Saagar Enjeti is a DC-based political correspondent and podcaster. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Saagar's Twitter: https://twitter.com/esaagar
Realignment Podcast: https://linktr.ee/esaagar
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PODCAST INFO:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:41 - Hitler
7:01 - Evil
8:20 - Donald Trump
18:51 - Teddy Roosevelt
24:12 - Nazi Germany
29:08 - The balance of power in US government
33:04 - Bureaucracy
41:38 - Money
43:54 - UFOs
47:57 - Jeffrey Epstein
1:01:18 - Left and Right
1:12:02 - How to fix politics
1:37:28 - Political predictions
1:50:42 - Journalism
2:01:37 - Joe Rogan
2:09:04 - Lyndon Johnson
2:10:23 - World War I
2:15:15 - Dan Carlin
2:22:09 - How Stalin came to power
2:27:36 - Putin
2:33:47 - Lenin and Stalin
2:37:17 - Book recommendations
2:44:44 - Antarctica and Mars
2:51:59 - Born to Run
2:54:26 - Texas

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I suppose that's a wishful thinking because it takes time to build trust in institutions and it takes time to build new institutions.

My main thing I would say is public legitimacy as a concept is not gonna be there in mass media anymore.

Because of the balkanization of audiences, I mean, think about it, right?

Like this is like Legion, you know, the classic stuff around a thousand true fans or no, sorry, like a hundred true fans even now, like you can make a living on the internet just talking to a hundred people.

If as long as they're all high frequency traders, some of the highest people, highest paid people on Substack, they don't have that many subs.

It's just that they're Wall Street guys, right?

So what you will have is an increasing balkanization of the internet, of audiences and of niches.

People will become increasingly famous within this, you will become astoundingly famous.

I'm sure you've noticed this with your fan base.

But when somebody meets, they're like, oh my God, I watch your show every day.

Right, Like it's the only thing I had watched for news, right?

Like instead of casually famous, if that makes sense, be like, oh yeah, that's like Alec Baldwin,

But you're not like, oh shit, I love you, Alec Baldwin.

This is a Ben Smith of the New York Times, actually.

He's like, the future is everybody will be famous, but only to a small group of people.

And I think that is true, but again, I don't decry it.

I think it's great because I think that the more that that happens, the more engaged people will be and it empowers different voices to be able to come in and then possibly, I wouldn't say destroy, but compete against.

I mean, look at Joe, Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox all put together.

Like he created the space for me to succeed.

And I told him that when I met him, I was like, dude, like I listened to his podcast when I was like young.

And like, and I remember like when I got to meet him and all that, and I told him this on this pod, I was like, I didn't know people were, millions, were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps for 3 straight hours, including me.

I didn't know that I could be 1 of those people.

I learned something about myself before the show, yeah.

And so by creating that space, I'd be like, wait, there's a hunger here.

And none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan because he was the first.

And that's fine because he created the umbrella ecosystem for us all to thrive.

That is where I see like a great amount of hope within that story.

Yeah, and the cool thing, he also supports that ecosystem.

1 of the things he paved the way on for me is to show that you can just be honest, publicly honest, and not jealous of other people's success, but instead of be supportive and all those kinds of things, just like loving towards others.

I mean, to the comics community, I think there are a bunch of, before that, I think there were all a bunch of competitive haters towards each other.

Yeah, and now he's like, just injected love.

They're like, they're still, like, many are still resistant, but they're like, they can't help it, because he's such a huge voice.

He like forces them to be like loving towards each other.

And the same, I tried to, 1 of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast was to try to, I wanted to be like, do what Joe Rogan did, but for the scientific community, like my little circle of scientific community of like, let's support each other.

Yeah, well, like Avi Loeb, I would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you.

I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe, he went on Joe's show, I had him on my show.

Like millions of people would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for

Just by the way, in terms of deep state and shadow government, Ivy Lo has to do with aliens.

