Cenk Uygur: Trump vs Harris, Progressive Politics, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #441

Communism makes no sense at all. Totally opposed to human nature, it never works. It always evolves into dictatorship. It creates a power vacuum. When you say, "Hey, there's no structure of power here, right? We're all equal," it's a flat line. One guy usually gets up because that's human nature and goes, "Uh, I don't think so. I think if you're going to leave a power vacuum, I'm going to take that power vacuum."

Corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power, whereas capitalism loves competition and wants free markets. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don't have the right information. You have propaganda; you have marketing; you don't have real news. When you're in the online world, it's chaotic. And don't get me wrong; it's got plenty of downsides, right? But within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge.

Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he's such a wild card that he overturns the whole system. And that is why the establishment is a little scared of him.

The following is a conversation with Jen Yuger, a progressive political commentator and host of The Young Turks. As I've said before, I will speak with everyone, including on the left and the right of the political spectrum, always in good faith with empathy, rigor, and backbone. Sometimes I fail; sometimes I say stupid, inaccurate, ineloquent things, and I frequently change my mind as I'm learning and thinking about the world. For all this, I often get attacked—sometimes fairly, sometimes not—but just know that I'm aware when I fall short, and I will keep trying to do better. I love you all.

This is Alex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Jen Yuger.

You wrote a book, a manifesto that outlines the progressive vision for America. So the big question: what are some defining ideas of progressivism?

Yes, so in order to do that, Lex, we got to talk about where we are in the political spectrum. In fact, there are two different spectrums now. People often think of left-right, and that's true; that exists, but layered on top of that is now populist versus establishment. So I'm center-left on the left-right spectrum, but I'm all the way on the populist end of the second spectrum.

So where does progressivism lie within that? Well, I would argue that it's exactly in those places. It's populist and it's on the left, but it is not far-left. So far-left is a different animal, and we could talk about that in a little bit.

So in terms of what makes a progressive: expand the circle of liberty and justice for all and equality of opportunity. Now, people will say, "Well, that seems pretty broad and all-American," but is it? Think about it. So expand the circle of liberty; everybody's in favor of that, right? No, absolutely not. So certainly the king of England was not in favor of expanding the circle of liberty, and the founding fathers said, "We're going to expand it." And they expanded it to propertied white men. And then progressives have been, they're progressives because they expanded the circle of liberty. They then from then on, as we're perfecting the union, progressives always say, "Expand it further." Include women, include people without property, include all races.

And at every turn, conservatives fight against it. So that doesn't mean if you're conservative today you don't want to include women or minorities, etc. But today you would say, for example, "Well, I don't want to expand the circle of liberty to, for example, undocumented immigrants." And maybe you're right about that, and we could have that discussion in terms of a specific philosophy.

And I don't believe that undocumented immigrants should immediately be citizens or anything along those lines, but I do believe in expanding liberty overall. And the contour of that is what's interesting. And then you say, "Justice for all." Everybody's for justice—no, right now marijuana possession is still illegal in a lot of parts of the country. Now, a lot of right-wingers and left-wingers agree that it should be legal, but for my entire lifetime, black people have been arrested at about 3.7 times the rate of white people, and the entire country has been fine with it. So is that justice? No. They smoke marijuana at the same rate, but black people get arrested about four times the rate. That is an injustice that an enormous percentage of the country was comfortable with. Well, progressives aren't comfortable with it; we want justice for all.

So the equality of opportunity is an interesting one because the far-left will say, at least some portions of them will say, equality of results, right? So progressives just want a fair chance—so free college education. But afterwards, you don't get to have exact same results as either the wealthiest person, or we're not all going to be equal. We don't have equal talents, skills, abilities, etc. There's a lot of questions I can ask there.

So on the circle of liberty: yes, so expanding the number of people whose freedoms are protected. But what about the magnitude of freedom for each individual person? So expanding the freedom of the individual and protecting the freedom as an individual, it seems like progressives are more willing to expand the size of government, where government can do all kinds of regulation, all kinds of controls on the individual.

So Lex, what we're probably going to talk about a lot today is balance. A lot of people think, "Oh, I’m on the right; I'm on the left," and that comes with a certain preset ideology. So the right is always correct; the left is always correct. So there are two problems with that. Number one, how could you possibly believe in a preset ideology if you're an independent thinker? It's literally by definition not possible if you say, "I lent my brain to an ideology that was created 80 years ago or 8 years ago or 800 years ago, and I'm not going to change it." You're saying, "I don't think for myself." You know, I bought into a culture. And by the way, there are a lot of different forms of culture you could buy into: religion, politics, sometimes racial, etc. So that's why you need actually balance.

The second reason you need balance, other than independent thought, is because the answer is almost never black and white. And that gets into a really interesting nuance because mainstream media, in my opinion, is the matrix. Its job is to delude you into thinking corporate rule is great for you and we should never change it and the status quo is wonderful. So they have created a false middle. What mainstream media calls moderate is actually, in my opinion, extremist corporate ideology.

So for example, they'll say Joe Manchin is a moderate. None of his positions are moderate other than potentially gun control. In West Virginia, he's not for gun control; the people of West Virginia are not for gun control, generally speaking. And he uses that. And they usually have these shiny objects where they're like, "You see this? I'm a moderate because of guns," or "I'm a moderate because I'm a Democrat from West Virginia." But wait, let's look at your positions. You're against paid family leave, that polls at 84%. So you're a radical corporatist who says that women should be forced back to work the day after they give birth. You're against the higher minimum wage, you're against you're for every corporate position, and they all poll at 33% or less.

So Joe Manchin is not at all a moderate. And this applies to almost every corporate Republican and every corporate Democrat. They're all extremists in supporting what I call corporatism. So you have to get to a balance in order to get to the right answer. So that's an interesting distinction here. So you're actually, as far as I understand, pro-capitalism?

Yes, which is an interesting place to be. That's the thing that probably makes you center-left and then still populist. You're full of beautiful contradictions. That will be great to untangle. But what's the difference between corporatism and capitalism? Is there a difference?

Yeah, so I really believe in capitalism. I don't think that there's really a second choice. Where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism and socialism because that's not at all as clear as people think it is, and people often say socialism and communism as synonyms when they're not synonyms. Right? And so I view it as there's basically four distinct areas. It's obviously a spectrum; everything is a spectrum.

Right on one end you have communism on the left, and on the other end you have corporatism on the right. Okay? And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle. And so communism, we know—the state owns all property; you're not allowed to have private property. So I will piss off a lot of people in this show, and so I'm asking for their patience; please hear me out and don't worry, I'm going to piss off the other side too.

Okay? So communism makes no sense at all. Totally opposed to human nature, it never works. It always evolves into dictatorship because it is not built for human nature. We're never going to act like that; it's not in our DNA. You could try to wish it into existence, and they have, and it never works. And it's because once you have almost no rules in terms of "Oh, we're all equal," and even though communism eventually winds up having an enormous amount of rules, right, it creates a power vacuum.

