The Broken Promise: Democracy, the Economy & What Comes Next with Pete Buttigieg

Has democracy unraveled in America? And if so, what can leaders on both sides of the aisle do to save it? Former Secretary of Transportation and 2020 Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg joins Trevor and Eugene in this wide-ranging discussion.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  A graduate of Harvard, a road scorer, a naval reserve officer who's deployed to Afghanistan, and the mayor of a small city in Indiana.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Buttigieg is now the first openly LGBTQ elected official to run for president.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm running for president because I think our country is running out of time. We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and expect it to get better.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  The Senate overwhelmingly approved the nomination of Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary.

• 0:25Speaker 03

  He's overseeing one of the most significant investments in America's bridges, roads, and rails in more than half a century.

• 0:32Speaker 04

  What made Peter stand out was his leadership. You kind of knew that there was some extraordinary potential there.

• 0:44Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now? with Trevor Noah.

• 0:51Trevor Noah?

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• 1:26Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info on travel days or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 2:11Trevor Noah?

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• 2:18Trevor Noah?

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• 3:03Trevor Noah?

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• 3:34Trevor Noah?

  Pete Buttigieg. Do you miss being called Mayor Pete? Oh, I always go by Mayor Pete. Oh, you still go by Mayor Pete? I like that. Even on LinkedIn? I haven't logged into LinkedIn in a while. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. That'd be great if you had a LinkedIn. I should. Maybe I do. I don't know. I should check now that you mention it. I still have my old, you know, one of my MySpace is still up somewhere. Just like someone trying to link with you there. You know, you know what I always think about, like, people's social media profiles? Is the people who don't pay attention to the world world, but pay attention to the social media, and then they're friends with you on MySpace, and they're just like, "I wonder whatever happened to Pete?"

• 4:11Trevor Noah?

  Like, think about it. There's people like that out there who were friends with you on like MySpace, Facebook, any of those things. You went off. You went and did things in the world. They're still friends with you then. They're like, I wonder whatever happened to that guy. And now you got a beard, so you look a little different. So they're just like, I wonder where he is.

• 4:25Speaker 06

  You didn't always have a beard.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  No, no, this is, uh, it comes and goes, but I haven't had one in a while, so.

• 4:30Trevor Noah?

  Beard, beard crew, both of you.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  How did you make that decision of this is it now?

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Uh, mostly my husband made that decision.

• 4:36Speaker 06

  He was like, I like you with a beard on.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:39Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I don't like seeing your face.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  He's like, stop.

• 4:40Speaker 06

  Cause how, when a partner likes the beard, it's a hard one, eh?

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:45Trevor Noah?

  How does, how did your beard come around?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  I think it's an easy one. You just give in.

• 4:49Speaker 06

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I was like, what is your aim in life?

• 4:55Speaker 06

  Then I was like, what do you, what do you mean? I'm doing everything right. And my face was like, is everything right for real, real, real? Then I was like, yeah, maybe I'll try a moustache. Then I tried a moustache. Then I had a goatee. Then out here, girls going, yeah, wow, you look, um, yeah, with a beard, you know, baby, baby, baby. Then I was like, yeah, then I grew a little bit on the side. And I was like, I mean, what do you think now? Then I did a little bit of a pole. Then I went around and I was like, what do you, looked vulnerable. I was like, yeah, what do you think? They were like, oh, yeah, actually. That became my identity. Then COVID happened. Couldn't go to the barber.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 06

  Then I was like, let me, let me see how this thing goes. Yeah.

• 5:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's when you went full beard.

• 5:29Speaker 06

  Yes, then I went full beard. Then when I came out of COVID, people were like, this is you now. Then two weeks, three weeks ago, I shaved everything off. Oh.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Really?

• 5:38Speaker 06

  I lost my aura.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  You had to get it right back.

• 5:40Speaker 06

  Completely. I was like, I can't live like this anymore. I saw my dimple. I saw my, this part of my chin. I didn't like myself, so.

• 5:50Speaker 06

  Past mirrors. I couldn't look at myself and it started growing back and I was like, I'm in now. Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  I don't know if I'm that committed yet.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  You are. You are here with it now still.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  If I've worn it here, it's over. It's locked in.

• 6:01Trevor Noah?

  Now it's official.

• 6:02Speaker 06

  If you wanna see how your partner feels about your beard, call them and then turn on clippers. Then go, yeah, I'm just shaving and just hear what they say.

• 6:12Trevor Noah?

  Then you know if it's

• 6:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:14Trevor Noah?

  Wouldn't be good. I like this. I like this. I didn't I didn't expect to be in a beard conversation with you two. Thank you very much. Yeah, how long you been doing that? Don't even ask me those questions. I can't grow a beard. Don't, there's no.

• 6:24Speaker 06

  What do you mean you can't grow a beard?

• 6:25Trevor Noah?

  I can't grow a beard. I've tried. It doesn't work.

• 6:27Speaker 06

  This is it.

• 6:27Trevor Noah?

  It doesn't. This, it's gone. It's, there's no chance.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  But your mustache game is strong, though.

• 6:31Trevor Noah?

  Thank you so much, Eugene.

• 6:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, the mustache.

• 6:33Trevor Noah?

  Thank you. This is what good friends do for you. They give you hope. I appreciate it. No, I can't, I can't grow a beard.

• 6:37Speaker 06

  Or you can do the size.

• 6:38Trevor Noah?

  No, so when I was, you know what happened is when I was, um, when I was young, late, like, early twenties, somewhere there.

• 6:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:44Trevor Noah?

  I had really, really bad acne, like, really, really bad. So then whenever my hair would grow out, it would make things worse. So someone was like, oh, you must go and get laser so that the hair doesn't grow. So I went and I got laser.

• 6:53Speaker 06

  You got laser?

• 6:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I got laser on my face. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. And then it helped. And then I was like, oh, this is much better. Thank you. And then beards came into fashion. Then I was like, I'm joining. And then my, my skin was like, no, you're not. So now I'm just, this is me.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  Um, thank you for being vulnerable with us. I mean, this is not something that most men like talking about.

• 7:14Trevor Noah?

  What? Not growing a beard?

• 7:15Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 7:15Trevor Noah?

  Or getting laser?

• 7:16Speaker 06

  What you are doing right now is you're opening up the podcast to a huge segment of men who are struggling with connecting beards. And some of them don't know what happened. But you particularly, you chose this platform to face this disability that you now have.

• 7:32Trevor Noah?

  That's what we all do. You've got to share, you've got to share your vulnerabilities.

• 7:35Speaker 06

  Look, I would like to say I see you.

• 7:37Trevor Noah?

  Thank you.

• 7:38Speaker 06

  I respect your decision.

• 7:39Trevor Noah?

  Thank you.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  And Pete and I would like to say we'll think of you when we're oiling up your

• 7:46Speaker 06

  all the time.

• 7:47Trevor Noah?

  Thank you, Eugene.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  You're welcome.

• 7:49Trevor Noah?

  Pete, welcome to the, uh, podcast. Mayor Pete, uh, former Secretary of Transportation Pete. Which, which title do you prefer the most? Just Pete. Just Pete? Yeah. It's weird calling you just Pete because I feel like you're not just Pete. Like, you've done everything beyond just Pete. You know what I mean? Yeah, his excellency works, if you want. You see? Amen. His excellency Pete. Now we're talking.

• 8:12Trevor Noah?

  Now we are talking. Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  No, I'm a Midwesterner. We're like humble, straightforward people. Pete's good.

• 8:17Trevor Noah?

  No, I like this. I like this a lot. Thank you so much for joining. You know, you know, I'm excited to have you is because like from the very first time I heard of you and knew you, I was on The Daily Show back then. And then you were the mayor and you know, it was like, so it was Mayor Pete and then it was like Mayor Pete's running for president and then it was like Mayor Pete and then it was Mayor Pete in the administration. You've always been inside the government in some way, shape or form. And this is the first time where we find you sort of like in an in-between space. So maybe we start there. What are you up to these days? Like, what are you doing?

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. So this is the first time in 15 years that I haven't been either running for something or in some kind of public position or both.

• 8:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  That's kind of great. I mean, you know, most days I'm the one dropping the kids off at school or a camp this summer. Just able to, able to stop shaving for a few days, actually. And, you know, just things that weren't possible when there was that like everyday grind. So I'm enjoying that. I'm trying to make the most of that, but then I'm balancing that with the fact that there's things going on in the world that I feel like I need to be part of or making myself useful around all the time, which is why I'm in the media and I'm traveling and I'm doing what I can, working with candidates I believe in and promoting causes I believe in and you know, just being active politically without being in an active campaign.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  And it's different. I mean, it's, it's, it can be strange sometimes because I am so used to there being like the one big thing that, that you organize your life around. But, you know, that can, that can do a lot of work for you in your life and it can also be very unhealthy, right? I think one of the occupational hazards for people, including people in public service who have a lot of purpose in their work, is that your work becomes your purpose and then you can't live without it.

• 10:03Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  That's especially dangerous in politics because sometimes doing right by your job means putting your job on the line. It's the only way to do your job well. And maybe losing it. And it's, it's that much harder if you draw meaning from work. So, yeah, I've been wrestling with all of that, but also really enjoying a life where I'm just around my husband and kids more. And at the same time, getting out on the road and trying to be part of the political conversation because obviously there's a lot to talk about.

• 10:29Trevor Noah?

  It almost feels like you're like a retired superhero.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:34Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? You were thinking the same thing. No, you know, you know why? Because we never think of it. But at some point, a superhero goes, I want to be done. Yes. I want to be with my family. I want to be, you know, it's like, I want to be Clark Kent. Yes. I don't want to spend as much time being Superman. But then what happens? Dust off the cape once in a while. Exactly. Then there's something happening. They're like, oh, a tower is falling. Or they're like, oh, there's a big invasion. And then it's like, where's Superman? And if you were a superhero in any capacity, I think it feels weird just sitting at home. Because here's what I mean. Most of us watch the news. Yeah. And we can only respond or react to the news. Yeah. Like most people, you just go, I can't believe that happened. Man, that sucks.

• 11:16Trevor Noah?

  And then the most you can sort of do, if we're honest, is like, wait to vote. Or maybe phone lawmaker, maybe? But if you were in the inner workings of it. Hmm. You have more access to the levers that can actually change something and do something. So maybe, maybe that's a good question. It's like, what would you say is something you've seen recently in the past few months that has made you go, ah, I've got to get off the couch and shave a little bit?

• 11:39Speaker 00

  I mean, where do you start, right? I mean, obviously, so many things are happening in the country under this administration. From these like massive things that I think threaten the integrity of the republic, like, like sending troops into the streets of American cities.

• 11:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  To very specific policy things that I disagree with, that the FTC or whatever, or the department I used to serve in. I mean, one thing that's hard, even if, even if somebody comes in who you agree with, it's, I think it's hard for anyone who leaves the high office to watch their successor. Uh, but it's especially hard for me to watch them dismantle the airline passenger protections we put in. For example, we worked really hard on that. It was the right thing to do. You know, we took on the airlines and we won, and now they're just unraveling it. So there's a lot of things like that that are very hard to watch. But you know what I've realized is I don't have to be in a seat of political power to be talking about it. I mean, one of the advantage, privileges, I guess, that comes with just kind of where I fit in the picture right now is, you know, I've,

• 12:37Speaker 00

  like my unexpected specialty going on Fox News a lot, right? Like, part of that was, I was like everybody else, occasionally finding myself watching that network and being like, man, somebody ought to go on there and say this. And then I got to actually be the guy who went on there and said this.

• 12:50Trevor Noah?

  Be the change.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Um, and I can still do that. I mean, I'm not doing it from a position of power.

• 12:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  Uh, but, uh, you know, as a citizen out there talking about this stuff and, and, and I'm hopeful that that matters.

• 13:02Trevor Noah?

  I want to talk about each of those things that you said individually. Because I think they branch out into topics and ideas that everybody's grappling with right now. So let's start with like the first part of it, you know, leaving a position. Seeing somebody else step into that position. I think we all take that for granted in many ways. Because that's it's very rare that that happens. Most of the time, if you leave a position, the person who fills the position after you is generally trying to do the same job as you.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:29Trevor Noah?

