Matt and Chris dip their toes into the fetid, guru-infested swamp surrounding the 2024 U.S. election. Straining to see what lurks in the murky depths, they encounter dark shapes, including Eric Weinstein pledging his services to whoever wins (or will give him a call), Joe Rogan conspiracy hypothesizing with Donald Trump, the Free Press hosting a truly heterodox election party, Michael Moynihan pulling no punches, and finally, Jordan Peterson’s shockingly sycophantic psychological assessment of Donald Trump and his cohort.Join Chris and Matt as they navigate the election discourse swamp and the ever-unsettling convergence of internet personalities and political power, examining how these online figures function like the courtiers of old—gathering around their would-be kings, flattering them with pseudo-profound or sycophantic praise, and vying to secure their place in the new order.All very cheerful stuff, we’re sure you’ll agree!LinksA Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Personality by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson | EP 492Professor Dave Explains: The Problem With Sabine HossenfelderMatt Johnson's article on Joe Rogan: A Conspiracist for the Trump EraJoe Rogan Experience #2219 - Donald TrumpMoynihan on Triggernometry: The Most Important Election in History - Michael MoynihanQAnon Anonymous: Episode 211: Tulsi Gabbard P1 (The Cult) feat Mike Prysner
The cognitive anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh.
Me and him, the psychologist of unknown sub-discipline, as he likes to be referred to.
Matthew Brown in America, roving correspondent, holding the mic in his hand.
So now we have a higher quality mic situation, but I have discovered, I've been afforded by Matt that...
He did not see Fed to bring the stand for his mic.
So we're relying on Matt not to move his hand during this.
So let's see how that goes.
How do you think that's gonna go, Matt?
I'm feeling confident.
I'm feeling good.
I feel like it's gonna go really well, Chris.
Don't worry.
You're a worrier.
You worry too much.
Things will turn out fine.
You lack confidence.
That's your problem.
What we need to do is try and locate where you are so we can just send you.
Like a $20 microphone on a stand.
I know this is a complex concept, but we'll see.
We'll see.
Maybe I'm being pessimistic.
That's not going to work, Chris.
As you said, I'm a roving correspondent.
By the time you find out where I am, and I'm at Venice Beach at the moment, very nice, I'll be gone.
Off to Palm Springs.
Yeah, you can't catch me, man.
You can't catch me.
Look, I was going to bring the stand, Chris, but...
Uh-huh.
Here's the thing.
I was already concerned about immigration because it's a little bit suspicious.
We've come to the United States for three months, and you know what they're like.
They're worried that we're going to, you know, stay here for too long.
We're trying to sneak into the country.
Americans are paranoid.
I think everyone wants to sneak into the United States.
They don't know.
That's the last thing I want to do.
I'm already looking forward to it.
I'm not going to stay here forever, but that's what they think.
And if you bring anything that makes it look like you're working and you're on a tourist visa, Then it could be problems.
And I thought, I can get away with the microphone.
I can get away with that.
But my stand is really big.
It looks very technical.
It looks like equipment.
And it doesn't look like a guy that's going on a holiday.
So I was just a bit paranoid about getting turned away.
Oh, yeah.
I know your stand is huge.
But there's microphone stands that are not huge.
That are just little...
Like the one I have.
I don't have one of those.
In front of me and the desk.
That's it.
Yeah, well, that's the problem.
You've got it, but I don't.
Yeah.
I could buy one.
You're right.
I could buy one.
But I'm busy.
I'm busy.
I'm roaming.
I'm busy roaming, Chris.
Don't worry about it.
It'll be fine.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see.
So any complaints about audio quality, please contact Matt directly.
Okay?
That's MatthewBrown at Gmail or whatever.
You can reach me at the DecodingTheGurus email.
It'll be fine.
It'll get forwarded out to me eventually.
That's true.
That's true.
All right.
Well, so.
We're coming up to election season, in any case, Matt.
And the Guru takes, they have been flying.
They've also been interviewing political candidates, giving their opinion on the upcoming election.
And I thought it might be good to, you know, do a little whirlwind tour with some clips, yes, but also just take a look.
I had a lot of people message me to recommend that I look what Eric is up to.
Eric, who's been a little bit silent recently.
Did you happen to see the trouble that Eric got into on twitter.com?
I did not.
I did not.
I know nothing about this.
You're coming fresh.
Wow.
Well, given that you don't know what has happened to Eric, what would you anticipate that Eric's stance on the upcoming election would be?
What would you imagine that he would add to this tense time?
Oh, well, it would have to have something to do with a shadowy conspiracy where nothing is as it seems.
Everything that you're reading is kind of a distraction around the really important thing that is going on, which will be...
And that's where I don't know, Chris.
I know the general tenor, but I don't know the specifics.
You tell me.
The first tweet is very much in that being, I am feeling this election.
I tried, but I simply failed.
I cannot work within these concepts.
My world...
My country, my America is not on the ballot.
Poor Eric.
He's lamenting his choice.
And his familiar trope there of, I don't understand what's going on.
Can somebody please explain it to me?
I'm baffled.
There's lawn signs out there.
There are campaign ads happening.
What's going on, Chris?
It's unclear.
How did we get to this situation?
But that's not where he finished, Matt.
If he had done that, that would have been just a...
Standard Eric, you know, election tweet.
Or really, you know, an Eric tweet, right?
That's what they are usually like.
Yeah, a general vague post.
No, he went on.
And he made full use of his ability to extend past the, you know, arbitrary Twitter word limit.
So, unfortunately, I can't read it all.
But I'll read some of it.
Here's what I will say.
Colon.
I will work with anyone to restore my country.
I have been an expert in what is wrong with our CPI inflation gauge.
I was an expert in immigration in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I wrote one of the earliest peer-reviewed academic papers on the danger of mortgage-backed securities back in 2001.
And I know how and why the science system and the physics with a prayer to get us out of this solar system is being dismantled by our government.
I co-ran the Sloan Science and Engineering Workforce project at Harvard and MBER.
I refuse to take all that hard work and just flush it down the toilet on these campaigners.
These campaigns are horrific.
They destroy the ethos of our nation.
So then he goes on.
He doesn't want lawfare.
He doesn't want insecure elections or insecure borders.
He doesn't want bullying.
He doesn't want government departments named to promote financial instruments.
Blah, blah, blah.
Kind of both sides in.
But, you know, leaning a little towards Elon.
So any thoughts so far?
Well, I enjoyed the way it started.
He's got a real talent for taking his extraordinarily slim resume.
Making it seem like he's a leader in all of these different fields.
You know, economics, physics, what else is there?
Mortgage-backed securities, whatever.
So why aren't people asking him?
Why isn't he being invited into the corridors of powder?
He's got his jacket.
Was he wearing a jacket?
Well, it was a tweet.
You don't know.
But I assume he's wearing his jacket.
He's ready.
Why haven't they called?
Oh, yeah.
Well, more explicit, Matt.
There's more both-siderism.
I don't want censorship.
I don't want tech companies to be front ends of the security seat.
But I don't want to...
A naive American foreign policy in a dangerous, dangerous world.
We need to be muscular.
But I don't want to go around the world screwing over or killing good people because they happen to live on top of mineral resources.
I don't want endless wars.
I don't want isolationism.
Eric doesn't want anything about it.
What he's been offered, it can't give him it.
And what he does want, common sense, some concept of civility, charity of spirit and decency.
He wants a world free from endless utopian, reactionary, progressive or revolutionary.
Nonsense.
I think we're pretty much on board with this.
You don't want the extremist politics.
All good, Eric.
But now we come to the pivot.
I'm rolling up my sleeves.
If any of you want my help, I'm here for ELO team should you win.
I do not believe that anyone on the blue team will ever do anything to contact me other than get headpieces written against me.
Even though I'm a registered Democrat, you have become a cult that brooks no dissent.
So be it.
That said, I would love to be proven wrong.
Try me.
There aren't that many technical US-born Harvard STEM PhDs, MIT postdocs with a huge audience.
If you can't work with me, that's on you.
As for the red team.
So that's the Democrats, right?
That's the pitch to the Democrats.
I think it's an enticing proposal.
As you said, it speaks for itself, Matt.
Now, should the red team win?
And seek out Eric's services.
Three of the big six of you know me.
I am here to help get things done.
On science, policy, and higher ed.
Physics beyond relativity and the standard model.
Inflation, CPI, GDP, indexed construction, immigration, migration, national reconciliation, AI and labor markets, quasi and solutions to AI and migration problems.
Those are my core competencies where I have something unique to offer you.
If loyalty to campaign matters to you, I'm sorry.
I'm loyal to the country, as I understand it.
And the campaigns weren't in my idiom at all.
They felt almost totally wrong to me.
No hard feeling.
Let's get things fixed.
Or not.
Up to you.
I'd opt for the former.
Let's unfuck ourselves as soon as this is over.
Praying hands.
Praying hands.
Wow, that's the thirstiest tweet I think I've ever heard.
Poor Eric.
Poor Eric.
He wants anybody.
Someone call that.
Like, you know, if it's blue or red, someone call.
He's got a PhD, Chris.
He's had thoughts about AI and workplace disruption.
He's got ideas.
He's got an audience.
He's got a lot of followers on Twitter.
He's exactly who they need in the government.
I wonder what position he's angling for.
Is it just any position in the government?
The cabinet.
Eddie, he can do economics.
He can do AI.
He can be a, you know, come on, come on.
He's got core competencies coming up the wazoo.
But Chris, is he even available?
Like, is he free?
Like, does he, doesn't he have a job at the moment?
Like, won't he have to resign?
Isn't he letting someone down to stop doing what he's doing so he can join the government, run the country?
No, Matt, he's too much of a patriot.
Too much of a patriot for that.
But he knows it's not going to happen.
But you don't know.
What the second part of the story is.
So on its own, it's a desperately thirsty, but very Weinsteinian tweet.
So the second part of this, Matt, is that Mike Cernovich, noted conspiracy theorist and MAGA diehard, he clearly got annoyed with Eric's both sides in and yet asking to get called in to help out.
He said, Eric, no one loves you more than me, so I'll lay it out.
When you came out as a liberal who doesn't understand the left, you were welcomed by many people far more significant than you, including myself.
You responded by trying to steer MAGA people to the left, sabotage Kavanaugh, you owe an apology for that, using your platform to promote warmongers.
