual American politicians that we've seen in decades. Uh, at this point, Donald Trump's victory makes him the most important and transformative figure in American politics since FDR. And, uh, thought process for the audience is in 2028, there will be an 18-year-old who's eligible to vote, who cannot remember a time when Donald J. Trump was not the central American figure. And there's stories, uh, in World War II, where troops were on the front line, some of them are 18, 19 years old, FDR died, and they literally said, "Well, who's the president?" And they said, "Harry Truman, you dumbass." And they go, "Who?" They couldn't conceive of a universe where FDR was not the president of the United States. And, you know, Donald Trump, e- even during the Biden administration, he was the figure. Joe Biden defined his entire candidacy and his legacy around defeating this man, and obviously he's failed. We should talk a lot about Joe Biden as well for his own failed theories of the presidency. So, I think at a macro level, it's easy to understand. At a basic level of inflation, it's easy to understand. But what I really hope that a lot of people can take away is how fundamentally unique Donald Trump is as a political figure and what he was able to do to realign American politics really forever. I mean, in, uh, the white working class realignment originally of 2016, the activation really of a multiracial kind of working class coalition and of really splitting American lines along a single individual question of, did you attend a four-year college degree institution or not? And (laughs) this is a crazy thing to say. Donald Trump is one of the most racially depolarizing, uh, electoral figures in American history. We lived in 2016 at a time when racial groups, you know, really voted in blocks, Latinos, Blacks, whites. There was some, of course, division between the white working class and the, uh, white- white college-educated, white, uh, collar workers. Um, but by and large, you could pretty fairly say that Asians were g-... Indians, everyone mo-... 80, 90% were gonna vote for the Democratic Party. Latinos as well. Uh, I'm born, you know, here in Texas, in the state of Texas. George W. Bush shocked people when he won some 40% of the Latino vote. Donald Trump just beat Kamala Harris with Latino men, and he ran up the table for young men. So, really, uh, fundamentally, we have witnessed a full realignment in American politics, and that's a really fundamental problem for the modern left. It's erased a lot of the conversation around gerrymandering, around, uh, the electoral college, the so-called electoral bi-... college bias towards Republicans. Uh, really the r- re-... being able to win the popular vote for the first time since 2004 is a shocking and landmark achievement by a Republican. Uh, in 2008, I have a book on my shelf and I ne-... I a-... and I always look at it to remind myself of how much things can change. James Carville, and it says, 40 More Years: How Democrats Will Never Lose an Election Again. 2008 they wrote that book, after the Obama coalition and the landslide. And, uh, something I love so much about this country, people change their minds all the time. I was born in 1992. I watched red states go blue. I've seen blue states go red. I've seen swing states go (laughs) red or blue. I've seen, uh, millions of people pick up and move, the greatest internal migration in the United States since World War II. And, uh, it's really inspiring because it's a really dynamic, interesting place, and I love covering it, and I love thinking about it, talking about it, talking to people.

3. 10:07 – 13:44

   Book recommendations

   1. SESaagar Enjeti10:07

      It's awesome.

   2. LFLex Fridman10:08

      One of the reasons I'm a big fan of yours is, uh, you're a student of history. And so, you've recommended a bunch of books to me. And they and others thread the different movements throughout American history. Some movements take off and do hold power for a long time, some don't. And some are started by a small number of people and are controlled by a small number of people. Some are mass movements. And it's just fascinating to watch how those movements evolve and then fit themselves maybe into the constraints of a two-party system.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti10:38

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman10:38

      And I'd love to sort of talk about the various perspectives of that. Um, so would it be fair to say that this election was turned into a kind of class struggle?

   5. SESaagar Enjeti10:51

      Well, I won't go that far, um, because to say it's a class struggle really implies that things fundamentally align on economic lines, and, uh, I don't think that's necessarily accurate. Although if- if that's your lane- lens, you could get there. So, there's a- a s-... very big statistic going around right now where Kamala Harris increased her vote share in won households over $100,000 or more, uh, and Donald Trump won households under $100,000. So, you could view that in an economic lens. The problem, again, that I have is that that is much more a proxy for four-year college degree and for education. And so one of my favorite books is called Coming Apart by Charles Murray. Uh, and that book really, really underscores how the cultural milieu that people swim in...... uh, when they attend a four-year college degree and the trajectory of their life, not only on where they move to, who they marry, what type of grocery store they go to, their cultural, uh, what television shows that they watch. One of my favorite questions from Charles Murray's, it's called a bubble quiz. I encourage people to go take it, by the way. Uh, which it asks you a question. It's like, "What does the word Branson mean to you?" And it has a couple of answers. One of them is, uh, Branson is Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson. Number two is Branson, Missouri, which is like a country music tourist-style destination. Three is, it means nothing. So you are less in a bubble if you say country music, and you're very much in the bubble if you say Richard Branson. And, uh, I remember taking that test for the first time. I go, "Obviously, Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic. Like, what?" And then I was like, "Wait, I'm like, I'm in the bubble." And, uh, there are other things in there, like can you name various different military ranks? I can 'cause I'm a history nerd, but the vast majority of college-educated people don't know anybody who served in the United States military. They don't have family members who do. Uh, the most popular shows in America are like The Big Bang Theory and NCIS, uh, whereas people in our, probably, cultural milieu, uh, our favorite shows are White Lotus, The Last of Us. This is prestige television, right? With a very small audience, but high income, high education. So the point is, is that culture really defines who we are as Americans where we live. And, uh, rural-urban is one way to describe it, but honestly, with the work-from-home revolution and more rich people and highly educated people moving to more rural, suburban, or areas they traditionally weren't able to commute in, that's changing. And so really, um, the internet is everything. The stuff that you consume on the internet, the stuff that you spend your time doing, type of books you read, whether you read a book at all, frankly, uh, whether you, uh, travel to Europe, whether you have a passport, um, you know, all the things that you value in your life, that is the real cultural divide in America. And I actually think that's what this revolution of, uh, Donald Trump was activating and bringing people to the polls, bringing a lot of those traditional working-class voters of all races away from the Democratic Party along the lines of elitism, of sneering, and of a general cultural feeling that these people don't understand me and, uh, my struggles in this life.

4. 13:44 – 21:13

   History of wokeism

   1. LFLex Fridman13:44

      And so the trivial formulation is that is the, the wokeism, the anti-wokeism movement.

   2. SESaagar Enjeti13:49

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman13:49

      So it's not necessarily that, uh, Trump winning was a statement against wokeism. It was the broader anti-elitism.

