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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30299 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Trump's interview with Joe Rogan is out. I think it should be mandatory viewing, as someone who has read a lot about both of them but never heard either speak at length I had some interesting surprises.

I spotted a few major pieces of culture war fodder.

  1. Joe apparently didn't want to do this because he was worried it would end up being fluff or making Trump look good.

  2. I do think it makes Trump look good. It's the beer test, implemented, and for all to see. Many people have the instant opposite visceral opinion. As with everything about this, that's interesting.

  3. Most here have concerns about legacy media, I think this adroitly makes the case against legacy media - as does Joe himself explicitly multiple times during the interview.

  4. I've polled some Kamala supporters and they all think she'd have done just as well, but I highly doubt that.

  5. Trump gets asked about election stealing...and some of his answer kinda matches some of the "best" answers we see here (complaining about procedural changes and so on).

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

He did well, but mainly because he knows a lot about boxing and MMA and they spent half the interview talking about that, and Rogan didn't push back too hard when he kept dodging questions by going off on rambling tangents. He tried to bring him back a few times, but he would give a vague answer and then immediately veer off topic.

Harris is terrible at interviews and I don't see why she wouldn't have gone on the podcast unless she knows that.

I kinda wanted Trump to go full-bore off on that tangent about concrete because Rogan is at his best when he facilitates his guest in talking about something they know about and have enthusiasm for, and I really think Trump cares way more about concrete than he does about running the federal government.

he knows a lot about boxing and MMA and they spent half the interview talking about that

I got the impression Trump was bullshitting his way through this subject. He said nothing of substance, just mirrored and affirmed Joe.

No I don't think so at all. Trump's been showing up to boxing, pro wrestling, and MMA fights for as long as I can remember. I don't think you insert yourself (or allow yourself to be inserted) to multiple WWE storylines without at least being a casual fan. He allowed UFC events to be held in the Trump Taj Mahal when MMA became legal in New Jersey (which was the start of his long standing friendship with Dana White). Hell, he was one of the main investors in Affliction, the short lived MMA promotion that actually had quite a lot of push at the time. Famously, Josh Barnett killed the promotion by popping for steroids. Trump's definitely been a fight fan for a long time.

It could be. I know very little about it

Trump has an interest in fights (Boxing, wrestling) that stretches back decades. Even if he doesn't have technical knowledge about MMA, I believe he is genuinely interested in it.

He brought up quite a bit independently, including specific details, which were mostly affirmed by Joe.

I get the impression that you want to see Trump as having bullshitted his way through.

One of the things that I found interesting was Joe talking afterwards about how he couldn't pin Trump down. It makes sense! He's a good interviewer, politicians in general and Trump in particular manage to dodge and weave - but Joe makes it explicit.

And I think we spend a lot of time Monday morning quarterbacking communication and would do no better without additional training or something.

I’ve never been able to get into podcasts, but I actually found this engaging. Part of it might’ve just been the week long hype cycle. When it first got announced Trump was gonna be on JRE, it legit had me soy facing.

Now will this move the needle? I’m not sure. I find Trump entertaining but for people more ambivalent, I feel like this may have just come across as more of the same Trump who is already a known quantity.

I watched all of it, and the interview was highly inconsistent with the narratives that either Trump is Hitler or Trump is senile. The interview made Trump seem joyful. Funny to think back to the TV show NewsRadio (yes, I'm old) and consider that the actor playing the station mechanic played a key role in an US presidential election by interviewing Donald Trump.

I don't watch too much of the election stuff, but when I see clips of Trump doing the speeches or interviews, I always notice this - he's loving what he's doing. He likes to speak to the audience, he has a good time doing it, and it can be seen. He can shoot breeze for 3 hours and he's enjoying it. Politicians are professional bloviators, but I haven't seen many of them that have the same quality. It looks effortless when he's doing it. I don't think Harris has this quality.

Harris was apparently pretty good at confidently saying nothing substantial back in the day, according to what Harmeet Dhillon said during her TC interview. Wasn't known for stumbling over her tongue..

Dhillon met her in San Francisco, Kamala was self assured and cool meeting people. Something happened to her since then.

she probably does very well among her typical crowd, the struggle looks like trying to avoid saying things that would trigger the wider public.

Yes, she can prepare the word salad and serve it, but you can't survive 3 hours on that. You can't survive any serious amount of time, and not with a counterparty that might call you on that. And she seems to be either incapable or under severe prohibition from talking about anything genuinely and on substance.

As for what happened to her - maybe deep inside she realizes the same thing many of us realize - she has no business being where she is, and it wasn't her decision to be there, she didn't earn any of it and she's there only because some other people are using her, blowing her up like a frog with a straw. That can't be a comfortable feeling. People may hate Trump as much as they want, but I think even his enemies believe Trump does things that Trump wants to do. Even for his enemies - you can't think he's a future Hitler and also think he's a nobody that has nothing of his own. He's a figure. Harris isn't. She never won anything on strength of her achievements, and without the vast party machine she's nobody. I can't know if she realizes it, but if she does, that certainly can't be comforting.