Whether you were ever sincere is a question for others, but this is all nonsense.
You're afraid to take a stand because your peers and friends and Sam Harris would not like it.
You're not above it all.
You're not even a heterodox to an appreciable degree.
You don't break news.
You don't have right-wing podcast guests on.
You're timid.
You're a moral coward.
You find a cozy existence where Joe Shapiro will promote you.
You want to keep the audience of Trump people without paying a social price.
No one will tell you this because then they'll be blacklisted from the podcast Circle Jerk.
But this is pathetic.
Every word you wrote oozes moral corridors in a pivotal moment in American history.
This is self-important horseshit best suited for a therapist's chair.
This is coming from Cernovich.
Isn't it for the rest of us?
Now, Cernovich, of course, well, you can say it better than me.
He is a weird, cultish, right-wing extremist, right?
Yeah, yeah.
He's a misogynistic, racist, conspiracy theorist.
He was, you know, the alt-right and actually the alt-right movement in 2016.
But before that, he was, you know, like a manosphere.
Influencer and whatnot.
And he's just like, he's Alex Jones level conspiracy theorist, but one that Eric has consistently prized, I might add.
Yes, it makes for an interesting read, doesn't it?
Because he is bona fide alt-right, whereas Eric is this, you know, above it all, both sides obfuscating, blathering mess.
So it's just interesting to hear the alt-right You know, hyper-partisan take, which a lot of it is true, but it's also filtered through that lens of someone who is a psychopath.
Yeah, yeah.
So you have, like, Eric Won't Have Own right-wing guests, and he's, like, pandering to Sam Harrison, which I think is an interesting read on it.
But he's right, you know, about the attempt to portray himself as an above-it-all figure while still pandering.
To the Trump crowd.
So yeah, Sertovich is a reprehensible character, but he is right about some of his analysis of Eric.
Yeah, you got to hand it to him.
Okay.
Well, but so Matt, there was a nuller response, Matt, from Eric to this.
So I want to ask you, you know, there was a long street there.
There were many points raised.
What do you think is the single point?
That Eric took most issue with.
He doesn't respond to everything, but he highlights one particular phrase that got to him.
What do you think it was?
Oh.
Oh, I can't even guess.
I don't know.
No, I can't imagine, Chris.
Tell me.
Okay, I got you.
So, you were welcomed by many people far more significant than you, including myself.
Oh.
Whoa.
What the fuck?
You are more significant than me?
Wow, Mike.
I don't treat you this way.
You have never said anything like that before.
You have been decent to me.
I'm just shocked.
I mean, F that.
Jeez, I'm not doing this.
I treat you with respect.
You can certainly do the same.
You have a champion.
I do not.
Passions are high.
So go fight.
I don't even think we are playing the same sport, honestly.
And I don't want any of what you're staring up here against me.
I'm not steering MAGA to the left.
Seriously?
What the hell?
I'm largely a moderate common sense person during a time of mass delusions, particularly on the left.
That is not news.
It's not low T, a trick or a secret crime.
Not everything is a guerrilla or guerrilla mindset.
Go do MAGA.
Go try to win.
Good luck.
But leave me the hell out of this.
And...
Well, that is funny.
The thing that got him...
And of course, I feel silly for not having guessed this.
Being called insignificant?
Unimportant?
Less important than Cernovich?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Poor Eric.
Yeah, that is not...
He's such a little sad sack, right?
And actually, Cernovich again calls that out saying...
That is the thing that you focused on from everything that I said there.
Yeah, so that's Eric Ma.
He's a beautiful crystal.
He's a snowflake that cannot be replicated.
Nobody else can quite out Eric.
Even Brett can't do it quite the way Eric does.
Nobody can do it like Eric can.
But it is interesting to see those exchanges and see how they look at the world.
You know, like you said, there is truth in what they both say, I guess.
Like, you know, Cernovich correctly identifies Eric as the bloviating obscurantist that he is, who will not put his chips down.
He wants to keep all options open.
And yeah, we'd be quite happy to switch Democrat if somebody would just give him a job.
So he's different.
You know, Cernovich correctly identifies him.
As different from himself and a typical MAGA chud.
You know, he's terrible in a completely different way.
But I think we have some common ground there.
Yeah, agreed.
And Eric retreats into his cloud of ink, as he often does.
But, alright, so that's Eric Matt.
They're all our gurus, though.
Oh, there's more?
That's right.
That's right, there are.
Unfortunately, Eric may be the Alpha and Omega, but he's not the only star in the sky.
So, another collision of Gurus was that Joseph Rogan had Donald J. Trump on for a three and a half hour long hard-nosed journalistic interview with Trump focusing on policies and,
you know, taking them to task on his past record.
Only kidding, a sycophantic three and a half hour incredibly indulgent interview.
Power for the course.
But you might remember that Rogan said he wouldn't do that to Lex.
Wasn't interested in helping Trump.
And by the way, I'm not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form.
I've had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once.
I've said no.
Every time.
I don't want to help him.
I'm not interested in helping him.
The night is still young.
We'll see.
If I have him on, the night is still young?
You think I'll have him on?
I think you'll have him on.
Really?
Why do you think that?
Because you'll have Putin on?
And you're competitive as fuck.
No.
I think ultimately...
I mean, you've had a lot of...
People that I think you may otherwise be skeptical, would I have a good conversation?
Which I think is your metric.
You don't care about politics, so can I have a good conversation?
And I think you had people like Kanye on, for example, and you had a great conversation with him.
I think you...
I think...
Yeah, but Kanye's an artist.
But Kanye doing well or not doing well doesn't change the course of our country.
Yeah, but you don't...
Do you really...
I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone's image in a way that is pretty shocking.
But after some other people had Trump on their podcast, seems like he got over that concern.
Yeah, he did.
I guess in fairness, though, he did subsequently invite Kamala.
On, but only if she flew to him, right?
So, I think the latest is that she turned that down.
Yeah, so, I mean, to be honest, I would have probably initially said, oh, talking to Rogan could be beneficial.
But after seeing the Trump interview, you know, this is just my...
But I think it would be a waste of time for Kamala Harris to go on.
So Rogan with Trump was yes-anding his every response.
And he was raising conspiracies that then Trump would endorse or go on.
And Rogan was just talking about how much he loves everyone that Trump is around.
He loves RFK Jr.
He loves Tulsi Gabbard.
He loves all the people that are supporting them.
So it was, you know, it was a bro-fest.
Plus, they have...
Some shared overlap in terms of MMA.
Trump is also a fan of MMA to some extent, at least enough that he can talk about it and whatnot.
Whereas with Kamala Harris, it would have went like his interviews with vaccine doctors.
He would have been, you know, give a couple of softballs and then he would raise.
A bunch of conspiracies or potentially, you know, the kind of things that a journalist might raise in terms of, well, you said this, but now you said that.
And I don't think she would have come across well in that encounter, right?
Because if the person on the other side of Joe is not yes-anding him and instead is having to get into a debate, it just would come across poorly.
And she probably wouldn't give great answers Contradictory statement that she's made.
But Trump did that as well.
But, you know, the fact that Rogan is willing to constantly help him out means that there's no emphasis placed on that.
So, yeah, I don't think it would be that beneficial.
And Rogan's audience is already strongly right-leaning, strongly, like, bro-centered.
So it's a big audience.
But I doubt Kamala going on is going to really pick her up that many.
Yeah.
No, I feel like you're right about that.
I don't think there's much benefit.
And I just dislike it on principle.
The vice president and presidential nominees making their way to Austin to pay homage to the great Khan.
Screw that.
I don't like it.
Yeah, yeah.
So Rogan mentioned that they proposed instead that they could do a one-hour interview at a location that's On the campaign trail or whatever, and he didn't like that, which is understandable from his point of view, but also just shows that they're treating him like a media appointment,
a fairly normal one.
And obviously that's not what Rogan sees himself as.
No, no, that's true.
That's true.
Okay, so what happened?
Anything else of note in this interview with Trump?
Yeah, so I've just got a couple of clips.
I mean, it could go through it all, and it just reinforces the point, Matt, that we made repeatedly whenever we covered Rogan, that, you know, he is best to understand as a partisan conspiracy theorist and like a narcissistic, egotistical person who regards himself as having,
you know, very...
Good insights and good judgment.
And also very credulous.
Very credulous, right?
But in terms of motivations about having Trump on, so here's him talking about that.
Think of it.
This is the Washington Post, ABC, Paul.
I was down 17 points in Wisconsin, and I won.
It's crooked stuff.
There's a lot of crooked stuff, and I wanted to talk about that, too, because one of the things that people...
I think J.D. Vance did a brilliant job the other day when he was being interviewed, and they asked him, did Trump lose the 2020 election?
And he turned it around and said, was there legitimate election interference in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media?
And was that a concerted effort?
Well, they say it made 10-point difference, and I lost by one...
Tenth of a point.
They say it was 22,000 votes.
But look, it was much more than that.
And I appreciate J.D. Van saying that.
And by the way, I think he was a great pick.
Do you like J.D. as a kid?
I like him a lot.
You're allowed to say that.
No, I do.
I like him a lot.
I think he's a brilliant guy.
And I think his ability to talk like a normal human being.
You did my friend Theo Vaughn's podcast.
And he just did it.
How did he do with it?
He did great.
He just talks like a normal human being.
Is that why you called me to do this?
No, no.
He was a nice guy.
Once they shot you, I was like, he's got to come in here.
It's all about timing.
It's all about the timing.
So you get Rogan talking about, you know, it's important the timing and he was definitely going to have Trump on after he was shot and whatnot.
But before that, Matt, you know, Trump is predictably talking about how it's all crooked.
They had him down in polls and he won and all this.
And then Joe's response is, yeah, yeah, it's crooked.
Like there's lots of crooked stuff.
And he liked J.D. Vance's.
Absolute deflection around the, you know, the question about whether Trump actually won the last election.
And Rogan was like, oh, that was Greer because he brought up the point, you know, about the Hunter Biden laptop.
Yeah, I mean, Trump, I mean, not Trump.
Joe Rogan is completely on board with those stolen election conspiracies and the grand overarching narrative that the...
Democrats have been fighting dirty and stealing the election and doing fake news in various ways.
This is basically, Rogan sees the world pretty much the same way as Trump does, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And just to put a pin on that, so you can hear Rogan saying that, you know, denying election results, everybody does it.
