Cameron Kasky, co-founder of Never Again MSD, recounts the February 14th Parkland shooting where he hid with special needs students after a fire drill turned deadly. Channeling survivor's guilt into advocacy, he transformed his grief into the March for Our Lives movement, though he admits to past hubris regarding political polarization. While debating Marvel deaths and musicals with Dave Rubin, Kasky emphasizes the need to separate facts from feelings, criticizing the current climate of attacking opponents instead of finding common ground to foster healing across the spectrum. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm really happy that you're here for many reasons, mostly because you strike me suddenly as someone that's trying to find some common ground these days, and we're going to get into that and a whole bunch more, but of course I have to mention up top, you are a survivor of the Parkland shooting in Florida.
Before we go all into that and everything that you've been through since, just tell me a little bit about life before, because I assume you have a life before And now, a new life.
Well, you know, I spent most of my life as your typical little shitster who just said whatever he wanted to, had a voice.
I was always so convinced that I was right about everything.
Whether that was nature or nurture is kind of up to interpretation, but I really grew up just dead set on the fact that I knew everything, everything I said was right, and I was a genius.
I learned the hard way recently, a little too recently, that I'm not, and that was a crazy awakening, learning that you don't know everything in the entire world is actually An interesting experience.
But one of the things that helped me a lot was doing theater.
I was a big theater kid because I had this voice.
I always wanted to express myself.
I was flippantly loud all the time and I didn't know what to do with it.
I did spend 12 years doing stand-up comedy in New York City, which is a whole other nightmare, but... I always wanted to do stand-up, and then I tried it once when I was 7 years old.
I was on a cruise with my family and there was a kind of adults only nightclub.
It wasn't really... You were able to get in if you were younger, but I was the only person there under maybe 40.
And they had an open mic and I kept on raising my hand to get on and the host was saying no.
What the hell is this kid doing?
And then finally he just caved in and was like, all right, let's let the kid get up here.
And I walk up there and I drop a three minute routine.
I make a joke about my dad's penis, which was an interesting experience.
And the thing is, I did not know that while I was sitting alone in the front row, I snuck out of my room, my parents went to the club and I didn't see them.
Four foot three, and everybody's drunk, so they think I'm a riot, so I think I'm a riot, and I just kept going and going to the point where the guy who was running the open mic was just looming behind me waiting for me to be done, but I guess he just didn't want to grab the mic from a small child without looking kind of weird.
My test scores were always good, but my grades were awful because I never bothered to do homework.
I thought I was too smart and cool for that.
But I liked high school a lot because I never really subscribed to one social circle.
I kind of hung out with a lot of people.
You know, kids who were the stereotypical popular-y kids.
You know, I was just the guy they knew that was funny.
I would hang out with them sometimes.
Kids who were the stereotypical nerds.
We would talk about movies and comic books, which I want to get into.
I need your comic book collection soon.
I'd say that my core group was the theater kids.
I love my friends from drama.
It's really fun having a group of friends where you'll be hanging out on the weekend, shooting the shit, and then you'll get to school and either be falling in love with each other and making out on stage or killing each other on stage.
We just did Fiddler on the Roof and I got to marry one of my best friends.
It was actually a really nice day, and there was a period of time during the day that I always remember where I thought, today's going a little too well.
I was sitting reading John Walsh's book, Tears of Rage, I believe, if you're familiar.
I don't remember the title exactly, but I was a big fan.
And I was planning out a Valentine's Day gift for a girl that I really liked.
She had an endoscopy that day, and she was on a lot of medicine.
And I was gonna give her cousin some gifts for her and have her bring it to her.
And I made her a card that said, "I would've brought you this myself,
And my little brother, I don't want to brag, is kind of the ringleader over there.
And I went to go pick him up because on days like that when my mom was at work, I would take him to drama and he would just hang out and he really loved it because all the girls would give him attention.
Yeah.
And, you know, he's a bit of a cocky little bastard.
And I realized it's maybe 2.20, let's say, and we're halfway through the song and I say, I forgot to pick up Holden.
So we finished the song and I asked my teacher if I could go run and pick him up.
Of course she said yes.
And I'm picking up Holden and suddenly there's a fire alarm.
And that was a little scary because we were close to pick up and I was with the special needs kids, some of whom were in wheelchairs, some of whom were a little physically disabled, and we had to go to the parking lot where the buses would come.
