#428 — Political Extremism

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. I am here with Jonah Goldberg. Jonah, thanks for joining me. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me back. Yeah. It's great to see you again. So, I'm sure there's a lot to talk about. Let's remind people, first of all, where they can find most of your stuff, to read online. And how do you describe what you do and and, where you are these days? Sure. I'm the editor in chief of The Dispatch, which Steve Hayes and I launched about six years ago because we wanted to sort of model behavior that wasn't too much on display in American journalism, particularly in right of center journalism. And so we are unapologetically right of center. We have some left of center writers as well, but we are kinda we pride ourselves on being fact driven, and we're sort of violently nonpartisan. So we're perfectly happy to talk about how the Republican party is a shit show. Mhmm. And so the dispatch is the best place to find me. I'm an LA Times columnist, have been for almost two decades, and I've got a podcast called The Remnant. So there you go. Nice. Nice. Well, let's start with Trump two point o. How how's it going? How is the first, what is this, seven months, almost eight months been in your view? What what has surprised you? What is better than you thought, worse than you thought? Yeah. So that's a good question. I am, I have to admit I was wrong about some things. I, like a lot of people, thought that we would see more continuity with the first term for good and for ill than we have. I had this theory. I may have even floated it on here that the kind of mass deportation he was promising is too big of a lift logistically and politically for him to pull off. Mhmm. I don't think he's where he still hasn't gotten to where he sort of promised to go, but he's gotten closer to it than I thought he would. I have to say, I've been surprised at his remarkably quick success in shutting down the border. I think if he were smart politically, he would talk about that a lot more and stop doing a lot of the other stuff that he does. Mhmm. I've been surprised by the really sort of complete feckless confusion of Democrats in all sorts of ways and how to counter him. Yeah. …