And anyway, you know, the media, they've all been calling Trump Hitler, and that's not fair.
Listen to this extended exchange.
It does a good job of encompassing the vibe of the whole interview.
Yep.
So I'll either go as president or I'll be depressed and I won't bother going.
I think they're having a fight right after.
One of the things that was fascinating also was the denial of the election results is a pretty common thing.
Hillary Clinton famously denied that she called you an illegitimate president and she said that Russia put you in place.
Even though she conceded.
Yes.
You know, she conceded the night of the election because she was beaten.
Yes.
And it was a thing that was pretty common for people, especially Democrats, to deny the elections.
There's been many of them.
The Bush administration, the, you know, the dangling chads, all that stuff.
Well, look at these guys in Congress, all these sleazebags in Congress that are Democrats.
They're still denying 2016.
But now they don't so much because, you know, they try and pin it on me.
You don't hear them say it.
But here's my point.
But they denied it right up until the end.
My point is this idea of election fraud is a forbidden topic, and you get labeled an election denied.
It's like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have had from the COVID-19 shots.
Oh, my God, you're an anti-vaxxer.
If you say, and what I say publicly, and I've said this a lot, It's not zero percent.
So if you ask me, what is the amount of election fraud in this country?
Is it zero percent?
No one thinks it's zero percent.
I've never met one person, not a super liberal, progressive, far-left person or a right-wing conservative.
Not one person thinks it's zero percent.
They think when you have human beings and also you have a lot of weirdness that was going on during the 2020 elections, particularly with mail-in ballots.
And you had legislatures that had to approve and they didn't approve and they went out and did it anyway.
And you had old-fashioned ballot screwing.
I mean, you have people going up and dropping in phony votes.
You had unsigned ballots, etc., etc.
There's certain people that think that they have...
And the rhetoric is also that you're Hitler.
And that in order to stop Hitler, you have to do whatever it takes.
That was okay, yeah.
Yeah, and this is...
I mean, you're hearing this now.
Kamala compared you to...
said your love of Hitler yesterday.
You know, Kamala's a very low IQ person.
She's a very low IQ...
Yeah, yeah, Chris.
I think the thing that's so upsetting about this is, like, I've watched a documentary recently on the Australia's ABC that just did a very good factual and brief summary of all of the explicit steps that Donald Trump took to try to overturn those election results,
which were absolutely valid.
It was only, you know, stopped by the refusal of the Vice President Pence to go along.
And then when Plan A failed, incited this riot on the Capitol building.
You know, that's the reality of that.
And I don't think Rogan acknowledges that at all.
Am I wrong?
No, I mean, not really.
He might in a very offhand way, but you hear there that he's talking about, you know, Democrats are really the ones that deny elections historically.
And, like, there was a lot of sketchy things going on, you know?
Like, he moves from saying there's not 0% voter fraud to saying, like, yeah, you know, there's a lot of weirdness going on and strange things.
But, like, the reality is, no, Joe, people have looked into the American elections in quite some detail.
Trump's claims don't hold up.
And in many cases, they're just outright lies.
Like they're people lying who have been found to be lying and found in court to be guilty of lying.
And then had Trump, in some cases, pardon him.
In some cases, the Supreme Court say that he can't be charged for the things that he's done.
And in all these cases, it's Trump wielding power or institutions wielding Power, you know, to protect them and him trying to subvert democracy.
And Joe just doesn't, he doesn't grapple with that at all.
He just buys into all of Trump's rhetoric.
And you can hear him there, right, linking in to his stance as an anti-vax COVID person, right?
Oh, they called me anti-vaccine and what I'm just not allowed.
And like Rogan was an anti-vax advocate.
He is an anti-vax advocate.
But they don't want to own those positions.
So, yeah, it's just the whole interview is like that, Matt.
Three and a half hours of Rogan doing Trump's job for him.
And in many occasions doing it better.
Because even there, Trump was like, Clinton, she did.
She conceded on the day.
Because he wanted to say, like, she knew she lost.
But Rogan doesn't at all seem to grapple with.
Well, that is a difference, right?
That is.
Actually, a rather significant difference because you didn't do that.
He most definitely did not do that.
He tried to absolutely subvert the democratic process in the United States, which is an incredibly serious thing.
And it's worth at least mentioning in this extremely long interview.
Chris, you know, a friend of the podcast, Matt Johnson, sent us both, I think, a pretty good article talking about Joe Rogan, conspiracists for the MAGA era.
Yeah, just a quick quote.
I mean, he reiterates some of the stuff we've just said.
Yeah, when Rogan told Trump that a lot of weirdness was going on during the 2020 elections, it was basically affirming Trump's big lie.
Trump claimed that old-fashioned ballot screwing had taken place, such as people dropping in phony votes, and Rogan agreed with that.
Trump claimed the Russian hoax swayed the 2020 election.
Rogan agreed with that.
Claimed that the temporary suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story also swayed the election.
Rogan agreed with that.
And Trump claimed the Democrats weaponized the justice system against him.
Rogan agreed with that.
So, you know, as Matt says in this article or argues, and I think he's right, Joe Rogan is still perceived as, oh, maybe he's a bit conspiratorial, maybe he's a bit delusional, but, you know, he's just a regular guy and he's just open-minded and he's a centrist kind of guy,
you know, just interested in hearing perspectives from both sides.
No.
The most accurate way to understand him is a red-pilled loon who is 100% on the Trump train.
Yeah, yeah.
And on the anti-vaccine point, you know, he said people call him anti-vaccine, all these kind of things.
So vaccines did come up, and this time not the COVID vaccines.
And let's just hear, you know, Rogan, the responsible vaccine advocate, talking about polio vaccines.
I know you're against certain vaccines.
But like the polio vaccine, people had polio.
It was like a disaster.
And they came up, Dr. Salk, and he came up with a vaccine, and there's no polio.
Now, very interesting, there hasn't been polio, but now in the Gaza Strip, can you believe that?
Have you heard that?
There's been a big strain of polio coming out in the Gaza Strip.
Is it vaccine-derived polio?
Because, you know, there's a strain of polio that comes directly from the vaccine because, unfortunately, sometimes when you vaccinate people for polio, you actually give them polio.
I mean, all I can do is I sit down and I listen to him and I'll give it a total.
I would love him to be right.
Because if he's right, it's a lot less expensive, generally.
There's two things that people point to when they point to the dangers of the pharmaceutical drug industry.
One thing is when pharmaceutical drugs were allowed to advertise on television.
We're only one of two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical drugs to advertise on TV.
The other one's New Zealand, but they're more restrictive than we are.
But those ads, when you hear, like, you know, take a certain drug.
And then you hear all the consequences.
It's cancer.
And baldness.
We don't like baldness.
Suicidal ideation.
And this and that and eyesight.
And you can lose your vision.
Yeah.
The polio vaccines, Matt.
Maybe the outbreak of polio is because of the vaccines, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it just illustrates that Brogan is pretty far gone.
It's not just COVID.
You know, he's consumed so much of that anti-vax literature, like a lot of people, I think, due to COVID, and now become a more general anti-vaxxer.
Lapping up the various conspiracy theories that are floating around.
You know, Trump hadn't really heard of that.
But you understand how Trump operates, right?
If RFK wants him to do this stuff and it'll help him, it's like, yeah, fine.
Yeah, he doesn't care.
He doesn't care about the health system or anything like that.
He's not a true believer, I think.
He's more like an Eric Weinstein.
He's all about himself.
But we'll quite happily go along with that nonsense if it benefits him in some way.
Oh, yeah.
And, I mean, the one thing that I do agree with Trump on is the advertising of pharmaceuticals on TV.
It is a bit unusual, and we don't do it in Australia, and it's a bit shocking.
That was Rogan bringing that up.
Oh, was that Rogan who brought that up?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and Trump.
I mean, they were both talking about it.
Yeah, they both agreed, I think, about that.
Yeah.
I think they could be right there, but I'm throwing them a bone.
Yeah, well.
The issues with American pharmaceutical promotion aside, or maybe this actually provides the background context.
You know, Rogan is, as you described, like a red pill conspiracy freak, but his background is at least a little bit more towards the alternative spirituality, hippie,
not like 1970s hippie, but kind of counterculture.
Americans, right?
The X-Files kind of American.
And as a result, he likes RFK.
He likes Brett Weinstein for the same reason, right?
The crunchiness approach.
And you can hear this in the way that he talks about RFK Jr. and concerns about health and chemicals and stuff like this.
So listen to this.
First of all, I love this idea of you teaming up with Robert Kennedy.
Right.
And I love this make America healthy again.
Yep.
Because there are chemicals and ingredients that are in our food that are illegal in other countries because they've been shown to be toxic.
There's pesticides and herbicides and there's a lot of shit that's been sprayed on our food that really is unnecessary.
And there's a lot of health consequences that people are suffering from a lot of these things.
I've read this chart for you.
Beautiful.
Because I had a feeling you'd be asking me.
Thank you.
Look at this chart.
These are healthier countries.
Look where the United States is.
I'm going to send this to RFK Jr.
Look at this.
I was actually talking to RFK today, and he told me that more than 70% of young men are ineligible for the military because of their health.
I could see it.
That's crazy.
A lot of it's obesity.
So here's the life expectancy versus health expenditure.
Same chart.
Yeah.
Did you see that?
USA.
Wow.
That's pretty good.
Jamie's the best.
He's very good.
He's the best.
No, but look at that.
Look at the USA.
Not good.
And that's our food.
That's our diet.
That's sedentary lifestyle.
That's our diet.
That's the chemicals we ingest.
That's what that is.
But RFK is going to be very, you know, I think he's a great...
I love the fact that you guys teamed up.
Are you completely committed to have him a part of your administration?
Oh, I am.
But the only thing I want to be a little careful about with him is the environmental.
Because, you know, he doesn't like oil.
I love oil and gas.
Just keep him out of that.
So I'm going to sort of keep him out of it.
I said, focus on health.
You can do whatever you want.
But I've got to be a little bit careful with the liquid gold, you know?
I understand.
But listen, there's plenty of good work that could be done if you focus on health.
The fourth mat of RFK Jr. being in charge of American health policy.
Like, fucking hell.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a sobering.
I mean, I presume he was pointing at some graph that showed that America is not doing so great, relatively speaking, in terms of health, respect to other developed countries.
