Saagar Enjeti recommends Charles Murray's "Coming Apart" to understand cultural divides.
The book highlights how college education shapes cultural preferences and life trajectories.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
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. And that book really, really underscores how the cultural milieu that people swim in 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, what television shows that they watch. One of my favorite questions from Charles Murray, it's called a bubble quiz. I encourage people to go take it, by the way, which 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 Branson is 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 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 there are other things in there. Like, can you name various different military ranks? I can because 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 the most popular shows in America are like the Big Bang Theory and NCIS, whereas people in our probably cultural milieu, 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 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, the Internet is everything. The stuff that you consume on the internet, the stuff that you spend your time doing, the type of books you read, whether you read a book at all, frankly, whether you travel to Europe, Whether you have a passport, all the things that you value in your life, that is the real cultural divide in America. 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 my struggles in this life. (Time 0:15:56)
Electoral Impact of Wokeism
"Wokeism" impacts elections through cultural representation and affirmative action policies.
Saagar Enjeti suggests that it's rooted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, creating a new legal regime.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Difficult to say because I wouldn't dismiss anti-wokeism or wokeism as an explanation. But we need to understand the electoral impacts of woke. So there's varying degrees of how you're going to encounter, quote unquote, wokeism. 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 going to watch a TV show. And just for some reason, there's like two trans characters, and it's never like particularly explain why they just are there, or watching a commercial, it's the same thing watching. I don't know. I remember it 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. But one of the characters, I think 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 is used by Hollywood and cultural elites who really value those progress, you know, In sexual orientation and others. And they 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 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. There's another one, 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 another one of the books that I recommended to you about the origins of Trump by Jim Webb. And Senator Jim Webb, incredible, incredible man. He's so underappreciated, intellectual. He was anti-war. And he was, people may remember him from the 2016 primary. And they asked him, they asked him a question I don't exactly remember about one of his enemies. And he's like, well, one of them was a guy shot in Vietnam. And he was running against Hillary. And that guy, he wrote the book, Born Fighting. I think 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, the managerial revolution by James Burnham, and in terms of the origin of kind of how we got here. But the crystallization of like DEI and or affirmative action, I prefer to use the term affirmative action, in the 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.
Lex Fridman
At this point, do you think this election is the kind of statement that wokeism as a movement is dead?
Saagar Enjeti
I don't know. I mean, it's very difficult to say because wokeism itself is not a movement with a party leader. It's a amorphous belief that has worked its way through institutions now for almost 40 or 50 years. I mean, it's effectively a religion. 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 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, 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 again, 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? Because I would say that's still actually kind of a woke mindset. And that's part of the reason why 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 want to go public or something that you have to have a woman and a person of color on your board. This is a blatant and extraordinary look racialism that they've enshrined in their bylaws. So you can get rid of ESG. That's great. But 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. And (Time 0:18:38)
Scots-Irish Influence
Saagar Enjeti praises Jim Webb's "Born Fighting", highlighting the Scots-Irish influence on America.
Their fierce individualism, distrust of government, and military tradition shaped American identity.
Transcript:
Lex Fridman
I got to go back to Jim Webb and that book. What a badass, fascinating book. Oh my God. Born Fighting. Amazing. How the Scots-Irish shaped America. So I did not realize to the degree, first of all, how badass the Scots-Irish are. And 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. As he describes, the motto could be summarized as fight, sing, drink, and pray. So there's the principles of fierce individualism, the principles of a deep distrust of government, the elites, the authorities, bottom-up governance, over 2,000 years of a military Tradition. They made up 40% of the Revolutionary War Army and produced numerous military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton, and a bunch of presidents, some of the more gangster presidents, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, just the whole cultural legacy Of country music. We owe them so (Time 0:25:55)
Biden's Presidency Critique
Saagar Enjeti considers Biden one of the worst modern presidents due to arrogance and inaction.