  Just generally. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't matter what level you're on. So i- in my case, it's like Jon Stewart hosting The Daily Show. I come after him. We're sort of aligned, you know what I mean? Obviously, we knew each other as people, but we're heading in a similar direction as human beings. And so on and so forth. In your office, you leave your job as the head of HR. The next person who comes in does HR. It's weird if they're like, nah, I don't believe in HR.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:54Trevor Noah?

  I don't believe in people.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:56Trevor Noah?

  You're like, what, what happened? They're like, yeah, that's not how I roll.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Well, and you could take it one further. So I would say, actually, in my department, for example.

• 14:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  I disagree with my successor, but like, I think he believes in continuing the department, right?

• 14:09Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  You go to the Department of Education.

• 14:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  The secretary's mission is to demolish the Department of Education, right? Or you have people in charge of environmental protection who don't believe in environmental protection, right? Or, you know, they inherit USAID, the International Development Agency. And then they just burn it to the ground. So, yeah, there are, I shouldn't, I should only complain so much, maybe, about where I used to.

• 14:30Trevor Noah?

  Because at least he believes in.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  At least it's still there, yeah. And even the projects, they killed some really good projects. But most of the projects that I launched, they're still doing. They just put a Trump sign on them, so they can take credit for it. But they're still doing the project.

• 14:41Trevor Noah?

  Do you mind when that happens?

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course I do.

• 14:44Trevor Noah?

  Okay, I like that, honest, all right.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Because he, he promised when he was president that he was going to do a big infrastructure package. And then he failed. And then we set out to a big, do a big infrastructure package, and he campaigned against it. People forget this. It's not just that he didn't do it. It's when we did it. He threatened any Republican who was part of the bipartisan majority that voted to do the infrastructure bill. And said, we will remember. And you know, most of them either got taken out or took themselves out for the crime of having joined us to vote for more road funding, right? And now they're literally like slapping Trump signs on projects that were funded by our department, our administration with a bill that Trump tried to stop.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  So yeah, yeah, I'm kind of pissed off about that.

• 15:32Trevor Noah?

  I always wonder if there's a way to like fix that in American politics.

• 15:37Trevor Noah?

  The first time I remember thinking about it was when I first moved to the US, I was reading a newspaper and not a physical one, like digitally, relaxed, I saw the way you looked at me. And, um, and I was reading, I was reading the newspaper and it was interesting because it had names. And behind every name, it had a little D or a little R. And you know, it would say like, congressperson da, da, da says this, D R, congressperson, D R. And I was like, what, what is, what is that? And then someone was like, oh, that's Democrat, Republican. And it was so normal to my, to my American friends to say that. But I, for the life of me, I couldn't understand why news in America is filtered through the lens of politics before it's filtered through the news of, of, of, through the lens of.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. Any other country, I guess you don't see the party label.

• 16:23Trevor Noah?

  No, not, not behind your name, not behind you. Like in South Africa, for instance, they don't do that. They'll tell you if it's a story about a person who's in the ANC or a person in the DA, they'll say that. But it's not next to your name. It is not the thing that defines. Doesn't become your identity. Exactly. And so even when they propose something, I, I always wonder how much it blocks Americans in their ability to be for or against an idea. If the, if the idea is Eugene Cozer, Republican, says he's for beards. Then I'm like, but I, I like beards, but do I want to support a Republican? Do you know what I mean? Like, I wonder how much that actually blocks people from, from thinking of embracing an idea just because it might come from the quote unquote wrong side.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Sure it's not, you know, I have a little, um, a little experience on that through the lens of being a mayor. Because you know, there are some, every state, every city has a different system. Some of them, it's like national politics, they have a primary and there's a Republican primary and there's a Democratic primary and there's two candidates. Others, um, there's a nonpartisan system. And so someone emerges, they might be, they might proudly be a Republican or a Democrat, but, uh, they might actually not tell anybody which they are too. It just depends. And so I would find myself at mayor's conferences where there's other mayors. You know, these are elected officials, uh, in positions of major responsibility. And get to know them well and not know, like I'd have to go back online and look up

• 17:41Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Whether they're Democrat or Republican.

• 17:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  Uh, so I, I do think you view people and you view their ideas differently if you don't know right off the bat, what, uh, you know, what team they're, they're from.

• 17:52Trevor Noah?

  It is, it is weird to see America flip and flop though. I will say that, like when you're talking about like one administration wants this, then the next administration wants that, the next administration. I, I was at an event in, um, I don't know where it was. I don't, I don't remember now. Europe, Middle East somewhere. And there were some world leaders, leaders gathered and they were having this discussion about America and its new place in the world. And one of the world leaders said something that was the most interesting thing I'd ever heard because it gave me a different perspective. The moderator said, how do you feel about what's happening in America right now? And what do you think this means for the future? And he said, well, I don't really worry about the future. I just

• 18:33Trevor Noah?

  know we have to weather this moment for the next three or four years. And then America will flip this way, and then it'll flip that way, and then it'll flip that way, and it'll flip this way. And he said, we think longer term.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:46Trevor Noah?

  And we try to think beyond one cycle at a time. And there was a, there was a general concession and an agreement amongst the world leaders there who went, yeah, that's pretty much America. And if you think about it, it's, it is true for the most part. America is one of the largest, most prominent countries that completely switches the direction it's going in every single ish four years, which is a, that's like not a thing really when you think about it.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I'm trying to decide if I, if I buy that. I, I, I think that's somewhat true if we're in a normal political pattern. I think we're outside of that now. Like I, I worry that. Even in my party, I worry that people are acting as if we're in this kind of normal pattern of elections and politics when we're actually increasingly outside of it, right? In what way? We've always had someone win an election, somebody aggressively or not like promote their agenda, they win, they lose, whatever. But we have not had an American government try to consolidate its power over civil society,

• 19:57Speaker 00

  over broadcast companies, over law firms, over universities, you know, you just go on down the list, the way that we have now. And what I see is a real risk that what happens is way beyond what happens in one election or two elections. I think my party could win in 2026 and not get the message. I think we could even win in 2028 and not fully grasp the level of change that these guys in charge now are trying to achieve, which is why I'm trying to push people who are in the opposition to Trump, whether they think of themselves as Democrats or not, to think at a higher altitude as well about, like even my organization, a nonprofit in

• 20:41Speaker 00

  a PAC, we call it Win the Era. Not that I don't care about winning the election, but I think what's more important is to win the era. Right. And when you're thinking of it in those terms, you start looking at, okay, what does it mean to get ready for the next, the way some of these other countries you talked about plan, what does it look like to get ready for the next five, 10, 20, 30 years? Especially because I think we're also at a change or an end of a certain cycle that has gone on for decades, like certain patterns, assumptions, institutions about how the world works and about how the country works that were set up in the 40s and 50s are falling apart. And I don't think we can just go take power, find all the pieces, tape them back together and have things be the way they used to be.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  I think so many of our institutions have needed to be rebuilt for a long time. They're being smashed to pieces now by the current administration, which is wrong. But it would also be wrong to imagine that the answer is to just go back and try to put them back the way they were.

• 21:40Trevor Noah?

  Put it back to the way it was.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  I know you could say that about anything from the Department of Education to tax policy in this country, which I think we might have to start over on if they really break the fiscal viability of the country, which I think they're trying, to things like international development, USAID.

• 21:56Trevor Noah?

  You know what I always wonder? I wonder who pays the actual price. Because politics is weird in that when you look at the term generally of a president in a democratic country, it's not really enough time to implement change and see the effects of that change, just generally speaking, not all the time. But like, economies move slowly, effects generally, you know, happen over time. But I think to myself, like, wouldn't it be crazy? And we've seen this sort of happen before in America. Wouldn't it be crazy if like, Trump does all of these things, and then only at the end of his term do you sort of start to see the results? But that means whoever comes in next takes all of the blame.

• 22:41Trevor Noah?

  Because that's when you might see the biggest results of education. That's when you might see the biggest results of taxes and how they've changed and healthcare that's been cut.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  No, yeah, some of they're doing that by design, right? Some of the healthcare cuts they're doing that'll take people off Medicaid, they set up to only take effect after the next election.

• 22:55Trevor Noah?

  Oh yeah, they did that. I forget.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  They're not stupid. They know that that can happen. You're right, even if you are trying to do something immediately, it takes a while to filter through. I mean, I saw this back when I was mayor. I spent a lot of my first year as mayor doing things that upset people and cost political capital and weren't necessarily popular.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Believing that if I was right, if they were the right things to do by year four, I would have something to show for it and people would trust me, reelect me and give me the benefit of the doubt. And that's, that's kind of what happened.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Everything from the way we designed our streets to the way I organized the city administration, people were mad. We stuck to, I heard them out, but we also stuck to it in some important ways and then things worked. And then they gave me a little more credit or a little more trust the next time around. So I think that in an ideal sense is how it's supposed to work. But I agree with you that I think a lot about if, if there was a four year, if there was a five year instead of a four year term, and we were able to do just a little more on the bridges and the tunnels and the roads and the stuff that, at least the little piece of it that I worked on, how would things have been different?

• 24:05Speaker 06

  I come from a country where there were general elections last year and no one party won outright.

• 24:09Trevor Noah?

  Whoa, whoa, we.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  I come from a country where.

• 24:17Trevor Noah?

  I like how you just kicked me out of my own country. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, Eugene.

• 24:25Speaker 06

  Look, I'm sorry.

• 24:26Trevor Noah?

  You gotta understand, there's nothing has changed about me, Eugene. I'm proudly South African.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  I'll tell you what.

• 24:30Trevor Noah?

  I'll tell you what.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  That is just give you guys a couple of minutes.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  When no, no one party won outright, the ANC for the first time had to share power with another party, which is an opposition party, which is now in government. But what I've realized is when people oppose someone's idea, as soon as they get into power, they get co-opted into believing in the same thing as well. And I think that's what's causing distrust in my country about political parties. And if you've been opposing for so long, the next thing you become minister of whatever. Now you're like, I'm enjoying the perks, the blue lights and the.

• 25:03Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 06

  And the great siree. Yeah, what happened to that thing where you said you hated the, hold on, hold on, we'll deal with it when we get there. And I think that's what caused a lot of distrust. And I've said to many of my friends, it looks like most politicians want young people to be interested in voting, but not to actually vote. Is, do you think that might be true for many countries, not just for the US or South Africa?

• 25:23Speaker 00

  I don't know. That's a really interesting warning for those of us who sometimes fantasize about what it would be like if America had five political parties.

• 25:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  And, you know, there was, there was a minute. Last year, when Speaker McCarthy, or whenever it was, McCarthy was losing his grip on the US House, it looked for a minute like he could maybe keep his speakership by getting some Democratic votes. And I thought, if Democrats name their price and McCarthy goes with it, we could see a coalition government on American soil for the first time in my life.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  And I was actually kind of intrigued by that. It didn't happen, obviously, but I wondered whether that might give us some chance of breaking out of this really stultified, paralyzed state that we're in. But it sounds like what you're saying is not to romanticize that model too much because it has its other downsides, which makes sense. I think for us, the problem we have is here in America, there's no party that actually commands a majority, right? I mean, both parties, in terms of people who really are like, yeah, that's my party, are at like, something like 30%, right? But every election, functionally, pretty much every election for Congress and certainly for the president, it kind of comes down to two. And people are supposed to pick. And then people are dissatisfied with what they get,

• 26:41Speaker 00

  right? Part of what I wish we could do to respond to that is just expand the scope of things that both parties think are inarguably true and will defend, and then go out, argue about the other stuff. So I don't know about South Africa, but I know a lot of countries where if there's a center-right party and a center-left party, they both, for example, acknowledge the reality of climate change.

• 27:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  They'll fight over who's doing a better job.

• 27:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, no, that's, yes.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  But they don't fight over whether it's a thing, right?

• 27:11Speaker 06

  Universal healthcare.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot of these things are just a given. And I'd like to invest a little more in what I think of as the inargubles that we all ought to be, or most of us ought to be able to say we care about.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  But then there are all these other things that are contested, that are fought over, that we still have like two-thirds support in the country for. Importantly, lots of things Democrats are for and Republicans are against, that two-thirds of Americans agree on. I mean, the idea that we gotta tax the wealthy more, the idea that we ought to have a stronger minimum wage, the idea that there ought to be paid family leave in this country when you have a kid, ideas around a woman's right to choose, or freedom to marry, or climate change, or background checks on guns. These are not like 5149 things. These are actually like 60 or 70% consensus positions in the country.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  And yet my party can't figure out how to get fifty one percent, let alone sixty or seventy on our candidates. I think that needs to lead to some introspection on on how we how we approach these issues. And then this this other set of issues that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about that don't have any left to right pattern yet. I'm thinking about a lot about artificial intelligence, right? Where I think most people, left, right, or center, are skeptical of a lot of these tech companies.

• 28:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Interested in AI, if only because we use it, you know, chat GPT or whatever we use more and more in our day to day lives. Excited about what it can do, but also very worried about what it might do to us. And there's this moment where it hasn't fallen into this obvious left right fight yet.

• 28:50Trevor Noah?

  That's interesting.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  But what COVID taught us the hard way is that even something like public health and getting vaccinated that

• 28:59Speaker 00

  you would think was not a partisan thing, almost overnight became one.

• 29:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Which tells me that this is a very special and narrow window around AI to talk about things that might be shared principles before we figure out what to fight over between Democrats and Republicans. You know what I mean?

• 29:13Trevor Noah?

  That, yeah, that actually is a fascinating idea to think about is like, when does an issue suddenly become politicized? And when is it not? I distinctly remember, because I mean, I was like in the thick of things when it was COVID and it was. I distinctly remember seeing one of the strangest flips. And it was how Donald Trump was pushing forward for a vaccine. Right, Donald Trump was. I'll say this again, Donald Trump was pushing forward with a vaccine. And he was leading a team that was like, it was Operation something.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Warp Speed.

• 29:44Trevor Noah?

  Warp Speed, Operation Warp Speed. And it was like Donald Trump. And I I'll never forget this moment. I would see liberals, progressives, Democrats, whoever, whatever they want to call it. I would see tons of them going, I don't trust his vaccine. This man is, how are they making it so quickly? How are they rushing the, I don't trust Donald Trump's gonna make a, and then I was like, guys, Donald Trump's not in the lab. It's not like he's there with like his little vial and he's like, add two, add two of these, four drops. I think I got it, oopie doopie doo. No, he's leading a task force that is trying to get. Then they were like, I just don't trust it. I just don't trust it. And then Biden wins during COVID.

• 30:25Trevor Noah?

  Biden's in charge now. They keep moving forward with the vaccine, which I still say is Trump's vaccine. And by the way, which Trump has said is his vaccine. And then I noticed everyone flip. All of a sudden, people were like, well, I, of course, I trust it. And then now the flip happened the other way, the other way around is like, people were like, I don't trust that vaccine. I don't trust the Democrats. And I was like, what just happened? Has it become so like red and blue that you, you, you get what I'm saying? You can literally just flip based on. No, it's true. Who's, who's telling you something? Yeah, who's telling, and then Trump, he went to, I don't know if you saw this, he went to one of his rallies. I will never forget this. And then he said, it's my vaccine. Say it in his voice. It in the crowd, oh, he's there and he's like, it's my, I, I created a vaccine.

• 31:09Trevor Noah?

  Joe Biden taking credit for my vaccine, taking credit. I did it, I did it. And then the crowd was like, boo, boo, crowd was like boo. And then he's like, a lot of people don't like it, but it was mine, it was mine, I did it, I did it. And his crowd was booing the idea of the vaccine. And Trump was like, no, no, no, it's mine. It's mine, yes. And even now in moments, you'll see him slip. If someone asks him, who made it? He'd be like, well, I made it. But then he sort of says it like Joe's, Joyce, Joe spoilt it. But he still goes, he made it. And I'm like, what happened in that moment? I love that you brought up the AI thing because it's like, when does a topic or an issue become politicized in America? And I was wondering, do, because I know you, you spend a lot of time thinking about this.

• 31:53Trevor Noah?

  Is it when the groups know which lever to pull? Is it when, like, like, for instance, I, I, I often think that sometimes American politics is thought of as this, um, this pure ideal, idea and ideal that's hanging on its own. And we sometimes forget how many outside forces are poking and prodding at it, right? So if I run a major corporation. And I'm trying to get AI, you know, I want to get as few restrictions as possible. I want to be in a power position. I think all I would do is look at which party would be more amenable to getting me what I want. And then I would try frame it so that AI is in or out of the other party's wheelhouse. Does it, does, but does it sound like real to your even familiar?

• 32:38Speaker 00

  I think that's right. And I think companies do that all the time. Like they figure out a way if, if, you know, you're running a clean tech company.

• 32:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  And Trump wins and suddenly anything green is out of fashion. Maybe it's smarter to talk about it in terms of contributing to American energy independence or American energy dominance, which is also true, right? It was one thing that like green energy has to say for itself. Now, it doesn't, I mean, Trump's still killing wind power, but I think that happens all the time on some level. I think also though, a lot of this is downstream from culture, as they say, right? That, that the politic politicians kind of flatter themselves or ourselves that, that we're shaping things.

• 33:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Sometimes, obviously, leadership decisions matter hugely, but like a lot of times, a lot of things have worked through the culture before you even get to the, the, the, the left and right boundaries of what politicians get to do.

• 33:26Trevor Noah?

  That's interesting.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  And then sometimes it can come back out. So think about tech, right? Think, um, not AI, think about social media.

• 33:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  So it starts with kind of like left vibes, right? Think of like early internet days. These guys are like basically seem like Democrats because they're, maybe they're more libertarian deep down, but like they're young, they're socially liberal. They think climate change is real. They care about immigration, you know? And, you know, you've got Obama hanging out with tech CEOs. That seems like a very natural thing in like 2012, say, right? Then these things happen with the way social media affects the election, the role of Twitter. And suddenly it gets more complicated than that. And you come to this point where actually now, when you think tech CEO, Silicon Valley tech CEO, you are more likely to think of them at that dinner in the Trump,

• 34:19Speaker 00

  you know, White House than thinking of them like rubbing elbows with Obama, right? And yet, even though that's been kind of coded either way, one of the few kind of areas where the horseshoes come together on our political spectrum is the idea of getting phones and social media apps out of our schools. So you've got really right wing, like MAGA right wing politicians. Josh Hawley comes to mind, who I would disagree with ferociously, strongly on lots and lots of things. Teaming up with more liberal politicians and not just federally, but the state level,

• 35:00Speaker 00

  saying things like, yeah, a screen should not be with a kid during the hours that they're in school. Because that's a distraction, it's a problem, it's a vector for a lot of bad things to get into their minds. And there's actually something of a consensus. I don't think that's happening because the politicians got together and said, hey, we gotta find something that we can agree on, what about this? Or to put it another way, if that happened, it happened after more and more parents who didn't agree on politics, didn't agree on what they thought of, you know, this or that election or how social media played, but definitely agreed on, oh wow, this could be screwing up my kid, start to feel the same way about this issue. And that pressure then finds its way, which is healthy, by the way. That pressure finds its way into the political system. And then politicians are saying, yeah, we gotta do something about that, right?

• 35:46Trevor Noah?

  We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

• 35:51Trevor Noah?

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• 36:35Trevor Noah?

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• 37:20Trevor Noah?

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• 38:05Trevor Noah?

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• 38:49Speaker 06

  What always helps a voter not feel helpless? Because sometimes people think of government in this big juggernaut that's gonna happen with or without you, and you're just happy for smaller wins. Like, for example, in my country, people who are...

• 39:00Trevor Noah?

  Our country.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Pete, you know what I mean, eh?

• 39:08Speaker 06

  I'll stay on that list.

• 39:13Speaker 06

  Our country, Trevor.

• 39:14Trevor Noah?

  Thank you, Eugene.

• 39:15Speaker 06

  You're welcome. People who are mostly underprivileged or underserviced will always worry about social grants. If you can sort that out, or cheaper housing, if you can sort that out, whether it takes you four years of your tenure, or the last two months of it, it will happen. Just the hope of it is always enough. So how do people feel empowered that whoever they voted for will always do what they promised? How do you hold the person that you voted for accountable? Because, obviously, that seems like protesting on social media becomes a thing.

• 39:46Trevor Noah?

  I think that's, I think that's universal. I think that's every country, to be honest. It is a great question.

• 39:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Well, look, the answer is supposed to be the election, right? But look at our system. I mean, in addition to the, all the problems around presidential elections, including the fact that we're the only presidential democracy in the world, where the person who gets the second most votes can get the office, and the person who gets the most votes loses because of the electoral college. But in addition to that, you look at the congressional level, and out of 435 seats in the US House, less than 1 in 10, less than 40, are actually considered competitive.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  Less than 40?

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. So even though we are, let's say, typically a 55-45 country, in terms of which way the country feels, which party the country supports, you have states, like where I grew up in Indiana, I remember when it was 5 and 4, 5 Republicans, 4 Democrats in the House. Then it was 7 and 2, because they gerrymandered it. Now they're under pressure to make it like 9 and 0. And even if Indiana's a more Republican state, like a 60-40, that's probably true about Indiana right now, it's not 100 to 0, right? And so...

• 40:55Speaker 00

  There's this thumb on the scale, not in terms of somebody like secretly going in and changing what's in the ballot machines, but out in the open, the way they redraw these districts, that has made more and more of our elections less competitive. So, big picture, we need to reform that. In the meantime, since that's not going to happen overnight, I think the best ways and places to feel empowered are, first of all, closer to home, because a lot of these processes are actually playing out locally. A lot of decisions about vaccinations are happening at the state level or even the county level, right? Most decisions about policing happen at the local city level. A lot of decisions about resources for mental health or the policies we were just talking about, about smartphones,

• 41:38Speaker 00

  or any number of things are happening either at a state or a local level. There's a much better chance of getting somebody's attention at that level. At a local level. Yeah, and look, I came out, I got started as mayor, right? So, part of it is, I think, in those terms. But I saw, like, a city council make a different decision because a bunch of people lined up, many of them too young to even be eligible to vote, and said, hey, this decision's going to impact me. And they spoke with a kind of moral authority that young people have, and it got people's attention, and it changed things. So, that's one example of where I think people sometimes have more power than they might imagine, even if I understand why and share why so many of us feel disempowered when it comes to national

• 42:22Speaker 00

  politics. Another thing is to recognize that you don't have to wait for the next election to be having an effect. So, of course, periodically you have these elections, that's the kind of ultimate check on some, on power, assuming the elections take place appropriately. But in the meantime, some stuff that sounds very old fashioned, like getting in the streets or calling your member of Congress, matters. So, you can tell it matters because of what happened at these town halls, where a lot of people, especially when the Republicans were cutting Medicaid, a lot of people went to the town halls and said, if you cut Medicaid to give tax cuts to wealthy people, it's going to do this to me, and I'm pissed. And it mattered enough that a lot of these members either stopped doing the town halls completely or had these moments that showed that that really shook them, right?

• 43:07Speaker 00

  So, I think that we need to get more in the habit of flexing political muscle offline. As citizens. Not just on our, you know, on our smartphones, but yeah, as citizens in a very real IRL human 3D format. And the other thing I would say, back to our thing about culture, is that a lot of the battlefield of ideas and politics is inside people's social circles and their families. Yeah. And I wonder if actually, because it's so easy for us to spout off on politics online, we're actually less likely to have a hard political conversation with someone we know or care about. But those are the people you can actually move, right?

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Like, we know, time and time again, we've seen it, like, people's hearts and minds change when somebody they already know and trust shapes the way they think about something. And I worry that we might be doing less of that in a moment when we need to be doing more.

• 44:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, interpersonal mobilization.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:07Trevor Noah?

  You know, it's funny, I think of it less as changing people's minds, and I think of it more as just being around people who change you and how your mind works. Like, the reason I think of it is, I remember reading a book about how the views and opinions that we hold are oftentimes more influenced by our locales and our location than how we think we think, right? And I remember, I finished reading the book and I thought to myself, huh, maybe you're not conservative, you just live in a rural area. And maybe you're not actually liberal, you just live in a major metropolis. And I'm not dismissing anybody's political views, but I think it's inevitable

• 44:52Trevor Noah?

  that if you move to a major city where there are more people who have come from more places, you're gonna be exposed. You're in New York, you're walking around, you're like, this is how I think men dress. Within the day, you're like, all right, maybe I don't know how men dress.

