Supplementary Material 15: Russian Stooges, Lex Love-bombs, and Heterodox Hypocrisy
We rip off the unconvincing plastic mask to reveal the true gurus lurking underneath and discuss:Russian Propaganda and Influencer ScandalProfit Incentives in Alternative Media and the Need for DisclosureExcessive Profiteering and AdvertisingLex Fridman interviews Trump (with love)Trump and Anti-Vaxx Conspiracy TheoriesTrump and Kamala Debate Reactions and Heterodox TakesDestiny vs. the Low Bar of the Alternative MediaWhen Joe met BretRogan & Bret's Massive Projection and HypocrisyFinancial Incentives in Alternative MediaGabor Maté cites some Neuroimaging StudiesMatt's HUGE Correction on Twitter FundingThe University of Austin in Texas still exists!The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1 hr 47 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksLegal Eagle video on the Tenet Media scandalKanai, R., Feilden, T., Firth, C., & Rees, G. (2011). Political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults. Current Biology, 21(8), 677-680.Boekel, W., Wagenmakers, E. J., Belay, L., Verhagen, J., Brown, S., & Forstmann, B. U. (2015). A purely confirmatory replication study of structural brain-behavior correlations. cortex, 66, 115-133.Joe Rogan Experience #2198 - Bret WeinsteinDonald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442The Guardian: We each have a Nazi in us. We need to understand the psychological roots of authoritarianism. Gabor Maté.
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus with the psychologist Matthew Pine, the cognitive anthropologist Christopher Cabna, and we are here with a subsidiary production, the supplementary materials to the main attraction,
which is the Decoding episodes, just to clarify for everyone.
But here we are again, Matt.
Here we are again.
Here we are again.
A little affiliate.
Broadcast of Decoding the Gurus.
Supplementary materials.
The most important part of any research paper.
But yeah, you know, this is our time.
This is our time.
We are free from the constraints of talking about one specific guru interminable.
And we can talk about gurus in general, stuff that's been going on, little updates to what they've been doing.
The gurus have been up to things.
They often are.
But they've been up to many things.
And one of the things is that...
It seems some of them have wittingly or unwittingly been serving as propaganda outlets for Russian state media.
And this concerns the story around Tenet Media, an American self-styled, you know, heterodox, but actually right-wing, alt-right outlet that had Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan were the...
Two people who founded it, ostensibly.
And they, in turn, hired people like Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Sovereign.
But according to the United States Department of Justice, this was actually an operation funded by the Russians.
Kind of via Russia today.
Operatives in the US not disclosing their affiliation.
There were people created characters, fake finders, and there were various marching orders sent.
Some of the people, like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, have essentially argued that they are victims of receiving huge amounts of money, but that they basically didn't cater.
Their material, they were just being funded for God knows why, whatever reason the Russian media or the Russian state would have for wanting to support them.
But on the other hand, Lauren Chen and her husband, according to the indictment, seem very likely to know where the funds were from because they did things like refer to...
The people paying them as the Russians and look up the time in Moscow.
We're trying to contact the mystery investor who is purportedly Belgian.
Totally fictional character who is the apparent benevolent funding agency.
But of course it wasn't.
It was Russia Today.
And the amounts of money we're talking about, Chris.
So Benny Johnson would get $400,000 a month in exchange for four monthly videos plus $100,000.
Signing bonus.
Tim Pool also agreed to $100,000 a video, but he didn't get a bonus.
So poor negotiating skills there.
And one thing that Tim Pool and others have claimed, it's like this is quite natural for them to...
Be offered this kind of money to produce that kind of content.
You know, nothing suspicious about it whatsoever.
But of course, these videos that they were creating on demand were just, you know, actually attracting extremely low numbers of views.
And the amount of money that they could possibly have made in revenue from that content would have been like 50, 100 bucks maybe.
And they're getting paid $100,000 for it.
But they didn't notice anything suspicious about that.
Yes, so I think I saw figures of 10 million in total being funneled into this company and various commentators receiving, you know, $400,000 a month.
So yes, and the two ways that you can look at it is that if you buy that Tim Pool and Dave Rubin...
You know, just were completely tricked by Lauren Chen and they didn't find it that suspicious because they often get offers like these kind of large payments or whatever.
In that case, it means that they were identified as people that were promoting messages that the Russian state were happy to have amplified or like that they wanted to encourage.
