Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…te for them in order to get to the other side, where they were motivated to get there because it was in their self-interest to get there, but also because it helped accomplish the different objective. And I have many examples that I lived through with that, obviously negotiating in Congress for prison reform. I had to form a lot of trust with Democrats, whether it was Hakeem Jeffries or Dick Durbin. And then also on the Republican side with, I had Mike Lee, I had Lindsey Graham, I had Tim Scott, Senator Grassley, and then also Doug Collins in the house was tremendous. And every time we maneuvered something, we would get attacked either from the left. There was a time we were being attacked by Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, for not being inclusive enough. And then there were times that we maneuvered it, we’d be attacked from the right for maybe going too far. And ultimately, we had to find just the right place where we can get it done. And the same thing happened with USMCA, where we were negotiating the biggest trade deal in the history of the world, which was $1.3 trillion in annual trade between Mexico, Canada, the United States of America. And we were able to form good trust with the other side and try to say, “How do we create win-win outcomes?” And ultimately, we were able to do something in a record time that people thought was very hard to do. And both of them, in a divided time of the Trump administration, were bipartisan wins with big, big votes in the Senate and the House. You have a lot of stories of this kind, sometimes a soft approach, sometimes a hard approach. I think the story where with Bibi, there was a potential, a dramatic election coming up, and you have to say, “No. No excuses, no delaying. We have to make this agreement.” I know Bibi cares about Israel more than the particular dynamics of the election. You had to draw a hard line there. Yeah. But in fairness too, for him, during the time that we were dealing with him, he was always in election versus election, and then election. And what he was saying wasn’t wrong. And I think he was more expressing his concerns given the dynamics. And we never held those concerns against him, we just said those are real concerns he had. We respected those concerns. But then we helped him prioritize to help accomplish the right things. And that’s ultimately what the partnership is, right? My job was to represent America, his job was to represent Israel, and you had other parties representing their own interests. And as long as you assume that people were acting mostly in good faith, you were able to navigate areas where you didn’t have complete overlap of priorities and objectives.…

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