Today's guest is Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.

She explains how governments in places like China and the United Arab Emirates restrict academic freedom and expression not just in their own countries but also at colleges and universities in America by exploiting speech codes and threatening to end lucrative satellite campus arrangements.

McLaughlin and Gillespie also talk about whether it was a good idea for American comedians to censor their material at Saudi Arabia's Riyadh Comedy Festival and what to make of President Donald Trump's repeated minimization of the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:14—Trump's response to Khashoggi's murder

7:26—The Riyadh Comedy Festival

11:29—Foreign influence on U.S. college campuses

23:55—The NBA and the Chinese government

28:39—Sensitivity exploitation

34:36—Changes to campus culture

39:46—Satellite campuses

43:50—Matthew Hedges and the UAE

50:03—McLaughlin's path to FIRE

51:55—Solutions to campus censorship

58:12—Climate of free speech under Trump

 

Upcoming Reason Events

Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm on December 10

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post How Foreign Governments Police U.S. Speech appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is the science writer Matt Ridley, author of best-selling books such as The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, and, with Alina Chan, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. At a live event filmed in New York City, Ridley tells Nick Gillespie that political and cultural elites had already turned science, our best tool for understanding and improving the world, into a centralized, hyperpoliticized priesthood even before COVID.

He walks through the collapse of public trust in 2020 as experts flipped on masks and transmission, declared Black Lives Matter protests safe but religious services dangerous, and insisted on certainty where none existed. Ridley also explains how the lab leak hypothesis went from being a forbidden conspiracy theory to the most plausible explanation for the pandemic.

He shares his thoughts on why climate alarmism is finally waning, the future of innovation in an age of overregulation, why he's bullish on the future of nuclear power and AI, and how America can spark a new technological renaissance—even when leaders seem determined to smother dissent.

Please donate to Reason's annual webathon, the one time a year when we ask our online audience to support our principled libertarian journalism with tax-deductible donations. Click here for details, swag, and more information.

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:59—Bill Gates' climate change reversal

6:15—How COVID diminished public trust

14:27—Centralization and confirmation bias

17:53—Vaccine skepticism

21:29—Sex and evolutionary theory

29:47—Politicization of science

31:34—COVID lab leak theory

37:50—Human progress

46:10—The role of storytelling

Previous appearances:

"Matt Ridley: Why Did Anthony Fauci et al. Suppress the Lab Leak Theory?"

"Matt Ridley: The Coronavirus Pandemic Shows 'That There's No Monopoly on Wisdom'"

"Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels Are Greening the Planet"

"Matt Ridley on Ideas Having Sex, Free Trade, and Apocalyptic Science With Reason's Kennedy"

"Matt Ridley on His New Book, The Rational Optimist, & Why 'Ideas Having Sex' is a Very Great Thing Indeed"

Upcoming Reason Events

Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm on December 10

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Why Science Lost Its Way appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Ken Burns, the filmmaker who has massively reshaped national conversations about everything from the Civil War to baseball to jazz to immigration to national parks with epic documentary series that have aired on public television.

His latest work is The American Revolution, a 12-hour series about the nation's founding that he codirected with Sarah Botstein and David P. Schmidt. As the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, the American Revolution foregrounds the bloodiness of the war for independence from the British and the high levels of disunity among the colonists before and after the conflict, themes especially noteworthy in a society that is increasingly concerned about political violence and polarization. The series can also be seen as a rebuke to recent, overtly ideological attempts to recast the American experiment as morally irredeemable from its origins (The 1619 Project) or as a Disneyfied morality tale (The 1776 Project).

Burns talks with Gillespie about the role of truth in documentaries and why we should embrace contradictions in historical storytelling. They also debate whether PBS, defunded earlier this year by the Trump administration, should continue to receive tax dollars.

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep on the thinkers, doers, and artists who are making the 21st century a more libertarian—or at least more interesting place—by challenging outmoded ideas and orthodoxies.

 

0:00—The American Revolution was a global war

7:52—Slavery in the Revolution and competing narratives

21:48—The logic of the Declaration of Independence

29:14—The impact of Native Americans

32:41—Why the Revolution leaves Burns feeling optimistic

39:09—The importance of New York in the Revolution

46:15—Funding for public broadcasting

53:16—What's next for Ken Burns?

56:26—Why understanding history is important for unity

 

Previous appearances:
"Filmmaker Ken Burns on Prohibition, Drug Laws and Unintended Consequences," October 1, 2011

"Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a 'Yellow-Dog Democrat,' and Missing Walter Cronkite," October 1, 2011

"The Vietnam War Is the Key to Understanding Today's America: Q&A with Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick," September 13, 2017

"How Closed Borders Helped Facilitate the Holocaust," September 15, 2022

 

Upcoming Reason Events

Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm, December 10

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post What We Get Wrong About the American Revolution appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. He talks about why he cosponsored legislation to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files, how President Donald Trump's tariffs and bombing of Venezuelan boats are bad policy and unconstitutional, and why fellow Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance are Luddites and nostalgia merchants who want to regulate free markets to death.

Paul, the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?", also talks with Gillespie about his plans for a 2028 presidential run, the enduring anti-war legacy of his father Ron Paul, and why he believes that he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) are the only members of Congress who have stayed true to the Tea Party's commitment to lower spending and smaller government.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who are defining the 21st century in terms of individual freedom and autonomy.

 

0:00—Releasing the Epstein files

2:32—Tariffs and protectionist propaganda

6:29—The economic policies of the GOP

11:32—Military strikes on Venezuela

13:27—Foreign intervention

15:16—Military aid and arms deals

19:38—Congressional spending and the debt

22:04—Federal hemp ban

23:30—What's happened to the Tea Party?

26:00—Will Paul run for president again?

 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. My guest today is the libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul. Sen. Paul, thanks for talking to Reason.

Rand Paul: Glad to be with you, Nick. Thanks for having me.

You are an outspoken advocate for releasing all of the material on Jeffrey Epstein and everything that comes out of that. You co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the Senate. After a very public delay, President Donald Trump has fully endorsed the idea of getting all the Epstein stuff out there. What is in the Epstein files that we don't know yet that you think will be important for the public to know about?

I think it's important to know, first of all, that Donald Trump was for it before he was against it, before he was now for it. I have no idea what's in the files. It really has not been a big pressing issue for me. It's not something I've spent a lot of time either thinking about or researching. But as people talked about it endlessly, and as Donald Trump and his acolytes talked about it endlessly, it became a symbol for the idea of: does your government treat people differently whether they're wealthy or not? So, if someone is super wealthy, do they get a different form of government than someone who is not?

And so the idea that we wouldn't reveal these people because they were rich—I guess I come down on the side of transparency, because I think that it's important. And if government's going to mete out justice, that the justice, you know, be impartial. Based on the color of your skin, impartial based on who you are individually, but also impartial based on your financial circumstances.

But other than that, I have no idea if anything's gonna come out. I also think there are some complexities. For example, you know, I'm a public figure. If you accuse me of a heinous crime and it turns out I didn't do it, and they investigate me, is it really fair for you to now publicize that a grand jury investigated me for something terrible—that obviously people would not like—and I would be, you know, run out of town on a rail? Is it fair, really, to release that?

So there are real questions here, whether or not accusations should be laundered in public that could be very, very damaging to people. But all that being said, I come down on the side of, you know, we need to have a justice system where it doesn't have an appearance of partiality toward people who have money.

So let's talk about tariffs. Donald Trump has gone out of his way to unilaterally levy tariffs on basically every country on the planet. You have spoken out very harshly against the imposition of tariffs by government or executive order, essentially. Or claiming a national emergency. Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of all of this— which I suspect the Supreme Court will side with you on that issue. Can you explain to people who are struggling with the economic problems with tariffs—why are tariffs a bad idea?

Well, there are two arguments that the protectionists make. They say we've been ripped off. That China's ripping us off. And we're somehow getting poorer and the middle class is being hollowed out. These are both fallacies and pretty easily proven wrong.

So the first argument is that we're being ripped off. So you have to look at things, first of all, as an individual trade, not in aggregate. So if you go to Walmart and you buy a TV and you give Walmart $600, it is by definition a good trade because it's voluntary. No one forced you to buy it. You wouldn't have given your $600 unless you wanted the TV more than your $600. And Walmart wouldn't have given you the TV unless they wanted your $600 more than the TV.

So what happens is then a million people go to Walmart, and then all the TVs came from China. And we now have this enormous trade deficit with China, and you all bought TVs from China and China didn't buy anything from you." I'm simplifying this, but this is sort of what happens. But how can a million individual purchasers all be happy? And you ask them at the end of the year, "Are you still happy?" "Yeah, I love my TV. I'm glad I gave my 600 bucks. I didn't feel ripped off. I wasn't ripped off."

But then how can someone—a politician—draw a circle around a million Americans and say, "Oh, there it is. We've been ripped off. China's been ripping us off"? It comes from a measurement we call the trade deficit. And I think it's important that people, as they try to understand this…

How is it…Sorry go ahead.

I was just gonna say that a trade deficit is not just misinformation—it completely is a fallacy and means absolutely nothing. But we bought into this.

And then they buy into it also for nationalistic reasons: that my circumstances may not be perfect, I'm not happy with my income, inflation's outpacing me. You know, the Chinese must be at fault. Foreigners are at fault. It's an easy sort of false nationalism or patriotism. But it's a fallacy, because we've gotten rich and the Chinese have gotten rich.

Sometimes it's more apparent how rich they got because they started out so poor. So if they were making 30 cents a day in 1975 and now they make $4 an hour, you can see their richness more than you can see the increase in ours. 

We've all gotten richer.

One interesting thing is: before China got in the World Trade Organization, before we began trading with them in 1975…actually our manufacturing output from 1950 to 1975 was actually exceeded by our manufacturing output from 1975 to 2000. There's a great book by Don Boudreaux and Phil Gramm on this recently—The Sevens Myth of Capitalism — it goes through a lot of the statistics on this.

But anyway, it's a fallacy that we're being ripped off, and it's also a fallacy that the middle class is being hollowed out. If you look at the 70-year statistics on household income, you'll find that the middle class, while it's slightly smaller than it was 70 years ago, it's because they went to the upper class. The migration is from the lower class to the middle class and from the middle class upward. It's all migration upwards. HumanProgress.org does a wonderful job of bringing together these statistics and how well we're doing over the last century.

Yeah. So can I ask you, you know, you've taken issue with President Trump talking about this. People like J.D. Vance, you know the Vice President, senator from Ohio, which borders Kentucky. Is this the beginning of the end of this stage of the Republican Party? Because you're talking about economic policy that all Republicans signed on to a decade ago, and now many in the Trump camp are saying, "Oh, that's crazy thinking." Where do you go with this, in terms of what Republicans are following you on basic economic reality?

Well, you know, the Luddite philosophy started 150, 200 years ago, and I think that will be continued, and J.D. Vance will be the standard-bearer for that. For protectionism, for anti-trade— actually for the belief that mergers are bad, that capitalism is bad.

But I actually think that there's a positive silver lining to this. That while the free market wing or the libertarian wing of the Republican Party has shrunk, there's a possibility now that perhaps the wing of the party that I come from may actually be able to be joined with the wing of the party that has been corporate America.

So I think that corporate America understands, still, that trade is good. And they generally haven't been libertarian because they think, "Oh they're too hardcore on fiscal policy and balanced budgets. We don't care that much about that." But they are seeing now that I'm the only voice for trade, and I lean libertarian and am very hardcore on the debt.

I think you actually can bring two groups together. I've often felt that the libertarian vote isn't big enough to win a presidential nomination on the Republican side. But what if you were ever to join the libertarian-leaning Republicans with those from corporate America and from the business world who understand that tariffs are harmful to the economy? Maybe there is a bigger group here.

The J.D. Vance wing also hates mergers. They think the government should be involved with blocking mergers. Most people in big business realize that mergers and vertical integration are good for the economy, good for the consumer. So I think there's a lot of coalition-building that could happen.

The other side of the coin is, right now it's only me. I am the only voice left on the Republican side in this planet talking about trade and willing to vote that way. So, you know, there is that. And so we may have faced an extinction event.

Can you pick up people from the Democratic Party? Because, you know, it used to be Democrats—because they were in bed with the unions—they were against free trade. They think that, wrongly, they think free trade undercut wages, particularly for union members in America. Are there any Democrats that are coming around to the free trade philosophy, do you think?

So we've had several votes on the issue of whether or not the president can declare emergencies and then declare tariffs or import taxes by fiat. And it's been almost all the Democrats—I think all the Democrats—and three or four Republicans, myself being one of those.

And I think it is important to talk about this issue because there's the economical argument, but the constitutional argument is incredibly important as well. Because, you know, we fought the Revolution over taxation without representation. We gave the taxing power specifically to the House of Representatives, and it actually says literally in the Constitution: levies, duties, taxes are to be issued by the House.

Now for 100 years, a lot of these powers the Congress sort of delegated to the president. And for most of that 100 years, the president was actually negotiating lower tariffs. And so everybody kind of tolerated it. This is the first time that power is now being usurped in the opposite direction.

But I think it is important. The other reason it's important is because we found out during the pandemic emergency—when all these governors declared emergencies—they shut our schools down, they shut our restaurants down, they shut our churches down. It became authoritarian rule.

And so emergencies and limiting emergencies may well be the most important control of the abuse of executive power in our lifetime. And so in our state, we made it such that emergencies expire after 30 days unless affirmatively approved by the legislature. I've been trying to do that in Congress.

When Biden was president, we had probably two dozen Republicans that were interested in my bill to limit emergencies. Now that Trump is president, they're gone. They've all disappeared. And it really shocks me that people who were for emergency reform are voting to continue emergencies.

Trump's declared emergencies with 130 countries. I mean, these are literally like the things you would do if you were at war. You're in the middle of the Vietnam War and you say, "We're not going to trade with Vietnam." Well, you can kind of understand that. But that's what we've allowed that to happen. Not me, but virtually every other Republican is looking the other way right now.

Well, the other thing that you're outspoken on is Trump's actions on Venezuela. I mean, he's waging open war against Venezuela. And this is another thing that an autocrat or a tyrant would do. What is wrong with the Department of War under Donald Trump just blowing up Venezuelan boats that it says are carrying drugs or other bad things to America?

Well, I have my own personal refusal to call it the Department of War, so I'm going to keep calling it the Department of Defense, but just the name change is probably obnoxious and…

It's $2 billion in new signage, so it's an absolute waste of money for rhetorical purposes.

The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate's about 25 percent. It's hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people—incinerating them, blowing them to smithereens—if the error rate would be about one in four.

Some people are like, "Oh, they're drug dealers. It's self-defense. They're coming to America." Most of that we don't know. We don't know their names. We're presented with no evidence. Nobody's even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us they were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody's bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we're not even prosecuting them. We understand that there's no way we could prosecute them. We're just sending them back.

So these boats probably don't have the ability to go more than about 100 miles without refueling. They're 2,000 miles away from us, and they are outboard boats. In all likelihood, they would probably have to refuel 10 or 15 times before they got to the United States—if they were coming here in the first place. Who knows where they're going.

Yeah, you know, one of the great wins of libertarian policy or sensibilities over the past 20 years—and it's unfortunately rooted in really terrible foreign policy. Americans seem less interested in regime change overseas. Is it a hard sell to your fellow Republicans, because Donald Trump is a Republican, that like we really shouldn't have a president who is acting as if wars are going on all around us?

My favorite among my colleagues is when they say, "Well, I'm for this intervention, but I'm not for policing the world." And I think my dad actually deserves a lot of credit for making it unpopular to say you were policing the world. But they still do believe in policing the world.