And that's not a great look for somebody that...
People that try to present themselves as fearless, independent voices that authorities are freed of.
That if the authorities happen to be Russian, interested in sowing discord in America, then you are the kind of voice that they want to amplify.
So even in the best case scenario where they are just unwitting idiots who don't look into...
Any details because they're getting absurd sums of money in general.
Yeah, it's not a great sign for their content.
And the other view is that they did know or had some suspicions and didn't care or were happy to go along with things.
And if you look at the talking points, the kinds of material that Russia Today wanted the stable of influencers to promote, It was things like, you know, everything's going terrible in the United States, you know, universal poverty,
halting of economic growth, but a lot of focus on white Americans in particular, risk of job loss for white Americans, excessive privileges for people of colour, perverts and the disabled, constant lies of the Democrat administration about the real situation in the country,
threat of crime coming from people of colour and immigrants, including new immigrants from Ukraine, overspending on foreign policy.
At the expense of the interests of white US citizens, it goes on.
But last but not least, America is suffering a defeat in Ukraine, despite Biden's efforts.
We are being drawn into the war.
Our guys will die in Ukraine.
So, yeah, you know, not really, you know, stuff that's pretty clearly in Russia's interest, not in America's interest, I would say.
Well, there's also, there were some instances in the indictment that mentioned, like one of them was, Commentators been asked to promote this alternative conspiracy about an attack in Russia, which was carried out by ISIS or ISIS affiliates.
And they wanted them to push the possibility that it was actually an attack linked to Ukraine and America, of which there was no evidence for.
Or that very sycophantic video that Tucker Carlson put out about the Russian supermarket.
They wanted that promoted as well.
And actually, in the indictment, one of the commentators said, this feels a little bit
on the nose you know like a little bit i think the phrase was this is too obviously shilling yeah but but in the end agreed like the response in that exchange was well no that you know they think it would be okay and the commentator backed down
and said they'd be willing to put it out the
The classic clandestine operation to influence a foreign government in an undermining way.
It is Cold War shit, right?
I mean, it's also been going on in general in the modern era, but this is very much the Russian...
Media playbook, you know, like Putin's fire hose of bullshit, right?
Just pump out this information that aligns with Russian interests.
And yeah, so it's not surprising, but it is surprising that we now know about it and that the specific amounts are being revealed and so on, and that there are these high profile figures that have been identified in it.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, the general aims of this kind of information warfare are twofold.
One is they want to sow division and social instability in the United States.
Obviously, they've identified the kind of white anxiety, for want of a better phrase, and also the cultural topics around sexuality, etc., crime.
So, you know, they identify a gap.
Like a chink, and it's the crowbar to try to increase those divisions.
I mean, the Americans are doing a pretty good job of amplifying the divisions all by themselves without Russia's help, but they do want that.
And of course, the second thing is to advocate for an isolationist foreign policy on the part of the US, promote conspiracy theories about Ukraine.
And this is very obviously in the interests of Russia and other foreign powers.
I guess...
Before we go on, Chris, maybe we should play an example of a clip which maybe illustrates why these influencers might be preferred funding targets by Russian media.
Sure, and I have a clip which is from Tempul, a right-wing pundit who claims to be a centrist, non-partisan, whatnot.
But the ceiling point here is that he has claimed that...
He was not influenced in his content at all.
So according to him, this is purely his own opinion, his own outlook on the conflict in Ukraine.
And let's just hear a little bit about that.
But I don't know that it matters anymore.
This is psychotic.
Ukraine is the enemy of this country.
Ukraine is our enemy.
Being funded by the Democrats, I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine.
They are expanding this war.
Now, don't get me wrong, I know.
You've got criminal elements of the U.S. government pushing them and guiding them and telling them what to do.
Ukraine is now accused, a German warrant issued for blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline,
this conflict.
Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world.
We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologize to Russia.
Yeah.
Apologize to Russia.
A little on the nose.
Yeah, a little on the nose, especially in hindsight, knowing that he'd been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By Russian state media.
And, you know, so that illustrates in pretty obvious terms why the Russian foreign influence campaign might be fond of Tim Pool.
I mean, the other aspect of it too, of course, is the inciting internal divisions in the United States.
And, you know, the kinds of things that these influencers talk about is, you know, some of the titles like race is biological, but gender isn't.