He argues Biden lacked the vigor and bias for action necessary for effective leadership.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Biden is, I try to remove myself from it and I try not to give like 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 I think the reason why I'm going to go with it is because I want to judge him by the things that he set out to do. So Joe Biden 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 United States Senator, where He always wanted to be the star and the center of attention and to his 1988 presidential campaign. And 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 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 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 quote-unquote Transitional president, slowly 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 need to drop out of the race until it became truly undeniable to the vast majority of the American people. And that's why I'm trying to keep it as like him as an individual, as a president, because we can separate him from some of his accomplishments and the things that happen. Some I support, some I don't. But generally, a lot of people are not going to look back and think about Joe Biden and the CHIPS Act. A lot of people are not going to look back and think about Joe Biden and the Build Back Better bill, or whatever, his Lena Kahn 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, again, book recommendation, Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy is about the Roosevelt Years. And one of the most 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 unemployment. There was still a lot of suffering. 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 John F. Kennedy at VIGA, 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 we have an 80-year man who is simply just eating ice cream and going to the beach while people's grocery prices and all this thing 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, 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. And he had the opportunity. He could have done it, you know, if he wanted to, but maybe 20 years ago. Is that his own narcissism, his own misplaced belief in himself, and his own accidental rise to the presidency ended up in his downfall. And it's kind of amazing because, again, 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 want to make sure that he never gets back in the White House again. So by his own metric, he did fail. That was the only thing he wanted to do and he failed him (Time 0:32:40)
FDR's Leadership
FDR's success stemmed from his vigorous fight for the American people, inspiring hope.
His actions, not just policies, instilled confidence during the Great Depression.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Yes. FDR, people really need, FDR was like a king. He was like Jesus Christ, okay? In the US. And some of it was because of what he did, but it was just the fight. 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 was seen as this do nothing joke who would dine nine course meals in the White House and he's a filthy rich banker. FDR comes in there and every single day has him fireside chats. He's passing legislation. But more importantly, so 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 after he got polio. And 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 people think of him for World War II. Of course, we can spend forever on that. But in my opinion, 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 dictator, and he was a good one. (Time 0:37:01)
Bureaucracy vs. Presidential Power
Trump's misunderstanding of bureaucratic processes hindered his ability to implement policies.
Saagar Enjeti explains how bureaucratic procedures can constrain presidential power.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
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 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 because, and I guess for the people out there who don't think I've been too obsequious, he'll be my criticism. Trump said 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 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 Cheney agenda. Now, Trump's theory of this is that he likes to have, quote unquote, like psychopaths like John Bolton 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 is one model, but the bureaucratic 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 rein those people in as an influence. Here's the issue. Let's say for Mike Waltz, who's going to be the national security advisor, a lot of people don't really understand. There's this theory of national security advisor where you call me into your office and you're the president. 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 interagency process. So his job is to actually convene meetings, him and his staff, where in the situation room, CIA, State Department, SECDF, 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 going to concede of three things. We're going to have one group. We're going to call it the dovish option. Two, we're going to 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've 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. He hired a guy, Mike Flynn, who was his national security advisor. You could say a lot about Flynn, but 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 as a national security advisor. HR master. He's got a nice, nice shiny uniform, four star, all of this. Master doesn't agree with Donald Trump at all. And so Trump says, I ran on pulling out of Afghanistan. I want to get out of Afghanistan. They're like, yeah, we'll get out of Afghanistan. But before we get out, we got to go back in as we need more troops in there. And he's like, oh, OK. You know, it's like all this. And it proves 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, he 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 interagency 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 want to get out of Iraq, and I don't want to increase, I want to fight the good war in Afghanistan, right? And he's doing, Obama's a thoughtful guy, too thoughtful actually. And so he sits there and he's working out his opinions. And what he starts to watch is that very slowly 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 advantage Position of increasing troops in Afghanistan, but then tries to have it both ways. But by saying, but in two years, we're going to 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 want to get out of Syria, that doesn't compute up here for the Pentagon. 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. The 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 numbers, let's say five times. And so Trump would be like, hey, I want to get out of Syria. They're like, yeah, we'll do it. Six months, right? We need six months. After six months ago, so are we out of Syria yet? And they're like, no, well, we got to wrap this up. We got this base. We got that. And we have this important mission. And next thing you know, you're out of office and it's over. So there's all these things which I don't think he quite understands. 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 little things to never get to that president's desk, of which can shape extraordinary policy. And I'll give you the 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 kind of 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 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. (Time 0:47:07)
Immigration's Impact on Election
Biden's immigration policy changes significantly impacted Trump's victory in 2024.