   4. SESaagar Enjeti13:57

      It's difficult to say because, uh, I wouldn't dismiss anti-wokis- or wokeism as an explanation. Um, but we need to understand like the electoral impacts of woke. So there's varying degrees of like how you're going to encounter, quote-unquote, wokeism. And, and this is a very difficult thing to define. So let me just try and break it down, which is, there are the types of things that you're going to interact with on a cultural basis. And what I mean by that is, uh, going to watch a TV show and just for some reason, there's like two trans characters, and it's never like particularly explained why, they just are there. Or watching a commercial, and it's the same thing. Uh, watching, I don't know. I remember I was watching, I think it was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the main... It was a terrible movie, by the way. Don't recommend it. Uh, but one of the characters, I think his, her name was like America, and she wore a gay pride flag, right? Look, many left-wingers would make fun of me for saying these things, but that is obviously a social agenda to the point as in they believe it is like deeply acceptable that it's used by Hollywood and cultural elites who really value those, uh, progress, you know, in sexual orientation and others, and, and really believe it's important to, quote-unquote, showcase it for representation. So that's like one way that we may encounter, quote-unquote, wokeism. But the more important ways, frankly, are the ways that affirmative action, which really has its roots in, you know, American society all the way going back to the 1960s, and how those have manifested in our economy and in our understanding of, quote-unquote, discrimination. So two books I can recommend. One is called The Origins of Woke. That's by Richard Hanania. Uh, there's another one, uh, The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell. And they make a very strong case that, Caldwell in particular, that he calls it like a new founding of America, was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because it created an entire new legal regime and understanding of race in the American character and how the government was going to enforce that. And that really ties in with, uh, another one of the books that I recommended to you about the origins of Trump by Jim Webb, and Senator Jim Webb, uh, incredible, incredible man. He's so underappreciated. Uh, intellectual, he was anti-war, and, uh, he was... People may remember him from the 2016 primary, and, uh, they asked him, um, uh, uh... They asked him a question, I don't exactly remember, about one of his enemies. And he's like, "Well, one of 'em was a guy I shot in Vietnam." (laughs) Uh, and he was running against Hillary. And, uh, that guy, the, he wrote the book Born Fighting. I think it's, well, it's history of the Scots-Irish people, something like that. And that book really opened my eyes to the way that affirmative action and racial preferences that were playing out, you know, through the HR managerial elite really turned a lot of people within the white working class away from the Democratic Party and felt fundamentally discriminated against by the professional managerial class. And so there's a lot of roots to this, uh, The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham, and in terms of the origin of kinda how we got here, but the crystallization of like DEI and/or affirmative action, I prefer to use the term affirmative action, in the higher es- highest echelons of business, and there became this idea that representation itself was the only thing that mattered. And I think that right around 2014, that really went on steroids, and that's why it's not an accident that Donald J. Trump elected in 2016.

   5. LFLex Fridman17:14

      At this point, do you think this election is the kind of statement that wokeism as a movement is dead?

   6. SESaagar Enjeti17:20

      I don't know. Um, I mean, it's very difficult to say because wokeism itself is not a movement with a party leader. It's a amorphous, uh, belief that has worked its way through institutions now for almost 40 or 50 years. I mean, it's effectively a religion, um, and part of the reason why it's difficult to define is it means different things to different people. So for example, there are varying degrees of how we would define, quote unquote, "woke." Do I think that the Democrats will be speaking in so-called academic language? Yes, I do think they will. I think that the next Democratic nominee will not do that. However, Kamala Harris actually did move as much as she could away from, quote unquote, "woke," but she s- basically was punished for a lot of the sins of both herself from 2019, but a general cultural feeling that her and the people around her do not understand me, and not only do not understand me, but have racial preferences or a regime or an understanding that would lead to a, quote unquote, "equity mindset." You know, equal outcomes for everybody as opposed to equality of opportunity, which is more of a colorblind philosophy. So I can't say. I think it's way too early. And, you know, again, like you can not use the word Latinx, but do you still believe in an effective affirmative action regime, you know, in terms of how you would run your Department of Justice, in terms of how you view the world, in terms of what you think the real dividing lines in America are? 'Cause I would say that's still actually kind of a woke mindset and that's part of the reason why the, the term itself doesn't really mean a whole lot, and we have to get actually really specific about what it looks like in operations. In operation it means affirmative action, it means the NASDAQ passing some law that if you wanna go public or something that you have to have a woman and a person of color on your board. Like, this is a blatant and ex- and extraordinary, look, racialism that they've enshrined in their bylaws. So you can get rid of ESG, that's great, um, but, you know, you, you can get rid of DEI, I think that's great, but it's really about a mindset and a view of the world, and I don't think that's going anywhere.

   7. LFLex Fridman19:20

      And you think the reason it doesn't work well in practice is because it... th- there's a big degree to which it's anti-meritocracy?

   8. SESaagar Enjeti19:29

      It's anti-American, really. I mean, uh, you know, DEI and woke and, uh, affirmative action make perfect sense in a lot of different countries, (laughs) okay? And there are a lot of countries out there that are, uh, multiethnic and they're heterogeneous and they are run by basically quasi-dictators, and the way it works is that you pay off the Christians and you pay off the Muslims and they get this guy and they get that guy and everybody kinda shakes it. It's very explicit where they're like, "We have 10 spots," and they go to the Christians. "We have 10 spots," and they go to the Hindus. You know, I'm talking... India is a country that I know pretty well and, uh, this does kind of work like that on a state politics level in some respect. But in America, you know, fundamentally, we really believe that no matter where you are from, that you come here and basically within a generation, uh, especially if you m- migrate here legally and you integrate, that you leave a lot of that stuff behind. And the story, the American dream that is ingrained in so many of us, is one that really does not mesh well with any sort of racial preference regime or anything that's not meritocratic. And, uh, I mean, I will give the left-wingers some, you know, credit in the idea that meritocracy itself, you know, could have preference for people who have privileged backgrounds. I think that's true. Um, and so, you know, the way I would like to see it is to increase everybody's equality of opportunity to make sure that they all have a chance at, quote unquote, "willing out" the American dream, but that doesn't erase meritocracy, hard work, and, uh, many of the other things that we associate with the American character, with the American frontier. So really, these are two ideologies which are really at odds. Like, in, in a lot of ways, like, wokeism, racialism, and all, this is a third world ideology. It's one that's very prevalent in Europe and, and, uh, all across Asia, but it doesn't mix well here, and, and it shouldn't, and I'm really glad that the Am- America feels

5. 21:13 – 27:51

   History of Scots-Irish

   1. SESaagar Enjeti21:13

      the same way.

   2. LFLex Fridman21:14

      Yeah, I gotta go back to, uh, Jim Webb and that book. What a badass, fascinating book.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti21:18

      Oh, my God. It's, it's amazing.

   4. LFLex Fridman21:19

      Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. So I did not realize to the degree... first of all, how badass (laughs) the Scots-Irish are.

   5. SESaagar Enjeti21:29

      (laughs) .

   6. LFLex Fridman21:29

      And then to the degree many of the things that kind of identify as American and part of the American spirit were defined by this relatively small group of people.

   7. SESaagar Enjeti21:38

      Yes. Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman21:39

      A- as he describes, the motto could be summarized as fight, sing, drink, and pray. So there's the principles of fierce individualism.

   9. SESaagar Enjeti21:45

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LFLex Fridman21:46

       The principles of a deep distrust of government, the elites, the authorities, bottom-up governance, over 2,000 years of a military tradition. They (laughs) made up 40% of the Revolutionary War army and, uh, produced numerous military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton, and a bunch of presidents.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti22:06

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman22:07

       Some of the more gangster presidents. Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti22:14

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LFLex Fridman22:15

       Just the, the whole cultural legacy of country music.

   15. SESaagar Enjeti22:19

       We owe them so much, and, uh, they really don't get their due, unfortunately, a lot of be- for the reasons that I just described around racialism is because post-, you know, mass immigration from Europe, the term white kind of became blanket applied to new Irish, to Italians, to Slovenians. And, you know, as you and I both know, if you travel those countries, people are pretty different, and it's n- not different here in the United States. Scots-Irish were some of the original settlers here in America, and particularly in Appalachia, and their contribution to the fighting spirit and their own culture and, like, who we are as individualists, and, uh, some of the first people to ever settle the frontier, and that frontier mindset really does come from them. We owe them just as much we do the Puritans, but they don't ever really get their due. And the reason I recommend that book is if you read that book and you understand then, you know, how exactly could this group of white working class voters for- go from 2012 voting for a man named Barack Hussein Obama to Donald J. Trump, um, you really s- seem to... it makes perfect sense if you combine it with a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here, about affirmative action, about distrust of the elites, about feeling as if institutions are not seeing through to you, and specifically also not valuing, valuing your contribution to American history, and in some cases, actively looking down. You know, I'm gl- I'm glad you pointed out not only their role in the Revolutionary B- War, but in the Civil War as well.

