- 2 days ago
The New York Times writer and podcast host talks with David Remnick about the Charlie Kirk discourse, Barack Obama’s conspicuous absence in politics, Bari Weiss’s coverage of Gaza, and the future of the Democratic Party.
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00:00Let's start with what happened when Charlie Kirk was killed.
00:03You pretty immediately published an essay in The Times that, of course, condemned political
00:09violence, comparing it to a contagion or the danger of a contagion.
00:14And you praised Charlie Kirk's willingness to debate.
00:18You called it, quote, practicing politics the right way.
00:21That was the phrase that resonated everywhere.
00:23And since that terrible event, the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah, we've seen how Trump
00:29and the MAGA movement at times has planned to use his death in a serious crackdown on
00:34the opposition.
00:35As you're thinking about this evolved, how do you look back on that column?
00:39What did you get right?
00:40And how maybe has it been misinterpreted?
00:43I think I've got to separate a couple of things here.
00:44Sure.
00:45My view is that in the what's called 12 hours after somebody is publicly murdered, it is
00:51a good time to sit with people in their grief.
00:53And I believe very deeply that when you commit an act of political violence like that, it
01:01is an act of political violence against everybody who participates in politics.
01:04I said in that piece, and I believe, right, that on that stage that day, Charlie Kirk was
01:10practicing politics.
01:11He was up there.
01:13He was arguing with people.
01:14I've heard people say, well, he's not really debating to find the truth.
01:16And of course not.
01:17He's a very, very effective practitioner of politics.
01:21He's trying to persuade people.
01:23He's trying to create content that will work in our attentional sphere.
01:26And I think something that we liberals have to reckon with is he had been winning.
01:32He and the people like him had been winning.
01:34They had been beginning to win on college campuses.
01:36And there's a big Gen Z swing towards Donald Trump.
01:39They were certainly winning on social media.
01:41You can disagree.
01:42I disagree with him profoundly.
01:45And still, you know, find things in him to think that there's meaning to make out of
01:50it.
01:51I don't actually find this to be a complex part of it.
01:55I think the critique of it was that you were for sure engaging with his practice of
02:02politics, of meeting people where they are, but not maybe, but maybe underselling what
02:07Charlie Kirk represented in terms of his positions about, about race, about, quote, Jewish
02:13money, funding and anti-whiteness agenda, about his views about LGBTQ people, all kinds of
02:20things.
02:21What is your sense of his particular politics with all due respect and sympathy for, I think
02:27we totally agree, a horrific, a horrific act of assassination?
02:32I think this is a weird critique.
02:36Genuinely.
02:37Like, you, you know, human beings, David, if in the moments after a murder or death, do
02:44you go people and tell them exactly what you thought of the person they just lost?
02:49Is your like relationship to people who you're in community with?
02:52Right.
02:53And I do believe myself to be in a political community with people who cared about and loved
02:58Charlie Kirk, even as much as I'm very much on the other side from them.
03:02I just, would you go to people like that when they've just watched somebody be killed?
03:07So, Chonahasi Coast wrote a piece in Vanity Fair, um, making very clear what had been the,
03:17a collection of statements from Charlie Kirk that was quite representative.
03:20Did you think that was unfair?
03:23No, I mean, I don't, not to me, right?
03:25Like I virtually agree with Chonahasi on every view he has.
03:29And Chonahasi is on my show this weekend.
03:31I agree with Chonahasi on virtually every view he has on things Charlie Kirk has said.
03:36I agree with the things that you just said.
03:38It's bad.
03:39I have, as I wrote in my second piece, I have poured virtually every ounce of myself
03:44into preventing everything that Kirk poured himself into creating.
03:48I think that for more people than I had understood, the sense that we are in any way in community
03:55together, the sense that we are still in a place where we are all practicing and doing
03:59politics has already eroded.
04:01I think something that's very alive for me is a feeling that we are not that far from
04:07national rupture.
04:08So many things that we like to say, it can't happen here, have already been happening here.
04:12Who do you blame for that?
04:16I mean, I blame Donald Trump quite specifically for that.
04:19And I think that the way he has acted in the aftermath of Kirk's murder has been a exhibition
04:25of virtually everything that is wrong.
04:28There I am in 100% agreement with you.
04:30I watched a lot of that memorial service.
04:32What did you think of it?
04:33I saw two remarkable things.
04:35I saw the widow of Charlie Kirk get up and do an extraordinary thing, a woman whose world
04:41has been shattered, whose family has been shattered, who's lost the husband she adored.
04:47Forgive, forgive the person who killed him.
04:51I mean, I don't know that I could ever be capable of that.
04:55And then who spoke later?