And I said, oh no, what if this is a real fire and I have to sit out here and make sure that nobody gets hit by a bus?
There were teachers there, of course, but you know, it's a public school, there are maybe two teachers for 10, 15 students who need a lot of help.
So we're out there sitting in the parking lot and there were students out there from other classes nearby who, because again this is a fire drill, there were students out there who were with us and it was the ESE class, it was a couple of the nearby classes, and one of the kids jokingly said, there's a shooter.
I said, dude, shut the fuck up.
That's not cool.
Because how could that ever happen, right?
Suddenly, I see everybody running back inside, and the teacher says, get inside, get inside.
And I said, oh, OK.
It wasn't a real fire, and they want to get all the kids inside before the buses come.
And then we're told to go in a room.
And we're told to hide, get away from the window, and turn the lights off.
And I say, OK, something's going on.
And that experience was an interesting one, because I was in the leadership room with a lot of the leadership students, which is a class that specializes in leadership and they planned prom and everything, sort of
student government.
And it was also the special needs kids because it was the nearest room.
And some of the students, being non-verbal does not mean you can't make noise.
And some of the students were yelling and wailing.
Fortunately they had shadows and the special needs teachers at Douglas are fantastic and
we were able to keep everybody calm but we didn't know what was going on.
Holden, my little brother, has no idea what's going on.
And And slowly I realized, okay, there's a shooting.
I heard, and people were whispering around the room, it was maybe 20 kids in the room, people saying 50 people are dead, two people are dead, one person is dead.
There were conflicting stories.
I heard conflicting stories of who the shooter was.
I heard five different names, one of whom was somebody I knew, somebody I knew would not pick up a weapon to harm a butterfly, because that's hysteria, and that's natural, and I understand it.
Then I saw something that was a terrible exhibit of humanity, if you ask me, which was there was a Snapchat video going around that was with the caption, yo, with multiple O's, my school getting shot up.
And it was a video of a dead teacher.
Look, if you're going to film a shooting from inside a room so you can have evidence to show the police, good on you.
If you're going to film a shooting in a room and say, yo, my school getting shot up and send it to everybody you know, That's pretty awful.
And when you're sitting there in a room not knowing what's going on, and you see videos of people you know and love deceased, and the only video I saw was of somebody who I had cared about for many years, he was a mentor in my life, you start to realize that Nothing is ever gonna be the same again.
Let's pause for one sec, because we shouldn't gloss over that part where the social media component of this is so important, because you guys all grew up on this, and then you grow up hearing about school shootings all the time, and I don't know who this kid is, it doesn't matter, I'm sure he's a perfectly fine person, or he or she, but it's like, doing that, it almost feels like, oh, that's the normal thing to do, there's a shooting.
I could look at interviews I did days after and have a much better gauge, I forget.
But I would call it around two hours.
And, you know, when the SWAT team broke the door down, there was the big issue that there are students who are developmentally disabled in here who might not be able to put their hands up.
And fortunately, one of the only good things you'll see from Broward's handling of the shooting was the SWAT team was very understanding and was very quick to help these students, which was good.
But when that glass broke and the first thing that walked into a room was a rifle, how were we supposed to know that that wasn't us taking our turn?
But, and I, everybody was texting their parents.
Everybody, the phone lines were kind of jammed because everybody in Parkland was making a call.
I mean, it was Parkland.
It was a city with, I don't even know how many people, but it's a small town where there's one high school.
Is there one high school?
There's around one high school.
Yeah.
And we... I mean, nobody should be equipped for this, but we weren't.
Tell me a little bit more about the makeup of Parkland, because you mentioned something interesting that's kind of like a little liberal area in Florida.
Did you in that period, and I'm sure it's very hard to even remember it clearly,
did you have a real chance to mourn, to figure out what happened?
I don't know, you can maybe let me know how close you were to maybe some of the students.
Because it seems like, and I think this was part of the problem with the way we deal with these things, is that we go from the incident to immediately, especially on social media, just attacking each other and destroying each other.
Then you guys all get thrust into the spotlight and it's like, whoa, this would be hard on an adult.
You know, impossibly hard.
Meanwhile, you have these kids who are now out there talking about these things.
So I think that there's really no formula for recovering from a mass shooting, especially one at a school.
Enough has happened that they're starting to develop a precedence, which is a horrible thing, but there's really nowhere to look.
I could have hidden away, I could have locked myself in my room for weeks, and maybe that would have been the right thing to do.