   16. LFLex Fridman23:39

       Mm-hmm.

   17. SESaagar Enjeti23:39

       Um, and, you know, just how much of a contribution culturally really that we owe them, um, for setting the groundwork that so many of us who came later could build upon and adopt some of their own ideas and their culture as our own. It's one of the things that makes America great.

   18. LFLex Fridman23:53

       Mark Twain.

   19. SESaagar Enjeti23:54

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman23:54

       (laughs) I mean, so much of the culture, so much of the, yeah, the American spirit, the, the whole idea, the whole shape and form and type of populism that represents our democracy. So you, would you trace the, the, that, that fierce individualism that we think of back to them?

   21. SESaagar Enjeti24:12

       Definitely. It's a huge part of them, uh, about who they were, about the screw you attitude. Um, I mean, uh, that book actually kind of had a renaissance back in 2016 when Hillbilly Elegy came out.

   22. LFLex Fridman24:22

       Oh, yeah.

   23. SESaagar Enjeti24:22

       I'm sure you remember this. Which it's kind of weird, uh, to think that it's now this vice president-elect of the United States. It's kind of wild, honestly, to think about. Um, but J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, I think was really important for a lot of American elites who were like, "How do these support- people support Trump? Where does this shit come from?" That there really, I mean, that, if you really think back to that time, it was shocking to the elite character that any person in the world could ever vote for Donald Trump. And not just vote, he won the election. How does that happen? And that's Hillbilly Elegy guided people in an understanding of what that's like on a lived day-to-day basis. And J.D., to his credit, talks about the Scots-Irish heritage, about Appalachia, and the legacy of what that culture looks like today and how a lot of these people voted for Donald Trump. But we gotta give credit to Jim Webb who wrote the history of these people and taught me and you about, you know, their f- their original fight against the, uh, the oppressors in Scotland and in Ireland and their militant spirit and how they were able to bring that over here. Um, and you know, they got their due in Andrew Jackson and some of our other populist presidents who set us up on the road to Donald Trump to where we are today.

   24. LFLex Fridman25:27

       Dude, it got me pumped, excited to be an American.

   25. SESaagar Enjeti25:29

       Me too. I love that book.

   26. LFLex Fridman25:31

       It's crazy that J.D., the same guy... 'Cause that's, uh, Hillbilly Elegy is what I kind of thought of him as.

   27. SESaagar Enjeti25:39

       Y- yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, for me, it's actually pretty surreal. I met J.D. Vance in like 2017. (laughs) I didn't, in like a bar. (laughs) I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States. I mean, just kind of wild. Uh, one of my friends went back and dug up the email that we originally sent him, just like, "Hey, do you wanna meet up or..." and he's like, "Sure," you know? (laughs) Yeah, yeah, it's like... And I was watching on television.

   28. LFLex Fridman25:59

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SESaagar Enjeti25:59

       Um, I mean, the first time that it really hit me, I was like, whoa, he has like name in a history book, 'cause whenever he became the vice presidential nominee, I was watching him on TV and the confetti was falling and he was waving with his wife and I was like, wow. Like, that's it. You're in, you're in the history books now forever. Especially now, so, uh, as the literal vice president-elect of the US. But his own evolution is actually a fascinating, uh, w- a fascinating story for us too, because I think a lot of the time I've spent right now is kind of... This, the, a lot of what I'm giving right now are like 2016 kind of takes about like why Trump won that time. But we should spend a lot of time on how Donald Trump won this election, and like how, what happened, some of the failures of the Biden administration, some of the payback for the Great Awokening. But also if you look at the evolution of J.D. Vance, this is a person who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, and not a lot of people pay attention to this, but if you read Hillbilly Elegy, uh, J.D. was much more of a traditional conservative at that time. Uh, he was, uh, citing, you know, report... I think the famous passage is about like payday loans and why they're good or something like that. I don't know his position today, but I would just, uh, assume that he's probably changed that. But the point is, is that his ideological evolution from watching somebody who, uh, really was more of a traditional Republican with a deep empathy for the white working class then eventually become a champion and a disciple of Donald Trump and to believe that he himself was the vehicle for accomplishing and bettering the United States, but specifically for working class Americans really of all stripes. And that story is really one, one of the rise of the modern left as it exists as a political project, as an ideology. It's also one of the Republican Party which coalesced now with Donald Trump as a legitimate figure and as the single bulwark against cultural leftism and elitism that eventually was normalized to the point that a majority of Americans decided to vote for him in 2024.

6. 27:51 – 31:54

   Biden

   1. SESaagar Enjeti27:52

   2. LFLex Fridman27:52

      So let's talk about 2024. What, what happened with, uh, with the left? What happened with Biden? What's your take on, on Biden?

   3. SESaagar Enjeti27:59

      Biden is, um... I try to remove myself from it and I try not to give like hi- big history takes while you're in the moment, but it's really hard not to say that he's one of the worst presidents in modern history. And, uh, I think the reason why I'm gonna go with it is because I wanna judge him by the things that he set out to do. So Joe Biden, um, has been the same person for his entire political career. He is a basically C student who thinks he's an A student. The chip on his shoulder against the elites has played to his benefit in his original election to the United States Senate, through his entire career as a United States senator where he always wanted to be the star and the center of attention, and to his 1988 presidential campaign. And, uh, one of the most fascinating things about Biden and watching him age is watching him become even more of what he already was. And so a book recommendation, it's called What It Takes, and, uh, it was written in 1988. And there's actually a long chapter on Joe Biden and about the plagiarism scandal. And one of the things that comes across is his sheer arrogance and belief in himself as to why he should be the center of attention. Now, the reason I'm laying all this out is the arrogance of Joe Biden, the individual and his character, is fundamentally the reason that his presidency went awry. This is a person who was elected in 2020 really because of a feeling of chaos, of Donald Trump, of we need normalcy, decides to come into the office, portrays himself as a "transitional president," slowly, you know, begins to lose a lot of his faculties, and then surrounds himself with sycophants, the same ones who have been around him for so long that he had no single input into his life to tell him that he needed to stop and he needed to drop out of the race until it became truly undeniable to the vast majority of the American people. Um, and that's why I'm, I'm trying to keep it as like him as an individual, as a president. 'Cause we can separate him from some of his accomplishments and the things that happened. Uh, some I support, some I don't. Uh, but generally, a lot of people are not gonna look back and think about Joe Biden and the CHIPS Act. A lot of people are not gonna look back and think about Joe Biden and the Build Back Better bill or whatever, his, uh, Lina Khan antitrust policy. They're going to look back on him and they're going to remember high inflation. They're going to remember somebody who fundamentally never was up to the job in the sense that...... it's one of, again, book recommendation, Freedom From Fear by David Kennedy. It is about, uh, the Roosevelt years. And one of the most (laughs) important things people don't understand is the New Deal didn't really work in the way that a lot of people wanted it to, right? Like, there was still high emplo- unemployment. There was still a lot of suffering. Um, but you know what changed? They felt that they had a vigorous commander-in-chief who was doing everything in his power to attack the problems of the everyday American. So even though things didn't even materially change, the vigor, that's a term that was often associated with, uh, John F. Kennedy and vigor, you know, in the Massachusetts accent. We had this young, vibrant president in 1960, and he was running around, and he wanted to convince us that he was working every single day tirelessly. And when you have an 80-year-old man who is simply just eating ice cream and going to the beach while people's v- grocery prices and all those things go up by 25%, and we don't see the same vigor. We don't see the same action, the bias to action, which is so important in the modern presidency. That is fundamentally why I think the Democrats, uh, part of the reason why the Democrats lost the election, and also why I think that he missed his moment in such a dramatic way. Uh, and he had the opportunity. He could have done it, you know, if he wanted to, but, uh, maybe 20 years ago. But the truth is, is that his own narcissism, his own, uh, misplaced belief in himself, and his own accidental rise to the presidency ended up, uh, in his downfall. And it's kind of amazing because, again, if we, if we look back to his original campaign speech, 2019, why I'm running for president, it was Charlottesville, and he said, "I want to defeat Donald Trump forever, and I wanna make sure that he never gets back in the White House again." So by his own metric, he did fail. That was his... It was the only thing he wanted to do, and he failed on it.