04:56Donald Trump got up and he said, I hate my opponent.
05:00I can't be like that.
05:03And it wasn't just rhetoric.
05:05It wasn't a tossed off comment.
05:08It was true.
05:10And that, that really struck me.
05:14There is some part of him, I think, that would thrill to the possibility of an excuse
05:20to crack down.
05:24They're already trying it in many ways.
05:26The other thing I saw, to be honest, was a political opportunity.
05:29I think a politics of hatred is a weak politics.
05:33And a lot of people desire for something different.
05:36I found myself thinking a lot recently about the speech through which Barack Obama rose
05:40to power at the Boston convention speech.
05:44I think a lot of people now have almost given up on that politics.
05:48And I also think that, uh, well, you remember what Obama said about it, that that was, it
05:52wasn't a statement of here's the condition of it's, it was an aspiration.
05:56Of course, aspiration is very powerful in politics.
06:00And I, both because I am genuinely worried about rupture, but also because I'm genuinely,
06:06uh, determined to try to be useful in making our politics better and having people who I
06:15trust more holding power.
06:16I think we should not engage in oppositional mirroring where whatever the other side does,
06:23we do, right?
06:24You hate me.
06:25Oh, well, you know what?
06:26I hate you.
06:27Do you see that on the liberal side that there's a lot of mirroring of that?
06:32I see on the liberal side that one huge strategic mistake we have made for well over at least
06:39a decade now, let's call it, is yes, oppositional mirroring.
06:42Not on the word hate, right?
06:44That's a specific thing with Trump.
06:46How would you illustrate that?
06:48So let me give you an example.
06:48Sketch it out.
06:49Yeah.
06:49Obama was a very, very effective politician and he's a very effective politician because
06:55he was very good at containing opposites inside of him.
06:58You wrote a biography of him.
06:59You know this about him better than just about anybody.
07:02So he was very good at having a sense that if you're going to push the country, you also
07:08need to create space in yourself, in your political movement, in your rhetoric for the
07:12disagreement, for the concern, for the pushback.
07:16And so he was this generationally capable political balancer, right?
07:22Like sort of holding both our liberalism and our illiberalism inside himself.
07:26After him, I think this began to break down.
07:28So Trump rises and you have, say, the Hillary Clinton deplorable speech.
07:33The worst word in that is irredeemable.
07:35She says that these people are irredeemable.
07:37What?
07:37Half of the people voting for Trump, irredeemable.
07:39I agree.
07:39Right?
07:40That's really, when you talk like that, a severing of political community.
07:44What begins to happen as Trump then wins, which I think is taken as truly shocking, is
07:50you begin to see the, and this is not even a painting, this just literally happens.
07:54The Democratic Party begins to take on the opposite positions of Trump in many ways.
08:01So Trump is the most anti-immigrant president of our lifetime, right?
08:05Not just in his wanting, desire to build a wall, but emotionally anti-immigrant.
08:09The Democratic Party becomes much more pro-immigrant, right?
08:13If you're going to build a wall, we're going to debate legalizing, decriminalizing illegal
08:18border crossing.
08:19But that wasn't true across the board.
08:20There were a lot of differing positions on immigration.
08:23There were, but almost everybody on that stage, except Joe Biden and Bennett.
08:28And not expressed with a similar, much less equivalent hatred.
08:34I agree that Donald Trump is very unique in the way he radiates hatred.
08:39And, and I think, you know, this, even as you're pushing me on this, if you talk to people on
08:46the right, and I'm not talking about Donald Trump or people at the top of politics, I'm
08:50talking about the people in my life who ended up voting for Trump, that they felt in these
08:55years profoundly rejected.
08:58I do think this politics of deplorables was very real.
09:01There is certainly people, right, who don't agree with the things I believe in the world,
09:06right, they began to feel that the Democratic Party genuinely didn't like them.
09:12And one of my strongest, most strongly held views about politics, one of my most strongly
09:17held views about politics is that the most important question for a voter is not whether
09:22they like you, but whether you like them.
09:24If they're going to trust you with power, the first thing is not whether they agree with
09:27you.
09:27The first thing is just whether or not they feel you like them and will take them into
09:31consideration.
09:31But do you think any of that was centered on Obama himself?
09:35Oh, there's no doubt.
09:36Why?
09:37But I think Obama...
09:38Because of his character?
09:39Because he was black and foreign to people.
09:42But, and I'll ask you this question, do you think Obama would have won in 2016 if he could
09:46have run again?
09:47I do.
09:47So there you go.
09:49Politics is about power.
09:51And I think people have missed this.
09:54Politics is not about self-expression.
09:56There's room for that.
09:57It's not just about a dispassionate analysis of ideas.