I didn't know what to do, and my way of coping has always been doing something.
I had dealt with some tragic loss this past year, and there were some really dark things that happened to people that I loved, and the way I always handled them was by doing something.
I never liked to have a clear head, because while I think it's important to process your pain and deal with it, I also think that if something like that happens and I do nothing, I'm never going to forgive myself.
I had survivor guilt.
Why should I have left that day?
There were 15-year-old girls that were murdered, and I made it out.
And if I could have pressed a button to trade my life for theirs, it wouldn't have even been, hmm, well maybe I should say goodbye to people, maybe I should think about this.
No, I would have broken my finger pressing it too hard.
So what made me deserve life when other people who did nothing wrong, people more innocent, more kind than I am, didn't get to make it out?
And I realized, while I'm alive, and one of my mentors wasn't, Scott Beagle, one of the nicest guys I've ever met.
He's the reason that I'm a snarky little asshole.
I developed that from him.
He didn't make it out there, and he's somebody who changed young people's lives by making them better and making them more proud of themselves.
So what has me deserving of this?
I'm not a very religious or spiritual person.
So I didn't think there was some great plan that got me out of school, but I think that I had a responsibility.
I had a responsibility to do right by the people we lost and to do what I thought would make the world a better place while they can't.
Because there were marriages that didn't happen, there were people who would have had children and...
I don't know.
It's a horrible thing to think, but at the end of the day, lives ended, and I still had mine.
So I said, after this shooting, what I'm going to do is something.
I've been a big liberal most of my life and I've always been an advocate for gun control.
I was a big debater of other students after the shooting in Las Vegas where I said, nobody needs these.
We're at a point in our society where we're advanced enough that nobody needs An assault weapon to take care of themselves.
Yeah, okay, so let's, before we get specifically too far down the gun road here, which obviously we're gonna touch on.
Okay, you guys are trying to mourn.
You know, you're having survivor guilt, all of these things, I'm sure, just in your family and your brother and everything else, just, I can't even imagine.
Then the media, because I think this is, we have to hit media stuff before we get to the gun parts.
The media then descends.
What was that like?
I mean, I assume everybody and their brother was trying to reach out to all of you guys.
Were there people, I assume parents, advisors, whoever, that were kind of guiding you through the media part of this?
Because there were so many strange moments where it seemed like Look, I said to you right before, I don't want to make this about any specific student, especially, and I don't want to throw anyone out on the bus, but when we'd see someone like David Hogg, who obviously is very public now, you know, saying things that didn't quite seem right or talking about laws and all this stuff, like going from just surviving to suddenly advocacy with almost no
I think the general idea of going right to advocacy, while it might not have been our best call to immediately go to it, was these cameras are only here for so long.
So do we wait our respectful time and then go out and advocate?
Or will people not care?
I think I stand by advocacy.
I'm not sure.
I think on a moral level I might not, but generally I think that while everybody was looking, we had to say, let's look at what we really want to look at here.
Were any of you guys afraid that you were being looked at as experts suddenly, where as horrific as what happened to you was, it doesn't make you an expert either in law or in guns or any of those things.
Like, you can very eloquently, as you're doing right now, tell me your story, tell me what you think, all of those things.
But especially at the beginning, I'm sure you know way more now, you don't know everything.
Nobody knows everything.
And they were throwing a bunch of 17-year-olds out there as if they were experts on all of these things.
and I think that also added to some of the tumult around everything.
Yeah, it was awesome to me that I got to... I spent my whole life watching people talk about laws and watching people talk about politics and now I got to say this and my word got to be respected, but every time I went out there I thought there were people dead.
It's a moral qualm.
I'm doing this because I believe in it and I'm doing this because I don't want the world to lose people again.
Nobody deserves to be shot.
Nobody at all.
Nobody who's a good person deserves to be shot.
So it was difficult for me because on the one hand it was this amazing feeling of here's my voice, everybody's listening, let me tell you what you all need to hear.
And what everybody needed to hear was we need to pass gun laws.
It's been enough.
If people did nothing after Columbine I would have understood because that was supposed to be an anomaly.
I'm sure you remember that was a shocker.
And then Stoneman Douglas happened and it was more of another, not a whoa.
So it felt great that people were caring.
That was what I would say was the awesome part, was that I was afraid everybody in the country would feel helpless and cry and be done.
