Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…I hope you’re right. … with more transparency, more authenticity. I think also the Democratic Party has learned a lesson of you have to have candidates that do … I don’t give a shit about podcasts, but do podcasts-like things, meaning reveal themselves as human beings. I think it’s one of the best things that happened in this last election. I did think they were great, but I’m not saying that any of the Trump podcasts were perfect or maybe there’d be a better way that they could be done. But I will say that I used to say this for a while, as of the last few years, but I’d be like, so I’m me, and for me to do what I do, it’s kind of expected that I’ll probably … I don’t know, I get at least maybe 15, 10 to 15 times a year, I’ll come do a show like this. A long-form show on a big platform where my ideas will be poked and prodded and tested and there’ll be pushback questions and they’ll be … Sometimes they’re more adversarial, sometimes they’re more friendly. And then yet our standard for who is the commander in chief was like, you show up to these debates that are 90 minutes long with these really … they are really stupid questions and you give a 90-second answer to it or … And at least for the first time now it does seem like, oh, the standard is kind of you’re going to have to do a long-form show where you really have to have … And that I think is long term a real positive development. You just know going forward, the Democrats, which I think is what you were saying, you can’t run a Kamala Harris if she can’t do a long-form interview. You got to run somebody who’s able to sit down and express themselves and have real genuine thoughts, or at least try to convince people they have real genuine thoughts at least. And that’s very different in a way. I look back at the most talented politicians of my lifetime, which I’d have to say the two were Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, just the most talented, traditional politicians. Trump’s the anti-politician, but they were the traditional and just unbelievably … but they never had to do that. It was just a different time. Bill Clinton had to walk up and be like, “Oh, it’s a beautiful baby you have here.” Then go back and then play the sax, and then have a couple good answers to a small crowd, “I’m from a little town called Hope.” That’s not the game anymore. Now the game is like, can you sit down and actually have some ideas in a long form? And I think that’s so much better, because it’s so much more revealing of … Kind of like what we were saying before, you reveal a little bit, it’s not 50 hours, but in those three hours you reveal a little bit of your soul.…

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