Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…I don’t like talking about Russia because there’s so much emotions that go into that topic. The right wing, the minute you mention Russia, they’re like, oh, it’s a hoax and all this baggage that comes with it, et cetera. To me, Russia’s not any different than Saudi Arabia or Israel for Trump. You give me money, I like you. You buy my apartments, I like you. If you don’t give me money, I don’t like you. It’s not that complicated. Okay, don’t worry about the Russia part of it. The bottom line is Trump thinks, what do I care about those three regions of Ukraine? I want to get this thing done. He’ll go and he’ll say, “Ukraine, we’re going to withdraw all help unless you agree to a peace deal with Russia, and Russia wants those three regions, that’s the peace deal. That’s it.” Ukraine will lose a part of their country and we get to a peace deal. See, I hope not. I hope not. I think Trump sees themselves and wants to be a great negotiator, and I personally want the death of people to end. And I think Trump would bring that much faster. And I disagree with you, at least my hope is that he would negotiate something that would be fair. His anti-war record is so complicated because moving the embassy in Israel and killing the top Iranian general were super provocative, and they could have easily triggered a giant war there. And then you know what’s going to happen if you get into any kind of real war? Trump’s going to want to prove his buttons larger. Then he’s going to do massive, ridiculous bombings. I worry about nukes. And so we had Giuliani on the show, on the RNC, and I asked him this question. I said, “He keeps saying, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t do it if I was in charge.'” I’m like, “What does that mean? Because it sounds like what it means is they wouldn’t do it because they know if they did it, I would do something insane like attack Russia or use nukes.” And Rudy said, “Yeah, that’s what it means.” That means you have to at least bluff that, and you have to get them to believe that he’s a madman. That’s the madman theory of Nixon. And Rudy said that too. He was very clear about it. But the problem is, if you get your bluff called. And so if you actually attack Russia, you’re going to start World War Three. That’s why, yeah, if you could just get away with bluffing, maybe. But he’s playing a very dangerous game, and he massively increased drone strikes. On the other hand, he didn’t bomb Iran further, and on the other hand, he started the process of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not black and white, complicated record. And one thing, I’ll give him another piece of credit here. I think I’m taking this steel manning too far, but the credit was that he changed the rhetoric of the right wing. They went from the party of Dick Cheney, War is great, and all Muslims are evil. And so he hates Muslims too, but that’s a different thing. But, oh, we have to attack the enemy. We have to start wars, et cetera. To now the Republican voters are generally anti-war and hate Dick Cheney. Oh, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. That’s a great thing that Trump did, even if he didn’t mean it. Even if he does these provocative things that could lead to a much worse war. Even if I’m worried that he’ll be so reckless he’ll start a bigger war. At least he did that, right, and so I’m happy to have our right wing brothers and sisters join us in the anti-war movement. And I’m not being a jerk about it. I love it.…

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