10:00There's room for that.
10:01It's a lot of what I do, a lot of what you do.
10:03So politics is about building coalitions capable of winning power and making the decisions
10:08you need to do to do that.
10:10So I said recently in a podcast with my colleague Rushed Out then that I feel that there's been
10:16a lot of fatalism among Democrats, right?
10:18They've just accepted places where they cannot compete.
10:20And I said that I want to see, you know, real decisions being made to try to compete in
10:24Kansas and Missouri and in Ohio and then in red states, right?
10:27Meaning rather than that, I'd like to see us running pro-life Democrats again.
10:31When Obamacare passed, 40 House Democrats were pro-life.
10:35People got very upset about that.
10:36I get why.
10:37But I think it's worth thinking about this.
10:39Has it been bad for the Republican Party that Susan Collins, who is nominally per choice,
10:47wins in Maine?
10:48Has that been a weakness for them?
10:49Has it been bad for the Republican Party that Donald Trump welcomed RFK Jr.
10:54and all of his voters, everybody who liked RFK Jr., Joe Rogan all the way down into their
10:59coalition?
10:59No, it has expanded their power.
11:02Trump built coalitions when he thought it would serve him.
11:04He is, among many other things that he is, a ruthlessly political animal.
11:09And I think there are things to take seriously in that that we have begun to demean.
11:13I hear you.
11:14The problem is, the difficulty is, is juggling these plates all at once.
11:19Sure.
11:20Right now, you're talking the language of conciliation and broadening the scope and the
11:27tent temperamentally and politically of the Democratic Party.
11:30I hear you on that.
11:31At the same time, you have, I think we agree on this, you have a president who, in fact,
11:39is uniquely authoritarian in his instincts and it would seem in his policies as well.
11:48And to do those things at the same time, to fight that battle at the same time, is hard
11:54to do.
11:56It seems almost irreconcilable temperamentally within the Democratic Party.
11:59I mean, I think some of this reflects the absence of, right now, a leader in the Democratic
12:03Party who can sort of make decisions on behalf of it.
12:05Right.
12:05But to me, these two things are the same thing.
12:09If you're facing Mitt Romney, you have margin for loss.
12:15If you lose, it's a shame, but it's Mitt Romney.
12:19Nothing that bad is going to happen.
12:21If you keep losing to MAGA, then at least under the way I look at the world, terrible things
12:30are going to happen, truly terrible things.
12:31And the risk of catastrophic things happening, the risk of what we understand to be the American
12:36political system cracking into something else becomes very real.
12:40So if you think, hold on, if you think the threat, if you think the threat is that bad.
12:44You're asking for a certain kind of equanimity within the Democratic Party.
12:47No, I'm asking for strategic discipline.
12:49What's the difference?
12:50It means that what I'm saying we should do is we should take on an approach to politics
12:59that we think will expand our coalition such that we are not always within two points of
13:04losing to Donald Trump or the people around him.
13:06Fair enough.
13:07And if that means doing things that are uncomfortable, yeah, if a war or a battle or a project, I
13:13mean, when people get terrible diseases, they don't take the medicines because they enjoy
13:17the side effects.
13:17They do it because it might work.
13:19So who would you, who exemplifies this temperament of leadership and of the way he or she looks
13:26at the world?
13:27I'm not sure I have the person right now.
13:28I mean, I, in some ways I think I am saying we should rediscover the politics of Barack Obama.
13:33Tell me more about that.
13:34I don't think it's an accident that the last two Democrats to win nationally and serve
13:41two terms had this very open-palmed approach to politics and were very good at balancing
13:46these different forces and dynamics in them.
13:49And that doesn't mean, by the way, that their presidencies, their power, their assent did
13:55not drive many people on the other side crazy.
13:57Clinton, in ways that, in retrospect, look ridiculous, drove the right crazy.
14:01I mean, you remember the conspiracy, but conspiracies about Vince Foster and all the rest of it
14:05and Obama, by virtue of who he is, no matter how conciliatory he was, by virtue of his identity,
14:11by virtue of his skin color, by virtue of his name, he drove the right nuts.
14:16Are you happy with how present or not Barack Obama is in the national conversation and debate?
14:22No. I think we could use more of his leadership and voice right now.
14:27Look, I've said this on my show. I'll say it on yours. I wish he were more out there.
14:31But I think that he is still playing by the rules where it is—I mean, increasingly less.
14:37He's starting to do a little bit more.
14:38But I think he's still playing by the rules wherein it would be unseemly for a former president
14:45to take a very public role. I also think he believes if he does that, he will choke off
14:50oxygen for the next generation of Democratic leaders to rise. But I would like to see Barack
14:54Obama on Joe Rogan. I would like to see that in the end of the election.
