This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Colleen Shogan, the former archivist of the United States and head of the National Archives, the federal agency responsible for preserving presidential records and stewarding the nation's historical documents. Shogan explains what the archivist actually does, how the National Archives approaches custodianship of presidential records, and why those materials belong to the public rather than to individual presidents.

The conversation then turns to the country's upcoming 250th anniversary and Shogan's "In Pursuit" essay project, which aims to foster a shared civic memory at a time when history has become a battleground in the culture war. Shogan reflects on how a divided country can commemorate its past without collapsing into partisan narratives, and what it takes to present American history in a way that invites disagreement without descending into zero-sum politics.

Boehm and Shogan also discuss how the Archives became caught up in the Trump documents controversy, why Shogan believes she was fired without explanation, and how disputes over records and transparency have increasingly turned into political flashpoints.

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

0:52—The role of the U.S. archivist

9:54—Celebrating 250 years of history with "In Pursuit"

17:17—The importance of keeping history nonpartisan

22:47—Celebrating the lesser-known U.S. presidents

28:13—Wall Street Journal's criticism of Shogan

37:27—Getting removed by President Donald Trump

40:11—The importance of presidential records

44:51—Politicizing nonpartisan institutions

50:43—President Joe Biden and the Equal Rights Amendment

56:16—Shogan's Washington murder mystery novels

 

Upcoming Reason Events

• The Reason Roundtable: Live in Washington, D.C.! on February 4

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Can We Save American History From Partisan Politics? appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Billy Binion is joined by Scott Jennings, a political analyst best known for his viral debates on CNN, where he is often the lone conservative voice. Jennings is also the author of A Revolution of Common Sense, a new book arguing that President Donald Trump's political comeback is rooted in what Jennings calls a common-sense governing platform.

Jennings and Binion discuss whether Trump's policies on such issues as tariffs, deportations, and foreign affairs live up to that description a year into Trump's second term. They also talk about Jennings' experience working at CNN, his criticisms of the legacy media, and why he feels Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are more similar than they appear.

The conversation also turns to the growing civil war on the right, including recent public infighting among conservative factions and influencers. Jennings explains where he draws lines within the conservative movement, his views on free speech versus free association, and why he believes some figures are doing lasting damage to conservatism's ability to articulate a coherent set of values and priorities.

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 more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.

0:00–Introduction
0:59–Being a conservative at CNN
6:53–The future of media
17:01–Going from Trump critic to Trump supporter
19:53–The influence of Mitch McConnell
24:00–Limited government and the One Big Beautiful Bill
30:25–The Trump administration and free speech
39:31–Trump's immigration and tariff policies
56:45–The shortcomings of DOGE
1:01:24–Antisemitism and conspiracy theorists on the right
1:09:08–Alignment between the GOP and libertarians

Transcript

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

Billy Binion: Scott Jennings, thank you for talking to Reason. 

Scott Jennings: Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me in.

So you've been very critical of the mainstream media, and you're also on one of the most visible mainstream media networks. So I'm wondering, what is your objective at CNN? And do you think that you get a fair hearing on those panels?

Well, my objective is to participate in debate. I think debate is good. I think the country was founded on debates—and some muskets—but also debates. And I think to the extent that we can foster more debates in our political culture, it's gonna be a good thing for America.

CNN used to, years ago, sort of pioneer this. You know, this was the network of Crossfire. And then we got away from it, and there's really not that much debating content out there on the air. And so last year, they decided to do this debating show. And I thought, "This is a great idea." And it's worked. I think it was supposed to be a temporary thing. And then it was so popular, they left it on the air, and it's still going here over a year later.

So my purpose is to participate in debates. My purpose is to give half, or more than half, or sometimes 90 percent of the country, like, somebody who can argue and articulate on their behalf. And I just—I'm here to pop bubbles, you know? I think it's bad when we get stuck in our ideological bubbles. I meet a lot of people in this line of work who—I might be the only Republican they know. That's a bad thing, ok? This is not a good thing for America. And so that's my purpose.

Do I get a fair hearing? I mean, I think I make it more than fair out there for my point of view. I mean, certainly, there are more people out there who would disagree with me than agree at the table. And none of the hosts agree with me, of course. But no one's ever censored me. No one's ever told me, "You can't articulate that view." No one has ever put a script in front of me and said, you have to do this. So to the extent that I get to do what I do and say what I wanna say, it happens every time. 

To that point, why do you think that the makeup is always you being outnumbered? Do you think it would be better if it were just 50–50? What do you think about that?

Well, I don't know. I'm not a television producer. I mean, I think it actually is sort of interesting when you have one person, you know, fighting a mob, you know? I mean, just for television. I mean, to me it's kind of interesting. And certainly people who are of my political persuasion like it that way. They think it's kinda neat that one guy can disarm, you know, four or five people at the same time.

At the same time, I think you could probably do quite well, you know, putting an even-handed thing out there. But for what CNN is trying to do and what they have done, I don't have any criticisms at all because they're the only network that actually has stepped its foot back into the idea that debates are a good thing to platform.

I go all over the country. I hear two things: I love you and I love the debates. I don't care for you, but I love the debates. The commonality is the debates. And so CNN and our CEO, Mark Thompson, realized this and they decided to put some debates on the air. And most of the time, I think it works pretty well.

Could you make a go of it with a totally evenly split show? Probably. But that's not what they've chosen to do. And that's…for me right now, that's perfectly fine. I do think there could be other evolutions of this and other iterations of it, but that—that's above my pay grade.

How do you think the legacy media is doing covering Trump this time around? Do you think it's better or do you think it's worse, the same?

Not great. I mean—no, look. I think… Trump broke a lot of people—he broke a lot of institutions and he warped a lot of things. One of them is institutional media, which has decided that it needs to defeat Trump, that it needs to subdue Trump, that it needs to finally get Trump. That's different than covering Trump. And it's been that way for 10 years.

And so do I think there are people out there covering him fairly? Yeah, I do. Do I think that there are people out there who are grinding axes and basically executing on a political agenda? Absolutely. And I think—look, I mean, don't take my word for it. Look at the Gallup poll. You know, they take this confidence-in-institutions survey every year. Trust in the mainstream media is lower than it's ever been. There's a reason for that.

And so I think there is a way to cover Trump where you can tell the truth, and where you can be critical, and where you can shine lights. And I think there's also a way to do it where you can appear to just be grinding an ax to fit a narrative. And I think a lot of times the ax grinding and the narrative building is what you get, right?

The show versus tell quandary.

Yeah. And I also think, you know, a lot of mainstream media is very insular. And they don't really consider the viewpoints of people outside of their little bubble. And that's not good either.

So look, you know, I think—I believe you asked me, why am I at CNN? I believe in a free press and a trusted free press at that. I also believe in popping ideological bubbles. And I also believe that conservatives need to be represented in news organizations.

So there's a lot of reasons for someone like me to do this. But one of the ways that they could reform themselves is to take a little bit of an introspective look at: How are we covering not just Trump but all conservatives, all Republicans? How do we cover that movement or that political persuasion versus our preference?

And if they were able to do that, I think, and do it, you know, with a really critical eye, they might find some shortcomings in what they've done. And it would help explain why people don't trust them, or why they have fled to independent journalism or independent news sources. And it might be a little bit of a roadmap back.

That is a perfect segue to something I wanted to ask you. In your book, Common Sense, you talk a lot about how the influence of the mainstream media has receded over the last few years. How have you experienced that shift? And what do you think the future of media is?

Well, I've experienced it for the last 25 years in politics. You know, I'm in media now, but really, for the last quarter century, I have been a political operative. I've worked on presidential campaigns, Senate campaigns, all kinds of Republican politics stuff. I've been in public relations, and now I'm with CNN and Salem Radio.

So I've seen this from all angles. And for most of my career, what the mainstream media said in a presidential campaign mattered a lot. You know, the narratives that they would strike, the storylines, the vectors—what they said mattered a lot. It mattered, frankly, more than TV ads, or the paid advertising.

That just wasn't true in 2024. I mean, you think about what you heard in October of '24 about the narratives that were closing out the campaign—you know, all the Puerto Ricans are mad and Harris is going to win Pennsylvania because of it, or there's a poll in Iowa, or…You kept hearing these things. What they wanted people to believe the vector or the momentum of the campaign was was something altogether different than what was actually happening in the country. That was borne out on election night.

And so what I learned in 2024 is that, probably in my career, this was the least influential the mainstream media has been in a presidential campaign cycle. Not to say that there isn't influence, and not to say that the mainstream doesn't have an impact. But in terms of overall influence, if you look at the way Trump ran around them and did all sorts of things in alternative formats, that obviously was extremely helpful to him.

And if you looked at the ways Harris kind of ran towards the mainstream media—I mean, all she was really capable of doing was standard-issue mainstream media stuff. And even at that, she didn't do it very well. But she was not really capable of the unscripted, outside-of-the-mainstream.

Right, the criticism of her was that she was inauthentic.

Exactly. And you have to have some of that in order to participate in the new media stuff. Trump obviously did it, and his people understood it. And they kind of ran circles around it. And so they just didn't live or die by the narratives of the mainstream media. They created their own communications ecosystem outside of that. It obviously worked.

And so that's why I argued in the book that it seems to me that in 2024—and I said this on election night—this was kind of the death of the political information distribution complex, which has heretofore controlled the narratives in our politics. But I don't think that's true now.

We're seeing this White House prioritize some of these independent creators, smaller right-leaning outlets, which I think is interesting and good in a lot of ways. I will also say, though, some of the people who have gotten the opportunity to be in the briefing room who otherwise wouldn't have been have gotten some criticism for using the chance to kind of lob more softball questions. You know, like there was one guy who asked about, like, "Will Big Balls get the Medal of Honor?" or that kind of thing.

I very much agree with you that the mainstream media has squandered a lot of credibility by being very deferential to one side—and very obviously so. And so I'm wondering what you think the right's role is in rectifying that.

Well, I agree with you that it's good for the White House briefing room to be reformed. I think it's good that they brought in other people.

Look, a lot of these people—and I'm new to this—but a lot of these people I'm learning have millions upon millions of followers. And they get lots of views. And in some cases, they have more views than certain mainstream outlets.

Totally, yeah.

I mean—and so in terms of audience, if I'm the White House—and the, you know, the White House that I worked for, we came just before the advent of social media. Bush 43 was kind of the last old-world White House before 24/7. You know, I think Politico came out in 2007 and then social media comes shortly thereafter.

And so that was basically the dawn of Twitter. Right.

Exactly. And so we existed before. But if you had told me back in those days, well, you have all these different channels where you can talk to hundreds of thousands or millions of people without having to get, you know, hammered by The Washington Post or whatever, I would have taken it in a heartbeat.

So it's smart for the White House to do this. It's also good, because there's a lot of people that get news and information that way. So that's a good thing.

You know, the right's responsibility here, I think, is to produce honest, true content and understand that we're in a moment where the marketplace is desirous of new political content. They want it presented in authentic ways. They have questions they'd like to get answered.

And so my only advice would be: Do something creative. Do something authentic. Do something that's pleasing to the viewer. I mean, after all, it is a business. But do something with your time if you're given a seat in there. Ask a good question. Think of something that no one else has asked.

I try to do this on the shows that I'm on: What is nobody else saying? What is the question that no one else wants to ask that would lead to a line of conversation that might be new and unique to your deal?

That will enhance your position in all this. I don't want to single out or be critical of anybody who's gotten a seat in there, because I think it's good what they're doing. But if I were giving any of them advice, it would be: What's the thing nobody else is willing to ask in here that actually might be illuminating to the overall conversation? That's a good way to do it.

So right now, CNN is in the spotlight with this merger. What do you make of Trump's role in the media merger and, you know, purporting to have a voice in CNN's future?

Yeah, he has lots of opinions about lots of things in the media business, and that's not gonna stop—

He's a showman after all. 

I think it is hard. He's a television producer…

Right, exactly.

I mean, in some of the interactions I've had with him and observing him over the years, I think he—and look, he had one of the most successful television shows out there. He knows a little about the TV business. And so I'm not surprised that he has opinions about it.

And of course the federal government does have some regulatory oversight here in terms of how this goes. So I don't really know how to answer that, other than to say: not surprised Trump has an opinion. And it's a little bit above my pay grade. You know, when you're talking about this amount of money, it's way above Scott Jennings' pay grade. But I don't know who's going to own it. I don't know what it's going to look like. But do I think Donald Trump is going to continue to voice an opinion about what he sees on CNN? One hundred percent.

I assume he will not answer this, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do you have a preference?

I do not. I have no answer for that question, other than to tell you that I'm quite happy with my deal and quite happy with my role. And as I said earlier, for all the criticisms of the right of CNN—some warranted—it was CNN and Mark Thompson who brought back the debating format that ultimately put conservatives in a position at CNN to articulate our viewpoint.

And look, I think that show and what we've been able to do there has actually made CNN safe again, you know, for some conservatives to watch it and to come back on it. I've noticed since we put that show on the air, there are now more Republican elected officials who are willing to come on and do interviews and do things.

You've been there since 2017. Did you feel like they were skeptical before of coming on?