Dude, the last thing I sent to him was the American Airlines audio.

The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing.

So like, I'm like, this American Airlines flight crew was over New Mexico, this happened 5 or 6 days ago.

And the guy comes and he goes, hey, Do you have any targets up here?

A large cylindrical object just flew over me.

Then a guy, like a radio catcher, records this and posts it online.

American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio.

And they go, all further questions should be referred to the FBI.

So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed it's a legitimate transmission.

FBI, then the FAA comes out and says, We were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane at the time of the transmission.

So the only plausible explanation that online sleuths have been able to say is maybe he saw a Learjet, which was, you know, using like open source data.

He saw a large cylindrical object while he was mid-flight, American Airlines.

But you can go online, listen to the audio yourself.

This is a 100% no shit transmission confirmed by American Airlines of a commercial pilot over New Mexico seeing a quote unquote large cylindrical object in the air.

Like I said, when we first started talking, I've never believed more in UFOs than aliens.

I just wish both American Airlines, FBI, and government would be more transparent.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but the kind of transparency that you see, maybe not Joe Rogan.

But just a, I don't know, like a podcast from the FBI.

Just like being honest, like excited, confused.

I'm sure they're being overly cautious about their release information.

I'm sure there's a lot of information that would inspire the public, that would inspire trust in institutions that will not damage national security.

And the reason they're not sharing it is because of this momentum of bureaucracy, of caution and so on.

But there's probably so much cool information that the government has.

The way I almost, I wouldn't say it confirmed it's real, but Trump didn't declassify it.

Like you know that if there was ever a president that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him.

I know for a fact, because I pushed to try and make this happen, that some people did speak to him about it.

And he was Like, no, I'm not gonna do it.

They were probably all telling him, they're like, sir, you can't do this, you know, all this.

And there's this legislation written as COVID that like they have 6 months to release it.

There's so many different levels of classification that people need to understand.

He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton.

He tried, like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information and they could not get any of it.

And we're talking about the president and the White House chief of staff.

Well, there's a whole bureaucracy built just like you're saying with intent.

that has to be your focus because there's a whole bureaucracy built around secrecy for probably for a good reason.

So to get through to the information, there's a whole paperwork process, all that kind of stuff.

You can't just walk in and get the, unless again, with intention, that becomes your thing.

It's sad that the bureaucracy has gotten so bulky.

But I think the hopeful message is from earlier in our conversation, it seems like a single person can't fix it, but if you hire the right team, it feels like you can.

I don't wanna give people unrealistic expectations.

You can fix a lot, especially in crisis, you can remake America.

And the reason I know that is because it's already happened twice.

But Sorry, FDR and JFK's assassination, LBJ.

2 hyper-competent men who understood government, who understood personnel, and coincidentally were friends.

I don't think actually people understand this.

FDR met Johnson 3 days after he won his election to Congress, special election, he was only 29 years old.

And he left that meeting and called somebody and said, this young man is gonna be president of the United States someday.

Like even then, like what was within him to understand and to recognize that?

And sometimes Johnson as a young member of Congress would come and have breakfast with FDR, like just to the great political minds of the 20th century, just sitting there talking, like I would give anything to know what was happening.

There was like a genuine human connection, right?

Well, I need to read those thousands of pages.

I was gonna say, 1 of my goals in coming to this is I was like, I gotta get Lex into 2 things because I know he'll love it.

I know he'll love LBJ if he has the time to read the books.

say you'll love him, but you'll love the books about him because the books are a story of America, the story of politics, the story of power.

This is the guy who wrote The Power Broker.

These books are up there with Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in terms of how power works.

And that's why the books are not really about LBJ.

They're about power in Washington and about the consolidation of power post new deal, the consolidation then, where they're using the levers of power like Johnson knew, in order to change the House of Representatives, the Senate of the United States, and ultimately the presidency of the United States, which ended in failure and disaster with Vietnam, don't get me wrong.