I would say that most people in Washington are—on the Republican side, a good solid majority—still are of the neoconservative variety and do believe in intervention. But they've masked that, and they've been clever. So Lindsey Graham has not changed his positions, but he's clever, and he's become very close to the president— influences the president. Same with Marco Rubio.

So the pending invasion or regime change war in Venezuela is hatched by those people. I actually think Trump is the one who is least likely to want to do these things, but he is surrounded by people who believe in regime change and are goading him on.

I do think, though, that if he invades Venezuela, or if he approves significant arms sales—which are really gifts—to Ukraine, or more welfare to Ukraine, if he does either of those, the rift with Marjorie Greene will pale in comparison to what happens to his movement. If he invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve.

You are not a pacifist or an isolationist, let's say. How do you figure out what countries deserve military support or arms deals and things like that. And which ones do we steer clear of?

You know, there are various levels of sort of what you have to go through. War would be the most extreme, and the Constitution is pretty clear with that. You have to go through the constitutional process. And so I've struggled against presidents of both parties to limit their power to go to war without approval.

With regard to arms sales, it's sort of a lower bar. But at the same time, I think—one— I think people should buy our arms with their money, not with our money. So I have opposed giving people money to buy our arms. And that's sort of this game we play with several countries where we say, "Oh, this is good for America. We give this country $3 billion a year, but they buy 70, 80 percent of it from us. It's so good for our arms manufacturers." And it's like, "Well, I'm not really for subsidizing any industry, particularly the arms industry."

But I've opposed arms sales to people who have significant human rights records that are horrendous. I've opposed selling arms to Saudi Arabia after the killing of Khashoggi. I've opposed selling to several of the Sunni sheikhdoms who have human rights abuses against Shia minorities within their country. That often have arrested teenagers for sending a text message to, "meet me at a rally." That's enough to be arrested and to be held in many of these countries—you know, indeterminate. You know, being held without a definite release date and without a trial.

So I have opposed on many occasions, that. I've always opposed the foreign aid. I said, "Come to me when we have a surplus. I'll probably still be against foreign aid then. But until we have a surplus, don't even bother because I'm not voting for it." I've introduced more amendments and had more amendments about foreign aid than anybody else in the history of the Senate ever. I think I've had at least 35 votes to try to kill foreign aid.

How does Israel fit into that? Because you are a person who is—you have a certain kind of mindset and things like that. But you also resist calling what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide and things like that. How does that fit into your philosophy right now?

I think it's not always my responsibility to have an opinion for every event in the world, and I think it's also sometimes complicated, and sometimes I can see both sides of it. So, for example, I have three kids. They go to music concerts. I could see them October 7th being in a concert out in the desert of America or somewhere, you know, Burning Man, or whatever. And a group of people armed in Jeeps comes and kills 1,500 people and takes 100 people hostage. I have no sympathy for those people at all. That is Hamas. So I don't get these kids on our campus. Look, you can argue for freedom. You can argue for the right to vote. You can argue that the Israeli government is not letting the Arabs vote, they've taken their land. All those are arguments that you can have and justify. But there's no argument for Hamas.

So I have to, if I'm to condemn Israel, I have to say, "Well, gosh, what would I do if those were my kids? When would I quit fighting?" But then also, on the other side of that, I see as tens of thousands of civilians are killed, that what we call collateral damage in a war is still killing of civilians, and it will have ramifications.

And I've said this, my father said this before me, that the collateral deaths in Afghanistan—when you blow up a wedding, you intend to kill terrorists, and then a wedding party of 150 people are killed—whoops, it's an accident. But you don't realize that you create thousands of new terrorists with every accident and that there is a downside to the continuation of it.

And actually, Donald Trump does deserve credit for that, for in some ways, standing up to Israel and saying, "Enough's enough, it's time to stop." And I think without him—I think without his presence—the war probably would still be going on.

A lot of what you're talking about stems from the fact that Congress is not willing to do what it's supposed to be doing, either in restraining the president or in passing legislation. You know, my boss, Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor in chief at Reason, when I said I was talking to you, she said, "Ask him: Is Congress ever going to do anything?" Can you answer that question, particularly in terms of budget issues? Because this is another thing that you alone in the Senate, it seems, have been talking about—the debt and spending and deficit since you came into office. Is there any interest among your colleagues—Republican or Democrat or the couple of independents—to actually change the spending habits of D.C. at this point?

One of my favorite comments by Madison is when he was talking about the separation of powers, how there'd be these checks and balances. He said,"We would pit ambition against ambition and that the ambition to grab power by the president would be checked by the ambition of the legislature not to give up their power."

But my response is: Who would have ever imagined—what Founding Father would ever have imagined—a Congress with no ambition? Completely without ambition. Feckless. Completely without principles. And afraid of their own shadow. Afraid of their own president. And unable to even squeak.

I mean, it is pitiful. But it's both parties. I mean, when the Democrats are in power, the Democrats, you know, are feckless. When the Republicans are in power, they are feckless.

It's going to take maybe an emergency. Even with the tariffs, you know, the farm state senators will all privately tell you, "We are free trade, and this is killing our farmers." But they will not stand up and they will not vote with me to end the emergencies.

There is the process of having a significant recession in the farming sector. There are going to be, and are as we speak, bankruptcies occurring. And the farm state senators sit on their hands, afraid to challenge Trump on this.

The Supreme Court might help, or if it gets worse. Now the president said he'll just give them money. And he's gonna give you money too, Nick. He says he heard your groceries are going up. He's going to give you some money. He's going to give you the tariff money. He's gonna give the tariff money to the farmers. But nobody's sort of brave enough to just say, "Mr. President, your tariffs are destroying the economy. Don't give us back tariff money. Take away the tariffs. Take away the punishment."

You've also talked about how recent orders and laws and things like that are hurting Kentucky hemp farmers. What has gone on? You know, there was a time where it seemed like the economy broadly—but especially when it related to hemp and marijuana and things like that—seemed to be liberalizing. That seems to be reversing. Why is that happening?

Some of this is dirty politics, like people are aware of but haven't discussed as much. Many in the cannabis industry and many in the alcohol industry decided to kill the hemp industry. So it's using government to beat up on your competition.

But in my state, we had taken the time to look at the hemp issue. We had decided to regulate it like alcohol. Our state legislature—you could buy a hemp drink with five milligrams of THC, and that was legal and is legal in our state until just recently. When they opened government, they passed legislation that's going to completely ban all hemp products in the United States. So it is a big problem, and we're going to continue to fight it, but we lost a big battle.

And I forced a vote on it. I told them, "You don't get to finish. I'm not going to let you finish quickly without a vote." So we put everybody on record. But amazingly, many people who actually are in adult-use cannabis states voted to kill hemp.

You came to power—or you came to the Senate as part of the Tea Party movement, which really crested about over a decade ago. The Tea Party movement came out of just exasperation with spending levels and with an out-of-touch government. At this point—you've mentioned—you're kind of at odds with people like Marco Rubio, another Tea Party senator. You're at odds with people like Ted Cruz, another Tea Party member. You and the congressman from Kentucky, Tom Massie, seem to be about the last Tea Party people who came into office who are doing what you were doing then. Is the Tea Party over, or was it wrong? I mean, why did the Tea Party energy slide away from us all?

I think you're right that myself and Thomas Massie are the two members that are the most libertarian in the Congress. And second place is a distant second place at this point in time.

If we want to suffer—if you are a libertarian Republican or at least like that idea—we're going to suffer an extinct— a virtual extinction event, if Massie loses. I'm going to be campaigning for him. I already have, and I suggest that anybody listening that cares at all about this needs to support Massie. If they get Massie, they'll come after me. If they get Massie and myself, there's no libertarian wing left of the party.

On the spending—it's extraordinary. The spending bills that they just passed to open government are the Biden spending levels they all ran against and they all voted against last December. They're not a little changed—they're identical. They all voted for the Biden spending levels without a peep, without anybody pushing back. And it's a disgrace.

But the levels of spending that the Republicans have all voted for will equate to a $2.1 trillion deficit. That's what they voted for. When they voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, they voted to add $5 trillion to the debt ceiling. Now, this is a decimation, and I worry that even if you describe it as fiscal conservatism, that fiscal conservatism is being rooted out of the party.

And yeah, the Tea Party really isn't discussed as much anymore, but they represented those things—fiscal conservatism, the Constitution. And there are some in our caucus who still say that, but they're voting for $5 trillion in debt. They have lost their way, and it's so… I can't describe how disappointing it is to me.

Two quick questions to wrap things up. A decade ago, you were a front-runner in early GOP presidential polling and surveys. There was a period where either you or your father, Representative Ron Paul, won all the straw polls at CPAC with one or two exceptions for, you know, something like five or seven years. The New York Times a decade ago ran a cover story, New York Times Magazine, a cover story saying: "Has the libertarian moment finally arrived?"

My two quick questions: Is the libertarian moment arriving now? Is it just that The Times, you know, got the story right, but the timeline was wrong? And the second is: Are you running for president in 2028?

On the final question—running for president—don't know yet. But I do know that if I am not loud, if I'm not out there, that there won't be any voice for trade. There won't be any for fiscal conservatism. And there needs to be.

I fear the populism and the protectionism of continuation of what we're doing now. And I think J.D. Vance will be that. It's worse than that, in the sense that they're very anti–any large business now. They want to break up business. The people who have been appointed to antitrust positions in the Trump administration are against mergers. They're against anything big and against trade.

So I think there needs to be another voice—whether that's me or somebody else, you know, we'll find out on time. But I do want to be a part of that, and worry that if myself or Massie are not around to be those voices, there won't be many other voices as well.

All right, we're going to leave it there. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, thank you very much for talking to Reason.

Thank you.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Cody Huff

The post Rand Paul: Congress Is 'Afraid of the President' appeared first on Reason.com.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, announced that the opinions section of his paper would be "writing every day in support and defense of…personal liberties and free markets." Today's guest is the person Bezos hired to execute that mission.

He's Adam O'Neal, a 33-year-old Southern California native whose resume includes stints at The Economist, The Dispatch, The Wall Street Journal, Real Clear Politics, and covering the Vatican for Rome Reports. O'Neal tells Gillespie his goal is to build a nonpartisan editorial section rooted in core American values of free expression, free enterprise, and limited government. That means taking on MAGA and the Trump administration, insurgent Democratic Socialists, and censors and statists in both parties. "It's small L libertarian…classical liberal," says O'Neal of the section he's building. "It's non-partisan and free markets and personal liberties are the North Star."

O'Neal talks about the challenges in bringing a classical liberal sensibility to mostly left-of-center readers, how growing up in California informs his thinking, what he thinks of Pope Francis' and his American successor Pope Leo's attitudes toward capitalism, and why newspapers shouldn't endorse candidates.

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and journalists who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by challenging worn-out ideas and orthodoxies.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:39—Writing in defense of free markets and personal liberties

7:40—Government threats to free speech

14:01—The Washington Post's editorial decisions

18:59—The state of free markets in America

21:52—Is the opinion section becoming libertarian?

34:09—O'Neal's origin story

40:46—Pope Francis and capitalism

45:17—Experiences at The Dispatch and The Economist

52:59—The culture of The Washington Post's opinions team

55:38—Generational change in politics and culture

59:04—The Washington Post ends candidate endorsements

 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Adam O'Neal of The Washington Post opinion section, thanks for talking to Reason.

Adam O'Neal: Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk about free markets and personal liberties with Reason, which knows a little bit about those subjects, certainly.

Yeah, that's right. Our longtime tagline has been "Free Minds and Free Markets." So I guess I'll start there. All of us at Reason were excited earlier this year when Jeff Bezos announced on Twitter that the opinion section is going—and I'm quoting him here—he said, "We're going to be writing every day in support of personal liberties and free markets."

And then you got hired a couple months later to help execute that kind of defense. Let's start with personal liberties and free markets—maybe start with free markets. What does it mean to be writing every day in support of those things?

Right. There's the textbook definition of prices and wages being set by competition and not the government. That's a free market, right? We all know that. But within that system—and certainly the United States is very far from being a free-market economy, more so than Europe, maybe less so than some examples you could point to elsewhere in the world.

And when we're writing in defense of it, it's those prudential questions that come in—where we are on that scale. Because we're not going back to the pre-industrial economy, right? But at the same time, you think that—

I live in New York, so we'll see come January.

Yeah, I mean, certainly decline is a possibility. And it's often a choice that societies make. Maybe New York is doing that right now. I think we'll see how he governs, right? But what we're writing about every day and we're one as an editorial board writing about these prudential questions. Right?

I know you've written about abolishing the FCC [Federal Communications Commission]. I think that's an interesting question to explore. Or if it's: Does the current configuration of the federal government, these different departments, does make sense? Should air traffic control be privatized—moving that particular service in a free-market direction?

We're both staking out a position and developing a voice as an editorial board, as our staff writers, but also hosting that debate with people whose North Star is wanting to move toward a more free and open economy. But may have differences of opinion about how far you go in that direction one way or the other.

What about personal liberties? You've got a piece that went up a couple of days ago—and we're talking, just for people, because this may change—we're talking on November 6th, a couple of days after, 2 days, after Zohran Mamdani won the mayor race in New York City, etc.

But personal liberties—you recently had posted a piece by Leana Wen, who is a doctor, one of your contributors, who was saying like, "Hey, forget Tylenol. Pregnant women shouldn't be smoking weed when they're pregnant," right? Personal liberties, how do you define that? That's a big topic.

I think this is less of a textbook definition than I gave you on free markets, but it's doing what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's personal liberties and their freedom. And the same way of thinking it applies of the United States—it's a quite free country.

I lived in Europe for five years, and there were certain freedoms I didn't have there. One of my parents grew up in an authoritarian country. We're certainly much more free. But you can't do anything you want anytime in the United States, and it's hosting those debates. Sometimes I'll agree with the contributor; sometimes I won't.

But there's a spectrum, right? You could talk about Tylenol or drug usage, right? Or should heroin be legal? That's one question. Should you be able to smoke heroin on the street in front of a—

Yeah, or do direct-to-consumer advertising on television. And the FCC should be abolished. We could go down a whole lot of different mine shafts with all this kind of stuff. What are the personal liberties that you think matter most?

And I'm not asking you to kind of read Jeff Bezos' mind, but it's kind of amazing that the owner—since 2013—of one of the very most influential newspapers in America and the world said, "Hey, we're scrapping the old kind of general, you know, we are a newspaper that's going to talk about a lot of different stuff," and "We're going to focus—not exclusively—but we are going to focus mostly on personal liberties and free markets."

What are the personal liberties that you think are most under attack in the United States?

I think—well, so that's a different question. What's most important to me and what's most attacked? I'll start with what's important to me, which—I'm a bit biased here because I've spent my career in journalism—but freedom of speech is under attack, I think.

It certainly perpetuates from the dawn of the country. There've always been questions about how far you go with speech. But I'm always horrified when I see a politician—and I'll see them in the Republican or Democratic Party—it feels like it pops up: "Hate speech is not free speech." That's an easy one, guys. Yes, it is, right? We can dislike it, but that's free speech. And it's remarkably important.

As someone now in a position of power to welcome voices, give them a boost inside of a major newspaper, it's something I think a lot about, because you want a robust debate. You want an interesting debate. And you want to feel uncomfortable sometimes with positions that people are taking. And it's a matter of finding out where that works.