But it was amazing to see that the country was saying, maybe there's something we can do here.
Maybe we can make some change.
And the thing that was awful was I was going from news hits to memorial services.
Yeah, so you've had a sort of interesting evolution about all this, and it sort of leads to where we're going to end, which is what you're doing now, which is pretty awesome.
So, all right, now you're part of the media machine.
You guys are trying to figure out what can you do.
I assume that's sort of how March for Our Lives started, and if I'm not mistaken, it started in your house, right?
I didn't like the movie very much, but there's really nobody who was in it that I think is not an incredibly funny person.
But anyway, it started in my home and I got a lot of my friends together.
I called everyone who I knew was intelligent and well-spoken and was Willing to put their time to grieve aside to demand action because I felt like it was in some ways public service because people are grieving and we're out here saying we're going to put that aside.
As much as I wanted to cry every day and mind you I really wanted to and I did a lot, I knew that I had to put that aside.
I had to do something.
So I got everybody that I knew could do something too.
Mostly my drama friends, because I knew that they could speak.
And we all got together in my house and said, what do we do?
This whole country, people on both sides are all mourning together.
How can we get everybody on both sides together to do something?
Now mind you, that didn't happen.
Getting people on both sides didn't really happen.
Original intentions were let's get gun control passed.
And I'm still a big let's get gun control passed guy.
And that's what we wanted to do.
We wanted to say, everybody out here saying we should do this, let's get everyone together.
Let's get a big march together where people say, I'm coming all the way out here, I'm standing out here today to demand this.
And seeing everybody together was amazing.
Getting up on the stage and seeing all those people.
I didn't care about being in front of them.
I mean, I was a drama kid.
I stood in front of people and talked for the past five years.
But I saw all those people and I said, these people believe in something.
These people come from different places.
These people are all completely different.
But they're all together because they believe in one thing.
And that was magical.
And I don't use the word magical very often.
I think it's cliche.
But that was magical.
And it was amazing to see.
But from the beginning of our advocacy to the march...
It was a lot of personalities together and we were able to make it through the pain we felt together.
I mean, so often people said, well, why are you guys, you know, your school got shut up a month ago, your school got shut up three weeks ago, why are you smiling?
And I said, well, at least from my own personal perspective, the teacher that I was dear friends with that I lost, Scott wouldn't want me to cry.
Scott would want me to do something.
Scott would want me to do what I believed in.
He wasn't a very political guy.
After the shooting, he probably wouldn't have focused on any politics.
He would have focused on getting everybody at Douglas to feel better, to laugh, to smile.
But if I believed in something and I wanted to advocate for it, I knew that if he were here, he'd say, well, go do it.
So the time I spent, I was sitting at his memorial and I was crying.
I was in the dirt.
I was all snotty.
I tried to wipe my face with my dirty hands.
It was what many would consider the low point in a movie when the person feels like they've lost everything.
And then I thought about it and if Scott Yoda'd behind me as a ghost, which he and I used to talk about actually.
He and I used to talk about Yoda-ing.
If he Yoda'd behind me and he would say, Cameron, do something, you must.
No, there were points where Scott was my teacher in fifth grade and he Yoda voiced me
while I was asking him a genuine question, which frustrated me a lot, but in the spirit of time,
I could do a three hour interview on him, but he would have said do something.
So when we were all smiling together, when we were all laughing together,
it was because I knew that somebody that I loved would have wanted me to.
And we had each other.
That's the thing.
If I was advocating for gun control alone, it wouldn't have worked.
Not only because I couldn't have done it alone, I'm not good enough to do it alone, but also because we were each other's lifeline.
When everything seemed awful and everything seemed like the world was this dark, terrible place, I had my friends around me to say, We're here for you.
"We've got this together."
And I was some people's shoulder, many people were my shoulder.
I'm more emotional than many.
I'm a theater student, so more people had to help me than I need to help them.
I think what March for Our Lives It's a political issue, obviously.
I think the way it should have come off, and I think this is what everybody I worked with believes, I know it for a fact, is that we're kids who don't want to get shot.
That's what we are at the end of the day.
We are kids who are out here saying, we don't want to die.
And back then, I thought that if you didn't believe in my gun control beliefs, you didn't care if kids died.
I spoke to people who disagreed with me, and I learned that they want the country to be a better place.
You know, we might not agree on how, I might think that their views are horseshit, but we all agree on basically 90% of things.
