#403 — Sanity Check on Trump 2.0

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Jonah Goldberg about the damage Trump is doing domestically and abroad. They discuss Trump’s tariffs, Curtis Yarvin and the Tech Right, threats against Republicans who criticize Trump, why the arguments Republicans are using to defend Trump’s position on Ukraine are flawed, America’s deteriorating moral standing on the global stage, the recklessness of DOGE, why so many CEOs bent the knee to Trump, antisemitism on the Right, Trump’s plan for Gaza, worst case scenarios for Trump 2.0, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	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 we'll 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
0:21.9	at samharris.org. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts
0:27.2	to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made
0:31.4	possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here,
0:36.1	please consider becoming one. I am here with Jonah Goldberg.
0:45.3	Jonah, thanks for joining me.
0:48.3	Hey, it's great to be here.
0:50.3	Thank you for having me.
0:51.3	So, um, Trump 2.0.
0:53.3	How's it going? Well, you know, it. So, um, Trump 2.0. How's it going?
0:55.0	Um, well, you know, it's funny when in the waning days of the election, I had arguments
1:01.0	with a lot of friends among them.
1:02.0	They were friends who were going to vote against Kamala Harris for Donald Trump.
1:08.0	And I thought their calculations were wrong. I didn't vote for Harris, but I was certainly not going to vote for Donald Trump, And I thought their calculations were wrong.
1:11.4	I didn't vote for Harris, but I was certainly not going to vote for Donald Trump.
1:14.5	But I also live in Washington, D.C., so I didn't think my vote mattered all that much.
1:17.2	But the argument that you heard from everybody was the best case scenario was also the most
1:23.1	likely scenario.
1:24.6	And the best case scenario for them was that it would be going to be a repeat of
1:28.1	the first Trump term, which I thought they were overly nostalgic about and forgot a lot of
1:33.6	things about the first Trump term. Yeah. But they said, look, at the end of the day, what was so bad?
1:37.5	It was sort of a sophisticated version of it was a lot of mean tweets, but the economy was great, right?
	...

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