And I think—and I always go back to Europe because I lived there, right? They're a much darker place on free speech than we are. But we'll see flashes of European-style thinking on speech. And that's nothing compared to the Chinese Communist Party or what might be in a country like Iran.

But we should compare ourselves probably more to England, right—or the U.K.—which is currently arresting tens of thousands of people a year for tweets and things like that. And we had—I mean, I guess, let's sharpen this a little bit, talking about free speech—because we went through an era when Joe Biden was in the White House where, you know, we learned later that Biden administration officials were jawboning all kinds of social media platforms, who oftentimes—I don't want to say in their defense or in Biden's defense—but they were also asking for guidance from the White House: "Is this hate speech? Is this COVID wrong-thinking?"—things like that. And working in cahoots to clamp down on stuff.

A lot of—if not legal—actions against speech, then really pushing a social envelope—that is a bad phrase—but pushing people to ostracize anybody who dared think outside of a very narrow range.

Now we have people in office in the Trump administration—including Trump's FCC head, including Trump himself—saying certain late-night comedians, "who really nobody's watching, should be fired. They're no talent. The FCC should do something about that." Pam Bondi, the attorney general, actually recently, in recent memory said, "Hate speech is not protected speech," briefly—things like that.

Are we in a worse place with free speech under the current administration and climate of opinion than we were under Biden? Or is it just, you know, it just keeps getting worse?

I think we're in a spiral, and it's a bad one. I was talking to one of our editorial writers the other day, and he's telling me, "You know, we're definitely a democracy, but it's like we're becoming a democracy where you vote for which censors you want to be in charge." Pick your censor, and those will be the people who bully the big media companies into behaving a certain way, right?

Whether it's one of the streamers on COVID, right, as you said, or a comedian that a lot of people weren't paying a lot of attention to until he was being bullied by the government. And it's one of the things that concerns me.

I think about how we can get out of that spiral. And maybe that takes a politician with a forward-looking view who can kind of declare a truce. But I'm generally very optimistic about America in general, our ability to move on. When you read enough American history, we've been here before. That's certainly something that's happened. But we're clearly in one of those waves—or in one of those spirals; I don't want to mix up my metaphors—where we're escalating.

It's the censorship questions, but there's also lawfare, right? You don't want to end up in a position where you're a country like Pakistan or South Korea, where there's a very good chance you go to prison after you're done being in charge of the country—and the opposition comes in.

How we get out of that spiral is something that we're grappling with as a group of journalists working together to come up with a voice.

Yeah, do you feel like journalists are part of the problem? And, you know, I guess we always want to be part of the problem, because then at least maybe we won't have our jobs replaced as quickly. 

But I mean, there seem to be so many people in the media who are very quick to be like, "You've got to shut down this person's speech." "Like, of course, I won't be touched by it." Or, "Now that I'm in power, we're going to go after these people who kind of screwed with me later."

I mean, I was just talking with somebody the other day about journalism shield laws. And I can remember when these were a thing—I would talk to kind of student journalism groups, and I'd be like, you know, "If the government is going to say, ok, if you're an accredited journalist, then you get certain protections, that's a really bad thing." Because it means the government gets to say, "You're a journalist and you're protected. You're not a journalist," and somehow you get lesser rights. And I feel like we haven't gotten out of that yet. It seems very strange to me that more journalists are not just rock-solid in favor of massive First Amendment rights all over the place for everybody.

Right. And you get into a lot of gray areas and nuances when it comes to that. And I think that's also where it becomes very dangerous. There's a big controversy this week—I don't know when this airs.

It'll be like that was a million years ago. Like, "Oh, woolly mammoths were seen in Bethesda," or something, yeah.

Right. And I think you want to be very careful to not be policing the way that people think. Right? At the same time, you also need to recognize the way that William F. Buckley did when he was running National Review. "You know, we don't want lunatics in our movement." And National Review—it's a smaller magazine—but when he stood up to the John Birch Society, I think that's something that decades later… now, there's some debate about how far did he go in standing up to them?

That's right, yeah.

But the general concept of: it's ok to say when there's something that's clearly out of bounds that, "This is not what we're associated with." But it shouldn't be that you should go to prison, or you should be fined, or you should be banished from society. It should be: you can go write somewhere else, because this is our movement, and this is what we're trying to do. I think any publication—you have your sets of norms, your boundaries, and what you're advocating for. And that's a separate thing than government coercion.

What troubles me is when I see journalists who advocate for government coercion and this sort of thing. People who think…I think it just has to be short-term thinking of: "My team will always be in charge and will never lose power." And it's a nice thing—one of my favorite things about America is that power changes pretty frequently, actually. And sometimes the new team does some things I like, I don't like. But it's a comforting thought—instead of living in an authoritarian state or even a place like Japan, where the LDP is just sort of perpetually in power and different factions trade off.

So, if we can go to today's page, I think—and this is kind of just to get a sense of your sensibility, because you mentioned National Review and I appreciate you saying there are questions about how far did Bill Buckley go in really reaming out the John Birch Society. I'm with Matthew Dallek, who wrote a great book, a biography of the John Birch Society a couple of years ago, where he says, "you know, that's more Buckley's version of things than reality." But that's neither here nor there, because my point is National Review is a viewpoint magazine, or a viewpoint platform—same as Reason, same as The Nation.

We have thought about newspapers—with the possible exception of The Wall Street Journal—as kind of being bigger tents than that. Right? So like you are going to be supporting personal liberties or defending personal liberties and free markets every day, but you're not, you know, you're not a movement newsletter, right? So that has got to be challenging for you, right? To figure out what you're going to emphasize.

And I just want to point—like you have on today's page, there's a— which I just had up and now I can't find it. You have an editorial up, "Elizabeth Warren Knows Better," and this is where you're attacking—this is from the house editorial of The Washington Post. Where Elizabeth Warren is basically bitching and moaning that YouTube TV did not carry a game on Monday Night Football. Can you explain what your basic case there is, why she's wrong, and how do you decide that's something that we're going to weigh in on?

I'll start by saying the editorial page—the opinion section—I've been here for four months, and we've made tremendous progress, tremendous change. It's still a work in progress. We're still recruiting people. And that's not a caveat to explain what that editorial—I actually quite like the editorial that we ran.

So Disney and YouTube are in a dispute—YouTube TV—they're in a dispute. Disney would like more money to air ESPN on YouTube TV. YouTube TV does not want to pay that much. And so it's a question about—it's a business dispute between two corporations who are having a negotiation, and things have gotten tough. And so on Monday, when I turned on Monday Night Football to watch, as I usually do—as tens of millions of other Americans—I couldn't find it on my YouTube TV.

And the senator from Massachusetts, what she argued was, "The problem is the companies have gotten too big and they can keep nice things from you because the companies are so big and they're very mean." And I don't think that's an unfair interpretation of the tweet.

We saw this—and we covered the bigger stories: the election results, different foreign policy issues. You can see the mixed ones in the editorials. But we think that when people who should know better, and this is a former law professor and adviser to corporations before she had her pitchfork-populist turn, also a contributor to something, I like to bring this up all the time—a contributor to something called the Pow Wow Chow cookbook, where she offered up her grandmother's variation on some kind of Native American dish. 

Right? I think she was 1/64th. Right?

Yeah, the troubling part about it was—so it's, you know, you want to beat up on corporations, that's fine. Free speech, go for it, senator. But then she said, "And Donald Trump is letting them." And I'm old enough to remember when Senator Warren was very concerned—maybe I'm sure she was—let me rephrase. I'm old enough to remember when a lot of Democrats, and I think principled Republicans, were worried that Donald Trump was getting too involved in television decisions and saying who should be on air and who shouldn't.

And so we just wanted to step out and inform our readers quickly—I just think it was 300, 350 words—and say, "Look, this is a business dispute. The last thing you need is government getting involved in it." And there's a never-ending supply of senators, congressmen, congresswomen, governors who make economically illiterate statements that might stir some populist passion. I don't like the word populist—I shouldn't say populist—because I don't know what populist means. But stir some passion in voters and fire up their base.

And I think that one value we can do—and it's not the core product by any means—but one way we can add value is by pointing it out, explaining what's really happening, and suggesting that maybe there's something else going on here. And our readers can be—

And you point out in the editorial that Disney, among other things, owns Hulu, which is a direct competitor of YouTube. And like nobody in contemporary America is suffering from a lack of stuff to watch, right?

Do you think that we—so that's one way that the government is kind of getting in people's business where it just doesn't need to be. It doesn't make any sense, almost from any perspective. How will you guys—and I think I know the answer to this, because I've already seen it on the editorial page, both from columnists or opinion guest writers or things—when Donald Trump starts to say, "OK, the American government needs to own a piece of corporations either as a condition of them getting a merger, or of them exporting things to China, or bringing things into the country with a special exemption." Do you see this all as like, if we're in a bad space, a bad time for free speech generally, we're also in a really bad time for free markets, it seems?

Absolutely. I think one tricky part of all of this is that no party's hands are clean when it comes to this. Now, traditionally the Democrats were the party that could kind of use state power, push the limits. And Republicans were supposed to be the grown-up party that said, "No, we'll be a little more prudent." One is the party of free stuff. One is the party of growth and opportunity. That's sort of the myth that a lot of Republicans tell themselves.

And I think there are many times in history where it was actually true. Donald Trump, who is a very talented politician and also not a very ideological person—as we all know—there are certain things he's really felt strongly about for a long time, like tariffs, but not a deeply ideological person. I think when he talked—I think it was about the Intel stake—he was asked about it. And he said, "Yeah, of course I'm going to try to get what I can get." That's how he sees these things.

I won't predict what he's thinking, but the end result of that is, ok, maybe you're able to do that now. And I don't know what benefit the U.S. gets from having a piece of Intel. Certainly it's a problem for Intel in the long run, even if there's some help or preferential treatment now.

But again, eventually Democrats will be in power again. And a lot of Republicans who are cheering this on are not going to be thrilled with what Democrats do when they take stakes in companies or which companies they're bullying. And that's just a bit of prudence that we're trying to share with our audience. And when they see this, they might think, "Oh, it's interesting," or "Things are changing. Let's not be free market fundamentalists." But there are really good long-run reasons why you want to avoid getting into this business when you're the government.

Do you see that broad kind of province or edict to support personal liberties and free markets—I mean, is it ultimately the bounds of what you're talking about is a kind of basic classical liberalism or libertarianism?

You know, and I'm thinking of other things that are coming up today where you're starting to see Republicans talk about, "Oh yeah, it would be great to get rid of the filibuster," because we wanna end this government shutdown on our terms—as if earlier this week they didn't get at least a little bit of a wake-up call to say, "Hey, you may not even be in control of Congress this time next year."

Or I saw one of the senators from Alabama—Senator Football from Alabama—talking about why it's great that we're about to go, apparently, gonna go in to teach Nigeria how to defend its people and things like that, In a way that this was the exact opposite of what Donald Trump was running on for a second term. I mean, are you essentially—is the opinion section essentially becoming broadly classical liberal or libertarian?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say, right, small-l libertarian, or a classical liberal, right? There's all kinds of nomenclature that you can use. I'd say fundamentally, it's a nonpartisan project. And that's something that's new. That's sort of our very clear attitude.

When I'm facilitating conversations with the editorial board, or if I'm meeting with the op-ed editors and we're thinking through stories, it's never about which party will be advantaged or which one we prefer in general. Right? So that's the baseline: it's nonpartisan. And free markets and personal liberties are the North Star.

So there may be ways that we agree with libertarians. It's funny—I covered the Libertarian Party convention last year, when I was still at The Economist, and I love Libertarian Party activists. I remember there was this table with buttons that you can steal—or not steal. So you could pick up—

…you could liberate. 

And there were just like different libertarian slogans. It was like, "Sell the Grand Canyon," "Legalize buying AR-15s from vending machines." It was just the most libertarian stuff possible.

So yeah, you know, I'm probably not that far. Like, I think the federal government probably has some role to play in preservation—things like the national parks. I'm not pure libertarian in the way that some of my friends I made at—

Some of the people on this interview may be, yes.

Yeah, so I would shy away from that particular label, but there are plenty of times where I'll agree a lot more with the libertarians than I do with the Republicans. I say "I," you know, but also institutionally in our room, it's a wide range. And I think of myself as facilitating a conversation and getting us to the best answers institutionally—and also the most interesting debate.

But yeah, classical liberal—I think that's a huge tent, by the way, under classical liberalism.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, it's interesting. In my experience over the years—and particularly over the past three or four years—the ranks of classical liberal people, which basically means people who believe in, you know, kind of most personal liberties and mostly free markets, that's starting to get filled up from a lot of people who would have, maybe a decade ago, would have considered themselves liberal or progressive.

And then, particularly after the reaction in America to October 7, a lot of free speech–kind of liberals started moving toward the center. Which they are not social conservatives; they're very libertarian—and all small-ls and things like that. So I think you're on to something with the idea that being classically liberal, or small very, very small-l libertarian, contains multitudes in a way that it didn't really 15 years ago.

How is the audience responding to this? 

I've read over the past couple of years there were various reports claiming that The Washington Post, between 2020 and the end of 2023, lost half of its readership. It went from 100 million unique visitors online in a given month or given day to 50. Part of that was seen across the news industry broadly—just that when Trump was kicked out of office after 2020, it's like ok nobody was interested in reading about politics anymore.

But I also—supposedly, and this was in The Washington Post—when The Washington Post refused to endorse a candidate—and obviously by that, meaning that it was expected to endorse Kamala Harris in 2024—it lost 250,000 subscribers.

I know part of what you have to do is build a new section that is pointed in this particular direction, but also you have to win over a new readership or win over the existing one. How are people responding to the changes since you've been at the helm of the opinion section?

We still have quite a lot of readers and subscribers. I'll say, I've worked at smaller places, and it's a robust audience. And you know, when you write something in The Post, someone notices it.

That said, it needs to get bigger. And the audience now is overwhelmingly left-leaning. Everybody knows that as the data is available.

And that's for the whole paper, not…

Yeah the entire paper. Probably the opinion section. I don't have the breakdowns in front of me. And we value those subscribers. A lot of them have been loyal subscribers for decades.

And we're not trying to push them away and make this a MAGA project where they'll be deeply offended by everything we write. At the same time, I don't think it's a great business model to have one sort of mono—it's not entirely monolithic—but one very similar audience. And so we're trying to continue to serve our existing subscribers, who we value, while also looking at people—I don't know, like my dad—who frankly never would have subscribed to The Washington Post, who just wouldn't have trusted it, and say, "Look, we're doing things different at the opinion section. There's going to be a lot of stuff you disagree with, but you ought to find it interesting. We'll challenge you and educate you. And there may be things that you find that you're agreeing with that you wouldn't have seen before. Or you might've seen here or there, but not as frequently."

And one thing I've noticed that's been very encouraging, when I break down the data, is that a lot of stories are doing particularly well with non-subscribers. There are people who were kind of looking past The Post in the past and now are giving it another look.

And this is a long process, right? It takes years. You're going to have to write editorials hundreds of times on different subjects where people start to realize, "Oh, this is interesting. This is something I'd actually pay for."

So we're not taking anything for granted—whether it's the people we need to win over or the people we want to keep and remain happy subscribers. And it's a tough balancing act. Where do you fit in? And some folks simply will see stuff that we're publishing now that I think is interesting and engaging, and they'll disagree with me, and they wanna leave.

But I think overwhelmingly, by having this big tent, hosting this robust debate, we're building a stronger audience. And some of the early returns—things I'm seeing in the data—leave me very optimistic. In the long run, that's a good move for us. I think for the country, for society, it's helpful to have an opinion section like this—but also for the business.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because basically, there's The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. If we were talking 20 years ago, you might throw in the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune, but newspapers as places that everybody gathers are fading.