When you say, "Hey, there's no structure of power here," right? "We’re all equal," it's a flat line. One guy usually gets up because that's human nature and goes, "Uh, I don't think so." I think if you're going to leave a power vacuum, I'm going to take that power vacuum. That's actually a really interesting way to put it because when everyone is equal nobody is in power, and human nature is such that there's a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum, somebody's going to fill it.

So the alternative is to have people in power, but there's a balance of power, and then there's like a democratic system that elects the people in power and keeps churning and rotating. Who's in? That is exactly it, Lex. You got it exactly right, in my opinion. Okay, so that's why communism never works and can never work.

So it's an idea of like we're all going to work as hard as we possibly can and take only what we need. When has that ever happened in the history of humanity? Right? We're just not built that way. So we can get into that debate with my friends on the left, etc. Now, corporatism is just as extreme and just as dangerous, and that is basically what we have in America now.

What we have in America now—and this is another giant trick that the Matrix played on everybody—that they did a shell game and all of a sudden extreme corporate like Mansion and almost every Republican in the Senate are moderates. Oh my God, Mitch McConnell all of a sudden is a moderate and etc. As long as you're not a populist, populists are never moderate.

Okay, but if you love corporations and corporate tax cuts and everything in favor of corporations, you're magically called a moderate when you actually, according to the polling, have super extreme positions that the American people hate. By the way, that's part of the reason for the rise of Trump, we can come back to that.

Okay, okay, but the second shell game is taking out capitalism, putting in corporatism but still calling it capitalism. Okay? So what is corporatism? It is when corporations slowly take over the system and create monopoly and oligopoly power, so that snuffs out equality of opportunity.

So how do they do that? When people say the system is rigged, they oftentimes can't explain it that well, and then mainstream media goes, "You sound conspiratorial." Rigged? Yeah, I wonder how. Yeah, it’s super easy to explain. Here's one of dozens of examples: carried interest loophole. So that is for hedge funds, private equity, the top people on Wall Street.

That's part of their income. They get 2 and 20, right? So 2% is a flat fee no matter what happens to the fund, and 20% of the profits of the fund goes back to the people who invested it. It's not their money; it's not their investment. What they're getting is actually just income and should be taxed at the highest rate. But it's because of this loophole, it's taxed at a much lower rate at around 20%.

So do you know at what income level you go above 20%? If you're a regular Joe, it's at $84,000 a year. So these billionaires are getting the same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year. It's unbelievably unfair, and that's corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m going to pay less taxes; you're going to pay more taxes.

Okay, so again, I can give you dozens of those examples. So mergers, so that they get to oligopoly power—that's how you rig a system. Lowering the corporate tax rates, making sure that there is no real minimum wage, making sure there's no universal health care. We all become indentured servants of corporations. They take away power from the average guy and give it to the most powerful people in the world.

So, but the most important distinction, Lex, is that corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power, whereas capitalism loves competition and wants free markets. And I remember we started Young Turks back in 2002, so we've been around for 22 years—longest running daily show on the internet ever.

And so we were pre-Iraq war. And as the Iraq war started, and Dick Cheney starts handing out no-bid contracts, I'm like what part of capitalism is a no-bid contract? You can't negotiate drug prices—the most anti-free market thing I have ever heard! It's almost like communism for corporations. They get everything; you get nothing. Right? So it's preposterous, it's awful, and it kills the free markets, and it's killing this country.

And it is the main ideology and religion of the establishment. Are all companies built the same here? So when you say corporatism, it seems like just looking here at the list of lobbyists by industry, it seems like there are certain industries that are worse offenders than others, like pharmaceuticals, like insurance, oil, and gas.

Yeah, so it seems to me it feels wrong to just throw all companies into the same bucket of like they're all guilty.

No, they're not all guilty. So let's make a bunch of distinctions here. So first of all, can you? First of all, are they quote-unquote guilty? No, they're doing something that is logical and natural, right?

So if you're a company, do you want to pay higher taxes or lower taxes? Of course, you want to pay lower taxes, right? Do you want to have higher employee costs or lower employee costs? Of course, you want lower employee costs, right? So but the government needs to understand that and protect us from that power that they are going to exercise to get to those results.

And if you think free markets is, there is no government you read it wrong, go re-go back and reread Adam Smith. He says, "You must protect against monopoly power." If you do not protect against monopoly power, you will have no free markets, and he's absolutely right. So second distinction is between small business and big business.

That's why Republicans will always be like, "Oh, we're doing this for small business." That's why we got the biggest oil companies in the world, $30 billion in subsidies. What happened to small business, right? So I run a small business, and so if people were to say like, "Hey, maybe there should be exemptions for some of the regulations if your company has less than five employees, 10 employees, 50 employees," etc., there's some logic in that because businesses have different stages of growth and they have different interests and different needs in those stages of growth, and we want to facilitate small business growth because that's great for the economy; that's great for markets, freedom, etc.

But the bigger corporations, even there, there's a third distinction. It isn't that there's certain industries that are worse; there's just that there are industries that are better at lobbying. So anyone who—like right now number one donor in Washington, a lot of people make a mistake. They think it's AIPAC or they think it's the oil companies or the banks. No, it's Big Pharma. Okay, and who has the most power in this country? Big Pharma.

So we can't even negotiate the drug prices. I mean look, guys, think about it this way: that's like saying, "Okay, here's a bottle of water," and normally in the free market, that would cost about a dollar, right? And in the—for Medicare, the drug companies come in and go, "No, I'm not charging a dollar for that water. I'm charging $100." And the government has to say, "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Of course, sir, we'll pay $100."

That's why compared to communism because I can't imagine anything more diametrically opposed to the free market than you, the consumer, have to pay whatever the hell a corporation charges. That's insanity, let alone the patents, let alone the fact that the American people pay for the research, and then they make billions of dollars off of it, and we get nothing but robbed by them.

So it's about lobby power; oil companies have huge lobby power, defense contractors have huge lobby power. It's not that they're more evil; it's just that they have figured out the game better and they have basically taken the influence they need to capture the market, capture the government, and snuff out all competition.

Well, a lot of companies are good at winning the right way, by building better products, by making people happier with the work they're doing, and winning that game of capitalism. Then there are other companies that win at the game of lobbying. And I just want to sort of draw that distinction because I think it's a small subset of companies that are playing the game of lobbying.

So I think first of all, you have to set rules for what makes sense, not, "Oh, I don't like this industry" or "I don't like this company" or "Hey, this company is not doing that much lobbying at this point." They will later when they realize what's going on.

So for example, in my opinion, AIPAC has totally bought almost all of Congress, and so now other countries are going to wake up and go, "Wait, you could just buy the American government!" So AIPAC is going to spend about $100 million in this cycle, and they're going to—and then they're getting $26 billion back.

So every country in the world is soon going to realize, "Oh, take American citizens that live there, get them a tremendous amount of money, and just buy the US government."

Right, so that, but for corporations, they've already realized that on a massive scale.

Right? So for example, in the two industries you gave: automotive, so in New Jersey about a decade ago or so, one of the most powerful lobbies is car dealerships. So at the national level, you've got Pharma, and you've got defense contractors, etc. At the local level, guys who have huge power—number one is utilities, number two is real estate, and then car dealerships are hilariously among the top, right?

