#490 — Lies, Bulls**t, and the Rule of Law

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Sam Harris, welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm good. Great to see you, Preet.
It's been a while.
It's been a while and um
I'm just trying to figure out if things are the same, if they've gotten better, if they've gotten worse.
I don't wanna talk about politics just yet.
Okay.
Something that's been on my mind, I know is on your mind.
And one of the things that you're known for.
Is is your commitment to and dedication to
And concern about
Good faith.
Debate and discussion.
Right.
Is that a fair statement? Yeah, sure.
Um that's why you know, one of the reasons you have a podcast, it's one of the reasons
I have a podcast. So be before we talk about
How political debate unfolds.
'Cause that's a subspecies of overall conversation and debate.
There are discussions in col on college campuses, there are discussions in people's
Homes or discussions at Thanksgiving.
Cable television, podcast, you name it.
Has the has the quality of
Discussion.
We love we love to say you hear this
All the time and I heard it.
Twenty years ago and thirty years ago also.
But the quality of dialogue.
Has gone down.
Mm.
Is that true, or do we just reinvent a reason to be
Concerned and critical and annoyed.
Every few years.
No, well I think both things are
Also
True. I mean those aren't mutually exclusive, but I I do think it has gone down for some obvious reasons. I mean I I think the information siloing of
Born of social media has
Uh you just said that and the fragmentation of culture as a result of that that has proceeded
a pace for the last uh twenty some odd years.
I think people are reading less.
And uh
Uh and what they read is uh
shorter and less uh carefully argued. I mean
Much of what
People are consuming is
If not.
AI slop entirely. It's the slopification born of
hot takes and and and you know, frankly podcast conversations such as this, although you know, I think you and I are
Hopefully we're gonna we're okay. Yeah, we're not gonna be uh displaying the the the most egregious sins of of the format here, but so many podcasts.
Are just a matter of
The host and the guest.
Blovate in without much
care to observe anything like academic or journalistic.
uh intellectual norms, right? They're just I mean, we have so many podcasts that are run by comedians and, you know, entertainers and and um
And also just unserious people and and so the the appetite for
Contrarianism and conspiracy thinking.
has been supercharged, you know, during Covid and and beyond.
uh as one big cultural change. And so there's there's very little uh
uh respect for institutions and institutional narratives and gatekeeping and expertise and and that so that unwinding
Has um
had an effect. It's not to say that there weren't reasons for it, but
Uh, I think it has been in the main disastrous.
I'll just take a moment to defend.
Some comedians I know who are not unserious people. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Well I think some of the late night hosts
I don't know that they have podcasts. I I think
I think David Letterman is a
Is it not an uns. I certainly wasn't thinking of of the old guard. Stephen Colbert is not an uns. And there and there are some other comedians, I won't name them. Yeah.
Well I'll n I'll name one. I mean he he was a friend, uh but uh but I'm quite worried about
His cultural influence. I mean I I've named him on many other podcasts, but I think
The effect that Joe Rogan's podcast has had
Uh has been uh I mean it it's been many things, but it has been
Politically.
Disastrous, I think. I I I just think I I think it's not just what's happened on his podcast, but
The instruction that
every other independent broadcaster on earth has taken from his example.
I I think it's it's been terrible.
But sort of the odd thing is
You would think people would have a base level of
credulousness about things that they hear.
And
In both regards.
With respect to people that
Folks think they shouldn't agree with someone from a different party?
They don't believe anything that comes out of the the mouths of the people who are on the other side of the fence.
Yeah. Which I I sort of get that.
But you coup that with simultaneously
Taking as gospel everything said by the folks on their own side of the fence.
Yeah.
That I don't really underst uh that I don't really understand.
Do you have a theory about
About that?
Well is you know, it is a form of tribalism.