And in a way, you've got The Wall Street Journal is conservative—it's good for free markets—and they've been strongly critical of Trump. The New York Times editorial page has its token conservatives, occasional libertarians, but it's reliably liberal.

Do you think The Washington Post will kind of square that difference? You've been critical of Trump. If you look at the page today—and again it's November 6 as we're talking—there's a lot of criticism of MAGA. The leading piece is by Jeff Flake, the former senator who got chased out of office. I interviewed him only a couple of weeks ago; I was visiting his Institute of Politics at Arizona State. He got chased out of office by Donald Trump.

Do you think you will be the kind of libertarian place—and again, not in a doctrinaire way—that will, not split the difference between The Times and The Journal, but will offer up real, hardcore defense of personal liberties and free markets?

You could pick the precise language, but I do see an opportunity there. And we should separate out the philosophical and then also just a regional and sort of cultural space.

So philosophically, I think we can be genuinely nonpartisan. I think both The Times and The Journal do good—like you said, they'll run a mixture of voices—but I think we can really own that space in a way no one else does.

But at the same time, I'm not looking to just try to steal market share from other papers. I think that there are a lot of people in America—some of my colleagues joke, there's one example I always go to, I don't know where it came to me—I say "a dentist in Tucson." It's kind of a particular individual. I have some family in Tucson—they're not dentists—but you know—

And you've got to be careful, because a dentist from Arizona is Paul Gosar, the congressman who was MAGA before MAGA. I don't think you're ever going to win him over.

Does he represent Tucson though? 

I don't know if it's Tucson. It's somewhere close around, but…

Ok, well, a variety of professions, a variety of places that aren't on the coast. Folks who wouldn't necessarily be subscribing to a big newspaper. And part of that is just writing in plain language. When we write—let's call it lifestyle content, or more or less focused on politics or policy—but the other offerings that you can have in an opinion section, things that appeal to them, that they don't just think, "That's really weird," or "What is that?"

Reaching folks like that, who either are kind of turned off by news or maybe get some news from Instagram here or there, and finding ways to meet people where they are. I think that's our bigger opportunity. Rather than thinking, "Oh, where do we sort of triangulate ourselves between the other similar institutions?" "Where can we go that they're not going as aggressively as we are? And how can we serve that audience?" I think that's a big part of it.

And the nonpartisanship and the sort of general American values of, "Hey, leave me alone. I like free enterprise." A normal person doesn't wake up and say, "I support free enterprise," but they have that instinct of like, "No, I'd like to start a business and be left to my own devices."

Appealing to that kind of American instinct and that American tradition. That I think is a huge opportunity for us. And that's one place where we're looking and where we're pushing hard.

You know, that's a good segue. I like to talk to people about where they're from and how they kind of came to their beliefs. So I think that's a natural segue.

So you're from Pomona, California—famously smoggy Pomona. Or it used to be. Nothing is smoggy really in the way it used to be because of progress and whatnot. But you're from Pomona? What was it like growing up in Pomona, and how does being from California—which, you know, until Texas started eating its lunch, was the definition of the American dream… You went to U.C. Irvine as well, a great university in the premier state university system in America. The U.C. system was part of the postwar American dream that California represented. How does where you're from inform who you are today?

Well, it's funny you mention smog, because my father—he actually wrote about this once for a newspaper—he was an air quality regulator.

Oh, wow.

And he's an engineer, and that's what he did for, I think, a little less than 30 years. He worked at the air quality regulator.

So being in Pomona would be like being an actor on Broadway, right? It's like where you want to be.

And my parents moved there to be closer to his work, actually. Yeah, indeed. And I'd say, one, we had a middle-class upbringing. My parents were engineers. And it was a nice, pleasant place to grow up in Southern California.

You weren't totally shielded from life in the way that I think maybe Irvine is, where you'd have—there was crime and violence in Pomona. You know, not unimaginable…

So my father, in his career working at a regulator, it kind of made me skeptical of state power pretty early on. And I think it also made him skeptical of state power. From a young age, he was kind of teaching me the ways of classical liberalism. I don't think he would call it that, but there was a lot of reading in our house.

We subscribed to The L.A. Times when it was a really significant, meaty print product that you'd get, and you could spend hours reading it. And we also had a lot of magazines in the house. It was just a lot of print products—reading. And also things like National Review, right? Things like The Wall Street Journal. I'm not sure if The Post came across our direction very much back then, just being on the West Coast. And The Post was a very different paper in the '90s than it was now and in recent years.

But certainly had some interaction with columnists, right? Like George Will—still writing for us. Real gem. But that was kind of the intellectual and cultural ferment that I grew up in.

Did you go to—were you part of any kind of student networks or anything as you were moving through Irvine?

Yeah. So in Irvine—I mean, I barely attended Irvine. I went to classes, I almost flunked out because I got a job at a radio station. And you can imagine how my engineer parents felt when I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to switch out of biology and do something else." And, "Don't worry, I'll go into this radio station to make, you know, eight bucks an hour, nine bucks"—whatever it was. I don't remember exactly.

But that was the start of my journalism career—it when I was 19. I worked at KFI AM 640—"More Stimulating Talk Radio." And actually, there's a Reason connection there because Lisa Kennedy—who we all of course just call Kennedy, she was at KFI at the time. We overlapped and I got to know her a little bit when I was just a fill-in producer on different talk shows at KFI.

Yeah, I did that. But as a student, I did policy debate. I was in this Junior State of America, which was part Model U.N., part student government, part debate society. And I got to meet a lot of really interesting students—some of whom I'm still friends with to this day.

And that really shaped a lot of the kind of debate. And I don't want, "intellectual" is too generous to describe, you know, 15 year old me—but the kind of mental exercises I was engaging in, that started early with activities like that.

You, early on, you worked at RealClearPolitics, which is an interesting site—it's coded right, and I think for some legitimate reasons, but it does fantastic work across the board. And you were the Vatican correspondent for Rome Reports. You had mentioned living in Europe. You did that for The Wall Street Journal as well, right?

Yeah.

But what was Rome Reports and what was it like covering the Vatican?

Right. Well, I was working at RealClear, and I really liked it. Carl Cannon was a great mentor and editor and boss. He gave me my first shot in D.C.

But I started—I don't know, "wanderlust," I don't really like that word—but I knew I wanted to go out and like see the world. And so I found Rome Reports, a job posting for them on journalismjobs.com. I'd never heard of it. It's actually a Spanish news agency. They use it in English, but it's run by Spaniards based in Rome.

And so I had the great experience of learning how to speak Spanish while I was living in Italy—which is just endlessly confusing. Because in the office we would speak Spanish, and then I'd go out and try to… they're different languages. People always say, "Oh, they're very similar." They're different languages.

But covering the Vatican was a real…it was a real blessing.

What year? What was the range of time?

Most of 2015 and the beginning of 2016. It was a one-year contract. So Francis was established—he came in in March '13. So at that point, I think I covered his second-year anniversary. He'd kind of gotten comfortable as a pope, people were getting to know who he was.

And look, I was not like interviewing the pope or, you know, deep in Vatican intrigue. I was—

Yeah, you weren't during the—

You weren't doing the Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code, Skullduggery. Are you Catholic, and does that inform what you do or what you think?

Yeah, I'm a Catholic. It's not a huge part of what I talk about, but of course, I was raised Catholic, confirmed Catholic, and I still identify as such.

I have five of seven Catholic sacraments, so I am lapsed, and so my education bears no responsibility for my failure to remain Catholic.

Somebody like Francis strikes me as an interesting figure, right, from this question of personal liberties and free markets. Because he was critical of personal liberties and free markets, but he was also deeply Christian in a way that it seems like he presented a challenge to a lot of, I think, really devout American Catholics.

And Catholicism is a weird thing to think about because traditionally it's not the American faith. The American faith, if anything, was kind of anti-Catholic. But now Catholics comprise the single largest religious group in America.

Is that—I'm not sure where I'm going with this—but like is that part of what makes America interesting but also complicated? Where your faith kind of dictates one thing, your ideology kind of dictates something else. And then it's kind of like, how do you sort these things out?

This is something that I've thought about since I was a Vatican reporter, really. And Francis is a particularly interesting case, because in addition to having covered the Vatican, I've spent a decent amount of time in Argentina. And I know you all are very interested in [Javier] Milei, and so am I.

Who's very Catholic—well, now is supposedly converting to Judaism—but has been quite Catholic.

I think he said—I can't remember the exact translation, so I might be getting it wrong—he said something like, "Well, I'm a Catholic, but sometimes I do Jewish things." Only the way Milei could say it, right?

So that means he would never be hired by the Heritage Foundation now, right?

Well, with Francis, I think his interpretation of what Catholicism is, is the kind of state capitalism or the very corrupt version of capitalism that defined Argentina for decades. And it's one way that the Peronists were able to have such political success.

He sort of equates capitalism with greed and theft and corruption in a way that—it's… I don't want to sound like a socialist saying, "Well, true capitalism hasn't really been tried." But it has been tried in a lot of very vibrant and successful societies—but not so much in Argentina, or at least not for a long time. And I think that distorted Francis' worldview a bit.

If you look at other popes, like Leo—who I find incredibly impressive—and I should say Francis, I didn't know him personally. I met him once, shook his hand, and we took a photo together. But they're all—like, to become pope, it's sort of de facto, you're an incredibly impressive and interesting person. A few centuries back, there were some really bad ones. But we've been on a good run for a while now.

But someone like JP2 or even Benedict were just such worldly…they were real, true scholars. And Francis very much was—you know, he studied in Germany briefly, didn't like it, got homesick, went back to Argentina. And he was very much in that world. And I think that limited his worldview in some ways, and it made him a more vociferous critic of capitalism than he ought to have been.

Now, that said, there can be complicated questions for politicians when it comes to their faith and exercise in public office. That's not a new debate. And if you're a Catholic, that should be the most important thing to you, and it should come before anything else. But that's not a politically viable thing to say, as JFK learned—and everyone else, every other Catholic we've had in office eventually encounters.

And you saw this when Francis came to the U.S., a lot of politicians didn't quite know what to do. I think that was about 10 years ago—I think it was November—it was in the fall or the winter of '15. And that's something that there are no firm or concrete or easy ways out of it. People will make judgments about how to reconcile those two.

But I think in some ways, Catholicism, sort of like classical liberalism, doesn't neatly imprint onto the American political spectrum. And that is something that frustrates people endlessly, especially politicians. Whoever.

And ideally—I think I believe this about libertarianism or classical liberalism, probably also about religion—it doesn't dictate your partisan, certainly not your partisan affiliations. It might inform them, but these are things that come before those things, which are worldly and crass and vulgar and maybe necessary.

You also worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Dispatch, which is—what was it like working at The Dispatch? And I know…

[Audio Cuts out]

…twin sides of The Weekly Standard. It's kind of like The Weekly Standard broke up into two bands that don't like each other very much anymore.

What was it like? Because The Dispatch is—they're anti-Trump, but they're maybe anti–anti-Trump at the same time. I don't know. What was your experience at The Dispatch like?

Yeah, these sort of anthropological dissections of conservatism—I certainly engage in them from time to time because I think it's interesting. When I talk to people who aren't in politics or journalism, sometimes they're sort of baffled at the level of detail we can go into.

But I would just say I have nothing but good things to say about The Dispatch. I was there for a year, before I went to The Economist. Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg—I have tremendous respect for. They treated me very well and gave me opportunities to be a manager.

But what I really admired about those two, and the general ethos of The Dispatch, was that they didn't let Trump change their policy views. Right?

There's a range of views about how—if you're a conservative—how do you treat Donald Trump, right? And how do you interact with him? I think a lot of people over the past decade have just changed their policy views and their view of the world—whether that was more to the left or more to the right—in response to Trump. And also, Trump has sort of scrambled left-right distinctions.

Totally, yeah. 

That gets more complicated. But I think Steve and Jonah—their views on policy, and the people who were working there, including me—we tried to keep them the same, regardless of what the president was saying on any given day.

So I had a great year there. I was the executive editor—so helping them—the boring stuff like workflow and editing process. I was helping them implement things like that.

But the broader project—I was very proud to be part of. And I should say, Jonah, Steve, and I—other folks who were working there, David French—we overlapped for a few months. There are times where I have disagreements with them on policy or on what exactly you'll make, but we're in the same galaxy in a helpful way.

And the person who succeeded me as executive editor, Declan Garvey—I think really highly of Declan. And I continue to read The Dispatch, and I think they're a real net positive contributor in a time when there's a lot of toxicity or unhelpful contributions to the discourse. 

The Dispatch still does a great job.

The Economist, how did you like working there? This is a publication which my colleague at Reason, Matt Welch, when he first came over to join Reason and I asked him, you know, "How do you define yourself?" He wouldn't call himself a libertarian—I think he does now—this was in the early 2000s. He called himself an Economist-style liberal, meaning a European liberal or a kind of classical liberal.

A lot of people think that The Economist has really kind of gone left over the past 20 years or so. What was your experience working there, and how does that inform what you're doing at The Washington Post?

So there's one thing I learned from The Economist…I learned a lot. I was there a little under two years, and I had no plans to leave. Then I came to this job because it was such an amazing opportunity.

But one thing I really liked about The Economist—and this is kind of a little more in the weeds, but it's something that I really took—is they do a great job. Zanny, the editor, and my boss came, John Prideaux, who I also really loved working for and respect. They do a great job of spotting talent—not just those two, but management in general.

"Oh, you're working at a think tank," or "Maybe you're an English teacher," or "You're a trader," "You work in an investment bank," and "You've got a little bit of talent for writing—we can train you up and teach you how to do journalism. But what we want is your understanding of the world and your knowledge." And there are no taboos about hiring people who didn't work in journalism and bringing them to this very prestigious publication with 182 years of history.

I think they and—yeah, it's like them and The Spectator, the British Spectator, maybe Scientific American—these are like the oldest magazines around.

Yeah. So that's just one thing now that I'm in a place where I'm thinking about: how do we build out our team? The Economist really had a great model for: Can you write well? And now I'm thinking, can you do a podcast well in addition to writing well? But what do you know about the world? What can I learn from you?

That's what I'm always thinking about when I'm seeking out talent to bring to The Post.

But The Economist, more broadly, and that as a project…The Economist has changed over the decades, right? It's still, I think, true to classical liberalism. It was founded in opposition to the Corn Laws in the 19th century. It's still very much opposed to protectionism.

But it goes up and down exactly on the details and the nuances of different economic policy. They'll endorse Democrats sometimes, sometimes they'll oppose Republicans.

But what I really also appreciated about working there was—people knew I came from The Journal and The Dispatch, which were traditionally viewed as center-right—and they valued the perspective that I had.

As a journalist, I was trying to write objectively with The Economist, with a little bit of flavor. Like when I covered the Libertarian convention for The Economist, getting those great details. It was a really fun piece.

They also had a really robust internal debate. When they'd go on editorial calls—I won't get into the details of any of them, because those are all off the record—but I could tell that the leaders there were trying to facilitate a conversation with this immense amount of expertise that was assembled at a really remarkable publication like that.

And at The Post, that's another lesson—when I'm leading the editorial board calls or meetings, sometimes I'll stake out a position that I don't really have, just to stress test it.

You know, we'll see what happens in the next two weeks, but it looks like al Qaeda might take over Mali. So I said, "You know guys, do we care if al Qaeda takes over Mali? Do the Malians want that?" And I'm pretty sure they don't. And I'm pretty sure it would be bad. But let's actually not take anything for granted.