Yes. Oh, I think we went through a period where a lot of Republicans did not want to come on. They didn't feel like they were going to get a fair hearing. And I think we were having trouble booking Republicans at one time. I mean, there's always, you know, a person here or there. But now it feels to me—and I don't have any metrics to back this up—it just feels to me now like there are more Republicans willing to engage with CNN.

I attribute some of that to what we've been doing with the debates, because it shows that CNN actually does have a commitment to allowing people with authentic conservative views to voice those views and not feel like they're just going to be shouted down or run out of the room or, you know, maligned for eight minutes or however long they're on there.

So I'll just say, however this goes, whatever happens, it is CNN right now that's giving the American people debates. And I don't think anybody else is doing that.

For the listeners who are very online, they may know that sometimes there is like a gossip cycle when, you know, when you are pictured with someone like Kaitlan Collins or something like that. Before we move on to, you know, politics in general, can you just talk about the relationships off the camera? Why you think that animates people so?

Yeah. Well, first of all, the people who work at CNN—we're very collegial internally. We have a community. In fact, it's one of the best parts of the job, actually, is the people who've been there together for a number of years. We spend a lot of time together, and in some cases we even travel a lot together.

My two best friends at the network are Van Jones and David Axelrod—interestingly.

Staunch Dems. 

And I love them both and have really benefited, I think, from knowing them and conversing…

David Axelrod was an Obama guy, right? 

He was Obama's chief strategist.

Right, right, right.

And Van Jones, you know, is one of the most prominent left-wing commentators, Obama White House staffer, and has been aligned with a lot of left-wing causes and organizations.

But I think they're both—look, the best debaters and commentators have experience, are thoughtful, they listen. I mean, you can always tell the difference between the good and the bad out there. The people who can only sort of say what they wrote down in advance versus the ones who listen and can engage in the debate.

Van and Axe are debaters, and they listen and then they can react. Those are the best kinds.

But off the air, those are my buddies. And with the anchors—I mean, I have great relationships with the people that I'm on the air with. I mean, I think we have some interesting and sometimes heated exchanges, but I respect what they do. I think they respect what I do. And the community of CNN has actually been quite a pleasant thing to be involved in.

I want to talk about the changing GOP. Something that's always kind of fascinated me. And I would like to preface this by saying I do not mean this as a gotcha. You know, in preparing for this interview, I saw that in the 2016 election, you weren't necessarily Trump's biggest fan. 

Nine years ago, correct.

And you were worried that he might have some authoritarian tendencies. For the record, I mean it when I say I don't want this to be a gotcha, because there are a lot of Republicans who share that—our vice president being one of them—who has kind of had this evolution over time. And I'm wondering for you what that journey was like, if there was like an aha moment, if there was something that really changed your mind, or if it was gradual. How did that happen for you?

Well, in 2016, like a lot of Republicans, I didn't really know Donald Trump other than just Donald Trump the entertainer, the businessman, whatever he was. And I wasn't trained in his style of politics. I never thought of him as a Republican political actor. I didn't know him. And he comes along, and I guess the best way to describe it is, I just was completely and totally unfamiliar with him or with an election cycle where someone from outside the party would come and take control of the party.

So in 2016—my unfamiliarity with him and, you know, questions about him—I did have a lot of questions about him. I did vote for him. Voted for him three times, actually. And probably just fast forwarding to 2024, felt closer to him in '24 than I ever felt. And I'll get to why that is in a moment.

But back in the early days, I, along with millions of Republicans, were somewhat skeptical and didn't really know what to make of it.

I'll tell you one thing: Had he not won the election—you know, I wonder what would have happened to the Supreme Court, for instance. And that was one of my motivating things about my vote for him. I actually think it's one of the reasons he won the election. Mitch McConnell holding open that Supreme Court seat—I think this is one thing that a lot of Republicans looked at and said, you know, "I don't know a lot about Trump…"

I remember that news cycle. It was very controversial. 

"I don't know a lot about Trump, and I'm not a little sure about it, but I sure as heck don't want Hillary Clinton filling this." And so, I mean, that changed everything. And so that was persuasive to me at the time.

So, you know, Trump—there's not a politician alive that I agree with 100 percent of the time. Not even the ones that I like very much. And certainly Trump has done things over the years that I, you know, wish he hadn't done that, or I would have done it differently. The same was true for George W. Bush. The same is true for Mitch McConnell.

But I'll tell you this: If he does 95 percent of what I want, and the left does 0 percent of what I want, it's an easy choice for me every time.

You mentioned McConnell, who was one of your mentors, correct?

I would not have gone to college, I don't think, if it hadn't been for Mitch McConnell. 

Why is that?

Well ok, I'm a poor kid from west Kentucky. I'm the son of a garbage man and a factory worker. I didn't have much.

And I got a scholarship to go to the University of Louisville at the McConnell Center for Political Leadership. They give a scholarship to 10 kids a year. I got one of them, and it's a full ride to the University of Louisville. Now, this changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my life.

And so—he doesn't pick the kids, and he raises the money for the scholarship. But had that not existed for me, I don't know what would have happened to me. And later on, I did work on his political operations and political campaigns over the years. He's been a mentor.

What was the most important lesson you learned from him in politics? And do you think that there was a failure of that version of the Republican Party that left open this opening for Trump? Or is that a misunderstanding of why Trump is now kind of the leader of the Republican Party?

What did I learn from Mitch McConnell?

Number one: focus. I think in campaigns, it's easy to chase every tail out there. You know, it's like—lots of things happen. What actually matters, and what do you have to focus on? So don't chase your tail. Focus is important.

Number two, in terms of just tactically—you know, McConnell's kind of famous for: If you throw a pebble at me, I'll throw a boulder at you. And in some ways, he and Trump are actually quite similar in that. Now, they're different attitudinally…different disposition. McConnell's not a showman, Trump is. But in some ways, I perceive similarities in their desire to thoroughly destroy their political enemies in the heat of a campaign.

I recognize that trait in both of them. But really, it's focus and a willingness to do what you have to do to win. McConnell never lost a race, even in a state that, when he started, was extremely Democratic. There's a reason for that. And so I really, you know, as a political operative, learned a lot from Mitch McConnell on that.

Do I think he led to the rise of Donald Trump? No. I think that—

I didn't mean him specifically. I more so just mean that kind of older version of the Republican Party. There was something that was missing.

Oh, well, I think that a lot of people voted for Trump and liked Trump because of the way he handles our perceived enemies—whether it's the media or whether it is the Democrats. I think there was a perception, certainly in 2016, that in coming out of the 2012 election—which I also worked in—that the party had just, you know, basically rolled over to the left, rolled over to the Clintons, rolled to the media, whatever.

And you talk about in your book kind of like how when you were an operative, compassionate conservatism was the response to a lot of these things, right? Like you just need to be nicer.

Well, yes. But, you know, as a tactical matter, I think there was a belief among Republicans that we just sort of turned the other cheek all the time to people who were never going to do the same for us or give us the benefit of the doubt. Why should we do that for them?

And look at 2012. I mean, most Republicans would tell you that Mitt Romney was eminently qualified, eminently moral, had good ideas—and what did they do to him? They called him a murderer. They assailed him for having the controversial idea that he might appoint more women to the government.

These are the things that made Mitt Romney history's greatest monster. And we just did not effectively understand what we were dealing with. And Trump comes along and says, "No, no. I get it. I am going to fight these people to the end." And it was that fighting spirit that people believed the 2012 operation lacked, the '08 operation lacked, that even back in the Bush years—you know, why do you allow yourself to be consumed by these entities that exist only to consume and destroy Republican presidencies and Republican presidential candidates?

So I think what Trump provided was, "Hey, whatever happens, whatever we do, I promise you I will not be consumed by these people who have eaten up everybody else we've nominated for years."

In your book, you talk a lot about the Republican Party being the party that takes a stand against big government. And I think particularly emblematic of that in the book is—you talk about Elon Musk's kind of fracture with Donald Trump over the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

And, you know, Elon Musk, of course, being the tech entrepreneur who was very close to Trump with the Department of Government Efficiency, leading that agency for a time before he left a few months into the administration. Elon Musk famously said that a bill can be big and it can be beautiful but it might not be able to be both.

What do you make of that? The criticism, I guess, of the One Big, Beautiful Bill was that over 10 years it was going to raise the national debt by somewhere between $2.4 and $3 trillion. Is that compatible with a party that wants to spend responsibly?

Well, the White House disputes that. I mean, the White House's disputing of that is: Look, we're locking in permanent tax rates. We're deregulating energy. We're creating, effectively, an engine for more economic growth, which will create more tax revenue, which will not explode the deficit. I mean, that is their counterpoint to your argument.

But Elon—I interviewed him for the book on Trump's 101st day in office. And I could tell he was a little bit out of shape with Washington generally at the time. I don't think he believes he found anyone in Washington who shared his urgency for all the things—particularly fiscal—that he thought were going to lead to the downfall of the country. And he obviously did not agree with this bill.

I do think maybe he had some misunderstandings about the vehicle of reconciliation and what the purpose of this bill was versus other things that he might want to do that I don't actually think are mutually exclusive. I think you can do the Big, Beautiful Bill, and I think you can also meaningfully tackle our fiscal situation. But they weren't going to happen in the same vehicle.

And so, you know—anyway, I guess it's water under the bridge now, because they're back together. But I think, just to focus on the book for a moment, my impression of Elon is that he believes one of the things that is going to lead to the downfall of America is this debt that we have, and that it will lead to the devaluing of our currency, and that this will put us into a fiscal spiral when combined with mass migration, when combined with low birth rates.

You can see these huge forces rapidly leading to the decline of America. That's what he believes. But a lot of it is wrapped up in the idea that we have this debt, we're not dealing with it, no one here cares about it all that much, and I'm kind of frustrated with Washington over it.

Right. I edit an economist for Reason, named Veronique de Rugy, who's a very talented economist at the Mercatus Center, she wrote something along the lines of—and I would wonder if you'd agree with this, being a former political operative—"The House agrees to spend one dollar, the Senate agrees for two dollars, and then we end up spending three dollars?"

You know, the idea being that somehow spending is just—I mean, what is the solution to that?

Well, the one issue that we've never sort of dealt with is, three-quarters of federal spending is non-discretionary. It's basically on autopilot. And then you have a quarter of it that's discretionary. So you can adjust that and change that, but if all you're ever dealing with is the quarter that's discretionary, and you don't ever touch the non-discretionary piece, you can see how you'll never meaningfully get your arms around it.

Ultimately, if you really wanted to tackle this, it's going to require some pretty massive structural changes in entitlements and other things that are effectively just on autopilot right now. That, coupled with some kind of long-term period of growth, would—in a conservative's mind—make a difference in this. We just haven't really grappled with the idea that roughly three-quarters of the federal budget is just on autopilot, and tinkering with the 25 percent is never really going to catch up on it.

Totally. And there seems to be misunderstanding that you can get away with not reforming things like Social Security and Medicare and that kind of thing. I mean, it feels like a political death wish to even suggest it. You know, Rand Paul is—I feel like—the only person who's like, "Hello?" Thomas Massie, that kind of strain of the Republican Party.

Interestingly, by the way, just to cut in for a moment. When I asked Elon, for the book, "Did you meet anyone in Washington that you actually think gets it?" He only gave me one name, and it was Rand Paul.

Interesting. What do you think of that?

Well, they're both more libertarian, right? I mean, they come from that wing of the conservative thinking. If Elon—I didn't really ask him what he considers his political ideology to be. I assume he would describe himself as more libertarian than anything. But that was the one person that he named.

And then again, they tend to think about our fiscal situation in more drastic terms than the average, you know, other Republican. Or at least more drastic terms in what they're willing to say about it. Plus, you have Trump on top of all that, who's made a long-term campaign promise: I will not cut Social Security and Medicare. That's not something I'm interested in doing. He got ahead of that early on and has really never wavered from it.

There was one quote from Elon Musk in the book that I wanted to see if you—I wasn't sure what he meant. He said something to the effect of: "Not all Democrats are criminals, but all criminals are Democrats." What do you think he meant by that?

Well, he believes that Democrats and the Democratic Party have gone all in on protecting illegal alien populations on the one hand. And on the other hand, they have dedicated themselves to criminal justice reform that seems to be only aimed at allowing violent criminals to roam the streets and let them out of jail, and so on and so forth.

So he's looking at these two issues saying, "What is it about the Democratic Party that they're coddling illegal populations and coddling violent criminals? And this seems to be where all their energy is."

Frankly, I think he's onto something here, as a political matter. I think it's one of the things that's holding down Democrats' ability to rise up above where they currently sit. I mean, the image of the Democratic Party is quite low, and it has been low now coming out of the 2024 election.

To me, those two issues I mentioned are a big reason why people look at them and say, "Well, you don't really seem to spend any time on just the average law-abiding American citizen, but you spend a lot of time on illegal aliens, and you spend a lot of time letting people out of jail. What are you doing for me, the person who follows the laws, pays his or her taxes, and just is trying to make it in this world?"

I think it's one of the biggest anchors around their party right now.

I want to talk a little bit about free speech. In your book, you say that Trump's respect for free speech is something that connects him to some of your former bosses. You said that's something that will help preserve Western civilization, which is a big theme in your book.