14:57And I think we both know that he would do it in a second.
15:00I can't speak for him, but I think so.
15:03I think it would be good for him to be in places—again, this is a very big thing for
15:07me—talking to people who don't often hear from us, you have to win in the attentional
15:12sphere right now. And there are very few people who can do it as well as he can.
15:16Barack Obama, who was a hero of liberalism at a certain point in time, now takes a lot
15:24of criticism from the left or the left-left, depending on how you look at it.
15:29And I wonder how you look at that phenomenon now.
15:32So I've been thinking actually a ton about this. How does Obama go in a pretty compressed
15:38number of years from nearly an impossibility—the very act of his election seeming like a pivotal
15:48moment in the country to many people—to by the end of his term? I mean, still, by the
15:52way, the most popular national-level politician in America today. It's very easy, I think, to
15:56overstate the Obama backlash. He's doing better than any other figure. This is why I like to
16:01see him out there more. But I think it reflects a couple of things. One is I think it reflects
16:07that the hopes that his campaign aroused in people were not capable of being delivered upon
16:18by either the pros of actual governing, you know, through Congress and the filibuster and all these
16:27blockages. He did a lot. I mean, the Fort Hope Care Act is not a small thing. The Dodd-Frank
16:30financial reforms are not a small thing. But it wasn't enough. And so there was a letdown. And then he's
16:38followed by Trump. And I think the Obama legacy looks different to people because it seems to have
16:47ended not in, you know, this arc bending towards justice. You know, he's succeeded by Hillary
16:55Clinton and she gets things done. You keep sort of building a new era in American politics
16:59incrementally. Instead, it's followed by very rapid regression. And I think, you know, one of the ways
17:05I view politics is that the communication mediums upon which it happens are very, very determinative
17:11in what then becomes powerful and popular and energetic. And I think that the move to social
17:20media and algorithmic media, it was really a move towards a style of political communication
17:25that is somewhat hostile to the liberal project. The deliberative, open-minded, thoughtful on the one
17:35hand, on the other hand, mode of discourse that Obama is good at. He's bad at Twitter. You ever
17:39read Obama on Twitter? It's bad. It's not his thing. Trump is good at Twitter. And so I think that it all
17:46gets taken for granted. It actually is a sort of remarkable experiment, what we're doing here.
17:51And the idea that a country this big and this diverse-
17:54Nationally.
17:55Constitutionally.
17:55No, I'm in here on this podcast.
17:56I see.
17:57The idea that a country as big and diverse with as much political argumentation and division as
18:03we have, that we actually would live together, that we can make this work, that would keep getting
18:06better, that a black man with a middle name he seemed could get elected. Doing the work of
18:12democracy, doing the work of politics, that's actually amazing. And I think he wasn't able to
18:16keep that story going and nobody kept it going after him. But I do think there is a lot of power
18:22in actually reconnecting people at this moment when I think they feel it. I certainly feel it.
18:29I'm like, oh, this could break. We could just break this. Somebody like Trump could just break
18:33this. One of my deep- I mean, there's a lot I disagree with Trump on, but one thing I really
18:38find offensive about him, and I would say this about J.D. Vance now too, is I don't think they
18:47believe in this project anymore. I'm not sure if they did, or actually J.D. Vance at one point
18:52did. I think for Vance, there's something, a more kind of scarily ideological structure around
18:57that. I think he's very influenced by people who believe America was lost at some point in the past
19:0250 years. They differ on exactly when it was. And you need some kind of counter-revolution
19:06to restore it to the heritage Americans who are really supposed to have ownership over this.
19:11I think that they, I mean, I think there's a profound contempt and anger that radiates from both
19:16of them. And I think that they both intend Trump in his intuitive way, Vance in his more systematic
19:23way to instantiate that into policy and power. And things can get really bad when you attempt to do
19:29that. And so- How do you defeat that? In other words, we began our conversation
19:34with a endorsement of the ability to sit down with people who you disagree with ferociously,
19:43not over tax policy, but ferociously on fundamental things. But how is this rupture to be prevented?
19:55This is the work of politics. And one thing I believe is we've begun to demean the work of
20:00politics. One thing I am worried about is I actually think, a little bit on both sides,
20:04but it's particularly true for me in the Democratic Party, is that work, that work of building political
20:11coalitions around disagreement, of sitting in that kind of disagreement, has become seen as often
20:16something quite akin to betrayal. So I'm interested to see who Democrats run in 2026. And I would like to
20:23see in places where it has become very hard for Democrats to win, very unusual candidates. I would
20:28like to see them trying more things. So Graham Plattner in Maine is an interesting, tried to do
20:32that from an economic populist perspective, but Maine is not a red state. So I don't think that's
20:39not what's going to win you in Texas. You see James Tallarico in Texas. He's kind of an interesting
20:43candidate. Who are they going to run in Kansas? Who are they going to run in Missouri? Sherrod Brown in
20:48Ohio is a very strong candidate. I do think over a four, eight, 12-year period, we need to repolarize
20:56this country in a safer way than we have, right? Not this sort of system, anti-system polarization.