But he's overlooked for so many of the incredible things that he did with civil rights.

And the second thing is, we gotta get you into World War I.

We gotta get you more into World War I because I think that's a rabbit hole, which I know you're a Dan Carlin fan.

Yes, but that's what actually, there's a banality of that evil, of the Kaiser and of the Austro-Hungarians and of...

See, I like World War I more because it was unresolved.

It's 1 of those periods I was talking to you about, about like sometimes you're called and you fail.

I mean, 50 million people were killed in the most horrific way.

Like people literally drowned in the mud.

1 stat I love is that, you know, Britain didn't need a draft till 1916.

Like They went 2 years of throwing people into barbed wire voluntarily.

And because people love their country and they love the King and they thought they were going against the Kaiser.

It's just like that conflict to me, I just can't read enough about it.

Also just like births Russian revolution, you know.

You can't talk about World War II without World War I.

I've read way too many books about it for this reason is it's unresolved.

And like the roots of so much of even our current problems are happened in Versailles, right?

Like Vietnam is because of the Treaty of Versailles.

Many ways, the Middle Eastern problems and the division of the states there, the Treaty of Versailles in terms of the penalties against Germany, but also the fallout from those wars on the French and the German population or the French and the British populations and their reluctance for war in

or 1938 when when Neville Chamberlain goes right like that's 1 of the things people don't understand is the actual appetite of the British Public at that time They didn't want to go to war.

Only Churchill, he was the only 1 in the gathering storm, right, like being like, hey, this is really bad and all of that.

And then even in the United States, our streak of isolationism, which swept, I mean, things were, because of that conflict, we were convinced as a country that we wanted nothing to do with Europe and its problems.

And in many ways that contributed to the proliferation of Hitler and more.

So like I'm obsessed with World War I for this reason, which is that it's just like the root, It's like the culmination of the monarchies, then the fall, and then just all the shit spills out from there for like a hundred years.

So World War I is like the most important shift in human history versus World War II is like a consequence of that.

Yeah, so I have a degree in security studies from Georgetown, and 1 of the thing is that we would focus a lot on that is like war, but also like the complexity around war.

And it's funny, we never spent that much time on World War II, because it was actually quite of a clean war.

As in, the war object, which we learned from World War I, is we must inflict suffering on the German people and invade the borders of Germany and destroy Hitler.

Like the center of gravity is the Nazi regime and Hitler.

Begin, liberate France, invade Germany, destroy Hitler, reoccupy, rebuild.

Even the German general staff, they were like, even in 1917, they're like, the war was worth it because now we have Luxembourg.

Like you killed 2 million of your citizens for fucking Luxembourg?

And like half of Belgium, which is now like a pond.

And same thing, the French are like, well, the French more so, they're defending their borders.

But like, what are the British fighting for?

Why did hundreds of thousands of British people die?

In order to preserve the balance of power in Europe and prevent the Kaiser from having a port on the English channel.

That's more what wars are, is they become these like, atypical, they become these protracted conflicts with a necessary diplomatic resolution.

It usually leads in the outbreak of another war and another war and another war and a slow burn of ethnic conflict, which bubbles up.

So that's why I look at that 1, even because it's more typical of warfare

You're making me realize that World War II is 1 of the rare wars where you can make a strong case for it's a fight of good versus evil.

Like, yeah, they're literally slaughtering Jews.

And it's short and there's a clear aggression.

It's interesting that Dan Carlin has been avoiding Hitler as well.

I mean, but it's complicated too, because there's a pressure.

So This is the, I don't know if you feel this pressure, but as a creative, he feels the pressure of being maybe not necessarily correct, but maybe correct in the sense that his understanding, he gets to the bottom of why something happened, of what really happened, get to the bottom of it before he can say something publicly about it.

I know, you know, he takes so much shit from the historical community for no reason.

I think he's the greatest popularizer, quote unquote, of history.