I think Trump has gotten some criticism for not being super friendly towards free speech. A few examples being, this woman from the Tufts entering deportation proceedings over an op-ed that she co-authored, the Jimmy Kimmel thing, where the FCC had, you know, I guess there was a—and there was schism in the conservative movement over this too, right? Whether that was jawboning or not.

Similar to the Biden administration trying to pressure social media companies to censor certain types of content. And then you have people like Stephen Miller saying things like, you know, calling someone a fascist—which is often an inappropriate thing to call someone—but that that is an incitement to violence, which is not compatible with, in my view, a reading of the First Amendment.

Because the First Amendment is also supposed to protect, you know, kind of detestable speech. If it was just popular speech, you wouldn't have it. How do you think that the actions comport with the First Amendment?

So let me just start with the Millers, because I know them a little. Stephen and his wife, Katie, have to live on a military base because they can't live in a house like you or me, because they're under constant security threat. So I'm a little defensive of them on this.

I will say that's terrible. Unacceptable.

And I sit at a table a lot of nights where I hear people throw around words like "fascist" and "Nazi" and "white supremacist," and so on and so forth. That's the go-to insult to people who they just politically don't like. And they often ascribe it to Stephen Miller and Katie Miller. And I think it's wrong.

And so I think their perspective is quite different than mine and yours, which is, you know: Gosh, is it an incitement to violence? I don't know. I'm the one living on a military base because I can't raise my children out in the open. So that's number one.

And look, I think if you look at some of the violent attacks that have emanated from the left—I mean, they tend to use the language that you just used. Either etching it on the bullets or, you know, in describing their worldview: "I'm going to get the fascist." You know? I mean, there does seem to be a connection between that language and the violent attacks on that front.

I think you could pick out any individual moment and say, "Oh, what about this? What about that?" Generally, my argument is: Trump is friendlier to speech and friendlier to the First Amendment and friendlier to the press than virtually any other president in my lifetime.

Look at the number of questions this man takes on a daily basis. Look at how open his Cabinet secretaries and his staff are. They're in constant, open dialogue with the press all the time. I mean, I actually regard this as a good thing. It's a transparent thing.

The people asking the questions may not like all the answers, but compare that situation that we have today to the Biden years. When you can't talk to the president. And when you are talking to him, it's not—I mean, he's reading notes off of cards that his staff has handed him about who he's talking to and what he needs to say to that person.

It was embarrassing. And then I'll tell you one other thing. I talked to that character Chris Whipple the other night, who—

Vanity Fair.

Yeah, who interviewed Susie Wiles now to great fanfare. And he was saying, "Well, you know, honestly, she's transparent, she's candid, she's blunt." And then he was comparing it to his time trying to interview the Biden people.

And he said to me, he said, you try to interview them and it's like, "Well, I'll do it, but it's gotta be on background, you can't use my name, and you have to send me all the quotes in advance for approval"—the opposite of transparency.

And so when I think about the way this government operates and how transparent it is to the average American—love it or hate it—it's very transparent to you. I think you can make a really fair argument that his commitment to free speech and the First Amendment is really high.

Can you pick out anecdotal moments where you could make an argument that they didn't adhere to that? Absolutely.

Ted Cruz, for instance, took them on over the Jimmy Kimmel thing. Now, I think Brendan Carr had a point on the Jimmy Kimmel thing. And all the late-night shows, you know, they get away with portraying themselves as, you know, the "get-the-news" carveout or whatever. And so that means they can have on 275 Democrats and never have on a single Republican. And it's kind of ridiculous.

And what Jimmy Kimmel did in that monologue everybody was mad about was also blatantly false and kind of ridiculous.

Is Jimmy Kimmel still on the air? Yes. Did anything materially bad happen to Jimmy Kimmel? No. And so, do I think it's ok for the administration to have a point of view about people who may be abusing their position in that way? Sure.

So, you know, without quibbling over every single moment, I would say that, looking comparatively at Biden and also looking comparatively at Obama—their transparency to and treatment of the press and the media in general—far more open, open kimono, than what you got out of the last two Democrats.

What do you make of some of the lawsuits, like the lawsuit against 60 Minutes, for instance? I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that. For listeners who don't know, he had sued 60 Minutes for allegedly deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. That was his view.

Well, I think his view is that some mainstream media does things to help his opponents instead of presenting information fairly to the public. And so, you know, he filed a lawsuit over it. You know, my view is, if they were so sure they hadn't done that, why not fight it out?

Could part of that, though, like—you know, there is some, I think, anxiety in the business community over whether or not he will approve some of these business deals and that kind of thing. Could that be part of it?

I mean, look, I don't know. I'm not those people. All I know is that I don't know that 60 Minutes necessarily has the cleanest track record over time when it comes to how they present information to the public.

And look, Trump has also, as a tactical matter, said, "I have priorities, and sometimes I'm going to use the courts to enforce those priorities." He's done the same thing with universities when it comes to what they're allowing on their campuses as it relates to antisemitism and violence around antisemitism.

And so, you know, look, I think if you felt real clean about this and you felt great about what you did, you wouldn't have had any worries at all stepping into a courtroom or into a deposition. Maybe they felt otherwise.

You mentioned the Vanity Fair profile, briefly. I would be Interested to hear your general thoughts on it.

Yeah, I first of all, I think Wiles…

His chief of staff.

Susie—is, I mean, incredibly blunt, transparent, and candid. And sometimes I think the chief of staff, or top sort of consigliere for a president, can say things that presidents can't say. Maybe there's a message in that. I don't think she does anything by accident. And I think everything she does is intentional and meant to ultimately serve the president's interests as she sees it fit, trying to execute his agenda and deliver messages. I don't think any of these things happen by accident.

Look, I'll go back to my answer previous. Do I think it's a good thing that this administration is pretty darn transparent and has opinions and views, and they're not afraid to air those views? Quite interesting. I actually think it is good. 

That was my take, for the record.

I don't know what the problem is. I mean, I think in Washington, it's so unusual for administrations to be transparent instead of, say, opaque and sycophantic like you had during Biden, that it freaked everyone out. But out in the country, it was like, wait a minute, she just answered questions honestly? Ok, what's the problem with that?

I mean, to me, the biggest problem with the deal was the photographer.

I was gonna say, the photos were ridiculous.

It was terrible. 

It was mean-girl behavior.

Exactly. And so, you know, we talked earlier about the press. What's the state of the press right now? That's the state of the press. So you get the White House chief of staff and these senior staffers to participate with you, and what do you do? You mean girl them with these photographs.

I mean, doesn't that just prove to the average conservative that there's no reason to engage with the mainstream media? I mean, here the Trump people show up and say, "Ok, we'll do it, we'll participate." And you reward that behavior and that attitude with, you know, putting like a super close-up picture of Karoline Leavitt in there. I mean, it was ridiculous—

Where you can see every pore.

I mean, look, so the next Republican administration, whoever that is—J.D. Vance or whatever—and Vanity Fair is gonna come calling, what would you say if you were their press people? Look what they did to Trump. They're gonna do it to you too.

And so I think there's a lesson in this for the mainstream media, which is, do you want engagement with Republicans or do you not? Because that kind of behavior tells me, perhaps you don't.

Another interesting part of your book was the idea that Trump essentially would workshop policy at crowds. You had talked about your experience with polling and how it's very unreliable—and not very, but it can be unreliable—and how he would kind of workshop ideas, like measure the applause. Which is interesting to me.

There has been some polling that has come out recently, that Americans—though they voted for Trump in large part on his immigration policy—are uncomfortable with some of the deportations and the kind of, you know, very muscular approach to them. I think the last poll that came out was from Pew Research, and its 53 percent of Americans are not so sure about it anymore, which has been steadily growing. Does that mean that he should change course?

Well, first of all, I think Americans are being lied to, frankly, about what they're doing with immigration. I think there is a propaganda campaign going on out there to mislead people. I sit in these debates sometimes, and I hear flippant things said like, "Well, you know, they're detaining and deporting Americans every day," which is just simply not true. Absolutely not true.

And I think certain situations are portrayed to make it look like ICE agents are doing things untoward, when, if you looked at the situation in context or you looked at all the details, you would say, "Oh, that—that's actually what a reasonable person would have done."

The one the other day about, "Oh, they raided a daycare center." Well, no. They were chasing an illegal alien who then pulled into the daycare center and ran inside. And then—you know—or, "They're zip-tying children," which didn't happen. But they do sometimes separate children from dangerous situations, where they're—I don't know—in a building with a bunch of MS-13 people.

So I think the way this is being portrayed is having an impact on the polling. That's number one.

Number two, I think if, after 10 years, you're unsure about what Donald Trump's intentions are on immigration, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, this is the number one motivating and animating issue for this man since he started his running for president back in 2015.

He has signaled forever that he intends to deport illegal immigrant populations, that he intends to close the border, and that he intends to enforce existing laws. We haven't passed any new laws on immigration since Trump became the president—zero laws. We are simply enforcing the ones that are on the books.

And I—my personal view is it's still his best issue. It is still the expectation of the people who voted for him that he would do this. And again, I think he's up against quite a propaganda machine right now to portray what ICE is doing as something untoward or illegal or un-American, when in fact all he's really told them to do is simply enforce the existing laws.

Sure. The poll referencing it was essentially drawing a distinction between, you know, deporting the violent criminal and deporting the gardener who's been here and been otherwise law-abiding. Do you see those as distinct, or do you think, "Oh, you're in this country illegally, you gotta go?"

Well, look, I think they're two different kinds of people. And I think they are deporting violent people. Again, I think part of the propaganda of this is to say, "Oh, they're ignoring the violent criminals and they're only deporting—" 

Yes, they have definitely deported some violent criminals. One hundred percent, they have.

But do I think there are two different types of people? Yes.

I think the question for them—and I'll put myself in position as defending their position, which is: How permissive do you want to be? Because a permissive attitude on any part of it then emboldens people to come here.

And I think they would argue that the permissive nature of our immigration enforcement is what led people to come here by the millions in the first place. And so when you start to loosen up on it and say, "Well, you might be ok if you came here," or "Well, this kind of person might be OK if they broke our laws"—then all of a sudden, you get back to a permissive situation where people start showing up saying, "Well, maybe I'll fit into one of the permissive categories."

I don't think it's unreasonable for them to assume that any permissive attitude would immediately reopen the floodgates.

So, look, I give them a lot of latitude here because they inherited a complete and total mess. The border was open. Millions of people came here.

Also, look how hard it is to get rid of people. I mean, Kilmer Abrego Garcia somehow is still in the United States. The man's seen 20 judges, has an existing deportation order, and all sorts of bad evidence—and somehow is—the so-called "Maryland man" is somehow still here in the United States.

All these people came here. It's very difficult to get them out.

I think for a Republican voter, for someone who thinks he's basically right about immigration, I give them some latitude.

I'll just say one other thing. I know he hears about this issue from people in agriculture and also people who are in trades that depend on immigrant labor. And so his base is not unified on exactly what to do.

His administration isn't either.

Yes. He's got different voices in his ear—internally and externally—about what to do and how to do it. And there have even been stories in the first year where it sounded like there were internal deliberations, specifically when it comes to agriculture, about: Ok, well, what do we do about this particular sector?

So even, I think, in his own mind, he's probably hearing from people who are saying, like, "Well, we like basically what you're doing on immigration, but you're going to have to carve out X so that we can continue to do this kind of business."

I know he's hearing about that. I don't know that they've really settled on that internally about how to deal with it. But this is a situation where Trump has a pretty large coalition. And on this issue, I think there's a lot of agreement that it was broken. There's a lot of agreement that he needed to do something about it.

And there's some disagreement about, Ok, what to do about it as a prescription here. Because there are some interests inside of his coalition that probably tend towards more permissive than "deport them all."

I will add with the Kilmer Abrego Garcia case—and that was initially because he was deported to a country that he was not supposed to be deported to, correct? El Salvador—he had withholding of deportation from the country, which has made this process longer than it otherwise would have been. I just—I feel the need to…

And why was he—and why was—why did he get a withholding? Because he claimed it was unsafe for him to go there. OK.

I mean, look, I don't want to make the whole interview about this particular case, but to the average person, this is ridiculous.

The guy came here in, like, 2011 or 2012, lived in the country illegally for 13 years, at some point got a deportation order, still was somehow living in the United States because they argued he couldn't go back to where he came from.

And since that moment, his lawyers, I guess, successfully have argued he's not able to go anywhere else either.

That's how hard it is to get rid of one illegal alien who is clearly, you know, not an upstanding—well, citizen's not the right word. He's clearly not an upstanding person, if you believe the evidence that's come out against him in a lot of different fronts. And yet still in the United States.

So, look, I see why Trump gets latitude from people on immigration. Because they look at that case and they say," I don't get it. If you came here illegally and you lived here illegally, and yet you did get due process because a judge saw your case and gave you a deportation—even if the Trump people messed up by sending him back to one country—why isn't he being sent somewhere else?"

And then, at the same time, they look at a United States senator like Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who spends his time flying down there to meet with this guy. I mean, he's an illegal alien living in Maryland. This is not your constituent, ok? Like, this is not who you are elected to represent, and yet that's—you've made this your cause of the year.