He knows his audience, right, Matt?
So do you think Kamala Harris would come with a pre-prepared diagram showing America is doing badly in health?
No.
Trump understands how to play to Rogan.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing.
I mean, like, sure, like promoting measures to reduce obesity, promoting a healthy lifestyle, exercise and stuff like that.
That's good, right?
But somehow I'm not thinking that they're going to be encouraging people to, like building bike paths, for instance, so people can ride their bikes to work and, you know, some kind of universal healthcare that ensures that people get their regular health checkups and so on.
I mean, not that I'm an expert on this, but my...
Strong feeling is that the contradiction that America at once has the best healthcare system in the world in terms of being the most technologically advanced and having the most capabilities and just the most prestigious centers of health in the world.
The reason why it doesn't have the best population health is essentially inequity in healthcare access.
That is the principal reason.
I mean, yes, Americans are too fat.
Yes, they don't.
I mean, I think...
of our foods and stuff.
It's just such a total red herring, I think.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. A disaster.
I mean, I think...
There is a focus on RFK and Rogan and outdoor activities and health and getting exercise and all those things.
But they talk as if there is no public health messaging recommending that people do exercise and, you know, eat vegetables.
And, like, that's been recommended for decades.
Absolutely decades.
And it also doesn't jive with, like...
In other parts of the conversation, Trump is talking about the need to remove all these regulations.
And then this part, they're essentially talking about America needs more health regulations, right, compared to other comparable countries.
So, like, there's nothing coherent about it.
It is all rhetoric, and it's all personality-driven.
And the thing to note there as well, Matt, Joe Rogan mentioning he was getting messages or talking to RFK Jr.
That's just an indication.
Do you think Joe Rogan is communicating with many Democratic politicians regularly?
I would suspect not, unless they're Tulsi Gabbard, right?
I would think so, Chris.
I would definitely think so.
So that's that.
Now, if you wanted some more moderate election coverage, you know, there's going to be various streams covering the election.
I think Destiny, Hassan.
You know, you can choose your pick.
But there's also, I saw the Free Press, Barry Weiss's, you know, centrist outlet.
It is having an election event.
And I just wanted to note what modern centrism looks like over at the Free Press.
So there's a lot of people, but I'll give you some highlights.
So, of course, you've got Barry Weiss, right?
You've got Michael Schellenberger.
You've got the Fifth Column guys.
They're all, right, you know, libertarian sorts.
Oh, Red Scare.
Notice centrist Red Scare.
Anna Kachayan and Dasha Nekrasova are there, along with Konstantin Kissen, the, you know, the famed centrist, Konstantin Kissen.
Who else have they got appearing there?
Marianne Williamson, you know, ex-presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson.
Yeah, so, and of course, You may or may not know, but Anna Kasparian of the Young Turks has recently started her heterodox arc.
So she will be showing up, along with Brianna Wu.
I was left-wing, and then the Democrat Party have abandoned their principles.
So, yeah, this just speaks to the state of centrism in Barry Weissland.
That's what Constantine Kissin.
It's a completely meaningless term, unfortunately.
It just feels like a bunch of aristocrats sort of flocking around the hopefully, you know, new god-emperor.
Like, don't you get that feeling that they're such lackeys?
Like, they're such flatterers.
They seem to be, you know, scheming and maneuvering and, well, I'm not sure of a polite way to put it.
Jerking people off.
To get a place at the table.
I mean, Eric is quite straightforward about it.
He simply begs.
But, you know, that's what's going on here, isn't it?
Yeah, like, and it is not centrism.
It is a weird postmodern, crunchy, conspiratorial, reactionary conservatism if you had to try to label this movement.
Now, I will say, Matt, that there are degrees within that, right?
Because, like, I...
I think the fifth column guys still have it within their capacity to be critical of right-wing stuff.
Or John McWhorter.
There are some other people that I think are more critical.
But I think it's worth noting the absolute dregs that are there with them.
Constantine Kissin and so on.
And like Michael Moynihan, somebody that's come up on our episodes repeatedly for doing softball interviews with people that he gets on.
Just recently was on trigonometry.
Like, there is exactly what you say here, that there is a kind of groove of heterodoxy.
And Donald Trump, as we just covered, went on Joe Rogan, had a sycophantic interview for three and a half hours.
The Fifth Column guys mentioned it in a two-minute segment where they just talked about whether or not he actually will put RFK Jr. in charge of the FDA.
But they didn't talk anything.
About how incredibly sycophantic it is, or that kind of thing.
Actually, in the trigonometry interview, Moynihan, because it was recorded before Rogan had the interview with Trump, so he talks a bit about what he expects.
It's not going to be a softball interview from somebody from MSNBC like Stephanie Ruhl.
I believe it's 20 minutes.
25 minutes, something like that.
The next one was in that universe, too.
So you have...
Presumably a lead-up, some questions, some niceties.
You're probably talking about 15 minutes of actual substance.
Joe Rogan does two hours.
Two and a half hours.
Donald Trump should do four and a half, right?
I mean, is it going to be substantive?
Is it going to be making sense the whole time?
Absolutely not.
Is it going to be funny?
Absolutely.
I cannot imagine what she would be like over a 45-minute period, an hour period, an hour and a half.
And especially if somebody...
Who is not on one side or the other and is going to ask kind of curious questions and probing questions.
And Joe Rogan is not somebody who's going to, from watching him over the years, is going to allow a bunch of bluster and nonsense to pretend it's an answer.
And she gets away with that.
I mean, Anderson Cooper, I don't hate Anderson Cooper.
There were a couple of answers about the economy.
That I, I mean, word salad is being generous.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
And she loops back and they say, you know, like, what are you going to do on taxes?
And she says, you know, I grew up in a middle class family.
And it's like, oh, here we go.
That is the indicator that everything that's going to come after is absolute fluff.
When you're sitting in front of somebody for two hours who is not a professional journalist, who just wants to know the answer of questions, right?
Is not trying to please a constituency, you know, was...
I think it was the biggest media deal in the past decade, maybe, probably in history, with that single deal for Spotify.
He doesn't need you.
He doesn't need your money.
He doesn't express fealty to any party.
And you think he's going to let you get away with this stuff?
It will be interesting to see what he does with Trump.
I don't think he's going to take it easy on Trump.
Well, we'll find out by the time this interview comes out.
It's interesting.
I have two things to say.
I think Joe is great.
And one of the things I would say is he's one of the most open-minded people I've ever met.
Yes.
But he will push back if you talk about something that he knows about and he doesn't agree.
Correct.
And then he's like a pit bull and he will not let you get away with any bullshit.
And he does the standard thing of saying, you know, Rogan's not an ideological guy.
I expect he'll ask critical questions of Trump and all this kind of thing.
And it's not like none of the people can ever voice criticisms of Trump.
They can, but it's just a very uneven.
Application where everything on the Democratic side is hammed up really highly.
There was a story a couple days ago.
It's amazing that it's taken this long.
Granted, it's a very short campaign.
Short campaign for her is that she actually prosecuted a handful of cases, 10, 20, something like that, in the courtroom.
That this is not what...
She actually doesn't have a ton of courtroom experience.
And this was...
Look, I just read this the other day.
I don't know if it's true or not.
It strikes me as watching her on stage that it probably is true because she doesn't seem to have that ruthless killer instinct that you need to be a DA.
So she was chief prosecutor?
Yeah.
And she only was in court prosecuting people 10 or 12...
That's what I...
There's been some reporting on this recently that...
In the actual courtroom, she was not often there.
She was not often present.
You can offload this stuff pretty easily.
I'm a Brit.
I'm not the smartest person in the world.
I'm not as au fait with your ways of government.
This is mental.
You have a lot in common with Kamlo Harris.
Everything you're saying sounds insane.
It just sounds like someone who has failed upwards continually until they get the chance to be the most powerful person in the world.
Or to be the ultimate failure, right?
You know, they're just as bad.
They're lying as well.
They challenged elections previously, whereas on the right...
You know, the press exaggerate the threat of Trump.
They're always saying that people are a danger to democracy and so on.
And they're taking his comments out of context.
He lies constantly.
I mean, we know that.
I mean, he makes things up all the time.
You know, I always said that Donald Trump, when he says the word, "Sir," you know, he's lying.
It's like somebody came to me and said, "Sir."
When that happens, you're like, "Oh, here comes the bullshit," right?
But that is not even really a January 6th.
I mean, that's obviously related, right?
And that's why.
That happened.
But I think that the overstatement of that from some people, the armed insurrection was not armed.
I mean, nobody...
Nor was it an insurrection, by the way.
No, no.
I mean, I don't think that either.
I think that it was a disgusting, sickening riot that if somebody who's a conservative should think is everything about this is opposed to conservative principles from attacking the seat of government to beating up cops with, like,
the blue lines, the...
Cop flag, whatever they call it.
Thin blue line flag.
Attacking them with the flag.
I mean, good lord.
That stuff is sickening in almost every way.
Where they lose it is overstating.
Kamala Harris the other day said people were killed during the January 6th uprising.
She's not talking about Ashley Babbitt.
She's talking about police officers were killed.
That's not true.
I mean, it's not really not true.
It's been disproven.
Like, you are lying about this in a very sinister way of saying that this man is controlling This mob who goes and kills people in the Capitol.
They did bad stuff.
They didn't kill anyone.
All that kind of thing.
And it gets so tiring because it's the constant refrain in a heterodox fear.
And you feel like people present themselves as brief truth-tellers.
But whenever they're actually in the presence of, you know, like politicians or whatnot, they become like little puppy dogs, you know?
And if they lob anything beyond the softball, It's always immediately backpedaled.
You know, as soon as it gets uncomfortable, they'll just move on to something and say, well, you know, anyway, people disagree on that.
So it's frustrating because of how much distance there is between the brand and between what they do.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
We just have to stop.
Using this word, heterodox, because I just can't think of a less appropriate term for what this is.
When I think heterodox, I think of someone like, I don't know, Peter Singer or maybe Roger Penrose.
Or what do you call the big grumpy man that binds around on Twitter?
Oh, Taleb.
Nassim Taleb.
Yeah, he's heterodox, right?
Yeah, I'd count him.
He's heterodox.
Yeah, I mean, you don't have to be good to be heterodox, right?
No.
But my conception of it is that you actually have some genuine, original position that is, you know, in some way remarkable and salient.