Right. And that's also a separate question from what does that entail for America.

Exactly, exactly. And trying to bring out those conversations—And that was a skill in all the places I had sort of picked up, but The Economist really brought it into focus. And it's something that I think The Post can do very well. So we can learn from that particular publication.

You've hired a bunch of people—many of them will be known to readers of Reason, like Dominic Pino and Kate Andrews recently. You've shed people—Washington Post stalwarts left before you were announced or anything, including the editor of the section when Jeff Bezos publicly said he offered him to continue, David Shipley.

Karen Attiah, who was a columnist for The Washington Post, left not too long ago, basically saying that she got fired.

Are you firing people because they don't fit into the new framework or they don't go along with it?

I can't get into individual personnel matters, right? So I can't speak about any particular case.

I can say in general, when I look at the team that we have today, I'm very confident we're aligned. We're rowing in the same direction, and I'm quite happy. Every day I come into work, and I think we have a collegial atmosphere. We have rich debate, but also intellectual cohesion within that debate.

We hired Dominic, who I think—for my money—is the best writer on free markets under 30 in the country. We hired Kate Andrews from The Spectator in the U.K. Later this month—maybe by the time this comes out—Kareen Hattar from The Boston Globe is coming. There are more conversations.

So we're building out people who we think fit the culture that we're trying to build. Collegiality is hugely important to me as an editor.

And that, you don't mean just that they're not jerks in meetings—but also that they're interested in intellectual kind of debate and give and take to get to a better understanding of an issue.

Yeah, absolutely. I want this to be a place where people are excited about the direction—not resigned to it, but excited. And I think that's the team that we have now and the team that we're building. That's where we're at. And it makes coming into work every day an absolute joy.

There's a lot of laughter in our meetings, I'll say. Because people can have a very healthy push and pull. For more out libertarian people, it's like, "Oh, are we going to get rid of the FDA now?" You know? And it's like, not enough. You can kind of joke about that.

And it's just a great team, and it's going to be continuing to grow in the coming months.

Two quick things to finish up with. One, how old are you?

I'm 33.

Ok, so you are young. Thirty-three, it's a bad year for people. It's a tough year for people. Well, it was a good year for the country, because that's when Prohibition was repealed—1933.

Do you see a significant generational shift? I mean, I am—God, almost—I'm 29 years older than you. So, you know, I mean I know the boomers and the Xers are done. We're going to be around forever, but the sun is setting on our careers.

How does generational change fit into what you see happening in politics and culture in America?

It's an interesting question. I'll say first—you know, I suspect in the coming months, we'll be hiring some Gen Xers, and maybe a boomer or two, or maybe seven, right? Age is not something I think about when hiring. It's more about background, journalistic ability—that sort of thing.

But certainly, the millennials now are kind of coming into positions, of management positions. And it's interesting to see friends around my age now in Senate-confirmed positions—friends and acquaintances. 

I think it's a healthy thing.

If you look at the past 5 years, clearly there's an issue—particularly with elected officials—of hanging on too long. And I have a lot of admiration for the knowledge and expertise that people can bring with experience. Everybody ages differently. But also, I think that you get fresh perspectives.

And it's not just, "Oh, you need to get someone who's younger," right? But it's, what particularly about that experience do they bring in? And it's beyond age—it's regional, it's previous occupation, it's education or lack thereof that brings it in.

But I wouldn't say—it would be very shortsighted to just say, "Great, we're never going to hire someone over 30." Obviously, that wouldn't be the case. Because really, I want that mixture of ages and generational experience.

You want someone whose first formative experience was 9/11, and someone whose first formative experience was COVID. And another person's was the downfall of the Berlin Wall. Because they're going to think about government, about foreign policy, about the world in general in a very different way.

And I'm not sure that any generation has the right answer. So to the extent that we can bring those conversations together, I get very excited.

I mean, it's kind of amazing—George Will is like the Benjamin Button of journalists. He is getting younger and sprier in his mind, I think. When he was 33, he was talking about how blue jeans were a curse upon the land, and now he's pretty out there. It's wonderful to see that happening.

And then people like Elizabeth Warren—I don't think she was ever young. So yeah, age comes and goes in different ways.

Final thing. You mentioned it just in passing—The Washington Post chose not to endorse anybody in the 2024 election. And that was kind of seen, or it was widely read as, you know, that Jeff Bezos didn't want to piss off Donald Trump. I don't know that that entered into it at all.

I mean, it's fascinating—many newspapers have stopped endorsing candidates. Does anybody actually vote because the editorial board of the Huntsville Item, or the Car Recycler, or The Washington Post says to? No. But do you think you'll ever go back to that? And if not, make the positive case for why it's better that we live in a world where newspapers don't pretend to tell you who to vote for.

I can't predict the future, but I would be genuinely shocked if we ever made an endorsement again. Endorsements are a bizarre tradition, and I think a bit of an anachronism.

They made sense when you had partisan papers, right? Literal, explicit partisan papers.

Yeah, papers called The Democrat or The Republican.

The New Democrat, or what. But when you have papers like that, ok, maybe I can understand—especially if it's a party primary…

Then you don't even need to do the editorial, right? Like we know—if it's The Waterbury Republican, yeah, vote for the Republican.

Right. And so I think they were sort of an anachronism to begin with. That decision was made before I came here, but I would say, from my perch, when I was at The Economist and I saw that news, I said, "Well, that's smart."

So I don't have any interest in formally aligning a newspaper with a particular party or a politician. I think it's a fool's errand to hope that one politician will fulfill all of your wishes and everything will work out perfectly—and to line up with them.

Except for Gary Johnson in 2016. That was our one opportunity, and we'll never see it again.

You're more of a 2016 Johnson guy than a 2012. I'm a bit of a Gary Johnson hipster. You know, when I was in college, I interviewed him in 2012. And I had a voicemail on my phone—at the college radio station, the call didn't go through. And he's like, "Oh hey Adam, it's Gary Johnson." And I lost that voicemail. But it was like when I was 19, I was very proud of that.

Oh, that's a very good party trick, yeah.

Do you think you'll ever get rid of house editorials? Why not take it a step further? Because don't we want to know—it's a forceful editorial saying, "Hey, you know what? Today, we don't need the government telling YouTube TV that they have to cover Monday Night Football." Why not have the person who principally wrote that be responsible for it?

I'm a bit biased here because I spent most of my career without a byline. But I came to—whether it was at The Economist or…there's not a byline, and that's another fun party trick: being on a flight, and someone's reading it, and you're not going to believe who wrote that article."

But I do think that there's something to be said for the power that an institutional voice can have—not to endorse a politician, which I think is a foolish idea—but to…

You could put a byline in, I guess, but they're the product of a long conversation. A lot of eyes touch an editorial before it goes out. And it really is a group project—but unlike in college, everyone's actually contributing. Now, maybe one person writes the draft and has a heavier lift, but I do think there's something to be said for that.

We're still—it's a work in progress—and we're going to develop a distinct voice. And it's getting there. I can already kind of feel our voice coming together. But it'll be built up as we hire more interesting people.

I'm hoping a year from now, you'll read an editorial without even looking at the byline or seeing that it's labeled an editorial. You'll say, "Oh, this is a Post editorial." And if whoever wrote it also has a column, you'll be able to tell there's a real distinct style between when she writes a column and when she's writing the editorial.

I will admit that I used ChatGPT to help prepare for this. I'm a big fan of AI. ChatGPT has a lot to say about you, which should make you feel either worried or good—but it's always nice to be noticed.

One of the things it said was—it characterized your work, and I don't know the black box that goes on there—but it said that you were an institutionalist. And in our conversation, that seems to fit kind of right.

I'm not saying that you are talking about being a slave—you are not trying to just maintain whatever was because that's the way it is—but it seems like you have an interest not simply in, "OK, on this one issue, I'll just do this." It seems you keep coming back to certain kind of basic ideas, certain institutions, certain formulas or principles that are supposed to stay relatively constant.

Do you think that's a fair kind of description of how you think, and the editorial kind of acumen that you'll bring to The Washington Post opinion section?

Yeah, I think—I mean, great job, ChatGPT, saying nice things about me. Because I was worried a little bit before. It actually said, "You're more of a Mussolini type."

Might not have agreed with….

So I read a lot of institutional history of The Post before I came here. And you find out things like, you know, in the 19th century, The Post editorial board endorsed annexing Canada. Endorsements were really not something that The Post always did—that's relatively new. That started happening, I think, in the '70s.

Yeah, which is amazing that more people didn't take note of that. And the publisher's note about why they weren't endorsing somebody—he kind of mentioned in passing like, "Yeah, we only started doing this, I think in '76 or something." And it's like, yeah, why not get rid of it?

Sorry, I only bring up that history just to say—I do think that The Post is a valuable institution. I respect its history. And a big part of that history—like the United States more broadly—is reinvention, trying new things, challenging them, and also evolving with the time.

And in 50 years, will there be unsigned editorials? Maybe not. Maybe they'll just be unsigned TikToks, right? Or unsigned Instagrams, or whatever the social media technology is that doesn't exist yet. Maybe we'll be writing in that form.

It's something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I'm a writer—that's how I came up. But part of it's multimedia. Where do we reach people who prefer to watch videos, right?

And now there's the philosophical change, there's the actual product change—but you have to stay true to the North Star, which is good journalism, context and understanding, bringing people new information, making it reliable, knowing what they're getting.

I think those are things that have been true about The Post. That's something they've aspired to throughout its history. And that's something I think it's important we stay true to.

As part of that, yes, we'll continue to evolve, and yes, we'll change, like we always have. But it's a big job, and I take it very seriously. I want The Post to succeed, and I want it to last.

I mean, it's coming up on 150 years. And I'd like it to last well into the future beyond that. So in that sense, I'm certainly an institutionalist. But not one who thinks that you should just kind of rest on your laurels or the past glory or past history. 

You respect it, but you think about how you change for the future.

All right. Thank you. That's a great note to end on.

Adam O'Neal, the head of The Washington Post opinion section, which is going to be writing every day in support of personal liberties and free markets. Thanks so much for talking to Reason.

Hey, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed it.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Is <i>The Washington Post</i> Becoming Libertarian? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Katie Herzog, co-host of the popular Blocked & Reported podcast and author of the paradigm-shattering new book Drink Your Way Sober. Katie writes about her and other people's experiences with The Sinclair Method—a medication-assisted approach to alcoholism where you use one drug to counter problematic use of another. Her story—and the cutting-edge research and treatment she reports on—upends just about everything we think we know about drug use, recovery, and autonomy.

She talks with Nick Gillespie about naltrexone, the drug that helped her retrain her brain, why Alcoholics Anonymous works for some people but not for others, and how modern medicine is finally catching up to the idea that we should treat adults like adults when it comes to what we put in our bodies.

They also get into the insane cancel culture politics that gave rise to her and Jesse Singal launching the Blocked & Reported podcast in 2020, whether we've passed peak woke, and if conservatives are now simply presiding over their own version of cancel culture.

Previous appearance: Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal on Left-Wing Cancel Culture, June 17, 2020.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:34—What is the Sinclair Method?

6:59—Herzog's experience with alcoholism

15:50—Sexuality, self-identity, and self-loathing

22:22—Recognizing addiction and the myths of willpower

27:43—Alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous

35:03—Herzog on differences in weed and alcohol use

38:44—Beta-blockers for overcoming anxiety

43:51—Transgenderism in media and cancel culture

58:29—Tolerance vs. agreement

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post There's More Than One Way To Get Sober appeared first on Reason.com.

Nick Gillespie speaks with Dr. Wolf von Laer of Students for Liberty, and Sean Themea of Young Americans for Liberty about how campus activism may change after the murder of Charlie Kirk. They discuss how the tragedy has affected their organizations, what it means for the future of student organizing, and how libertarian ideas about free expression and individual rights fit in today's campus climates.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Campus Activism in the Wake of Charlie Kirk's Murder appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guests are Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jon Shenk and former Navy SEAL Marcus Capone. Shenk is co-director, with Bonni Cohen, of the new Netflix documentary In Waves and War, which follows three former Navy SEALs as they use psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries related to their service.

Capone is one of the three main figures in the film. He first used the ultra-powerful substances ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in 2017 and is the co-founder with his wife Amber of VETS, a nonprofit that helps veterans access psychedelic therapies. He's also CEO of TARA Mind, a company seeking to expand the use of psychedelic-assisted mental health therapies for all Americans. He is featured in the 2023 Reason documentary Welcome to the Psychedelic Renaissance.

They talk with Gillespie about why so many veterans and everyday Americans could benefit from psychedelic therapy and discuss the challenges of depicting both the grim realities of war and the otherworldly experiences of tripping on ibogaine, which some call the "Mount Everest of psychedelics." They also discuss why the Trump administration and an unlikely bipartisan group of legislators may well help usher in an era of legalized psychedelics.

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by challenging worn-out ideas and orthodoxies.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:40—The reality of war

10:34—Documenting war for film

21:05—The psychological toll of the Afghanistan War

31:23—Health care for veterans and ibogaine treatment

36:14—Amber Capone and the importance of veteran spouses

40:15—The psychedelic experience of ibogaine

44:16—Stanford University study on ibogaine

51:49—Visualizing the psychedelic experience

55:37—Legislative progress for psychedelic-assisted therapy

1:05:52—The work of VETS and TARA Mind

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Veterans Are Suffering Because of Government Red Tape appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Jake Tapper, the host of The Lead on CNN and author of the new book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.

He tells Nick Gillespie why it matters that Donald Trump is following Barack Obama's lead in trying terrorists in criminal courts rather than military tribunals, why he believes the Trump administration is unleashing an all-out offensive against journalists critical of the president, and what the legacy media got way wrong with Joe Biden and COVID.

They also discuss the future of journalism in an age of media consolidation, where Free Press upstart Bari Weiss is heading up CBS News—and possibly CNN, too.

Previous appearance:
Jake Tapper on The Hellfire Club, Donald Trump's Big Lies, and D.C.'s 'Bullshit Waterfall', May 11, 2018

The Reason Interview goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least more interesting—place by challenging worn-out orthodoxies and ideas.

 

0:00–Introduction

1:34–Race Against Terror

5:25–The Bush administration and the war on terror

8:39–The legality and effectiveness of torture

17:06–President Trump's approach to foreign policy

22:19–Media censorship and the FCC

29:43–CBS News, CNN, and the challenges facing legacy media

40:14–The rise of independent media

52:07–Joe Biden's decline and its impact on the Democratic Party

58:37–What is being underreported in the second Trump administration?

1:06:05–Generational shifts in political views

 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Jake Tapper, thanks for talking to Reason.

Jake Tapper: It's great to be here. Thank you.

The new book is Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Trump's attitudes toward the press. We're going to talk a little bit about Joe Biden. And have we actually digested the debacle that was the final months of the Joe Biden presidency?

But let's talk about Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. This takes us back 25 years almost—to 9/11, Afghanistan, and the beginning of what was called the global war on terror, the global war on terrorism. What brought you back to this topic? Because you've already written about Afghanistan.

So this story is the story of the one and only foreign terrorist that was brought to the U.S. to be tried in a criminal court for killing service members abroad.

I first got interested in the story because I heard about it just randomly at my son's birthday party. One of the prosecutors was a fellow—and he told me the story. He said something about The Outpost, and I said, "That book was really difficult to write because the military keeps bad records and they don't share them."