Saagar Enjeti argues for a merit-based system, prioritizing skills over family connections.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Also, I just realized I did not talk about immigration, which is 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 ability to, 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, my friend Raihan Salaam 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 America to the Irish and to mass European immigration, what a lot of people don't realize is it caused a Ton of problems. There were mass movements at the time, the know-nothings and others in the 1860s, who rose up against mass European migration. They were particularly concerned about Catholicism 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 people previously had. One of the most tumultuous periods of U.S. Politics was actually during the resolution of the immigration question, where we had massive waves of foreign-born population come to the United States. We had them 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 moved past manufacturing. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't bring some of that back, but the truth 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 asylum law to basically gain entrance to the United States without going through a process of application Or of merit. And this has 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 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 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, it's basically a non-citizen Population of illegal immigrants, people who are not as skilled. 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, 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 to that population would be extraordinary. And even if we were to do so, 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. The immigration system in the United States effectively, they call it family-based migration. I call it chain migration. Chain migration is the term which implies that let's say you come over here 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 because he's your cousin. So he actually has preference. 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 going to 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 and 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 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 tens of millions, potentially tens of millions, at the very least 12 million new entrants To come to the US 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. (Time 0:53:44)
Child Separation and Immigration
Saagar Enjeti discusses child separation, highlighting the Flores Doctrine and prosecution challenges.
He argues the current immigration system is dishonest and incentivizes illegal entry.
Transcript:
Lex Fridman
From their parents seems deeply un-American, right?
Saagar Enjeti
Well, I mean, look, it gets tough. Okay. So, you know, I'm not going to defend it, but I'll just put it this way.
Lex Fridman
Do you hate children?
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. See, that's what I mean. Do you think twice whenever you see a drug addict who's put in prison and their child is put in protective services? Nobody in America thinks twice about that, right? Right? So, I mean, well, that's kind of screwed up. Well, we should think about why did we come to that conclusion? The conclusion was is that these adults willingly broke the law and pursued a path of life, which put them on a trajectory where the state had to come in and determine that you are not allowed To be a parent, basically, to this child while you serve your debt to society. Now, child separation was very different. Child separation was also a product of extremely strange circumstances in U.S. Immigration law, where basically at the time, the reason why it was happening was because there was no way to prosecute people for illegal entry without child separation. Because previous doctrine, I believe it's called the Flores Doctrine, under some asylum lie. People will have to go check my work on this. But basically, the whole reason this evolved as a legal regime was because people figured out that if you bring a kid with you because of the so-called Flores Doctrine or whatever, that You couldn't be prosecuted for illegal entry. So it was a de facto way of breaking the law. And in fact, a lot of people were bringing children here who weren't even theirs, who they weren't even related to or couldn't even prove it, were bringing them to get around the prosecution For illegal entry. So I'm not defending child separation. I think it was horrible or whatever. But if I give you the context, it does seem like a very tricky problem in terms of do we enforce the law or not? How are we able to do that? And the solution, honestly, is what Donald Trump did was remain in Mexico and then pursue a complete rewrite of the way that we have U.S. Asylum law applied and of asylum adjudication and really just about enforcing our actual laws. So when I try to explain to people is the immigration system right now is a patchwork of this deeply dishonest, such a great word, deeply dishonest system in which you use the system and Set it up in such ways that illegal immigration is actually one of the easiest things to do to accomplish immigration to the United States. (Time 1:18:30)
DOGE Committee's Challenges
The "DOGE" committee, focused on government efficiency, faces challenges due to its lack of power.