Because it's local businesses that are, you know, financing the politicians at the local level. So they passed a law saying that you have to sell through dealerships, but Tesla doesn't sell through dealerships. And it was intended to bully, intimidate, and push out Tesla out of the market. They then did that in a number of different states throughout the country.

So does that make any sense in a democracy? Of course not! Why do you have to sell your product through a specific vehicle or medium? You can sell it any way you like. That’s the most anti-free market thing possible. Why? It was just total utter corruption, and it's perfectly legal. The Supreme Court legalized bribery. So then what happened in that case?

So then Elon came in and gave campaign contributions and reversed it, so now we're in a battle where it's an open auction, right? Different companies are buying different politicians, and then they're pretending to have debates about principles and ideas, etc.

So now let's look at tech. In the beginning, Facebook was not spending any money in politics or almost any money in politics. So what happens? They're getting hammered. They're getting pulled into congressional hearings, and Facebook's got fake news and, "Oh my God, all these trouble from Facebook." Then Facebook does the logical thing: "Oh, it turns out I need to grease these sons of bitches, okay?"

So then they hire a whole bunch of Republican consultants. They go grease all the Republicans and most of the corporate Democrats, and then all of a sudden we're no longer talking about Facebook at all, and Facebook are angels, and now we've turned our attention to who Facebook's top competitor TikTok—funny how that works.

And by the way, then Donald Trump goes, "Oh, and TikTok's a big dangerous company; they're working with China.” Okay, and then Jeff Yass comes in on this cycle—part owner of TikTok and he doesn't want TikTok banished, of course, right? So he gives Trump a couple of million dollars, and Trump turns around the next day and goes, "We love TikTok; TikTok's a good company."

Right, so that's a big contributor to influencing what politicians say and what they think, but it's not the entire thing.

Right, no, it is. It's 98%. I'll go on mainstream media, and they'll be like, "Oh, I see what you're saying. I can see how that influences politicians about 10%." I'm like, "No, no, it's 98%."

So even a lot of good people think it's 50/50. They have principles, and they have money. No, they have money and this smidgen of principles. That's why I wanted to clarify, it's 98%.

Okay, so how do we fix it? So it's really interesting and nice that you're pro-capitalism and anti-corporatism. So how do we create a system where the free market can rule, where capitalism can rule, we can have these vibrant flourishing of all these companies competing against each other and creating awesome stuff?

Yeah, so in the book, I call it democratic capitalism as opposed to Bernie's democratic socialism. Right? We can get into that distinction in a minute. But, um, so as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to protect the market as well as the people. Because, like, why do we have cops? Because if we don't have cops, somebody's going to go, "Well, I like Lex's equipment; why don't I just go into his house and take it?" Right? So you need the cops to protect you, and that's the government.

So people say, "I hate big government." Do you? Right? It depends. Right? If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like the government but you also need cops on Wall Street, because if you allow insider trading, the powerful are going to rob you blind, and the little guy's going to get screwed. So that's this easy example.

And so if you don't have those cops, the bad guys are going to take over. They're going to set the rules, rig the rules in their favor. So that's why you need regulation. And so the Republicans on purpose made regulation a dirty word. They're like, "Oh, all regulation is bad." And then sometimes on the left, people fall for the trap of, "All regulation is good." A guy I like in on has a great analogy on this, Matt Stoler. He's one of the original, I would argue, progressives, and there's about four of us—I'm sure there's more—but that have stayed true to the original meaning of progressivism and populism: me, Matt Stoler, David Sirota, Ryan Grim.

Okay, and they used to be in that original blogger group. There were guys like Glenn Greenwald and other interesting cats, right? But they went in different directions. So Matt has a great line. He says, "If somebody comes up to you and says, 'How big a pipe do you want?' there is no answer for that. It depends on the job, doesn't it?" Right? What are we doing? What are we building? I'm going to tell you the size of the pipe depending on the project.

So when people say, "Are you in favor of regulation or against it?" that's an absurd question. Of course you need regulation; it just means laws. Right? So don't kill your neighbor is a regulation.

Right? So my idea is a simple one, and one we're going to keep coming back to: balance. So when my dad was a small business owner in New Jersey, and they inspected the elevator six times a year, that was over-regulation. And I said to my dad, "So should they not inspect it at all?" I'm a young kid growing up, and he said, "No, no, you got to inspect it at least twice a year." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because in Turkey, sometimes they don't inspect it, and then the elevator falls."

Okay, so bounds of reason: correct regulation to protect the markets and to protect the American people. Yeah, but finding the right level of regulation, especially in, for example, in tech—something I'm much more familiar with—is very difficult because people in Congress are living in the 20th century, before the internet was invented. So how are they supposed to come up with regulations?

Yeah, that's the idea of the free market: you should be able to sort of compete; the market regulates, and then the government can step in and protect the market from forming monopolies, for example, which is easier to do.

Yeah, but that's a form of regulation, right? But then there's like more, check in the elevator twice a year, that's a more sort of specific watching, micromanaging.

So Lex, here's the deal: there's no way around the laws made by politicians. Okay? And so you can't give up then and go, "Oh, it's a bunch of schmucks," who I think most politicians are just servants for the donor class. You know, the media makes it sound like they're the best of us, "Oh, they deserve a lot of honor and respect," and they kiss their ass, etc. I think generally speaking they're usually the worst of us, especially in this corporate structure.

Right? Because they're the guys who, their number one talent is, "Yes, sir. No, sir. What would you like me to do with your donor money, sir? Absolutely, I'll serve you completely," or 98%, right? So in this structure, the politicians are the worst of us.

But at some point, you need somebody elected to be your representative to do democratic capitalism so that you have capitalism but it's checked by the government on behalf of the people. It's the people that are saying, "These are the rules of the land, and you have to abide by them."

So how do you get to the best possible answer? And which is related to an earlier question you asked, Lex, which is the number one thing you have to do is get big money out of politics. Everything else is near impossible as long as we are drowned in money and whoever has more money wins. And by the way, when it comes to legislation, again that's true about 98% of the time. Like we predict things ahead of time. People are like, "Wow, how did you know that that bill wasn't going to pass or was going to pass?" It's the easiest thing in the world.

And we like literally like teach our audience on The Young Turks, "Watch, you'll be able to see for yourself." And now like our members comment it 10. They do these predictions; they're almost always right, right? Because it's so simple: follow the money.

So if you get big money out of politics—and I could explain how to do that in this act—then you're at a place where you got your best shot at honest representatives that are going to try their best to get to the right answer. Are they going to get to the right answer out of the gate? Usually not. So they pass a law, there's something wrong with the law, they then fix that part. It's a pendulum, you know? You don’t want it to swing too wildly, but you do need a little bit of oscillation in that pendulum to get to the right balance.