Question mark, question mark.
Trans widows are a thing and it's getting out of hand.
Some of the most common three-word phrases include World War III, Black Lives Matter, diversity, equity, inclusion, and stuff about racism towards white people, gay date, trans women, massive attack, free speech.
What are you reading from, Matt?
I'm reading from a Wired, quite a good article actually, where they downloaded the transcripts.
From a bunch of the material that these influencers were created and they did a content analysis.
I see, because that sounds like standard culture war stuff on the right.
So that's why I was just curious.
But the thing about that content as well, it doesn't feel particularly authentic, the kind of banging the fist on the table, and people have pointed that out, but also...
It doesn't even make sense saying that the Nord Stream pipeline explosion triggered the conflict, but that happened after Russia invaded.
So it's just a mishmash of talking points and rhetoric and that kind of thing.
But again, Tim Pool is one of the people arguing that he wasn't told any talking points or things to say.
So that's purely organic.
Russian apologetics.
To the extent that at the end of it, he says, you know, we should apologize to Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.
So, yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, so a lot of the discussion about this stuff has sort of hinged around this question of whether or not they were the unwitting beneficiaries of Russian state media support.
The victims, as they claim, are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
Or whether, in fact, there was some kind of editorial influence exerted.
And I think I've got a little bit of personal experience with this kind of thing, Chris, in terms of the way in which money is used in an attempt to influence purportedly independent voices.
So, for instance, I wrote a paper some years ago that dealt with cigarettes and addiction and vaping.
And just from that single paper, I started receiving letters from Philip Morris, the big international tobacco conglomerate.
You know, very vaguely worded, but along the lines of, we really admire your work, you're doing important stuff, we would love to get together and have a meeting to discuss ways in which we can cooperate.
And I actually received phone calls from them as well.
Interestingly, of course, not from...
The phone calls were not from Philip Morris themselves, but actually from a guy who represented...
Some organisation, he wasn't at liberty to divulge which specific tobacco companies his organisation was representing.
So he was basically a front person, right?
So I played him along a little bit because I was just curious in terms of how that stuff works.
Needless to say, of course, I have never taken a single dollar from any of those people.
Same thing with gambling.
There's a lot of money involved there, a lot of interest at play.
What you'll see at gambling conferences and regulator conferences is very nice young men.
Wearing very nice suits with big smiles and firm handshakes and nice business cards who are really keen to, you know, make contact, really admire your work, which is unusual given that when your work is very highly critical of the gambling industry.
But, you know, again, just opening the door for opportunities to collaborate.
And the vast majority of researchers do not touch any of that money, but obviously with tobacco, it's quite famous that at least a few.
Medical researchers have.
And the same thing with gambling researchers.
I won't name names, but there are gambling researchers who take very large checks from organisations associated with gambling who purportedly just want to support gambling research, would not dream.
Of influencing their research or influencing their opinions in any way, shape or form, I am sure.
It just happens to be, just like Tim Pool, it's just a coincidence that those researchers tend to find stuff which is more broadly in favour of more liberalised policies towards gambling.
So my point with this is that there is a big grey area in terms of the way in which money can...
It's usually never so crude as here's a brown paper bag full of cash and you need to say X, Y and Z on this thing.
It's much more subtle than that.
And so, you know, I think it's a real problem.
I think so much of the discussion about free speech and, you know, heterodoxy and independent commentators out there with their independent views, let a thousand flowers bloom.
That's incredibly naive when, you know, you and I through the podcast have gotten the sense of the kinds of ways in which People who are kind of hungry for more profile and hungry for money, for income, are quite susceptible,
I suppose, to various forms of payments and support.
And, you know, that isn't always divulged and made completely transparent to the people listening.
This particular scandal here, it's obviously at the extreme end where you have Russian intelligence agencies funneling money to influencers.
But I think it's indicative of a much broader problem.
And I think people should just have an awareness that often what appears to be an independent voice...
Can often be a mouthpiece for propaganda.
And it made me think of characters like Bjorn Lomborg, who is this famous climate change contrarian, has these independent think tanks, independent institutes, which purportedly is offering a fresh, independent perspective about climate change.
And of course, he's finding that, oh, you know, it's all overblown.
It's all scaremongering and so on.
There's really not much point trying to adhere to a two centigrade limit on the increase in climate.
But, you know, he's paid a very huge amount of money.
