#416 — "More From Sam": Biden's Big Lie, Review of Tapper Interview, Trump, & a Case Against Israel's Actions in Gaza

Sam hopped back on with his manager and business partner, Jaron Lowenstein, to talk about current events and answer some of the questions you all submitted on Substack. They discuss the Biden cover-up and how it compares to Trump's transgressions, Sam's latest episode with Jake Tapper, whether Tapper had a journalistic responsibility to share what he knew about the cover-up sooner, and criticism from the audience about Sam's views on Israel's actions in Gaza. Produced by Griffin Katz

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Sam Harris?

  Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Okay, we're back, Sam. Good to see you, my friend.

• 0:39Sam Harris?

  Good to see you. Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:41Sam Harris?

  What's going on? Anything happening?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Oh, nothing happening in the world, but, um, you know, maybe there's some, maybe there's some topics I can, I can hit you with if you're okay with that.

• 0:51Sam Harris?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  All right. You've been concerned about Donald Trump due to his refusal of a peaceful transfer of power as a threat to democracy. But now we're beginning to see just how massive this Biden cover-up was. And in the past, we also saw Bernie pushed out by the Democratic elite in 2016. Aren't these also threats to our democracy? And maybe these aren't even threats. Aren't these actual moments where we didn't have democracy?

• 1:15Sam Harris?

  I mean, there's certainly a corruption of our democracy. I mean, they're, they're not ideal. The details of, you know, what went into Biden running for a second term and just the level of delusion and hubris and dishonesty that birthed that project. I think that, you know, that was, yeah, reading Jake's book, that was very troubling to discover just how deep that went and how unrepentant they all still are. I mean, we were just, we, we had an awful choice. We have, we have, and it's a choice that I think explains how corrupt and corruptible the Democrats and the media were from essentially 2016 on.

• 1:56Sam Harris?

  We had a choice between, I think, a genuinely evil candidate, right? I mean, certainly perceived to be evil by half of our society. I mean, I just, you know, this is, he's, he's, this really is the banality of evil because his, his evil is incredible. Bonal, but nonetheless, I think he's so outside the norm of what should be acceptable to us politically that it's easy to see that everyone perceived this as a five alarm fire. I mean, and we are now, I will point out, living in the midst of that fire. We're four months into it.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  But you can't destroy or erode democracy while trying to protect it, right?

• 2:30Sam Harris?

  No, but I mean, it's not so clear as all that. It's just that you have to ask the questions. Why would anyone prefer a nearly comatose president to Donald Trump? Well, that's a, that's a measure of how bad people perceive Donald Trump to be. And I, I mean, I can, I can say that I would prefer a comatose president to the president we now have.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  That's slightly less than half the country feels that way. What about the other half?

• 2:57Sam Harris?

  Well, the, but the other half is voting for Trump, right? So, and, and for reasons that are, uh, in many cases also delusional, right? I mean, you had a QAnon cult behind Trump who, who thought not that Biden was not only too old to be president, but that he was a pedophile, you know, and, and siphoning off the adrenochrome of children in basements. I mean, this is, this is the fever swamp of right wing politics that got Biden's infirmity, right? Okay, but look at everything else they threw against the wall, right? It's completely nuts over there. So, yes, the, the mainstream media has a lot to atone for in not being more interested

• 3:37Sam Harris?

  in just how far from compos mentis Biden has been at various points, um, toward the end of his term and during the campaign. I mean, what I take from Jake's book, and I think this is one of the, the appropriate lessons to take from it, is that there was a successful cover up. It's not that, I mean, everyone knew he was too old. I mean, certainly he was not ideal, an ideal president, or much less an ideal candidate. I mean, he was not actually a viable candidate in the end. And many of us saw that with increasing clarity over the years. But something was revealed that night on the debate stage when the, when the wheels completely came off.

• 4:20Sam Harris?

  Knew it all along is to make the claim that nothing was learned during that debate. And that's just not true, right? You know, maybe Alex Jones, who also thought Biden was a pedophile, also knew that he wasn't going to be able to complete a sentence during the debate. But most people thought this was, um,

• 4:38Speaker 01

  But I don't think it said, I did reveal something. I don't think people felt like they learned it for the first time. I felt like they were watching that saying, okay, this is impossible to hide now. This is no longer possible.