21:02And that means mixing up the parties a little bit again. But the sense that you will need to build
21:08bridges right now to survive that maybe are not the ones you most prefer building, I think that's
21:12very real. And I think that requires us to see the work of politics as honorable work, even when it
21:18includes a lot of compromise and a lot of working with people who, yeah, we have very, very deep
21:23disagreements with. But you're trying to build power and you're trying to do good things with that
21:29power. And that is a point of politics. I think a lot of listeners, and myself included, want to
21:35know a little bit more about you. Do they, David? Well, they're trapped, so they're going to.
21:43You have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years. Very often I will read about people in the
21:49Democratic Party wanting to know what Ezra Klein thinks or the influence you have within the Democratic
21:57Party, positive or negative, about the potential shutdown in Washington that may be coming around
22:04the corner. So I want to go back. Tell me a little bit about your family background and your
22:10political family background. What were the politics in your house?
22:14So I grew up in Irvine, California. The district I lived in did not elect a Democrat to Congress
22:20until Katie Porter in 2018. That was our first Democrat we sent to the House. My father's a professor
22:28at UCI, now retired. Taught what? Mathematics, which I am not good at. I used to joke that I'm good
22:35at math for a journalist, but not for the son. That's not saying much. It's not. So my dad's a
22:41mathematician. My mother worked with children and was an artist. They are both thankfully alive and
22:47healthy. My house was, without revealing people's politics who it's not mine to reveal,
22:54mostly Democratic. But members of my family in recent years, some of them less so. Some of them
23:03a lot less so, in fact. But it wasn't a highly political house. We did not receive the New Yorker
23:09or the New Republic. We got the LA Times, watched nightly newscasts. I wasn't talk radio. It wasn't a
23:17highly political house I grew up in.
23:19You had some political enthusiasms early on. You worked for Howard Dean.
23:22Oh, yes. When I was in college. So I got into politics. So my brother, my older brother,
23:28was a lawyer, environmental law, and used to take me to protests in LA where he lived.
23:36And what kind of protests?
23:37Farm workers marches. Not the only kind, but he had a lot of great work there. So I did get into
23:44politics, but I primarily got into it through blogging. I became a blogger back when nobody
23:48knew what that was. This is when I was a freshman in college. And I got into blogging in 2003 and just
23:55loved writing about politics, reading about politics, thinking about politics, debating it
24:00with people.
24:00When I began to read you in little venues early on, and then you arrived, to me, the
24:06first self-branded journalist that I knew of when you were doing wonk blog at the Washington Post.
24:14Simpler time.
24:15Well, but an innovative person, and at the same time had an analytic cast of mind when it came
24:22to politics that a lot of journalists just don't have. How did that develop? And do you accept the
24:27premise?
24:28Somebody told me recently, they think of my work as a cerebral children horse for emotional
24:32ideas, which I don't think is wrong, actually.
24:34What are they getting at that you think is true?
24:37I would say, I don't think this is my reputation anymore in the way it was in the wonk blog days,
24:41but the idea that I was this cool, detached calculator of a reporter or journalist. I mean,
24:49the reason I care about these things is I care. I feel incredibly emotionally compelled
24:54by the stakes of politics, whether or not people get healthcare, whether or not we go to war,
25:00what kinds of people are in power, that these things are shaping our lives, whether we want
25:05them to or not, is a central, almost physical reality we all have to face. And understanding
25:12them is one of the few ways to try to face it.
25:14But kind of like a Marxist or a certain kind of conservative of a different sort, there is this
25:21systemic look at the way things work. When you were younger, when you were 28, still at the
25:26Washington Post, you used to give a talk that was called, Why Washington is Horrible in Charts,
25:31in parentheses. The main point being that we focus way too much on individuals and maybe not
25:37enough on Washington as a system. Tell me what that was about and how much has it carried over
25:43to your thinking today?