He said, "Tell me about it." And then he proceeds to tell the story about how he had to prove—he and his colleagues had to prove a case—a criminal case, that would be upheld in court against a terrorist for actions on the battlefield that took place in 2003. And an attempt to blow up the U.S. embassy in Nigeria not long after that. And like all of the sleuthing and the detective work that they all had to do.

It was just this incredible story about all the stuff I love from police procedurals like CSI or Cold Case or whatever. How do you prove a case?

And yeah, it reads—I mean, it's incredible—because the Al-Qaeda killer, who is known…I can't pronounce his actual Nigerian name, but he's known as Spin Ghul. He showed up in Italy. He was arrested by Italian authorities and was bragging to them, basically that, "I killed American soldiers."

Yeah. Very proud of it. Very proud.

Yeah. But then they had to prove it, because that was his assertion, right?

They had to prove it because it was the Obama years, and Obama had closed off Gitmo from any new terrorist suspects. Obama wanted to try terrorists in criminal court. And that was really controversial at the time. People might not remember, but—Trump is trying to do it now. Spin Ghul was the first terrorist tried like this. Trump is trying to do it with a guy named Jafar. Not controversial at all—no hue and outcry. The guy is sitting—this terrorist is sitting in a cell not far from where you and I are sitting, in Virginia, and nobody's acting afraid about it.

But at the time, people acted as though these terrorists had superhuman powers, and if you brought them to Manhattan or Brooklyn, they would escape and wreak havoc.

But in any case, the sleuthing—what was so interesting to me about it because it was just proving a case that was not just cold. I mean nobody…people are generally not brought to court for killing people in a war. It just generally doesn't happen. So the sleuthing was so interesting.

And then the subtext also became the different ways—and this wasn't intentional in terms of like, I wasn't trying to give a history of the war on terror—but you had to tell it. You had to describe what was different about Bush, to Obama, to Trump, because it was part of the hurdles that these prosecutors and FBI agents had to jump over.

Can you explain that a little bit? Again, this is history worth recovering. A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Dan Krauss, who came out with a new documentary about Afghanistan called Bodyguard of Lies, and it again—you know, it's amazing. This is recent history, but it feels like a million years ago, and we've forgotten all the nuances.

The Bush administration—what was their approach to the war on terror, and particularly to military combatants—or noncombatants, but just suspected terrorists? How did they deal with people like that?

Well, they basically set up an entirely new system of law. Now, they would argue that it was rooted in previous systems. But the idea is, these are not criminals, they're enemy combatants. Which is not the same as a prisoner of war, by the way. Prisoners of war have different rights. These are enemy combatants. We're going to send them to Guantanamo Bay. We are going to engage in enhanced interrogation—or what the rest of the world calls torture. We are going to engage in extraordinary rendition—or what the rest of the world calls kidnapping.

And to give them the benefit of the doubt, they were thrown into this situation where America and the world are terrified because 3,000 Americans, almost, had been killed in this attack. And they feel like they can't deal with it in the normal system of criminal laws and justice. And so they create this other system.

Now, that system proved problematic in many, many ways, as your readers and viewers and listeners know very well. One of them is, it didn't exactly endear the rest of the world to the United States.

So when I'm talking about—when I write in this period of 2011, and we're dealing with the Italian government—has this Al-Qaeda terrorist who claims he has killed Americans and tried to blow up the U.S. Embassy. The Italians are not just eager to hand him over to the Americans. I mean, they don't want him. They don't want to hold him. But they will not turn him over if he's going to Gitmo. They will not turn him over if he is going to a military tribunal. And they will not turn him over if the death penalty is on the table.

And the Italians at this point are, by the way, kind of fed up. They have just prosecuted, successfully, a number of CIA agents in absentia, and military officers—American military officers—for kidnapping, for extraordinary rendition of an Egyptian cleric from the streets of Italy.

Now we're in the Obama era, and Obama has what you might want to call a very aspirational notion of how this should be done. He thinks that the criminal courts are good enough. He doesn't follow through on that entirely, because he creates this Gitmo commission to examine everybody in Guantanamo Bay. Some people, he says, can go abroad to other prisons or other countries. Some people can be tried in criminal courts here in the United States. And then there's this third group that is largely still in Gitmo: people that are too dangerous to let go, but the evidence against them is too tainted for even a military tribunal.

So that's where Spin Ghul drops in, in the middle of all of this.

Yeah, so remind us a little bit, where were you in terms of things like putting a suspected terrorist in Gitmo without any kind of due process or any kind of military tribunals that the Red Cross or other organizations would send. Because Reason—you know, it was an interesting book to read because it's a thriller even though you know the outcome. But it was also—it reminded me, like, it was very…I'm not saying it's heroic in any way shape or form, but it was very uncomfortable. 

Oh yeah. 

You know what, like, torture and just picking people up off the streets and dropping them in kind of black sites where who knows who is torturing them, etc. Like to speak out against that was considered kind of anti-American at the time.

Yeah, it sure was. Look, Nick, I mean, one of the things I admire about you and the work you guys do is that it's never a good time to be—it's never a comfortable time to be a libertarian. Right?

There were 15 minutes in 2014 when it was looking to be quite a lot.

And you know, being right in your own time is often uncomfortable. That should be your motto.

But yeah. I mean, the thing about the torture, in addition to the questions about whether or not it was effective to begin with, is that it created a whole bunch of situations where terrorists—criminals—could not be successfully put away.

And one of the things that was interesting about this case was, since it started in 2011 during the Obama years, there was this effort to do everything by the book. 

But it hadn't always been done that way.

There's this one chapter that was fun to write and interesting to write—it takes place in 2002. It is the capture of a terrorist accomplice named Abu Zubaydah, who was in Pakistan. The FBI is part of this, and they go in there. They seize Abu Zubaydah's stuff. Then the CIA takes over—John Kiriakou and others—and nothing having to do with Abu Zubaydah, who's still at Gitmo today, is ever usable again because it's so tainted. But the FBI was still doing things by the book, and the stuff that they had—there was some evidence there that was part of the trial against Spin Ghul.

So what the book—and I didn't, it's not a polemic; you can read it and like it; a progressive can read it and like it. Hugh Hewitt read it and said he thought this proves why military tribunals and Gitmo are the way to go. I didn't write it to be a political statement. It's just a thriller with political facts.

But I personally do think that like that stuff having to do with tainting evidence because of enhanced interrogation or torture makes us less safe. And the reason I think that is because if Spin Ghul had been captured during the Bush era, 2008, he probably would have been thrown in Gitmo. There would not have been this exhaustive, fascinating search for evidence against him. And then ultimately, probably—just if you look at the history of detainees at Gitmo—probably after 10 years somebody would have said, "This guy doesn't belong here. We don't have any evidence against him. He's just some crazy guy who claimed he did all this stuff. We can't prove it." And he probably would have been sent to Niger, or Saudi Arabia, or Oman, or wherever. And then he probably would have gone and tried to kill as many Americans as he could. Because that was his purpose in life. I mean, no one's claiming these are good people.

No, no, no. I mean, one of the ironies that comes out in the book is that Spin Ghul himself was like, "No! Treat me like an enemy combatant. I'm not a criminal. I am a terrorist. I am like hellfire from Allah to kill Americans. That's what I exist for." 

He wanted to go to the Hague.

He was demanding that he talk to Ban Ki-moon and President Obama. He had a very grandiose view of himself, as zealots and people who commit violence in the name of extremism often do.

The ideological point of the book, it strikes me—which I agree with completely—is that ultimately this is a vindication of an approach to terrorism to say, "We are going, as Americans, are going to follow the rule of law and due process, because that is a defining attribute of us."

And it's a rejection of Bush-era policies—many of which I'm sure are still going on but are just not acknowledged by the government—where we do just torture people to tell us what we want to hear. That we put them in black sites. We have other countries or other people murder people, etc.

Is it your argument, ultimately, that torture turns out not to be very good at getting information? That putting people in places like Gitmo really doesn't make us safer? We don't gain the information or we lose sight of these people? That we are in a better place, not just morally but also materially, by doing this kind of criminal prosecution?

Well, I'm not taking a position per se on that. I mean, I think that it is very difficult to make a case for torture just in terms of results. Forgetting the morality of it all or the American ideals of it all. But I think it's very difficult to make the case for it in terms of results. I just think its difficult to say.

Now, does that mean…I don't know that I would have done anything differently than Obama when it comes to the 15 guys who are still at Gitmo: too dangerous to release, and yet the evidence against them is too tainted to prosecute. So what do you do? I don't know.

I do think that it is effective. I think that on Earth Two, where Spin Ghul is picked up in the Bush years, he's free and killing people. It doesn't spoil the book to say that Spin Ghul right now is in a supermax in Colorado. And he's, you know—but that said…

So this is the first terrorist ever tried in the court, the U.S. criminal court, for killing service members abroad. Trump is trying to do the second. This guy Jafar, who is responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing—or is part of…very statement-based. It's based on what he has confessed to. Before the FBI got hold of Jafar and brought him to this country, and there was no hue and outcry the way there was when the Obama years.

Which either suggests that we as a society have evolved—or that only Nixon can go to China, in terms of Trump and terrorism, I guess. But before that, he was in the hands of the Pakistanis.

I wonder about that evidence against Jafar. Because it has been in previous cases—that you learn about when you read the book—it has evidence against these confessed terrorists has been thrown out because of whatever happened to them while they were under the duration of either the CIA at a black site or the Rwandan government or whatever.

I am worried about the Jafar prosecution because the Trump Justice Department is winnowing their department—and the Eastern District of Virginia—of experts. People who know what they're doing, who know how to prove a case against a guy like this. These are not easy cases.

And we're replacing… There was a guy in charge of the Jafar case—Michael Ben'Ary—who was fired for this ridiculous reason. Some MAGA person speculated that because he'd worked under Lisa Monaco at the Deputy Attorney General department, that he was part of the deep state or whatever. He got fired. He wrote a letter saying this weakens the case against Jafar.

How do you feel about Trump more broadly, in terms of things like the war on terror or foreign policy? Because the one thing we know for sure is that Bush's foreign policy was disastrous. Obama's was nothing to write home about. Trump and Biden kind of are different—I'm not saying they're the same thing—but clearly different.

Have we evolved out of…are we really done with the "global war on terror" kind of era of foreign policy?

I don't think it's done with us, is the bottom line. I mean, I think as long as there are dozens, hundreds, thousands—whatever—of radicalized Islamists who are willing to kill Americans and target Westerners, the war is not done with us.

There was an attack, an ISIS-inspired attack, by an American in New Orleans at New Year's this year. So I don't think we're done with it.

I think Trump…he's a complicated guy and I have a lot of complicated feelings about his foreign policy. I mean, I think you can look at…There's a ceasefire in Gaza right now. That's empirically a good thing. People might not like what happened with the strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but I think the fact that they don't have it is a good thing.

Right. And that he didn't follow it up. I mean, he was saying, "This is something we're gonna do but we're not gonna stick around."

Yeah. "We're not." That's it. "We're dropping the bombs on their facilities, and then we're out." I mean, I think there's…to be cautiously optimistic about.

I also think he's exercising a mix of hard power and soft power. His hard power is the threat of tariffs, the threat of force.

Blowing up Venezuelan boats.

Well, that's another question. So that's a different part of the war on terror powers.

And this is something that you guys at Reason always know, which is like: Once a president establishes for himself that he has a shiny toy, good luck getting that toy ever wrested away from whoever the president is.

Bush used drones. Obama multiplied it by 100. And now Trump is using the same arguments to:

A) label Antifa a domestic terrorist group—which I'm not sure he even has the power to do. And then
B) use these powers to strike terrorists abroad, like going after al-Awlaki or whoever in Yemen.

Using those same powers and saying, "We're going to use them against what we're calling narco-terrorists," because they're killing 100,000 Americans a year through fentanyl.

Which is not really—I mean, it's tragic—but it's not really the same thing as terrorists blowing up Americans in embassies. To say, "We're selling drugs and Americans are overdosing on it."

I don't shed a tear for any narco-terrorist dying, but like I don't know that it's sane.

And as Rand Paul points out, when it comes to those strikes on these boats from Venezuela or Colombia or whatever—even if you're wrong only 25 percent of the time—that's 25 percent of the time you're killing innocent people. And also, there's no judicial process for this.

So I would say, ultimately, as with all presidents, I think it's a mixed bag. I do think it's a positive development that President Trump is using the criminal court system to prosecute Jafar. I don't know that they even remember that it was really controversial to do this in the Obama years.

I had Seb Gorka on specifically to ask him—

Dr. Gorka on this podcast

I apologize.

I had Dr. Gorka on to ask him about this. And now that I know so much about this from The Race Against Terror book, I'm very intrigued by it. I don't think he even had…I don't know that he knew that this had been controversial back in 2011 or 2012.

But either way, I take it as a positive development that President Trump thinks we can use the criminal courts to prosecute foreign terrorists captured abroad. I think that's a good thing.

Yeah. And it is strange that Trump talked a lot actually in 2016—and certainly in 2024—"I'm not doing regime change," even as now he and J.D. Vance are explicitly talking about regime change in Venezuela. So it's like there's something rhyming here, but it seems slightly better. You know, it's not totalizing like it was 20 years ago.

Yeah. TBD when it comes to the South America thing. Because I don't know how much of that is chest-thumping and how much of that is like… I mean, are they really—I can't see them ever sending ground troops anywhere.

You know that the U.S. and Latin America—or South America—have a terrible history. And hopefully, I thought we were past the military version of it. But that remains to be seen.

If we can, let's talk about Trump domestically. It's only been about a month since Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC chair—as well as Trump himself—explicitly said that Jimmy Kimmel, basically, that Disney and ABC should fire Jimmy Kimmel because airing him is not in the public interest. A lot of things along those lines.

And again, this is something else. I mean, that's a month ago, but it seems like it was a decade ago. Almost, right?

And you were very forceful in saying that, in your mind, this was the most direct threat to a free press that you've seen in your lifetime. Do you stand by that? And how are you thinking about it now, a month on?

I absolutely stand by it.

Look, there have been a lot of egregious examples. I don't like what the Biden administration did with social media companies—a lot of it was confirmed years later. But in terms of… I mean, there's a difference between…They used a very slippery slope—which is always the argument—which is, if you say, "Don't put this on the internet because it's going to hurt people," and the social media companies comply, we're in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, etc., etc. Then the next thing they're gonna do is start removing stuff that is just politically untenable, like the lab leak theory, which to me is still insane.

Look, I get that there's anti-Asian hate crime out there, and that's horrific and obviously should be condemned. But I think most Americans are capable of having a conversation about the Chinese government as a force for evil or ill—versus people of Asian descent, or even Chinese citizens.

So I found a lot of it really, really troubling.

But the argument that—I mean, I stood up when the Obama administration was saying that Fox was not a legitimate news organization, when they were declaring that from the White House podium. I said—and I got a lot of shit for it, and I still get shit for it to this day—"Why is it appropriate for a White House to label a credentialed news organization not legitimate?"

This having nothing to do with my feelings about Fox. My feelings about Fox are irrelevant, really. First of all, in 2009, that was a very different Fox than what we have now. And second of all, it's a question about why is it appropriate for the White House to do this. So I do have a history of this.

I will say that this was the most direct. Brendan Carr goes on the podcast of a MAGA right-wing person and says, "I don't like this speech, and Disney should act. And the local affiliates that air this quote-unquote garbage should stop airing it."

Which was followed by the largest owner of local TV stations, Nexstar—which needs Brendan Carr for some business transactions they want to do. Not just approval, but to lift a limit on how many households they can reach. They need Brendan Carr. And it was basically, "Aye aye, sir, how high do you want us to jump?" And they did that.

