Saagar Enjeti: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, that would imply that I don’t believe in democracy. I actually do believe in democracy because I think the people, if they love their president, should be able to reelect him. I think FDR was amazing. I think that the term limit change was basically what happened is that Republicans and a lot of elite Democrats always wanted to speak against FDR, but he was a god, so they couldn’t. So they waited until he died. And then after he died, they were like, “Yeah, this whole third, fourth term, that can never happen again.” And America didn’t really think that hard about it. They were like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” But, I mean, it had immense consequences for American history. Clinton is the perfect example. I mean, Bill Clinton left office, even despite the Lewinsky bullshit, he had a 60% approval rating. Okay? No way George W. Bush gets elected. Impossible. Clinton would’ve blown his ass out. And imagine the consequences of that. We would have no Iraq… I mean, I’m not saying he was a great man. We probably still would’ve had the financial crisis, and there’s still a lot of bad stuff that would’ve happened. But he was a popular dude, and I wouldn’t say he had the best judgment at times presidentially… Definitely not personally, but presidentially. But I’m pretty confident we would’ve not gone into the Iraq war. And so that’s where it really cost us. If you’re left wing and you’re talking about Obama, yeah, I think Obama probably would’ve won in 2016. Although it’s a counterfactual, because Obama was never challenged in the same way that MAGA was able to, to the liberal consensus. Romney really ran this awful campaign, honestly, about cutting spending. It was very traditional Republican. It was deeply unpopular. The autopsy of that election was we actually need to be more pro-immigration. That literally was the autopsy. But Trump understood the assignment. There are two people who I so deeply respect for their political bets. Peter Thiel and Donald Trump. So one of the books that I recommended called The Unwinding by George Packer, he actually talks about Peter Thiel there. This is in 2013. And Thiel talks about, he was like, “Whoever runs for office next, they don’t need to run on an optimistic message. They need to run on a message that everything is fucked up and that we need to… And if you think about, that’s why Thiel’s endorsement of Trump with the American carnage message is… I mean, it was shocking at the time, but he had that fundamental insight that that’s what the American people wanted. Trump too comes out of an election in 2012 where the literal GOP autopsy, the report produced by the party, says, “We need to be pro-mass immigration.” What happens? Immediately after 2012, they start to go for mass immigrant… Basically, they go for these amnesty plans, the so-called Gang of Eight plan, Marco Rubio, and all of this in 2013, it falls apart, but Republicans get punished by their base in [inaudible 02:04:04]- Basically, they go for these amnesty plans, the so-called Gang of Eight plan, Marco Rubio, and all of this in 2013, it falls apart, but Republicans get punished by their base in [inaudible 02:04:04]- Republicans get punished by their base in 2014. So Eric Cantor, who was the House Majority Leader, the number two Republican, spent more on stake in his campaign than his primary opponent who successfully defeated him, a guy named Dave Brat. Dave Brat kicked his ass on the issue of immigration and said that Eric Cantor is pro-amnesty. All of the forces were there. Then in 2015, Trump comes down the escalator, and he gives the message on immigration that the GOP base has been roaring and wanting to hear now but that nobody wanted to listen to them. That was his fundamental insight. That bet was a colossal and a Titanic political bet at a time when all political ideology and thought process would’ve said that you should come out on the other side, which is where Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and all these other guys were effectively there in varying different ways, like they were hawkish or whatever. But Trump just had such a monopoly on that as an idea. That’s why he wins the 2016 primary. Then paired with immigration, a hard line position on immigration, is this American carnage idea that actually everything is wrong. The American dream has gone. “We will stop this American carnage. ” I think American Carnage is one of the most important inaugural speeches ever given in American history. Put it up against every single other speech, there’s nothing else like it. But that was what the country wanted at the time. That’s what great politicians are able to do, is they’re able to suss something out. That’s also why Peter Thiel is who he is because he saw that in 2000. Imagine what it takes to come out of the 2012 election and to be honestly totally contrarian to the entire national mood and this entire theory of Obama-esque star politics and say, “No, you need somebody who runs on the opposite of that to win.” Well, we’ll never know. I love this kind of Mike Tyson versus Muhammad Ali. I still think I would’ve loved to see Obama versus Trump.…

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