I tend to suspect that she’s doing word salads because she’s afraid to simply say what she actually thinks. Probably her handlers are worried that her actual opinions will turn off a part of the electorate. If she says anything substantial about Israel, she’s either going to lose the woke left (who are so pro-Palestine that a good number seem okay with Hamas) or she says something pro-Palestine and loses most of the evangelical vote (because to a good lot of them even mild criticism of Israel is blasphemy in the sense that they think God backs Israel). So in that case you don’t want to forthrightly answer the question. Now a good politician would say something like:

”We support a peace with strength in the region and we’re working with both Israel and our Allies in the region to secure that peace. Until then we are working with international partners to supply humanitarian aid to the people displaced by the conflict.”

This is, quite clearly, a nonanswer. There’s not much in the statement that can be construed as supporting either side. It’s simply a wish for a strong and lasting peace and support for displaced civilians.

Her word salads seem like they’re trying to do the same thing. She’s trying to come up with a statement that sounds convincing but doesn’t give any substantial, tangible information that can be used against her. Her problem is that she’s not particularly good at it. Probably because she’s actually spent most of her political career in state politics that didn’t need that skill as much. Her opinions would be pretty standard in big city California, so she could just say what she thinks without too much difficulty. Very few in California are pro-Israel or anti-abortion, so she can just give an opinion.

If she says anything substantial about Israel, she’s either going to lose the woke left (who are so pro-Palestine that a good number seem okay with Hamas) or she says something pro-Palestine and loses most of the evangelical vote (because to a good lot of them even mild criticism of Israel is blasphemy in the sense that they think God backs Israel).

I think you're spot on with regards to what's happening with Kamala's thought process and agree with the rest of your post, but I just can't believe that she cares that strongly about the evangelical vote. Last I checked the evangelicals were almost as devoted to Trump as black men are to the democrats, and support for Israel's genocide is a massive enthusiasm-killer on the left. I think she is unable to credibly move left on this issue, but I can't believe that the tiny share of the evangelical vote she's trying for is the reason. The deep state, wealthy donors and lobbying/interest groups seem to me like they'd have far more influence over who she does or does not try to offend.

Not evangelicals, necessarily, but there are others to convince. Moderate and liberal Christians and Jews might be turned off by a strong anti-Israel sentiment. There’s also the conservatives who are leaning against Trump, who are probably pretty easy to alienate since they’re already holding their nose to even consider a Kamala vote. She’s kinda in a hard spot. Going left will break off the conservatives who don’t like Trump. Going too far right means her left wing either stays home or votes Jill Stein. Hence the nonsense answers.

yes this is what i think, she is trying to pre-filter her output in real time out of concern that it would be offputting to various segments of the public

Yeah, News Radio is very surreal when rewatched knowing where Joe's career went.

Especially the episode where Joe (temporarily) went on the air.

In 1995 when NewsRadio first aired, Trump had just lost his casinos in a billion dollar business bankruptcy. It’s wild to think Joe Garelli’s actor interviewing someone similar to billionaire radio boss Jimmy James* might be the most consequential media event of the twenty-first century.

* Jimmy James’ actor, comedian Stephen Root, refers to his character as “Trump-like” in this Uproxx intervew from 2020

Yeah, Jimmy James was definitely quite a character! I still am amazed that Stephen Root is the voice of Bill Dauterive from king of the hill! That blew my mind when I made the connection.

This is the key thing. There’s no way to reconcile the presentation on here with any mainstream narratives about him unless he’s also the world’s greatest and most restrained actor as well.

Trumps not hitler. Trumps not a wannabe dictator (sorry @Amadan). Trumps not senile. Trumps not a dimwitted lazy slob whose world view comes from watching cable news all day. Trumps not a paper thin egotist who doesn’t really like America or hold policy positions. Trumps not a phony fake executive who can’t actually think business.

But also Trumps not a genius. Trumps not a conservative. Trumps not a particularly visionary thinker or populist leader.

That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?

A 90s pre-NAFTA Democrat who survived to the current day in his old age.

As the line says, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian.

He’s a showman and a patriot.

He’s the reincarnation of PT Barnum, running a rally at Barnum’s own Madison Square Garden. He’s a dealmaker from Queens. He’s someone who took the silver spoon he was given and made the most of it. He’s the average non-ideological American who never really thought about partisan politics until it started affecting him.

He’s a husband and father whose family saw him almost get killed several months ago.

He’s a political moderate who came in as an outsider at a time when Americans wanted an outsider and Bernie had been taken down by the ultimate insider, “Crooked Hillary” Clinton. He’s an anti-woke political moderate who’s seen the beast from the inside, and wants another stab at its blackened heart. He’s the kind of man who believes in strength and power and expects to be lauded for using them for common-sense win-win goals. He’s the kind of American the founders imagined standing next to kings and holding his own.

When everyone else is playing chess, he’s prepping a pro-wrestling move that’ll knock the board over. If Ted Cruz is Batman, Trump is Superman.

He’s someone who took the silver spoon he was given and made the most of it.

Huh? You're talking about a man with ~6 corporate bankruptcies. He made the worst of the several hundred million dollars he inherited.

He also had four years of control of America’s executive branch and armed forces, at the time an exclusive club of 45 men throughout history. A quarter of Americans would willingly fight and die to return him to that control, were cheating provable. That’s riches.

He became a demagogue and rabble-rouser, and rode that to being a poor/mediocre president. I don't think that's related to his silver spoon, or making the most of it.

I don't think among the superheroes Trump is a Superman. Superman is a Lawful Good with both qualities dialed to 11. Trump is more like Chaotic Good.

One consistent thing about Trump is that he's of the belief that America has been getting a bad deal internationally and has had poor leadership. You can see this back in the 80's when he was on late night talk shows complaining about America's standing relative to Japan.

He's my model of Trump:

He's a uniquely talented bullshitter who is also uniquely able to withstand a level of criticism and scorn which would break almost anyone.

He is above average intelligence, but certainly not extremely book smart. His energy and extroversion stats are maxxed out.

His intuitions are incredibly strong and he can't be fooled by other people's bullshit. So he often arrives intuitively at the correct conclusion (build the wall) long before others catch up using rational arguments. He actually is a talented negotiator.

In terms of motivations, he mostly wants personal glory, but he also loves America, and humanity more broadly. He wants peace and prosperity.

He's a bad coalition member. He won't play nice with the other kids unless he is the unquestioned leader. In 2017, he had an opportunity to bow to the uniparty in exchange for social acceptability, but he refused.

He's bad at making a plan and sticking to it. He mostly just goes with his gut, and that's worked for him so far, but it makes him an ineffective executive compared to someone like DeSantis.

This jives with my more general model of him:

He's basically a creature acting on instincts evolved over decades in one of the most competitive and cut-throat environments on the planet: New York Real Estate Development.

His long term survival in such an environment is proof positive that he is good at 'what he does.'

This is a refutation of the "4-D Chessmaster" model that nonetheless respects the fact that Trump is like a shark. Senses honed for finding blood in the water, efficiently targeting weakened prey, and killing and consuming them quickly. Every move is simply based on the innate drive for survival. No strategic thinking necessary. Also like a shark, he doesn't tend to maintain alliances very long, he goes off on his own inevitably.

Thus, even if Trump isn't a 'brilliant tactician' he can still perform well enough against a fractured, weakened, and incredulous enemy that tries to model him as a more standard threat.

It worked so well for him for so many years, it did not take much adaptation to bring it into the political arena, and it turns out that politicians themselves were ripe prey, and they simply haven't adapted to this new type of predator.

Eventually something will come along that is either purpose built to beat a Trumpian candidate, or that has honed insticts that effectively counter him, and THAT will be the new apex predator.

FWIW I watched that recent Vince McMahon documentary and I got the exact same sense from him. I also get this sense from Elon Musk, but with a bit more strategic thinking afoot there.

Creatures that have almost no real 'existence' beyond their drive to compete and win at whatever game they've chosen. Their entire persona is in service of that goal at all times. Trying to understand who they 'really' are misses the point.

This seems exactly right and I dunno from this if you're voting for him or not, so maybe it's a characterisation people on both sides can agree to. I also agree that a new apex predator will emerge (the Marlo to his Stringer Bell) but the interesting thing is what they will have had to go through to be sharpened into such a new variety of shark. Although I really cannot see Musk as commanding much authority with either ordinary people or non-SV elites, I do think Silicon Valley could produce the right combination of brutal drive combined with (lying) idealistic rhetoric. There would need to be an extra ordeal or formative chapter in a candidate's background though for them to reach a broader audience. Vance in theory has both though I feel like he's speedrun poverty and tech too quickly to be adequately honed by either.

I disagree re Musk. The man has run several companies and has managed to build all of them to be successful, he’s created new technologies that weren’t even on the table before he showed up. Nobody in 2010 thought that you could reuse the launch phase of a rocket. Musk figured that out and can actually have one caught in midair at this point. He’s dreaming the future, except that when Musk says he wants to see it, it stands an above average chance of happening. You don’t think that if (when) a guy steps out of a SpaceX vehicle on friggin’ Mars that he’s not going to resonate with average people who will be seeing him as “commanding authority?” I can’t think of anything that would get blue collar voters in line like “when NASA was busy booking trips on Russian rockets, Musk went to Mars.” They like doers, big thinkers, and bold adventures.

I mean if he goes to Mars and back, then who knows. But he doesn't put people at ease and is not gifted as a communicator, so he's got quite a lot to overcome if he is going to get through all the normal gates political candidates go through (debates, speeches, interviews etc).

Vance in theory has both though I feel like he's speedrun poverty and tech too quickly to be adequately honed by either.

I, too, am curious about Vance. It is possible 4 years in the White House will sharpen him even further.

I personally expect something new and 'interesting' to pop out of the Democratic party, eventually, their best hope is someone that can keep the social justice wing satisfied while also restoring populist appeal, I think, and that's going to take a unique set of traits, similar but not identical to what Obama brought to the table.

They won't be a 'standard' politician and will have a unique background, though, I can predict that.

Who is Atlas?

At this point, I think, it doesn't matter who he really is: the hyperreal personae that the partisan public impose on him are more compelling than the authentic human being beneath it all.

Here's a link to the podcast on youtube.

Go ahead and watch at 1.25 speed. I’m glad I did.

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

Plus Spotify -- the reach of Rogan is just wild.

I just said the other day I was feeling lukewarm on Trump. But now I'm feeling different. I thought the podcast was awful. Couldn't make it past ten minutes. I might have to try again now that people say the first hour was rough.

It was Trump rambling at its worst. Rogan asks about winning the race in 2016, and next thing I know Trump is talking about how Lincoln was melancholy instead of depressed, cuz his kid died.

Sometimes I feel I would love Trump if it weren't for Trump.

