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Annie Jacobsen: evaluation

22 Mar 2024 Lex Fridman Podcast #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy

“Long gone are the days where we had presidents who had advisors on both sides of the aisle. That’s really important, because you want to have differing opinions.”

— Annie Jacobsen

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Annie Jacobsen
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
22 Mar 2024
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

Transcript context

…I’d like to believe that there’s people in major nations that don’t give a damn about the bullshit of politics and can always just pick up the phone. Very close to the top, but not at the very top, and just cut through the bullshit of it in situations like this. I hope that’s true. I doubt it is, and let me tell you why. Most, and neither you nor I are political, from what I gather. So I just write about POTUS, President of the United States. You have no idea what my politics are because they shouldn’t matter. No one should be for nuclear war, or no one should be for national insecurity. Yes, you want to have a strong nation. But once you get into politics, then you’re talking about sycophants. And the more a political leader becomes divisive, becomes polemic, the more his platform is predicated on hating the other side, either within his own country or with alleged enemy nations. The more you surround yourself, as we see in the current day with sycophants, with people who will tell you not only what they think you want- … defense with people who will tell you not only what they think you want to hear, but will help them to hold onto power. So you don’t have wise decision makers. Long gone are the days where we had presidents who had advisors on both sides of the aisle. That’s really important, because you want to have differing opinions. But as things become more viperous, both here in the United States and in nuclear armed nations, all bets are off at whether your advisors are going to give you good advice. Who are the people around the President of the United States that give advice in this six minute window? How many of them just, maybe you could speak to the detail of that, but also to the spirit of the way they see the world. How many of them are warmongers? How many of them are kind of big picture, peace, humanity type of thinkers?…

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