It's a form of uh confirmation bias. I mean there there are certain sources that you
you know, prejudge as friendly or you know, through cruel experience, you realize that, you know, certain
Sources are um
kind of weaponized against you and you just are not disposed to take them seriously. I mean if
I'm gonna tell you know again, so much of this
you can date to Covid and what it did to our society. I mean both the
the fact of the pandemic and the reaction to it and the overreaction to it and the counter reaction to it.
I mean all of that.
was a great shattering of culture that I I still think we're
working out the consequences uh of and and and and living living under the shadow of but
Yeah, you know if CNN
you know, colorizes your face to make you look sick and
tells the world that you're you're uh a racist or you're um
Yeah, and you're eating, you know, horse tranquilizer or you know, horse dewormer.
Um, I mean d you know, Rogan got completely slimed by the mainstream media, so it's natural to think he's going to have a reaction against it.
And I you know, I in in miniature I know what that's like, right? So it's
And I e and you know what it's like when when you see a story that you're close to
you many of us have had the experience of of seeing the bias and, you know, frank idiocy of even the best
You know, organs of journalism like the New York Times.
on full display. As recently as today, I'm reading an article in the New York Times and I see them
predisposed to get many things wrong because they're
tend into various, you know, left leaning
Shibaleths.
You know on a topic that I I know very
closely, right? So you know all of that stuff is infuriating, frankly, and and if you don't have enough of a
foothold in the norms of
Proper critical thought.
It's easy to see how
Someone who builds himself as really just an entertainer. Some someone's just having fun on his podcast with friends, uh you know, mainly.
Doesn't have a responsibility to
keep bending over backwards to give
The gate the usual gatekeepers and the usual authorities a a fresh hearing, right? And so yeah, I mean there are many people who just think that
You shouldn't believe anything in the New York Times, but you should believe what some
You know?
fairly crazed person thinks about uh vaccines, you know, in the same breath as he tells you that he was denied a Nobel Prize.
For his uh groundbreaking work.
Uh I mean there's th they're they're they're listening to crazy people and but some of these crazy people are are running
parts of our government now. I mean there's again s there's been a great
Unraveling.
Since you mentioned Covid
Do you have a view on
How Doctor Fauci
has been described, how he's been treated and how he's been received and thought of, and how do you think of him?
Uh well there are a few layers to this onion. I mean so the first thing I would say is that
In defense of all the people who are um
outraged at how the government handled everything.
There are s kernels of truth.
to that outrage. And and one one kernel is
That the um
The immediate branding of any speculation about the origins of this virus being
Not a wet wet market, but a a lab leak.
As racist.
Right. That
kind of vilification of people who were just following some obvious
Chains of thought.
At the time.
Th that was terrible and and terribly counterproductive.
Right. It has not had nothing to do with racism. It but just
Just step back for a second and ask yourself, how is a lab leak
more politically invidious, uh to i. e racist.
Than a wet market.
Outbreak.
Right. I mean if anything, I would say the fact that the Chinese can't figure out how to stop eating bats and
Pangolins and and raccoon dogs.
That is more quote racist.
to observe about their culture.
Than the pr than their propensity to have a lab leak out of a level two or level three lab, which happens to more or less everyone, right?
So I mean the racism charge was always idiotic. It was always
going to produce rage in anyone who it was directed at.
And um
So
That's true. And Fauci was part of that.
And
His um leaked journals, though I don't I don't think they should have been leaked. I think that's
Awful.
Are obviously embarrassing. I mean the contents there, I mean his his level of star fucking. What is consistent.
Rand Paul's libertarianism is consistent with releasing the diary.
So yeah, I I don't I I don't support the leaking of private journals in this way. I mean I think many people would
Be embarrassed.
By that process. But
What is in fact on display is also
As objectively embarrassing as
As almost anything.
in a public health official. I mean he was just blown around by his fame in a way that it was

Defend.

He y you know, and and as to whether or not he was doing anything to cover
Yeah, they the
for the improprieties of himself or his friends in trying to quash any investigation of a lab lab leak.
I mean I think that remains to be seen, but
I do think
He's also
The focus of a witch hunt.