And it was awful.

I have not seen ever before a direct infringement on the right to free speech like that before ever.

I think we both might be—thankfully, we're not very young anymore—but we're too young for LBJ and whatnot. But yeah, this is…

I mean, I wrote a piece for The Free Press: "Abolish the FCC," in the wake of this. Partly because there is no reason, I think, why the government or a group called the FCC should have the ability to license content in any way, shape, or form. I realize that is an outlier position, but…

Do you feel like this threat—this most recent threat—plus the lawsuit that Trump is bringing against CBS, and he's done against other broadcasts or other news organizations… is it actually having a chilling effect? Or are people developing a backbone in the regulated media to push back?

Well, both is the answer.

I think the Trump assertions of… Look, anybody has the right to sue anybody in this country. And corporations don't have to acquiesce if they don't want to.

One of the things that's troubling is that this is coming at the same time that, for want of a better term, the oligarchs are out oligarching. And they are very susceptible to what one CBS News employee called "legalized bribery," to me.

And look, the lawsuit against CBS News was absolute nonsense. The idea that CBS, in making an edit like that, was defaming President Trump in any way… it was an edit to a Kamala Harris interview. And yeah, she spoke in word salads. They took one clip and used it, and they took another clip and used it.

And as you showed on CNN, on your show, that Fox News had done the same thing for Donald Trump. None of this rises to the level of even notice, much less legal action.

Yeah. Look, I'm not crazy about taped interviews to begin with, because I think people get lazy in terms of the talkers—they're not concise. They're long.

But generally speaking, most of the time, no every time, that we're trying to edit an interview we're just trying to save time. "Ok, here's this 20 minutes of whatever. Can we find like a minute that answers the question?" Because that's the business here.

And that's what 60 Minutes was doing. That lawsuit was nonsense. And the only reason, in my view, that it was settled was because Shari Redstone wanted this merger to go through. She wanted Brendan Carr….

And in the middle of this, Colbert gets fired. And while you can make the argument that there is an economic issue when it comes to late night in general—including Colbert's show—announcing it then? There's no reason for it, other than to announce it so as to please Trump and Brendan Carr.

There's no other reason to announce it then just in terms of television. You would announce it on your own terms after the New Year or something like that. The only reason to do it during this merger week was to please Trump.

The Stephanopoulos interview is a different thing, because I also suspect there was a lot of discovery that nobody wants all their emails and text messages turned over.

But that said, now President Trump is using this stuff to argue that he's constantly defamed, that he's consistently attacked by the media unfairly. And it's not true. I mean, I see stuff about him that's not fair, of course. Yeah. So I think there is a chilling effect.

What are you worried about? What comes next? What does the White House do next to turn the pressure up even higher?

Well, I mean, they're already doing it to CBS News.

There's already… I mean, Bari Weiss—who I like and have only the highest hopes for, and I don't think is… Look, I think legacy media—Nick, you and I have been talking about this for a long time—I think the legacy media has work to do. Absolutely. In terms of credibility, in terms of inclusivity of voices. Not just from the right, by the way, but also libertarians, independents, and all the rest.

But I mean, the degree to which it feels as though President Trump feels very empowered… He only insults NBC and ABC when he talks about networks. He always excludes CBS now, ever since the Ellisons took over. And he says, "Larry Ellison is a good friend of mine. He's a good guy, blah blah blah. They're gonna make it fair, da da da da."

Which, you know, that's not how presidents should be talking about people who cover them. Presidents in general should think we're all pains in the ass. Every president. About every news outlet.

Well, we're also talking about a president who—and I'm jumping ahead now a little bit—but we're talking about a president who, in response to the No Kings rallies or marches, released an AI video where he is wearing a crown and literally dumped shit on protesters.

So we're talking about a different president. Now, what does the media do to push back against this in any kind of meaningful way?

Well, I think, first of all, we have an obligation to point out that…

You know, when Hillary Clinton referred to half of Trump supporters in 2016 as fitting in a "basket of deplorables," or when Joe Biden said what he said about Donald Trump's supporters being "garbage" or whatever he said—I know that's disputed. Those were considered gaffes.

Those were, you know, as Michael Kinsley's famous saying that, "a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth." But those were accidents. Those were mistakes. Them accidentally revealing what they really think about millions of Americans.

But here's Donald Trump, in a strategic way, showing himself dropping shit not on MS-13 gang members, not on Antifa rioters, but on Americans demonstrating peacefully. The No Kings rallies were peaceful—largely, as far as I know.

They were virtually completely peaceful, yeah.

Yeah. And certainly the ones in the AI were that. If you look closely, you can see he's dropping shit on a woman holding a baby. He's dropping shit on an American flag.

So I think it's incumbent upon us to cover the president—including when he does things like that. We don't have to use adjectives. Just use verbs.

This is the president…as a strategy, attacking millions of Americans and dividing the country. That is what he is doing.

And then you ask people for their opinions on it. But I think we can't shy away from covering it.

But at the same time, it's not for us in the news media—unless you're an opinion journalist—to say how you feel about it. You just state the facts of it and let opinion people talk about it.

And also, we have to cover everything else he's doing, whether you like it or not: tariffs, Mideast peace. There's a lot going on.

Do you—David Ellison, who installed Barry Weiss—and I should say I'm friends with Barry; I write for The Free Press from time to time—installed her as the editor in chief at CBS News. He's also rumored to be talking about buying CNN. Puck and others have said that if he does that, he's going to extend her role to CNN.

How would you feel about Barry Weiss being the head of CNN's operation?

I only know her personally. I don't know her professionally, so I can't really say.

I read The Free Press. I subscribe to The Free Press, as you know—as one of many places I read. 

Yeah, of course.

I read Reason. I read you know, whatever. I read a lot. And I try to read as many perspectives that I don't think automatically or what I knee-jerk think.

And you know, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. Just like every publication I read.

I don't know. I mean, I suspect it would be fine. I mean I look at legacy media, and I see flaws. And I think there are flaws that need to be fixed.

What are the biggest flaws—and you're considering CNN should be considered legacy media, even though it's the original cable show. Fox News is legacy media at this point. 

What's the big failing of legacy media right now, do you think?

Well, look. I mean, Fox has its own issues, right?

I don't think I'm spilling any secrets when I say they are commodifying preaching to the choir. That is a channel for Trump supporters—not for conservatives, not for Republicans. It is for Trump's supporters.

Very seldom—although there is that one woman on Outnumbered—very seldom are there voices that are allowed to criticize Donald Trump or even question what he's doing. Period. Full stop.

There is another channel on cable that is the exact mirror image of that, and that is commodifying ideology. And that's fine. I think that's a fine supplement for a news diet. I don't think it's a news diet.

Ideological media has been part of this country since it was founded.

I think legacy media, as a general rule—and this is difficult to do in an era of cost-cutting, etc.—but I think we should be doing more stories outside the Delta Shuttle corridor and Los Angeles. I think we need to be covering the heartland more.

Like, if I had unlimited funds and I were running any network—CNN, let's say—I would have a big office in Kansas City.

Could you move—I mean, you film out of D.C.—would you move? Even to Philadelphia would be…I mean, it's in the Acela corridor, but that would be radically different, wouldn't it?

I mean, yes. I think that you would want to go to—I don't know that I would.

Look, I mean, it's such an interesting question because when CNN was founded, it was founded in Atlanta. And that was done purposely. And I don't know that that made CNN different ideologically than any other network.

But I think there should be more voices from all over the country included in coverage. And I do think that the biggest bias is often story selection. It's not necessarily in coverage. It's: Are we covering this? Are we covering that?

And I just think ideologically, we need to expand our aperture in terms of what we think is news. And I don't only mean issues that conservatives are interested in or libertarians are interested in. But I'm also interested in: Are we covering the opioid crisis enough? Are we covering poverty in America enough?

I just think there are all sorts of things we should…we could be doing better. And that's what I would do.

But the problem is—one of the problems is—this is happening at a time of media consolidation. It's happening at a time of oligarchs taking over news media. And it's also happening at a time where there is this commodification of rage-bait, of making people hate each other.

And I don't just mean Fox or MS. I also mean social media driving people away from each other. Villainizing each other.

How does it hurt?

CNN as a network has flat-to-falling ratings. The cable system writ large seems to be fading. I think most networks had peak years in 2020 for a variety of reasons that are probably not going to come back anytime soon.

Cable as a distribution mechanism is dying. I mean, C-SPAN, of all things, has to come up with a radically new business model because not enough people subscribe to cable anymore.

How much of it is that when industries are kind of sunsetting, they don't actually experiment, they don't do something new—they just kind of double and triple down on what has brought them to decline in the first place?

Well, look—we are in…

First of all, I think everyone's ratings are going down. Including Fox.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

They're just losing viewers at a slower rate than others.

Or they have a bigger audience, but it's down from where it was a year ago—and 4 or 5 years ago, for sure.

Cable is…the cord-cutting is a real thing. But it's not just the cord-cutting.

There is just a plate tectonic shift in how we are all, as individuals, consuming information.

So, I've written eight books now, and the difference between how much people factor in e-books and audiobooks today is light-years away from just 2 years ago. There is a recognition now that people are listening to books and reading them on their phones in a way that just a few years ago people did not recognize—they were only looking at hardcover.

It's everything. It's entertainment. It's news. It's movies. It's everything. And everybody's trying to figure out how to do it.

I don't know what the future is. I know that Mark Thompson, who is our boss at CNN, he helped The New York Times get from a newspaper with a website to a website with a newspaper.

Or a game company with a newspaper, right?

A game and recipe company with a newsletter. Hey, I play those games every day.

You know, it's interesting because your—was your first book, or one of your first books, about Jesse "The Body" Ventura?

That was the first one, yeah.

And this is going back—you started kind of in a big way… I mean, you were at Philadelphia magazine, if I'm remembering correctly, but at Salon, which is still soldiering on and things like that.

Is the decline of the networks—legacy or otherwise—is that being supplanted by another kind of rush toward independent journalism or alternative journalism? Or is it just that credibility among media people everywhere is kind of fatal?

I don't know where it's going to land.

I mean, people can say, "Compare the ratings for, let's say, CBS Evening News with Joe Rogan." Well, they're not doing the same thing, right?

People might be getting information from both of them, but they're not doing the same thing. So I don't think that's a fair comparison. But I do think—and I'm not belittling Rogan—he's created this giant empire based on long-form, authentic conversations.

But he's not calling himself an expert on anything. And these aren't news reports.

I just think we, as reporters, need to figure out how to get in that space where viewers are.

Publishing has figured it out, in the sense of audiobooks and Kindle books. That's how…basically that's how I consume books now. I'm listening to them in my car and then I'm reading them on my phone.

So how do we get there? I don't know. CNN has been doing a lot more in terms of the vertical video space. And that's different, right?

People don't want a highly produced news report in that space. They want—or they seem to want—a much more authentic, produced but Instagram or TikTok-friendly presentation of information in under three minutes.

So I don't know. We're all just trying to figure this out.

Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting to see the experimentation. I know even at Reason, we started our video site in late 2007, and our signature were long-form documentaries and interview programs.

We are now…our biggest successes with short-form, info-rich vertical videos. So there's actual information, reporting, and things like that.

But does it feel like—you know, you may be one of a dying breed, right? Where you are an old-style newsman. You have a politics, but it's subsidiary to the journalism that you're doing.

Do you think your days as a kind of, you know, Wolf Blitzer–type voice of authority—are those days numbered?

I don't think so. Because I think there will always be a need for somebody who is not a Democrat, not a Republican, who is able to moderate debates. Who is able to perform—or provide, rather—a news service and accounting of the day.

Who can have on Speaker Johnson, who can have on Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader. I think there's always going to be a need for that.

I don't know the format for that in 5 years, 10 years.

While you and I are both having success in these short vertical videos—CNN and Reason—there is also simultaneously—and this is fascinating—this explosion of these incredibly long-form podcasts or YouTube podcasts. Hour-long conversations. Three-hour-long conversations, in the case of Joe Rogan, sometimes. Right?

So, I don't know where this lands. I just know that I think we, as you note, need to experiment, need to get out there, need to try stuff. Hue closely to the brand of nonpartisan, nonideological, trying to get information.

Yeah, you stand up for facts. And yeah, you stand up for democracy. But as a general note, I'm not saying that like this politician is better than that politician. I just think we're all trying to figure out how to get there.

I don't see any news organizations, by the way—in terms of legacy media—knocking the cover off the ball in terms of getting to that place.

So I think there is an opening.

CNN is gonna launch a streaming service. I hope that we are able to get in that space. And I hope people, you know…

What happened to CNN+? Because you guys—you took a swing at this, right? That lasted, what, a week or something?

Yeah, that didn't really…

So what happened was—that was an attempt by the previous regime—Jeff Zucker and his team—to get into the streaming space. And there were other shows that were non-normal, like me having a book club, or Anderson having a parenting show.

But my book club was honestly just for CNN. No one's covered it this way, but that was us trying to get into the book space. Like, right now—although it's changing a little bit—but right now, the book space is 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning, and then you go on Colbert, and maybe you do Today Show or whatever.

And it was us trying to get into the book space by offering a half hour to 45 minutes with the author. It was a way for us to try to get in early on that stuff.

But in any case, what happened was that happened right around the time Discovery took over. That it became Warner Bros. Discovery. And they came in, and they had a lot of debt, and they had this huge expense that three weeks into it, or whatever it was, had not caught fire. And most things take years to build. 

And it was killed.

It's interesting because Fox also—I mean, Fox has Fox Nation—but it does not seem to be particularly robust. What, in the new CNN streaming service, are the types of things you'll be doing for that?

Well, I think my show is going to be on it. And then I have a bunch of ideas of stuff I want to do for them once it's off the ground.

But right now, I've been told that since The Lead is going to be one of the shows on the streaming, just to focus on The Lead. And I'm talking to them right now about other stuff I could do that would be value-added.

And in terms of the long-form interview space—where there is this ability, whether it's on streaming or podcasts or whatever—to do a long interview with somebody who's a newsmaker that they might find appealing.

If you're canoeing with Nick Gillespie—I mean, maybe somebody would watch that. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't think anybody wants to see that. And I don't blame them for that.

But it is true. I mean, one of the great things about long-form possibilities, which are easier to do now that we're freed from, you know, network kind of patterns or templates or whatever—is that people run out of bullshit to say. Right?

What I mean is, if you're talking to somebody like Mike Johnson, and he's got to do a second take at a topic, it's probably going to be less hype and more, hopefully, thoughtful or thoughtless in a way.

Well, you tell me, because you do this. Do you think…? I mean, most libertarian politicians are pretty candid, so I don't know. I don't know what it would be like. It would be interesting.

I would be interested to see—like, if I go, I'm just making this all up, Ok? But if I got oyster fishing with Mike Johnson in Louisiana, right? Is he less inclined to talk like a speaker on TV if he's, you know, knee-deep in a bayou? I mean, like, I don't know.

One of the things I think everybody wants out there—or it seems to be, at least, based on viewing patterns in the new media is authenticity. "This is actually what this person thinks." Now, they might be nuts and they might be wrong, but they're getting millions of viewers.

I think… The way I think about it is…it's interesting that his career seems to be mostly over now—but Howard Stern, going back to the '80s… his genius was that people—celebrities or other public figures—were coming on, and they would have three or four talking points. And he would have them hurry through those, and then ask, "Keep talking," and they would say something unguarded.