I think in one of those years, the financial document said that his personal compensation package was about $760,000 American dollars.
That's a pretty good salary.
And the activities of these research groups or think tanks is pretty much all about propaganda.
Like, it's all about pushing a particular line.
And if you look at the funders, they tend to be strange, capitalist, very wealthy, right-wing individuals who have got an interest in this kind of thing.
And lots of connections to the energy companies as well.
So, yeah, you know, I think the takeaway from this is for everyone to be just a bit skeptical about the so-called independence.
Of a lot of commentators.
And, you know, we should be demanding a lot more transparency about where people are getting their sources of income from.
Yeah, actually, I remember doing a little bit of a dive into Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen consensus think tank.
And I found the reporting of their finances from 2018 to 2020.
And his salary...
His salary was between $500,000 to $750,000 per year.
And that was by far and away the mean expense that was in financing for the group.
So, yeah, I was saying, I wonder, are there comparable non-contrarian?
Environmental groups paying such a salary to people just talking about the actual research.
If so, I'm not that aware of them, but maybe there are.
Actually, there's a clip of Tim Pool where he's talking about this kind of influence operation and how people don't have to be given specific instructions in order to promote a particular narrative.
So what happens with social media, particularly YouTube, where it's really easy, you can have a foreign agent or even the government or some corporation or whatever say, this guy talks about things that we really like.
Dump ad money into his channel through Google AdSense and they'll never know we were the ones funding them and you can't prove it.
So do you think YouTube, do you think that's something like YouTube should be looking into or somebody should audit YouTube for that kind of information?
Definitely.
Do you think YouTube's in on it?
I don't think YouTube's in on it.
I think YouTube doesn't care.
And as long as journalists don't call them out for it, they're not going to say anything.
That's going to cause another adpocalypse.
Are you ready for that?
That's the big problem.
But I think, I've said it a million times, if they announced that they were going to ban Twitter, I would lose my account.
I'd be like, dude, Twitter's terrible.
Get rid of it.
Just get rid of it.
I'm half kidding.
No, it's bad for us.
But if...
In turn, if I found out that someone was secretly funneling money through AdSense to my channel, I'd be like, cut it all off?
I don't care.
I'll go sleep in a ditch.
I might have some news for you.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, I mean, we've looked at, like, we kind of addressed this with you the last...
Board meeting we had about certain sites like syphilisdating.com.
Don't go to any of the sites we talk about.
Well, it does because it lists your brother and you as the owner.
And there's a series of 55-year-olds like antifahub.org.
A lot of them are packed with malware.
A lot of them are packed with...
They have security reports.
Yeah, but what does that have to do with me or YouTube?
I don't know.
I'm saying I don't know, but you should look into it.
So he...
Is aware of it.
It's just, seemingly, it doesn't apply to this circumstance.
Or maybe it does, but in any case, it's an issue.
And it doesn't have to be as blunt as somebody with a Russian accent wanting to hand you over money in a briefcase.
But in this case, some of the details...
Do involve people putting on fake accents, making up fake name people and stuff.
So that's quite remarkable.
And also remarkable is there's a whole host of heterodox figures who will leap on any conspiratorial sniff of information, almost exclusively if it comes.
At the expense of like the left wing or the Democrats or this kind of thing, right?
Hunter Biden, all of that.
That's like hugely significant.
But as people have pointed out, the specific amounts here involved dwarf those in the Hunter Biden scandal.
But figures like Eric Weinstein, you know, the usual commentators, remarkably silent or...
Very willing to see the nuance in this situation.
And we shouldn't be too hasty to condemn, you know, people who it's unclear that they did anything wrong.
So it's just that double standard that like claiming, oh, they demonize conspiracy fears.
They're interested in looking at state warfare and all.
Just suddenly not particularly interested in this very on the nose example of an actual conspiracy.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I got into trouble ages ago a little bit because I referred to like real conspiracies as mundane conspiracies and how they have like very little interest in them.
And, you know, it's a bit misleading that word mundane, but I just mean like the real...
Yeah, so it is disappointing but not surprising.
I think there's a wide range of ways in which people are motivated by the source of their funding.
We've got this dimension on the garometer called excessive profiteering or grifting.
And this is exactly the kind of thing
That we're talking about.
We're not talking about making money.
We're talking about making money in underhand ways.