7. 31:54 – 33:55

   FDR

   1. SESaagar Enjeti31:54

      He failed from it.

   2. LFLex Fridman31:54

      You said a lot of interesting stuff.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti31:56

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman31:56

      So, so one, FDR, that's really interesting. It's not about the specific policy.

   5. SESaagar Enjeti32:01

      (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman32:01

      It's about, like, fighting for the people and doing that with charisma and just uniting the entire country for a parti-... And this is the same with Bernie.

   7. SESaagar Enjeti32:12

      Yeah. Yes.

   8. LFLex Fridman32:12

      Like, maybe there's a lot of people that disagree with Bernie that still support him 'cause, like, we just want them to be-

   9. SESaagar Enjeti32:16

      Feels authentic.

   10. LFLex Fridman32:16

       Yeah.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti32:17

       That's it. That's-

   12. LFLex Fridman32:17

       We just somebody to fight authentically for us.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti32:20

       Yes, yes. FDR, people really need... FDR was like a king. He was like Jesus Christ, (laughs) okay, in, in the US. And it, some of it was because of what he did, but it was just the fight. So people need to go back and read of the history of the first 100 days under FDR. The sheer amount of legislation that went through, his ability to bring Congress to heel, and the Senate. He gets all this stuff through. But as you and I know, legislation takes a long time to put into place, right? We've had people starving on the streets all throughout 1933, um, uh, under, uh, under Hoover. The difference was Hoover was seen as this do-nothing joke who would dine nine-course meals in the White House, and he was a filthy rich banker. FDR comes in there, and every single day has fireside chats, he's passing legislation, but more importantly... So he, he tries various different programs. Then they get ruled unconstitutional. He tries even more. So what does America take away from that? Every single time, if he gets knocked down, he comes back fighting. And that was a... Really part of his character that he developed, uh, after he got polio. And it was, uh, it gave him the strength to persevere through personally what he could transfer in his calm demeanor and his feeling of fight, that America really got that spirit from him and was able to climb itself out of the Great Depression. He's such an inspirational figure. He really is. And, uh, I, I... People think of him for World War II, and of course, you know, we can spend forever on that. But, uh, in my opinion, the, the early years are not studied enough. '33 to '37 is one of the most remarkable periods in American history. We were not ruled by a president. We were ruled by a king, by a monarch, and people liked it. He was a, he was a dictator, and he was a good one. (laughs)

8. 33:55 – 36:18

   George W Bush

   1. SESaagar Enjeti33:56

   2. LFLex Fridman33:56

      Yeah. So, uh, to, uh, sort of push back against the implied thing that you said.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti34:02

      Sure.

   4. LFLex Fridman34:03

      So when saying Biden is the worst president-

   5. SESaagar Enjeti34:04

      No, second worst in modern history. That's what I said. Second worst.

   6. LFLex Fridman34:07

      In modern history.

   7. SESaagar Enjeti34:07

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman34:07

      Who's the worst?

   9. SESaagar Enjeti34:08

      W., no question.

   10. LFLex Fridman34:09

       I see, because of the horrible wars probably.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti34:12

       I mean, Iraq is just so bad.

   12. LFLex Fridman34:13

       It is just messy, yeah.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti34:14

       Like, uh, one of my, uh, favorite authors is a guy, Jean Edward Smith. He's written a bunch of presidential biographies. And in the opening of his book, W., Biography, he's like, "There's just no question this is the single worst foreign policy mistake in, uh, in all of American history, and W. is one of our worst presidents ever. He had terrible judgment and, (laughs) and got us into a war of his own choosing. It was a disaster, and it set us up for failure." It... By the way, we talked a lot about Donald Trump. Nobody is more, uh, responsible for the rise of Donald Trump than George W. Bush, but I could, I could go off on Bush for a long time.

   14. LFLex Fridman34:44

       Oh, we will.

   15. SESaagar Enjeti34:45

       Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman34:45

       We will return there.

   17. SESaagar Enjeti34:46

       Yeah. (laughs)

   18. LFLex Fridman34:46

       So as part of the pushback, I'd like to say, 'cause I agree with your criticism of arrogance and narcissism against-

   19. SESaagar Enjeti34:52

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman34:53

       ... Joe Biden. The same could be said about Donald Trump-

   21. SESaagar Enjeti34:55

       You're absolutely right.

   22. LFLex Fridman34:56

       ... of arrogance.

   23. SESaagar Enjeti34:56

       Yeah. Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman34:57

       So... And I think you've also articulated-

   25. SESaagar Enjeti34:59

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman34:59

       ... that a lot of presidents throughout American history have suffered from a bad case of arrogance and narcissism.

   27. SESaagar Enjeti35:05

       Absolutely, but sometimes to our benefit, you know?

   28. LFLex Fridman35:07

       Ye-

   29. SESaagar Enjeti35:07

       You have to be a pretty crazy person to be, uh, to wanna be president. I tw- you know, I had put out a tweet that got some controversy, and, uh, I think it was Joe Rogan, uh, who I love, but he was like, "I wanna find out who Kamala Harris is as a human being."

   30. LFLex Fridman35:20

       Yeah.
9. 36:18 – 41:35

   LBJ

   1. SESaagar Enjeti36:18

      and everything around you. There's a famous story of, uh, Lady Bird Johnson after Johnson becomes the president, and he's talking to the White House butler. And she was like, "Everything in this house revolves around my husband."... whatever's left goes to the girls, her two children, and I'll take the scraps. So it, she, it, everything revolved around Johnson's political career. And his daughters, when they're honest, 'cause they like to paper over some of the things, uh, that happened under him, but they didn't spend any time with him. Saturday n- Saturday morning was for breakfast with, you know, Richard Russell, I forget. These are all in the Robert A. Caro books. Sunday was for Rayburn. There was no time for, you know, for, for his kids. That's what it was. And, and by the way, he's one of the greatest politicians to ever live, but he also died from a massive heart attack, and he was a deeply sad and depressed individual.

   2. LFLex Fridman37:03

      Yeah. I saw that-

   3. SESaagar Enjeti37:04

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman37:04

      ... tweet, to go back to that.

   5. SESaagar Enjeti37:05

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman37:06

      Uh, and also I listened to your incredible debate about it with Marshall-

   7. SESaagar Enjeti37:10

      Uh-huh.