Saagar Enjeti explains how congressional appropriators hold the true power over spending.
Transcript:
Lex Fridman
It that it's called Doge?
Saagar Enjeti
Actually, with Elon, it's quite real. I guess I've just, you know, I've accepted Elon as a major political figure in the US. But the Doge Committee, the Department of Government Efficiency, is a non-statutory agency that has zero funding that Donald Trump says will advise OMB, the Office of Management And Budget. Now, two things. Number one is, as I predicted, Doge would become a quote unquote blue ribbon commission. So this is a non-statutory blue ribbon commission that has been given authority to Vivek Ramaswamy and to Elon Musk. Secondary, their recommendations to government should be complete by July of 2026, according to the press release released by Trump. First of all, what that will mean is they're probably going to need private funding to even set all this up. That's great. Not a problem for Elon, but you're basically going to be able to have to commission GAO reports, Government Accountability Office, and other reports and fact-finding missions across The government, which is fantastic. Trump can even empower you to go through to every agency and to to collect figures. None of it matters one iota if Republican appropriators in the House of Representatives care what you have to say. Historically, they don't give a shit what the executive office has to say. So every year the president releases his own budget. It used to mean something, but in the last decade or so, it's become completely meaningless. The House Ways and Means Committee and the People's House are the ones who originate all appropriations and set up spending. So that's one, is that DOGE in and of itself has no power. It has no ability to compel or force people to do anything. Its entire case for being, really, if you think about it mechanically, is to try and convince and provide a report to Republican legislators to be able to cut spending. So that's that. Now, we all know how Congress takes to government reports and whether they get acted on or not. So that's number one. Number two is the figures that Elon is throwing out there. Again, I want to give them some advice because people do not understand federal government spending. The absolute vast majority of government spending is entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are untouchable under Donald Trump and their most politically Popular programs in the world and military spending, discretionary non-military spending. I don't have the exact figure in front of me, is a very, very small part of the federal budget. Now, within that small slice, about 90% of that eight is bipartisan and is supported by everybody. Noah, you know the hurricane guys? People like that. People who are flying into the eye of the hurricane, people who are government inspectors of X, Y, and Z. The parts that are controversial that you're actually able to touch, things like welfare programs, like food stamps, is an extraordinary small slice. So what's the number he put out there? Five trillion, something like that? There is only one way to do that. And realistically, under the current thing, you have to radically change the entire way that the Pentagon buys everything. And I support that, but I just want to be very, very clear. But I haven't seen enough energy around that. There's this real belief in the US that we spend billions on all of these programs that are doing complete bullshit. But the truth, the absolute vast majority of it is military spending and entitlements. Trump has made clear entitlements are off the table. It's not going to happen. So the way that you're going to be able to cut realistically military spending over a decade long period is to really change the way that the United States procures, you know, procures Military equipment, hands out government contracts. Elon actually does have the background to be able to accomplish this because he has had to wrangle with SpaceX and the bullshit that Boeing has been pulling for over a decade. But I really want everybody's expectations to be very set around this. Just remember, non-statutory, blue ribbon. So if he's serious about it, I just laid out all of these hurdles that he's going to have to overcome. And I'm not saying him and Vivek aren't serious dudes, but you got to really know the system to be able to accomplish this. (Time 1:26:08)
Optimism for the Future
Saagar Enjeti's optimism stems from the American character's resilience and adaptability.