I think it's confusing to most Americans.

I do think if there's one thing we can agree on in this issue area, it is that the immigration system is incredibly red-tapey and it's bogged down by an enormous amount of cases and not enough judges. I think that is something that would be—Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, whatever—would be interested in addressing that.

Well, look—also, it's not just one judge or one part of it. In Wisconsin the other day, you had a state judge in Wisconsin who was convicted of helping an illegal immigrant—an illegal alien—in her courtroom evade ICE. And this happened back in April. And all the liberal legal intelligentsia came out and said, "Oh, this will never make it to a jury. This is an outrageous abuse of power."

She was convicted of obstruction. She may go to jail for five years. So you have elected judges in certain places who think it's their job to help illegal aliens somehow evade federal law enforcement.

So it's more than just red tape. It's more than just bureaucracy. It's malign actors in the system who are supposed to be upholding the laws who are helping illegal aliens evade the laws.

Again, just put yourself in the shoes of an average American citizen. You're looking at this thinking, "If I broke laws like this, would a judge help me evade law enforcement?" I doubt it.

I would like to think that most judges are doing their best.

I know you'd like to think that. And I would like to think that as well. Unfortunately, we keep getting examples of judges who believe it's their job to upend Trump's stated policy as opposed to uphold the law.

This is where I have a problem. Even if you are a judge who's very liberal and you hate Donald Trump and you hate everything he did…

You're supposed to be applying the laws as written.

Yes. And it seems to me that a number of judges and a number of parts of the bureaucracy have said, "Well, I'm going to put my political interests ahead of my duties to the law." That's wrong.

And it would be wrong if a conservative judge were applying their views to a Democratic president. I mean, the thing is, you're either a nation of laws or you're not. And in this case, we have parts of our judiciary that have decided, "I'm applying politics. I'm not applying the law."

And it's happening even at the Supreme Court. When you look at the decisions and the renderings of a Ketanji Brown Jackson—I mean, she clearly believes she was put there to be a political actor, not apply the law. And she's pretty open about that. That destroys confidence in the rule of law and in our overall judicial system.

As an aside, I will say that Congress could do its job and change the laws that people are unhappy with.

They could. Well, on immigration, you're 100 percent right. If you don't like that we deport people, you can change the laws.

That's always my argument is that the Congress is supposed to be the one making that call.

Trump has passed no immigration laws. He is enforcing laws that have existed and that he inherited. And somehow people are mad at him.

I interviewed Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, earlier this year for my radio show. He's been with the agency for a long time. He told me during Biden, they were instructed not to enforce the laws. Trump simply said, "Just enforce the laws."

Wouldn't most people think it was reasonable to enforce the laws as they're written? And if you're mad about it, ask Congress to change them. I couldn't agree with you more. But right now, the laws are what they are. They should be enforced. 

Congress should do something. On trade, I want to talk about trade. Your book is called A Revolution of Common Sense. I think some would argue that the tariff regime has not necessarily been commonsensical. Like on Liberation Day, when tariffs and that sort of thing—the tariff regime has changed a lot. It's oscillated a bunch. And that has created, I think, some instability in the private sector. You know, and also we've seen manufacturing lose jobs for seven months in a row when it was supposed to help manufacturing.

How do you reconcile that with common sense? Is that common sense?

So the tariff—I write about this extensively in the book. I'm of two minds on it. One, as a Republican political operative for the last 25 years from the pre-Trump era, I was not trained to believe that tariffs or taxation was a good economic model. We believed in the Ronald Reagan theory on this. This was the way the party had existed for decades before I came along—and certainly after I came along. And I write about that in the book.

On the other hand, as someone who grew up in rural western Kentucky with parents who were in and out of factories and who dealt with layoffs and dealt with sort of the hollowing out of our manufacturing economy, I understand the impulse to try to do something about that, and the impulse of some voters to look at the situation and say, "Well, they told us that if we engaged in all this free trade, it would inure to our benefit. But all we've ever seen is job losses and outsourcing and so on and so forth."

I also understand that. I personally lived it.

So—and I also think that it's true that when it comes to Republican orthodoxy, this is the area where Trump has changed it the most. I mean, I can't think of another area where…

…it's kind of 1950s protectionist Democrat vibes.

Well, 1990s protectionist Democrat.

I mean, look, a lot of the Clinton—my dad's one of them; I write about him in the book—a lot of the biggest Clinton guys, the union Clinton guys, are now the biggest Trump guys. 

We inherited all those people and some of their economic theories.

That's the biggest change to the Republican platform—is Trump's belief in tariffs. I think in his heart of hearts, if he could reorganize everything, there'd be no IRS, there'd be no income tax. We'd just be a tariff-based nation. We would do everything based on tariffs. That's what he believes. He's, by the way, never going to change.

Well, he's believed that since, like, the '70s.

It's his longest-held belief. It's his most deeply held belief. And even though he's negotiated around the edges, he would also tell you it's not just an economic theory.

For him, he would say that most of the peace agreements that he's negotiated this year have been based on the use of—or threat of the use—tariffs. He would say it's a tool of diplomacy, and it's a tool just of the projection of American power to be able to level and levy tariffs.

By the way, I don't know what the Supreme Court is going to do on this. The arguments did not go well for the administration. They haven't rendered a decision yet. We'll see what happens. But I'll tell you this: If they throw it out, he'll be very unhappy. Like, it won't be pretty. If I were John Roberts, I wouldn't check my Twitter that day.

So for me and a lot of Republicans, reconciling this has been interesting. Because on the one hand, it's not traditional conservative economic theory. On the other hand, a lot of our constituents actually believe somebody's got to do something about the hollowing out of middle America.

And so it's probably one of the things I've had to think about the hardest, in terms of: How am I going to debate this? How am I gonna argue it?

It is one of your longer sections in the book.

Yeah. Well, and I think for a lot of Republicans, it's the thing they've had to sort of learn about the most and come to grips with the most with Trump. He has basically done most of what you would expect a Republican to do: cut taxes, reduce regulations, put conservatives on the judiciary. I mean, these are all things you would expect a Republican to do.

On tariffs, that's the one thing you wouldn't expect a Republican to do. And so to absorb that and to learn about it—I get the theories behind it. He would sit here and argue to you that we're bringing in all this revenue, and it's going to help us do a lot of different things. And so we're going to have to see how it works out.

I will say one more thing about it, and that is, what they're doing overall with the economy is not a quick-fix thing. I think people—you know, I used to have a boss years ago in politics who said, "Instant coffee ruined the world." People wanted an instant fix to a very, very deep hole. What they're trying to do is completely reorganize our economy and reorganize the way we do business with the rest of the world. This will take a very long time to fully flesh itself out.

And that may not comport with what voters want in November, or what they decide they want in November of 2028. But I think what they're doing was not designed to work in 30 days. It was designed to work over years. And they would say, "Look, of course it's designed to work over years because it took years to dig this hole—for America's manufacturing economy. It took years to dig this hole in forgotten America. And it's going to take us years to dig out of it.

But this is the way out."

Again, the great question in politics is—whether you're right or wrong is almost irrelevant. It's whether the voters are patient enough with your solutions. And in this case, what they have put forward is a long-term restructuring of our economy that again may not ultimately comport with the patience level of American voters.

Relatedly, there's a quote that sticks out to me from Trump that he's said a few times about how, "You don't need many dolls, you just need two dolls. Every kid, you don't need 20 dolls," or whatever. To me, that is somewhat of a tacit admission that in order for this to work, you kind of have to go with less.

What do you make of that? And is that a viable political platform when everyone's talking about the importance of abundance?

Yeah. If I were advising him, I would tell him I don't think that's the correct communications vector on this. I actually think he has good arguments for what he's doing. That is not the best one, is my view.

I want to very briefly talk about DOGE. You're talking to a libertarian magazine, so this was a…

Great idea for you. 

Made us hopeful. Why do you think it kind of didn't work out as promised? In the book, I think the number you reference is it saved about $160 billion, which is, as you know, not even a drop in the taxpayer bucket. Why did it not live up to its promise?

And this morning I read that they're now saying it's over $200 billion. I haven't looked to see what the latest savings are, but that's the latest from the administration.

Here's what I think. I think that the public relations of DOGE—and I say this in the book—was probably the worst it could have been. If they had really wanted to maximize the impact of DOGE, some of it would have been PR and political, meaning: We have to immediately involve the Congress in this, we have to immediately involve the public in this, and we have to do it on a rolling basis.

I think the impulse behind DOGE was exactly correct, because people inherently know the government spends too much money and on a bunch of crap that no reasonable person with common sense would spend.

You outline several kinds of crazy projects.

Well, Trump did it in March when he spoke to Congress. You know, that was one of the most effective parts of his speech: "We spent this here and this here. Nobody knows what that is. Nobody knows where that is." That was brilliant.

So I think—but I think they missed an opportunity to ingrain this in the political culture in Washington in a way that they could have. I think there were Republicans on the Hill who wanted to be part of that. And they set up a DOGE caucus or whatever. But if it had been me, I would have been doing a weekly—you know, every Thursday afternoon we're going up to the Hill and giving them our latest stuff. That would have sort of forced it to become part of the ongoing culture of what Republicans would do when they're in charge. They didn't really do that.

Number two, again—I'll go back to what we talked about earlier. I think they were only dealing with the discretionary pieces of the government. DOGE did not get into the non-discretionary part of the government. And if you were going to DOGE the non-discretionary part, it would necessitate political buy-in from the Hill.

Look, I still think it was a good project. I think the impulse is correct. I think that the American people want it. I think getting rid of some of the things they did was great. I think more could be done.

But to get to the non-discretionary pieces of the budget would require more political buy-in from just a project that was set up within the executive branch. And, you know, we'll see what the next administration wants to do with it, if it's a Republican administration. I think they need to keep going.

I mean, I think when you hear these things that we spend money on, people go crazy. It's like, "Ok, I'll tolerate a lot of things, but—you know, transgender operas in Peru or whatever—like, why? What am I doing here?" You know? It's a good argument. It's a great political argument. And it creates within the public the assumption that, well, if they're doing that, what else are they doing?

The other thing about DOGE that never got the PR that it deserved is they actually did have, I think, a tremendous impact on some IT systems and some of the ways we were doing technology in certain cabinets. A cabinet secretary, Lee Zeldin, told me for the book, those DOGE guys were able to streamline a bunch of systems within EPA that allowed them to get to a bunch of constituent service issues that had been backlogged forever. And they were able to work through it because of a streamlining of the system. That's a good thing.

So they never got the credit and the PR that they deserved for that.

So overall, I'm still pro-DOGE. I'm still somebody who thinks we spend too much. We spend 54 percent more money right now than we did just pre-COVID. I don't feel like my government's 54 percent better than it was, and I bet you don't either. Most Americans would not agree that the government is 54 percent better than it was just pre-COVID.

So there's more to do here. But again, to really fix this, we're going to have to DOGE the non-discretionary stuff. And that's going to be hard. It's going to be a hard political conversation to be had.

And that is why it's hard to do—because, you know, once you get into that stuff, it gets pretty thorny out there in the middle of political campaigns. I mean, I remember when I worked for Bush, he tried to get into it on Social Security. He wanted to take a small part of Social Security and put it in private accounts for people and invest it in the stock market. People went crazy over it. Even Republicans didn't want to touch it.

Now, I would point out that had he done that, the returns on the stock market since that point in 2005 versus what you've gotten on your Social Security out of the government—I mean, it's miles and miles apart. But at the time, there was no political will to do it, although it would have certainly worked out to the benefit of the American taxpayer.

As we're talking, Turning Point USA just wrapped up its big conference, Charlie Kirk's organization, during which some pretty big schisms were on display within the conservative movement. This has been playing out for a bit with the Heritage Foundation, the general kind of Ben Shapiro versus Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens camp. And for listeners who aren't familiar, it's this idea like, do you engage with certain parts of the very far kind of fringe, right, that have these very offensive and overtly antisemitic views, or do you try to ignore them and banish them? And I'm wondering what you make of that.

Yeah, some of the things that were said were wild.

Yeah, it was public infighting for the world to see.

I'll start this conversation by saying that this is the most pro-Israel president we've ever had, and the most pro-Jewish president we've ever had. That's number one. I don't think that's assailable. I think his foreign policy decisions, how he chooses to communicate about this—the man is pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. And when you look at what he's done to take on college campuses who've engaged in coddling or encouraging antisemitism, again, there's no question where Trump is.

So then you get to the question of, ok, why are we debating this in the conservative right, right now? Some of it is wrapped up in Israel. Some of it is also just wrapped up in people who have just frankly lost their minds and gone, you know, cuckoo bananas—chiefly Candace Owens.

I mean, her latest claim is that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was run by Jewish people.

Take all the crazy policy stuff out of it. The fact that since Charlie Kirk was murdered, she has decided to go on a months-long quest to platform and create every possible conspiracy theory about his murder—up to and including forcing the grieving widow of Charlie Kirk to have to meet with her about it—is vile and despicable.

Why is that part of the conservative movement? To effectively terrorize a grieving widow with crazy conspiracy crap and then force her to meet with you? Like, to me, that has no place. I mean, that is—it's just unfathomable to me that someone would do that for their own personal financial benefit and their own personal self-aggrandizement. I can't even wrap my mind around how someone would make someone's murder—and the terrorizing of his widow—part of their "Oh, this is how I'm going to make a living." I don't understand it.