It's not a good interview. Trump is a very boring person to listen to. It would be more interesting if someone who knew more about politics and economics would interview him and challenge more of his assertions, but that might just get hostile and he might refuse to answer. He used every opportunity to go off topic and avoid answering direct questions.

Here's Cenk Uyger's take, which seems pretty positive for someone who pretty clearly isn't suffering from pro-Trump derangement.

De gustibus nil est disputandum. shrug

It's a bit spooky how much he's being glazed up-thread.

Some of this is just ridiculous.

The thread you linked has people describing an inflection point where Red Tribe gets enough of a breach in the establishment firewall to actually have a go at producing good things outside the stranglehold of the present consensus. It's obviously quite optimistic; I think it's a reasonably open question whether optimism is inherently ridiculous at this late date.

The more probable outcome is that no matter who is declared the winner, trust declines precipitously, possibly to the point that credit cards stop working. I observe that there are multiple forms of doom converging rapidly on our present position, most of which even people here show no awareness of. Rockets and unrestrained Can-Do might thread the needle. It seems unlikely to me that your general prescriptions can. Or maybe I'm wrong; how does the future go in your view?

Some people will cling to the counterfactual no matter how aggressively the world beats them over the head.

Wishful thinkers tend to reinforce each other.

No idea whether it's the case though. I couldn't bring myself to watch that Interview.

I’m not Trump fan, or a Rogan guy. I thought the first twenty minutes were pretty tedious. But it gets much much better. It is actually quite enjoyable and insightful. I am saying this as a guy who has only ever sat through 1 other full Rogan show and never listened to a trump speech I. Full outside of a debate.

He does very well, his style works well in this format and once you settle into his ideoayncracies he’s still long winded , but it is very clear that he stays on topic in a particular way. He answers a lot of important questions that reveal his way of thinking. And there’s also a lot of fluff.

My favorite part was trump not really being interested in Joes alien obsession.

Joe asked Trump how he felt when he entered the White House on his first day. Trump tells a story about seeing the Lincoln Room and having the reality of the presidency set in. He saw all the details of Lincoln’s real life, like the bed that was custom-made because he was too tall, and the small photo he kept of his son who tragically died. Lincoln was no longer a mythical figure but a real person, who lived in this real room, occupying the same job as himself.

I guess this is rambling but at what point is rambling just good story-telling? I mean, Homer rambled. Trump talks like a wise old East Coast relative who has lots of good stories. I also think there’s an element of Irish American conversational style he inherited from his mother’s side. Trump’s mom was born in the Outer Hebrides in a Gaelic speaking household, people forget this.

Trump’s mom was born in the Outer Hebrides in a Gaelic speaking household, people forget this.

I posted a comment the other day about the impressive social skills and conversational abilities of my grandmother and her brother's amazing storytelling ability. Her entire family and that of most of the people in the community she grew up in were from the Outer Hebrides. Many of them, including their parents, spoke Gaelic as a first language.

It might be worth noting that she was known for making things up if it made for a better story.

It’s funny — during the interview Trump basically admitted to bullshitting to make the story a bit better.

I mean, Homer rambled.

Did he? I've only read him in translation, but he's never seemed particularly rambly to me.

The list of ships is some of the most rambling verse I've ever read.

This is a little bee in my bonnet for me, but the more I read about Ancient Greece, the more I agree with my old Classics prof claiming the list of ships was in a way the most important part of the Iliad. Not to us, of course, but to the Greeks that list of ships was how each city and region could claim its connection to the political founding myth of Greek civilization. Think of it less like part of the narrative and more like Revolutionary War memorials in New England towns.

I had a teacher assert something similar. That naming of people and households was important because the people listening to the story could claim some of those were their ancestors. So there ends up being 1000+ named people almost all of whom are (from a narrative point of view) pointlessly mentioned in passing.

And that teacher claimed a bit of improvisation in oral retellings was allowed. An ancient bard or traveling storyteller could add in a few mentions to local families. As though their ancestors were battling at Troy.

Rather off topic, but is that why there are a lot of genealogical texts in the Bible? It seems like a similar idea a way to connect all the places that exist. Or maybe I’m not understanding something.

The Bible is like this because a lot hinges on the descent of the person in question from the right person. Shower thought: why is the term "Y-chromosomal Adam" and not "Y-chromosomal Noah"?

My understanding is that the genealogical passages are about establishing Jesus as the descendant of David. But I'm not an expert and I could well be mistaken.

More comments

That's an interesting concept. When you say important, do you mean narratively important, culturally important, or something else?

I think what my prof was saying was "important to the average Greek listening to the Iliad." It's the bridge between the distant characters of the Iliad and the flesh and blood, the soil and city of the audience. Maybe a mild exaggeration given the different ways passages can be important, but imo a reasonable argument nonetheless.

Knowing the names of my five ancestors aboard the Mayflower, listening for their names during a Thanksgiving narrative is more exciting.

I would certainly not describe the Iliad or the Odyssey as 'rambling'. They're extremely well-honed texts, refined over generations of repetition and modification.

I suppose you could consider Homeric Simile to be somewhat rambly? Or the extensive repetitions? It's not how I'd see it, but Homer isn't exactly concise and rigorously structured.

Man I had the opposite reaction to this. Trump was telling the story of his first night staying in the White House, and sharing some of the feelings he was having while standing in the Lincoln Bedroom.

I thought it was a very humanizing story. Trump has kids who he seems to really care about (he talks about them a lot), and he seemed to be connecting how depressed the Lincoln’s were at the loss of their son.

I thought that was a really great story and was one of my favorite moments from the episode.

Whether you liked the story or not (I did not). It was the most rambly part of the interview. It was the only part where Joe got impatient. After this the conversation settled down quite a bit

I listen to podcasts all the time, including Joe Rogan's. I mainly listen to comedian podcasts. I think they tend to have the best economy of words. Even if they are idiots most of the time, they at least know how to tell a good story and make it entertaining.

To be fair, comedians literally have as a job description "tell narratively-interesting and humorous stories in as economical, effective, and entertaining a manner as possible." It's useful for politicians to also have this skill, but they're not as hyper-selected for this trait as comedians.

Trump just naturally learned to be charismatic. Trump is very flawed, but I found it interesting how Rogan as a comedian saw and respected Trump's oratory. The timing, the way to hold a crowd. It's great when people see something in their own craft in the craft of others.

I think it helps if you try not to parse it like high density scientific style communication (much of the diet of most people here) or usual focused politician/PR boilerplate.

It's more like two guys smoking weed and shooting the shit, but one of them has to periodically say some campaign related bullcrap.

It's all over the place, Trump goes on these asides, but I was enthralled with the first ten minutes or so - it's easy to listen to, shockingly focused for his reputation, and charismatic as hell (this is coming in as someone who hasn't really heard him do anything long form before).

My suspicion is that most of the people here who didn't like it were already pretty anti-Trump or very logic brained. Both of those are totally fine, but it's worth considering a more "typical" person might be more directly buying what he's selling here. This is very much one of the ways high end charisma can manifest itself, and in one of Joe's post-game type things he even talks about how hard it is wrangle Trump, which is interesting given how proficient of an interviewer JR clearly is.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Joe Rogan is probably in the top ten. But everyone above him that I listen to are also comedians and guys just shooting the shit. Matt and Shane's, Tim Dillon, Two bears one cave, Flagrant (which i think had trump too?), Stavy's world, etc.

I think I was more annoyed because I like listening to Joe Rogan. I tend to not like guests that speak over and monopolize the conversation. They are on the "Joe Rogan Experience", not the "Guests of Joe Rogan". The whole point of the podcast is that an everyday man is injected into this position of having a conversation with important, famous, and knowledgeable people. It ruins the ambiance to just talk over him.

Probably should have realized this would be my reaction. I couldn't watch much of his convention speech either. Got like 5 minutes in and quit.

I'm not saying this as someone that is very anti-trump. It would be nice to like trump. He appeals to some of my contrarian instincts. I just also have standards of entertainment. He talked about the apprentice a bit in the beginning as well. I was never interested in that show. Maybe its like many other fads, I'm just the wrong target audience. Whether the fad is MAGA or TDS, I'm just missing out. I don't get it.

Interesting. Again I don't think it's invalid to not be about Trump, but I did find it very entertaining - Joe is a great interviewer but it felt like he was on the Trump ride and at times sitting there going "wow." The anecdote about the Lincoln bedroom isn't particularly interesting, but the fact that it was Trump saying it and the way he said it was.

If I want to hear about the technical details of Space X I want an engineer, if I want to hear Elon do his thing I want to hear Elon. Talking over Joe, being hard to pin down. That's part of the Trump experience.

And again, no problem if you don't like that or aren't about it in this situation because you want to see Joe nail him down on the JFK stuff.

From a campaign perspective you have Trump sitting down and seeming more or less normal, with it (despite media push about that) and reasonable (despite reputation about that) for multiple hours.

Someone else called it relatively boring but if I'm Trump that's what I want to be here given that so many people have heard me called senile Hitler.

Also for what it's worth I know some people who have met him, and this interview matches what casual interactions with him are supposedly like. Don't know if there is anything else under the hood however.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Joe Rogan is probably in the top ten.

If yoh listen to dozens of podcasts but can't listen to Trump talking about the Lincoln bedroom... it sounds like you like slop. I guess that's your perogative.

  • -24

it sounds like you like slop. I guess that's your perogative.

This is pointless antagonism. It adds nothing but heat to the conversation. Your AAQCs get you some leeway, but that leeway is not infinite.

Three day ban.

Joe apparently didn't want to do this because he was worried it would end up being fluff or making Trump look good.

Joe said in the interview that he knew he wanted to do the interview as soon as Trump got shot. He goes on to say he wanted to wait for dramatic timing.

Well, he certainly got the timing right.

I'm pretty amazed at Trump's campaign to be honest. Recruiting Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and now finally getting Rogan onside (debatable as it's not an endorsement, but the outcome is the same as if it was).

And these are real investments into Trump's success, not just your usual 'celebrity endorses politician' article that is quickly forgotten. I never thought I'd see Elon (awkwardly, as is his way) holding townhalls around the country to promote a politician.

Overall, this is a really interesting election year that is probably only overshadowed by 2016 for craziness.

Overall, this is a really interesting election year that is probably only overshadowed by 2016 for craziness.

Right, when people say they've been especially exhausted by this election cycle, I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump. No one with any respectable position in pop culture was willing to openly hope for his victory. It seemed his only supporters were anons and the denizens of flyover country, who all did their best to make the movement very unseemly. And then he won! My sister texted me that night telling me she was crying. I told her she needed to chill big time (and I was right).

This time he's got Zuck calling him a badass and Reddit's ultimate hero-turned-villain Elon Musk basically campaigning for him. JFK's nephew?! Scorned former Democrat (and woman) Tulsi Gabbard? Sure your open support will leave your professional friends sputtering, but this time around you do have some modest cover under the support of these guys.

Maybe that does make it crazier than 8 years ago? I don't know.

Right, when people say they've been especially exhausted by this election cycle, I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump

Speaking from a purely entertainment standpoint, it was much easier to root for Trump in 2016 because no one liked him. It almost felt like a movie, where Trump went around and beat down all of the Republican candidates before fighting the final boss. Also, 2016 Trump was a much more fun, energetic, and clever Trump. A lot of the quips he made off the cuff in the debates were legitimately genius. Also, him gimmicking every one of his opponents (Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Crooked Hillary) was really fun (Cacklin' Kamala was literally so easy). This time, there's no underdog story because he's already won. He's much slower mentally. He's also much less energetic. In 2016, the Republican debates were legitimately riveting television. There weren't any debates in 2024. The magic is just not all there. It's like if they did a remake of a beloved childhood film. It looks like the film everyone knows and loves, but there's just something missing.

I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump. No one with any respectable position in pop culture was willing to openly hope for his victory. It seemed his only supporters were anons and the denizens of flyover country, who all did their best to make the movement very unseemly.

That honestly doesn't sound worrying if I completely ignore hindsight. Why would you exhaust yourself over some puffed up nobody who's going to go down in history as the other candidate when the first woman president was elected?

Eight years later, he has the weight of history behind him.

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

18 million hours? Jesus Christ, that was before Jesus Christ!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I mean... technically still a valid statement, right?

Sorry that was in subjective hours as experienced by Hillary Clinton being forced to listen to Trump. I apologize for my lack of clarity.

I watched the whole thing. The first hour was a bit hard to get through due to Trump being Trump and 'weaving' some long monologues or rehashing the same tired material we've heard before.

After that though, there were quite a few pieces that I found interesting.

  1. I really liked when Trump would bring up something that he was clearly knowledgeable about such as regulations and their effects on businesses. His explanation about how environmental consultants (and some lawyers) are incentivized to drag out Environmental Impact Statements and the like, reflects what I've seen about some of this in the real world.

  2. He seemed to be pro-nuclear and particularly pushing for Small Modular Reactors over (more complex) Large Nuclear Reactors.

  3. He's clearly got a Principal level understanding of the building industry. Actually it was his aside into how building commissioners would ask him to tear something down if it wasn't built to spec that did this (as well as how he stopped himself going into detail about modern construction materials like reinforced concrete). All this knowledge is great when you want new infrastructure to be built. He can sniff out bullshit when people tell him what can and can't be done.

  4. I found it amazing that Trump was really nonplussed when Rogan emphatically described how the media and deep state elements had unfairly crucified him. He reacted like he'd been told the sky is blue. He really must just have that baked into his world view by now.

  5. He really doesn't care about aliens. At all. He seemed to find them so boring it was palpable, while Rogan was wild eyed talking about them.

  6. It was hilarious how they pretended they haven't been trash talking each other in the past. Bridges have been mended it seems.

  7. The message is the medium. I mean that in the sense that Trumps ability to do an unscripted 3hr conversation will stand well in comparison to Harris who couldn't do Rogan due to 'scheduling conflicts'.

  8. I don't know how many new voters this will win over. To be honest I can't see a lot of normies making it through the full 3 hours. The bite sized clips of the interesting parts (JRE clips) will likely be a lot more influential.

After the McDonalds something-burger (heh), this podcast and Kamala's recent lackluster performance, I'm predicting a Trump win at around 55-60% certainty.

you might have the meaning of nonplussed backward - if so its a common mistake no biggie just wanted to mention in the spirit of being helpful

edit: oh no apparently now the dictionary says that in "north america" it can informally mean its opposite now. i guess i'm too late.

Wait, what? When did that change happen? The parent comment to this one is the first time I can remember seeing it used in the informal North American sense, and until reading your edit, I assumed CertainlyWorse got it wrong as well.

i think people who learn it by osmosis through reading often think it means something like unphased, and now enough have used it that way that it's officially a definition. i think i'm fine with it, not a linguistic prescriptionist

it means something like unphased

I think you mean unfazed here.

unphased

ha you're right, bit of an ironic blunder there

nonplussed

Interesting. I've always used it in the North American sense, which is weird because I'm usually a stickler for using the Queen's English.

the Queen's English

I’ve got some bad news for ya bud…

(Well I suppose you didn’t specify the Queen Regnant’s English so…)

Old habits die hard. Elizabeth was much more likeable.

Hasn’t every King Charles dissolved parliament? I’d be rather disappointed if this Charles breaks tradition.

Even if normies can only get through 15-20 minutes, for a voter who gets their information about only the most outrageous and bifurcating statements, any exposure to humanize himself is an incredibly positive move. Going on the podcast circuit was a genius idea supposedly pushed by Baron, and this type of forward thinking really sets himself as a trendsetter instead of an evil bogeyman. It's much harder for the media to discredit his personality when there's a 3-hour long form podcast, even if the interview is fairly benign compared to the interviews by legacy media.

I slightly agree with number 8, at this point the battlelines are largely drawn. I voted before the interview even came out.