By the way, I was listening to Joe Biden from when he was like 30 years old. The speeches he was giving were eloquent as hell. It's fun to listen to, actually. And he has a speech he gives—or just maybe a conversation in Congress, I'm not sure where—where he talks about how corrupt the whole system is, and he's really honest and, like, fun. And that Joe Biden is great, by the way. That guy—I mean, age sucks, you know? People get older. But he was talking quite honestly about, like, having to suck up to all these rich people and that he couldn't really suck up to the really rich people. They said, "Come back to us 10 years later when you're like more integrated into the system." But he was really honest about it. He's saying, "That's how it is. That's what we have to do, and that really sucks that that's what we have to do."

Yeah, so we did a video on our TikTok channel then and now of Joe Biden. This was when I was trying to push Biden out. We should say you're one of the people early on saying Biden used to step down.

Yeah, I started about a year ago because I was positive that Biden had a 0% chance of winning. And it turned out, by the way, two days before he dropped out, his insider advisers inside the White House said, "Yeah, near 0% chance of winning." Yeah, so we were right all along. You got a lot of criticism for that, by the way.

But, yeah, we can come back to that. Yes, I did. And which makes it Tuesday for me, I get a lot of criticism for everything. And, by the way, Democratic Party, you're welcome.

But Biden's a really interesting example. I'm really glad you brought it up. So the video on TikTok was just showing Biden then—Biden now—and you're right, Biden was so dynamic. When you see how dynamic he was, we did a side-by-side, right? And then you see him now going, "Get barely," anyways, right? You're like, "Oh, that's not the same guy." I get it, right?

So and that got like 5 million views because it resonates. They're like, "Yeah, of course." But when he first started, to the point you were making, Lex, one of his very first bills was anti-corruption. Why? Because at that point, everything changes—in 1976, 1978, as Supreme Court decisions that basically legalized bribery.

But remember, Biden is ancient. So he's coming into politics at a time when money has not yet drowned politics, and in fact, the American population is super pissed about the fact that it's begun. They don't like corruption.

So early Biden, because he's reading the room, is very anti-corruption. And the first bill he proposes is to get money out of politics. Okay? But as Biden goes on for his epic 200-year career in Washington, he starts to get not more conservative, more corporate, because he's just taking more and more money. By the middle of his career, he has a nickname, the senator from MBNA. Okay?

MBNA was a credit card company based in Delaware. The reason he had that nickname is because there isn't anything Joe Biden wouldn't have done for credit card companies and corporations based in Delaware, which are almost all corporations. Okay? So he became the most corporate senator in the country and hence the most beloved by corporate media.

And corporate media has checked him his entire career until about a month ago. So for example, in the primaries, both in 2020 and 2024, if you said, "The senator from MBNA," I guarantee you almost no one in the audience has heard of it. If you heard of it, good job, you know politics really well. Okay?

But the reason you didn't hear of it is because the mainstream media wouldn't say, "That's outrageous of Joe Biden to be such a corporate stooge." They'd say, "That's outrageous of you to point out something that's true."

And something we reported on earlier, okay? And so they protected him at all costs. Now finally when you get to this version of Joe Biden, we—he can't talk, he can't win; he bears no resemblance to the young guy who came in saying that money in politics was a problem. Now he's saying money in politics is the solution, and in 2020 he said, "Well, I can raise more money than Bernie. I can kiss corporate ass better than Bernie. I'm the biggest corporate ass kisser in the world, so I'm going to raise a billion dollars, and you need to support me."

Now, of course, he doesn't say it in those words, but that was a message to the establishment and media, "Kurn, everybody goes, 'That's right, Biden, Biden, Biden, not Bernie.'"

I don't know that there's anybody in the country who instinctually dislikes Bernie more than Barack Obama.

Oh, that's an interesting—I’m not taking that attention at this moment.

Let's, because you mentioned mainstream media. What's the motivation for mainstream media to be corporatist also?

So first of all, they're giant corporations; so they're all multi-billion dollar corporations. In the old days, we had an incredible number of media outlets. So you go to San Francisco, there'd be at least two papers, and there'd be a paperboy. And I'm going all the way back: paperboy on each corner, and they're competing with one another. Literally, there'd be catty corner, right? And one guy's going, "Oh, I hear all this detail. They're trying to get an audience; they're trying to get people interested."

So they’re populists, they’re interesting, they’re muckrakers. They're challenging the government. Fast forward to now, or not now, but about a decade ago, five years ago, in that ballpark. Now there's only six giant media corporations left, and it's an oligopoly, right? And they're all multi-billion dollar corporations. They all want tax cuts. Half of them are also, especially about 20 years ago during the Iraq War, half of them are defense contractors.

So they're just using the news as marketing to start wars, like the Iraq War. And then GE, which owned MSNBC, makes a tremendous amount of money, so much more money from war than it does from media that media is a good marketing spend for these corporations. Now that's part of it; they themselves want the same exact thing as the corporate—you know, the rest of corporations do for corporate rule, lower tax cuts, deregulation so they can merge, etc.

But the second part of it is arguably even more important. So where does all that money in politics go? So for example, in 2022, it's just a midterm election, not no presidential; it should be lower spending. A ridiculous $7 billion is spent on the election cycle. Where does the $7 billion go? Almost all of it goes into corporate media, mainstream media, television, newspapers, radio; they're buying ads like nuts.

So we have a reporter at TYT, David Schuster. He used to work at MSNBC, Fox News, etc. And David wants to piece about money in politics at a local NBC news station, and his editor or GM spiked the story. And David goes into his office and asks him, "So why this story is true? It's a huge part of politics; if we're going to report on this issue, we got to tell you what's actually happening."

So he says, "David, come here," puts his arm around his shoulders, takes him to the big news room, and he goes, "You see all this money in politics? Paid for that." That's really fascinating. So big corporations are giving money to politicians through different channels, and then the politicians are spending that money on mainstream media.

And so there's a vicious cycle where it's in the interest of mainstream media not to criticize the very corporations that are feeding that cycle.

So not actually direct, it's not like corporations, or, because I was thinking one of the ways is direct advertisement, like pharmaceuticals obviously advertise a lot on mainstream media, but there's also indirect, which is like giving the politicians money. The super PACs spend money on the these.

That's why the Press never covers it. Almost never, right? So you're telling me you're doing an article on the infrastructure build or Build Back Better, etc. and you're not going to mention the enormous amount of money that every lobby spent on that bill? That's absurd! That's absurd! That's 98% of the ballgame, and the reason they hide the ball is because they don't want you to know this whole thing is based on the money that they are receiving.

And by the way, one more thing about that, Lex: the ads themselves actually work, and they work pretty well. But that's not the main reason you spend money on ads; you spend the money on ads to get friendly coverage from the content, from the free media that you're getting from that same outlet.

And so since every newspaper and every news television station and network knows that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are their top clients, they're going to get billions of dollars from them; they never really criticize the Republican and Democratic Party.

On the other hand, if you're an outsider, they'll rip your face off. That's also really interesting.

So if you're an advertiser, if you're a big pharma and you're advertising, it's not that the advertisement works; it's that the hosts are too afraid, not like explicitly, just even implicitly they're self-censoring. They're not going to have any guests that are controversial anti-big pharma, or they're not going to make any jokes about big pharma. And that continues and expands; that's really interesting.