And I wish more people in history understood it that way.

I mean, I do some videos sometimes on my Instagram now where I'll do like a book tour.

I'll be like, here's my bookshelf of these presidents.

And like, here's what I learned from this book and this book and this.

And that was very much like a skill I learned from him of being like, as a historian writes.

And I've read, I bought a lot of books because of Dan Carlin he'll be you know because of this guy because of that guy in terms of you know another thing he does which nobody else and I'm probably guilty of this he focuses on the actual people involved like he would tell the story of actual British soldiers in World War I.

And I probably, and maybe you're guilty of this too, we over-focus on what was happening in the German general staff, what was happening in the British general staff.

The result is that there's a feeling, you get the feeling of what it was like to be there.

You know, you're becoming, quickly becoming more and more popular, speaking about political issues in part.

Do you feel a burden, like almost like the prison of your prior convictions of having to being popular with a certain kind of audience and thereby unable to really think outside the box.

I came up a much more doctrinaire conservative in my professional life.

And I did feel an immense pressure after the election by people to say, wanted me to say the election was stolen.

And I knew I had a sizable part of my audience.

Most people know me from Rising, which is with Crystal and me.

That is inherently a left-right program, so it's a large audience.

So I felt comfortable and I knew that I could still be fine in terms of my numbers, whatever, because many people knew me who were on the left.

And if my right listeners abandoned me, so be it.

I had the luxury of able to take that choice.

But I still felt an immense amount of pressure to say the election was stolen, to give credence to a lot of the stuff that Trump was doing, to downplay January 6th, to downplay many of the Republican senators or justify many of the Republican senators, some of whom I know who objected to the Electoral College certification and who stoked some of the flames that have eaten the Republican base.

Like, I feel more politically homeless right now than I ever have, but I have realized in the last couple of months, this is the best thing that ever happened to

And it's not that I wasn't doing that before.

It's maybe I would avoid certain topics or like I would think about things more from a team perspective of like, am I making sure that it's, I'm not saying I didn't fight it, and I still, I criticized the right plenty, and Trump plenty before the election and more.

It's more just like, I no longer feel as if I even have the illusion of a stake within the game.

I'm like, I only look at myself as an outside observer, and I will only call it as I see it truly.

And I was aspiring to that before, but I had to have, in a way, Trump stopped the steel thing, it like took my shackles off

And I think it's bad for the Republican party.

And if people in the Republican party don't agree with me on that, that's fine.

I'm just not going to be necessarily like associated with you anymore.

This is probably 1 of the first political- Oh, really?

Politics-related conversations we've had.

I mean, unless you count Michael Malice, who-

He's not so much political as he is like, burning down man.

Yeah, I think he's- There's a place for that.

It's almost, well, first of all, he's working on a new book, which I really appreciate.

Outside of, he's working on a big book for a while, which is White Pill.

He's also working on this short little thing, which is anarchist handbook or something like that.

It's like Anarchy for Idiots or something like that.

Well, me being an idiot and being curious about anarchy seems useful, so I like those kinds of books.

I find those kinds of things a useful thought experiment because that's why it's frustrating to me when people talk about communism, socialism, or even capitalism, where they can't enjoy the thought experiment of like, why did communism fail?

And maybe ask the question of like, are there, is it possible to make communism succeed?

Like I enjoy the thought experiment, like the discourse of it, like the reasoning, and like devil's advocate and all that.

People have like, seem to not have patience for that.

I was obsessed with the question and still am.

I will never be, I will never quench my thirst for Russian history.

Like the autocracy embodied in Tsar Alexander.

And then you get this like weird fail son, Nicholas, who is kind of a good guy, but also terrible.

And also Russian autocracy itself is terrible.

And then I just became obsessed with the question of like, why did the Bolshevik revolution succeed?

Because like people in Russia didn't necessarily want Bolshevism.

People suffered a lot under Bolshevism and it led to Stalinism.

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Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #167