Jordan Klepper Charts Trump's Long History with Epstein & Nick Offerman Sounds Alarm on National Parks | Thomas Chatterton Williams

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Speaker 4 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 I gotta tell you, we got so much to talk about tonight. The government insists there's no government conspiracy.
We release our own Epstein files and we go for a walk in the woods with Nick Offerman.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 let's get in the headlines.

Speaker 2 We are on week two of the MAGA civil war over the Epstein files.

Speaker 4 And the Trump administration can't get its stories straight.

Speaker 2 There was a client list, then there was no client list. They were going to release all the files, and then they decided not to release any files.

Speaker 2 So let's see what today's excuse is.

Speaker 5 I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.
They were made up by the Biden.

Speaker 2 Okay. Cool.

Speaker 2 Cool as a cucumber.

Speaker 2 This guy's not worried about a thing. So let me get this straight.
According to Trump, all the top Democrats got together and said, Let's create some fake files that destroy Trump's political career.

Speaker 2 They don't ever use them. They let Trump get elected, don't use them.

Speaker 2 Let Trump get elected again, still don't use them.

Speaker 2 And then, once he's the president, hope he releases the files without ever looking at them.

Speaker 2 Frankly,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 that plan sounds so inconceivably bad. I do believe the Democrats might have come up with it.

Speaker 2 But Trump clearly wants everyone to just to move on. And after initially pushing back, some of them are getting the message.

Speaker 6 I think the DOJ should immediately move to unseal all the Epstein documents in the Southern District of New York. I think every file should be released to the public the same way as the JFK files.

Speaker 6 Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration.
I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it.

Speaker 6 Ball's in their hands.

Speaker 2 Oh, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. The ball's in their hands, he says.

Speaker 2 Probably not the phrase I would use when

Speaker 2 talking about the Epstein files.

Speaker 2 The ball's in their hands. The shaft is in the courts.

Speaker 2 The taint is in the breadbasket. What the f ⁇ are we doing here?

Speaker 2 A phrase you don't hear conspiracy theorists, free thinkers utter a whole lot is: I'm going to trust my friends in the government on this one.

Speaker 2 Clearly, this issue has MAGA on its heels, which means now is the time for Democrats to strike. Democrats, show us what you got.

Speaker 5 Congressman Hank Johnson coming to give you some more ear candy or perhaps an earache.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 2 maybe I was too harsh on the J6 choir.

Speaker 2 You know, I just feel for his poor aides who probably spent all week having to help him with this. Like, Rebecca, quick, give me a list of all the words that rhyme with suicide, please.

Speaker 2 But it's a fluid situation right now, and MAGA is trying to wrap their heads around it because they have a lot of unanswered questions.

Speaker 8 There are a lot of unanswered questions, but the biggest question is just what on earth is going on? I don't know what's happening.

Speaker 2 It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 8 I can't reconcile this Donald Trump with the Trump that we're seeing right now, the Trump that is gaslighting the public right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay, okay, you know what? Yeah, this is a tough one. Why is Donald Trump refusing to release the Epstein files and telling everyone to shut up and move on? Well, okay.

Speaker 2 Let me offer one possible theory.

Speaker 2 Perhaps you've heard of Occam's razor. It's the idea that the most simple explanation is probably the correct one.
In the case of Trump and the Epstein files, let's call our theory

Speaker 2 Occam's giant f ⁇ ing machete.

Speaker 2 By now, you've probably heard that Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein's partner, Ghelane Maxwell, used to be friends. But it's worth understanding how close this friendship was.

Speaker 8 Trump says he's known Epstein since the late 80s, and pictures from the 90s show the president with Maxwell, who became Epstein's girlfriend. They were neighbors in Palm Beach.

Speaker 8 At one point, Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 2 It's party time at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago. And among the guests, Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2 Trump and Epstein can be seen ogling the cheerleaders. Trump points one of them out and says, she's hot.

Speaker 2 Then he says something in Epstein's ear that has the financier doubled up in laughter.

Speaker 2 Now.

Speaker 2 Okay, now.

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Speaker 2 What did Trump say? It's impossible to know.

Speaker 2 And Donald Trump and Epstein didn't just party together. They were neighbors.
Epstein said he was Trump's closest friend for 10 years.