And, you know, you are going to be pushing for that and rubbing shoulders and, you know, bustling around, you know, probably disagreeing a lot with other people in this heterodox community.
You know, but what we see here is none of these people have an original thought, right?
Eric pretends to.
Constantine Kissen doesn't even do that.
Or they're just simply sycophants who promote conspiracies and are on an ideological train.
So, like, I see that the brand is incredibly effective, right?
Because it's very flattering.
Oh, I'm interested in heterodox ideas.
I like thinking outside the box.
I don't, you know, I don't just assume that the conventional point of view is correct.
You know, that is not what this is.
That's not what this movement is.
It's a bunch of lackeys and wannabe apparatchiks or court flunkies attaching themselves to a movement in the hopes of personal gain and influence.
Yeah.
Yeah, just terrible people.
I do want to just make a comparison as well.
But when Michael Moynihan interviewed Megyn Kelly, He didn't really push back very strongly when she just suggested that Alex Jones is always right and Tucker is a force for good, right?
It does take work if you want to stay factual and totally non-conspiratorial, even in a day and age when our conspiracies are being proven true, like lab leak versus pangolin and all that.
But I'm still in favor of more voices versus fewer.
Well, it bothers me a little.
Some people who have gone really far on demonizing certain groups have become so popular.
It's just, that's America, and the answer to that is more voices that are saying, not fewer of those voices.
I wonder if you agree with me on this, because, I mean, I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and I think that, you know...
I kind of blame the previous gatekeepers for this, is that there was such a stranglehold on what one could say and what one could discuss, and that those guardrails were set by people that I think Tucker would call the elites.
He has no love for William F. Buckley.
Yeah, which is really surprising to me, actually, when I saw that conversation when he was denouncing Buckley.
But it's an interesting thing because...
People are desperate for information that is not filtered through everybody who went to Columbia Journalism School.
And what's going to happen and what's going to come out the other end is a lot of people who have maybe kind of overcorrected and started to think that every elite is lying to them and every elite narrative is a conspiracy theory and so one must push back against it.
I mean, you know, I think that that's...
You know, being somewhere in the middle of these conversations is actually the people who are generally most successful.
And I think that's why Tucker's interesting to people, because he's a bit of an outlier in the sense that he's wildly successful and does go into these kind of odd places, right?
Speaking of kind of odd people, Donald Trump.
And, you know, as he talked about afterwards, this might relate to the fact that he's friends with Megyn Kelly and that the Fifth Column guys have regular appearances.
On their show.
And sure, that might influence him a little bit.
But actually, he doesn't want to get into...
If you want to hear all the people do gotcha journalism, that's not what he's about and stuff.
And you're like, are people really confused about what Megyn Kelly is offering?
I feel her brand is pretty well established at this point.
So it might have actually been interesting to hear pushback.
And if your friendship relies on you not questioning someone hard, or if your gig relies on you not in questioning
That's heterodoxy, Chris.
That's heterodoxy.
You can never disagree with anyone about anything in order to maintain your network of connections.
That's heterodoxy.
And I'm going to give Destiny some credit again here because he had on Baccia and Garza gone to talk with him.
Right.
And she she tried the heterodox thing of saying, you know, look, we are both disaffected liberals.
Yes, I want to vote for Trump or, you know, I might be more likely to vote for Trump.
But we both agree there's problems with that.
Right.
And Disney was having none of it.
Right.
I just eventually got to the point about, like, what are her views about election conspiracies and whatnot on.
But his editor on this channel.
Titled the video, Debate with Marjorie Taylor Greene Admirer Ends with Shocking Twist.
So he did that because she said she respects Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So instead of presenting it as a fun heterodox fast where we all agree there are issues on both sides and whatnot, he correctly framed it as this person is so far partisan that they're supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And obviously, I'm sure Bacha didn't like that framing, but that's accurate.
That's accurate.
Yeah, well, I do like that Destiny or his video editor guy don't care about making people happy.
Don't mind burning those bridges, whatever they are.
But I'm still stuck in Monaghan, Chris, because as you said, he could be good.
You know what I mean?
He is good in some respects and could be so much better.
He doesn't have to be...
Part of that useless gaggle of clowns.
I feel sad that he feels that he needs to do that because, you know, he projects this sort of, you know, hard-bitten journalist.
You know, he seems like someone who'd be fun to have a drink with and talk turkey about this, that and the other.
But then when somebody says that Tucker Carlson is a force for good, you can't let, you know, if you can't say anything to that, then...
You've lost your way.
Yeah, I tend to agree.
And I think it's the same issue that it's the kind of self-presentation versus the willingness to roll over.
And I actually still like Moynihan's takes on a whole bunch of things.
And I think he is very good, for example, on Ukraine.
And there, he shows that he can be critical of people like Tucker Carlson.
That also reveals when he's pulling his punches.
And it is in a particular direction that he pulls his punches.
And it happens to be a direction which is working out quite lucrative.
And it's why he will, for example, appear on a panel for Ron DeSantis, but is unlikely to feature on any such democratic panel about, you know, corruption in the media, right?
So, yeah.
I feel like there's a distinction there, isn't there, between some of the characters we cover, like...
There are some people that do have substance and have contributed good things to the discourse and could continue to do so, but it's just very regrettable and sad when, as you say, they pull their punches or they compromise in certain ways.
I think it's no secret that we're thinking about covering Sabine Hossenfelder sometime soon, and she's someone who also demonstrably can produce excellent content, but also, I think, has the capacity to bend.
With the incentives at play.
And, you know, that's quite a different issue from someone like Constantine Kissin, who is just an inconsequential, insubstantial nothing, who couldn't contribute anything good if he tried.
Right?
So, I think, in my mind anyway, I have these different categories.
People who could do better.
I hate that phrase.
But then there are just people that are just either clowns or probably...
Kind of evil, like Tucker Carlson.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, on that frame, so I have various criticisms of Sam Harris, but he recently was hosted on the Free Press to debate Ben Shapiro about the election and whether they should vote for Trump or Kamala,
right?
And he makes the case for Kamala.
But I think in that case, he does...
Emphasize the issues that we've highlighted about the election interference and just, you know, Trump in general.
And he also, throughout it, kind of acknowledges that he would likely vote for a more moderate Republican now.
You know, he would prefer to vote for Mitt Romney over Kamala Harris.
And then, well, one, that suggests that you're now a moderate Republican, if that's just that.
But two, the fact is that he is making the case.
Just before the election for Kamala.
Like, quite strongly against Ben Shapiro.
And whatever other issues you have, that, to me, like, counts at least, you know, that you are not falling into line with everything in the heterodox sphere.
Like, you're still willing to argue that case.
Yeah, and you can see, like, the response to that episode, obviously, on the free press.
Lots of people hate...
Sam, right?
Because that's what their audience is like.
Yeah, yeah.
A lot of those rightoids, those pseudo-centrists hate Sam for that reason.
But yeah, if he's vocally supporting and arguing for the Democrats in the current election, then he's doing more for the progressive side of politics than, dare I say, people on the activist left who...
Talk about not voting for the Democrats because, you know, they don't measure up to their standards.
So Sam manages to clear that bar when others do not.
Yeah, yeah.
So there you go.
Just an example that we're not just criticizing everything that heterodox fear produces, right?
That was on the free press.
So it's not like they can't produce content that least has to be.
But I think that is the extent of the ideological divergence, right?
It's Ben Shapiro to Sam Harris.
That's the stretch of their reach.
So for some people, that's a long stretch.
For others, it might seem a relatively limited bandwidth they have.
It is what it is.
But speaking of sycophants, so the last thing.
That we'll look at today.
And it is the pathiosis of sycopency.
It's possibly one of the worst pieces of content that we've ever covered.
Genuinely.
I don't want to be hyperbolic, but this is literally the worst thing I have ever heard.
Yeah.
So this is Jordan Peterson's psychologically informed analysis of Donald Trump.
And his, like, surrounding figures and potential cabinets, right?
And, you know, we were just complaining, as we often do, about the level of sycophancy that you can come across in the heterodox and gurus here.
But this, to me, is genuinely on a whole new level.
Like, I think this is a level of sycophancy that would make Lex Friedman blush if he reduced it.
It's incredible.
And it makes me think about that we're basically dealing with this pyramid in a way where, you know, you have the gurus at the top with Trump being probably the mega figure currently in that constellation.
But there are others, you know, there's Rogan and there's Jordan Peterson himself and whatever.
But they're always just like crawling up to the...
The next level or the people that they consider their friends.
And as you go further down, you know, you're going to get Constantine Kissin and Andrew Gold and whatnot.
But they're all on the same pyramid structure.
They're all crawling in the same way.
Well, I think you're right.
They're all on their all fours, kissing each other arses, but they could be in a circle.
It's a human centipede of sycophancy.
Chris.
Yeah.
And, you know, Jordan Peterson has done it a lot, but he really excels himself in this one.
Yes.
So, let's get to some of the clips.
So, first, this is him giving the introduction, showing some of his psychological bona fides.
This history of entrepreneurial activity combined with his successful bids for attention.
Speaks to two of President Trump's cardinal personality features.
He is extremely extroverted.
That is, both assertive and enthusiastic, although more particularly the former rather than the latter.
And also at least relatively high in trait openness, which is the single best predictor of entrepreneurial slash creative activity and prowess after general intelligence.
This makes him high in the personality meta-trait of plasticity, which is characterized primarily by the capacity to change, grow, and transform.
Something quite evident in the case of Trump, who is a very dynamic individual indeed, particularly given his age.
Many people have been set in concrete with regard to their essential being by the time they're 30. Not Trump.
He reinvents himself constantly and with a high degree of continual success.
I wanted to play that to give an example of Jordan.
He's referencing psychological terms.
He's doing a kind of clinical analysis.
He's looking at his treat openness and his assertiveness.
This isn't your ordinary approach.
A professional analysis.
Yeah, this is a professional, a clinical psychologist.
It's informed by all the greatest research.
You know, Trump is, what is it?
He's got the meta trait of neuroplasticity or something.
Plasticity, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know.
The absolute sycophantia site, don't worry, we'll be hearing much, much more of that.
But yeah, I think that's a good example of, you know, he talks about the big five personality traits as well as a whole bunch of other, you know, he alludes to a whole bunch of concepts in psychology.
But what I really want to emphasize is that in this context, like the big five personality traits is a real thing, but what he's doing, where he's just like freewheeling, diagnosing people with various traits at particular levels based on...
A conversation he's had with them or some material that he's listened to.
Yeah, he's using those technical terms purely to sex up what is otherwise just unadulterated adoration being expressed for each of these people.
Yeah, yeah.
So he talks about Trump's agreeableness and how this makes him able to relate with the ordinary man, right?
And already...
That's highly questionable, but one of his next tier is just how empathetic Trump is.
It's clear from the personality and psychopathology literature that people tilt towards narcissism when they are extroverted and disagreeable.
Trump is indisputably extroverted, and extremely so.
He's also definitely low in politeness, but he simply would not be able to make contact with the so-called ordinary people that love him.
If he did not care deep in the blackness of his heart, I have a suspicion that his very impoliteness is at least in part a mask worn to shield him from the pain that such caring can produce.
This would make Trump a man whose gruffness is there to shield himself from the public exposure of his tender heart.
There are many men who are like that.
Now, I don't know Trump.
Except from a distance.
But I know many people who do.
All of them have spoken to me of his hospitable nature in private and of his proclivity to go out of his way for the people around him.
This group of witnesses to his character includes people who are seriously not aligned with him politically, by the way.
It is also by no means obvious that Trump kisses up and kicks down.
That tendency is a very damning sign indeed, particularly in someone who has genuine power and is simply not reported of Trump.
This is something that appears to stand in marked comparison to Kamala Harris, who is notoriously unpopular among her staff, current and former, and for precisely that reason.
You couldn't parody that.
That just has to be the worst.
Diagnosis of Donald Trump's personality that it could be possible to make, wouldn't you think, Chris?
It's unbelievable idiocy.
Trump is empathetic because deep in his heart, you know, his gruffness.
He might seem harsh sometimes, but that's just because he cares too much.
There are many men like that, Matt.
My God, yeah, so...
So this is something between just lick-spittle flattery and political propaganda, isn't it?
Yeah, well, but the thing is, I think Jordan believes his analysis.
He's not deranged.
He's deranged that he thinks Trump is a tender, caring man.
And he makes reference to how Trump is loved by all those close to him.
Who have worked with him.
Yeah, and he's...
He's been condemned by almost all of his previous candidates.
It's unprecedented, the number of prior staff, people.
Yeah, it's not even just his vice president or whatever, right?
It's his chief of staff.
All of them, almost all of them are condemning him.
But Jordan's in an alternative reality or something where everyone close to Trump says, how wonderful.
He is.
And you're like, how could you have missed how broadly he's been condemned by ex-allies and whatnot?
Yeah, it's just, it's a ridiculous analysis.
It's absolutely astonishing.
Yeah.
But Jordan seems very, I think Jordan is convinced of it because he's not delusional.
Like what he's saying there is his considered analysis, which just speaks to genuinely how little insight he has.
Right.
Well, he's also absolutely delusional about his ability to do this kind of pseudoscientific, psychological personality analysis.
Like, he really thinks, like, this is how it works.
This is how you take your training in psychology and, you know, paint that kind of picture based on vibes, basically.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
And you heard the rank partisanship at the end, where he's like, and Kamala is just completely the opposite.
Everyone dislikes her, right?
She kisses up and kicks down, whereas Trump, yeah, he'd never do that.
Yeah, he's not known for praising strongmen or anything like that.
He's actually known for saying, you're fired.
That was just sick.
Well, but there's all the evidence we haven't considered.
Like, Jordan's not just drawing from, you know, that kind of thing.
He's also considered, you know, the broader context.
However, he is genuinely compassionate, really quite surprisingly so, and appears on the basis of his behavior to be relatively or perhaps even markedly conscientious.
The presence of those aspects and traits mitigates against what could otherwise be the dangers associated with narcissism.
We might also spend some time, in regard to Trump's personality, considering his family and the evidence for the Donald's fundamental reliability, and perhaps even goodness, that its high level of function indicates the Trump children are a remarkably scandal-free and stable bunch.
Certainly by the standards set by, say, Hunter Biden.
Barron seems to genuinely admire his father.
Donald Jr. has many of the same personality traits of his father, for better or worse.
But he has also remained free of the taint of narcissistic privilege and power.
Jared Kushner married into the family, but has certainly done it credit, not least on the Abraham Accord front.
Trump's beautiful and elegant wife, Melania, keeps her own counsel and is admirable in so doing.
She does not appear to think that she could or should run the country merely because she's married to the man who does, in marked contrast, say, to Hillary Clinton.
This familial honesty and reliability is particularly telling.
In the case of the Trump family, given that the almost universally Democrat-biased legacy media and its propagandistic agents would be thrilled to trumpet any possible misstep on behalf of those near the former president to the skies,
where there is smoke, there is fire, or so goes the cliché.
This is sometimes, but not always, true.
Now, people who know anything about Donald Trump might be surprised by some of the things they've just heard.
Yeah, and his children.
How did it begin?
He's genuinely compassionate, and if you consider his family, it shows his fundamental reliability, even goodness, that he and his children have managed to remain scandal-free.
Yeah, God, his children, Trump's children are perhaps even worse than Trump.
It's amazing.
It depends on the ones, but they're certainly not scandal-free or a scandal-free family.
I mean, Trump is not.
His children are not.
Donald Trump Jr. is a version of him.
Was involved with, just for an example, the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer.
Remember that?
Remember Ivanka Trump getting in trouble about when she was a senior White House advisor and business interests in China?
There's huge numbers of them, Matt.
There's so many scandals associated with it.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I mean, at this point.
Jordan Peterson is someone who has just gone completely mental but somehow retains the ability to string words together in a reasonably coherent way.
It's like being gaslit, hearing someone say things which are just so completely wrong.
So they just couldn't be wronger.
Every diagnosis that he makes about Trump and his family is the opposite of what the truth is.
And it's plain to see.
Benevolent?
Compassionate?
He's just got a big heart and that he cares too much.
I mean, it's just surprising that Jordan Peterson even thinks that this is...
Like, surely this cannot ring true even to...
I know.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think it does.
It speaks to the different realities that people inhabit.
But also to say, Matt, you know, just to finish off this zero scandal point.
Zero scandal!
Within the Trump family is reminiscent, for me, of the zero wars of the Trump presidency.
It's something easy to take for granted, given its too easily invisible non-existence, as it's hard to be grateful for a problem you just don't have, but it is a relief.
And another indication that the bombastic Donald J has at least properly ruled his own roost.
This is also no easy matter, as we have seen in the appalling family scandals of the Biden White House, and is another fact mitigating against the claim that President Trump is a danger on the temperamental front.
Every opportunity to, like, get a reference to Biden or Hunter Biden scandal, right?
Like, every time.
That's the dominating thing.
So, Jordan's analysis of Biden's character?
Would be, I imagine, horrified, right?
What a venial and corrupt and incompetent person.
And his son's scandal terribly reflecting on him.
But in comparison, Trump is basically saintly.
Yeah, his children, just good, upstanding citizens who just mirror the best of Trump's qualities.
I remember, have you seen the photos of Trump's son?
I forget which one, like hunting beautiful animals in Africa.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, anyway, I mean.
Beautiful people.
Yeah, beautiful people, beautiful people.
I mean, this is a partisan screed.
Like, he pretends, it's like, oh, this will be interesting.
I'll do a, I'll contribute to the discourse, but I'll do a, I'll present my psycho analysis of these personalities.
But of course, it is to sycophancy, and it is absolutely a partisan.
Like, he kind of acknowledges in a backhand kind of way that Trump is perceived as narcissistic.
And then, of course, devotes all of this effort to explaining why, to the untrained eye, it might seem like that.
But actually, to a qualified psychologist like me, he's not at all.
His temperament is perfectly fine.
And it always robs me the wrong way, too.
It seems to have become accepted wisdom that it's just Democrats who...
Just love, love war.
Just love kicking off wars all over the place.
But, you know, it was the Republicans that started the most, I guess, wasteful and unnecessary wars in recent memory.
And it's Vladimir Putin that started the war in Ukraine, not the US Democrat Party.
I just, yeah.
I mean, but I guess it makes sense, right?
This is the new right, which is isolationist, know-nothing.
Right.
You had the same version of it before World War Two as well.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, like under Trump's presidency, the people like to talk no wars, but like the U.S. was involved in Iraq and Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen.
You know, they were still actively involved in a whole bunch of conflicts.
And Trump famously okayed various strikes in retaliation for events.
It wasn't like that.
And even in the case of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Trump promised, that took place under Biden.
And yes, it was a fucking disaster.
But that would be a policy where you could argue that there's a continuation.
But in Trump land, and in Peterson's version of it, it would always be that the shambles that that was is because of the Biden administration.
If it had taken place under Trump, it would have been perfect.
Trump had been president.
There would never have been an invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that Russia was in the Donbas during Trump's residency.
Trump would have cut a deal, Chris.
He would have cut a deal.
He would have cut a deal with the Taliban as well.
A good deal.
A good deal for America, I'm sure.
You know, we were talking about, whenever we had the Verveke episode about these responsible man vitamins that came in and how they were...
On the nose, but also, like, you know, it's kind of, well, that's some silly conservative-branded, like, supplement pill, right?
It's not like Jordan Peterson is doing the ad read.
In this episode, you can't quite use that defense, because listen to this.
I own a very comical book, The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump, available for purchase at the Daily Wire website, by the way.
Which compiles his most memorable tweets and declarations from 2009 to 2019 into beautiful library edition hardback form.
It is a ridiculously funny tome.
I believe that deeper consideration of this proclivity for the viciously funny is also useful in shedding more general light on Trump's admittedly complex personality.
First...
We should fairly note that dictatorial types, a category which his enemies insist he falls into, are generally not known for their sense of humor.
People were imprisoned in the Stalinist Soviet Union for being the first to stop applauding after a speech by the great leader.
Criticism was absolutely out of the question, and certainly not forthcoming from the top.
I've also never encountered a commendium of the witty and amusing things said by Adolf Hitler or Fidel Castro or Chairman Mao.
Absolutely shameless, Chris.
Absolutely shameless.
A hardback library edition volume, Matt.
You know the image that's playing in my mind.
I'm just imagining Jordan Peterson in his study.
All the books on the wall.