And it could be, like, literally taking money from Russian government.
Or it could be, you know, taking money from a sponsor who wants you to say good things about their supplements and you don't make it clear that that's an ad read.
Like the diary of a CEO guy who was on the...
Executive board of the companies that he's reading ads for and giving testimonials for.
There's a conflict of interest there that is transparent to a toddler, but apparently escapes the mind of somebody interviewing CEOs.
The thing that researchers know is that the only sensible approach to this kind of grey area is to be very stringent about your rules for Accepting money and waving your hand and saying it has no influence is really not good enough.
You actually have to have good principles from what sources of funding you will accept and you should be transparent about them.
And that's why researchers like you and me, when we publish articles or we apply for grants and things like that, we will, as a matter of course, often document every single source of funding for research that we've taken.
I'm very glad to declare every single funding source, for instance, that we receive for doing Decoding the Gurus because it's very bloody simple.
We get money from Patreons, most of whom are paying $2 a month to listen to this nonsense, and we thank them for it.
And we get a tiny little bit of money from YouTube, you know, the automatic ad revenue thing.
AdSense, yeah.
AdSense.
That's it.
That's it.
Well, yeah, we did have advertisers once upon that.
Grand use.
Did they ever play us?
I think they did.
If you hear us reading ads, it's very clear because we put little ad music on and whatnot.
We've never said anything that we feel is degrading of our morals.
We wouldn't shill for something like AG1 or whatever.
Unless they offered us one million.
No, no, not even that.
I'm just joking.
But like, yeah, so it is...
About transparency.
Though I will say, Matt, that there's plenty of academics who, yes, usually people disclose their funding sources, but I just know a bunch of things where people have not declared conflicts of interest and the really extreme conflict of interest and it's only when they get called on that they end up having gathered in or it becoming an issue.
So it's all voluntary.
And I think the majority of people behave ethically.
in regards to that because they don't have anything to hide but the people who actually have things to hide are often the ones that don't disclose these kind of things without pressure so yeah.
But you see how it works don't you like in the same way that a company like Philip Morris right is just going to be scanning the research literature, pinging papers that are connected to their issue of interest, smoking, addiction, cancer, whatever and then you know sending out this broad net which
included me to sound out people whether or not
They can be brought into the fold.
And, you know, they obviously start off with people that have a shared view, I suppose, about the issue.
And then through the funding, I guess, solidify that kind of relationship.
And you see exactly the same thing happening with the activities of Russia today with American political commentators, right?
They didn't pick Tim Pool randomly or Dave Rubin randomly.
They did their survey.
They identified the kind of people that are on board with the kinds of narratives they want.
And then they set up, just like Philip Morris did with the nice phone call I got from that guy who was representing a group of undisclosed companies, they set up a front organization.
So there's plausible deniability, hopefully.
Not in this case.
They didn't manage it.
But usually there's plausible deniability.
And yeah, the only solution to it is for there to be just much more transparency and people demanding clear answers about, okay, who funds you?
Because it is an influence.
Even if you have good intentions, this is why we're very careful about where we take funding from as researchers.
Even if you are not corrupt, even if you have good intentions, just by human nature, if you are reliant...
On large amounts of money from a particular source, then you are going to be...
You almost can't help but be influenced in terms of not wanting to make your funder unhappy for fear of cutting off this flow of income, which is very important for your very, very important research.
And I think the same thing is true of online independent broadcasters, content creators.
They may well tell themselves that...
Oh, they're not being influenced.
They've got the highest standards.
They're just taking this money because they're supporting my very important work.
But it's naive to think that it does not cause influence.
So even organic sources of revenue, getting paid by YouTube clicks and whatever, that obviously incentivizes people to make clickbait.
There is always an influence in terms of...
The kind of revenue that comes along.
I personally think that a reasonable subscription type model where your audience is donating a small amount of money is one of the better ways for someone to be funded because it's clear and transparent and doesn't incentivize the worst kinds of behavior.
But I think the main thing is to be transparent about where the money is coming from because it always has some influence.
Yeah, I think in any...
If you build an audience that is polemical and you're feeding polemical content to them, you could be getting small donations and have a whole bunch of things.
So I don't think it's any guarantee that a crowdfunded small donation model will lead to not pandering or clickbait-style content.
No, absolutely not.
I'm not saying that.