Speaker 2 In fact, Epstein's infamous little black book included 14 different numbers for Trump and his representatives. I mean, he had 14 separate ways to contact Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 I mean, when I drop my kid off at camp, I give two emergency contact numbers.

Speaker 2 And one of them is fake because I don't need the hassle, all right?

Speaker 2 And these guys didn't just party together. Epstein was a part of some major major milestones in Trump's life.
Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania to Donald Trump.

Speaker 8 Trump was a frequent passenger on Epstein's plane, known as the Lolita Express. And Epstein told author Michael Wolfe: the first time he slept with Melania was on my plane.

Speaker 2 And that is how I met your mother, Baron.

Speaker 2 Any questions?

Speaker 2 I'll tell you, next time you're on a flight with a crying baby, just think about how much worse it could be.

Speaker 2 All right. So right now, you might be thinking, fine, they were friends.
They hung out. That doesn't mean Trump knew about what Epstein was doing.
And you know what? Maybe not.

Speaker 2 But he clearly had some idea.

Speaker 8 In a 2002 interview with New York magazine, Trump showered praise on Epstein, calling him a, quote, terrific guy, and saying, it is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do and many of them are on the younger side.

Speaker 2 Do you know how creepy with women you have to be for Donald Trump to pick up on it?

Speaker 2 I mean that that's a real you're drunk friend taking the car keys from you moment.

Speaker 2 And you could still say so what? They were close friends. They were mile high club pals.
That still doesn't mean that Trump is in the files. And maybe.

Speaker 2 But after Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, the only person left who knew all his secrets was Ghelane Maxwell.

Speaker 2 And when she got charged with sex trafficking, Trump's response was surprisingly sympathetic.

Speaker 9 I haven't really been following her too much. I just wish her well, frankly.
I've met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach.

Speaker 9 But I wish her well, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 You wish her well?

Speaker 2 Is that the right response? I think there's a reason they don't have that section in the Hallmark store.

Speaker 2 It's not there.

Speaker 2 It's not.

Speaker 2 Let's be clear. Law and order SBU doesn't start like in the criminal justice system.
Sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous, and we wish the perpetrators well. Dun dun!

Speaker 2 Okay, you know what? You know what? You want to take another shot at it?

Speaker 2 Maybe even more flailing and desperate?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I wish you well. I'd wish you well.

Speaker 11 I'd wish a lot of people well.

Speaker 10 And I do wish you well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her.
I'm not looking bad for anybody. What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 You wish bad things on everybody.

Speaker 2 Suddenly you're wishing Ghelane well?

Speaker 2 You were harder on Kristen Stewart for cheating on Robert Pattinson.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 all right, all right, all right. So, so

Speaker 2 to sum up to all the MAGA people who are so confused about why Trump doesn't want to release any of these files, maybe the answer has something to do with Occam's giant machete.

Speaker 4 Bravo, Jordan.

Speaker 2 Wait a minute,

Speaker 2 what is that? Bravo.

Speaker 2 I know that sarcastic clap.

Speaker 2 Is that Michael Costa?

Speaker 2 Yes, Michael Costa. Michael Costa.
Apparently.

Speaker 2 Apparently, I'm Mona Lago, everyone. Michael.

Speaker 4 That's right. I'm Michael Costa.

Speaker 4 And you must think you're Inspector Gadget, the way you're putting all the clues together, huh?

Speaker 4 But the fact is, you're just talking out of your go-go-gadget ass.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's fair, Michael. I've laid out a pretty good trail of Trump and Epstein's decades-long friendship.

Speaker 4 Sorry, I barely recognize you in your tinfoil hat. Hey, Clepper, you're just like all the other conspiracy theorists, stringing red yarn between random facts.

Speaker 4 You think you're Sherlock Holmes, but really, you're just talking out of your go-go gadget ass.

Speaker 2 All right, Smarty Pants. Why do you think Trump was just so close to Epstein?

Speaker 4 It's so obvious, Jordan. Once you take off your go-go gadget blinders, you'll realize that the reason Trump was friends with Epstein was so he could investigate him.

Speaker 4 He knew from the very beginning that Epstein was trouble, and as a concerned citizen, Donald Trump f ⁇ ed Melania on his claim.