25:44That speech, which I think was either from or became my book, Why We're Polarized, which is my
25:48first book, which is sadly relevant at the moment, was about the way you needed to understand
25:54these as structures and institutions that had rules and internal logics. So, for instance,
26:02we have this functionally false idea of how our political system works based on the founder's
26:09intentions, which is, oh, we're a system of checks and balances, right? We have three co-equal
26:13branches that will jealously guard their power and prerogatives from one another. Well, that
26:19was the intention of our system. In fact, what we have is two political parties that are not
26:24mentioned anywhere in the Constitution because they were not predicted or anticipated or hoped
26:28for. They compete across those branches. So, right now, we have a Republican-controlled
26:35Congress cooperating with a Republican-controlled executive branch, I would say cooperating with a
26:40Republican-controlled Supreme Court. Unless you have built into the way you are looking at politics,
26:46the influence and fundamental centrality of parties, which our system does not do in any
26:51rigorous way, you will not understand either how it works or how it doesn't work.
26:56In the Senate, right, it's just, it was, maybe less so now, but it was certainly a mainstay
27:01of political reporting that we just treated everything as the president should be able to get this done.
27:08And if it's not getting done, well, what's the president doing wrong? But the filibuster was
27:14being used constantly. And unless you understood, first, that that was a new fact about American
27:20politics. That wasn't how it was for most of the 20th century. The filibuster was rarely used.
27:26And unless you could kind of see why that had happened and then realize, oh, it's actually very
27:29hard to get to 60 votes in the Senate. And in this time of polarization, it's hard to get bipartisan
27:33cooperation. I think it's important. I think it is part of our duty, our, like on some level,
27:39sacred duty to give people a true account of why things are happening. And that requires understanding
27:45the systems in which people operate, because most of us, for better and for worse, reflect the systems
27:52which structure the logics of our lives.
27:55I want to go back to the question that I raised before about your influence in the Democratic Party
27:59and how do you feel it and not feel it? When this began being the way people saw me, it was really
28:04around Biden leaving the ticket.
28:07Right. But what I will say about that whole process where in early 2024, around the time of the Super Bowl
28:14and the Robert Herr press conference, I did a series of pieces basically saying this is going to be
28:19catastrophic for this then 81-year-old to run again. He's not up to it. But also there is still things.
28:28The big problem to me at the party in that point was fatalism. Well, we have no choice to run because
28:33there's nobody but Biden because otherwise it'll be Kamala Harris and she'll lose. Right. That was
28:38the quiet whisper response to anybody who thought Biden should have run.
28:42From Biden's people.
28:43From that world of people. Yes. And I one thought Harris would be a better bet. And I think would
28:50have been a much better bet if he had left the ticket much earlier. But two, I believed we should
28:54have had an open convention and that if he had left early in the year or with someone even with
28:59only 107 days left on the clock, he could have left before that. No, no, without question and
29:04should have. But considering by the time he left, there was not time for it. It was too late. It was
29:08too late. Yeah. He had waited too long. When I did that series of pieces, I would say they were not
29:11influential at all. Biden gave a good state of the union and everybody thought I was an idiot.
29:15And like that's just where the situation sat. What changed the situation was reality. It was Joe Biden
29:20getting up in that debate and falling apart. Without a teleprompter. And so, uh, you know,
29:25I don't see this as some remarkable campaign to influence Iran. There was, I think I was seeing
29:31reality a little bit. I think I was seeing it clearly, but by the way, voters had seen this
29:35long before I said anything about it, right? The supermajorities of the public had said for a long
29:38time, Biden was too old to run again. And I helped create a little bit of permission structure for
29:43people to admit that when reality interceded and it was no longer something that could be denied.
29:48Would you ever go into politics? No, absolutely not. I think we're making a Sherman statement.
29:54I'm making a Sherman statement. I don't, um, I, I think I'm, I think you have to know what you're
29:59good at doing. I think I'm good at doing this. Tell me a little bit about this. What is your
30:04sense of your mission as a podcaster, as a, as a writer, as somebody who makes public appearances?
30:13What is your sense of mission? I mean, my sense of mission is simple. Uh, I have,
30:18values and beliefs about how the world should work and what would make the world better.
30:24And I try to persuade people of them, but I also try to explore them in an honest way. I,
30:31but I do this because I care about where things are going. I'm not, um, dispassionately observing
30:36from the sidelines. I am emotionally, intellectually, spiritually involved. And, but what I'm doing in the
30:44way I'm doing is changed a lot over the years in ways that I can follow more through intuition than
30:52through some framework. You know, the version of me that was writing wonk blog and telling everybody
30:58about healthcare aging in one chart is not what I'm doing on my podcast. Now, my podcast is a forum
31:05in which I'm not primarily trying to be persuasive over time. I think it has persuasive elements,
31:11but it's mostly other people talking. I have a lot of people on who I disagree with.
31:15And I think it acts as a space, a space in which certain kinds of conversations can be had
31:23and then can be put into conversation with each other. And that matters in my column. I'm more
31:28prescriptive, right? The, what goes into eventually the book abundance comes more from the column.