And
The co the attacks on him
And the glee with which many people are
uh expecting an eighty five year old man to spend the rest of his days in prison. I mean like all of this is just
a kind of moral panic and a burning of a wit, which I think is
Again.
It's a sign of
the times we're living in. I mean I think so I think the most of it's awful and yet there are
Kernels of truth in there that
Yeah.
Or also
Understandably getting people.
Tuned up.
So you so you you raised something else.
That is sort of part of this whole discussion about good faith debate.
And the lack of it.
And where people go
directionally with their complaints.
And what outcomes they want.
And and this one this one is near and dear to my heart.
It's
It's criminal prosecution.
And I don't know if it's the case.
Fift ago.
That people were so quick to say if you disagree with somebody
Or you thought someone violated a quote unquote norm and I want to talk about norms in a minute and what they mean.
Or someone was on the other side of the fence.
Or someone committed an ethical violation.
Or someone told um an untruth in some context other than when they're like it doesn't matter what it is.
If they're not in your tribe.
Lock'em up.
If they're not in your tribe locker up.
And there's lots of things.
That are morally blameworthy.
I dare say that I
committed a number of them. I'm sure you have.
There's not a human who hasn't.
But if you're in the other tribe
The call to imprison you.
I feel comes much more quickly than it ever did before.
And that's even true on the left sometimes too.
What's what's what's that? I'm just gonna keep asking you questions.
Well, I I'm impossible to answer. Let me volley this back to you w with a similar question, but I I I'm wondering
I mean it
There's some significant asymmetries here, right? So it's like
If you were someone who claimed to care
About the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop or about the impropriety of
of him having a you know a a synacure at in a Ukrainian oil company for which he was
Clearly not qualified.
And what that might say about corruption from the you know in the Biden family and and the Biden you know, uh coming Biden presidency.
Okay, well
It's fine to care about all that, I guess.
But then how can you not care?
about a president who has has already enriched himself billions of dollars by trading away
uh our you know tariff policies and our foreign policies but the it's the scale of the thing that is so different and you know Nancy Pelosi's stock trades are one thing
what Trump and and and company are doing now is
orders of magnitude worse even if you were going to take the
the least charitable view of
The Pelosi case.
So my question to you is
If not laws against what
Trump and family are are doing now? I mean, did she the cryptocurrency scams or
creating an insider trading mechanism, you know, selling access, early access to his
Truth Social Posts for a hundred thousand dollars a month so that you can
Bet on their implications in the market.
I mean, one, aren't there laws against that and why wouldn't somebody be going to prison once the Democrats are uh have enough power to actually investigate things?
But so that's question number one. I mean, are there laws and and if so, why not? But two
My concern is that
Once the democrats
are in a position to investigate these sorts of things.
It's all gonna be spun as just more lawfare, more cynicism, more tribalism, w a and
Attention to detail of scale and to the egregiousness of some of these offenses.
We'll go completely out the window and we will just
be mov swinging back and forth between these
Misuses of American justice.
Wh where in one is a
is actually a it's proper use.
If this kind of financial behavior and self dealing
Can't be investigated. I don't know what
Can be.
Well, so number one, I think it will be
I think the House will be in the hands of the Democrats.
The Justice Department is not.
And you have
My erstwhile friend Todd Blanche.
And former colleague.
Saying words to the effect of
You know, neither he
uh will say, nor should any attorney general say that they're independent from the White House?
Which is astonishing.
But when you ask a question like that.
A lot of people do on a going forward basis.
There's some history here.
And Donald Trump has been investigated.
Multiple times.
Again and again and again, both by state courts.
I'm I'm sorry, state jurisdictions, state DAs?
By federal prosecutors, a number of them.
By a state attorney general?
By Congress multiple times?
He has been sued, he is lost, so
You know.
Th there i there is a mechanism for doing this.
It doesn't always succeed because there are problems of proof.
Were there problems of um
No, who's who's directing the investigation?
And who's not? And I think the things that you're talking about

And will be investigated.