I guess the main thing I'm saying is that there's always going to be some influence, even if you try to minimize it.
But I guess the important thing is for it to be transparent so that people can judge for themselves the degree to which the influence might be at play.
Yeah, I sign off on that.
I sign off on that.
Greater transparency.
Sounds like the replication crisis, open science movement.
So let's do it.
Transparency for all.
But from one set of useful idiots, Matt, to Lex Friedman.
Lex Friedman got something that he wanted for quite a while.
He likes to interview world leaders and he had a sights set on Trump.
He was previously trying to convince Joe Rogan to interview Trump and Joe Rogan, to his credit, actually pushed back.
On that idea.
So that's quite amazing.
Like when Joe Rogan is a sensible voice in the room, you have problems.
But Lex got Trump.
So this was a significant deal, but it was just a one hour interview.
And also Trump has actually been not that hard to get for podcasts.
He's went on a bunch of like relatively...
Random podcast outlets, and he's just generally repeating his narratives.
He was on with Theo Vaughn, for example, the comedian.
But his interview with Lex went as you would imagine.
Let me hear a little bit about how Lex framed that encounter.
This is from after the interview, the kind of like post-interview editorializing.
So in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat.
I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there's a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal.
The outrage mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision.
But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten.
A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture.
This is much easier said than done.
It's not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them.
It's not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at.
But let's say it's a work in progress.
You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.
This is hard.
Really hard with political and business leaders.
They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they've been screwed over so many times with clickbait, gotcha journalism.
So to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard.
And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration.
And I've been thinking a lot about why.
I don't think it's just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content.
I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details because I think it's in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light.
Lex, a beautiful historian looking for the eternal in his dialogue with Donald Trump.
How do you think that went for him, Matt?
Do you think he managed the extract pearls that the clickbait, ethereal journalists with their sensationalist outlook have managed?
Did Lex dig to the core issues of Trump and get to know him as a man?
I can imagine he really pitched some hard-hitting questions.
The kinds of stuff that most people are too afraid to ask Donald Trump.
Probably Trump rarely...
It was pretty uncomfortable having to dig so deep and talk so truthfully about some of the controversial things that he's been involved with.
I'm sure Lex held him to the ropes, did he?
Wrong, wrong.
There were three questions about the election on January 6th in total.
And that is two more than I anticipated Lex to ask.
But as you might imagine...
Essentially, for every question that Lex asked, Trump just blathered on.
He maybe gave one line that was related to the topic, but even that was generally not the case.
And he just waffled on.
About random talking points and campaign slogans and so on.
There was one point where Lex asked him, you know, how do we resolve division in this polarized thing?
And then he just went on a rant about how to stop Biden and Kamala because they're unhinged Marxists who will destroy the world, right?
The country seems more divided than ever.
What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?
Well, you can get rid of these two people.
They're terrible.
They're terrible.
You don't want to have them running this country.
They're not equipped to run it.
Joe, it's a disaster, okay?
And Kamala, I think she'll end up being worse than him.
We'll see.
I think a lot's now, you know, the convention's over with, and I see I'm leading in just about all the polls now.
They had their little honeymoon period, as they call it.
And we'll see how that all goes.
Who knows?
So, yeah, that didn't really emerge.
And Lex is, you know, was there waxing poetic about how you really need three and four hours.
But, you know, these people are busy.
They've been burnt by the media with their like hostile questions and so on.
And let's hear Trump talking to Lex about, you know, why he agreed to the interview and what use it is for him to appear.
Because this might be something that Lex might want to reflect on.
You've said that politics is a dirty game in the past.
Yeah, it is a dirty game.
That's certainly true.
So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?
Well, you win at that game by getting the word out and by using sense, you have to...
Have a feeling where it's going.
You also have to have a feeling of what's right.
You can't necessarily just go what's popular.
You have to do what's good for a country if you're talking about countries.
But you have to get the word out.
And you have to just continuously.
Like, for instance, you have a great show.
You have a great podcast.
It's very well watched.
And I'm sitting here and I do this.
A lot of people see it.
And I do other things.
And a lot of people see that.
And I go traditional also.
Traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant.
Could be less significant.
I don't know.
But it's changing a lot.
The whole plane of platform is changing a lot.
It's changed a lot in the last two, three years.
From a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they're watching, and you have to get on.
I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate.
They're getting very big numbers.