   8. LFLex Fridman37:10

      ... on the Realignment podcast, and I have to side with Marshall.

   9. SESaagar Enjeti37:13

      Okay.

   10. LFLex Fridman37:13

       I think you're just wrong on this.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti37:15

       All right.

   12. LFLex Fridman37:15

       Um, because I think revealing the character of a person is really important to understand how they will act in a room full of generals-

   13. SESaagar Enjeti37:22

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LFLex Fridman37:23

       ... and full of, uh-

   15. SESaagar Enjeti37:23

       Yeah. This gets to the judgment question.

   16. LFLex Fridman37:25

       The judgment.

   17. SESaagar Enjeti37:25

       And that's, I think of Johnson and of Nixon, of, uh, Teddy Roosevelt, even of FDR, I can give you a laundry list of (laughs) uh, personal problems that all those people had. I think they had really, really good judgment, and, uh, I'm not sure how intrinsic their own personal character was to their exploration and thinking about the world. So JFK is, actually JFK might be our best example because he had the best judgment out of anybody in the room as a brand new president in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he got us out and avoided nuclear war, which he deserves eternal credit for that. But, uh, how did he arrive to good judgment? Uh, some of it certainly was his character, and we can go, again though, into his laundry list of that. But most, most of it was around being with his father, seeing some of the mistakes that he would make, and he was also, had a deeply inquisitive mind and he experienced World War II at the personal level, uh, after PT-109. So it is, look, I, I get it. And I actually could still, man, and I could, uh, w- the, the response to what I'm saying is judgment is not divisible from personal character.

   18. LFLex Fridman38:29

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SESaagar Enjeti38:29

       But just because I know a lot of politicians and I've read enough with the really great ones, the people who I, I re- revere the most, um, there's really bad personal stuff (laughs) basically every single time.

   20. LFLex Fridman38:41

       But you're saying the judgment was good.

   21. SESaagar Enjeti38:43

       No, his judgment was great. His judgment was great.

   22. LFLex Fridman38:44

       On, through a missile crisis.

   23. SESaagar Enjeti38:46

       Yes.

   24. LFLex Fridman38:46

       Some of the best, uh, judgment and decision-making in the history of America.

   25. SESaagar Enjeti38:52

       Yes, and we should study a lot of it. And I encourage people out there, this is a, this is a brutal text. We were forced to read it in graduate school, uh, The Essence of Decision by Graham Allison. I'm so thankful we did. It's one of the foundations of political science because it lays out theories of how government works. This is also a useful transition, by the way, if we want to talk about Trump and some of his cabinet and how that is shaping up-

   26. LFLex Fridman39:14

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SESaagar Enjeti39:14

       ... because people really need to understand Washington. Washington is a creature with traditions, with institutions that don't care about you. They don't even really care about the president. They have self-perpetuating mechanisms which have been done a certain way, and it usually takes a great shocking event like World War II to change really anything beyond the marginal. Every once in a while you have a figure like Teddy Roosevelt who's actually able to take peacetime presidency and transform the country, but it needs an extraordinary individual to get something like that done. Uh, so the question around The Essence of Decision was the theory behind the Cuban Missile Crisis of how Kennedy arrived at h- at his decision, and, uh, there are various different schools of thought. But one of the things I love about the book is it presents a case for all three, the organizational theory, the bureaucratic politics theory, and then kind of the great man theory as well. So there's a, you know, you and I could sit here and I could tell you a case about PT-109 and about how John F. Kennedy experienced World War II as this, uh, what, I think he was like a first lieutenant or something like that, and how he literally swam miles with a wounded man's life jacket strap in his teeth with a broken back and he saved him, and he ended up on the cover of Life Magazine and he was a war hero. And he was a deeply smart individual who wrote a book in 1939 called Why England Slept, which to this day is considered a, a, uh, text which at the moment was able to describe in detail why, uh, Neville, Neville Chamberlain and the b- British political system arrived at the policy of appeasement. I actually have a original copy. It's one of my most prized possessions because, and, and from 1939 because this is a 23-year-old kid, "Who the fuck are you, John F. Kennedy?" Um, turns out he's a brilliant man. And another just favorite aside is that at the Potsdam Conference, you know, where Harry Truman is there with Stalin and everybody. So in the room at the same time, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general, right, who will succeed him, 26-year-old John F. Kennedy as a journalist, some shithead journalist on the side, and all three of those presidents were in the same room with Joseph Stalin and others. Um, and that, that's the story of America right there. It's kind of amazing. Uh, I, I love people to say that because you never know, um, about who will end up rising to power. But-

   28. LFLex Fridman41:25

       Are you announcing that you're running for president? (laughs)

   29. SESaagar Enjeti41:27

       No. (laughs) Absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman41:28

       Okay.
10. 41:35 – 49:07

    Cuban Missile Crisis

    1. LFLex Fridman41:35

       So, uh, yeah, actually can we just linger on that book?

    2. SESaagar Enjeti41:37

       Yeah.

    3. LFLex Fridman41:38

       So the book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by Graham Allison, it presents three different models of how government works, the rational actor model, so seeing government as one entity-

    4. SESaagar Enjeti41:51

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LFLex Fridman41:51

       ... uh, trying to maximize the national interest, uh, also seeing government as, uh, through the lens of the momentum of standard operating procedures, sort of this giant, uh, organization that's just doing things how it's always been done, and the government of politics model of there's just these individual internal power struggles within government.

    6. SESaagar Enjeti42:15

       Yes. Right.

    7. LFLex Fridman42:16

       And all of that is like a different way to view, and they're probably all true to a degree, uh...... of how decisions are made-

    8. SESaagar Enjeti42:24

       Yes.

    9. LFLex Fridman42:24

       ... within this giant machinery of government.