Also, I'd like to point that the 18 million views with Rogan is just on Youtube. This doesn't include Spotify or any other media platform where this interview may have been shared.

I actually think 2 - 3 hours of Rogan (or day-time tv) is the "normie" attention span as evidenced by his podcast's reach as well as that of others like the Kelce brothers. 2 -3 hours is also the typical run-time of football or baseball game.

IMO, the extremely-online trying to dunk on "normies" for an alleged lack of attention-span reads more like projection than anything else.

Meanwhile Kamala Harris apparently declined to go on Rogan even though she was in Houston.

What was she doing in Houston? Rallying with Beyonce, of course. According to the Harris team, over 1.5 million people registered to attend although there was only space for 30,000. Passionate Harris fans? Hardly. They thought there would be a Beyonce concert.

When Beyonce did not in fact perform, but just mumbled into a bad mic, the fans were not happy. They came to see Queen Bey, not Queen K. There's a viral TikTok clip of people booing and Kamala cackling awkwardly for like 45 seconds.

https://pagesix.com/2024/10/26/entertainment/beyonce-fans-furious-singer-did-not-perform-at-kamala-harris-rally-in-houston/

Seriously people, how hard is it to get Beyonce to perform? No one gives a damn about the endorsements of celebrities, but they might just vote the way you want if you give them a free concert. Tickets to Beyonce are hundreds of dollars. It's a nice vote-buying technique unless you blow it massively.

Seriously people, how hard is it to get Beyonce to perform?

As hard as Beyonce wants it to be. She sets her own price.

I'm curious if it's genuinely a matter of price. The Harris campaign is rolling in dough, and spending it in much worse ways. If it were worries about getting tied to a sinking ship, the endorsement is enough of an albatross.

My first thought is that there's some process limitations that make it hard to get done so quickly. There's reasons charity concerts after disasters often take the better part of a month if not months to assemble: planning properly for a 10k+ person assembly is a nightmare, and converting one type of assembly into another doesn't buy anywhere near the sort of stability you'd hope for.

But I have seen that sorta thing move faster before, and Harris (surrogates) have been motioning around it as long as there's been a Harris campaign. So I dunno.

I think it comes down to Beyonce doesn't want to do it.

Why? I don't know. Speculation? They don't see themselves as circus clowns for whatever the Democratic candidate of the day is. They truly believe in themselves as black royalty. (Which others, like the NFL, seem to agree with)

When it comes to the black elite, it's them and...people allied to them. There's no hostile Elon Musk-style billionaires on the other side. They're the top of the layer cake and have a monopoly on "celebrities who can mobilize black voters" or, more cynically, "celebrities white female staffers believe can mobilize black voters".

They might be willing to take a somewhat deferential stance towards Barack Obama, but he actually was the first black president and actually did win his elections before retiring to make enough money to be in their tax bracket. He can be primus inter pares.

Kamala Harris is no Obama.

Beyonce doesn't actually need to dance around for her and it's somewhat demeaning for there to be an expectation that she has to (for a person that doesn't even deign to give interviews anymore, so certain is she in her cultural cachet) so Kamala can salvage a campaign event. She's Queen Bey after all, her laying hands on Kamala should achieve the goal of telling her people who to vote for. She did Kamala - and the Democrats - a favor already.

There's nothing odd about this: Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johannsen support Democrats but don't have to do soliloquys for whoever the Democrats randomly picked to lead them. They give an endorsement and the party is happy to get that much.

Leave that the dancing bear behavior to the Meg Thee Stallions of the world. She's still hungry and climbing the ladder.

This is kinda off the wall, but I'm wondering if the local democrats didn't make enough problems to prevent Beyonce from performing? The Harris county democrats are at least partly(but not entirely) tied to/infiltrated by the state level GOP and it's entirely plausible that this is a cheap favor by democrats for Ted Cruz.

Sounds like her endorsement doesn’t mean much.

It's a nice vote-buying technique unless you blow it massively.

Maybe they didn't want to be accused of doing such?

They got Bruce Springsteen to perform at another rally. They got Willie Nelson to perform at the not Beyoncé concert. They are openly asking for Swift to perform at one of these rallies.

The reason Beyoncé didn’t perform is because Beyoncé didn’t want to perform. But Harris stupidly ran a bait and switch.

I doubt it considering all the other naked vote buying.

I predict that in 2028 the Democratic nominee will leverage concerts a lot more effectively. It's the $20 bill just sitting on the sidewalk for the taking. It's a massive advantage for Democrats since most of the top stars are aligned with Dems.

It's kinda like Elon's lottery except that instead of just one winner there will be tens of thousands.

I wonder if there are FEC limits on it

How? I’m not sure paying people to be at a rally by booking a band translates to votes. She might be able to buy large rally crowds, but she’s not going to be able to convince them to vote for her. They often don’t actually stay for the rally part (actually quite surprised they haven’t noticed and moved the concert until after the rally).

Can you share the viral clip?

Here's the one linked in the article, but I've also seen it on Twitter. https://tiktok.com/@hunterbidenslaptop4.0/video/7430049960197967146

To Kamala's credit, I'm not sure what a person's supposed to do when they're being booed. This is probably as good as anything.