I did Spaces with Elon, and they got numbers like nobody's ever heard before.
You wouldn't do that on, like, radio.
You wouldn't do those numbers.
No matter how good a show, you wouldn't do those numbers on radio.
You wouldn't do them on television.
You've been successful in business.
You've been successful in politics.
What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds?
There, you got a tough follow-up.
Tough follow-up question there as well, just to give you a taste of Lex's, you know, burning questions.
But that was...
Trump explaining directly to Lex, how do you play this politics game?
Well, I go on shows like this, which have big audiences.
I get to speak to them and I get to say what I'm supposed to say, get my message out.
So he's telling Lex that this is about reaching your audience.
You're giving me the ability to reach out and that's part of my media strategy.
But Lex is in the post.
Shofeng talking about, you know, actually getting to the heart and breaking through the soundbite exterior.
But none of that is going on.
This is just Trump using Lex to, like, pump out campaign slogans.
So, yeah, there's just such a disconnect.
And it's the fact that he's essentially explaining directly to Lex, well, you're very useful for me.
So, you know, because of your audience.
Yeah, Lex in particular because of his incredibly softball.
You're a tremendously successful person.
Could you explain to us the secrets of your success?
Of course Trump is going to like that rather than go on a real interview with a real journalist that might ask them some difficult questions that might not be an opportunity for him to simply promote himself.
Good job, Lex.
Really making a contribution there.
Now, Matt, you said Lex, you know, doesn't ask harsh questions.
He doesn't push back.
You've implied that, at least.
You know, he didn't say it directly.
That's the implication.
But there are things which Lex is willing to go to bat for.
There are things which are important that Trump needs to be held accountable for.
Things like this.
Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend Joe Rogan.
So you had a bit of tension with him.
So when he said nice things about RFK Jr., I think.
You've said some not-so-nice things about Joe.
I think that was a bit unfair.
As a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world.
What's the story behind the tension?
I don't think there was any tension.
I've always liked him, but I don't know him.
I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana.
And I shake his hand.
I see him there, and I think he's good at what he does, but I don't know about doing his podcast.
I mean, I guess I'd do it, but I haven't been asked, and I'm not asking them, you know?
I'm not asking anybody.
It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.
No, it's not really a negotiation.
And he's sort of a liberal guy, I guess, you know, from what I understand.
But he likes Kennedy.
This was before.
I found this out before.
Kennedy came in with us.
He's going to be great.
Bobby's going to be great.
But I like that he likes Kennedy.
I do, too.
You know, he's a different kind of a guy, but he's got some great things going.
And I think he's going to be beyond politics.
I think he could be quite influential in taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of.
The Joe Rogan post is an example.
I would love to get your psychology.
Uh, about behind the tweets and the posts on truth.
Uh, are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind?
And are there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?
It's important to get to Joe Rogan.
He said some negative things about Joe Rogan.
So Lex, you know, that.
Cannot stand unchallenged.
That needs to be addressed and followed up on.
Yeah, out of all the things that Trump has said and done, that stands out as something you need to hold his feet to the fire on.
Alex, good stuff.
Yeah, and, you know, you hear Trump kind of talking in his meandering way and, like, basically, you know, like, you know, Rogan, he's okay, even though he did it very, the announcement of him when he fought, but he's like, you know, he likes Kennedy, now Kennedy's in with us, so that's good.
And, I mean, there is a way in which Trump is superficially clear, like he's superficially and deep down.
A narcissist.
So if you're saying something that benefits him or pains him in a good life and, you know, suits his thing, then it's good.
And if you say something that's not, like when Kennedy was a...
Rival and you said something nice about him, then that's bad.
So, like, there isn't a huge mystery around this.
And what did Lex expect exactly to happen here?
You know, it's just what you would expect that Trump like kind of says, yeah, I'm fine with Joe.
And if he supports RFK now, then he's going to support Trump.
So, grand.
You just reminded me about RFK coming into the...
Trump fold.
And obviously the connection there is that they're both unhinged conspiracy theorists.
And Trump, who isn't an anti-vaxxer, I think inherently, I'm not sure if he has any sort of...
Yeah, he's always talked about anti-vaxxing stuff anytime that he's brought it up.
So I think he's a conspiracy theorist who is, you know, open to almost all.
Well, I was thinking of how at the beginning of the pandemic.