31:32And that's me trying to understand the world and trying to find ways to confront things in it
31:40that I find puzzling or unnerving. I try to take seriously questions that I don't love. I don't
31:47try to insist the world works the way I want it to work. I try to be honest with myself about the way
31:52it is working. You are an important figure at what I think is still today, the most important news
31:59gathering organization on earth, the New York times, but it's also one that everybody has
32:03opinions about. And recently, um, Thomas Chatterton Williams just wrote a book about the summer of
32:102020, which was dramatic in a lot of quarters, including the New York times, Barry Weiss left
32:16and created free press. How do you look back on that? So I wasn't there. No. So I just really
32:22don't know what happened internal to the times at that time. What's your, what's your opinion about
32:27Barry Weiss is increasing influence in what seems to be, she's about to be a very important
32:32figure. She's about to take over CBS. What do you think? I mean, my thing about Barry and I've been
32:39on her show and I have a lot of, uh, admiration for how good she is at what she does. My disagreements
32:47with Barry are that I think she can say, I think she's asymmetric in sympathy and generosity. Tell me
32:55what that means. Like I've thought their work on say starvation in Gaza has been really bad.
33:00I think the whole thing, yeah, they've done this whole thing like, well, a lot of the kids who have
33:04died and have been reported on, well, they had secondary conditions. And yes, when you starve a
33:10population, the people who die first will be the most vulnerable. That's not exculpatory.
33:16That did not feel to me like there was overwhelming evidence of how bad things were in Gaza. And I felt
33:23that they were trying to whitewash it. But what I see her doing is trying to do something that used
33:29to be somewhat more common, which is try to self-consciously be what she would define as the
33:35center. And I see them tacking back and forth around that. Right. Right. So they're much more
33:40sort of pro Trump. I would say when he's running and, you know, Democrats are in power, but then now
33:45that he's in, it's like, Oh no, they're the vandals. And it's a little bit more to me, like the old new
33:51Republic things they used to do. Like I, when I came into Washington, I felt there were more, actually,
33:57it's funny when I was a blogger, this was something we all used to complain about all the time.
34:01All of these organizations that we felt were using this concept, this amorphous concept of
34:08the center as a positioning device that instead of sometimes being guided, it was a dodge.
34:13No, that it wasn't a dodge. It was navigational. They weren't dodging. They were just kind of,
34:19there are a lot of politicians like this and a lot of players like this who had felt like
34:22their politics were hewing to some idea of the center, as opposed to a very, very consistent
34:30set of views and principles. And as media polarized, many fewer places are doing that.
34:38And I think Barry saw a market opportunity in that. Is her center what I think is a center? No.
34:45Or her politics, my politics? No. But, um, but I recognize a lot of editorial skill there.
34:52You are now in a position, I would imagine Ezra, that if you decided, you know what,
34:56I'm going to go out on my own. I'm going to do a podcast called the Ezra Klein show,
35:01and I'm going to get a staff of X, Y, and Z. And probably you could make, you know, a great deal
35:08more money than you do now. Why is it important for you to be at the times as opposed to out on
35:12your own? I believe in journalistic institutions. When I went out and did Vox, I was trying to build
35:17an institution, not just, you know, go out on my own and capture the most of my, um, revenue that I
35:23could. I think that the mix of the news is exciting and I'm committed to the news as an
35:31industry. I don't think the thing I, I think if you carve out, you know, all the national politics,
35:36et cetera, then it's much harder to also have the foreign reporting, the local reporting,
35:41the cultural reporting, right? All the things that make up the, the, the bundle. And those are the
35:47things I often care about. And I think I'm just in this way. It goes to the way I look at the world,
35:51but also does me. I think I'm an institutionalist. Let's talk about being at institutions and I
35:56admire them when they are doing good and I want them to succeed because I think we need them.
36:00Let me ask you about an institution that we were talking about earlier, the democratic party.
36:07You talk a lot to people within the democratic party, leaders of the democratic party.
36:12It looks like a mess at this point. You have some promising people.
36:16What makes you say that? I just, I just conjured it out of thin air in New York city. It looks like
36:23Zoran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York city. If I read you right, you have
36:29ambivalence about Mamdani. Um, or have you come around in some way?
36:36No, I don't think I've ever had a particularly different. I mean, I wrote a piece in the,
36:39during the mayoral primary where I said, I thought Brad Lander was the best choice,
36:42but I think Mamdani is like an amazing political talent. I agree with him on many issues.