• 4:48Sam Harris?

  Well, yeah, no, but the magnitude of it, the gravity of it, the fact that it was, that it was non-recoverable, right? That was revealed that night to most people. Now, the scandal, the real scandal is that there were undoubtedly, there were people, and we know this from Jake and Alex's reporting in that book. Undoubtedly, there were people close to the president who saw that sort of thing before, and many times before, going back years, right? That's the scandal. That's the cover up. And that is a genuine cover up because they're hiding that, they're lying about that. They're protecting him from exposure so as to avoid any public viewing of that, right? He's not having cabinet meetings. He didn't have cabinet meetings for nearly a year.

• 5:33Sam Harris?

  And the cabinet meetings he had prior to that were scripted and weird and, and the cabinet, cabinet members are sworn to secrecy on some level to not talk about that. I mean, so that's the cover up. To say that there was no cover up and say this was all in plain view is just not true. It's just the fact that right of center, they were whinging about this for years, doesn't mean that there wasn't effective cover up because there obviously was.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  There was effective cover up, but I think what happened was, I think a lot of people are claiming that they saw this all along. They were being convinced that what they were seeing with their own eyes wasn't the case. And not only that, they were being told they were being assholes for even pointing something like this out. And

• 6:13Sam Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Again, when you saw

• 6:15Sam Harris?

  I think all of that's bad. That's obviously bad. But crucially, it was bad to the point of masochistic self-immolation for the Democrats. Right? It's not like it worked out well for the Democrats. It destroyed the Democratic chances for the presidency.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  And beyond. I mean, the Democrats have a problems for a long time now.

• 6:36Sam Harris?

  So, no, but so, so it's like the idea that this is, how much of this is intentional? If it's synonymous with hitting a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. Right? I mean, it's just, it was a disaster for the Democrats. So the Democrats screwed up. And I think the honest accounting of what happened there is that, like almost everything else we're complaining about in, in public these days, it was a coordination problem. I mean, that you had all these people who couldn't get on the same page about what this obvious slow motion train wreck. Right? How could they get Biden to not be a candidate? When he was adamant that he was fine to run for a second term? There's no good way to do it.

• 7:18Sam Harris?

  And, and they're all living in this hall of mirrors where the first person to express doubt about his viability is the first person to show disloyalty and will be fatally compromised in their career prospects thereafter. Right? So it's an incentive structure that fucked everyone up. But it was not this calculated and effective deception. It was a pathological process and we're, you know, and everyone left of center should be unhappy about it.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  But what happens now? What happens to those people, the advisors that were in charge?

• 7:50Sam Harris?

  Well, I mean, as I wrote after the debate, when he was being slowed to drop out of the race, I wrote this on, in one of those articles on Substack that were increasingly shrill. I said, you know, but if he's not out of the race by Monday, I forget, I think it was the day I called. All we're going to want to know are the names of the people who have enabled this atrocity so that they can, they'll never work in politics again. Right? I don't think these people should ever work in politics again. And it's a disaster. The people who covered for Biden, the people who thought he should run even after that debate, should never work in politics again. They have discredited themselves fatally. That's absolutely the case. And, and you read about them in Jake's book.

• 8:34Sam Harris?

  It's mind boggling, the level of self deception that's expressed in that book.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I just, I find it, I'm, I'm embarrassed. I'm humiliated by it. I mean, the amount of times I've had to, you know, lean on CNN to explain something that, you know, where they helped me, I obviously seen with my own eyes and being told, guys, it's, you know, there are people that are talking. And I guess my point with Jake is that he could have been a little bit more of an intrepid journalist and asked more of the questions. I know he said, I wish I would have done that more, but I just, I feel betrayed. I feel like I relied on many of those sources to get this information and get it right. And again, when I saw with my own eyes.

• 9:12Sam Harris?

  But you have to, I mean, I, it's true. I mean, I think there's, there's enough embarrassment to go around in the mainstream media, but it is also true that Biden was effectively hidden to a degree that is unprecedented.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  But why aren't you asking every single day? Where is he? Where is he? Where's his cognitive test? Where is the man? If that were Trump, they would have done that every single day. It would have said every day, where is he?

• 9:34Sam Harris?