He's running his finger along the volumes looking for inspiration.
There's, I know, Thomas Mann is there.
Maybe a Greek poet.
Maybe some philosophy.
And then his finger arrives on the leather-bound copy of Trump's greatest tweets from 2009.
There's so much stupidity there.
The fact that The Daily Wire is selling this speaks to theirs.
Stupidity and the ecosystem that he exists in as well.
But the other thing, Matt, this is just a small though, but Jordan is unaware of a commendium of the sayings of German Mao.
Yeah, good point.
I don't think they were very funny though.
Maybe that's the argument, but just, you know, the little red book, you know, I'm sure there are some good one-liners in there.
You know, the level of sycophancy here.
It just, I cannot emphasize it enough.
They're talking about selling a binded book of the collected tweets of Donald Trump.
And then, also, he's talking about how he can't be a dictator because dictators are not funny, but also they don't allow criticism.
Donald Trump, famously someone that is on board with receiving criticism.
Open to, you know, critical feedback.
Not at all known as somebody who absolutely rejects critical comments or things that he doesn't want to hear.
He's talking about a different person.
Trump is not someone who is known for creating high-level critical feedback sessions or whatever.
It's just...
No, it's just delusional.
It's just an alternative reality that is...
Like, it's just the bizarro world version.
It's completely opposite in every respect to the real reality.
But, like, imagine you knew nothing about Jordan Peterson.
Like, imagine you were coming at this fresh...
And imagine it wasn't even about Donald Trump.
It doesn't have to be.
But somebody who has just spent the last 15 minutes or so, you know, waxing lyrical on just what an amazing person this public figure is.
You know, just how brilliant in every way.
And then just segues effortlessly into, oh, by the way, would you like to buy this expensive letter-down book that's written by this person?
I mean, that is just so clearly grifting.
Come on.
I know.
I concur, Matt.
But have you considered maybe, sure, I get that you find a little bit distasteful with the bound book of tweets, but...
Furthermore, he negotiated the Abraham Accords, the nine miraculous peace agreements that have built around Israel a cohort of, if not exactly Arab allies, at least not outright enemies.
In a just world, Trump and his previous team of diplomats should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this accomplishment, which was deemed...
Impossible by the experts, decade after decade, of the State Department.
It is of significant note, too, that these accords have held even after the events of October 7, 2023, and all the work that has been done, mostly by the truly pathological actors of the Islamic Republic.
Yeah, Trump should have a Nobel Prize as well, Matt.
Nobel Peace Prize.
Yeah, why not?
Nobel Prizes are a recurring theme in the Guru's sphere, aren't they?
Yeah, they are.
They're apparently not that hard to get.
The degree to which they should be doled out, it's unacceptably low.
So, I mean, that's all, as we talked about, it is what we said, right?
But the worst part, Matt, I've left for the end.
So, he gave Trump A verbal tongue-baving that will echo through the ages for its furrowness, right?
It's remarkable, truly remarkable.
He got right in there, that's for sure.
Yeah, all the crevices, all absolutely cleaned out, spotless.
But we haven't got to the team that surrounds Trump.
Now, some people have described him as a clown car.
Some people have discussed, you know, the kind of retro rates that inhabit Trump world and, you know, the motley crew that he assembles around himself.
Jordan has a slightly different take on them.
The Republican candidate has now attracted a truly remarkable, surprising and stellar group of compatriots around him, all highly accomplished and formidable figures, each with their own marked eccentricities.
This is also not something that is likely to occur when someone pathologically narcissistic is running the show.
That group includes Elon Musk, Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, Robert F. Kennedy, charismatic, eccentric, and intimidating, Tulsi Gabbard, who is in truth everything that Kamala Harris plays at being,
Vivek Ramaswamy, smart, Self-promoting, creative, witty, articulate, young, entrepreneurial and fast on his feet.
As well as J.D. Vance, the hillbilly who pulled himself out of the Appalachians by his bootstraps and who would, in sane times, be a veritable poster boy for the hypothetically support the poor and working class left.
I have been joking to myself and some others in my circle that the X-Men have now arrived, in reality, to rescue the Republic.
This is a transformation that has not yet been fully noted, even by the Trump campaign itself, despite its truly and surreally revolutionary nature.
It's cult of personality all the way down, isn't it, Chris?
And he gives each one of these figures the same treatment, of course, as he gave Trump.
They're all superheroes on a similar level.
But just that Like this idolization, like this mythologizing, this cult of personality that like Jordan Peterson has got that around himself, but they sort of pass it up in a futile kind of manner.
And, you know, it's just a concerning style of politics when you are presenting.
It's not so much about a party with a set of policies.
It's rather this personality cult with...
Trump and the various heirs and colonels and captains, each of whom is an absolutely amazing, Nobel Prize-worthy person in their own right.
It is this horrible intersection of gurudom with American politics.
When you and I started this podcast, we didn't think there would be this kind of overlap.
This Venn diagram overlap would be so large.
We thought it was a funny, quirky...
You know, unwholesome, but, you know, just a localized internet thing.
But it's actually quite dispiriting to me that it has become really important in the current election cycle.
And again, just the absolute distance from, like, the presentation and the reality.
Like, Vivek Ramaswamy as, you know, this hugely mythical figure.
Instead of, like, a degenerate, fast-talking, self-promoting politician who's, like, clawed his way up, you know, getting every scrap of attention from the media that he can get.
Yeah.
Or J.D. Vance, like, just another opportunistic chameleon.
It's like taking a group of shady used car salesmen with weird mustaches and then dressing them up in superhero costumes.
It is absolutely absurd.
Yeah, and, you know, he'll go on to do, you know, like a little mini psychological breakdown of each of them, and it's all the same.
We'll only cover like a little bit of the Elon one, I think.
We'll give a taste for it.
Yeah, all the rest are the same.
But when he talks about Tulsi Gabbard, for instance, he goes through all these, you know, her character and, oh, she's also such a feminine grace, Matt, and, you know, she's robust and stalwart and all these things.
She has as well the emotional resilience.
Not to panic, even under pressure.
Not to claim that the sky is falling and rush around madly and counterproductively merely for the show of work.
It doesn't hurt as well that she is the epitome of feminine grace and attractiveness.
Wonder Woman indeed.
Borrowing, if we can, from the DC world, the comic books, and not the city.
I could certainly envision her...
As the first truly deserving female president of the United States.
But in all this analysis, he's never looked into things like Tulsi's remarkable ability to absolutely spin on a dime her ideology.
There's a good episode of QAnon Anonymous where they look through her history.
And she has been, you know, at times an anti-gay marriage activist and then like a hard left progressive.
Person, a neocon, right?
She's been a moderate Democrat, and now she is a migra Trump Republican, right?
And the connecting thread is a search for power and influence and attention and fame.
And she was Tucker Carlson's stand-in host.
So they are misfits, but they're misfits in the realm of self-promoting media points.
Yeah.
Absolute opportunist.
Like, you know, we've mentioned her a few times, but, you know, Anne Applebaum, with her diagnosis of the kind of person, you know, like ideologically labile, very ambitious, and totally without principle.
And, you know, not necessarily having any talent, but having a huge amount of willingness to bend with the wind, you know, flatter the right people.
And just, as you said, claw your way to the top.
You know, so Trump, who, you know, you can think of him in terms of sort of those authoritarian left-right terms, but, you know, he is fundamentally like an opportunistic con artist.
And it makes perfect sense that he's gathered these kinds of people around him.
Yeah.
Or Roger Stone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to hear Jordan Peterson, like, really, you know, find his stride and really wax lyrical about their almost superhuman...
Virtue and amazing cognitive abilities.
Like, you know, like at some point there, he did one of our, you know, who was our guru who talked about, you know, running 70 different paradigms at Jordan Hall.
Yeah, yeah.
He talked about one of them like that, too.
Well, Matt, hold on.
Aren't you exaggerating?
But it's not like he'd compare them to actual gods and superheroes.
First and foremost among these new supporters and colleagues of the former president is Elon Musk.
He truly is, and so comically, an X-Man, as is starkly evidenced by the new name of the controversial social media platform he now owns and was once known as Twitter.
He has been struggling to build X, the everything platform, for decades with that particular moniker in his mind the whole time.
The X-Men, like the Avengers, was a group of misfit mutants who came together to save the normies from the various monsters of the world.
It is frequently the case that life imitates art.
And there were perhaps real reasons stirring in the collective unconscious of the West.
Inclining us to look toward the eccentric and supernormal for our salvation.
Fiction meets reality in the strangest of ways.
In any case, Trump is now playing Charles Xavier to a strange group of mutants.
Or, if the similar metaphor of the Avengers is more attractive, conceptually, Captain America to the gods and superheroes.
Let us assess this group of remarkable people psychologically.
Oh, God.
I know.
It's so puerile.
It really is.
It's like Brett Weinstein, you know, comparing themselves to the Harry Potter, Order of the Phoenix, or the Transformers, or whatever.
They're like little kids.
That's right.
I mean, for all these intellectual pretensions, like the ideas that resonate with...
These people the most are from stupid movies more than anything else.
But even in this case, this is what is slightly annoying about this.
It's like the X-Men, right?
Famously, famously, a metaphor or analogy for discrimination against gay people or other marginalized groups, right?
They're people that were pilloried by society but had these...
You know your X-Men lore clearly better than I do.
But go on.
This is not a deep reading.
It's a very superficial thing.
It's probably like one of the second or third lines that will come up on the Wikipedia article.
And so his reading of that is even just wrong.
Trump and this group is not the marginalized people in this society.
It's the...
Elite billionaires and the leaders of political parties and in Vivek's case, these investors and whatnot.
But he wants to analogize them to the X-Men and put Trump into the Professor Xavier thing.
I'm sure you don't know that much about it, but Professor Xavier might give you a clue about the image of that person.
And it's certainly not the image of Trump.
It's so ridiculous.
Well, Chris, I have my own metaphor here.
I'm going to set against Jordan Peterson's because I just finished reading A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman.
And it's a really good history of the 14th century in medieval Europe.
She's done a few history books.
Anyway, basically, long story short, the 14th century was a shit show.
But, you know, she really paints a...
A very accurate picture of the sociology and the ideology of that time, where you had these monarchs and despots and princes, or wannabe princes, you know, the various schisms.
And then you had their court, you know what I mean?