He emphasizes the importance of a competent execution of Trump's mandate.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I don't think slimness in and of itself is a good thing. What I care about is the relationship to people and its government. So the biggest problem that we have is that we have a complete loss of faith in all of our institutions. And I really encourage people. I don't think people can quite understand what the relationship between America and its government was like World War II and after FDR. Like 90% of the people trusted the government. That's crazy. Like when the president said something, they were like, okay, he's not lying. Think about our cynical attitude towards politicians today. That is largely the fault of Lyndon Johnson and of Richard Nixon and that entire fallout period of Vietnam. Vietnam in particular really broke the American character and its ability and its relationship with government. And we've never recovered faith in institutions ever since that. And it's really unfortunate. So what makes me hopeful, at least this time, is any time a president wins a popular vote and an election, is they have the ability to reset and to actually try and build something that Is new. And so what I would hope is that this is different from the first Trump administration in which the mandate for Donald Trump is actually carried out competently. Yes, he can do his antics, which got him elected. At this point, we can't deny it. McDonald's thing is hilarious. It's funny. It is. People love it. People like the podcasting. People like- Garbage truck. The garbage truck. Yeah, exactly. They like the stunts. And he will always excel, and he will continue to do that. There are policy and other things that he can and should do, like the pursuit of no war, like solving the immigration question, and also really figuring out our economy, the way that It currently runs and changing it so that the actual American dream is more achievable. And housing is one of the chief problems that we have right now. The real thing is Donald Trump was elected on the backs of the working man. I mean, it's just true. Households under $100,000 voted for Donald Trump. Maybe they didn't do so for economic reasons. I think a lot of them did for economic, a lot of them did for immigration, for cultural, but you still owe them something. And there is, I would hope that they could carry something out in that respect that is not a similar continuation and chaotic vibe of the first time where everything felt like it exploded Any time. With staffing, with even his policy or what he cared about or his ability to pursue. And a lot of that does come back to personnel. So I'm concerned in some respects. I'm not thrilled in some respects. I'm happy in some respects, but it remains to be seen how he's going to do it. (Time 1:49:47)
Escaping Bubbles
To escape bubbles, seek discomfort and expose yourself to different perspectives and cultures.
Saagar Enjeti encourages traveling to unfamiliar places and interacting with diverse groups.
Transcript:
Lex Fridman
American people. Actually, we started early on in the conversation talking about bubbles.
Saagar Enjeti
What's your advice about how to figure out if you're in a bubble and how to get out of it? That's such a fantastic question. Unfortunately, I think it comes really naturally to someone like me because I'm the child of immigrants and I was raised in College Station, Texas. So I was always on the outside. And when you're on the outside, this isn't a sob story. It's a deeply useful skill because when you're on the outside, you're forced to kind of observe. And you're like, oh. So like when I was raised was the Bible Belt and people really, you know, people were hardcore evangelical Christians. And I could tell them like, oh, they really believe this stuff. And they were always trying to proselytize and all of that. And then the other gift that my parents gave me is I got to travel the entire world. I probably visited 25, 30 countries by the time I was 18. And one of the things that that gave me was the ability to just put yourself in the brain of another person. So one of the reasons I'm really excited to go to Japan, and I picked it as a spot for my honeymoon, was because Japan is a first world developed country where the vast majority of them don't Speak English. It's distinguishedly non-Western, and they just do shit their own way. So they have a subway, but it's not the same as ours. They have restaurants. Things don't work the same way. I know, I could go to a laundry list, their entire philosophy of life of the daily rhythm, even though it merges with service-based managerial capitalism and they're fucking good at It too. They do it their own way. So exposure to other countries in the world gave me, and also just being an outsider myself, gave me a more detached view of the world. So if you don't have that, what I would encourage you is to flex that muscle. So go somewhere that makes you uncomfortable. This will be a very boomer take, but I hate the fact that you have 5G everywhere you go in the world because some of the best experiences I've ever had in my life is walking around Warsaw, Poland, trying to find a bus station to get my ass to Lithuania with a printed out bus ticket. I have no idea where the street is. I'm in a country where not that many people speak English. We're pointing and gesturing, right? And I figured it out. And it was really useful. I got to meet a lot of cool Polish people. Same in Thailand. I've been in rural, like, Bumbuk, Thailand, Colombia, places where people speak zero English. And your ability to gesture and use pigeon really connects you and gives you like the ability to get an exposure to others. And so I know this is a very like wanderlust like travel thing, but unironically, if you're raised in a bubble, pierce it. Like that's the answer is seek something out that makes you uncomfortable. So if you're raised rich, you need to go spend some time with poor people.