Not by the Justice Department.
Over the next two and a half years, but at some point they will. Now the other
The other paradox here
Is
You know, I I come from a law enforcement background and so if someone
committed a crime or there's sufficient predicate to investigate a crime.
Then you do that.
And you walk away if there's not enough evidence where it's not in the interest of justice.
And otherwise, no matter what the hue and cry is, you go forward.
The problem is when when you
Investigate and or
prosecute or declined to prosecute someone like Hillary Clinton?
Or Donald Trump or or anyone else.
Who has a political following
And in some cases.
A subset of a political following that is sort of blindly following.
Um I'm not gonna say which side I I mean that

Sometimes politically the best thing that can happen to them
is to get investigated or to get indicted.
No.
I haven't looked at the charts myself, but multiple people have said and I should go look at it myself.
That Donald Trump was deadder than dead as a political prospect.
Yeah. After he lost that elec the the election in twenty twenty.
And if and if you look at the people tell me, if you look at the graphs
His popularity began to rise again.
When he was indicted by the Manhattan DA.
And the other thing that happens is, which I don't know how you know, this is a sort of a general question for us to discuss.
Th the sort of drowning in information in the in
And not just information, but drowning
In conspiracy theories and drowning in lies.
And drowning in controversies.
Donald Trump, even though the publicity he was getting was largely negative.
Right. You had the prosecution in Manhattan, you had the prosecution in Georgia.
Yeah, the two special counsel prosecutions.
He was taking up all the air.
Right. So even if somebody else on his side, on the Republican side
had a message and even if the the information about Donald Trump was bad
It was all about Donald Trump going going to prove, you know, that old saying there's no such thing as bad publicity. I don't know if that's true or not.
And then you combine that with and I'm curious what you think about this assessment.
You combine that with J D Vance's recent pronouncement.
That if Watergate happened today
It would be a twelve hour story.
And can you imagine how ridiculous it is.
That that little thing called Watergate.
toppled a pop toppled a presidency.
How do you react to all of that stuff?
Well, I think he's probably right about that, which is but i it's you know, I would
draw the uh the opposite lesson, I think, there. I mean that is a sign of
Just how
Deep a hole we are in.
politically and culturally. Right. It's not it's not that it should have been a twelve hour story. It's that it would be now a twelve hour story.
Given how
how much noise and how little signal there is in our you know on our information landscape given to given it. But is there always that noise or does Donald Trump
Strategically, tactically
Instinctively.
create that noise. I mean was there that much noise when Biden was president? I don't I don't think so.
Well there was there there have been kind of Trump like
reverberations uh you know that that crossed
Yeah, the the four years where he wasn't
President America. We we continue to unravel and there are there's a left wing version of the kind of the Trumpist noise machine, but
I mean th for Trump specifically, I mean this is I think a kind of unpopular opinion of him, but this is the
the framing I I have always had of him and I I I think I I still have it.
I think a lot of his success and
the you know, his ascendancy and his invulnerability to scandal
has less to do with him being some kind of political genius
And more to do with the situation in which he
has found himself. Right. So I I view him as a
The the the the analogy that that has worked for me is that he's kind of an
evil version of the Chauncey Gardner character from the the Jersey Klasinski book and the
being there and the and they
The film by that name.
If people remember that Peter Sellers

It's just kind of alone in the house and he's all he is is the gardener and and he um
Gets
a thrust into a situation where
He can be b everything he says can be mistaken for political wisdom.
But he's really an imbecile, right? And he's ne he never ceases to be an imbecile, but he's in a context in which everything he does
begins to look profound and has a profound effect on the people around him.
There's something like that going on with Trump, right? So so ask yourself now, is it is Trump being a genius?
When he contradicts himself.
fifteen times over the course of thirty minutes on
Topics of enormous importance like
What's going on in our current war with Iran?
Right.
He clear he'll he'll
claim that the the Iranians are you know just uh peace loving people just like ourselves who want the best for their country.