I'm by no means a fan of Donald Trump, and if I was an American citizen there's no question in my mind that I would've voted for Hillary in 2016. But regardless of my opinion of Trump's politics, his authoritarian tendencies, his disregard for principles, his emotional incontinence etc., credit where credit is due - the man is a remarkably compelling public speaker. I watched the first ten minutes of the podcast, having never watched Joe Rogan before, and I was riveted. People used to say that Johnny Cash could read the phonebook and make it interesting - I think I could listen to Trump go off on weird tangents about his real estate ventures and Lincoln for an hour and not feel like my time was wasted. This is not the rambling of a senile old man suffering from the onset of dementia: this is an extremely practiced, keenly honed skill. He knows exactly what he's doing.

Obviously the job of being a compelling public speaker and the job of being President are very different things, and I am confident that skill in the former is only very weakly correlated with skill in the latter. But to the extent that it's correlated at all - well, it's a skill that Trump and Obama have, Kamala and Hillary don't have, and that Biden probably had at one point but no longer has. Kamala appearing on the Rogan podcast would have been an awkward, unproductive and uncomfortable experience for everyone involved, and I'm sure everyone involved knows this, up to and including Kamala herself. If Kamala's campaign manager had made an appearance on the podcast, he or she would have come off better than Kamala herself.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

As a point of fascination with Trump I'm not really sure if he knows exactly what he's doing or he's just an entity who has gone through enough selection pressure to emerge as a thing that naturally does this kinda stuff.

I haven't listened to anything long form and uninterrupted from Trump in a while (I watched most of the debates and some Trump clips), so what instantly struck me was just how fake the "Trump is old and incoherent just like Biden was" narrative is. I already thought it was a bad narrative and this really cemented that thought in my head. Trump is aware of the way he goes on conversational detours and actually says it is one of his strengths, so he clearly does it intentionally unlike with Biden's gaffes. He called it "the weave" and says it's the mark of a good speaker if they can weave multiple different things together but still come back home at the end. I found this all amusing to listen to even if I didn't 100% agree about the weave being the mark of good oration.

I also watched the recent Theo-Vance podcast and what I found notable was Vance on the election. When asked, Vance says the biggest problem in 2020 was big tech bias and the Hunter Biden laptop story, but that he still thinks voting is fair. When Trump was asked, he "weaved" together an answer that involved various vote by mail problems and law changes he thinks were done wrong, date changes, voter ID, or just outright ballot box stuffing alongside the Vance answer of an unfair big tech.

Back to Trump, I really liked the mini deregulation theme with environmental review and permitting. I also really enjoyed when he looked off to the side and stopped himself from saying something with a big smirk on his face (maybe a slight mark against the Ezra Klein disinhibition theory?), like when he said "You know, my uncle, I had a great uncle who was a great genius just like (pause, look to the side and smile while clearly holding back a specific name of someone he was about to say) other members of my family but he was a professor at..." or when he said "I only believe them if [the polls are] good (chuckle). No, ..." all with a huge smirk knowing what he said is ridiculous.

He called it "the weave" and says it's the mark of a good speaker if they can weave multiple different things together but still come back home at the end.

Again has someone who has never heard him talk at length I was really impressed by the answer about a thing, shove in a random campaign talking point in a reasonableish way, go back to the thing.

He's clearly still very with it.

He's clearly still very with it.

This is what I've been saying for months, but there are people here who firmly insist that he's losing his grip. It's like the Shiri's scissor of this sub. Not only do I disagree with the people who say he's senile, I just can't understand where they're coming from at all. It just seems self-evident to me that Trump is still very present and energetic.

Maybe not "energetic" but agree that he's very much "with it" and so clearly so that i find it difficult to understand where the people who are calling him "rambling and incoherent" are coming from.

He even speaks in the interview about how he believes that part of being a good orator/negotiator is being able "to weave" multiple tangents together to create a desired mental/emotional state and then he goes and does it.

Are people's brains here litterally so rotten from exposure to TikTok Instagram and chat-GPT that they can't process a "brick joke" or any argument that isn't in the form of a soundbite?

The media blitz on this front has been very strong, it's tough to consistently completely disregard "experts."

My single encounter with his speeches (as I generally can't stand video/chatter content) has been a live stream of some recent rally that I only tuned into because I randomly entertained the thought of playing the Polymarket "will Trump say Border more than 25 times" game, and my immediate first impression was that he really just sounded shockingly old and tired. I don't think I got a sense of mental decline beyond what is a necessary consequence of old age, and he sounded way sharper than I remember Biden doing in the one video I saw of his fatal debate, but he certainly didn't come across as either spry or quick-witted. I don't think I have any particularly negative emotions towards him nor that he has declined to a point that would be extraordinary for a head of state, but it did seem to me like those who claim that he currently presents a picture of rhetorical brilliance and strength must be suffering from a case of reverse TDS.

The interview a big W for the Trump campaign in my opinion. The podcast has the biggest reach of any other, and more exposure the better, he didn’t blow up or look dumb, not sure there’s any undecideds left to convince but this could just be a nice reminder to Trumpy people “oh yeah there’s an election I better vote!”

I found it boring but I think that was the point. My personal desire for a 'based Trump' performance nonwithstanding, Trump's biggest problem is that he's being painted as a radical fascist demagogue: the more he can soften his image the more undecideds he can pull to vote for him.

Yeah to some extent it just seemed like two dudes talking about a bunch of random stuff with a moderate degree of intelligence. For Trump that's a big win.

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