  I think some of that was happening. I mean, you know, the fact, I, you know, I remember whenever there was something important for the president to communicate about, and he wasn't communicating about it. I mean, post October 7th, there were many moments when we needed a president who could come forward and make the case for why the US was standing with Israel in, in the conflict with Hamas. And we did not have, I mean, he, I think he made some attempts at communicating about that, but it was clear that his deficits as a communicator were actually causing problems for society at that point. And I think I said as much in some context, probably on my own podcast. I mean, yes, it's, you know, the separation between the two parts of the job, you know,

• 10:16Sam Harris?

  the decision making component of the job and the communication slash persuasion component of the job. Yes, the decision making component of the job is important. And I think, as I said, when I was talking to Jake, and as I said, you know, I think some years before, when we were all talking about Biden being compromised, it's at least intelligible to say, okay, he's not a good communicator. He was never a good communicator. He's only getting worse. Right? You can't reliably stick him in front of a microphone and trust that something good is going to come out of his mouth. But the truth is, is that when you sit with him and deliberate about the war, your war in Ukraine, or anything else, he is compos mentis. He is, he clearly understands

• 10:58Sam Harris?

  the issue as well as he ever did. He just doesn't, he's just not a fluid speaker, right? And he's less and less fluid by the hour. Right? That is a, neurologically speaking, that is an intelligible claim to make about a person. That's what I assumed was true. That because of how effective this cover up was, I no longer believe that to have been true. Right? I think it's quite possible that he was just checked out to a degree that, that I did not suspect at the time. But to close the loop on this whole scandal, even that is preferable to me, and to I think many Democrats, than having someone who we consider to be genuinely evil, genuinely 100% purposed to serving himself in the office of the presidency.

• 11:44Sam Harris?

  I would rather have a president in a coma where the duties of the presidency are executed by a committee of just normal people. Right?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Okay, but that would be different if they communicated.

• 11:55Sam Harris?

  People picked at random out of a Starbucks, I would prefer to an evil president. And that's the choice that many of us believe was before us. And so therefore, not much materially changes once you reveal just how insane and despicable this cover up of Biden's infirmities actually was.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  But Sam, but how you get there matters. And it would be one thing if those people told the American people, hey, he's not compos mentis. We're going to take it from here. We know what we're doing. We're fine. But that didn't happen. And I mean, just the scale of things, Trump's out there making hotel deals. And I know that's embarrassing. And this is A bit of a Sophie's Choice, but you really would rather not have been betrayed by your own president than have somebody out in the open? Just, you know, with his kleptocracy, getting he and his friends rich?

• 12:46Sam Harris?

  No, but the problem with Trump runs much deeper than that. I mean, that that is totally disqualifying in a president. It's illegal. I mean, I think it is the very definition of unconstitutional, given the Emoluments Clause. I think he should be impeached for it, right? I mean, I don't I don't have any expectation that he will be, but the liability of having Trump in the White House, in my view, runs much, much deeper than that. And I've spoken, there's probably a hundred hours of me talking about this on my podcast and others. I just, I think to have an empty Oval Office would be better. I mean, and that that's to say that there's lots of other normal career politicians who have been deputized in the State Department and other, you know,

• 13:27Sam Harris?

  parts of the executive branch to make normal decisions, you know, that are not thinking about their hotel deals and their and their meme coin. I mean, that that that it's it's normal politics, the swamp. I would I would return to the so-called swamp over what we have now, and for good reason, right? And that was always, that's been obvious for now 10 years, right? For so all the problems with Hillary Clinton, all the problems with Kamala Harris. You know, I I've never been shy to acknowledge those, right? All the problems with the democratic machine as it is, yes, it screwed Bernie Sanders, all of that, price all of that in. I think it's worse to have a president who values nothing but loyalty in the people he appoints to run our government.

• 14:12Sam Harris?

  I mean, the fact that we've got Cash Patel running the FBI and the FBI is now weaponized against private citizens who are being, quote, investigated and thereby bankrupted simply because they were against President Trump at some point in the past. You know, that's the road to fascism, right? That's much worse than having having normal people pulled out of a Starbucks who would be appropriately awed by the responsibility given to them, run the country.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just want to take a quick comedy break. When you said Cash Patel, did you see that video with he and Dan Bongino having to defend at Epstein?