    10. SESaagar Enjeti42:26

        That's why it's so important, is because you cannot read that book and say one is true and one is not. You can say one is ma- more true than the other, but all of them are deeply true. And this is one where this is probably a good transition to Donald Trump, um, because, uh, and I guess for the, uh, people out there who don't think I'm being too obsequious, you'll read my criticism, Trump says something very fundamental and interesting on the Joe Rogan podcast, probably the most important thing that he ever said, which is, he said, "I like to have people like John Bolton in my administration, well, because they scare people, and it makes me seem like the most rational individual in the room." So, at a very intuitive level, a lot of people can understand that, and then they can rationalize while there are picks that Donald Trump has brought into his White House, people like Mike Waltz and others that have espoused views that are directly at odds with a, quote unquote, "anti-neocon, anti-Liz Cheney agenda." Now, Trump's theory of this is that he likes to have s- quote unquote, like, "psychopaths like John Bolton," uh, in the room with him while he's sitting across from Kim Jong Un because it gets scared. What I think Trump never understood when he was president, and I honestly question if he still does now, is those two theories that you laid out, which are not about the rational interest as the government as one model, but the bureaucratic p- theory and the organizational theory of politics. And because what Trump, I don't think, quite gets is that there are 99% of the decisions that get made in government never reach the president's desk. One of the most important Obama quotes ever is, "By the time it gets to my desk, nobody else can solve it. All the problems here are hard. All the problems here don't have an answer. That's why I have to make the call." So, the theory that Trump has, that you can have people in there who are, let's say, warmongers, neocons, or whatever, who don't necessarily agree with you, is that when push comes to shove at the most important decisions, that I'll still be able to reign those people in as an influence. Here's the issue. Uh, let's say for Mike Waltz, who's gonna be the national security advisor, the... a lot of people don't really understand, you know, there's this theory of national security advisor where you call me into your office and you're the president and you're like, "Hey, what do we think about Iran?" I'm like, "I think you should do X, Y, and Z." No, that's not how it works. The national security advisor's job is to coordinate the inter-agency process. So his job is to actually convene meetings, him and his staff, where in the situation room, CIA, State Department, SecDef, others, before the POTUS even walks in, we have options. So we're like, "Hey, Russia just invaded Ukraine. We need a package of options." Those packages of options are gonna concede of three things. We're gonna have one group, we'll kinda call it the dovish option. Two, we're gonna call it the middle ground. Three, the hardcore package. Trump walks in, this is how it's supposed to work. Trump walks in and he goes, "Okay, Russia invaded Ukraine. What do we do?" "Mr. President, we've prepared three options for you. We got one, two, and three." Now, who has the power? Is it Trump when he picks one, two, or three? Or is the man who decides what's even in option one, two, and three? That is the part where Trump needs to really understand how these things happen. And I watched this happen to him in his first administration. Uh, he hired a guy, Mike Flynn, who was his national security advisor. You could say a lot about Flynn, but h- him and Trump were at least like this on foreign policy. Flynn gets outed because what I would call an FBI coup, whatever. 33 days, he's out, uh, as a national security advisor. H.R. McMaster, he's got a nice, nice shiny uniform, four-star, all of this. McMaster doesn't agree with Donald Trump at all. And so, uh, Trump says, "I ran on pulling out of Afghanistan. I want to get out of Afghanistan." They're like, "Yeah, yeah, we'll get out of Afghanistan. But, uh, before we get out, we gotta go back in." As in, we need more troops in there. And he's like, "Oh, okay." Um, you know, it's like all this, and, uh, he approves a plan and effectively gives a speech in 2017 where he ends up escalating and increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. And it's only till February 2020 that he gets to sign a deal, the Taliban peace deal, which in my opinion, you should have done in 2017. But the reason why that happened was because of that organizational theory, of that bureaucratic politics theory, where H.R. McMaster is able to guide the inter-agency process, bring the uniform recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to give Donald Trump no option but to say, "We must put troops." Another example of this is a book called Obama's War by Bob Woodward. I highly encourage people to read this book, because this book talks about how Obama comes into the White House in 2009 and he says, "I wanna get out of Iraq and I don't wanna increase... uh, I wanna fight the good war in Afghanistan." Right? And he's doing... Obama's a thoughtful guy. Too thoughtful, actually. Uh, and so he sits there and he's working out his opinions. And, uh, what he starts to watch is that very slowly, his narrow, his options begin to narrow because strategic leaks start to come out from the White House situation room about what we should do in Afghanistan. And pretty soon, David Petraeus and Stan McChrystal and the entire national security apparatus has Obama pegged where he basically, politically at the time, decides to take the advant- advantaged position of increasing troops in Afghanistan, but then tries to have it both ways where, but by saying, "But in two years we're gonna withdraw." That book really demonstrates how the deep state can completely remove any of your options to be able to move by presenting you with ones which you don't even want, and then making it politically completely infeasible to travel down the extreme directions. That's why when Trump says things like, "I wanna get outta Syria," that doesn't compute up here for the Pentagon. Um, because first of all, you know, if I even asked you how many troops we have in Syria, and you go on the DOD website, it'll tell you a number. That number's bullshit, because the way that they do it is if you're only there for 179 days, you don't count as active, military contracts. The real number's, let's say, five times. Um, and so Trump would be like, "Hey, I wanna get outta Syria." They're like, "Yeah, yeah, we'll do it. Six months, right? We need six months." And after six months ago, he goes, "So, so are, are we outta Syria yet?" And they're like, "No. Well, we gotta wrap this up. We got this base, we got that, and we have this important mission." And, you know, next thing you know, you're not, you're out of office and it's over. So that, there's, there's all these things which I don't think he quite understands. I know that some of the people around him who disagree with these picks do, is the reason why these picks really matter is not only are the voices in the situation room for the really, really high profile stuff, it's for all the little things that never get to that president's desk, of which can shape extraordinary policy. And I'll give you, uh, the, uh, best example.There was never a decision by FDR as President of the United States to oil embargo Japan, one which he thought about as deeply as you and I would want. It was a decision kinda made within the State Department, it was a decision that was made by some of his advisors. I think he eventually signed off on it. It was a conscious choice, but it was not one which ever was understood the implications that by doing that, we invite a potential response like Pearl Harbor. So think about, you know, the what- the organizational bureaucratic model can tell us about the extraordinary blowback that we can get, and why we want people with great judgment all the way up and down the entire national security chain in the White House. Also, I just realized I did not talk about immigration, which is

11. 49:07 – 1:21:06

    Immigration

    1. SESaagar Enjeti49:07

       so insane. One of the reasons Donald Trump won in 2024, of course, was because of the massive change to the immigration status quo. The truth is, is that it may actually be second to inflation in terms of the reason that Trump did win the presidency was because Joe Biden fundamentally changed the immigration status quo in this country. That was another thing about the Scots-Irish people and others that we need to understand is that when government machinery and elitism and liberalism appears to be more concerned about people who are coming here in a disorderly and illegal process and about their rights and their, you know, ability to per- quote-unquote "pursue the American dream" while the American dream is dying for the native born population, that is a huge reason why people are turning against mass immigration. Historically, as well, uh, my friend, uh, Reihan Salam wrote a book called Melting Pot or Civil War, and one of the most important parts about that book is the history of mass migration to the United States. So if we think about the transition from Scots-Irish America to the opening of the- of America to the Irish and to mass European immigration, we... What a lot of people don't realize is it caused a ton of problems. There were mass movements at that time, the Know Nothings and others in the 1860s, who rose up against mass European migration. They were particularly concerned about Catholicism (laughs) , uh, by... As the religion of a lot of the new immigrants. But really what it was is about the changing of the American character by people who are not have the same traditions, values, and skills as the native born population, and their understanding of what they're owed and their role in American society is very different from the way that, uh, people previously had. One of the most tumultuous periods of US politics was actually during the resolution of the immigration question, where we had massive waves of foreign born population come to the United States. Uh, we had them, you know, integrated, luckily actually at the time, with the industrial revolution. So we actually did have jobs for them. One of the problems is that today in the United States, we have one of the highest levels of foreign born population than ever before, actually since that time in the early 1900s, but we have all of the same attendant problems. But even worse is we don't live in an industrial economy anymore. We live in a predominantly service-based economy that has long, you know, moved past manufacturing. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't bring some of that back, but the truth is, is that manufacturing today is not what it was to work in a steel mill in 1875. I think we can all be reasonable and we can agree on that. And part of the problems with extremely high levels of foreign born population, particularly unskilled, and the vast majority of the people who are coming here and who are claiming asylum are doing so under fraudulent purposes. They're doing so because they are economic migrants and they're abusing, you know, asylum law to basically gain entrance to the United States without going through a process of application or of merit. And this has its- all of its traces back to 1965, where the Immigration Naturalization Act of 1965 really reversed and changed the status quo of immigration from the 1920s to 1960, which really shut down m- uh, levels of immigration in the United States. In my opinion, it was one of the most important things that ever happened, and one of the reasons why is it forced and caused integration. It also forced, by slowing down the increase in the number of foreign born population, it redeveloped an American character and an understanding that was more homogenous and was the ability for you and me to understand despite the difference in our background. If you accelerate and you continue this trend of the very high foreign born unskilled population, you unfortunately are basically creating a mass, you know, un- an... It's a- it's basically an- it's a non-citizen population of illegal immigrants, people who are not as skilled. Uh, you know, I think it was... I read 27% of the people who've come under Joe Biden illegally don't even have a college degree. That means that we're lucky if they're even literate in Spanish, let alone English. So there are major problems about integrating that type of person, you know, even in the past whenever we had a mass industrial economy. Now imagine today, the amount of strain that would put on social services if mass citizenship happened, you know, to that population would be extraordinary. Um, and even if we were to do s- I don't think it's a good idea, but even if we were to do so, we would still need to pair it with a dramatic change. And part of the problem right now is I don't think a lot of people understand the immigration system. Uh, the immigration system in the United States effectively, uh, they call it family-based migration. Uh, I call it chain migration. Um, chain migration is the term which implies that, uh, let's say you come over here, um, and you get your green card. You can use sponsorship and others by gaming the quota system to get your cousin or whatever to be able to come. The problem with that is who is your cousin? Like, is he a plumber? Is he, you know, does he have... Is he a coder? You know, that doesn't actually matter 'cause he's your cousin, so he actually has preference. Uh, the way that it should work is it should be nobody cares if he's your cousin. What's- what does he do, you know? What does she do?... what is she gonna bring to this country? All immigration in the United States, in my opinion, should be net positive, without doing fake statistics about, oh, they actually increased the GDP or whatever. It's like, we need a merit-based immigration system. We are the largest country in the world, uh, and one of the only non-Western, or one of the only Western countries in the world that does not have a merit-based, points-based immigration system like Australia and/or Canada. And I mean, I get it because a lot of people did come to this country under non-merit-based purposes, so they're really reluctant to let that go. But I do think that Biden, by changing the immigration status quo and by basically just allowing, you know, tens of millions, uh, potentially tens of millions, at the very least 12 million new entrants to come to the US, uh, under these pretenses of complete disorder and of no conduct, really broke a lot of people's understanding and even like mercy in that regard. And so that was obviously a massive part of Trump's victory.