Lex Fridman
And consider that they might actually understand the world better than you.
Saagar Enjeti
Well, in some respects. So I think a lot of rich people have really screwed up personal lives. So if you're poor and you really value family, you say, oh, that's interesting. There seems to be a fundamental tradeoff between extraordinary wealth and something that I value. But what can I take away from that person? Oh, put my money in index funds. Make sure that I am conscientious about my budgeting. It's common sense shit, right? And vice versa, people who are very wealthy get so caught up in the rat race about their kids going to private school and all of this. And then they very rarely engage with – there's that famous study where they ask people on their deathbed what they valued in life. And every single one of them was like, I wish I'd spend more time with my children. I think about that every time that I am thinking about pursuing a new work endeavor or something that's going to have me spend significant time away from my wife. And I'm almost always these days, now that I've achieved a certain level of success, the answer is I'm not doing it unless you can come with me.
Lex Fridman
One of the bubbles I'm really concerned about is San Francisco bubble. I visit there recently because I have so many friends there uh that i respect deeply so so many brilliant people in san francisco absolutely the silicon valley but there's just this Um i don't even want to criticize it but there's definitely a bubble yeah that thought i'm with you i'm friends with some sv silicon valley people well.
Saagar Enjeti
I'm similarly struck by that every time I go. And honestly, I do admire them because they, what I respect the most amongst entrepreneurs, business, and political thinkers is systems thinking. Nobody thinks systems better than people who are in tech because they deal with global shit, right? Not even just America. They have to think about the whole world, about the human being and his relationship to technology. And coding, in some ways, is an expression of the human mind and about how that person wants to achieve this thing. And hey, you mechanically can type that into a keyboard or even code something to code for you to be able to achieve that. That's a remarkable accomplishment. I do think those people and people like that too, who think very linearly through math and their geniuses are the ones who can take their creativity and merge it with linear thinking. But I do think that that actually, those are the people who probably most need to get out of the bubble, check themselves a little bit. And look, it's really hard. Once you achieve a certain level of economic success and others, what do most rich people do? They close themselves off from the world, right? The vast majority of the time, what do you do? Economy is annoying flying. They fly first class. Living in a small house is annoying. They buy a bigger house. Dealing with a lot of these inconveniences of life is annoying. You pay a little bit more to make sure you don't have to do that. There's a deep insidious thing within that. Each one of those individual choices, where the more and more removed that you get from that, the more in the bubble that you are. So you should actually seek out those experiences or create them in a concerted way. (Time 2:57:50)
Future of Political Parties
Predicting the future of political parties is difficult due to shifting public opinions.
Saagar Enjeti discusses potential successors to Trump, depending on his presidency's success.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Like you just said, Bayesian, let's take various theories, right? So let's say it's 04, it's Bush-Cheney. In 2004, the day after the election, I would have told you this. We live in a Bible Belt, Jesus Land America. This America wants to protect America. A war on terror against Iraq. And the axis of evil, and American people just voted for George W. Bush. And so I would have predicted that it would have been somebody in that vein. And they tried that. His name was John McCain. He got blown the fuck out by Barack Obama. So I cannot sit here and confidently say it.
Lex Fridman
What year would you be able to predict Obama? It was just his first time he gave the speech.