I'm sure there are plenty of political things you and I will disagree on, but at the end of the day, Todd McFarlane is one of the most gifted Spider-Man writers of all time.
So the way people should have seen us and the way I failed really in the messaging because I was so deeply involved with it was we just don't want to get killed.
And quickly, because of the perfect storm of everything, it became left versus right.
And I don't think anybody in my group wanted that.
I don't think anybody in my group wants that at all.
But it's in one way the media's portrayal, it's in one way my personal inability to express it correctly, and in another way my arrogance, because I was pretty arrogant.
I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
Everybody else I worked with in March for Our Lives was a kid who wanted to help the world, but I was a cocky little son of a bitch.
And that translated a lot.
Because I said, I'm right.
That's the thing.
I'm right.
Everything I say about gun control is completely right.
So why aren't you listening to me?
Because I'm obviously in the right here.
Everybody else, again, was basically saying, I don't want to die.
Here's how I think it could work.
But I said, I'm right politically.
This is my political movement.
Listen to my politics.
That's my fault.
That's okay.
I don't blame myself.
I was a kid who lost friends, and I thought that this is what we needed, and I still do.
But my big error, my... What's the word from a tragic hero that's their flaw, hamartia, hubris?
But my hubris was, and again, I could be interpreting this wrong, I just thought I was right.
I thought that anybody who didn't agree with me, because I was so right, wanted kids to die.
No, I wouldn't say that.
My guess is that 3% of the country doesn't care when kids die.
3% just says, not my kid, or it's not where I am.
But the rest of the country doesn't want kids to die.
I learned about that family in Texas where the mom and the dad both carry weapons because they want to protect their family.
I learned about the people in Everywhere who want to protect their families.
I have guns in my house, and while I believe in an assault weapons ban, or at least much more restrictive laws, if you want to hurt my autistic brother and I have a gun, you're in trouble.
So when you see someone like David Hogg, and I'm only mentioning him because he's been so vocal, and you know I try to talk about ideas and not people, but when you see someone like him tweeting all these things about, you know, I don't want to get an exact quote crossed up here, but in effect, if you don't agree with me, you want dead kids, Republicans want dead kids, Marco Rubio doesn't want to save anybody, all of these things, you now realize that's just not the way to do it.
That it's not true and it's not actually effective.
The reason I criticize myself and not my friends is because I know David.
David is a dear friend of mine.
I've known him for A couple years, but I've only known him really well since the shooting.
I had a class with him once.
He was a nice guy.
Everything David does, and I know we're not talking specifics, but I'll just use David as an example, because much like everybody else in March for Our Lives, everything David does, he does because he wants the country to be a better place.
He and I don't always see perfectly eye to eye on what exactly to do, but every time I see something he tweets that I don't like, and I think about it and I say, I've spent hours with David.
I've known him, I know him so incredibly well because we have this dark, tragic, terrible bond that was really created after the worst case scenario.
But when David says something that I don't agree with, he's saying it because he doesn't want another kid to die.
So, you know, messaging with everybody in the group is occasionally not really in sync.
We disagree on things sometimes.
But if I thought that people in March for Our Lives, like David or anyone, was in this for the wrong reasons, I would instantly call them out.
Dave is a guy who cares so deeply about the world around him and will do whatever it takes to make it a better place.
But it's funny that you say the road to hell is paved with good intentions because our summer tour where we went around advocating for more voter registration and more accessible voting around the country was called Road to Change.
And there was a counter-protester at one of our events that said, more like the road to hell.
We reached out to a lot of people and a lot of people reached out to us.
There were a lot of conservatives that we were speaking to about the issue.
I have a couple friends who went to gun groups to talk about it, sat down with some very big gun advocates in their areas, not really in the country, but notable where they were, to talk about the issue.
I know that the rest of my group was really interested in opening up and talking about this.
Again, I was the shitty one at March for Our Lives.
I wanted to stir some shit.
You know, I wanted to cause trouble.
I wanted to own the conservatives the same way a lot of conservatives want to own the libs.
I mean, that's what it's about right now.
People play games where they're trying to one-up each other.
I was trying to do that.
I was trying to make politicians I didn't like look bad, as opposed to say, what can we do?
When I went up there, Were your folks or anyone saying, you know, maybe ease up on Twitter or like, you know, just because you're going to get, no matter what, even if everything you said was factually right and came from the right place and all that, just the amount of hate you're going to get while you're still a young person in mourning cannot be fun.