And then he'll turn around and say they're scum.
He'll say he's gonna annihilate them, but then they then he'll say that the the war's already been won and and the straits of Hormuz are wide open and
He lurches back and forth. There's it is just a word salad, right? Now that is not
I would say calculated
To
confound the audience and no, it's just
He has found himself in the presence of a
Of an electorate.
where tens of millions of people simply do not care about what is real.
Right.
They don't they're it's not like so uh an an ordinary con man
Has to lie.
So as to be believed.
Right, he had he has to he has to be aware of the logical expectations of his audience.
And the con
is to shade the truth or to lie outright in such a way but the
The puzzle piece has to fit.
Right, or seem to fit.
So that everyone doesn't call bullsh on on the the whole enterprise where
Wha w the situation Trump is in is
He's got enough people, you know, something like thirty percent of Americans, maybe forty percent of Americans
Who simply don't care if the
puzzle piece fits, right? There's just they're not tracking the truth. They're signaling to themselves
I in this some kind some kind of you know extended loyalty test.
That they will eat everything that comes out of his mouth.
You know, lie, insult, you know, hallucination.
And uh and they'll give him money. I mean he'll then then he'll print another, you know, gold fake gold coin.
And
It doesn't matter what that gold coin says. I mean like he he could

a coinage that says you're all a bunch of dumb cucks come and get it and he would sell
Millions of dollars.
Of those coins.
Right. So that that's the situation he's in and given that he's got tens of millions of people
who are who will never be dislodged from that cult.
He looks like of some kind of political genius.
Would you describe it as a demagogue?
Oh.
Yeah.
And so
Demagogs.
Never have a majority, I don't think.
It's unlikely that they have majorities because they're a thinking intelligent rational
people in any given population, particularly one that's a democracy.
that may be under threat of becoming something less than or different from a democracy.
And
Most people
As politicians, whether it's
Republican like John McCain.
Or it's a Democrat like Barack Obama?
No.
Try to strike themes of unity and stitching together coalitions and big tents and there's always talk about tents.
Is the tent big enough? Is the tent too big?
And
Donald Trump seems to have figured out again instinctively,'cause I don't think he gives deep thought to anything. He doesn't have a manifesto at home. He has
Instinct in his head.
That
You don't need to have fifty one percent of the people.
Yeah.
You don't need to have sixty percent of the people.
And if you if if your particular appeal
Is to that subset of any population.
Who is who is more
likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
And is and is more likely to not be attached to democracy. I mean Alan uh
And Applebam has this this this statistic.
That I think about all the time. And I was looking back at one of her books over the weekend.
That I think there are social scientists who believe that even in in Western liberal democracies
There is like a latent subset of I don't know.
They claim.
twenty, twenty five, thirty percent.
Well I guess.
Look, if if we have to have some autocracy
Yeah.
Will we get the outcomes we want?
Then we're okay. And he and he figured that out. I mean look even now.
With his very low poll rating.
He's basically alienated all the people who have some skepticism about him.
Even if they voted for him.
And the only people that are left are the ones who don't.
And if that's of a sufficient number to win the electoral college
Then then that's all that's all you need.
Does that mean the system is messed up?
And then I guess my question is
On the pie chart of blameworthiness about
are being in this predicament.
How much of that pie chart is filled with Trump?
And how much of that pie chart is filled with Trump supporters.
Well I would I would point to the other

I would say cl at least half of it.
Which is um
The uh
Miscalculation and Frank
Idiocy and confusion of the left.
Right, I blame the left.
in large measure for the fact that there's a President Trump in the first place.
Let's go through that.
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Literally the President of the United States commander in chief who also calls himself
the chief federal law enforcement officer of the country is saying that certain people are guilty and should go to prison and in the case of some should get the death penalty.
In the old days, if a sitting president of the United States
Openly called for the death penalty.
of a duly elected member of the Senate from the largest state in the country from the other party, that would be close to presidency ending that day.