On the larger questions of antisemitism and Israel, I thought Ben Shapiro's speech was necessary and very good. He's more than willing to debate people and debate things, and he did debate a guy in the crowd over this USS Liberty thing that they always bring up. But his point is—and I've articulated it this way—we're a political movement. We're not a sponge. We don't have to absorb everything that oozes in under the door.

I mean, if somebody walked in the door and said, "Let's raise all the tax rates to 100%," we'd beat them up and throw them out. But if somebody oozes into the door and says, "Hey, I have a great idea, let's deny the Holocaust and praise Stalin and worship Hitler or whatever"—we don't have to absorb that either. Like, we're not bound to absorb that.

The retort to that is always, "But free speech." This has nothing to do with free speech. Free speech has to do with government coercion. This has to deal with speech you want to be associated with—or you don't.

And I don't want to be associated with people who dabble in that kind of stuff. And I don't think any conservative leader should want to be associated with that. And I think some of these people who are peddling that are not conservatives. They've been sent here to destroy the conservative movement—to divide and destroy.

And I just think it's OK for us to say, "I don't really want this person in the tent." Now, does that mean we can't have reasonable, adult debates about Israel or foreign policy? Sure, we can. That's different than dabbling in the latest conspiracy bullshit. It's all really just kind of wrapped up in the oldest hatred, which is antisemitism.

The response, you know, from kind of like the Megyn Kelly side—other than verbatim "go fuck yourself," which she said on one of her shows recently—is that Candace Owens specifically is a young mom and that therefore she is kind of off-limits in this debate. What do you make of that?

Look, she herself engages in this debate—in this public conversation—as her job. So I don't think that makes you off-limits. I don't know how you could argue anything other than she has spent the last several months terrorizing Erika Kirk. It's not just asking questions. She's out here terrorizing a widow. Forcing this widow to try to meet with her to calm her down. And then in the aftermath of that meeting, continuing on.

I mean, look. I don't pay attention much to Candace Owens. But she wants us to pay attention to her. And she wants us to pay attention to her conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk. And she wants Erika Kirk to pay her attention to her. So I guess we're going to pay attention now.

Again, the idea that you would spend any time platforming or defending the terrorizing of a grieving widow and the organization that Charlie Kirk left behind—I mean, they're trying to figure out what their future is, what direction they're going. And they're important.

And you have somebody out there saying, at one point, Erika Kirk had something to do with it, or the people who were working for Charlie had something to do—I mean, this is terrorizing these people. I don't know what else to say about it.

So, she wants the attention. So she's getting it now. And I don't think she's—I don't think it's wearing very well on her, truthfully. But she's getting the attention that she asked for, is what I would say.

Why do you think Trump hasn't commented on these fractures? And do you think he will?

Well, no, I don't. And I don't know that I would want the president of the United States refereeing the squabbles of podcasters.

I don't think it's bigger than just the squabbles. Do you think it is something deeper in the conservative movement? Because these people, like you said earlier at the beginning of the conversation, they have insane numbers of followers.

Yeah. Yes. But again, do I think the president needs to referee these people? No. Do I think the president needs to be clear about where he stands? Yes.

And by the way, he has been clear. I mean, in case you haven't noticed, this is the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish president we've ever had. We fired missiles into the Iranian nuclear mountain. We negotiated the release of the living hostages. He can tell the good guys from the bad guys. He can tell civilization from barbarism. He can tell right from wrong when it comes to the people we're dealing with in the Middle East. I don't think he could be any more clear about where he stands on it.

And, you know, some of these people, by the way, who are trying to foment this antisemitism or, you know, sort of this sort of crazy conspiracy stuff—I'm not sure they voted for Trump. I mean, the one kid—Fuentes—I mean, I'm pretty sure put out a post in '24 saying he was campaigning against Trump at one point.

So again, I think Trump's been pretty clear about where he stands on all this. And where we go from here—I mean, my only advice to leaders is: listen, there's some people you want to be associated with. And you do want to build a big tent, and coalition-building is important. But that doesn't mean you have to have everybody in the coalition. Particularly people who are ultimately sent to divide and destroy your movement and to turn other people away.

As I said earlier, this is a libertarian magazine. So where do you see the most alignment with libertarians and potential to work with them in the current vision of the Republican Party?

Well, great question.

Well, look, I think the libertarian vision and the conservative Republican vision have always been far more closely tracking than, say, where the libertarians would be vis-a-vis the radical progressive left. I mean, they've gone off the deep end.

And so I think there's—and that's why you saw people like Elon Musk coming into the president's coalition in '24. There's just more alignment, I think, with Trump and the Republicans right now with libertarians than there ever is gonna be.

Now, there will be squabbles. Free trade is going to be the big—one of the biggest ones. I mean, Rand Paul this weekend went out and made a case about free markets and free trade and international trade, and flatly said he would not be for J.D. Vance in 2028, as best I could read it.

So you can see where the fissures are. But does Rand Paul have more in common with Trump and Vance than he has in common with, you know, Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders? Yeah, I think he probably does.

And so I think in coalition politics, you have to decide, you know, who do I have more in common with? And who am I going to be more influential with? I'll get some of what I want versus zero of what I want.

And this has been part of the mastery of politics of Trump. He's built a huge coalition. And a lot of those people are not regular Republicans. We've got a Kennedy in the Cabinet, for goodness' sake.

So part of the beauty of it was he could win because of a large coalition. Part of the sort of management problems is now you're managing a bunch of people who don't agree on everything.

And so I think where you work together is—excuse me—where you work together is understanding that you're not going to get everything the way you want. Your vision and their vision may not fully align on everything, but you may be able to influence decisions or get some of what you want.

Versus the other side, which is going to give you zero, and not give you the time of day. Pretty easy bet. I mean, if you're just a political actor or you're trying to decide how to get outcomes, to me it's a pretty easy bet.

So I think when it comes to tech policy, I think when it comes to speech, I think trying to shrink the government—certain operations—I think it's a no-brainer for libertarians. Because what the left wants to do is anathema, in my opinion, to what most libertarians would say they would want.

What's your most libertarian view or streak?

My most libertarian? That the government should be shrunken down as deeply as possible. I just find it unfathomable that we spend $7 trillion. I don't understand it. I find this crazy. That the government is so large, we spend so much money, it is so sprawling, and within it are bureaucracies that often work at cross purposes of the political elected leadership. It's crazy to me.

And so, you know, I just—I am for—that's why I was so enthusiastic about DOGE in my book. I love this idea. And maybe it didn't do everything we wanted it to do right out of the gate, but this was a first step. And maybe, maybe reclaiming some sanity when it comes to the size and scope of government.

Again, before COVID, we spent like $4 trillion. Now we spend $7 trillion. That wasn't that long ago. You can see how this spirals out of control. And all it took was really a pandemic and then a Democratic administration—and voila, you're 54 percent larger than you were. It's unfathomable to me.

So, my most libertarian thing is I just would love to continue to shrink and destroy vast parts of the federal bureaucracy.

On that note, Scott Jennings, thank you for talking to Reason.

Thank you very much.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post CNN's Scott Jennings: The Conservative Movement's Identity Crisis appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Lauren Hall, a political science professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life, a Substack newsletter that encourages readers to reject binary thinking and keep politics from consuming every part of their lives.

Hall's work focuses on the roots of tribalism and political polarization, examining where they come from, why they are so powerful, and how they distort both public debate and personal relationships. She has grown increasingly concerned about the populist impulses shaping American politics on both the right and the left, and about how political elites frame elections as a choice between the lesser of two evils.

In the interview, Boehm and Hall discuss what it means to be a "radical moderate," why she believes that outlook offers a way out of America's broken political compass, and the diverse intellectual influences that have shaped her political philosophy. They also talk about what Hall did not anticipate in the second Donald Trump White House, and how moderates can navigate a political culture that rewards outrage, loyalty tests, and constant engagement.

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

1:17—What is radical moderation?

6:24—Third parties in America

9:19—Polarization and elitism

15:13—Evolutionary biology and tribalism

27:24—Hall's path to political science

35:06—Culture of Rochester, New York

41:39—Expectations for the second Trump administration

47:19—Radical moderate advice for Democrats

51:03—Lessons from Edmund Burke

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post The Politics of Permanent Outrage appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Tony Gilroy, the creator, writer, and director of Andor, the critically acclaimed Star Wars series that reimagines the origins of the Rebel Alliance. While Andor is set in a familiar sci-fi universe, it stands apart for its focus on the mechanics of authoritarian rule.

Gilroy discusses how Andor portrays the Galactic Empire not as a cartoonish evil but as a bureaucratic system that centralizes authority, normalizes surveillance, and absorbs previously independent planets, corporations, and cultures. Rather than relying on superweapons or singular villains, authoritarianism in Andor functions through institutions, incentives, and ordinary people just doing their jobs.

Boehm and Gilroy talk about how these themes connect to Gilroy's earlier work, including the Bourne films. They also discuss how Andor approaches moral compromise, resistance, and responsibility, why it matters that fascists still care about mundane details like parking spots, and why the series has resonated with viewers interested in liberty, power, and the quiet ways systems enforce obedience.

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
1:23–Behemoth
3:21–Andor in the Star Wars timeline
5:04–Cassian Andor's character development
12:04–The moral compass of Andor
18:31–Constructing the authoritarian regime
22:05–The reality of bureaucratic institutions
25:04–Mass media representation in Andor
31:43–Exploiting loneliness and vulnerability
37:40–Would Gilroy return to Star Wars?
39:21–Gilroy's contributions to Rogue One
42:25–The Bourne movies and whistleblowers
46:10–What is the libertarian view of Andor?
53:48–Gilroy's origin story
57:08–Themes in Gilroy's work

Transcript

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

Eric Boehm: Tony Gilroy, thanks for talking to Reason. 

Tony Gilroy: Pleasure.

Now, you are probably best known—at least right now—as the showrunner behind the two-season Disney+ show, Andor. I don't think I'm overstating things here to say that it is the best piece of Star Wars media since the original trilogy, at least. And maybe even the best piece of Star Wars media ever made.

That show is a prequel to Rogue One, which I think we'll probably also talk a bit about in this conversation. You were involved in the writing of that movie as well, and that's also in the conversation as the best piece of Star Wars media since the original series. You're also the writer behind the Jason Bourne movies. We may get a chance to talk about that as well.

But you are joining us, if I'm not mistaken, while you're also in the midst of working on a new movie. So I want to start there. This is a production titled Behemoth, and you're shooting this—again, if I am not mistaken—with Pedro Pascal and Olivia Wilde. I am really excited about that. That sounds really cool. Can you tell us anything about the new one?

It's an original. It's about movie music. It's about a cellist that returns to Los Angeles to do studio work. I guess that's about all I'll say about it right now, until we get out to sell it, whenever we do. No, it's all about music. I've been living in music for the last year, and I'm fully immersed in it right now. I've been living in California. It's a very California movie. It's a Los Angeles movie. And we're a little over halfway in shooting, so you're catching me on the weekend of a busy time.

Well, we are very glad you made the time for us. That sounds like a nice break from Andor, honestly. After all the politics and the drama and the sci-fi-ness, to do something so grounded that must be nice.

It's really been a great place to hide out for the last 10 months, yeah, to live in music. It's escapist for sure.

That's nice. We all need a little bit of that. So let's talk about Andor, the show that is out there, that is now finished. The second and final season was released earlier this year to widespread critical acclaim. Look, there's obvious political themes to that show. This is a political podcast—we've got to talk about that.

You know, one thing that came up to me, I think, as I was watching that…well, I guess we should start here. I imagine most people are familiar with Star Wars and Andor if they're listening to this conversation, but just for anyone who isn't: Catch us up very briefly on where this is in the Star Wars timeline and how this show fits into the broader overarching story of good and evil and Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader—because it kind of doesn't fit into that story exactly.

Rogue One is the discovery of the plans to the Death Star that will lead to what people traditionally know as the beginning of Star Wars. This is the five years gathered around the main character of Rogue One, Cassian. One of the main characters of Rogue One, Cassian Andor. It's the five years of his life prior to that film.

Our last image, our last scene in Andor, is him walking into what would be the first scene of Rogue One. So it's a five-year tranche of history right before the destruction of the Death Star, and it is a five-year period where the Empire is sort of really tightening its grip around the throat of the galaxy in the most extreme way.

You were involved in writing Rogue One, which in a very similar way leads directly into the events of the first Star Wars movie. Now you're sitting down and writing a prequel to a prequel, and you have to get this one central character to the point that he's at in Rogue One, where Cassian is somebody who's willing to do literally whatever it takes for the Rebellion.

There's a lot of constraints there as a writer, I would imagine, to have to build this character out. How did you sit down and think about who he was going to be five years before—or two years before—and lay out that arc? What were you thinking about? Where were you getting inspiration from as you were writing Cassian's character specifically?

Well, it's two issues that you raise. One is the idea of limitations. Limitations are really good, creatively. Boundaries and limited materials or this is what you can work with. Any kind of restriction is usually very beneficial in the creative process, to fill that vacuum.