My mom, her sole existence in the world is to make everybody in the world happy and love each other.
So she said to me, be nice and loving.
My dad, who is a bit of a political advocate himself, agrees with me on a lot of things.
Sometimes he would tell me to ease up, sometimes he would tell me to be a little bit rougher, but he also said, and this is why I think my parenting from my mom, stepdad, dad, stepmom was so great, was they said, do what you think is right and don't let people put their hooks in you.
And I did.
I let people manipulate me a bit because I thought that they were kindred spirits, but I'm lucky enough to have parents who say, believe what you believe.
My parents are all liberal, but if I came home with a Trump 2020 hat, which I do not expect to do unless some drastic change happens in my life, Yeah, although I know you're not thrilled with the Democrats at the moment.
I'm not thrilled with Democrats at the moment, but I'm not thrilled with Democrats at the moment because they're not being good Democrats, not because they're Democrats.
But, you know, we'll get to that.
If I came home and I told my parents that I would vote for the opposite of what they would vote for, they would say, if you're doing it because you think it's right, you're gonna do it.
Because I think what happened was at the event, at March for Our Lives, there were a lot of people getting up there and they were saying things that implied, and I think this is the way a lot of people on the right took it, It's not about sensible gun control.
This is ultimately about taking away all the guns.
And that, of course, is the fear of most of the people on the right.
And there were a couple of the students, there was one young girl, I don't remember who, said, we're going to start with bump stocks, but we're coming for all the guns, or something to that effect.
And that feeds right into the people on the right who go, all right, well now we're not going to talk, we're not going to negotiate.
Exactly, and then because of that, then the people on the left and all you guys go, well, all right, see, now they don't wanna talk at all, so we're not gonna talk, and then you end up sort of exactly where we're at at the moment.
The left and the right attack each other's worst arguments, and that does nothing for us.
But when it comes to my personal stance on guns, there are some differing opinions amongst my friends from March for Our Lives, but we all agree with some similar things.
Personally, I think that as long as people who are responsible can carry concealed firearms, particularly handguns in the country, in many situations the country is a safer place.
I also think that there is not a strong vetting process for people to purchase these firearms And a lot of people just get guns, and a lot of these people are not the good guy with the gun.
Because I think the good guy with the gun argument is just a hasty generalization.
I understand it in some ways, because I intend to concealed carry when I'm an adult, because I intend to have a family, and I intend to shoot anybody who tries to kill my family.
I think that a lot of people who want to aren't taking the right steps because they're saying, yes, we can come to some common ground if you agree with me.
And there's a want out there, and that's something I'm really interested in.
Because I come from a generation that I believe puts principles and morals over money and political victories.
And I think that we've actually got a bright future.
People will call me an insane Bobby Kennedy moron for saying that we have a bright future, but I think we do.
I think we need to de-stigmatize the conversation.
I have a lot of friends who Who before, seven months ago, I would have thought were racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes who want the country to explode and want to destroy everybody who isn't exactly like them.
And then I learned maybe that's not the case.
And I have a lot of friends who would have thought that I was some leftist beta-cuck shill who wanted communists to take everybody's guns and kill them.
And then they learned maybe that's not the case.
I think our generation really is moving in a good direction when it comes to smart conversations.
I just think we need a bit of a social revolution there.
The party of Lincoln is the only party that currently, well, not the only, there are some Democrats who are like this, but the majority of people who are running as admitted white supremacists are part of the party of Lincoln.
So a lot of switches happen there.
I mean, you've got some really awful rhetoric out there from folks like Candace Owens,
who will talk about the left plantation.
Look, I think identity politics are dangerous, but saying that the real racists are the Democrats
But I think that all men and women are created equal and need to be respected equally.
Whereas people farther to the left will say, as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male, I don't have the right to say any of that.
Look, a friend of mine, Michael Skolnick, who I've worked with before, said something to me that I really appreciated, which was, you can't judge somebody by the hand they're dealt, you judge them by how they elect to play that hand.
People farther to the left will judge me by the hand I'm dealt.
I grew up in a pretty well-off family.
I had a pretty easy childhood.
I could have walked around my neighborhood without fearing death, which is something that some of my friends I made in Chicago were not able to have.
But they'll say that my opinion is less valid than anybody's because I don't deal with the struggles they do.
I have an incredible amount of empathy for people who are not as privileged as I am.