• 45:03Speaker 06

  I've been resisting that.

• 45:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, when you're around it, but when you're around it enough.

• 45:07Speaker 06

  I have been resisting.

• 45:10Speaker 06

  I'm keeping my fashion sense until I leave.

• 45:12Trevor Noah?

  Stay here long enough. Stay here long enough.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  What are your tools of resistance?

• 45:17Speaker 06

  My wardrobe?

• 45:20Trevor Noah?

  But this is what I mean. So and and and you don't even realize it's happening to you. So like, you know, the Overton window is such a powerful thing in our lives because it's where we perceive the the bulk of reality to exist. Yeah. And then it shifts without us realizing it's shifting. So you look at yourself, like beards are a good example. I remember a time, and I I know I have a personal, you know, feeling to that, and I'm I'll I will say I'm biased. But I remember a time when a beard was considered the number one um indicator of your unprofessionalism. You could not be elected with a beard. You could not be on TV with a beard. Yeah. You could not get an interview. People were like, the dude with the beard. The news. You can't read the news with a beard.

• 46:03Trevor Noah?

  And then part of it is COVID. You know, whatever it is shifts in society and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, look at that. Oh, that that news anchor has a beard. Oh, and that TV presenter has a beard and your teacher has a beard. And and then society doesn't realize that the Overton window of a beard has shifted. Same thing happened with tattoos, right? Yeah. There was a time when a tattoo was a great way to know who you shouldn't hire. That's how people thought of it. Oh, tattoo. I guess we're not hiring you. And then now a tattoo almost means nothing. It's like it's not. It it is not a signifier that tells you about how somebody does or doesn't live their lives, not that it ever was. Yeah. But now it definitely isn't, even in society's view for the most part. Yeah.

• 46:43Trevor Noah?

  And so when when I think about these things, and I think about like the Overton window and and how it shifts in politics. I I wonder if you've thought about it on a local level versus a national level because you you are in an interesting position. Yeah. You were a mayor. As a mayor, you're only trying to shape the lives of the people who are in the same town that you live in. You know, we all know the streets. We all know that corner. Yeah. We all know that shop. Yeah. Let's get something done. I would love to know how you think the nationalization of all politics has adversely or maybe beneficially affected politics in America because I'm assuming there's a big difference between

• 47:28Trevor Noah?

  what people need on the ground and what they're reading about as like national news.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Totally. I thrived on the fact when I was mayor that our work was distant from what was going on in Washington or national politics. And I think that's one of the reasons, without ever concealing where I was, that I was a Democrat, that I was more progressive than probably most people in my city. I had, you know, before I became more of a national figure, I had like equal approval rating among Republicans, Democrats and independents in the city. Because they weren't, they just wondered if I was gonna get the trash picked up and are we gonna like grow the local economy? You know, what were we doing about these, this blocking and tackling, like basic things to take care of the city? And so I guess to your question, I'd say it's in one way easier and one way harder.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  The way that it was easier was we were all operating from a pretty consistent sense of the facts.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  So if there was a hole in the road as the mayor, I couldn't be like, that's the best road ever. There's no holes in it. And you know, like people could see and they'd be like, there's a hole in the road. What are you gonna do about it? Right? If something was good or something was bad, people could just tell. And so there was much less of a contest over what the facts were. And much more of a contest of, given these facts, what are you gonna do about it? Right? It was the good, the bad and the ugly. And the ugly was, we had, because we'd been a factory town, we had acres of collapsing auto factories everywhere. And vacant and abandoned houses everywhere. And you couldn't escape it. You couldn't pretend otherwise. And so what was easier was we at least had the same reality. Compared to nationally where, I mean, you could tell, like the way, like the way Donald Trump talks about American cities.

• 49:09Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  He's clearly just using his imagination.

• 49:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Right? This is not based on any experience of what it's actually like.

• 49:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, or maybe it's a social media feed, because I think we take for granted how much that man is on social media.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 49:20Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, here's the way it's harder. It's harder because you're trying to pry open an Overton window. The more that the reality you're trying to describe that's different is kind of in somebody's face, I think the harder it is to picture something different. I can try to open somebody's Overton window and I have about.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Changing the Electoral College. Like, I talked about that when I was running for president, which probably not the smartest thing to do in New Hampshire. And I definitely didn't think that that was gonna like happen in five years. But I just think like, I should lay down a marker from the earliest in my career till the end about that being important and try to like push, push, push. So like one day, 20 years from now, maybe we will fix it.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  But when you're asking people to look around the vacant and abandoned houses in their neighborhood, or look at the abandoned factory downtown, and say with a straight face, it doesn't have to be this way. We can change it. If you trust me, I will change it. Give me a chance.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  That can require even more of a push on the imagination than I want when I'm talking in abstract terms about what we might want our country to be like.

• 50:25Trevor Noah?

  Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  But I think the other thing that's at stake in what you're saying is a kind of a humility about what we believe. Like, I passionately believe in all of the things that I passionately believe in. By definition, I think I'm, I think I'm right about the things I believe. But I recognize that if I were born in a different family and raised in a different community and soaked up different values, I would probably think differently about a whole bunch of things. And that's just a basic thing that's definitely true about how we all form our political values. And yet, there's even less room to show regard for that now than there's ever been. Because instead of a news story,

• 51:10Speaker 00

  and now I sound like a grumpy old timer, but I can say like, I grew up in a time when the way I learned the news was I watched a TV bit or read an article. And that article on a controversial issue contained the perspectives of the two different sides. Whatever it was, abortion, taxes, you know? And it's not that I read both sides and wound up in the middle. Like, maybe I read both sides and seeing the other side made me feel my side even more strongly. Or maybe not. Maybe the other side made me stop and think. But the point is, you would think about it. Now, I have a feed, and what does the feed give me? Gives me two things. Here's this person I already like, doing something that looks good.

• 51:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  And reminds me why they're amazing. And here's this person I already don't like, doing something which reminds me why I don't like them.

• 52:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  And that's it, right? And I think it makes it that much harder for us to have any humility about why we are where we are on the political spectrum and why we believe what we believe about what ought to happen next.

• 52:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I think as you separate communities, that becomes the first thing. Like, we had Robert Putnam on the podcast a while ago, and he wrote that amazing book Bowling Alone. And the fundamental, I mean, you're familiar with it, but for those who don't know, the fundamental premise of the book was

• 52:30Trevor Noah?

  he wanted to study why some societies work and why some don't. And when he was in Italy, where he was studying it, he came to realize that in Italy, which is a relatively small country, especially in like in size itself, he saw that some towns and cities were doing particularly well, and people trusted the government, they engaged in the government, and there was low levels of corruption. And this is what interested me, because, you know, from our country, I was thinking, I was like, why is corruption worse or better in some places? And he found one of the most interesting correlations, and it was just about how strong community bonds were.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:08Trevor Noah?

  So in places where there were still church choirs and community bowls and clubs, whether it was coffee or debates, social clubs, he found was the biggest correlation

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 53:21Trevor Noah?

  between how the thing worked. And then when he brought it to America, he almost instantly found it was it was true. Where people had bowling clubs is where they generally were less polarized and where they had more community, and they moved in unison in a different way. Doesn't mean they all had the same view. But he found it was because you had spaces where people could sit together, not coming to talk about politics, but because of the in-between time, would just talk about things that might be political. So they would say, to your point, hey, man, you see that hole in the road? What's been going on? And now the person goes like, well, I heard this guy Mayor Pete says he's gonna fix. What do you think of that guy? I don't know, man. What do you think? What do you think? But because you know me and I know you and we're bowling together,

• 54:05Trevor Noah?

  we're more likely to form opinions that are shaped by the collective as opposed to individually, and it's less of an echo chamber.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:12Trevor Noah?

  Right? And that made me rethink everything. I even started quote unquote judging America less because I went maybe America's not polarized, maybe America's just isolated. You know, and he shows it like starts with TV. He goes, as soon as TV came, people just stopped hanging out. And when they stopped hanging out, that's where you start to see the split in American politics. And I was like, oh, man. What if it's not that people don't get along? It's just that people don't hang out.

• 54:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I also think COVID played a big part in exposing people's vulnerabilities.

• 54:42Trevor Noah?

  You're not wrong.

• 54:43Speaker 06

  I think the rise of the of the political strong man, which in most cases would be called a dictator before, has become more prevalent. We see it now with countries that we won't mention their names and we know.

• 54:56Speaker 06

  So we know those countries and the strong man is is and I think it makes sense now because I've been battling with this question is why councillors locally and municipal managers and mayors are not taken seriously? It's because people think there's an overlord somewhere.

• 55:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 06

  That can affect change immediately. Then you go, no, don't worry about him.

• 55:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 06

  He probably doesn't even know there's a pothole in this street, but I do. But we'll have looked at the world now. Like I said, people would have assumed before that Putin, Zelensky, Trump, or Ramaphosa, whoever in Africa, would have been a dictator 10 years ago.

• 55:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 06

  But since now, it looks like if he's a strong man and he's rolling with strong men, it looks like we're safe generally as a population. But I also think

• 55:39Speaker 06

  I think people generally as voters have lost hope in the system. I I see it every time I see when people go, ah, what can we do?

• 55:45Trevor Noah?

  I think that's true everywhere.

• 55:46Speaker 06

  Phrase.

• 55:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 06

  Is is very prevalent everywhere now.

• 55:49Trevor Noah?

  I think that's true everywhere. Yeah.

• 55:50Speaker 06

  What can we do?

• 55:52Speaker 00

  But in a democratic, even a complicated democratic society like ours, I think the answer comes back on us. Like if there's something wrong, either with an individual policy in our system or with the system itself.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  We're responsible. Because who else is gonna, right?

• 56:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  I mean, it's either the strong man.

• 56:12Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Or it's us. And if it's us, if the entire, and I would argue, I have a very different view of what it means to be American than people like J.D. Vance. My view is what it means to be an American has a lot to do with this civic structure we created, this democratic structure we have.

• 56:27Speaker 06

  Go deeper into that.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Well, one way to think of it is this. The fact that we have a word un-American.

• 56:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Which gets abused and, and, and, um, used as a weapon. But the fact that we even have that word is telling. Because I don't know what you could do to be un-French.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  South African.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Or un-South African or un-Japanese.

• 56:50Speaker 06

  But we really don't have that as a thing.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  And I think what it signals is we believe that actually a certain set, a certain creed, I mean, the Declaration, right? The things that are in there. Not some ethno-national affinity, but the creed is what makes America, America. Of course, we came out of a specific place and, and, and have a specific story and heritage and a certain landmass, obviously, but that's not what makes America, America. What makes America, America is our fidelity to this national experiment in democracy.

• 57:21Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  That we've been running for 249 years.

• 57:24Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  And it follows from that, that, that all of us, just in as much as we were Americans, have some responsibility toward that in a way that I think is just different than the way you would say somebody in any other, or other countries I can think of.

• 57:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  You know, uh, relate to their country. Um, and so I, I just think it, it's too easy of an out to say, ah, what can we do? Um, we're in charge. Like, we, the people collectively, are in charge.

• 57:52Speaker 06

  What threat does the strong man pose to those ideals? Like, it almost feels like everywhere we have spoken about a strong man, people have voted for Andrew Tate to be a president.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's bad. And I think the threat is all of these commitments, all of these freedoms that we care about. By the time everybody wakes up and sees that they're gone, it's too late. And this happens. I mean, when strongmen come to power in elections, when they don't just emerge as figures, but then actually win an election.

• 58:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  Very hard to get them out.

• 58:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  I mean, history has shown that again and again and again. And so I think the challenge, especially for an opposition, is to do two things at once. We have to talk about those freedoms and that democratic commitment itself. And talk about the things that are a little more immediate in people's lives. Because the other thing we have learned, definitely the hard way, over the last hundred years, is that these authoritarian systems are systematically worse at taking care of your needs. At the end of the day, they will not help you be able to afford to buy a home. They will not help you get healthcare. They will not deliver these things as well, because they don't have to be responsive to you. They don't have to be responsive to you.