I was given a five-year— The setting is a five-year piece of history that has some very specific guidelines to it. There's a few canonical markers that happen that are well-established. I guess most notably would be Mon Mothma's departure from the Senate. Mon Mothma is a character Genevieve O'Reilly plays, and she's a big character for us all along the way. There's a moment in canonical history where she calls out the emperor for something called the Ghorman Massacre. And it was never detailed what the Ghorman Massacre was, but she's—

Just to clarify, this is a pre-existing thing in other Star Wars media that you had to write around.

Pre-existing canonical Star Wars, exactly. So what's the frame? So that's on the calendar. I have a couple of other events on the calendar. Things have to sort of line up. So that's the setting I'm given.

And then, dramatically—I mean as a creator, as a writer, as a dramatist—Cassian Andor in Rogue One was sort of an all-singing, all-dancing, brilliant warrior-spy. I mean, he kind of has the full complement of skills. There's nothing he sort of can't do. He can lead; he can seduce; he can lie; he can plan; he can adjust. He's an assassin. He can fly. He does all these amazing things with a great deal of low-key commitment— a very casual, comfortable vibe to it.

There was no backstory for that character before. He never existed before. So, dramatically, my approach was to say, "Well, if we're going to go back five years, why don't we put him as far away from that level of competency and commitment and accomplishment as you could possibly get? Let's take a roach and turn it into a butterfly, essentially. How far away could you take him from where he'll end up to make that journey interesting?"

That's my approach to how I did it. He's an entirely fictional character, and it's completely free-range what I want to do with it. But I have to put him in the maze of that very specific canonical framework and the rules of Star Wars and the cosmology of it that already existing, and the geography that's already existing, and the calendar. So I roll them back and find out who he is, back five years ago, and it's sort of a wind-up machine and you let it roll.

You mentioned that constraints can be really helpful creatively. One of the other interesting things about Andor is that it sort of leaves aside—maybe not entirely—the mystical side of Star Wars. There's a sort of soothsayer, fortune-teller-type character who pops up in the second season there, right? So there's a hint of that. But you really left that aside.

Was that something else you decided to do deliberately as a constraint for yourself? Or was that just a result of, "Hey, look, there's so many characters in this story already we can't also have a bunch of Jedi pop up somewhere?"

You have to think of Lucasfilm and Star Wars—I've said this many times before—as sort of like the Vatican, in a way. I mean, it has a curia, and it has a whole bunch of cardinals of various… Our attitude was: we're gonna take the Latin Mass out of the church. So we're gonna do it a different way. That was the mandate.

One of my original questions to them, to the experts there, was, "In the galaxy—in this huge galaxy—how many people would have ever encountered a Jedi? How many people would ever know about the Force? How many people know about this family you keep rotating these movies on?"

And the answer is: nobody, or almost nobody. If you're living in the galaxy, if you're a being in the galaxy, you've probably never had any encounter ever with Jedi or even know what it is, or the Force.

So that was my intention. Probably in the beginning, I was never, ever, ever gonna touch on the Force. We're certainly gonna do a show without lightsabers. And we'll certainly do a show that doesn't have anything to do with the same bunch of people that you've been dealing with all this time before.

But the Force… We worked on the show for five and a half years. Coming into the second season, there was a really cool way to touch it and have it help us and have it enhance our story. And I think really gets a fundamental emotional feel for it as well—I mean, something that felt of value to me.

So we touched on it. I liked the way we ended up doing it. A lot of discussion went into it, a lot of finessing of it. But yeah, we do touch on it a little bit.

But as I said, the concept of the show was to put it in the kitchen and get it out of the dining room, and just talk about what happens when authoritarianism and fascism comes kicking down your door, ordinary people, and you're forced to make a choice. A lot of people in the show are forced to make choices because of events. And that doesn't really involve lightsabers, and it doesn't really involve a spiritual dimension that will help you.

There's something that I actually wanted to ask you about that I think you're getting at right here. You did an interview with Ross Douthat at The New York Times a few months ago, and something that came up in that conversation but sort of got glossed over was: You described yourself as a moralist.

You said when you start writing characters—I don't remember if you were speaking specifically about this show or just more generally—[you are] "a moralist." And that sounds like what you're talking about here: that there is a moral compass to this show, to Andor, that the characters are dealing with. It's not necessarily a religious or metaphysical one, right? They're not contacted by the Force and told to do something or not do something, and then making a choice.

They're making choices for sometimes political reasons, but oftentimes like moral, calculated reasons here.

That was an interesting interview, because he was really trying to pin the show down and pin me down. And to analyze it in a way, but certainly put it in a place where I didn't feel comfortable it should go.

I think it's two different things again. One is what my job is as a writer and, again, as a dramatist. You have to just completely inhabit the people that you're writing about—in a generous way—to do it. You have to live through them. If you're writing anybody, you have to get inside them. Everyone's the hero of their own story, and everybody believes what they're doing.

I really wouldn't want to… I'm trying to think. There have probably been characters over time that I've judged as I've been writing them, a little bit, but it's really not a great place to be. I want to be free to let them all let their freak flags fly.

But I think when you're talking about the moralism, it really came around from him trying to push me into a left–right definition of the show. And I don't see the show in that context. I mean, I know what my politics are, and they're certainly left. But I don't think the characters in the show are ever advocating monetary supply or social safety net or better schools or less drug laws or whatever issues. No one's ever talking about what they wanna have, where they want to get. There's no list of demands.

I found that conversation ended up pushing me to a place where—it wasn't a big revelation to me—but what I really do think is universal to the show, and what I really can stand behind as an ideology in the show is it's the destruction of community. And the parallels that people have found in the show—which made all the conversations about selling the show when it was coming out so interesting—and why we ended up in some pretty complicated conversations along the way. 

What do I wanna say? 

The parallels to what's happening in our world right now are even beyond moralistic, I think. There's an essential decency aspect to what's happening politically in the world right now that I don't understand. There is a personal decency aspect to what's happening in the world that I don't understand. There is a giddy rush—you'll see people cravenly move toward power because it's gonna benefit them, or it's warmer there, or they have no spine or moral commitment to really back up. What we're seeing now is on a level that I'm not sure… I don't know when the parallel is. People getting on board something—getting on board a train that's on fire that they know is heading toward a cliff. It's just amazing to watch the sort of giddy rush of people stripping off their clothes and jumping onto the fire here. It's quite amazing.

And I think that's provoked in me more of a realization that—surprisingly, I mean more than—I just feel there's a level of decency and compassion that's worth fighting for.

Were you surprised to see the response to the show being read in such… I mean, it's obviously a show with political themes, but being read as such a commentary on modern events?

Oh, we saw that. We did the first season and that was just sort of done in a vacuum. That was done as per just trying to live and get through the show and make it happen. By the time we were in the second season and developing it—and, you know, the Trump resurgence was coming back—as we were finishing the show, it takes two and a half years to do the show. As we're finishing and watching the election coming up, we're going, "Wow, are we heading for a highway collision here or not?"

I would have been well pleased to not have the level of synchronicity that we had. As it started to happen—what can you do? It presented complexities for Diego and myself and some of the actors who were out selling the show, because we had to sell the show pretty hard for about six months. It made some of these early conversations very difficult, because we really didn't wanna get…

Disney has a lot of money invested in the show, and the Star Wars audience is rather large and complicated and probably includes all kinds of different people. We didn't want to have anybody to tune out. We didn't want to have anybody turn off. We didn't want to make it seem like we were spinach.

So we tiptoed our way through the beginning of it. I think over time we gradually just couldn't not face what was happening in front of us.

I want to go back to something you said about the destruction of communities as that's sort of a hallmark of authoritarianism. That comes up very clearly in the show—with Ghorman most specifically. But also, one of the arcs I really enjoyed was Bix, who kind of goes off after the first season and is sort of hiding out. You might even read her character maybe as an illegal immigrant doing farm work on another planet, right? And yet even—

It's obvious that's what they are.

Right, and the Empire comes for her too. The way you've crafted this authoritarian regime as one that just becomes increasingly difficult for people to get away from.

Yeah. I mean, this is a period when the Empire is consolidating, as fascism does. In the very first episode, five years back, the inciting incident for the show is that Cassian Andor goes to a pleasure zone on a corporate-controlled planet, looking for a rumor that a long-lost sister may be working in a brothel there. And he's forced—really, by two funky, corrupt cops—they basically try to shake him down and an accident happens, and he kills them. Not intentionally, but he has to.

As that rises up, that bubbles up to the Empire's notice, they use that as an excuse to nationalize that corporation, which is, you know, the classic fascist model.

What are they doing on Mina-Rau, which is the agrarian planet where the Keredians have gone to hide—our people from season one, the few we brought over? What are they doing there? They're doing a big audit and a big top-down accounting of their agrarians' food supplies, because they're taking larger control of everything. So they're just tightening everything. And, you know, the Death Star is meant to be the final turn in that screw.

Yeah. And obviously the Death Star is hanging there in the background—metaphorically, and also literally I suppose. At least in Rogue One, it's there.

But what is fascinating to me about Andor is that you've taken the Empire—it has Darth Vader and the Death Star and these terrifying things that are almost cartoonish. They're scary, yes, obviously. But you've created an Empire that is this authoritarian surveillance bureaucracy, and in a lot of ways that is more terrifying, I think, to me and to other people that I've talked with who watch the show.

Why do you think that is? Why is it that seeing the inside of this bureaucratic institution—full of grain audits and takeovers of corporations—in some ways seems actually scarier than a planet-destroying superweapon?

Anything real—anything that you can identify as reality—is going to be more emotionally connected and more terrifying, or funnier, or more poignant to you. And you know it from any kind of show that you ever watch.

There's all kinds of lenses that we put on when we watch things. We're such sophisticated viewers of narrative at this point in our lives and in our culture and our history. I mean, we're the most sophisticated. People could argue that we're living in an idiocracy, and that the general IQ of political emotional literacy has deteriorated. There is no denying that even the lowest common denominator of that formula has consumed more narrative in their life than any 150,000 people did 100 years ago—and a million times more than anybody did.

You've been consuming narrative your entire life, and you have a incredibly sophisticated series of filters with which to watch it and how it comes at you. Something that really feels real, something that you recognize, is always going to just dig a little deeper.

Our show is always trying to be real.

It's always trying to be—what the motivations… And behaviorally, our fascists are worried about their parking places. Our fascists are worrying about whether they're going to get to the commissary in time to get the fresh cheesecake. Our fascists are worried about the person next to them getting ahead of them, or failing to hit their numbers on their quotas.

It's very recognizably empathetic for the audience in that sense.

Hannah Arendt, I think, said that the sad truth is that most people who do evil things never make the honest choice or the actual choice to do good or bad. And that seems to be, for the most part, what the world you've created here reflects that, right? 

Part of the success—or part of the game plan—of authoritarianism or fascism, when it's played well, is to create an environment where people will forget, willfully forget, about those things because, "Oh, it's not me," "I was only taking orders," "I was asked to do this," "Everyone's doing it," "It's the system."

That inoculation is the hallmark of really successful authoritarianism bureaucracies.

Yeah. You talk also about narratives and how we're inundated by them. I noticed that Andor also had a form of mass media, which is something I don't think had ever been in Star Wars before, right? But there is propaganda. There's cable news in this show.

Why did you make that decision? Is that a commentary on what you were just talking about—about the inundation of narratives and how that changes the way we look at the world? It changed how some of the characters in the show viewed a conflict that was taking place there.

Well, in season one, if you go back to the destruction of community—the destruction of familiarity—the planet Ferrix, which is where Cassian is from: When they come in and look for him, the place rises up. That place is destroyed, basically by fiat, by bad timing, by accident.

He then goes to Mina-Rau, which you just said before. They hide out in this agrarian society there, and we watch them come through, and we watch that get torn apart.

The main event—if there is a main event in the second season, because the show is so abundant—but it's the Ghorman Massacre. And it's the destruction of Ghorman. As I said before, I had this thing on the calendar for Mon Mothma—this Ghorman Massacre—but it was unarticulated and undescribed. It was a free thing to play. So we invented Ghorman: We invented the planet, the culture, the history, a language, a national anthem, a wardrobe, everything. 

The whole culture we built.

You've seen them destroy Ferrix, which was kind of a "leave-us-alone" salvage enterprise. We've seen them destroy Aldhani, which was a colonial, indigenous people—you could put the Lakota Sioux in there if you wanted to. You could put the Zulus. You could put anybody you want in there. But it's destroying an indigenous society that's not capable of fighting back.

We've seen them go after Mina-Rau. We wanted to see something really substantial. What happens when the Empire really has to take down something really substantial—a political force, an economic force? And Ghorman is a really successful. They manufacture all this material, clothing material. They've done it for centuries. It's very bourgeois and very established and politically powerful.

So to take them down, you can't just—you know, what's the new weapon that's required for that? That's propaganda. And that hadn't really been done in Star Wars that much before.

There was a HoloNews Network that's already canonically true, and we thought, "Well, this is how they do it."

