Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Oh, I disagree here that that wasn’t the steelman. I mean, I think you have to listen to them to do the steelman, right? I don’t think the steelman is imaginary. If you read the OMB regulation that froze funding, it said explicitly that the government has to reflect the will of the people as expressed through their choice of president. If you read anything, Russ Vought has ever said, they have the unitary executive theory. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. If you asked me to do the non-steelman, which I would love to do too. It is not my view that the steelman case of this is to make the federal government fully responsive to Donald Trump. But the steelman case for what they are doing as expressed by them. And I think a steelman reflects, I mean, I have talked to these people, right? I’m telling you what they tell me on some level. The steelman cases, they believe, like as Derek said a minute ago, this has become non-democratically responsive, and the way it becomes democratically responsive is deeply responsive to the president. The president represents a different politics than Joe Biden’s politics. And so, if you have a state filled with liberal civil servants who don’t want to do what he says, that is a violation of small democratic principles of how the government should be run. I think if you don’t like it, that’s fine. But I do want to say, I actually think that is the steelman. They’re not doing this for no reason. They have an intention here, and I think whether you like it or not, so it depends on whether or not you like their view. Okay. Well, I don’t like it because it cuts my ear in a certain way that one of the criticisms I have for Donald Trump and the Trump administration is, there’s a natural circles of sycophancy that forms, and every president has their personality and psychological quirks, and I think he is one of the people where favoritism is more likely to develop. So, when you choose who to install as the head of whatever organization, so if you fire everybody and rehire, the rehiring process is more likely to have people that just said nice things about Donald Trump in the past versus a meritocracy-based system that these people are really good. Lex, AOC should definitely come on the show.…

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