The various powerful nobles and dukes and knights and so on that they would gather around them, right?
Who were the ones that they would reward.
They would all be extremely obsequious.
But, of course, loyalty in that kind of feudal system is the most important thing.
So that's kind of how I see this cult of personality culture.
It's not a culture for the modern world.
It is this archaic, horrible throwback.
So in this metaphor, Chris, Jordan Peterson would be the court poet or the jester.
He's got his pointy...
Shoes with the little bells on, and he's prepared these soliloquies to entertain the court and flatter them all with what amazing persons they are.
That's Jordan's role in this whole scheme, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And he's delivering it with aplomb, I will say.
Maybe a little on the nose.
He went a little heavy.
He maybe spread it on a bit thick, but he's definitely doing the work.
So just to show, Matt, this is a very short clip, but like on Elon, Ian, very good insights.
On to Elon himself.
First and foremost, the world's premier engineer and inventor is a man clearly and demonstrably capable of doing six impossible things at the same time.
This speaks primarily of his intelligence.
Musk is exceptionally...
One in a billion high in general cognitive ability and openness.
A true genius, albeit in the technical manner.
So, counter to us, Matt, he regarded Elon as actually being an engineering genius, right?
Like an inventor.
One in a billion, Chris.
Yeah, that does stand in stark contrast to our diagnosis, which is that he's a fucking moron.
He's a good bullshitter, a good marketer, and that's it.
It's like somebody that has interests and what not, but primarily his value is in getting investment for his companies and attention, which he is very good at.
But yeah, so, you know, two different visions of the man, the intrepid engineer and genius level internet versus...
It's somebody that's good at self-promotion and promoting these companies.
One of them is Mark, right?
Yeah, one of them is.
I mean, like you said at the beginning, Chris, it just speaks to the different mental worlds that we inhabit.
Because, you know, Jordan Peterson isn't alone in this idolization and hero worship of Musk, Trump and all the rest of them.
And we're not alone, obviously, in how we feel.
And, you know, regardless of who's right and wrong, we can put that aside.
It's just, it is amazing, isn't it?
That, you know, Jordan Peterson is genuine here, in a way.
I don't think he could get so, you know, he couldn't find his stride.
He couldn't be so passionate and find inspiration unless he truly did believe this on some level.
And I just, I find that endlessly fascinating.
Yeah, I don't.
Well, you know, if you're more compelled by his vision about Elon Musk, I think, just one last one, Matt.
RFK Jr.
See if this description fits what you're aware of RFK Jr.
I have met with the next member of this group in question, Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, five times, speaking with and listening to him at some length each time.
He has the near manic energy and loquaciousness of those with exceptional verbal intelligence and the intensely focused concentration that pushes people who have that proclivity beyond even their own limits in pursuit of a goal.
He's dreadfully well-informed, a veritable master of historical minutiae in a manner nonetheless relevant to today's concerns.
He is also someone who, like Trump and Musk, Canon does draw the overall picture accurately, and even in a somewhat prophetic manner, he is fearless and dedicated, having stood up and successfully against even the largest giants of the proto-fascist modern state,
and has single-handedly drawn public attention to what is genuinely a health crisis of gargantuan proportions, despite its invisibility on the political stage.
Until the current time.
Anti-vax stuff, presumably.
Yeah, yeah.
Anti-vax stuff.
But yeah, Jordan's on board with that.
Yeah, he is now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, he's very eloquent, isn't he?
He keeps finding new ways to...
To flatter.
To flatter.
Yeah.
Like, I do think it is like a court...
A court poet.
You know, they're really, really putting in the effort to find all the, you know, munificent and multiplicitous ways in which the lords and the king are so wonderful.
So refined.
Such great insights.
Such grace.
Yeah.
How about boys?
The angels themselves doth tremble with joy at their approach.
And this is presented...
Like we were talking about at the start, the kind of consistent thing with Joe Rogan, with the heterodox fear more broadly, whatever, is there's supposed to be these brave truth-tellers and what they consistently appear to be is the most base sycophants.
They are brave truth-tellers when it comes to political opponents that they dislike, but anybody that is in their orbit and kind of aligned with their vision.
They are the greatest person on the planet.
Their merits cannot be counted over several volumes.
It is just so counter to the image presented of these hard-bitten truth-tellers who are willing to go alone and stand up against whatever moral feelings there are in the world.
No, you're going to praise someone who is, whatever your view of his policies, obviously, A deeply venial and narcissistic, self-centered character.
And you're going to talk about what a wonderful family man he is and how incredibly empathetic.
He actually really cares for the little people, Matt.
And it's his gruff exterior is his way to mask that deep, empathetic heart.
Fuck off, Jordan.
Fuck off.
Oh, no.
The king loves his people.
The king loves his people.
Yeah, he does.
He does.
Yeah, with a horrible propagandist and mentally ill, probably.
Yeah, I think that's fair.
You usually might, you know, well, can we say that?
No, I think that's fair in Jordan's case.
So, Matt, we've been around a rather horrific little tour of the guru's sphere.
I have to go be sick in a moment, so let's wrap it up.
The US election is approaching, though.
We're not voting.
We don't live there.
But I do hope that this podcast who can't vote don't find it a particularly difficult choice.
I'm sorry, but when the choice is Trump or Kamala, there really only is a single option.
So what are you doing, Chris?
This is like the Washington Post situation or the various other institutions.
You're coming down.
Like, Decoding the Gurus has an official position.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
What is it?
What is it?
I'm fascinated to know.
So third party, Matt.
Right in your Mueller.
Right in your...
No.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, this isn't news, right?
This isn't news.
As we have constantly declared since the first episode, we are moderate left-leaning people.
So our view...
Even if it wasn't Kamala, even if it was like AOC or whatever, I would still be saying, you know, against Trump, you should vote for the moderate left-wing candidate.
If you care about, you know, the kind of things that we care about.
If you are like Jordan Peterson and want a political establishment ruled by only the greatest supermen and mutant heroes around, then yes, perhaps Trump is the option.
I don't know.
We are both going to be insulated to some degree from the choice that Americans make.
But I just don't find this particularly a big hand-wringing exercise.
It just doesn't seem like it should be.
It's a stark choice.
Well, in a normal world, I'd say that this kind of thing would be totally inappropriate for us, Chris.
It's not our country.
It's not a political podcast.
What people do is up to them.
But I guess...
Due to this massive overlap between gurudom and all the things we cover that gurus do, and Trump and the people that are affiliated with this movement, yeah,
I think I'm on safe grounds when I say that there is one of those parties in the United States which exhibits a really strong gurometer score, if you took them in aggregate.
And one much less so.
The way it looks to me is people can vote whatever way they want, but if there's any person in the audience who is like, "Oh, those guys think that it would be better to support Kamala over Trump."
Come on, it's not secret, Matt.
I think you can be a reasonable person and vote for different parties.
I think you can be a perfectly reasonable, moderate conservative.
But I just think given Trump and all the stuff around this.
Yeah.
No, no, that's right.
I mean, hopefully we won't be making a habit of this.
Hopefully in another four years or eight years or 12 years.
Well, who knows?
We'll still be podcasting.
But, you know.
Hopefully by then, who knows, maybe there'll be like a Mitt Romney character or a McCain-type character, and you and I will have nothing to do with it.
It'll be totally out of value.
I think you're overabashed with your influence.
We have nothing to do with this one.
Of course not.
But this is the thing, so all I'm saying about it is the exact same way, like, what do you think I would vote for in the UK?
The Labour or the Conservative government?
Which one would I pick?
It's not hard, so I don't feel shy.
It's all about saying to people, you know, my birthday is on the 4th of November.
If you were a nice present, American listeners, would not have me wake up to another four years of listening to fucking Trump.
So if you trust the reason, I appreciate it.
You've missed the best reason to hope for a Democrat victory, which is that it would make the vast majority of our gurus...
Really, really upset.
It would make them really sad.
It would cause them pain.
I know, that would be beautiful.
That's not nothing.
If that happens, that is perhaps the greatest benefit.
It would be very funny for that reason.
I mean, that's all I'm saying.
I mean, I don't wish I had happiness or pain on anyone, but we will drink their tears on this podcast if the Democrats win.
And that makes for great content.
So that's a decent reason.
Yeah, but, you know, in my case, it's a 50-50 toss-up.
I expect the worst, but I just hope for the best.
Come on, America.
Don't let me down just this time.
It's all my freaking birthday.
Oh, come on.
Let's see what we can do.
All right.
You know, look for whatever you want.
Jill Stein, is she running?
Vote for her if you want.
Yeah, see who Brett Weinstein's proposing.
Yeah.
Well, he's Trump.
He's Trump.
Oh, no.
So there's no unity candidate this time?
Ah, shame.
Shame.
The unity candidate is Trump with RF Gamer.
You must have missed that.
Oh, that's right.
Of course.
Yeah.
Of course.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thanks for indulging us, everyone.
Sorry for inflicting Jordan Peterson's absolutely gut-wrenching display there.
But yes, stay well.
And don't be too psychologically affected by the election.
The world will still turn.
We'll muddle through somehow, whatever happens.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's true.
You know, we'll all manage with whatever happens everywhere in the world.
OK, so let's leave on that note of slight optimism.
And yes, good night and God bless.
Yep.
Keep plugging on, by the way.
Ciao. Ciao.
Ciao. Ciao.
Ciao. you
Is I want to present another choice.
And the other choice is voting for somebody else, a third party.
They're not going to win.
Doesn't make a difference.
My job as a citizen when voting is to express disgust, right?
Or pleasure, but I never have ever experienced that.
I want to re-elect this guy because he's so great.
It's never actually happened in my life.
And one way of doing that...
Is either not voting, which is a choice.
If turnout is low, it tells you something about your political society.
Or voting for somebody who's not these two people, in a way, is saying, "Try harder, guys.
You can do better than this."
We want somebody who is actually relatively sane, is stable, is not going to act like a complete nut all the time, or can actually put a sentence together.
And agrees with my fundamental values and is not going to lie to people to tell them what they want to hear, to get the votes, and then not do anything about it.
You know, I think that voting for whoever the libertarian is, I don't even know.
I'm sorry to the libertarian candidate that I don't know.
For me, that is also a choice.
And that, I think, is a choice to show that you have utter contempt for where this two-party system has landed.
What a fantastic, uplifting note to wrap up the episode.