• 59:05Trevor Noah?

  But I think that misses the point of what they're trying to do, actually.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  Right. How do you mean?

• 59:09Trevor Noah?

  I hear what you're saying.

• 59:12Trevor Noah?

  But the more I talk to people, the more I realize that some of the allure of the strong man, some of the allure of the populist, is not the fact that people actually think they're gonna fix it. Some people enjoy the fact that they're gonna break it for everyone. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:27Trevor Noah?

  So there's people in South Africa, there's people in the UK, there's people in America, there's people in Brazil, there's people in wherever, where they go like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't think that person's gonna fix it. But you know what I like? They're gonna break it for everyone.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  It's almost like being on their side means you're in on the joke.

• 59:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because they go, they go, look, I was left behind. I was in that town that had cars that were being, you know, it was a manufacturing city. I was in that town that had jobs. I was in that city that had this, I was, and I don't have it. No one cares about me, no one looks at me. The news only pops up when it's the next election and they're gonna ask my opinion. But no one's here for me. But now there's somebody who's gonna break all of it. And they go, look, I'm already living in the trash.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Trevor Noah?

  You're gonna join me. And I think that's sometimes what we forget. We, we always think of it as a logical push. We go like, this person's not gonna help. Then they're like, yeah, I'm already homeless. I already don't have healthcare. I already don't have a job. My wages are already not keeping up. So I would like them to break it so that we're all on the same page. And I, I actually wonder if that's something you look at, you know, when you talk about the Democrats now. There's a feeling that I hope you're aware of where a lot of people, and this isn't unique to to the United States. When I was in the UK and I was talking to people who voted for the new government now, they go, I mean, they're useless. That's what they go. We voted for this this guy and he has Keir Starmer and he has this, but they're useless.

• 1:00:51Trevor Noah?

  And the main thing that people say when I listen to them in different parts of the world is they go. It feels like liberals are selling an agenda that is beautiful on paper. But they're feckless when they get into power. They'll tell you about healthcare, they'll tell you about education, they'll tell you about jobs. But when they get in, they tell you about like, oh, you you can't just do that overnight and it's so hard and it's this. And and then they'll also tell you things like in America, for instance, we got to get the Republicans on board. We've got to get them on board. Obama, no, no, no, I don't want to do it myself. I gotta wait for Mitch. Mitch has got to come on board, you know, got to get this thing. It's like, why are you waiting? Then when Donald Trump comes in, Donald Trump goes, I'm not waiting for anybody. I'm gonna shut down the border the way I said, then they're like, you're not allowed to. He's like, stop me, you try and stop me.

• 1:01:36Trevor Noah?

  And he goes and he does it. He goes, I'm doing trade, I'm doing tariffs. You can't do that. He's like, bring your courts. I'm gonna do the thing. And whether or not you support Donald Trump or not, you can't deny that people see that and go.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  It is possible.

• 1:01:50Trevor Noah?

  He does the thing that he said he's gonna do, and it may not have the effect that people have promised. And he may not help the people he said he's gonna promise and your taxes are gonna are gonna.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Creates the impression of being decisive and.

• 1:02:00Trevor Noah?

  That's exactly what I mean. And so I wonder if like, the Democrats internally, are you guys having a conversation about how? There is a perception that you just don't like do a thing. It it feels like you guys are very good at like, you know, the homework side of it.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  He made everyone look like a bureaucrat.

• 1:02:16Trevor Noah?

  He did, actually. You're not wrong. He did make everyone look like a bureaucrat.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we need to be able to demonstrate how your life gets different materially and rather quickly if we're in charge instead of them. And part of that's standing up to what they're doing that's wrong. It's like you are gonna lose your healthcare or pay more in your premiums. Like now, people are paying more in their premiums now because turns out he doesn't care about you and he's taking the money and he's giving it to the wealthy. But it's not enough to just point out poke holes in what they're doing. We have to be able to say, look, if you put us in and you give us enough political room to. Implement this agenda, here's what we're gonna deliver for you. And I think it's a good list. Like the list of things we wanna deliver. Like higher wages. More housing. Paid family leave, this is something every country has. Except us.

• 1:03:04Trevor Noah?

  Wow. But let's pause on like a few, let's just pause on the housing one, for instance. One of the criticisms that I think a lot of people correctly level at the Democrats as they go. There are states where Democrats are ruling from top to bottom. Why do they have some of the worst housing crises in America? Like, why do they have some of the highest homeless populations? Why do they, you know what I mean? So it's like, I think that's the thing that a lot of people butt up against is they go, I, no one is against housing. No one will say, I don't want housing for people, no one is against. But I think the question people will ask is they'll go, yes, beyond the promise, why does it seem like? And again, this is why I'm not in all the states. But some might ask you, they might go like, but Pete Buttigieg, why does it seem like

• 1:03:50Trevor Noah?

  the Democrats aren't able to do this thing in the state where they're running all of the levers? Why can't they get housing going? Why can't they get better schools going? Like, what's your response to them in that situation?

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  There's so many, there's so many different answers that are all true and that are important. One is that, yes, like sometimes we just get in our own way. I mean, I saw that with a kind of a, it's kind of a proceduralism, a kind of a fetish for process. That all these processes that are there for good reason, but the result has been a federal government. I felt this when I was trying to build things around the country as a, as Transportation Secretary. The process is more set up to stop a project from going wrong than to make sure the project happens, period.

• 1:04:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  Right? And so there's so many checks that by the end, it's taken so many years that it's doubled in cost and you can't get it done. Now, sometimes we were able to get through that, other times it was really tough, so that's real. Um, but another way to answer the question is to point to the places where we are getting results or did get results, either locally or nationally. And I think because we are doing a healthy process of questioning some of our own policies and habits, sometimes missing the fact that we also need to vigorously defend the things that we got right. And that's true at the local level where you have, um, Denver, where there's Mayor Mike Johnson, who has gotten extraordinary results on housing.

• 1:05:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  In a way that mixes compassion for people experiencing homelessness with the need to make sure that it is safe and clean on the streets and expanding just the affordability and access to housing.

• 1:05:19Trevor Noah?

  Or DC had a great, I think more houses per capita than Texas was building.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Or on something like safety, you know, a place like Boston.

• 1:05:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Where you got the low, one of the reasons it didn't work when Republicans tried to bring in Michelle Wu to a committee and kind of beat her up on public safety was the lowest murder rate in 75 years. So she can explain like, here's how we got that done. But there's also a third set of answers. It's also true that has to do with all the ways that when Democrats came to power, they were still stopped by Republicans, right? And the question is, is the answer to that, that you just blow through the way Trump is? Well, the truth is, no Democrat in my lifetime has amassed that kind of power.

• 1:06:04Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, the total power over government, right? Because the courts and the Congress are unwilling to constrain him, even when they know he's doing something wrong.

• 1:06:15Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:06:17Trevor Noah?

  So you're basically saying like, Trump has everyone in line, really?

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:06:22Trevor Noah?

  Not just amassing the power, but he has, he has the power in line with him.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Right. The problem is you say that and then it starts to sound attractive to some people like, great. All we need is to do that on our side. We just need to have somebody, some Democrat who's willing to break all the laws and have total control over, you know, all government and then we'll do our stuff. And that's not the right answer because sometimes the rule of law is part of what we're trying to protect itself. In addition to the things that it, that it might shape or stop. But look, the appeal of the strong man is always, I'm going to get results. I mean, Mussolini's, you know, I'm going to make the trains run on time. But by the way, importantly, he didn't, he did not succeed in making the trains run on time. But he built that reputation.

• 1:06:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  And so the other thing we have to do is really talk in terms of concrete results and show that they're related. If you have a corrupt government, if you have a corrupt president.

• 1:07:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Who's making money on crypto or accepting jumbo jets from Emir's or whatever it is. That actually winds up being related to the fact that your healthcare premium just went up. Cause it means he's not accountable to anybody and he can just do things that make that happen. It's related to the fact you're under 65 and you're going in for a COVID shot and you can't get one. Like, I actually think that's the related, you know, obviously, in the, in the immediate sense, that's because RFK did that, changed the eligibility for, for, for people. But in a way, that's related to an administration that doesn't think it has to answer to anybody. And an administration that doesn't have to answer to anybody is also going to leave us weak and unprepared in the face of the things that we're actually, that are going to change everything. This is where I think about AI all the time.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Like, we have an education secretary who has given speeches referring to what she calls A1, which means she's unaware that the acronym is AI.

• 1:08:05Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  That's, she's...

• 1:08:07Trevor Noah?

  No, the person's reading a speech and says like,

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  A1.

• 1:08:09Trevor Noah?

  When A1 comes into our lives.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  We gotta make sure that we're dealing with like the implications of A1 in our schools, something like that.

• 1:08:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Secretary. Which means she doesn't know what, that it's AI, which means she doesn't know that it stands for artificial intelligence, which means she's unaware of the most important development affecting US education since the invention of the pencil. And I think that's related to the corruption of the president, because in a system of healthy checks and balances, the moment that happened, the president would be shamed into replacing that person.

• 1:08:38Trevor Noah?

  Ah, they would be.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:08:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  So, these things are related. The challenge for my party is to talk about them at the same time.

• 1:08:47Trevor Noah?

  It seems like an, not a, not a, not an unscalable mountain, but it, you know, it's, it's, it's so interesting to hear these things. Here's what's, here's what's always got me is,

• 1:09:01Trevor Noah?

  when I look at South Africa and its issues, and many smaller, smaller countries, in terms of like their GDP and, and what they actually have going, I go, man, I understand why this developing nation is experiencing what they're experiencing.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Trevor Noah?

  What always shocks me is how America will have third world problems with a first world budget.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:20Trevor Noah?

  That always blows my mind. Like, I'm shocked that the issues Americans have are the same issues that South Africans have with the budget that America has.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  But I think there's one word that explains most of it, if not all of it, and the word is inequality. So, there's so much research that shows, even if you take two countries that have the same average GDP.

• 1:09:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  The same general level of development. The one that has a higher level of inequality will have more, will have worse outcomes on everything from violence to public health, even on average. And you mentioned Robert Putnam famously wrote Bowling Alone. He wrote another book, co-wrote another book that's less famous called The Upswing, which basically, the whole book is written around a chart that is the, the level of inequality in this country. And you can see all of these, they kind of, if you start the clock in the 40s or even in the 60s, you see a comparatively more equal society.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  And then you see it go more and more unequal until you have this explosion of inequality that we're living with now. And you can correlate all these other developing world problems that we seem to have here around social instability and violence and health, all of them, get worse pretty much on the same trajectory as the inequality gets worse. And then, of course, it becomes self-reinforcing because the more you have that economic inequality, the more you start to have inequality and power. Yep. And that can be used to reinforce the conditions that lead to the economic inequality. And this is yet another reason why I think we're not paying enough attention to AI. Everybody's paying attention to AI as tech. Yeah. But I think we need to pay more attention to AI as a question of political economy

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  because it can do one of two things. It can either create so much wealth that there is enough to go around and all of us could have a four-day work week and more money in our pocket and it could alleviate inequality. Right. Both by finding the right way to share the dollars and cents wealth that it creates and by taking the, the benefits of it in terms of like a level of tutoring that up until now has only been available to a wealthy kid and now you just get it. That's the dream, right? That's the dream. That's one way things could unfold. The other way things could unfold is it makes these inequalities of wealth and power even more extreme. It concentrates the wealth into the hands of the people who have the means,

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  not just to start these tech companies, but to own the physical plant, you know, the computers and the, and the land and the energy that goes into them. And they're making all the money. Uh, and you know, more wealthy and established and powerful players have more control over the AI and it unfolds that way. Like, one of those two things is going to happen. And the decision over which of those two things happen, in my opinion, is mostly not a technology decision. It's a political decision, a set of policy decisions about what we do next.

• 1:12:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's uh it's similar to what they discussed a while ago in. It was either in Sweden or it was in Finland, one of the two. And they basically discussed taxing robots in a factory. And people at the time, you know, especially outside of those countries, like, that's crazy. How can you tax a robot? And they went, no, no, nothing is crazy here. Because remember, we have to go down to the fundamental principle of what tax is trying to do and how it's trying to do it. Yes. Right? And when you start thinking of laws through that lens, you start to realize that every law is crazy until it's a law. Yes.