    2. LFLex Fridman55:06

       Speaking of illegal immigration-

    3. SESaagar Enjeti55:08

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LFLex Fridman55:08

       ... what do you think about the border czar, Tom Homan?

    5. SESaagar Enjeti55:11

       Tom Homan's a very legit dude. Uh, got to know him a little bit in Trump, uh, 1.0. He is an or- original, like, true believer on enforcing immigration law as it is. Uh, now, notice how I just said it that. That's a politically correct way of saying mass deportation. Um, uh, and I- I- I will point out for my left w- wing critics, uh, in that, yeah, he really believes in the ability, uh, the, and the ability and the necessity of mass deportation, and he has the background to be able to carry that out. I will give some warnings, um, and this will apply to Doge too. Czar has no statutory or constitutional authority. Uh, czar has as much authority as the president of the United States gives him. Donald Trump, uh, I think it's fair to say, even his critics, or even the people who love him could say he can be capricious at times. Um, and, uh, he can strip you or not strip you or give you the ability to compel. So czar in and of itself is frankly a very flawed position in the White House, and it's one that I really wish we would move away from. I understand why we do it. It's basically to do a national security advisor inter-agency convener to accomplish certain goals. Uh, that said, there is a person, Stephen Miller, who will be in the White House, the Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who has well-founded beliefs, experience in government, and a rock solid ideology on this, which I think would also give him the ability to work with Homan to pull that off. That said, the corollary to this, and frankly this is the one I am the most mystified yet, is Kirstjen Nome as the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. So let me just lay this out for people, 'cause people don't know what this is. The Department of Homeland Security, 90% of the time the way you're gonna interact with them is TSA. You don't think about it. But people don't know, the Department of Homeland Security is one of the largest law enforcement, if maybe the largest law enforcement agency in the world. It's gigantic. You have extraordinary statutory power to be able to prove investigations. You have Border Patrol, ICE, TSA, CBP, all these other agencies that report up to you. But most importantly for this, you will be the public face of mass deportation. Um, so I was there in the White House briefing room last time around when Kirstjen Nielsen, who was the DHS Secretary under Donald Trump, and specifically the one who enforced child separation for a limited, uh, period of time, she was a smart woman. She had long experience in government, and honestly she melted under the, uh, criticism. Kirstjen Nome is the governor of South Dakota. I mean, that's great you have a little bit of executive experience, but to be honest, I mean, you have no law enforcement background, uh, you have no ability to li- you have no, frankly, w- understanding of what it is going to be like to be the secretary of one of the most controversial programs in modern American history. You have to go on television and defend that every single day, a literal job requirement under Donald Trump, and you will have to have extraordinary command of the facts, you have to have a very high intellect, you have to have the ability to really break through. And I mean, we all watched how she handled that situation with her dog and her interviews, and that does not give me confidence that she will be able to do all that well in the position, so-

    6. LFLex Fridman58:24

       So what do you think is behind that?

    7. SESaagar Enjeti58:26

       (laughs)

    8. LFLex Fridman58:26

       So, uh, Krystal-

    9. SESaagar Enjeti58:27

       I have no idea.

    10. LFLex Fridman58:27

        ... Kwa's theory on Breaking Point-

    11. SESaagar Enjeti58:29

        Yeah. (laughs)

    12. LFLex Fridman58:29

        ... is that there's some kind of interpersonal, like, uh, see I didn't know ... I w- (laughs)

    13. SESaagar Enjeti58:35

        I can explain it.

    14. LFLex Fridman58:36

        I shou- I shou- I should know this, but I didn't know any of the-

    15. SESaagar Enjeti58:38

        Yeah.

    16. LFLex Fridman58:39

        ... t- there was some cheating or s- whatever.

    17. SESaagar Enjeti58:41

        There's a rumor, nobody knows if it's true, that, uh, Corey Lewandowski and Kirstjen Nome had a previous relationship and on- ongoing. Corey Lewandowski is a Trump official, and that he maybe put her in front. I don't know. I mean, it's a-

    18. LFLex Fridman58:52

        Is this like the Real Housewives of DC?

    19. SESaagar Enjeti58:53

        Yeah, kind of, although, I mean, it was the most open secret in the world, allegedly. I don't know if it's true. Okay? All right, I mean, I- I don't like to traffic too much in personal theories. But, I mean, in this respect, it might actually be correct (laughs) in terms of how it all came down. I have no idea what he's thinking, to be... I truly don't. Um, I mean, maybe it's like he was last time, he said, "I want a woman who's, like, softer and, like, emotionally and the ability to be the face of my immigration program." I mean, uh, again, like I said, I- I don't see it in terms of her experience and her media. It's frankly, like, not very good.

    20. LFLex Fridman59:26

        So you think she needs to be able to articulate, not just be, like, the softer face of this radical-

    21. SESaagar Enjeti59:33

        Yeah. So-

    22. LFLex Fridman59:33

        ... policy, but also be able to articulate the what's happening, the reasoning behind all that.