Speaker 2 You know laying low. Okay, okay, but if Donald Trump was working to expose Epstein, why doesn't he just say it?

Speaker 4 Because he's a humble man, Jordan.

Speaker 4 If the world found out he was the one who exposed the world's most notorious sex trafficker, he would get so much praise, love, and attention. And that's the last thing Donald J.

Speaker 2 Trump would want.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 But.

Speaker 2 Conte, he didn't expose anything. Epstein killed himself in prison.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, and you can thank Donald Trump for that.

Speaker 4 Who do you think talked Epstein into it? My man, Donnie T, went into his cell and said, listen up, you ugly mug, the game's up, see? We got you dead to right, so do yourself a favor.

Speaker 4 Punch your own ticket before we put you in the chair and give you the juice, see?

Speaker 2 Okay, all right, so let me get this straight.

Speaker 2 Your theory is that Trump spent the past 30 years undercover in Epstein's pedophile cabal, which he was not actually part of, to get evidence to convict Jeffrey Epstein who Trump convinced to kill himself but he can't release the files because people would be too grateful for him

Speaker 2 well

Speaker 2 well well

Speaker 2 look who finally

Speaker 4 connected all the clues mr. Detective Colombo looks like mr.
Murder She Road finally pulled his Nancy Drew head out of his go-go gadget ass

Speaker 2 Michael Costa, everybody. Buck slopping, stop slapping, stop.

Speaker 2 When we come back, Nico Offerman will give us his opinion. Don't go away.

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Speaker 13 Welcome back to The Daily Show.

Speaker 2 We all know I've got great opinions, but I'm not the only one. Studies show that other people also have opinions.
So, here with another installment of In My Opinion is our good friend, Nick Offerman.

Speaker 4 Hello, I am stage and screen luminary Nick Offerman.

Speaker 4 And I'd like to say the phrase that everyone loves hearing, do you have a moment to talk about the environment?

Speaker 4 I have several undeniable loves in my life. The oaky notes of a barrel-aged whiskey, an old-fashioned plum bob dangling over a red cedar plank, my blushing bride's hoo-ha,

Speaker 2 and of course,

Speaker 4 America's national parks.

Speaker 4 Our beautiful national parks were the brainchild of Theodore Roosevelt, Teddy if you're nasty,

Speaker 4 and environmentalist John Muir, who you may recognize as the old man in Home Alone.

Speaker 4 America's national parks, as the kids say, slay.

Speaker 4 Now I've spent much of my life in their splendor. I've written several books about them.
And thanks to the parks, my parents never had to teach me about the birds and the bees.

Speaker 4 They just took me to look at Old Faithful.

Speaker 4 I got it.

Speaker 4 But that's why it brings me great sorrow to report these pastoral gifts to America are under attack.

Speaker 14 National parks are facing a major summer staffing crisis. Staffing cuts under President Trump and cost cutting by Doge have left parks struggling.

Speaker 8 Permanent staffing is down 24%

Speaker 8 system-wide since President Trump took office. Cuts to the park system are causing chaos.
Long lines, dirty bathrooms, and overflowing trash cans.

Speaker 14 Even scientists now have to help clean toilets due to severe shortages.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 4 America's parks are so underfunded now that they're making scientists clean the toilets.

Speaker 4 Like goodwill hunting, but in reverse.

Speaker 4 Now this is a huge mistake. No scientist has the strength to clean the skid marks of a man who's been eating beans and campfire hot dogs for the past three days.

Speaker 4 They're weak.

Speaker 4 This is no way to treat America's park rangers. They are already underpaid despite being highly skilled.

Speaker 4 Our park rangers have to traverse miles of treacherous terrain, stand up to dangerous wildlife, and glue all the leaves back on the trees every spring.

Speaker 4 You thought they grew back?

Speaker 4 Read a book.

Speaker 4 These rangers are doing everything they can to keep the parks going, and I mean everything.

Speaker 8 A TikTok influencer is proving once again that sex sells, even when it comes to, yes, national parks.

Speaker 8 Kim Tanner is behind a trend called Park Talk, which features risque videos and raunchy song lyrics to promote awareness of the parks.

Speaker 8 Tanner says that she's concerned about federal funding cuts and new mining activity.

Speaker 2 Yikes.

Speaker 4 Rangers are stripping.