Sometimes it's super direct. When I was a host on MSNBC, I had a company that I was criticizing, and management looked at it, and by the way, I used to go off prompter a lot, and it drove him crazy—not because I wasn't good at it. I think my ratings went up whenever I went off prompter, but because they couldn't pre-approve the script. And what do they want to pre-approve? "Hey, are you going to criticize one of our sponsors, one of our advertisers?"

Etc. So we had a giant fight over it, and the compromise was I moved them lower in the script but kept them in the story, right? So sometimes it's super direct like that, but more often it's implicit, it's indirect. You don't have to say it, right?

So I give you a spectacular example of it so that you get a sense of how it works implicitly. So since GE is a giant defense contractor, they own MSNBC at the time of the Iraq War. They fired everyone who was against the Iraq War on air, so Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura, Ashley Banfield. But Ashley Banfield, they did something different with.

Okay, she was a rising star at the time. She goes and gives a speech in Kansas—not really even having a policy position, but just talking about the actual cost of this Iraq War and how we should be really careful. They hate that! So they take their rising star and they take her off air.

Okay? And she goes, "Okay, good, let me add to my contract." It's okay, I'll go because she was such a star at that time she could have easily gotten somewhere else. And they go, "No, we're not going to let you out of your contract."

Why not? "You going to pay me to do nothing?" Yeah, not only that, we're moving your office. "Where are you moving it to?" They literally moved it into a closet.

Okay, and they made sure that everybody in the building saw her getting taken off the air and moved into a closet. The closet is the memo, right? That's the memo to the whole building: "You better shut up and do as you're told."

Okay? So that way, I don't have to tell you and get myself in trouble. It's super obvious. There are guardrails here, and you are not allowed to go beyond acceptable thought. And acceptable thought is our sponsors are great; politicians are great; the powerful are great.

So how do we begin to fix that? And what exactly are we fixing? It feels like there's companies have found different ways to achieve influence, right? So how do we get money out of politics?

So it's very difficult but doable, and we will do it. But in order to do it, the populist left and the populist right have to unite because—and that, by the way, that is why we have the culture wars. That's why you're voting for Trump: "No chance."

Okay, so we can get into that in a minute. So the culture wars are meant to divide us. If we get united, we have enough leverage and power to be able to do it. But you can't do it through a normal bill because if you do it in a bill, the whole point of capturing the Supreme Court was to make sure that they kill any piece of legislation that would protect the American people.

You're saying the Supreme Court is also captured by this?

Oh, 100%.

So, okay, so let me explain again. For the uninitiated, they think, "Oh, that sounds conspiratorial." Well, in this case, that's actually somewhat true because people now know about this—is the Powell memo, right? The most infamous political memo in history. Lewis Powell writes a memo for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971 that's basically a blueprint for how the Chamber of Commerce can take over the government.

And Lewis Powell explains one of the most important things you have to do is take over the media. But even more importantly than that is taking over the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what is allowed and not allowed. And he says we need quote activist judges to help business interests on the court.

Okay? And then Nixon reads the memo and goes, "That sounds like a really good idea. How about I put you on the Supreme Court?" And he puts Lewis Powell—the guy who wrote the memo—on the Supreme Court where he's the deciding vote in ballot and, uh, Buckley. So bat's—a 76 to 78—and what they say is, "Yeah, yeah, I read the Constitution and it says that money is speech."

No, it isn't, and no it didn’t. That’s not even close to true. They just made it up! And they said, "Okay, in corporations, they're human beings." No, they're not! That's preposterous, right? And they have the same inalienable rights as human beings and citizens do, and money is speech, and speech is an inalienable right; so corporations can spend unlimited money in politics, and there goes our democracy—gone!

Okay, so Citizens United just shot a dead horse with a Gatling gun and made it worse and put it on steroids. But it was already dead in 78. So that's why every chart you see for the rest of your life, you'll see this: every chart in about the American economy starts diverging in 1978. So until 78, we have golden 40 years of economic prosperity. We create the greatest middle class the world has ever seen, and our productivity is sky high, but our wages match our productivity.

After 78, productivity is still sky high, best in the world. Okay? Sometimes people go, "Oh, the American worker is lazy." Not remotely true! We work our ass off. Okay? But wages just flatline, and they've been flatlining for about 50 years straight. And the reason is because the Supreme Court made bribery legal.

So in order to get past the Supreme Court, you only have one choice: that's an amendment. And so you have to get an amendment. Amendments are very difficult but so, for example, you need two-thirds of Congress to even propose the amendment. So why would Congress propose an amendment that would take away their own power?

Right? Because almost everybody in Congress got there through corruption. Their main talent is I can kiss corporate ass better than you can. Right? They take the most amount— a person with more money in Congress wins 95% of the time. Right?

But the good news is the founding fathers were geniuses, and they put in a second outlet. They said, "Or two-thirds of the states can call for a convention where you can propose an amendment." And after an amendment is proposed, then three quarters of the states have to ratify it. That's what makes it so difficult because getting three quarters of the states—there are so many red states, so many blue states—getting three quarters of the states to agree is near impossible.

But there is one issue that the whole country agrees on: 93% of Americans believe that politicians serve their donors and not their voters.

So this is the one thing we can unite on. If we unite on this, we push our states to call for a convention, we all go to the convention together, we bring democracy alive, and we propose amendments to the Constitution, and the best amendment gets three quarters of the states to ratify; you're gone above the Supreme Court, and you solve the whole thing.

So if 93% of the people want this, why hasn't it happened yet? I mean the obvious answer is there's corporate control of the media and the politicians, but it seems like our current system—and the megaphone that a president has—you should be able to unite the populist left and right.

So it shouldn't be that difficult to do. Like, hasn't a person like Trump, who's a billionaire, or on the left, a rich businessman, run just on this and win?

Well, eventually they will, right? And so that's why I actually have a lot of hope, even though things seem super dark right now. So, and that's why I was for Bernie. So I can come back to that, but why hasn't Trump done it? It's easy; he's like, "What am I, a sucker? The guy gives me money; I do what the guy wants."

Why would I get rid of that? That's how I got into power, and so that's how I'm doing it now. I go to Mar-a-Lago and say, "Give me $100 million, and I'll let Israel annex the West Bank." Right? So I'll go to the oil companies and say, "Give me a billion dollars, and I'll give you tax subsidies; I'll let you drill, I'll take away regulations." Why would I stop that?

You think he likes money more than he likes being popular? Because there's a big part of him as a populist in the sense that, like, he loves being admired by large masses of people.

Yeah, so—and you're absolutely right—but that is the fault of MAGA, and so MAGA, you're screwing populists in a way that is infuriating. Okay? And smart libertarians like Dave Smith have figured this out, and that's why he's just as mad at Trump as I am. And it's because he took a populist movement, and he redirected it for his own personal gain. MAGA! Figure it out!

Come on, right? And so if you say, "Oh, you think Democrats have figured out that—well, no! They largely haven't figured it out either! And I think there's blue MAGA, and I could talk about that as well, but for those of us on the populist left, we’re not enamored by politicians. And for example, when Bernie does the wrong thing, we call him out.

Well, why? I'm not—Bernie's not my goddamn uncle! I don't like him for some personality reason; it's not a cult of personality. You do the right thing, I love you; if you do the wrong thing, I'm going to kick your ass for it. Right? So but Donald Trump does this massive ridiculous corruption over and over again, and MAGA's like, "I'm here for it. Love it. As long as you're doing the corruption, I'm okay with it."

What does Trump say about getting money out of politics? Does he—he says nothing about it. Go MAGA! Why haven't you held him to account? Like, so when Bernie helped Biden take out $15 minimum wage from the Senate bill on the first bill that was introducing the Biden administration, we went nuts. We did a petition; we sent in videos to Bernie, our audience going, "Hey, don't kill it, Bernie! Don't kill it!"

And so Bernie then reintroduces it as an amendment; it got voted down, but he did the right thing, right? That is us holding our top leader accountable and saying, "You better get back on track, okay? Because we're not here for you and your personal self-aggrandizement; we're here for policy."

Right? And if MAGA was actually here for policy, they would have absolutely leveled Trump on the fact that he—I mean, remember what he ran on? "Drain the swamp." That’s why he won in 2016, right? So I predicted on ABC right after the DNC, and Hillary Clinton was up 10, 12 points, whatever she was, and I said Trump would win.

Okay? And the whole panel laughed out loud, right? They're like, "Get Al to this crazy guy." I said, "He’s a populist who seems to hate the establishment in a populist time." And so, "Drain the swamp" is a great slogan, and I knew he would win when he was in a Republican debate, and he said, "I paid all these guys before I paid them, and they did whatever I wanted."

And I was like, "That's so true," right? And people will love that. And especially Republican voters will love that. And I actually have a lot of respect for Republican voters because they actually genuinely hate corruption.

So what would an amendment look like that helps prevent money from being an influence in politics?

So I started a group called Wolfpack. And the reason why I named it Wolfpack is because everyone in Washington I knew would hate that name. It's a populist name, and everybody in Washington snickers like, "Now you're supposed to name it Americans for America," and just trick people, etc.

No, no, no. Wolfpack means we're coming for you, okay? We're not coming for you in a weirdo physical or violent way; we're coming for you in a democratic way, okay? So we're going to go to those state houses; we're going to get them to propose a convention, and we did it in five states, but then the Democratic Party started beating us back.

We'll get to that. And so we are going to overturn your apple cart and we're going to bring the American people back in charge. So what does the amendment say? Number one, a lot of people will have different opinions on what it should say, and that's what you sort out in a convention.

So for example, one of the things that conservatives can propose, which makes sense, is term limits because the reason why these super old politicians are in charge is because they provide a return on investment. So you know if you give to Biden, Pelosi, or McConnell, they're going to deliver for you. They love that!

Turn on a message they don't want to risk it on a new guy. The new guy might have principles. Ew! Or, you know, might want to actually do a little bit for his voters. Boo! Whereas these old guys in every corrupt system have these old guys hanging around that help maintain power, etc.

So my particular proposal in amendments would be a couple of things. One is end private financing of elections. So if—and look, if you're a business person, you're a capitalist, you know this with absolute certainty: if somebody signs your check, that's the person you work for, right?

So if private interests are funding politicians, the politicians will serve private interests, and then you're going to get into a fight like Elon did in New Jersey, where the car dealerships and Tesla are getting into an auction. "Can I hear $100,000?" "No, a million!" "Two million!" "Three million!" Right? And now you got to go bribe the government official—that's called a campaign contribution. And this is a terrible system, right?

And the private financing—go to complete public financing of elections. That's when conservatives, because they've been propagandized by corporate media—yes, mainstream media got into your head too, and right-wing media got into your head too, and right-wing media is also financed by a lot of this corrupt interest—and so they tell you, "Oh, you don't want publicly financed? Oh my God! You'd be spending like a billion dollars on politicians!"

Brother, they’re spending trillions of dollars of your money because they're financed by the guys that they're giving all of your money to.

So can you educate me? Does that prevent something like Citizens United, so like super PACs are all gone in this case?

So indirect funding is gone, direct funding's gone. You have to set up some thresholds. Not everybody can just get money to run. You have to prove that you have some sort of popular support—signature gathering. You would still allow for small money donations like up to $100, something along those lines, not $5,000 or whatever it is now.

Yeah, I think $5,000 is too high, but those are fine debates. You know, but you basically want to create an incentive. Everything is about incentives and disincentives. Again, capitalists realize this better than anyone else, right?

So you want to set up an incentive to serve your voters, not your donors. So if you take away private donors, well, there goes that incentive, and that's gigantic, right? And then if you set up small grassroots funding as a way to get past the threshold to get the funding to run an election, well, then good because then you're serving small donors, which are generally voters, right?

So that's what you want. And ending private financing is critical, but the second thing is ending corporate personhood. So this is where you get into a lot of fights because there's two reasons. One is some folks have a principled position against it, and they say, "Well, I mean, the Sierra Club is technically a corporation. ACLU is technically a corporation, and so if you end corporate personhood, then they—you know, that could endanger their existence."

Right? No, it doesn't endanger their existence at all, right? So it doesn't endanger GM or GE's existence; it doesn't endanger anybody's existence. Corporations exist; we're not trying to take them away. I would never do that. Right? That's not smart; that's not workable, etc.

We're just saying they don't have constitutional rights. So they have the rights that we give them, and by the way, read the founding fathers is also in my book: they hated corporations.

The American Revolution was partly against the British East India Company. And so the Tea Party in Boston was against that corporation; they threw their tea overboard. It was not against the British monarchy, and all the founding fathers warned us over and over again: watch out for corporations because once they form, they will amass money and power and look to kill off democracy. And they were totally right; that's exactly what happened.

And so it's not that you don't have them; it's that you, through democratic capitalism, you limit their power. They definitely—you can give them a bunch of rights; you say, "Hey, you have a right to exist; you have a right to do this, this, and this," okay? But you do not have constitutional rights of a citizen, and so you don't have the right to speak to a politician by giving them a billion dollars.

And you believe that the people will be able to find the right policies to regulate and tax the corporations such that capitalism can flourish still?

Yes, you know why? Because I'm a real populist, and I believe in the people! So that I drive the establishment crazy because they don't believe in the people.

They think, "Jake, have you seen MAGA? Have you seen these guys? Have you seen the radicals on the left? We're so much smarter. You know how many Ivy League degrees we have, right? And we know what we're doing!"

No, you don't! No, you're—everybody, to some degree, looks out for their own interests! Right?

Why I like capitalism and why I love democracy is because it's the wisdom of the crowd. And so in the long run, the crowd is right. Oftentimes in the short term we’re wrong, okay?

But the wisdom of the crowd in the long run is much, much better than the elites that run things. The elites say, "Well, we're so smart and educated; so we're going to better what's good for you." No, brother! You’re going to know what's better for you!

And here's something that a lot of people get wrong on the populist left and right—they think, "Oh, those guys are evil." They're not evil! I've met them. I worked at MSNBC. I worked on cable. I went to Wharton. You know, Columbia Law; I know a lot of those guys.

And so they're not at all evil. They don't even know that they're mainly serving their own interests. They just naturally do it. Right? And so they think the carried interest loophole makes a lot of sense, right? They think corporate tax cuts makes a lot of sense—not getting higher wages; you not having healthcare makes a lot of sense. It doesn't make any goddamn sense, but they get themselves to believe it.

And that's another portion of the invisible hand on the market. So there are problems with every path. So the elite, like you mentioned, can be corrupted by greed, by power, and so on, but the crowd— I agree with you, by the way, about the wisdom of the crowd versus the wisdom of the elite. But the crowd can be captured by charismatic leaders.

So the problem with populism—and I'm probably a populist myself—the problem with populism is it can be, and has been throughout history, captured by bad people. But if you say to me, "Trust the elites or trust the people," I'm going to trust the people every single time.

Well, that's why you're such an interesting—I don't want to say contradiction, but there's a tension that creates the balance. So to me, in the way you're speaking, it might result in hurting capitalism. So it's easy to, in fighting corporatism, to hurt companies.

So to go too far the other way, yeah, companies—so like when you talked about corporate tax, what's the magic number for the corporate tax? Because if it's too high, like, companies leave, right?

Companies have so much power right now. This pendulum has swung so far and we're guys, we're almost out of time. The window's closing. The minute private equity buys all of our homes, the residential real estate market, we're screwed, we're indentured servants forever.

Okay? Your right to—it's that it's not a contradiction; it's a tension that is inevitable to get to balance. The reason why people kind of can't figure me out is they're like, "Well, you're on the left, but you're a capitalist," etc.

That's not a contradiction; that's getting to the right balance. And in order to do that, like, if you say, "Well, if we change the system, I'm afraid of change because what if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction?" Right? Well, then you would be opposed to change at all times.

So if you do that, it actually reminds me of the Biden fight, right? So I'm like, "Guys, he has almost no chance of winning; he stands for the establishment; he can't talk." But then the number one push-back I'd get from Democrats was, "Yeah, but what if we change? It's so scary. We don't know about Kamala Harris."

What if it's not Kamala Harris? It's so scary; don't change. And I'm like, "Yeah, but if you say change might be worse, it also might be better."

And you're at zero; anything is better, right? And right now, in terms of corruption in America, we're at 98% corruption. So we got 2% decency left, brother. This is when you want change.

And Lex, if you actually have wisdom of the crowd, just like in supply and demand and how it works in economics, it works the same way in a functioning democracy. You go too far, you come back in.

So for example, when Reagan came into office—you know, me and my dad, my family—we were Republicans. Why? At that point, the highest marginal tax rate was at 70%. 70% is too high.

Right? They then brought it all the way down to 28%. That's too low, right? So—and even Carter was way more conservative economically than people realize because we were already getting past it by the time it was in his administration.

But the bottom line is, yes, you’re going to—whenever you have real wisdom of the crowd, whether it's in business or in politics, you're going to have fluctuation. You're going to have that pendulum swinging back and forth.

You don't want wild swings—communism, corporatism, right? You want to get to, "Hey, where's the right balance here between capitalism and what people think is socialism?"

Yeah, so I guess I agree with most of the things you said about the corruption. I just wish there would be more celebration of the fact that capitalism and some incredible companies in the history of the 20th century have created so much wealth, so much innovation that has increased the quality of life on average. They've also increased the wealth inequality and exploitation of the workers and this kind of stuff, but you want to not forget to celebrate the awesomeness that companies have also brought outside the political sphere—just in creating awesome stuff.

Look, I run a company, and so I don't want companies to go away. And I don't want you to hate all companies. I think Young Turks is a wonderful company, right? We provide great health care, we take care of our employees, we care about the community, etc., and we're building a whole nation online on those principles and the right way to run a company, right?

But, guys, we're at the wrong part of the pendulum. The companies have overwhelming power, and they're crushing us. We're like that scene in Star Wars with the trash compactors closing in on them. The walls are closing in; we're almost out of time because they've captured the government almost entirely. They're only serving corporate interests.

We've got to get back into balance before it's too late, and that's why I care so much about structural issues. So I form Justice Democrats—so that's AOC, etc.—right? That's people who know it as the squad. They know it as Justice Democrats, etc. I'm one of the co-founders of that, and my number one rule was no corporate PAC money, okay?

So you're not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way, now Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley have stopped taking corporate PAC money, and they've become, to some degree on economic issues, genuine populists. It's amazing—it happens overnight!

All of a sudden, they're holding—they're talking about holding corporations accountable, etc. Now, Justice Democrats wind up having other problems; they got too deep into social issues, not economic issues.

There's a general sort of criticism of billionaires, right? This idea—now you could say that billionaires are avoiding taxes and they're not getting taxed enough, but I think under that flag of criticizing billionaires is criticizing all companies that do epic, that build stuff, oh, okay.

So that create stuff— that's what I'm worried about. I don't hear enough genuine celebration of companies when they do, because, okay, so are you right? Not about companies, but about capitalism, yes; because you know, you look at life expectancy 200 years ago, and you look at it now and you go, "Wow! Holy, we did amazing things!"

Right? So—and what happened in the last 200 years? We went from dictatorships more towards democracy, wisdom of the crowd—we went from, you know, serfs and indentured servants and a nobility that holds the land to more towards capitalism, and boom! The crowd is right; things go really well.

I mean, the advances in medicine are amazing, and medicine is a great example. So—and on our show, I point all those things out, and I say, "Look, we hate the drug companies because of how they capture the government, right? But we don't hate the drug companies for creating great drugs. Those drugs save lives; they save my life; they save countless millions upon millions of lives."

So the right idea isn’t shut down drug companies; the right idea is don’t let them buy the government. Right? So—and I know we get back into our instinctual shells. So on the left, they'll be, "Oh, we should get rid of all billionaires." Why? Like, how does that fix the system? Tell me how it fixes the system, and I'm all ears, right?

My solution is end private financing, then you can be a billionaire all you like; you can't buy the government, right?

That's a more logical way to go about it. I've never worn an "Eat the Rich" shirt, and it drives me crazy. I'm like, "You would have eaten FDR," right? And FDR is the best president, most populist president in my opinion.

And so no, there are wonderful rich people, of course! Of course there's a range of humanity, right? But you don't want to get rid of the rich. You don't want to get rid of companies. But you also don't want to let them control everything.

So, okay, here I'll give you an example that really informs a lot of how I think about things, which is my dad. So my dad was a farmer in Southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border. No money. In fact, his dad died when he was 6 months old. And so they were saddled with debt and no electricity in his house, like as poor as poor gets.

And he wound up living the American dream. And so how did he do that? What made the difference? Well, what made the difference is opportunity, right? So I'm a populist because my dad was in the masses, right?

And the elites say the masses are no good. We're smart; you’re not. We're educated; you're not. We meritocracy; we talk about that; we have earned merit, and if you're poor or middle class, you have not earned merit. Okay? You're useless and worthless, and I hate that.