In the very first episode, we have something very much like the Wannsee Convention. I don't know how many people in your audience are familiar with the Wannsee Convention, but the Wannsee Convention is where the Nazis—basically over a PowerPoint luncheon, right outside Berlin, about 15 to 20 people—got together, and over lunch and some herring and some Sachertorte set out the detailed logistical plan for the Final Solution over a three or four hour luncheon. And they kept great notes. And they had their lawyers there. And the logicians were there.

So we wanted to do that. So we see that the plan for the destruction of Ghorman has happened long beforehand. It's been a long-term plan. And one of the key components is to turn the galaxy against Ghorman and make its destruction seem not only inevitable, but a wise choice. 

And so propaganda is really part of that. And state-owned media is clearly the way to go.

And the show plays with that concept. Syril ends up being stationed there, has conversations with his mother. His mother's perspective on Ghorman is obviously one that's been influenced by the propaganda. He's seeing something different on the ground.

And I thought that was a really interesting moment for a character that went through some really interesting evolutions. Syril is a guy who's kind of lonely and looking for meaning, and ends up as part of this imperial machine. Ends up kind of trapped by it. If a different set of circumstances happened, he seems like the type of character who could have stumbled his way into the Rebellion too. I don't know, am I overreading that?

No, you're right. I think that's what makes it so tragic. That's what makes his character so complicated and so fascinating to write—and so fascinating for Kyle [Soller] to play—and so heartbreaking. No, I agree with that. 

I think he's a fantasist. I think he's a romantic. I mean, look, so many people are looking to belong to something, right? The need to belong is really primary for so many people. So where do you belong?

And he's found a place to belong that probably—and this may be true for a certain segment of the people that become legitimately fascist or authoritarian—there's a lot of chaos, emotional chaos, in his life. You see his home life. I think the world is very challenging for him, and in a chaotic way.

If you become the thing that you're afraid of, it's a great way to pretend you're inoculating yourself against it. Why do so many people who were abused as children become child abusers? How do you become a monster? If I become the monster, I don't have to be afraid of it. I'll be part of it.

I think he sees that. I think part of him also has fantasies of dreams of glory. I think he really is a romantic in a way. So I do believe—and always believed—that he was available for all kinds of ideas and had just chosen the wrong way and committed to it.

What you see in Ghorman, as the show goes on, is we watch someone who's really, really deeply committed having those scales torn away—in a very explosive fashion. And he just doesn't have time to process the alternatives.

Yeah, he doesn't quite have a chance to get there.

There's a lot of talk and commentary in the media about the loneliness epidemic, or about people who are searching for meaning—even in a very prosperous, very successful, generally very free country like America. Does that prime the pump, if you will, for authoritarianism? Do you worry about that? Is that something you were trying to say with that character? Or is that something you thought about as you were going back and writing him?

I'm not sure. I mean, as you're saying it—yes. I fundamentally do believe that.

There's a terrible scene with him in the first. He moves back to his mother's house in Coruscant after his whole police career blows up, and he's in the room that he grew up in. He's all by himself with his crazy mother, and he's got his little figure there. We had a thing where like the sun passes by his room in Coruscant, and it reflects off a thing for like a minute every day. 

And you just see him alone.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever written those lines that go to that, but it's absolutely true. I do think that isolation and loneliness almost always lead to vulnerability of choices. I think social media, I think isolation, I think what's happened economically in America, and the fragmentation of media, the lack of a common narrative—even lack of a common entertainment experience in a weird way—has led to the rise of MAGA.

I thought the show went out of its way, like you're saying here, to sort of establish the loneliness of that character.

We also have to mention Dedra Meero, since we're talking about Syril. The sort of other—

Not a romantic. 

Not a romantic. Very different. But in some ways, she is also trapped by this machine, and much like him, doesn't really realize it, I think, until—I mean, obviously until it's too late. She's the victim, in some way, of the Empire. Maybe even more so than the overt targets of the Empire are. Right?

What does she say? When Syril's mother asks her: "Well, I don't have a family. My parents were criminals." She always says the five: "My parents were criminals. They were arrested when I was three. I was raised in an Imperial kinderblock."

So she has been a child of fascism. Again, what's the thing you're afraid of? Become the thing you're afraid of.

What's it like to be three years old and have your parents stripped away and be put into a state-run… God only knows what an Imperial kinderblock is really like. We didn't write that. We can imagine what that would be like.

But I think she does not have a wavering belief system. I think there's only one path that she's driving. She may have doubts by the end of the show, where we end up. And she certainly has time to think about it now.

But I don't think she's been living in doubt along the way. There's one path she's chosen that's been offered, and she's gone for it.

So many characters and so many arcs here. We don't have time to spend a lot of time with all of them. Was there a favorite one for you to write in either season? Or was there a certain character…

I can't say that, I really…

Was there a certain character that revealed something to you that you were surprised by as you were writing?

That is one of the perks of the job, is that you find out what you think when you write. Everybody knows that who's ever written anything.

If you tell people to write and they start to write, it's always fascinating. Because they'll come back a month later, and you find out what you think when you write.

You can find out a lot on a barstool or in a coffee shop or in a conversation like this, but I think I found the most of what I believe when I'm actually alone with a keyboard and writing for something else.

So the whole thing has been illuminating. And then—it's very weird—this happens on everything. The first time I went out to sell a movie that I directed, I'd worked on the movie for like five, six years to try to get it made and make it. And you're selling it, and you're out, and you go out and you start to talk about it and do things like this. And you kind of find out why you did it—after you did it.

I find the junkets and interviews and stuff afterward, it's sort of a forensic reveal. Like, "Wow, I didn't realize I did this show for this reason, or I wrote this movie for that reason." So there's some of that.

You want to be finding stuff all the time, or why would you do it?

So do you think you've found something more about Andor through the process of selling it and talking about it for the past year?

I have. I mean, the idea of being a moralist—trying to put the show in the context of everything that I had done before. I think there's a consistency in my work that you're unaware of. Even what I'm doing a movie about music, and then my son said to me, "Gosh, look at the Cutting Edge." 

I'm always dealing with economic disparity. Even in Cutting Edge, even in a rom-com—the first thing I had—there's an element of class struggle in there. So I think there's a consistent through line, weirdly, through all.

And there's no consistency to the kinds of projects. If you put my credits up in a row, they don't really make a lot of sense. But I do think I can feel myself all the way through there.

That's probably a great place to transition to other topics. But before we leave Andor, I did want to ask: Would you ever go back to the Star Wars world again?

I don't know if Disney has approached you to ask about that. Would you be interested at all, or have you told the story that you wanted to tell there?

I spent a year on Andor, and then this was like six years. We did 24 hours of the show. The way we think about it, we made eight Star Wars movies in five years. That's essentially what we did. We really made eight full films, and that's a lot.

And I think it's hard to imagine the circumstances that would lead me to go back, but I would never say never. But it was a gas to do. I doubt I'll ever be prouder of anything I ever do. I'm very proud. We're all very proud of it. We're not just proud of what we ended up with—we're proud of how we made it. We're proud of the community that we built doing it. We were proud of the process that we had, our efficiency. It was a lifetime achievement, I think.

And it must be really satisfying to tell a story and know that it's done. In TV, so often that's not the case.

I think that's why the show is good. That's one of the things is that we knew where we were ending. And I think knowing where you're going—I can't imagine working on a project and not knowing where I was going.

There's a lot of great things that have happened, and you've seen a lot of shows—and they can remain nameless or not—where people start something and it's a really cool idea, but they don't know where they're going. And if they don't figure it out in a decent amount of time, it turns into mush.

I was a big fan of Lost back in my younger days, so I am very familiar with that feeling.

We're not going to really have time to talk a lot about Rogue One here. I know you were brought into that process—I mean, Andor wouldn't exist without Rogue One. You were not part of that process, if I understand correctly, at the beginning. You were kind of brought in midway through.

This is just a pure writer question for me, but being dumped into that and asked to do whatever work it was that you did to move that script along and into the final form that it took—what was that process like? I know you've described yourself in the past as not really a Star Wars guy. You were coming in somewhat cold, and then it turned into this, you know, three-project-long…

It's very different, though. I mean, the side hustle for a successful screenwriter is weekly work and doctoring work and rewriting and repairing. So you have two different—

Andor is a completely original. I take full ownership from the first minute to the last minute. It's all mine. I'm absolutely invested.

But Rogue One was completely the opposite. And I've done a lot of work like that—a lot—like a lot of screenwriters before me, where you come in and there's a huge problem. And you're just basically…script doctoring is the most apt term. Because you're just coming in. The less emotionally connected, or the less territorially connected, you are to the material—in fact, really, really cold-blooded disdain for what's happened before is often the best approach. You just come in cold. I mean, you don't want your heart surgeon to really give a shit about anything else other than what's on the table. 

So I mean, I've done a lot. That's a big side hustle for successful screenwriters. And I came in on that job like that. It morphed into something else over time, and I don't really—I've said everything I want to say about that. But it was a completely different experience in terms of my commitment to it. Yeah.

I know there is still a great deal of speculation out there in the fandom about what the original draft of that movie looked like. I can't imagine that's something you're able to or want to disclose here, but like I have to ask for the sake of asking: What were the changes that were made in Rogue One? What elements did you add? Was it Cassian? What was the through line?

I won't. I'll only say that the easiest way to say it is: Writers Guild arbitration is a very…  Who gets credit on a screenplay is a very articulated, legal, and important process, and something that screenwriters argue and bicker about all the time.

There's a threshold for coming in on a rewrite where one has to contribute a certain percentage to get a credit. The easiest thing to say is that I came in after the film was finished, and I have a full screenplay credit on the film. So I'll leave the rest—the math—to somebody else.

Fair enough. We'll leave it there.

Let's talk about some of the other things you've done in your career. I just went back and watched, actually, the Bourne movies to prep for this conversation. And The Bourne Ultimatum really stood out to me as one I wanted to ask you about.

Maybe this is just the libertarian journalist side in me, I don't know, but amid all the car crashes and the awesome fight scenes and the special effects and all the great action sequences that are happening in those movies, one of the most pivotal scenes happens at the end of Ultimatum, when the assistant director of the CIA makes the decision to fax some information about the assassin program to someone.

We don't know who gets it. We don't know where it goes. We just are left to assume. And there's this sort of confrontation that happens over a fax machine in a small office in the center of the CIA's headquarters in New York or whatever.

Maybe it's because I've seen Andor now too, and I'm thinking about conflicts of interest and drama within an authoritarian bureaucratic regime or something like that. But that stood out to me as this important moment in the movie that comes well before, you know, Edward Snowden or anybody like that was leaking secrets.

Was that scene something that stood out to you at the time of making the movie? Am I overemphasizing the importance of that? Or is that moment saying something about the way in which—in the same way that Andor is—kind of the way in which these regimes contain their own destruction, in a way?

I think you could probably do a whistleblower film festival if you wanted to. I don't think there's anything wildly new about that.

I think maybe what you're recognizing is, in general, it's an approach. And I think probably if you go back to the beginning of our conversation. My approach is really small. Really, really small. Start small. All these big things will take care of themselves.

It's really what happens right now, and what's happening between these two people? What's happening at this meeting?

If you go in to try to make a movie and say, "I want to do…" Use Michael Clayton for example. "I want to do a movie about evil corporations and pesticides and legal malfeasance." If I tried to write a movie with that as a starting point, I'd sit here forever and never get anything. Ever.

I start with like, "Oh, man, there's a lawyer. You know what? They have these lawyers in these law firms that fix things. What's that guy's life like? What would that be like? What would he fix? How would he be treated at the law firm? How will the other lawyers deal with him? What comes out of that?"

I really start just lighting safety matches. I'm not making a bonfire. I'm just trying to light little kindling on the thing and what happens. I trust that my opinions, my worldview, my attitudes, my obsessive gathering of information over time will lead me someplace ultimately larger. But I don't want to ever start larger.

Arguing over a fax machine is right in my wheelhouse. A small thing that has great significance is really valuable to me.

And it's a pivotal decision that, as you say, is over ultimately a relatively small bit of action in a movie that's consumed by much larger, more impressive action sequences. Pushing a button on a fax machine doesn't really add up. But yet, that's kind of the most consequential decision that anybody makes.

I want to ask you a question. What is the libertarian view of Andor? What's the libertarian interpretation of Andor?

I can tell you that you have a lot of big fans here at Reason magazine, at least. But I think I see it as a story about anti-authoritarianism and about the— You know, we talked earlier about the morality or the political compass of the show, right? I agree your conversation with Ross was, like, left-right doesn't make a lot of sense. But the libertarian perspective here would say, "Yeah, sure, a left-right dichotomy is the wrong way to look at the world anyway."

It seems to me—I'll throw the question back to you—is it that the political compass on Andor is more complex than that? And it seems like it's more of a moral compass to me. It's like: How far are different people willing to go before they are radicalized or they're willing to fight back in some way? That takes different forms for different people.

Right. I mean, that's human and universal. I know libertarianism… What I know about it probably has a lot of gaps in it. But no, I'm just curious. I was trying to think before we came on this morning—how the show lines up with that?

For me, I can just say—I don't want to speak for all libertarians—but showing the cracks and the problems in a bureaucratic machine is something that you don't see enough of in media.