I believe that white privilege exists.
I don't believe it's as systematic or Really structural as people say it is.
I don't think the government exists to oppress people, but white privilege I believe exists.
I believe that there are certain situations where I will be in a better place because I'm a white, cisgender, heterosexual male.
Again, it's not this large oppressive force that people treat it like, but it's something we need to address.
And that's the real thing I'm talking about recently, which is We can find common ground on these issues and not try to push each other away.
Because in my view, white privilege exists.
And people will say, well no, because in many situations on the SAT, African American students were given points and Asian students were deducted points.
And that proves that Well, I got myself a new name.
We don't have to go too far down that road, because we could have a whole other conversation on that, because I actually don't agree with you on that, but that's the point of this.
That's the point, and I'm still learning, and you're still learning, and it's kind of a beautiful thing, actually.
That doesn't mean I want the government to oppress you.
I believe that there's a certain amount of time somebody should have access to an abortion, and I think that abortions should be more accessible just for a certain amount of time.
But I don't want to kill babies, and I don't want to oppress women.
I want the world to be a better place.
You want the world to be a better place.
I don't know about anybody up in the booth, but they seem really nice.
And one of the things that I find is, first off, I meet a ton of people your age.
I'd say the bulk of the people that are coming there are young people, probably right around your age, 17, 18, into their probably early 30s.
And it's male, female, gay, straight, black, white, the whole thing.
But it's very obvious to me that he's providing some level of guidance that somehow it seems that your generation kind of missed.
Now, it sounds like your folks are pretty great and your extended family and all that, but do you sense that there is some missing piece here that partly, I don't know, that there's like some, I discussed this last week with Peter Thiel, that there was some disconnect between the baby boomers, my parents' age, and that my guys, the Gen X people, we never had our moment or something, and then we've sort of handed it off to you guys, the millennials.
Because it's a fact that facts are difficult to find.
That is a fact.
You know, I can do it.
But also, before all of this, I was very, very obsessed with my own image.
Not because I thought I had a good one, but because I wanted it to be good.
I was posting things online because I wanted people to think I had a cool life.
I mean, I did.
I had a great life.
But I wanted people to know that.
And the hyper-connectivity of social media Which is a term I stole from many Ben Platt interviews where he's talking about his musical Dear Evan Hansen.
I don't want him to see this and think I'm stealing from him.
The hyper-connectivity of social media is...
It is a good and bad thing, but I think the problem here, and I think that, you know, folks like Jordan, I'm a big fan of Jordan, I'm a big fan of yours, don't get a big head.
People like you guys, one of the things that you advocate for is conversation, and people on the right, young people on the right that I know and I'm friends with, they want to own the lips.
This is all about proving them wrong and saying, like, facts don't care about your feelings.
I agree, facts by definition don't care about your feelings, but there's also logic, which is kind of the middle between the two, really.
And that's the interpretation and the insight and the fact where, you know, if we only base everything in facts, which a lot of young people on the right do, we're just talking about the past.
You can't look at the future.
You can assess facts, but a lot of young people on the right want to prove people wrong, and a lot of young people on the left, I've seen, want to make people who disagree with them look worse.
It's all about making the other look worse.
The right wants to show that the left is a bunch of commies, and the left wants to show that the right's a bunch of fascists.
And that's a waste of time.
That is what is harming our country right now.
I think Donald Trump's rhetoric is dangerous and harms our country, but Trump is a symptom of something greater, like President Obama said when he made his return that made all of my liberal friends think Jesus came back.
You know, Trump is the result of a country where the people who love Trump are loving him more than ever and the people who hate Trump are hating him more than ever because we're divided.
Our rhetoric is driving everybody in different directions.
That's why you see the rise of democratic socialism and that's why you see the rise of more and more people coming out and saying things that are stupid because they have the First Amendment right to do it.
Look, if you say something I don't like, I will defend it with my life.
I will defend with my life, you're right to say it.
But people are mixing being not PC and being a jerk.
And right now we're driving apart.
We need to come together, stop attacking each other.
Both sides are equally as guilty.
Certain sides in certain situations are obviously guiltier, but it's bullshit.
So do you sense a little more flexibility on the ability to talk to people on the right than on the left because you know that that's been a sort of big part of what's going on with me like I get invited to go to these conservative things in Turning Point USA and I talk about being gay married and I'm pro-choice and against the death penalty and all of these things that are thought of as leftist things but they invite me
We have a great time.