And that was authentic. It was interesting. It was often embarrassing or humiliating or illuminating. And I mean, I think that's the hope. Like, I don't want to see Mike Johnson for 30 seconds, because I can figure out what he's going to say. But maybe in the second or the last 10 minutes of an hour-long interview, he might actually get around to saying what he really thinks. And that matters.

Howard is such an interesting character or case study. Because he also makes it look easy because he's done a lot of research. He knows a lot about the people and he's asking them about obscure…

Like, there's this famous fight that took place in the early days of SNL, when Chevy Chase and Bill Murray got into a fight. I forget who broke it up—it was like Billy Joel. It was this very unlikely group that broke it up.

There's a video going around of each one of those individuals, at a different point in the last 20 years, being asked about it by Howard. And it's really just illuminating and interesting.

Howard's ability to attract guests, and also to go long—which means you're likely going to start getting some good stuff at some point, unless the person's a complete dud. And also to have information and know what's interesting, is really unparalleled. There's no one else doing it.

I mean, Charlie Rose was doing a version of it for a while before his troubles. But there really isn't anything that's replaced it. I mean, the guy from Inside the Acting Studio was doing it for a little while.

Right. James Lipton. And Bill Maher sometimes does a version of it in his podcast before it devolves into kind of high, drunken chatter.

But I think it's also partly if you're a fan, you want to ask these people the questions that fans have, as opposed to, "I am a very serious person. Let's talk about very serious things."

Yeah. Club Random—is Club Random still going on? 

Yeah.

I thought he said he was going to…maybe I misunderstood. I thought they weren't going to do it anymore or something. But like no, Club Random's really good.

But it also, you know, then you need somebody to curate it afterward. Because I don't have eight hours a day to listen to podcasts. I want somebody afterwards to clean it up.

Let me ask you about—I guess it was earlier this year, right? You published a book about Biden…

Original Sin, in May, with Alex Thompson.

And what was stunning to me—it's a fascinating book—you took a huge amount of shit for it. Because it's like, "Why weren't you doing this in real time?" Can you explain that a little bit? Like, at what point did you think it became a kind of journalistic imperative to say, "You know what? This guy, he's not there anymore."

I mean, I, along with everybody else in the mainstream media—in the legacy media—knew that when he took office, he was older and showing signs of age.

I didn't see huge evidence of acuity issues until…you know, 2023, maybe. And even then, you'd ask people what's going on and they'd insist—

I mean, look. People in the White House were lying. Not just to not just journalists, but they were lying to Democrats.

Oh, they were lying to themselves, I'm sure, as well.

I think that's right.

And I would see weird moments, but it wasn't… Look, I had the same reaction to the debate that everybody else did. I just had a better view of it, which is this guy cannot form a coherent sentence.

He's there to show he's up to the task, and he's proving the exact opposite. He can't even articulate a vision for the country, or even argue why he should be entrusted with the most powerful job in the world.

So, I mean, I would say, look—I wish I had… I can look back and say I wish I'd done more reporting on it. But I will also say the people that were writing about it were doing good journalism.

And I include my co-author Alex. You know, some other people wrote commentary pieces. That's a little different.

But in terms of journalism—from The Wall Street Journal, they did it in June. There wasn't a ton of investigative work being done about what was going on behind the scenes, because people were not talking.

I mean, conservatives were making fun of Biden as old and slow and this and that. But there wasn't any investigative work that was like, "And here's the smoking gun."

Do you think we've processed it as a country?

Because the Trump presidency—like winning—I'm not saying he shouldn't have won or didn't win in 2016, but it was such a weird thing that nobody saw coming. That's a lot to process.

And then he governed kind of as a centrist Republican, really, that first term around. You could—there are issues—but he wasn't the way he is now.

But then Biden—that is another giant thing to digest. The idea that you're like, "Oh my God, this guy is out of it. When did this start? It's unmistakable. It's unavoidable."

And now we don't talk about it anymore.

 The other thing that's a huge wrinkle in the whole thing about when we look back on it—is that, I think it was February or March or April, I forget the exact date. But his last State of the Union address—Biden's—it was good. It was fine.

And he actually had moments of playing off the crowd and whatever. I think that did a lot to shut people up. Because remember, that came after the Hur report. The Hur report came out in which Hur accurately described Biden as seeming like a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. And got an untold amount of shit for it.

And then he did the State of the Union, Biden, and he seemed fine. Old, but fine.

And then came the debate.

I don't know about the American people. I think that the Democratic Party has yet to reckon with this. I think that the progressives—no, it's not the progressives—it's the Democrats, the Democratic base. It's not the progressive base. The progressive base saw what happened because they never loved Joe Biden to begin with.

And they recognize it as an opportunity for them to kind of move into a more powerful position within the party, I think.

That's probably true. Although, Joe Biden was probably the most progressive president.

 Absolutely. The Washington Post called him the most liberal candidate the Democrats have ever run for the presidency, and I think that was accurate going in, but—

That's true in 2024—not in 2020.

In 2020, he was kind of like "Centrist Joe," which is who he was his entire career. But then, to unite the party, they agreed to take on all this stuff. And then, because I think he wasn't really paying attention—because he didn't have the wherewithal—he just outsourced the border to the activist wing of his party.

I think that the degree to which Democrat voters have yet to reckon with the fact that they were lied to by Democratic officials. and the reluctance of Democratic officials to reckon with the fact that Joe Biden and his inner circle did the country dirty and did the Democratic Party dirty. 

I think that's still a problem.

And I think it's one of the reasons why Democratic approval ratings are still so low. Who knows what's going to happen in the midterms? But I don't think they're doing themselves any favors.

And I see it online all the time, still. Just this reaction like, there's this obliviousness. It's not just online; it's on MSNBC and elsewhere. This idea that there was nothing wrong. Everything was fine with Joe Biden. Everything was great with him.

And it's like, what planet are you on? Go watch a video of him from the fall of 2024.

Kamala Harris writes in her book that it was reckless to make that decision without more input. And that he was not up to the task of running for president in 2024. I'm paraphrasing, but she says something like that.

She's talking about how she had to go and do a lot of the campaigning he was not capable of doing. That's a real problem.

And I have yet to see anyone other than Kamala Harris even reckon with it—just a little bit—in terms of the 2028ers, the potential candidates.

With Trump—because Trump is now what 79—he, of course, has a clean bill of health, and he is the strongest president of all time. And he's doing math quicker than he did when he was a teenager, and all of that…

I go back to that AI video. If that was my father or grandfather, I would be like, "Dad, you know you can't drive the car anymore. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

Should we be looking at Donald Trump for the same kind of senility that seemed to overtake Biden? Or are we kind of captive to that "This is just Donald Trump"? There's nothing he can do or say that isn't just the character he was in 1990 or 2000 or 2016.

 The truth is: I don't know.

I mean obviously he's always been a pugilist. And obviously, he has not exactly run on uniting the country. He likes to attack people. He likes to attack the media and Democrats. And, as we saw by the AI video, millions of Americans.

I'm really going to have a difficult time taking seriously the next time some Democrat says something that's vaguely insulting to Republican voters. I'm really going to have a tough time taking seriously anybody just, like, clutching their pearls.

Because this is Trump literally dropping shit on people peacefully demonstrating in this AI video. I'm not offended by it. But don't pretend you're offended by "deplorables" if you're not offended by that.

But beyond that, like sure. We should be keeping an eye out.

We cover this stuff all the time. I mean, the question is, when Donald Trump says that he warned the country about bin Laden a year before 9/11 and it's in his book—he can't even remember the title of the book—is that something to do with acuity? Or is that just him, as he always does, lying? Saying things that aren't true?

I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I mean he was doing that sort of thing before, when he was in his 60s.

Remember, he had the whole thing about Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11? Never happened. Never happened. No evidence it ever happened.

What are the things that the Trump administration is doing now that you don't think are getting enough attention, either good or bad?

So I think the way they're hollowing out experts from the Justice Department and the FBI is bad.

One of the things I've learned from writing this book is how important it is—if you want to put terrorists away forever—how important it is to have really good prosecutors who know what they're doing. And really good supervision of those prosecutors.

And they're firing them for nakedly political reasons.

There's a guy in the book named George Toscas—one of the toughest guys in the National Security Division of the Justice Department. There since '93. Just an incredible… You had to get everything through him before you could get it to the attorney general or the president—indictments, extraditions. And he's been sidelined because he approved the Mar-a-Lago classified documents warrant.

The guy in charge of the Jafar case in the Eastern District of Virginia—fired because some MAGA person hypothesized that he was against the Comey indictments, which he wasn't.

We're getting rid of really good people who are there to protect us.

That concerns me a lot in the national security space.

I was covering it a lot—like, every day—and we're not doing it as much. And I want to get back to it.

The effect of tariffs on small businesses is really important. I think we are covering the Mideast peace achievements—such as it is right now. We're covering it plenty, but I think that's important and significant.

Another thing that I think is important, that we're not covering enough, is and, we'll see what the effects will be—but the cuts to Medicaid. Is it reform? That's what Speaker Johnson says: "It's reform to Medicaid. We're just making able-bodied men have to work," etc., etc.

Or is it going to actually hurt people?

That's to be determined because it's just starting to happen now.

But all of that, I think, is important.

What about you? What do you think?

I don't—this is… I'm running. I own this microphone, Jake Tapper.

Well, I'll say one other thing that I want to know more about—and people are doing investigative journalism about it. The Times has done it, we've covered it on my show, but it's really tough.

All the money that the Trump boys are making with this crypto venture makes Hunter Biden look like a Boy Scout. Right? I mean, this is some real—

Which is an achievement, right? To make people think like, "You know, Hunter Biden was not really corrupt or a horrible human being. Kind of a good artist, really, when you think about it" compared to the various scams that are going on.

The naked shakedowns that are happening—both in the Trump family industries, but also out of the Trump White House in the name of the government. I mean that's something that concerns me a huge amount.

Like, the idea that Intel or Nvidia or other companies have to cough up a certain amount of revenue in order to do business, to get golden shares in companies and things like that.

This is deeply disturbing, because the MAGA state capitalism and a kind of progressive industrial policy—it's not a horseshoe anymore. It is forming a kind of solid ring now. 

And that troubles me.

I agree.

I would also say that when our Founding Fathers set up this system of checks and balances—that I think you and I agree, Nick, is like no other, and is a beautiful thing, and one of the geniuses of America. I don't know if they thought that the Congress, as opposed to the Continental Congress, was going to be populated by the Madisons and Jeffersons and…

I was going to say Adams, but I hate Adams.

But by that type of people. And then you look at the Congress, and you look at who's in there, and you think, like, I mean this makes Harrisburg look like the Algonquin.

Yeah, it's amazing. Like ancient Greece or something like that.

With very few exceptions—and I'm not only talking about Republicans, because Democrats did not bathe themselves in glory during the Biden years when it came to standing up and saying, "What the hell is going on here?"

But with very few exceptions, they seem entirely concerned about their own reelection possibilities and nothing else. Nothing else.

There are a few here and there that get away with whatever, but… I mean, Rand Paul praises the hell out of Trump but also criticizes the extrajudicial killings. And I get it. You have to make compromises. But this is very, very distressing.

I think they thought we were going to keep evolving as a country. They didn't think we were going to go the other way.

Yeah. That we had peaked in 1800.

Final question: You are Gen X, right?

Yes. Solidly so.

Ok. So do you see—and obviously Gen X and boomers spent most of the '80s and '90s fighting with each other because they're mortal enemies—now it's becoming clear boomers and Xers are kind of on one side of a generational divide, and Millennials and Gen Z are kind of on the other side.

Do you see anything coming out of younger Americans—say, people under 45 or under 40—that will radically alter the politics of the country? Or the energy? Or the optimism level?

My impression of Millennials and Gen Z is that there's actually going to be quite a division between them.

I think Millennials—and this is just anecdotal, do not hold me to this, and do not reply in the comments. My impression of Millennials is that they are fairly. Obviously there are exceptions, but they're fairly progressive.

And I think Gen Z is going to be a lot more conservative. I think that—just my experience knowing Gen Z kids—my kids and their friends and whatever—I sense much more skepticism.

And I think it's a reaction to Gen Xers and Millennials forcing on them progressive views on them in school. And I think there are going to be some conservatives. This just my general impression.

That was an early read of Gen Z and kind of a beta—but it may be what ends up happening, right?

Trump did not win young voters, as he constantly says he did. But he did do better with them than other previous Republicans.

And I just think that it's not just that he is reshaping and remaking politics and normalizing things that weren't normal 10 years ago.

I also think it is a reaction to the failures of progressive movements to achieve what they wanted to achieve. Whether it's Bernie Sanders, whether it's Black Lives Matter, whether it's Me Too.

I think it's COVID. I think it's a lot of progressive politics being forced down their throats in school.

I think there's a lot of stuff going on.

 All right, we're going to leave it there. The person is Jake Tapper. And the new book is Race Against Terror.

Jake, thanks so much for talking.

Always great being here. Thanks so much, Nick.

 

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Jake Tapper on Censorship, Media Failings, and Presidential Power appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Jeff Flake, former Arizona senator and U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and now head of the brand-new Institute of Politics at Arizona State University. Flake made national headlines in 2017 when he delivered a searing Senate floor speech announcing he would not seek reelection and declaring he would not be complicit in the "degradation of our politics" under Donald Trump and MAGA.

A lifelong conservative, Flake built his career on defending free markets, free trade, limited government, and pro-immigration policies—positions that put him at odds with a Republican Party drifting toward populism and protectionism. We talk about why he chose principle over power (and how he feels about that now), his time representing the U.S. in Turkey as Russia invaded Ukraine, his push for reforming America's broken political system, and why he believes the fever of grievance politics must—and eventually will—break.

Past appearances:

"Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on Immigration, Cuba, and the Future of the Republican Party," July 2011

"Pork Party House: Where DC insiders go for taxpayer-subsidized fun," March 2010

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world more libertarian—or at least more interesting—by challenging worn-out ideas and orthodoxies.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:29—The state of the GOP under President Donald Trump

8:41—Did Flake's conservative principles irritate Trump?

12:14—The case for more immigration

21:27—The connection between immigration and trade

26:25—Globalism in the era of nationalism

34:26—Ambassador to Turkey

38:05—The importance of Ukraine's independence

40:51—The Trump foreign policy philosophy

44:02—Reacting to political violence

47:57—How to reform the political system

58:33—Arizona State Institute of Politics

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post What Happened to the Republican Party? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Ben Wizner, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He says that President Donald Trump's second term has brought an all-out assault on free speech—targeting comedians, immigrants, universities, and even law firms that take the "wrong" cases.

Gillespie and Wizner put Trump's actions in the context of past presidents and discuss whether the ACLU has strayed from the days of defending the free speech rights of American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, Unite the Right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) in New York.

They also discuss the legacy of Edward Snowden, with whom Wizner worked, and whether government spying on citizens has gotten better since the whistleblower revealed illegal mass surveillance of Americans during the Obama administration.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world more libertarian—or at least more interesting—by championing free minds and free markets.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:04—Free speech under Trump

5:33—Comparing Trump to Biden on free speech

9:42—Have Americans become more comfortable with censorship?

16:21—The Federal Communications Commission and Jimmy Kimmel

25:43—What are Trump's standards for protected speech?

28:46—ACLU cases protecting the speech of immigrants

40:12—Why the ACLU defended the NRA

45:02—Has the ACLU remained committed to its mission?

53:52—Protecting the rights of students on college campuses

55:46—Snowden and the state of mass surveillance

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Can the ACLU Serve Progressives, Libertarians, and Conservatives? appeared first on Reason.com.