One of the things we talk about a lot in libertarianism is that when people go into government, they don't become angels. They are still human beings. They still have the same basic incentives that any human being has.

And that's why I think Syril and Dedra stood out so much to me. Their characters are responding to real incentives. They're not evil bad guys in the same way that, you know, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine are evil bad guys for these huge, metaphysical reasons. They're doing what—I think you said earlier—they're just doing what puts food on the table. Or they're doing the thing that seems like it makes the most sense to them at the moment.

The Bureau of Standards, where he works, is really the total libertarian nightmare, isn't it?

Yeah—just like the endless rows of desks. No, no, no.

All right. No, I'm just—I am curious. OK, cool.

I think that would definitely be our reading of it. And I think it stood out.

Something else I had on my list to ask you is this: So much media with a political message to it seems like it's hackneyed or boring or just too obvious. And I think the various ways that people read Andor and found some meaning in it—whether it's the libertarian interpretation or something else—it must be, to your point earlier, because you're starting by writing these characters in these scenes. You're not going into this thinking, "I'm going to make a statement about the ways in which people oppose authoritarian regimes."

I want you to care about the people before they tell you how they got there and what they believe. No, I really need you to be deeply invested in them, and then you can decide if you trust them or not along the way. It's the behavior. If I'm writing a libertarian character—someone says, "You have to write"—my first instinct is not, "Well, Jesus, I have to find out all about the specific… What's the spectrum of libertarianism?"

And it is confusing in some ways. You have libertarian MAGA. How do those people—how do you deal with church and state? I have all kinds of questions. I'm sure there's a lot of different parsing that goes into your community, I'm sure. 

But my interest is: What leads somebody personally? What happened? What's leading that person? What led you to this? And why are you there? And what are you getting out of it? How shaky is it for you? Those are the things that interest me.

Yeah. And it's interesting too—again in Andor, not to just constantly be pulled back to Andor, but it's a fascinating show—you've got these different factions that form the Rebellion, right? And because we know the future of Star Wars, we know they will all eventually come together and successfully fight the Death Star and all of that. But they've got different incentives. They've got motivations. Some of them are more violent. Some have ideological differences with the Empire. Many of them are just motivated by politics or economics.

Finding that Luthen being the one who's kind of trying to thread that needle is a really interesting…

Now he's your real bureaucratic revolutionary accelerationist. Saw Gerrera's an anarchist, basically, I think. I think he's pretty much—as he says—the only one with clarity of purpose. But he runs down a whole list of other factions that he thinks are foe. But yeah, fascinating.

Yeah. There's a paranoia that inhabits some of your stories here, and this goes beyond Andor—this goes to the Bourne movies too. There's definitely a sense of paranoia that is embedded in those movies.

Are you a paranoid person? Or do you think that's just a sensible way to think about authoritarian regimes, whether it's the Empire or the CIA? Just to always be worried about what they might know in their sterile rooms?

I would say that the overwhelming wheelbarrow of history would be on my side here. I don't think it's paranoia. I think it is reportage, really.

I'm an anticipatory human. I think I have a very—I mean, look, I get paid for a couple things. I get paid for being a grinder and working really hard. I get paid for the discipline of having figured out how to make people come alive and write shootable scenes and understand the structure of how stories go and how to keeping your interest.

But I primarily make my living off my imagination. This is ultimately, after all the books and stories about screenwriting and all the rest of the crap they have, ultimately: Can you make shit up? And make a lot of it up?

And Andor was the maximal expression of that. Part of a constantly unstoppable imaginative engine is you wanna anticipate. Sometimes it's really good for you. It's good if you're traveling. It's really good if you're in an emergency. It's really good if you're trying to figure out a whole bunch of different problems.

It's not really good if your imagination works against you. If you're ill it can really fuck with you.

So—what am I answering? What was the question? I mean the imagination is the key here. I don't think I'm a fantasist. I don't think there's anything that I've written… I don't think there's anything in Bourne…

Is there a world of assassins? Not probably as much as that. Are there government pharmaceutical programs that were like The Bourne Legacy? I think there are. I don't think there's anything where I'm pushing the fantasy into the point of unreality.

I think that's interesting. Obviously science fiction, always, has been a good filter for bringing real-world issues into media.

Let's finish up here in the last few minutes with some more concrete building out the character of Tony Gilroy here. You didn't go to college, if I understand it correctly? Or didn't finish college?

I went for two years. Yeah.

Why did you not finish? Do you regret not finishing? Would you recommend to other people in this day and age whether they go to college or not?

Oh, I went when I was 16, 17. I sort of got a plea bargain from high school. They kind of threw me out—asked me to leave. Then I got into BU. At that point, you could just go to college if your father could pay for it.

So I got in there, and I was a musician. And by my second year in college, I actually liked college. I really liked it.

I had been encouraged socially all through my schooling. There was no path to popularity by being a good student where I went to school. So I was constantly anti-authoritarian.

I mean, I'll tell you the truth: That's it. Really, I don't know, I've never been able to figure this out. I've never gone deep enough into any kind of analysis.

My relationship with my father was just fantastic. I had a great father. No issues with him whatsoever. He's just an absolutely wonderful, benevolent, interesting, fascinating dude.

Why I am so rebellious against any kind of authority in my life, I don't understand. I've always been very good at working with everybody down below. I chafe at a hierarchy above me. I always have.

And I have to guard myself against it, because sometimes I make the wrong decision just because it's an instinctive thing. I don't know where that's from.

I hated school. I hated it all the way through. I hated school. I got to college, and I was like, "Wow, it's OK to be smart here. It's OK to do well here." I really liked it. I was just working too much as a musician in my second year. And I was like, that's what I want to do. And, like, I was making a living, and it's like, I don't know, "I'm gonna go do this other thing and become a rock star. I don't need to go to college."

And, I mean, I liked it when I was there. I mean, I never stopped reading. I never stopped being an autodidact my whole life. But it just I get uncomfortable in a classroom, I guess.

We get that anti-authoritarian streak. I can only imagine what some of your emails with the Disney executives must have been over.

Oh, wow.

Won't ask you to reveal any of that.

You know what? I'll say this: We never took a note, creative note, on the show.

Really? Wow.

No. Kathy protected us and protected the show. The show's so complicated—either people didn't pay attention, or…

We originally said "Fuck the Empire," and they said, "You can't say that. You've got to say 'Fight the Empire.'" So we changed that bit.

But many, many, many controversies over money in the second season. So, yeah. There's a lot of people who see my emails appear in their mailbox on a Sunday morning or a Saturday night and don't want to open them. That's for sure.

Two more questions and we'll let you go here.

You mentioned it earlier: You wrote The Cutting Edge. I think that was the first movie you wrote. If I—again, if I'm understanding the history correctly—this is a—

First one I had made.

First one you had made. That was a romantic comedy about a figure skater and a hockey player in the Olympics.

The second one you had made was Dolores Claiborne, which is a Stephen King adaptation about a daughter and mother, and there's a murder involved.

These are very different movies, and they're very different from the Bourne movies and from Andor and things like that—at least at first blush.

So, Tony Gilroy, what is the theme of your life's work? Find me the through line there. You mentioned earlier that you think there is a consistency. What is it? Sum it up for me in two sentences.

Oh, I mean, you've been talking about it. I do think there's a moral…

I did Extreme Measures, which is about human experimentation and philosophical, and The Devil's Advocate, which is literally a Nietzschean approach to—

Yeah, sure.

Exactly. I'm trying to think back. Proof of Life. They all have…

Look, I always want to do things that interest me. I don't want to do anything like what I just did before.

I'm doing this music movie now. My game is I have to be able to see it. I have to see what it's about.

It has to be about something. I can't start something if I don't know what it's sort of about—or feel that what it's about will reveal itself to me before I actually start the script.

I have to start seeing scenes for it. I just want it to be exciting.

There are things that I've worked on that I loved that didn't get made, and then later on you want to revive them. And somehow, as exciting as they were—some of the best things I ever wrote—I feel like the moment's passed.

I think there's a timeliness about things, that you want to be on the spot, on the moment. I want to be part of the conversation. I want to be relevant. I want an audience. I want your attention. I do. I mean, I'm desperate for your attention, so I think I'm honest about that.

But I want to look forward to going to work, you know? I want to look forward to, like, "Wow, I want to get into this, and I want… I want to be here for a while."

Well, you've certainly got our attention. We're very excited about Behemoth. I know you're in the middle of making that movie, so you probably don't have a lot of free time, but I also wanted to wrap this up just by asking:

What is the most recent movie or show or anything you saw that you were impressed by? That you liked? Give me a recommendation for something.

Oh, my God. I hate these questions. I mean, I don't know. I turned down like five of these things in the last week—the year-end thing. It's so hard.

Number one—also—I've been intensively making something, and it's really hard for me to take a lot of other information in while I'm doing that. So I don't consume. I'm not as much of a consumer.

I've certainly not reading. I don't read a lot when I'm doing this, because I don't want a lot of other stuff. I mean, I don't know what I'm watching. What do I like?

I have been enjoying The Diplomat. I think that it's really well-written. I think she's doing a really great job on writing that. So, I don't know, I was watching it.

But I don't know. My TV here is weird in the house I'm staying in, so I have a western channel that I've been watching. So I've been watching a lot of westerns when I come home.

I watched The Professionals the other night when I got home at night. So I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you. 

That's a good—we'll come back to you next time.

The Geese album is really good—like everybody else says. The Geese album, I think, is really good. That's on constant rotation this week. I don't know.

Sounds good. Well, you're a busy man at the moment—we'll give you some time to catch up with the latest in media.

That's Tony Gilroy. I'll insert the obvious libertarian joke here at the end and say that I'm already excited about the sequel to Behemoth, which I assume will be called Leviathan. Although maybe you aren't…

There's a great movie called Leviathan already…

That'd be a good one. Tony, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great conversation.

Be well.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post <i>Andor</i> Creator Tony Gilroy on Bureaucracy and the Surveillance State appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Keonne Rodriguez, the founder of Samourai Wallet, a noncustodial bitcoin privacy tool. Rodriguez is currently facing a five-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, while Samourai's former chief technology officer, William Hill, faces four years. The conversation was recorded just 48 hours before Rodriguez was scheduled to report to prison.

Rodriguez explains why he created Samourai Wallet, tracing its origins to bitcoin's cypherpunk roots and his belief that digital cash should offer the same basic privacy as physical cash. He walks through how Samourai worked, and why it never took custody of user funds.

In the interview, Rodriguez addresses the government's allegations that Samourai facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal activity, the role of blockchain surveillance firms in shaping those claims, and why he believes prosecutors ignored clear regulatory guidance from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Rodriguez also explains why he ultimately chose to plead guilty despite believing he broke no law, citing the realities of federal prosecution, judicial reassignment, and what he describes as a stacked legal process.

We examine the broader implications of the case for privacy, free expression, and innovation, including parallels to encrypted messaging, past crackdowns on online marketplaces, and the growing tendency of governments to treat privacy itself as inherently suspicious. Rodriguez also reflects on President Donald Trump's recent comments indicating he would look into the case, the possibility of a pardon, and what it means to face prison time for building a tool intended to protect individual autonomy in an era of expanding surveillance.

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

0:39—What is Samourai Wallet?

3:31—Bitcoin and financial privacy

9:51—Money transmission and noncustodial wallets

13:15—Justice Department communication with FinCEN

16:27—Responding to the indictment

22:50—Why Rodriguez pled guilty

29:41—Money laundering accusations

34:59—Was Samourai's advertising evidence of guilt?

43:01—Canadian trucker protests and bitcoin

50:37—Trump comments on Rodriguez's case

55:08—Ross Ulbricht's advice to Rodriguez

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post He's Serving 5 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Privacy Software appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Katherine Dee, a writer chronicling the subcultures of the internet at her Substack default.blog and in columns for The Spectator, Tablet, GQ, UnHerd, and various other publications. Dee also hosts a weekly call-in show that's an homage to the late-night AM radio show Coast to Coast.

Dee talks about the internet as a mystical "other place": fairyland or the astral plane, somewhere you journey and play by different rules, interact with unusual entities, and hope you emerge with your sanity intact.

In this interview, they discuss the shift from the "internet utopianism" of the '90s and early 2000s, where cyber philosophers mused about netizens "forming our own social contract" in a borderless digital space where "governments have no sovereignty," to internet pessimism, where politicians fret about online misinformation and extremism, parents worry their kids are "cooked" by short-form brain rot, and the media tell us AI will replace our jobs, our friends, and our romantic partners.

Dee has a remedy, and she calls it "internet realism." It's time to step out of fairyland and remember what the internet is: a tool. We humans use tools to reshape the world, but so, too, do tools reshape humans. Wield them wisely.

 

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 by championing "free minds and free markets."

 

0:00—Introduction

1:42—Dee's relationship with the internet

7:16—The early days of the internet

13:48—Has the internet changed us?

18:21—Mythological analogies

23:00—Benefits of logging off

27:15—Falling in love with AI chatbots

33:39—Smartphones and anxiety

42:11—Defending pseudonymity

50:46—The death of reading

55:52—Internet nihilism and violence

1:01:20—Embracing internet realism

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Did the Internet Break Our Sense of Reality? appeared first on Reason.com.

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.