• 1:12:59Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:59Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:13:00Speaker 06

  It's a wild idea.

• 1:13:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like even the idea of weekends wasn't a thing. You used to work every single day of the week. And then at some point, unions fought and were like, man, we got to take days off. Now, the idea that you wouldn't work, that you would work seven days a week is now the crazy idea. And so I think, I think that's, that's the question is like, what are we able to do that seems crazy now? Yes. That could define the new normal tomorrow. And that sort of makes me think of all the, the, the, the people running for office in some way, shape or form, who are Democrats, who are very progressive and are doing really well, right? New York City, right now, Zohran Mamdani. Like, you can say what you want about the feasibility or not of his plans and ideas. Because everyone can poke holes in everyone's feasibilities, right?

• 1:13:45Trevor Noah?

  But the, the movement behind him. Yeah. People on the ground, black, white, young, old, you name it, saying, well, not rich, but everyone else going. This guy? Yeah. I like what he's trying to do. Yeah. And, and you see them mobilized behind him, you know, you, you see the Democratic Party having, having some of its lowest approval ratings in years, despite not being in power, which is rare in America. But Bernie Sanders bringing out some of the biggest crowds he's ever brought out, you know, and, and we, we, we talked to him about it on the podcast. And I was wondering, like, from your perspective, as somebody who's been in an administration, has been very close to like the upper workings of the, of the Democratic Party. Is there an internal reckoning with where the establishment Democrats sit?

• 1:14:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And where it seems like the voters of the Democrats sit? Because it seems like there's a big disconnect there, like Andrew Cuomo for me. Is the worst example of it. You say, I'm a Democrat, you're a Democrat. Okay, let's go into a primary to see who the voters want. The voters say, we want Zoran Mamdani. You then go, all right, I guess I'm gonna run independently. But it's like, wait, what do you mean? That creates a distrust in a system as well. Because it's like, but you said you were a Democrat. No, no, no, I only said that when I thought you'd vote for me. Now I'm an independent. So now you're an independent supported by Trump? Were you ever a Democrat then? Like, like, when you, when you're working, you know, internally, when you're having these conversations,

• 1:15:11Trevor Noah?

  is there a reckoning with where the Democratic Party is and where its voters are?

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, to be clear, there's not some like official meeting of all the Democrats that like, or if there is, I'm not invited. So I think these, these things happen in like a more diffuse way. But yeah, I think that conversation has to happen. And I think it's, it's playing out right now because there's a lot of kind of muscle memory in the Democratic Party about like, well, this happens, so we gotta do that. And here's what we're used to. But I think what you're describing of going back to first principles and saying, okay, it doesn't have to be this way. What if we start from scratch? And I think the appeal of Mamdani, and I agree with some of this stuff and I disagree with some of this stuff. But the point is, he has aroused a sense of hope by saying, we can solve these problems.

• 1:15:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  With big ideas. And I, the best leaders I see in the party, many of whom are on the left, but many of whom are more moderate. It's not about, it's not only about how left you are.

• 1:16:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  But they have a level of imagination about what needs to happen that gets back to the first principles. See, the, the left likes to think that we're the intellectual ones. But I actually believe the right, over the last like 50 years, has been much more systematic.

• 1:16:26Trevor Noah?

  Definitely.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  About connecting like big ideas, bold ideas, sometimes crazy ideas, through this process that gets them into the mainstream, finds politicians willing to, to give them a try, pushes, pushes the Overton window, pushes the political system until eventually that happens. And that's why they're able to sometimes, I mean,

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  Demolishing the right to choose in this country, that was a 50 year project on their part, right? The stuff in Project 2025, it wasn't just a laundry list of crazy policy proposals. It was the result of a whole kind of apparatus doing very big, deep thinking, most of which, of course, I think is horribly wrong. But they were really thinking about these things in a very basic way.

• 1:17:07Trevor Noah?

  It feels like they have a room and then the Democrats don't.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think they are more.

• 1:17:11Trevor Noah?

  Like in a weird way, you just said, there's not one room where all the Democrats meet. And but it seems like the Republicans were like, hey, let's meet in a room and have like this collective idea that moves us. But but but we move on from that. Give me an idea of like what you agree with on Zorn and what you don't agree with. I'd love to know because you were a mayor, you know, so you actually ran a city. So like, give me something where you go like, oh, I agree with that.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think, uh, I mean, first of all, just the the focus on affordability. Like, we have to prioritize that and make sure that that you can afford to live in this city. Makes a ton of sense. I think the stuff he's talked about, uh, getting, uh, mental health resources out to crisis situations. I don't think that means you get rid of the police. I think it means that you understand that the police are not the best. Uh, it's not even fair to the police to expect them to be the the kind of first resort responder.

• 1:17:56Trevor Noah?

  Same reason police don't fight fires. It's like, yeah, it's like it's different. Mental health crime is a different thing.

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  Completely. And I think he's shown an understanding of that, right? Other things, I'm kind of skeptical of the like government grocery store concept.

• 1:18:07Trevor Noah?

  What? So you see, this is what I'm intrigued with. What is it about that? I'd love to know.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  Because there are sets of things that should be done by government. Um, and then there are things that I think should be done by the private sector.

• 1:18:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  And, uh, running a grocery store is a good example. I think the government needs to come in where there are these big collective action problems or found it like, like basic research, good example. So my favorite example of this is is the iPhone to talk about the deliver, the the division of labor. Yeah, like, I don't think the federal government could ever like design and sell a smartphone that you and I would want to buy. Like, I think only a company could do that to drive that level of innovation and use the competitive pressures of capitalism to fashion a product uh, in that way that eventually becomes affordable for people. That's just, that's what companies do well, but.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  If the federal government hadn't literally invented the internet, which no company or even consortium of companies could have done, like that took taxpayer-funded, public research to do. If there's no internet, there's no smartphone. So the areas where I believe government needs to lean in more are areas where there's some, there's some reason to think that it will only work if government leans in. I think that's true to a point in health insurance. I'm not somebody who believes we should abolish any private health insurance, but I do think there needs to be a public option, a public, we call it Medicare for all who want it, like not Medicare whether you want it or not, but like especially if people are going

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  to keep changing jobs, like you need benefits that aren't just dependent on your company that you work for, right?

• 1:19:56Speaker 00

  But I'm not somebody who believes like every hospital and every health insurance system should be somebody who works for the government. Other situations, and this is why I was an aggressive regulator of airlines. I don't think we should have a government-run airline. Some countries do. I don't think that works. But I also don't think the market for airlines is exactly like a healthy, normal, competitive market. It's got huge barriers to entry. It's got all these things that help to explain why you only have a handful of airlines. So the answer to me was, okay, this should be done by private companies, but the government should very energetically lean in and regulate those companies so that they can't abuse their customers.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  And my sense is that when it gets to groceries, which is a highly competitive and very, very low profit margin business,

• 1:20:49Speaker 00

  you're not going to find some like market inefficiency because like grocers are, have these like monopoly, especially in the city context, right? Where there are so many different, so many different competitors. What I do believe in is making sure you have the right kind of subsidy structure so people can afford school, can afford food. I just don't know that I would route that through the plumbing of a government-owned and operated store. But look, he wins. He gets the opportunity to like demonstrate, again, what I loved about being mayor was some ideas were popular in my city, some of them were unpopular in my city. I was willing to attach myself to certain ideas and live and die by whether they worked. And the great thing is you actually get a chance in local government to show versus tell that this is going to work. And he can humble his critics if he's right and do these things.

• 1:21:35Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this. Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads, so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid.

• 1:22:21Trevor Noah?

  It's everything you already love about YouTube, just somehow even better. Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is Smart Downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ah, I forgot to download anything!" And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded." Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart Downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch, so even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear.

• 1:23:04Trevor Noah?

  If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. I think one of the things you realize when you start caring about clothes is that simple doesn't have to mean basic. Because a t-shirt is a t-shirt until you find the right t-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, "No, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve." And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their Pima Cotton Lux Touch t-shirts, and it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it.

• 1:23:48Trevor Noah?

  The fit is great, and it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit. You can throw on a jacket, a sweater, whatever you want, but everything works because you started with the right thing. That's what I like about Quince. It feels premium without feeling like you're trying too hard. It's effortless. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Hello over there.

• 1:24:30Trevor Noah?

  Oh, and if Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was What Now with Trevor Noah. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:24:46Trevor Noah?

  It's funny, I, I think there's a part of me that agrees with you. And there's a part of me that disagrees with you in terms of the government and its ability.

• 1:24:59Trevor Noah?

  I think of it through the lens of, I don't know, let's start with some of the bigger utilities. You look at the United Kingdom, like the railway.

• 1:25:10Trevor Noah?

  I don't think I'm crazy when I say that the UK's railway system has become more expensive, less affordable, less predictable, less, you know what I mean? When it became privatized. And I'm not an economics major, but from everything I've read, fundamentally, if you look at what economics tells you, you know, you're trying to make as much money as possible, you're trying to get the profits that you can. The argument is at some point it gets down to zero. And I mean, you like really, you're a brain in this world. I've, you know, I've seen your, your resume and everything you've studied. But it feels like.

• 1:25:47Trevor Noah?

  Corporations and the way they exist is sort of at odds with the public good. So let's go back to the iPhone, right? I don't believe that a government couldn't make an iPhone. I actually don't believe that. I think governments and the way we see them now could not make an iPhone. Because to your point and what we said earlier, they've become bloated, they've become slow, they've become corrupt, etc. But I don't think, to me, I go like, I don't think that means a government could not make an iPhone. I just think it means that the way some of the governments around the world operate now, they would not, right? So here's an example. Let's look at Brazil right now. And this could change. That's why I say I'm not an expert, but this could change. Brazil right now, on a government level, has rolled out a digital payment um system

• 1:26:33Trevor Noah?

  that works in the country, right? And basically what they've done is they've made it so that everybody in the country can have a bank account just having a phone. We've got similar products in in South Africa and in in Southern Africa. Uh, in Pesa and Nigeria and those places. Yeah, but this is not run by a company. It's the government. And what they did is they said, we are going to be your bank and your banker. We're gonna make sure that you have access to banking, which is one of the worst things you can do to a person when they're not banked. They just kicked out of a system, right? They said, we're gonna make sure that doesn't happen to you. You sell things on the beach, you have a little, you know, you sell food, whatever it is. You now have a bank, you now can build credit, you now have something that you can work towards, but we will manage that as a government.

• 1:27:18Trevor Noah?

  And the most impressive thing that they've done is they've basically made it that almost every single transaction is free. You pay me, I pay you. That doesn't cost you anything. Because they've come to realize, and we should all know this, the costs that a lot of banks tell us about are basically false. You know what I mean? Now, I'm not saying they were always false. There was a time when it cost a lot of money to send money to somebody else, but we've got systems now that can do these things for you, right? But now because of what Brazil has done, they've created a whole new market. And now the legacy players who are companies, they have a choice to make. They either get in line and offer a competitive deal, or they're just not gonna have customers. Yeah.

• 1:28:00Trevor Noah?

  When I look at what companies have done, look at, look at South Africa and most parts of Africa, right? We pay some of the highest data rates in the world.

• 1:28:09Trevor Noah?

  And we've seen time and time again, with every study that's done, whether it's, you know, the World Trade Organization or the UN. People who do not have access to the internet. Yeah. Have exponentially less upward mobility, because it's, it's the world we live in now. But then who sets the price of the data? Who chooses how much you pay to connect to the internet? It's a private company. And the government can say, oh, it should be within, it should be within. But we've seen what companies can do. You've seen what airlines can do yourself, you, you, you know what I mean? And so I don't think that governments can't do it. And I think governments should be in the business of doing it and doing it properly. Because New York, for me as an example. I, I try and ask these questions to random people just to see what they'll tell me.

• 1:28:51Trevor Noah?

  But one of the most interesting answers a grocery store owner gave me in New York was, he said, I don't think Zoran Mamdani's local grocers are gonna do well as a business in any way. But he said, but I do like that if the government becomes the owner of grocery stores, they can step into the fray of grocery stores and pricing and monopolies in terms of like, um, the suppliers. And they said, they can fight an outsized fight that we can't as grocery store owners. Yeah. You as Eugene own a grocery store, you as Mayor Pete own a grocery store, you can't really do much. But if the government owns a grocery store, the same way if the government owns. The purchasing power. The purchasing power, but also the power, power. Good luck screwing over a government and getting away with it in that way. You know what I mean?

• 1:29:36Trevor Noah?

  If the government says, we're gonna buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies, they can't come in with the same like, oh, your insulin costs. No, the government goes like, what are you doing? And, and that's, that's what I mean by like, the feasibility. I think sometimes we might think of it as, can the government run a business or not run a business well? I don't care if a government can run a business for profit, but I do like the government being involved in an industry so that the industry can't just run off and go crazy. You know what I mean?

• 1:30:03Speaker 00

  I I think to me a lot of it has to do with the kind of business or the kind of industry.

• 1:30:06Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, completely. Don't get me wrong.

• 1:30:07Speaker 00

  So and maybe I think you and I might read the grocery case differently because I'm just thinking about so much of the businesses about engaging like all of these different suppliers to get all of these different things on a shelf and the way supply chains work and the way retail works and then the margins being as tiny as they are.

• 1:30:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:30:21Speaker 00

  But to your point, I mean, an example that's not unlike what you're describing with with the payment system is something I've seen cities do that I do think makes sense, which is creating a municipal competitor to internet service providers.

• 1:30:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, this is exactly what I mean.

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  Chattanooga was the first place to do it.

• 1:30:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  And it turns out even just the existing ISPs, there's prices magically come down.

• 1:30:44Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:30:45Speaker 00

  The moment that they threat, they they they face some kind of competition, right? But that's because there's that local monopoly.

• 1:30:50Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no. Then we are. No, no. Then I think we are closer to it.

• 1:30:52Speaker 00

  So yeah, I'm not saying like government can't do well in a tech context.

• 1:30:54Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  I'm just looking for the things that are more like networks or platforms or utilities or something where

• 1:30:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  you really just cannot expect market forces to do much good.

• 1:31:03Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  Versus the ones where you we have more experience with like competition driving prices down and and you know.

• 1:31:10Trevor Noah?

  Like I found it wild that during COVID, the government couldn't pay people in America into their bank accounts. That was that was just wild to discover about America. I was like, wait, what?

• 1:31:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. And look, sometimes the answer to these things is also related to corporate power. So another thing that the Trump administration has killed is direct file. You know, the last administration was where he was kind of a pilot. Some people had it, some people didn't, but it was growing. Where you could just file your own taxes. It seems like a pretty basic thing. Most people in most developed countries can do this.

• 1:31:36Trevor Noah?

  Even in developing, South Africa, you can file your own taxes.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Trevor Noah?

  Developing even.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  And here you can't. Is that because we, the American people, couldn't figure out a way to make that possible? No. It's because there are companies that make a lot of money as the middleman.

• 1:31:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  Who figured out how to block getting that done, right? And they're they're having their way in this administration. So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm not going to be the person to say that like innovation only happens if you let the private sector do anything it wants.

• 1:32:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Speaker 00

  I just I think I draw the line on that balance a little bit differently.

• 1:32:04Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I understand what you're saying. I think you clarified it. Let's talk a little bit about the world, the geopolitics. And as as we wrap this up, I want to I want to know where you see yourself moving in the future. As you know, Pete looks at the future of America and America looks at itself in the world. There's no denying that Donald Trump has completely upended how America sees the world and how the world sees America.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Trevor Noah?

  You know, allies are no longer like ally allies.

• 1:32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Trevor Noah?

  You know, countries like India are on like a blacklist. Brazil's on a blacklist because they are prosecuting somebody who tried to stage a coup. Canada is always, you know, in an adversarial relationship or a moment with the, it, it, it just feels like America isn't the, you know, that rock that it once proclaimed itself to be. And I think how many countries saw it?

• 1:32:54Trevor Noah?

  When you look at the geopolitical landscape right now,

• 1:32:59Trevor Noah?

  what do you think the future of America is? If this carries on for the next like four years, like if, if it just keeps going the way it's going, what do you think it does to America that Americans don't realize? And what do you think it, like, how, how do you think it affects the world in a way that the world hasn't yet thought of?

• 1:33:19Speaker 00

  I mean, I think it's going to take a lifetime to, even in a best case scenario, it will take a lifetime to establish some of the trust that has been blown up uh, between other countries in this country by the Trump administration. And and also, I think we have to face the fact that the, the whole world system that we have all inherited has been showing its age for some time.

• 1:33:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Speaker 00

  Like this emerged out of the, the power dynamics and the values that were most uh prominent or, or, or um had their greatest moment of privacy immediately, primacy immediately after World War Two.

• 1:33:57Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:57Speaker 00

  Right? And like the last of the people who experienced World War Two as adults are, are passing out of uh, uh, out of this world right now. Like we're just in a very different

• 1:34:09Trevor Noah?

  world.

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  world. And so it's another example of a realm where I don't think we're saying like, let's just try to get Trump out, come in and stitch back together all of these systems and alliances and international institutions the way they used to work and hope that'll get us through another eighty years.

• 1:34:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  Um, I think the future is one where we reconnect with the

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  Importance of values as well as interests in American policy. And that's part of what I think is at stake for the rest of the world. So my view is leadership matters, leadership by people, but also leadership by countries. And somebody will be leading the way things unfold for the next five, 10, 20 years in the world. And I really want that not to be people like Putin. Or people like Xi Jinping. I want that to develop on terms, it's not that I want the world to look like and think like America, but I think there are the value, the American values that are most worth defending.

• 1:35:13Speaker 00

  Are most worth defending because they also express universal values. I think it was the most credible thing about what we did do and we set up the institutions we did, like the UN. In, in that, that period.

• 1:35:28Speaker 00

  So what does it actually look like? I mean, we can't be. We, we have this America first mantra, but it's really kind of like an America alone.

• 1:35:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  I would like to see a vision that's about America in first place, meaning America strives to compete and outdo every other country. And which means we care about what the other countries are doing. And when they're ahead of us on something, we try to learn from them, catch up and get back in first place.

• 1:35:55Speaker 00

  But it's not by having our, it's not by stepping on people's faces as we go. Because that really does amount to America alone. And in ways that we can't even guess, sitting here in 2025.

• 1:36:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:08Speaker 00

  That will make every American less safe, I think.

• 1:36:13Trevor Noah?

  Let's say you were president. And you're stepping into the White House is post-Trump, there's been another election. Things have gone well. Let's say you're president and, and you look at this world that lies out there. I won't ask you like sort of what you would do, there's policy and things change and whatever. What I'm, what I'm, what I found myself, myself most interested in is.

• 1:36:39Trevor Noah?

  Does America and do American leaders ever think about how to grapple with the world that they have created that they're now fighting against? And the reason I ask it is like this, like Putin is a great example. You can't talk about Vladimir Putin without talking about how Putin becomes Putin. And you can't talk about how Putin becomes Putin without looking at how Russia, the way we know it, becomes Russia. You can't talk about how Russia becomes Russia the way it does without talking about how America worked towards Russia. Now, I'm not excusing Putin in any way, shape or form, but I'm going, man, when you look at the Cold War and how America played it, a lot of it was like bullying in a way that didn't bring Russia along.

• 1:37:24Trevor Noah?

  And then you look at like, you know, the G20 and you look at all of these decisions that America made and you're like, ooh. Doesn't seem like America made a lot of the best decisions to bring Russia along, right? Because America at the time was so paranoid about communism. Yeah. It cast aside all of its values. You know, America was like, we'll give anyone money anywhere in the world if they're going to help us fight communism. We'll prop up dictators, we will overthrow leaders as long as it stops communism. And it's like, oh, well, if you're going to give up your values when it suits you, then are they your values? And so like, that's one example, you know. Um, another one I think of in the world is I go, you know, we, we talk about like issues now.

• 1:38:04Trevor Noah?

  I was thinking the other day, I was like, America doesn't have a particularly good track record of sort of like helping the, the movements that society would agree are the movements that are worth helping. Like apartheid was a good example. I'm not saying you were there, by the way, I'm not pointing at you like you did it.

• 1:38:22Trevor Noah?

  No, but like, I was thinking the other day, I was like, America didn't do a good job during apartheid. Yeah. It's not like America was like, we're gonna help you, no. When apartheid was fully in, like in full force, America was like, yep, seems pretty good to us. They welcomed South African leaders, none of their visas were blocked, none of them were restricted, no sanctions. America was one of the last to even like entertain the idea of sanctions, right? And then when apartheid ended, the Clinton administration, just so we're clear, there's not like a Trump or anything. The Clinton administration gave out thousands of visas to white South Africans. Only. Only to help them escape, I guess, because they were like, what's gonna happen to them?

• 1:39:05Trevor Noah?

  But it's like, wait, wait, wait, you were rescuing the oppressors? Hmm. That's a weird one. You're like, you, the Titanic is sinking and you fly in and you rescue the iceberg? Wait, like, wait, what just happened here? That was good.

• 1:39:21Trevor Noah?

  That was so, so, so, the iceberg, cause.

• 1:39:27Speaker 00

  See what you did there?

• 1:39:28Trevor Noah?

  No, but I mean, like, I, I, I think, I think of it in, in all of these instances. I, I go like, even now with like Israel, Palestine, I'm like, man, you know, week one after October seventh, people are going, well, you know, Israel, I mean, they've got to defend. Uh, week ten, well, uh, week a hundred, and then people are like, man, wow, at what point? And then like, most recently, we see a strike that happens in Qatar, and we don't know the inner workings of things, so I'm not gonna assume anything. But I, but I wonder if there's like a misalignment there between how America portrays itself? And how Ameri- how America acts in, in the world, you know, like even World War Two is an example. America for a long time was like, ah, man, that's none of our business.

• 1:40:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:40:11Trevor Noah?

  That's none of our business.

• 1:40:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Trevor Noah?

  People were like, yeah, but the, the Jews are being persecuted. America's like, yeah, but that's none of our business. And then when Pearl, Pearl Harbor happens, America goes like, all right, now it's our business.

• 1:40:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:40:23Trevor Noah?

  And now again, please don't get me wrong, I'm not diminishing America's contribution in the fights for democracies time and time again. But I wonder if, as a president, let's say you would step in? And would you be able to grapple with the inconsistency in how America applies its values? In and around the world in fighting for freedom or not fighting for it?

• 1:40:44Speaker 00

  I think not because we're Americans, but because we're a people. We are inconsistent in our affinities and our, the stories we tell ourselves and the commitments we come to. I also think that we can be imperfect in our fidelity to our ideas at home or abroad.

• 1:41:04Speaker 00

  And those ideas are still the right ideas and they're still the ones that ought to guide us. And I think that's true at home as we question like, how much is our democracy even a democracy right now? It doesn't mean we're on the wrong track trying to be one. It just means we're further away from one than we wish. And I think that's true for America's conduct around the world. All of that is definitely the experience of America and the countries that have had to deal, or the peoples who have had to deal with America. Right. As at best, a very flawed bearer of the flag of liberty and freedom around the world. And at the same time, I think that

• 1:41:44Speaker 00

  our belief in that, however imperfect, however, we haven't always been true to it at home and abroad, is the most important fact about us. And so I think leadership in America has to do the work of trying to center us in that while we're being buffeted by all these other things. So there were a lot of folks who were queasy about various countries in the course of the Cold War that we supported, but really believed it was still somehow the right thing to do for reasons of hard security. I think a lot of that was wrong, but

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  that balance, nobody can claim that that's ever going to be easy, but what we no longer have is the excuse of not knowing how it can go wrong. That's true. So the next president or just the next generation of American leadership arrives with the benefit of a lot of hindsight. And I say this belonging to the generation that was really shaped by nine 11 and also by the Iraq war. I mean, that definitely shaped my understanding of politics. It also shaped my life because I wound up serving in the Afghanistan war.

• 1:42:49Speaker 00

  And honestly, that was another example, right? Where for nine 11, it was the first time for a lot of people that a chain of events had happened somewhere else actually was visited upon us concretely and shook everybody out of this idea that that was just, you know, that we weren't going to be pulled into the consequences of what was happening abroad, some of which we had had a hand in getting to be the way it was. Yeah. Because it's a world that we made.