Speaker 4 People, I'm worried we're just about two months away from seeing the Grand Canyon on OnlyFans

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 it shows whole

Speaker 4 And it does rim-to-rim action.

Speaker 4 Color me subscribed.

Speaker 4 Now, true, our parks need to make money to function. And to make matters worse, President Trump's one big beautiful bill just cut another $267 million from the national parks budget.

Speaker 4 How will he make up that money, you ask? I'll tell you. The only way he knows by shaking down foreigners.

Speaker 8 President Trump just increased the price to get into national parks, but only if you're from a foreign country.

Speaker 4 The national parks

Speaker 10 will be about America first.

Speaker 8 The increase is estimated to bring in an additional $90 million to the Department of Interior's budget.

Speaker 4 Let me get this straight, Mr. President.
You cut $267 million to get back $90 million.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm no mathematician,

Speaker 4 but I believe that's called shitting the bed.

Speaker 4 But then again, I didn't go to Wharton Business College.

Speaker 4 If money is all you're concerned about, there is great news, Mr. President.
These parks actually make a ton of green.

Speaker 7 In 2023, national parks brought a record $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy, supporting more than 415,000 jobs.

Speaker 8 A record-breaking 331 million visits across hundreds of sites last year alone.

Speaker 4 330 million visits. That's over five times more visitors than Disney World.

Speaker 4 Plus, the mice in our national parks would never debase themselves by participating in the culinary atrocity that is the character breakfast.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry that you flunked out of Juilliard, Mickey, but you stay the f ⁇ away from my eggs.

Speaker 4 That is the true miracle of our national parks. It is an affordable vacation that everyone can take inside our own borders.

Speaker 4 Whether you're traveling with your family or abandoning your constituents during a crisis.

Speaker 4 Protecting our national parks is a bipartisan issue. They are the one place where a pickup truck and a Prius look equally at home.

Speaker 4 All Americans use our parks, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, from Rand Paul to the birds that live in Rand Paul's hair.

Speaker 4 In fact, President Trump, even you have talked about our parks fondly and almost remembered their names.

Speaker 9 We want every American child to have access to pristine outdoor spaces. When young Americans experience the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon, when they gaze upon Yosemites, Yosemite.

Speaker 4 Yo, Semites

Speaker 4 is what a bad undercover cop might say to a group of Hasidic Jews.

Speaker 4 Yo, Semites, you want to buy a bag of goofballs?

Speaker 4 So look, we can only hope that the president takes his own advice and protects our country's majesty with adequate staffing and funding.

Speaker 4 It's America the beautiful, purple mountain majesty, amber waves of grain, a little bit of chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and the radio up.

Speaker 4 I may have gotten my songs mixed up.

Speaker 4 The point is, if we don't protect our natural beauty, what is even left to sing about? Because let's face it, America without its national parks is like McDonald's without the hamburgers.

Speaker 4 You can still go there, I guess, but at that point, it's kind of just a bathroom.

Speaker 4 But that's just my opinion.

Speaker 4 It's over there, everyone. This is Royal Nick and the Climate Demo, Stafford, and Feeling Show.
This is Matt Thomas Chatterton Williams. And you're joining me on the show from Col.

Speaker 4 Welcome back to the Daily Show.

Speaker 2 My guest tonight is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the forthcoming book, Summer of Our Discontent, The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse.

Speaker 2 Please welcome Thomas Chatterton Williams.

Speaker 2 A lot of big ideas in this book, Thomas.

Speaker 2 I want to jump into some of these, all right?

Speaker 2 You look specifically at the summer of 2020, 2020, but this book takes us back a little bit about the promise of Barack Obama and talks about this promise of post-racialism and how the failures, I believe you say, the failures to take action in that or to find this moment of post-racialism, you could draw a direct line from that to this era of Trump and MAGA.

Speaker 2 Explain that for me a little bit.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think we had a moment in the beginning of this century when the country seemed to come, not everyone in the country, but a plurality of people in the country, maybe even a slim majority of people in the country, really wanted to put the past oppressions and biases behind us and create this multi-ethnic society that Barack Obama's figure kind of gave us a hint of what could be.

Speaker 11 You know, and so there was this moment of goodwill and even

Speaker 11 there were polls in Gallup that a majority of McCain voters even thought that this was an inspiring moment even in loss, and that. Fake news.