Saagar Enjeti
The 2004 speech at the DNC. That was his, we don't live in a black America, white America, the John Kerry DNC speech. You honestly could not have predicted it until 07, whenever he actually announced his campaign and activated a lot of anti-war energy. I mean, maybe 06, actually, I could have said in 06, if I was kind of the contrarian man now, I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of anti-war energy. I think the next president will be somebody who's able to vote the explosion of Keith Olbermann and MSNBC. It makes logical sense in hindsight. But at the same time, you're going up against the Clinton machine who's never lost an election, so I would have been afraid. I cannot confidently say. So I will say if things go in different directions, if Trump is a net positive president, then I think it will be J.D. Vance, his vice president, who believes in a lot of the things that I've talked about here today, about foreign policy restraint, about the working class, about changing Republican Attitudes to the economy. And he would be able to build upon that legacy in the way that George W. H. W. Bush was able to get elected off the back of Reagan. But H. W. Bush was fundamentally his own man. He's a very misunderstood figure, very different than Ronald Reagan. Didn't end up working out for him, but he did get himself elected once. So that's one path. That's if you have a net positive Trump presidency. The other path is the O4 path that I just laid out. If George W. Bush, if Trump does what Bush does, misinterprets his mandate, screws things up, creates chaos, and makes it just generally annoying to live in American society, then you will see Somebody in the Republican Party. I mean, still, it could even be J.D. Vance because he could say J.D. Is my natural and my chosen successor, but then he would lose an election and then he would no longer be the so-called leader of the Republican Party. So I could see it swing in the other direction. I could see, you know, Republicans or others, let's say if it's a total disaster and we get down to like 20 percent approval ratings and the economy is bad and stuff like that. Glenn Youngkin or somebody like that who's very diametrically opposed to Donald Trump, or at least aesthetically is somebody like that who could rise from the ashes. And I'm just saying like in terms of his aesthetic, not him per se. So there's a variety of different directions. It's a big question about the Republican base. I mean, a shit ton of people voted Republican now for the first time ever. So are they going to vote in party primaries? I don't know. You know, the traditional party primary voter is like a white boomer who's like 58, 59. Is the Latino guy in California who turned out to vote for Trump with a MAGA hat and rolling around, you know, suburban Los? With that, is he going to vote in the Republican Party? That could change. So the type of candidate themselves could come. So it's way too early to say. We have so many variety of paths that we go down. (Time 3:20:53)
Collapse of Empires
Empires collapse due to unpopular wars, overextension, and elite capture, often gradually.
Saagar Enjeti emphasizes that those living through it are often unaware of the decline.
Transcript:
Saagar Enjeti
Statistically, yes. You know, it's the famous fight club quote it's like on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everything drops to zero uh and uh you know i like for all the books you've quoted you
Lex Fridman
Went to fight club i guess the movie right the book is good though people should read that too um in terms of why, again, statistically, the answer is quite simple.
Saagar Enjeti
It usually comes back to a series of unpopular wars, which are pursued because of the elite's interests. Then it usually leads to a miscalculation and not a catastrophic defeat. Normally, comes gradually. And most of the times when these things end, the crazy part is most people who are living through end of empire have no idea that they're living through the end of the empire. And I actually think about that a lot from, you know, decline and fall of the Roman empire by Edward Gibbon. Actually, your episode on Rome was fantastic. People should go listen to that. So there you go. Another really good one, I like to think a lot about the British Empire and what eventually led to that collapse. And nobody in 1919 said the British Empire just collapsed. Basically, nobody thought that. They were like, yeah, the First World War is horrible, but actually we came out of this okay. We still have India. We still have all these African colonies and all that. But long periods of servitude, of debt to the United States, of degradation, of social upheaval, of Bolshevism, of American industrial might. And next thing you know, you find yourself at Potsdam. And Churchill's like, holy shit, I have barely any power in this room. So revolutions happen slowly and then all at once. And so could you really put a real pin in the end of the British empire? It took almost 40 years for it to end. So America's empire will eventually end either from rising geopolitical competition, likely China, could be India. Nobody knows. Um, it will likely be because of being overstretched of, uh, elite capture is usually the reason why, uh, and, uh, a misreading of what made your original society work, you know, in the First place. And that is one where I honestly, like all three of those things will happen all at once and it will happen over an extremely long period of time. And, uh, it's very difficult to predict. I would not bet against America right now. I think we have a lot of fundamental strengths. It's a unique and dynamic country. It really is fucking crazy. Every time I travel the world, as much as I love all these different places, I go, man, I just, I love the United States so much. You will love it more when you leave. I really believe that. So yeah. (Time 3:30:51)