He was quite bullish on vaccines, was keen to take credit for them, encouraging people to get vaccinated.
But my point is that, to whatever degree, he wasn't a full-on anti-vax conspiracist.
He quickly became one because he sees the political capital, the political energy there amongst his base.
Yeah, so him sort of embracing and pandering to the unhinged.
Anti-vax conspiracies of a Brett Weinstein and an RFK, purely because it's convenient, is the most Trumpish thing in the world, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
And I do think, like, just with Trump in general, you know, the conflict there, Matt, is he wants credit for something and his BS is, like, you know, anti-vax leaning.
But there are various times where he'll still be like...
Yeah, the vaccine, you know, all the things that he did were great.
And that's it.
So, you know, the conflict just exists that he wants Prius for whatever he can claim responsibility for.
So, yeah, that's the conflict, right?
But, like, I think his intuition is towards endorsing conspiracies, particularly ones that are right-wing violence.
So, but in his first administration.
He met with RFK and some comments about anti-vaccine stuff and autism.
So, you know, just a stupid guy.
Since we're talking about Trump, I think it'd be remiss of us not to mention the debate with him and Kamala Harris.
It would, but before that, I have to let Lex finish because we've been a bit down on him, been a bit negative, but...
Maybe we just misapprehend what he's about.
So I'll let Lex just finish off and give you a bit of chastisement for Doudini's motives.
And on the topic of politics, let me say as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America.
I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth.
And I'm grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well.
I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others.
I probably should do a better job of that.
But I've been doing most of this myself, all the reach-out, scheduling, research, prep, recording, and so on.
And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome, with the voice in my head constantly pointing out when I'm doing a shitty job.
Plus, a few folks graciously remind me on the internet the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice.
All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots, and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company, or maybe starting my own, all these options make me truly happy.
But like I said, on most days, I barely know what I'm doing, so who knows what the future holds.
Most importantly, I'm forever grateful for all of you, for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of a life I've been on.
I love you all.
I've got to say, if you feel that is authentic and genuine, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to tell you.
None of that is true.
It's very frustrating to me that this sort of saccharine, schmaltzy, self-aggrandizing, backhanded sentiments are perceived by his audience to just be so beautiful, so wonderful.
What a guy.
I'm less cynical than you because I think he's genuinely expressing his self-image and self-narrative there.
I know that you said it doesn't matter, but I think it is not all strategic.
That is Lex, but it is also...
This self-serving, schmaltzy, wounded bird thing that allows him to paint all criticism as a cruel attack on somebody who's just trying their best to speak with love to the world.
I recognize the strategic nature of that and the fact that he blocks anybody that disagrees with him and that he isn't welcoming enough criticism and stuff.
But I also think his internal narrative is consistent with what he said there, that that is how he sees himself.
I don't disagree with you.
Likewise, I think Trump genuinely believes he's a genius.
Yeah, yeah.
There isn't a contradiction there, but it's incredibly functional, I guess, that kind of self-serving, self-aggrandizing platforming.
And the reason I'm cynical is not just because I'm a cynical person, but because it's completely out of step with the actual reality, the behavior, the track record.
For someone who has a realistic appraisal of themselves and genuinely believes those things, they don't act the way that he does.
They don't just have these softball, fawning interviews.
With figures and endorsing all of these conspiracy theories, he constantly alludes to his technical prowess and his shining career.
He could be a programmer just working at MIT.
He must know at some level that none of that's happened.
Many times he's alluded to all of the important artificial intelligence work he's been working on while doing the podcast, independently or something.
But nothing ever comes of it.
If this is actually happening.
On some level, he must know that's not true.
That's not happening.
Yeah, on some level, deep buried down.
So this is true.
It's much like I wonder, does he really...
Believe that the moderation of his subreddit is conducted by people that are not named Lex Richmond.
It's unclear.
It's unclear.
So you wanted to say something about the debate, the recent presidential debate, Kamala and Trump.
What did you want to say?
Yeah, yeah.
Very timely.
It happened yesterday in real time, at time of recording.
And you've had a chance to listen to it now and watch it.
And I did too, because my dad was watching it.
I actually don't usually tune into this kind of thing, but I was cooking and it was on and I was looking at it.
And yeah, I didn't know much about Kamala Kamala.
Sorry, Kamala?
Kamala Kamala.
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