Speaker 2 I don't believe that for seconds.

Speaker 2 There was a moment where people on the other side were like, this is still inspiring.

Speaker 11 It's hard to believe. I don't remember.

Speaker 11 It was a different country.

Speaker 11 It might have been a temporary moment, but there was a moment when people seemed to want to transcend the kind of conflicts that we had been plagued by in the previous century.

Speaker 11 And Barack Obama's figure was a special charismatic kind of

Speaker 11 idea of a post-racial future embodied in the president. And I think that we had a chance, but it didn't last so long.

Speaker 2 So what?

Speaker 2 It didn't last so long. Well, you mentioned in here that this sort of clicked with you.
You're a teacher as well with the disconnect you had with your students. Is that correct?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I'm about 20 years older than the undergrads that I teach.

Speaker 11 And they can't remember the Obama era.

Speaker 11 This idea that there was a moment where we would become, now it seems naive to say post-racial.

Speaker 2 And a post-racial is such a loaded term now. It almost feels antiquated.

Speaker 11 It feels antiquated, and people don't really take you seriously if you say you believe in post-racialism, but there was a moment when that seemed to point to something that we could become.

Speaker 11 That seemed to be a kind of, it was downstream of Martin Luther King's idea of the mountaintop, you know, and that we would meet each other and judge each other by the contents of our character.

Speaker 11 It seemed when it was earnestly embraced like a vision of America that we were moving towards the arc of history, it bent towards justice, you know, and And that was a moment that I don't believe that the Gen Z students and soon to be the Gen Alpha students that I teach have direct contact with.

Speaker 11 And so

Speaker 11 it seems like abstract history to them. And when I try to kind of evoke that in the classroom, that sense of optimism that we had, that hope and change, when Barack Obama said,

Speaker 11 we're not red states, we're not blue states, we're the United States of America, there was a moment.

Speaker 11 moment where I truly believe in that because I came up when that kind of defined the political possibilities of my generation.

Speaker 11 And I noticed this absence with the young kids, with the young adults that I teach undergrad now.

Speaker 11 And I find that to be kind of a real tragedy of the political culture that we've inherited since

Speaker 11 that crucial turning point when we reached this fork in the road where we could have gone to this nicer, more perfected union.

Speaker 2 How could we have done that? Because I mean, this book is critical of the left and the way in which they handled that movement, right? Like, how do you see,

Speaker 2 what are the criticisms you see in the way that the left and Obama handled that movement? And where was the actual space for a post-racial America?

Speaker 11 That's a very good question. I think that there was a space where,

Speaker 11 and you might call this also, you know, I think there's a lot of room to push back and critique this, but I think there was...

Speaker 2 Give me a shot.

Speaker 11 There was a moment where I think a lot of very well-intentioned white people,

Speaker 11 let's call them, you know, white liberals,

Speaker 2 I'm dragging, I guess.

Speaker 11 Where a lot of them probably felt like we've done it. You know, we've really done it.

Speaker 11 We've decided to put race behind us and identity behind us, right? And so we've elected somebody who is embodying that new America that we're moving towards.

Speaker 11 And there is a chance to really be post-racial. But I think there were several missteps.
And I can understand how they happened and I think it's a tragedy how they happened.

Speaker 11 But one of the real inflection points that I tried to get into in the book is when Barack Obama said, you know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin.

Speaker 11 And at the time that that happened, I didn't really appreciate that that was a rhetorical misstep.

Speaker 11 I think that, you know, I really understand what he was trying to say, but I can also see now in retrospect how we had elected Barack Obama and we had believed that we were moving past race.

Speaker 11 And we had believed that we were moving past these divisions. It's appalling that a boy is stalked and killed because that's an appalling thing to do full stop.

Speaker 11 And I think that when he injected the kind of identity angle into it, people said,

Speaker 11 we haven't actually become post-race at all. In fact, this is a kind of identity angle and I feel excluded from this.
I try to think of the example of, think of like Lakin Riley, who was

Speaker 11 this young woman in Georgia who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Imagine if Donald Trump said, if I had a daughter, she'd look like Lake and Riley.

Speaker 11 That could actually really be explosively divisive. Not to say that he's not explosively divisive every day.