• 1:43:15Speaker 00

  I would like to believe if we get it right, if we have the right fidelity to the values that actually matter, we do this next time around if people are still returning our calls as a country with more of a partnership, with more of an actual partnership with other states and peoples that are sincerely committed to those same values. And that around that, we can build an architecture of values, but also of security.

• 1:43:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Speaker 00

  That that actually works. But that's gonna be really, really hard. And it's gonna be that much harder because the level of trust people have for America has been laid so low by what people are seeing from both our conduct toward other countries and just the way things are going at home right now.

• 1:43:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because when I, let's say, when I look at a situation like exactly what you're saying, looking at the relationship with others, other countries, their representatives and their people. Again, I don't know the inner workings, so I'm only saying what I've read and what I've seen.

• 1:44:14Trevor Noah?

  You have a delegation of host, of negotiators who are in Qatar, right? They're there to negotiate, whatever it is, but they negotiate. Israel kills them, bam, and says, yeah, we killed them. This is not even like a, I'm saying, they said, no, we killed them. I found myself going, just on a basic level, and maybe I'm a very stupid, simple person, it's possible. I went, if you kill negotiators, isn't that the opposite of wanting to negotiate? Like, you know what I mean? That's like, this is, that's kicking the guy in the pit in Sparta. It's like, yeah, that's the guy who's come to deliver the message and you won't get peace without.

• 1:44:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Trevor Noah?

  And so I was thinking to myself, I was going like, okay, so if, if you, if you are in power, if you're a leader in, in that type of situation, at what point does an ally stop being an ally? Or how do you define the allyship of another country? Is it when their interests are completely aligned with yours? Or is it when their actions are completely unaligned with yours? You know? Like, how far would Israel have to go for you as a president to say, I can't say that you are an ally anymore?

• 1:45:21Speaker 00

  But I think what happens in, you know, that happened as we're taping, like, I think that's just hitting the nail. So I don't know all of the, we're still learning what happened in that strike. But everything you just said makes sense to me about what it means to blow up negotiators. And it feels like every few days, or every day, there's another example of this.

• 1:45:42Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:45:43Speaker 00

  So I think the job of leadership is to say, okay, if this is our ally, or whatever you want to call it, we are the most important country to that country.

• 1:45:52Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:45:52Speaker 00

  We are the most important country to Israel.

• 1:45:54Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:45:54Speaker 00

  Right. What does it actually look like to draw a line between saying, we have a foundational commitment to this country being able to defend itself from people who are committed to its annihilation, which I think is the bedrock of the US relationship with Israel, to have fidelity to that and also say, when you do certain things, we're not going to sponsor you to do that.

• 1:46:20Speaker 00

  And to say, as your most important ally, friend, sponsor, whatever you want to call it, there's going to be more than pretty please. Like, we are going to find ways to shape your behavior. I think that's what leadership needs to do. And I don't know what, I don't know who the next leader in the US will be, or for that matter, the next leader of Israel, or what kind of leadership the Palestinians or the Arab states will have. And I actually think the further this goes, the more important the ultimate role of Arab states will be in whether there is any form of a two-state solution that's even possible, or whatever is about to happen next. But I do think that is an example where there are certain things that we still bear fidelity to, because there are reasons, not just tactical, strategic reasons,

• 1:47:04Speaker 00

  but moral reasons why the United States has decided from the beginning to be there to make sure that a country whose neighbors want it annihilated is not annihilated.

• 1:47:18Speaker 00

  And of course, that is born out of the circumstances that were present in the world at the time that the Jews sought that homeland. And at the same time, say, just because that is true, and however unshakable that is, this is not on, we're not on board with this.

• 1:47:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:32Speaker 00

  And we're going to think of more than just uh, saying this is unfortunate, but actually do something to change it.

• 1:47:41Trevor Noah?

  It's so difficult. And you know why it's so difficult is because humans bear the brunt, like civilians bear the brunt of the decisions of a few men, just generally speaking.

• 1:47:55Trevor Noah?

  As I've been, you know, watching what's happening in the now, I'd like to go back and try and read different times to see if there's any correlations or any, anything that gives me a certain insight. Because when things are happening now, they're happening now. You have to react to them. You don't have perspective. You don't have hindsight. Sometimes when you go back, you read something and it's a lot more clear. You never know what fully happened, but you have a better idea. I found it particularly interesting that a lot of the language the US uses now with Israel is similar to the language it used with South Africa during apartheid. It would say, I mean, we, we have to let these people defend themselves and we have to assure ourselves that the Afrikaner is safe and, do you know what I mean? It's interesting how defending the implied threat

• 1:48:40Trevor Noah?

  against these oppressors was more important than defending the actual threat that was happening to the people at the time. And I, that's something that I think, and that's where, funny enough, I think when we come back to voters and people. When you look at like the democratic base, I'm not saying Kamala Harris lost or didn't lose because of one specific thing, but there's no denying there was a huge swath of the voting population, democratic voters, especially young people who said, yo, man, we don't want our country, we don't want to be aiming in this direction. This is not what we're aiming, this is not what we see America doing. And it was interesting that the democratic leadership didn't seem to come on board with that. It felt like that was the 70-30 split, but just within a democratic party, where they were like, no, we're not on board with this completely.

• 1:49:25Trevor Noah?

  How do you, maybe bridge the divide is the wrong, the wrong phrase, but how do you, how do you make sense of that disconnect? You know, where, is it because young voters or voters in the democratic party don't know as much as the people, the leaders do? Or is it because you see the situation differently? And not, I'm saying you, the collective, not you.

• 1:49:48Speaker 00

  Well, look, I think part of it is what, what was going on during the time that your understanding of these events was formed, right? So if you're our age or younger, definitely if you're the, the, the Gen Z people who are watching this, including, by the way, many Jews, young Jews, who are watching this, saying, I want no part of, of that.

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  You have only experienced Israel as the dominant regional hegemon. And especially in the last two years where they have decapitated or neutered those entities that are most threatening to them right now, whether we're talking about Iran, whether we're talking about Hamas's military capabilities, whether we're talking about Hezbollah, right? So you see this extremely powerful country where there, I think, is a generation of democratic leaders who only knew or largely knew Israel as the underdog. Where this wasn't just some like offstage thing that was invoked as why, and by the

• 1:50:51Speaker 00

  way Netanyahu skillfully does this, invoke these offstage threats as something that will legitimize anything, including things like starvation that absolutely nothing can legitimize. But back then, that was a real, this was not like a theoretical thing. Now, I would say even today, it's not a theoretical thing, but it's obviously more offstage because of the power that Israel has exerted to not only defend itself, but to do things that I think most observers, including people who care about Israel's future, would say are not helping you defend yourself, is not helping the hostages. And it's not only incredibly destructive of life when you have starvation or these bombings that we're seeing, or so many of the other things that are going on, but it's also destructive

• 1:51:35Speaker 00

  of a moral fiber that has connected these two countries that really is as important as the strategic relationship. And that could be the most lethal thing of all. Right. Because it turns the relationship into a partisan cause or something that there's a generational split. And that is just catastrophically bad, I think. But to get to where your question began, I think.

• 1:52:05Speaker 00

  The next round of American leadership will just be about what will it take to make things get better. That's, that's the thing. It's so many, and this is the ultimate example of it. But so many things, international relations in here and home are freighted with layer upon layer that if I mention this, you say, okay, but what about that? And if it's that, what about that? All of which is true.

• 1:52:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Speaker 00

  And in this case, it goes back not just to 1947, it goes back thousands of years. Right? And it's all true. And no one moment, no one generation, least of all, like a, a child or a family living in Gaza, or for that matter, living in Israel, can or should have to bear the weight of all of those layers. All we can do is say, okay, what can we do that would make it better? And I think a new generation of American leadership will be willing to do things to shape the choices of an Israeli government in ways that neither an older generation of Democrats nor Republicans were willing to do. But across all of this, I still come back to the idea that, uh, the, the real challenge

• 1:53:07Speaker 00

  is to ta- to have fidelity to the values that, that even if we're not that good at living up to them, much of the time, the values are still there and they're still worth it. And our attachment to those is everything.

• 1:53:18Trevor Noah?

  So let me ask you this finally before we let you go. Um, I won't ask you if you're gonna run for president because I've learned in America, you will always say no, or you'll give me like a vague answer. Not you. Politicians just do that here. They go like, well, I think right now I'm focused on.

• 1:53:33Speaker 00

  Dropping my kids off at school.

• 1:53:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and my life. And, and I think what we need to look at right now is the midterms and building a world where we can, I know how this goes. I know how this goes. So I won't ask you that. What I would ask you instead is this.

• 1:53:46Trevor Noah?

  Pete Buttigieg, the mayor, Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, and then we meet Pete Buttigieg now. What do you think you've seen in the world, in America, and in your communities?

• 1:54:02Trevor Noah?

  That has changed how or what you would run on if you were to run again. You know, so when you look at yourself back, I mean, now, what has it been 10 years, maybe more?

• 1:54:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:54:14Trevor Noah?

  And then you look at it now, is, is there anything that's shifted you, is there anything that's changed your perspective slightly? And, and what would that thing be? And, and how would it change the path that you would pursue? Cause we all change, something changes us along the way.

• 1:54:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:54:27Trevor Noah?

  You know, now you've been in an administration, for instance.

• 1:54:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, I mean, I could point to any number of like tactical or policy questions where I think about it differently. Or I'm more attuned to why things are harder than they look. Or, or I think we should just blow something up instead of trying to keep working with it in our bureaucracy or something like that. But, but I think the biggest thing that's changed is that

• 1:54:50Speaker 00

  things that we used to talk about as a matter of rhetoric are here now.

• 1:54:55Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:55Speaker 00

  And so it's not enough, you know, words like authoritarianism or fascism.

• 1:55:00Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:01Speaker 00

  I think when I was first, definitely when I was first running for president, those words are out there as kind of the end of a conversation. Like, look at this stuff that's going on like that could, I mean, that, that might be authoritarian.

• 1:55:14Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:15Speaker 00

  And then it started happening.

• 1:55:19Speaker 00

  And now we're in a moment where we have to be much more clear eyed about what it means to deal with that. In other words, if, if we just say, that's, that's authoritarian or that's fascist, like we, you know, um, everybody's like paralyzed by that, where actually I think the project increasingly is like, find out who's really good at dealing with fascism and, and learn from them on, on how to beat it.

• 1:55:39Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:40Speaker 00

  Right? And that's just like a different project than the one I thought I was part of even five years ago. Um,

• 1:55:50Speaker 00

  I think that the other thing I would say is I, I still thought.

• 1:55:57Speaker 00

  As recently as five years ago, that there was more we could do within the structures that we inherited, within the kind of policy frameworks that we inherited. And now I just think all of that's being blown wide open, either because you have whole departments being burned down, like the Department of Education, or because like the financial picture, which is not as sexy to talk about fiscal policy, but I think sooner or later will require us to completely redesign our tax code as a country. Which is not a bad thing, actually, because that could be a chance to have a system of taxation where we actually get more trust that our government is actually doing good things with the money that we pay into it. There's a sense of more fairness. But I guess what I'm getting at more than saying like, oh, I think this like border policy, you know,

• 1:56:42Speaker 00

  I disagree with what I used to think five years ago. It's more that I think the framework we're in needs to be replaced in a way that I think, you know, Trump is clearly exposed, but I think Democrats need to come to terms with. And we're just into a new world in terms of what that means for what leaders need to do.

• 1:57:07Trevor Noah?

  Well, as always, man, I enjoy having a conversation with you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being so candid. And yeah, man, thanks for sharing your beard. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, for real.

• 1:57:19Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:57:22Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

• 1:57:56Speaker 07

  What's up, sports fans? I'm Rachel D'Amato, here to tell you about my show Courtside Club. If you love hoops and hot takes, then you're in the right place. Want to hear about Katelyn Clark's unstoppable rise in the WNBA? How stars like Wemby and Luka Doncic are dominating the NBA? Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments. Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us. Courtside. You can listen to Courtside Club wherever you get your podcasts. Uwi and ah.

• 1:58:28Speaker 08

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