• 14:46Sam Harris?

  No, no.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  You didn't see it?

• 14:48Sam Harris?

  No, no, I missed it.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Oh, you gotta see it. They basically are not-

• 14:51Sam Harris?

  I will watch it with pleasure and horror, no doubt.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Well, they're now on the other side, having to defend themselves from the conspiracy theories. They're literally saying things like, "Look, I know a suicide when I see one."

• 15:01Sam Harris?

  Oh, really?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  This is a suicide.

• 15:02Sam Harris?

  That's delicious.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Both he and Dan Bongino. Oh, it's, it's, uh, it's-

• 15:06Sam Harris?

  That's fantastic.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It's happy watching.

• 15:08Sam Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry I derailed this, but I want to get back to it because there's just something we talked about last time where I just, I said this last time, there's something more off-putting and gross to me about lying and secrecy than there is out in the open. And I know that's probably more of an irrational, uh, an emotional thought than irrational.

• 15:27Sam Harris?

  But it's not all out in the open. There's a lot out in the open and there's, and you, you have to imagine that that's the tip of the iceberg of corruption, right? To grade Trump on a curve so fully that the visibility of his sins are exculpatory, right, is just pure delusion, right? You have no idea what you don't know about what he's into. And we know, we already know he lies more than any other person that can be named, right, anywhere in public life. So the idea that he's not covering anything up is, just doesn't fly.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Again, I mean, the Trump lies to me. I don't know why. And, and we'll have to understand this or get some psychologist of some, or sociologist or someone to explain this, but it just feels like when he's called, it says he's got a building that's 20 stories tall and it's only 10. I just don't really care. Or some of the other lies, they just feel, of, of course it's corrupt to be both the policymaker and the dealmaker.

• 16:28Sam Harris?

  He deport someone to a torture room in El Salvador and then laughs about it at the Oval Office and says he can't get him back, right?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not defending that.

• 16:38Sam Harris?

  That's, that's a lie. It's a lie that he can't get him back. He can get him back in an hour, right? It's a, a sociopathic level of detachment from the real suffering he's causing, admitting that this person was sent in error to El Salvador and admitting that the process was so haphazard that we've probably sent, you know, 50 people who we really don't know whether they're innocent or guilty in the first place because there was no due process. I mean, there's just layers of this, the layers of the damage done to our society, to our system, to the way we've edged toward fascism just by throwing due process out the window. All of that's an unacknowledged harm.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, but but the damage to our system, you're right, the big lie was terrible. The big lie was about one person lying about becoming president versus the Biden lie, which is a person lying about being president. That's a big problem.

• 17:30Sam Harris?

  But again, you have to acknowledge the clarity and obvious malice of the first lie and the ambiguity and the kind of the slow rolling nature of the other lie. I mean, okay, Biden is probably not well placed to understand his deficits because he's the one with the deficits, right? I mean, this is just the classic case of somebody, somebody for obvious reasons, not wanting to admit that they're no longer competent to drive anymore. And now you have to have the conversation with them that they're, you know, it's time to take the keys from them for the rest of their lives, right? That's famously hard

• 18:11Sam Harris?

  negotiation for most people with their parents. And, you know, it's completely understandable that there's a lot of self-serving bias and delusion creeping in on the side of the person who thinks that, no, no, nothing much has changed and I can still drive, right? So that's.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  But Sam, it's the same thing you're talking about. This is the President of the United States. And I know you're not talking about Biden himself. And I know you're going to go into, well, it's the people around him. But this is a, this is a grave sin. This is a big problem that it's not just like grandpa taking away the keys. This is the country.

• 18:40Sam Harris?

  But there's no bright line. It's not a lie that has a bright line because if you see him.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  What do you mean a bright line? Everyone could see it. Everyone could see it and people around him.

• 18:48Sam Harris?

  Everyone could see it on the debate stage. I don't know.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  But it was enough what we saw, the excuses we made was enough that we saw that we should have said, okay, this guy's probably not at his best.

• 19:00Sam Harris?

  So it was absolutely obvious to me that after that debate, what should have happened is that he should have resigned and handed the presidency to Kamala Harris, right? And then she should have campaigned as president for a few months. That would have been. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at samharris.org.