Speaker 11 But think about what that would inject into the conversation about it. Almost a kind of white nationalism.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's what it would begin?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I think

Speaker 2 that's a curious point there, right? But Lake and Riley is somebody who has, from my perspective, been weaponized by the right. Absolutely.
As a victim that the left doesn't see.

Speaker 2 And I remember that moment with Barack Obama and Trayvon Martin. And

Speaker 2 from my perspective, it felt like a very powerful moment when Barack Obama saw himself and his family in this victim here.

Speaker 2 My memory of it was less that he brought race to that situation. I feel like he had an entire media ecosystem on the right that was making Barack Barack Obama the black president.
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 That was consistently projecting this and race-baiting and fear-mongering. And so, in some ways, it felt like that moment was like a necessary moment of inclusion.

Speaker 2 That identity, he didn't bring up identity. Identity was somewhat thrust on him as a weapon.

Speaker 11 Well, it shows how little leeway he had and how there was no room for any mishap. And that's what I think is the tragedy of his presidency, actually.

Speaker 11 It was always too much for one person, even as magnificent and excellent, and I think as elegant a person as he was uh it was too much for one person to ever be able to handle because there the moment anybody could kind of put a misstep on you then it was it was much more extreme and much more significant than than it would have been for for another president but you still see there's there was a moment of hope in that i really do and so do you see that is Does that does that give you ultimate hope that there's space there, or does it ultimately depress you because that was a missed opportunity?

Speaker 11 Both. I think

Speaker 11 I have to call myself a pess optimist.

Speaker 2 But both.

Speaker 11 You can't just be one or the other. And I think that the vision of America that I was exposed to, I can never forget.

Speaker 11 And so I have to be an optimist as long as I know that that moment existed and I lived it.

Speaker 11 The night he won in 2008, in November, I was in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, walking through the streets. I've never seen

Speaker 11 such

Speaker 11 civic pride. And the thing I felt in the streets that day is the country that I believe we will one day have back.
I think it's really under siege.

Speaker 11 I think it's the most dangerous moment I've ever lived through now. But having glimpsed that, I don't believe the future belongs to Donald Trump and the movement he's trying to bring in.

Speaker 11 I really can't accept that.

Speaker 11 I think it's...

Speaker 2 The major part, the big chunk of this book looks really at the summer of 2020.

Speaker 2 And it's fascinating to look back at something that feels in some ways like it was a month ago, in some ways it feels like 100 years ago. But you really walk through it

Speaker 2 from a critical eye towards

Speaker 2 what the progressive response to that was. And I think you're very clear about, like,

Speaker 2 you don't hold back on your critiques of the left, but make it clear that in order for people to find that step, perhaps away from Donald Trump, you need to be pretty clear-eyed about the mistakes that you made, specifically in the summer of 2020.

Speaker 2 What do you you see those major missteps as?

Speaker 11 Well, where do you want? How much time you got?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, like, you focus on, that was such a chaotic time. You're looking at COVID and you're looking at George Floyd.
Yeah, right?

Speaker 2 Talk to me about George Floyd and where you see the flaws of the left in the response to George Floyd.

Speaker 11 Sure. So, you have really, thank you for bringing that up, you have a confluence of events.

Speaker 11 You have the pandemic, which makes possible a kind of reaction to this horrific videotaped execution that really looks, it's a nine-minute-long, slow death that's recorded.

Speaker 11 So that happens at a moment when everybody is at home, sidelined from their normal lives, with a lot of time and attention, and glued to these screens that homogenize all of our shared reality.

Speaker 11 And then hanging above that, you have the specter of Donald Trump telling people to ingest bleach and

Speaker 11 to shine light on themselves as a way of fighting an epidemic that we still don't fully understand and terrorizing the body politic. So you have this kind of moment where so many missteps

Speaker 11 were made, but one of the most extreme things that I think was really done by people who would be left of center and progressive was that they squandered the kind of institutional authority that they had in our mainstream institutions.

Speaker 11 They squandered trust. So

Speaker 11 you have epidemiologists and public health

Speaker 11 authorities saying one day that you really can't be outside because it's too dangerous to mass collectively and people are trying to kill your grandmother if they're outside or if they're trying to, you know, if they're...