So what did Turkey do back in the 1960s that liberated my dad? They provided free college education. You had to test into it, okay? But the top 15% got a free college education at the best colleges in Turkey.

So and my uncle saved all of our lives when he came to my dad and said, "Do you like working on this farm?" And my dad's like "no," right? It's super hot, it's super hard; they got to get up at 4 in the morning. If they're lucky, the family next door gives them a mule; if they're not, they got to carry them themselves.

Okay? He's—so my uncle told him, "Work just as hard in school, and you'll be able to get a house, a car, pretty girls, etc." So my dad works his ass off, gets into the school, and he comes out a mechanical engineer and starts his own company. He creates a company in Turkey, hires hundreds of people. He then moves to America, creates a company here, hires tons of people.

Right? So do I hate companies? No, my dad set up two companies, and I saw how much it benefited people. I saw how much employees would come up to my dad 20, 30 years later in the street and hug him, and they'd tell me as a young kid, "Your dad's the most fair boss we ever had, and we love him for it," right?

That's how you run a company! And he taught me the value of hard work. But the reason I brought up here is because he taught me, look, skill and ability is a genetic lottery, so you're not going to just get the rich to win all the genetic lottery; no, there's going to be tons of poor kids and middle-class kids who have are just as good, if not better. You have to provide them the opportunity—the fair chance to succeed. You have to believe in them.

So this isn't about disempowering anyone; it's about empowering all of those kids who are doing the right thing, smart, and want to work hard so they could build their own companies and add to the economy.

What in general is your view on meritocracy?

So I love meritocracy. I wish that we lived in a meritocracy, and I want to drive towards living in a meritocracy. So that's why I don't like equality of results.

Okay? Now people that are on the left will get super mad at that and go, "What do you mean?" Well, okay, brother, let's say you're at work, and you got one guy who's working his ass off, and the other guy that's going, "I don't care; I'm not going to do it," right? Well, the guy who works super hard has to pick up the slack. Now he's working twice as hard, right? And now you want the same results; you want the same salary as that guy? No, brother, no! He's working twice, four times, ten times harder than you—that's not fair. Fairness matters!

I lived—we wound up— I mean, we lived we eventually and we lived across a farm which is kind of central Jersey, it happens, right? And it was called fair chance farm. Okay? I was like, "How did I get this amazing?"

And I love that; that's the essence of America, and that's what I want to go back to. So we've got to create that opportunity, not just because it's the moral thing to do, but because it's also the economically smart thing to do. If you enable all those great people that are in lower-income classes and middle-income classes, you're going to get a much better economy, a much stronger democracy.

So that's the direction we go. So again, it's Bob Allen, but what do you think about DEI policies, say, in academia and in companies?

So the movement, as it has evolved, where is that on the balance? Is that—yeah, how far is it pushing towards equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity?

Okay, so now we're getting into social issues, right? So this is where we all rip each other apart, and then the people at the top laugh their ass off at us, and go, "We got to fighting over trans issues; they're killing each other! This is hilarious."

And they're so busy they don't realize we're running the place, right? Okay, but let's engage. Some people will look at DEI and go, well, that just gives me an opportunity just like anyone else. I love DEI. Another person will look at it and go, "No, that says that you should be picked above me, and I hate DEI."

Right? So the reality of DEI is a little bit more complicated. And so, but you've got to go back. So first, did we need affirmative action in the 1960s? Definitely. Why? All the firefighter jobs in South Carolina, as an example, are going to white guys. All the longshoreman jobs in New York, LA, wherever you have it, are all going to white guys because that's how the system was—yes also in the North, right?

So we now are in a civil rights area; we decide we're going to go towards equality; minorities in the case mainly black Americans had to find a way to break in. I'm not trying—like if you're a longshoreman and it's a good job, you naturally want to pass it on to your son. I get your instinct; I don't hate you for it, right?

But we got to let black kids also have a shot at it, right? So you need it in the beginning, but at a certain point, you have to phase it out. So when I was growing up, it's now in the late 80s, early 90s, I hated affirmative action, and I have been principled on it from day one. To this day, I'm not in favor of affirmative action. I say it on the show all the time.

Why? I'm a minority, being a Turk; I grew up Muslim. I’m an atheist now. But generally speaking, a Muslim is certainly a minority in America and pretty much a hated one overall. So, but I didn't check off Muslim or Turkish or any ethnicity when I applied to college because I believe a, in a meritocracy—all we were talking about. But we don't really have a meritocracy now.

And so—so I can come back to that—but right now—but so I didn’t check it off because I didn't want an unfair advantage because I wanted to earn it. I wanted to earn it. So now I'm in law school, and I'm hanging out with right-wingers because at that point I'm a Republican and one of the guys says to me about one of our black students going to Columbia, he says, "Oh, I wonder how he got in here!"

God, that is the problem with affirmative action. It devalues the accomplishments of every minority in the country. You have to transition away from it. If you don't, it sets up a caste system, and that caste system is lethal to democracy.

So does DEI go too far in some instances? Yes, but is it a boogeyman that's going to take all the white jobs and make them black, as Trump would say? Black jobs, right? And give minorities too much power—etc.? No, the idea isn't to rob you and to give all the opportunity to minorities. The idea is to make it equal.

But as the pendulum swings, did it swing too far in some directions? Yes. So the left can't acknowledge that, and the right can’t acknowledge that either. Of course at some point, you got to give a chance for others to break in so they have a fair chance. By the way, Michelle Obama had a good line about the black jobs in the DNC speech where somebody should tell Trump that the presidency might be just one of those black jobs anyway.

But why do you think the left doesn't acknowledge when DEI gets ridiculous, which in certain places and in certain places at a large scale has gotten ridiculous?

Because people are taught to just be in the tribe they're in and to believe it 100%. Like I've gotten kicked out of every tribe. I might be the most attacked man in internet history partly because we've been around forever and partly because I disagree with every part of the political spectrum because I believe in independent thought.

And the minute you vary a little bit, people go nuts. And so the far-left tribe is going to go with their preset ideology, just like the far-right tribe is. So for example, on trans issues, we've protected trans people for over 20 years on The Young Turks. We fought for equality for trans people and for all LGBTQ people for two decades.

We did it way before anyone else did. When Biden came out in favor of gay marriage in 2013, we're like, "This is comically late!" So like we're all supposed to congratulate him in the year 2013 that he thinks gay people should have the same rights as straight people, and then he had to push Obama to get there, right?

So on the other hand, I'm like, "Guys, if you allow trans women to go into professional sports—not at the high school level, but professional sports—but let's say they go into MMA or boxing and a trans woman, I mean it happens in boxing, it happens in MMA, punches a biologic woman so hard that she kills her, right? So you're going to set back trans rights 50 years."

I'm not trying to hurt you; I'm trying to help you. You have to do bounds of reason. So when I say simple things like that, and I say you give LeBron James every hormone blocker on planet Earth, he's still going to dominate the WNBA. Okay? It would be comical! He might score 100 points a night!

Okay? And they'll say that's outrageous