I take a zillion selfies with the kids after and all that stuff, where there doesn't seem to be that flexibility over there.
Now, I don't wanna harp on this, because I get your greater point, which is we gotta get past this.
I'll say the left cares too much about people and the right doesn't care enough.
And I'll tell you what I mean, because there equally is wrong here.
Young people on the right will attack you with facts in either positive or negative ways, and they're open in conversation.
Very often, I believe, because they want to prove you wrong.
That's what I've seen from that.
That's not a fact, it's an opinion.
Whereas people on the left want to accommodate for everybody so much that if you say anything negative about anybody that they agree with, they jump to their defense.
I'll bring up the Israel argument, which is an argument that I don't know enough about to form an opinion.
Being pro-Palestine doesn't mean you hate the Jews necessarily, and being pro-Israel doesn't mean that you hate everybody who... you hate Palestinians.
But I'll talk to people on the right, and they'll be happier to talk about it than people on the left, but the second I say that You know, Palestine should have land, which again, I don't have a firm opinion on.
They'll say, dude, you're Jewish, how could you say that?
I'll say, because people are people, and then I'll talk to people on the left about it, and I'll say, there are a lot of concerns of terror.
And they'll say, don't you dare call everybody who's Palestinian a terrorist.
And on both sides, so yes, I think the right is more open to conversation, but I think that more people on the right are trying to lure you into a cave where they can prove you wrong.
I don't want to be proven right or wrong right now. I want to discuss.
Because my opinions on things have changed. My opinions really are not
taking a 180. I have all my opinions, but my opinion on opinions is changing.
That's the most important thing I'd like to highlight here.
I used to think that, and we've talked about this, I I used to think that if you didn't agree with me, you hated people.
Now I've learned a different thing.
What I'm advocating for now is I'm not asking people to change their perspectives.
I'm asking people to stop having your feet so firmly on the ground when you're a child.
Because I'm a child.
I can't rent a car.
I can't smoke a cigarette, nor do I intend to.
But at the end of the day, I can't tell you with authority about economics.
People on the left and the right need to realize that facts are facts, feelings are feelings, logic is logic, but the more and more we try to prove each other wrong, the less Progress we're going to make.
Because I have had the mindset, which is why I understand it, I've had the mindset where all I wanted to do was just own the conservatives.
And I know people who have had the mindset where all they want to do is own the libs.
And by the way, I know you're not just saying this, because Kyle Kashuv, who I've gotten to know well, who falls often on the other side of this than you, he's now working with Turning Point, and he's trying to strengthen the Second Amendment, and all sorts of other things.
You guys are friends, and you guys are still able to talk about these things.
I had originally said maybe we could get both of you guys in here, but we thought this would be a good opportunity just to let you do your thing, and I'll have Kyle on separately, but you guys are, despite your differences, You're able to talk.
No, I mean, you know, I can't tell you what college I want to go to, I can't tell you where I want to be in 50 years, but I can tell you that right now I want to dedicate my time to doing what I think is the best thing I can do with my platform, because I have a large platform for all the worst reasons, and with great platform comes great responsibility.
Well, man, I know a lot of people are worried about the future, but, I mean, it's clear to me that your future is bright, and if we can hand it over, if we can hand it over to people like you, we'll be all right, because this is everything that I've been trying to do here, I think, is summed up in the way that you're trying to go forward with life.
And I think, unfortunately, that leaves a lot of us, it's why people watch my show, because I've just been honest about what I see here, that leaves a lot of us suddenly With allies in places that we didn't think we were going to have allies.
And it's sort of unfortunate in one way, because you want to always think that you can sort of stay home and fix things.
But at the moment, I find my allies certainly are libertarians on the right.
I think I can, you know, be allies in a lot of ways with Ben Shapiro, even though we have differences on the margins, like with abortion and some of that other stuff.
But I don't see, at the moment, from when we're taping this right now, I just don't see any hope in the short term for the Democrats.
My hope is that this thing implodes, that they probably have to get crushed in the midterms, which is not looking likely, but that they get crushed in the midterms and then they have a major course adjustment where they go, we've got to return To liberalism.
But if they bring her back, which they will, because she was killed in the process of getting the Soul Stone, so they could say that once they destroy the stones, or however it may be, that they could bring her back.
And it'll be nice to see her back, because I love her as an actress.