Speaker 2 Don't you have sympathy for that? That was a fluid situation. Of course I have sympathy for that.

Speaker 11 But what I don't have as much sympathy for is that the next day after George Floyd dies tragically is that then it's like racism is also an epidemic and you actually must be outside now because

Speaker 11 we actually have to protest against this other pandemic and the risk is now tolerable.

Speaker 11 It's either

Speaker 11 COVID-19 doesn't discriminate based on which ideological standpoint you're at.

Speaker 11 So that

Speaker 11 that was a major mistake by the kind of public health messaging that was picked up by other outlets on the left. Then you had the kind of reporting that I think

Speaker 11 was a massive, massive squandering of institutional authority. I think maybe people in this audience remember a Chiron that said, fiery but mostly peaceful protests.

Speaker 11 I don't think that people people who lived through seeing cities burn, and you know, downtown New York City, Soho, it was getting crazy in Soho sometimes.

Speaker 11 All of the stores were boarded up. There were police guards outside of Nike.

Speaker 11 People

Speaker 11 were looting...

Speaker 11 It's one thing to say that that's sometimes what happens,

Speaker 11 but it's another thing to say that this isn't happening.

Speaker 11 Don't believe your lying eyes.

Speaker 11 It's really mostly peaceful. It's really, Kenosha is not burning.

Speaker 2 You feel that's that's embedded in some of the frustrations that the MAGA movement picked up.

Speaker 11 I don't think it justifies. justifies, you know, I think

Speaker 11 there's ways of responding to something

Speaker 11 that's not right that go so far beyond an appropriate response that they create a new problem

Speaker 11 that's far greater than the original offense.

Speaker 2 But at the time, though, at the time you do see a left who is like,

Speaker 2 You're advocating for a more rational response. Yes.
But it felt like it was an irrational time. Very much so.

Speaker 2 With a person in charge who was fear-mongering, giving you false information, who was race-baiting with all of the moments, with what was happening with George Floyd.

Speaker 2 And that I know that you're against elements of the identity politics and how the Democrats have clung to it, but it didn't feel like, at the time, it didn't feel like that was the choice Democrats were making.

Speaker 2 It felt like that was the reality they were embracing and had a real earnest

Speaker 2 desire to use

Speaker 2 that moment and to use that anger to try to enact some kind of change. I know you don't think that was done correctly,

Speaker 2 but what do you do with that energy in a moment that is so irrational?

Speaker 11 It's a very good question. I think that in retrospect, it's very easy to judge a lot of things.

Speaker 11 In the moment, you know, I think that emotion and a sense of solidarity can be very compelling, but they can also cloud judgment.

Speaker 11 You know, I think that there's something ludicrous when you look back at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling in Kenti Kloth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 It's a weird look. It's a weird look.
It's not a weird look. It didn't fit correctly either.
Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 they didn't do very well.

Speaker 11 It's a weird look, but you can understand this kind of, we all feel this impulse to empathize with the victim. But what I'm trying to get at in this book is like,

Speaker 11 The America that I want to achieve is like, what was George Floyd's primary identity? Certainly he was black, but his black experience is not the universal black experience.

Speaker 11 First and foremost, his identity was that this was a poor man. This was a man out of work.

Speaker 11 This was a man who was broken by police and was able to be violated in the way he was because he had no socioeconomic protection.

Speaker 11 And I think that, like, to talk about it only as a matter of identity actually limits our ability to engage non-black people in the struggle, which is that no American should be okay with law enforcement being able to break somebody, especially a poor person without any resources, the way that they broke George Floyd.

Speaker 2 Whatever color you are.

Speaker 2 Do you see a space? Is there there a space in the middle?

Speaker 2 Is there a space between no identity politics and identity politics that someone is walking right now, or you see as a potential lane for somebody to walk?

Speaker 11 I think so. I think the way you and I are talking, I'm cognizant of the fact that you seem to be descended from Europeans, though I would never assume.

Speaker 2 That is the kindest way to address my race.

Speaker 2 Cognizant of the fact that you are a pasty mother.

Speaker 11 But what I would like, I would like it to tell me as little

Speaker 11 about you as possible. I would like that to be as

Speaker 11 I would like to not make assumptions based on that, on those superficial identity markers that I see. I want to understand you as an individual.
I want to understand where you come from.