    23. SESaagar Enjeti59:37

        Yes. You need to give justification for everything. Here's the thing. Under mass deportation, the media will drag up every sob story known to planet Earth about this person and that person who came here illegally and why they deserve to stay, and really what the quasi thing is that's why the program itself is bad and we should legalize everybody who was here illegally. Okay, so the thing is is that you need to be able to have extraordinary oversight, you need a great team with you, you need to make sure that everything is being done by the book. The way that the media is being handled is that you throw every question back in their face and you say, well, you know, you either talk about crime or you talk about the enforceability of the law, the necessity. I mean, I just, I think articulated a very coherent case for why we need much le- less high levels of immigration to the United States. Um, e- and I am the son of people who immigrated to this country. Um, but one of the favorite phrases I heard from this from a guy named Mark Krikorian, who's at Center for Immigration Studies, is, "We don't make immigration policy t- for the benefit of our grandparents. We make immigration policy for the benefit of our grandchildren." And that is an extraordinary and good way to put it. And in fact, I would say it's a triumph of the American system that somebody whose parent family benefited from the immigration regime and was able to come here, my parents had PhDs, uh, came here legally, applied, spent thousands of dollars, uh, through the process, can arrive at the conclusion that actually we need to care about all of our fellow American citizens. I'm not talking about other Indians or, you know, other, whatever. I'm talking about all of us. I care about everybody who is here in this country. But fundamentally, that will mean that we are going to have to exclude some people from the US. And-I mean, another thing that the open borders people don't ever really grapple with is that even within their own framework, it makes no sense. So for example, a common left-wing talking point is that it's America's fault that El Salvador and Honduras and Central America is fucked up. And so because of that, we have a responsibility to take all those people in, 'cause it's our fault. Or Haiti, right? But, you know, if you think about it, America is responsible, and I'm just being honest, for destroying and ruining a lot of countries. Do they... They just don't benefit from the geographic, like, ability to walk to the United States. So, I mean, if we're doing grievance politics, Iraqis have way more of a claim to be able to come here than anybody from El Salvador who's talking about something that happened in 1982. Uh, so within its own logic, it doesn't make any sense. Uh, even under the asylum process, you know, people... I mean, people don't even know this. You're literally able to claim asylum from domestic violence, okay? Uh, there are... I mean, imagine that. Like, that's frankly, that is a local law enforcement and problem of people who are experiencing that in their home country. I know how cold-hearted this sounds, but maybe, honestly, it could be because I'm Indian. One of the things that whenever you visit India and you see a country with over a billion people, you're like, "Holy shit, you know, this, this is crazy." And you understand both the sheer numbers of the amount of people involved, and also, there is nothing in the world you could ever do to solve all problems for everybody. It's a very complex and dynamic problem, and it's really nice to be bleeding heart and to say, "Oh, well, we have responsibility to this and to all mankind and all that." But it's just, it doesn't work. It doesn't work with a nation state, it doesn't work with a sovereign nation. We're the luckiest people in the history of the world to live here in this country and, uh, it... You need to protect it, and protecting it requires really thinking about the fundamentals of immigration itself and not telling us stories. Like, what... There's a famous moment from the Trump White House where Jim Acosta, uh, CNN White House (laughs) correspondent, got into it with Stephen Miller, uh, the, uh, current, you know... He'll, will be the current deputy chief. And he was like, "What do you say," something along the lines, "to people who say you're violating, you know, that quote on the Statue of Liberty? Like, 'Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry,' uh, all of that, the Emma Lazarus quote." And Stephen, very logically, was like, "What level of immigration comports with the Emma Lazarus quote? Is it 200,000 people a year? Is it 300? Is it one million? Is it 1.5 million?" And that's such a great way of putting it, because there is no limiting principle on Emma Lazarus quote. There is when you start talking, honestly, you're like, "Okay, we live in X, Y, and Z society, with X, Y, and Z GDP. Um, people who are coming here should be able to benefit for themselves and us, not rely on welfare, not, you know, be people who we have to take, uh, uh, take care of after, because we have our own problems here right now. And who are the population and the types of people that we can study and look at? Who will be able to benefit?" And based on that, yeah, immigration is great. But there are a lot of economic, legal, and, uh, societal reasons for why you, you definitely don't want the current level. But another thing is, even if we s- turn the switch and we still let in a million five people a year under the chain-ba- s-... the chain family-based migration, I think it would be a colossal mistake, because it's not rooted in the idea that people who are coming to America are explicitly doing so at the benefit of America. It's doing so based on the familial connections of people who already gamed the immigration system to be able to come here. I have a lot of family in India, um, and, you know, I love them, but... And some of them are actually very talented and qualified. If they wanted to come here, I think they should be able to apply on their own merit, and that should have nothing to do with their familial status or the fact that I'm a US citizen.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:04:59

        Like, you mention the book Melting Pot or Civil War by Reihan Salam. He makes an argument against open borders. The thesis there is assimilation should be a big part.

    25. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:09

        Mm-hmm.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:05:10

        I guess there's some kind of optimal rate of immigration which allows for assimilation.

    27. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:14

        Yeah, and there are ebbs and flows, and that's kind of what I was talking about historically, where, you know, I mean, the truth is, is you could walk the streets of New York City in the early 1900s and the late 1890s and you're not gonna hear any English. And I think that's bad. I mean, really what you had was ethnic enclaves of people who were basically practicing their way of life just like they did previously, bringing over a lot of their ethnic problems that they had and even some of their cultural, like, unique capabilities or whatever, bringing it to America, and then New York City police and others are figuring out, like, "What the hell do we do with all this?" And it literally took shutting down immigration for an entire generation to do away with that, and there's actually still some. The point about assimilation is twofold. One is that you should have the capacity to inherit the understanding of the American character that has nothing to do with race, and that's so unique that I can sit here as a child of people from India and have such a deep appreciation for the Scots-Irish. Um, I consider myself, you know, American first, and one of the things that I really love about that is that I have no historical relationship to anybody who fought in the Civil War. But I feel such kinship with a lot of the people who did, and reading the memoirs and the ideas of those that did, because that same mindset of the victors and the values that they were able to instill in the country for 150 years later gives me the ability to connect to them. And that's such an incredible victory on their part, and that's such a unique thing. In almost every other country in the world, in China, in India, or wherever, you're kind of like w- what you're, what you are. You're a Hindu, you're a Jew, you're a, you know, you're Han Chinese, you're a Uighur, (laughs) you know, or you're Tibetan, something like that. It's... You're born into it, but really here was the only, one of the only places in the world where you can really connect to that story and that spirit and the compounding effect of all of these different people who have come to America. And that is a celebration of immigration as an idea, but immigration is also a discrete policy, and that policy was really screwed up by the Biden administration. And so, we can celebrate the idea and also pursue a policy for all of the people in the US, our citizens, to actually be able to benefit, and, um, look, it's gonna be messy.And, uh, honestly, I still don't know yet if Trump will be able to pursue actual mass deportation. Just because I think that I'm not sure the public is ready for it. I do support mass deportation. I don't know if the public is ready for it. Um, I think... I don't know. I- I'll have to see, because there's a lot of different ways that you can do it. There's mandatory E-Verify, which requires businesses to basically verify you're a US citizen or you're here illegally whenever they employ you, which is not the law of the land currently, which is crazy by the way. Um, there's... You know, you can, uh, cut off or, uh, tax remittance payments, which are payments that are sent back to other countries like Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. Again, illustrating my economic migrant point. Um, there are a lot of various different ways we can just make it more difficult to be illegally here in the US so people will self-deport. Um, but, you know, if he does pursue like real mass deportation, that will be a, that will be a flashpoint in America.

    28. LFLex Fridman1:08:19

        Aren't you talking about things like w- what, what Tom Homan said that works at raids, sort of increasing the rate of that?

    29. SESaagar Enjeti1:08:27

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. We used to do that, you know? (laughs)

    30. LFLex Fridman1:08:29

        But, yeah, but there's a rate at which you can do that where it would lead to, I mean, radical social upheaval.

Episode duration: 3:35:06