Speaker 11 I want to understand what experiences you've had in America and not just assume things based on the texture of your hair, the color of your eyes, and your epidermis. And that's really what you know,

Speaker 3 I was curious.

Speaker 4 I will say like,

Speaker 2 there's a lot in this book. I found this book really challenging and fascinating.
I very much enjoyed it. And something you talk about, you spend a lot of your time in France,

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 the ways in which a place like,

Speaker 2 how the French see identity compared to how Americans see identity. And like,

Speaker 2 what are some of the takeaways you have of looking at what American identity politics is from the point of view of somebody who's spent so much time in a place like France?

Speaker 11 Yeah, so I wrote an article in the Atlantic a few years ago about the kind of ideal society would be someplace in between France and America.

Speaker 11 You know, France has this commitment to universalism and what they call laicité, and this idea that there's just the French citizen and you leave

Speaker 11 everything for the Jew privately, but nothing for the Jew collectively as a group. That's how it kind of originated.

Speaker 11 And then now with Islam and Muslims, this kind of idea idea that you leave that ethnic or religious identity in your home outside everybody's a French citizen this has a lot of strengths to it they don't actually

Speaker 11 they've struck the the word race from all

Speaker 11 the government doesn't recognize racial difference you know but that's actually kind of like where you would say if you had to say like what's the ideal society you would like to get to you would say in theory I would like to get to that society but in practice you know you actually don't know how many French citizens of Arab descent are in jail and how the criminal justice system operates.

Speaker 2 So, by doing that, you don't have any awareness of what the patterns are within the past.

Speaker 11 Exactly. So, you have

Speaker 11 some real drawbacks to that. But you would have to say that I would like to get there as opposed to a kind of society where we permanently kind of fetishize our differences and think that

Speaker 11 here I am a descendant of slaves, here you are, a descendant of slave masters.

Speaker 2 I like the earlier description you used.

Speaker 11 And that we can never kind of understand each other and that there's an epistemological divide between us.

Speaker 11 You would have to say that you would want to get to the society of the universal citizen, but in practice there are some real stumbling blocks and sometimes the kind of American way of speaking as a has a place.

Speaker 11 So I think what you're talking about is a kind of nuanced approach that recognizes and respects identity differences, but doesn't make that the whole game

Speaker 11 and doesn't ever allow that to occlude the ability of the individual to, you know, what about the minority within the minority? I think sometimes when we talk about differences of identity,

Speaker 11 we forget that there are Muslims who disagree.

Speaker 11 about what the proper direction of Islam is.

Speaker 11 There are blacks who have very powerful critiques of affirmative action and reparations.

Speaker 11 There are Jews who see the war in Gaza completely differently. So there is no Jewish point of view.
There is no woman's point of view.

Speaker 11 There are just people who come from these backgrounds and have lots of competing viewpoints. From 2020, the example that I really take about this is that for a moment there was so much

Speaker 11 understandable empathy about policing that people said, you know, this is terrible. Like, black people are being killed in the streets by police.
We have to do something about it. Okay,

Speaker 11 let's defund or even in some cases abolish the police because that would be what's in

Speaker 11 black people's favor. And then suddenly, you know, the homicides go up.
You really have serious consequences in Minneapolis and other places that experimented with this stuff. And you have

Speaker 11 this inconvenient result that a lot of black people are screaming and saying, bring the police back. I'm the one getting shot here.
My daughter is getting shot here.

Speaker 11 There is no black point of view that agrees on that.

Speaker 11 So you actually have to listen to differing viewpoints. People don't have a monolithic kind of identity.

Speaker 11 And so I think that is what is the risk in a kind of American identity forward, multi-ethnic society where you stay in your corner, I stay in my corner.

Speaker 11 When I'm speaking, you listen to me because I have some epistemological advantage over you that's based on ancestry and can't be bridged. So I think the ideal society...

Speaker 11 has a softer approach than the French who can be too tough with their universalism, but never kind of skews too far into fetishizing the difference the way that we do now.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it's truly a fascinating read, and I appreciate most of this conversation. The slave owner thing, maybe not as much, but

Speaker 2 Thomas, thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 Summer of our discontent is out August 5th and available to pre-order. Thomas Chatterton Williams.
Gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back after that.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. Now here it is.

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