36:49My concerns about Mamdani really just have to do with, can he first get the revenue he needs for
36:56a very, very pricey agenda? And can he, I mean, he's talked a bunch about abundance and done
37:02interviews with my co author, Derek, you know, can he actually rebuild the government such that he can
37:06achieve the kinds of things he wants to achieve? And what is going to happen when the Trump
37:11administration moves into a confrontational mode with him? Because I think they will,
37:15right. They're going to want to break him, send, you know, escalate ice raids, send in the national
37:19guard here, occupy New York city. He's inexperienced as an executive. Um, New York city is a very hard
37:26thing to run at the best of times. He has not run much, but I don't think of those as, you know,
37:35terrible demerits to somebody. You could have said some of the same things about Barack Obama on one
37:39level. Um, and we're just gonna have to see how it plays out. I think it is genuinely strange the
37:46way the leadership of the democratic party has treated him. It's cut. It's extraordinary. Uh,
37:51I have never, the state chairman, I think is still on the, at this point, at this point,
37:56you know, they, I have just not heard an account that makes sense. If they're trying to keep in
38:02arm's length, it will not work. He is going to be the mayor of New York as a Democrat. Um,
38:08saying that they're friendly to him, but not endorsing him is not going to save them from
38:12being painted by what he does. On the other hand, to all the people who are inspired by him and like
38:17him, they look feckless. I said this on other, on other shows, I would on some level respect it more
38:24if they don't want to endorse him. If they think he'd be a bad choice, then they should say that.
38:27But this weird ambivalence stance they're doing, um, is, I just think much more bizarre.
38:33Well, the ambivalence, I assume, comes from a kind of fear of his popularity and his talent.
38:38I don't think it comes from there.
38:40Where do you think it comes from?
38:41I think they are afraid that he will open up gigantic, um, surfaces that they will have to
38:49defend and will have trouble doing. I am truly horrified at Israel's conduct in Gaza at this point.
38:56I think it's, uh, I mean, I think we're well past war crimes. I think we're, you know,
39:00we're, we're into something generational. Um, but Mamdani's promise to say, direct the New York
39:06City police to arrest Netanyahu. The moment Netanyahu steps foot in New York City, say to attend a UN
39:13meeting, which I think Netanyahu would probably love this confrontation. I can understand as with
39:18Trump, as with Trump, I can understand why the democratic party's leadership is just a
39:26afraid of what might combust, right? Israel is a very hard issue for them. It splits our base very
39:31badly. So I can see if I like squint, I don't think what they're afraid of is talent. I think
39:38they're afraid of something that goes off the rails that they're then trying to defend, but I just
39:44don't think what they're doing makes sense. I think you have to accept one thing I've been saying
39:48about the big tent of the democratic party is the theory of having a big tent doesn't just mean
39:54moving to the right. It also means accepting in the left and Mamdani is going to be one of the
40:00left's standard bearers. In the, in the last two weeks, there've been stories about AOC,
40:05Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and what the future might hold for her, either running for Senate or even
40:10president. When you think about her, do you see her as a potential president? I don't know. We'd have
40:18to see how she performed in a primary, what her agenda was, what her campaign looked like,
40:22how she performed under that kind of scrutiny. I think you have to see her as one of the people
40:28who is a serious contender for that role. I mean, I think the way I would think about the
40:332020 democratic primary is she would naturally inherit Bernie's lane in most of his sport.
40:40So he doesn't have full control over supporters, of course, right? Some people might've liked him
40:43who wouldn't like her, but I think the anti-oligarchy tour they were doing was in certain ways of
40:50passing the torch from him to her. And so Bernie has been incredibly powerful in democratic primaries
40:56and has come very near winning in 2016 and 2020. And I think that you have to assume that she would
41:05just start with a more solid base of support than all but a couple other people. When I've seen the
41:10early polling and you should be extraordinarily skeptical of 2020, 25, 2025 polling for a 2028
41:18primary, but she is... I'd be skeptical of it in 2027. Fair enough. Yeah. But she is polling behind
41:24only Buttigieg and Newsom. This in polls where Kamala Harris is not included. And so you're looking
41:31at somebody who starts out with one of the clearest lanes because so many other candidates are going to
41:37be competing in the non-Bernie lane. And so it'd be pretty straightforward to how you would imagine
41:42her winning the primary. You were describing Obama before and his talents, but also his
41:47more capacious ideology. Who's in that lane? I don't know that we know it yet. I have not seen...
41:58Probably the closest person in the way he thinks about politics is Buttigieg. But whether or not
42:04Buttigieg can do what Obama was able to do. And I mean, part of what made Obama such a
42:09extraordinary force in the Democratic Party was his support for black voters, which Buttigieg really
42:14struggles with. And continues to. And Kamala Harris just admitted in her new book that the reason she
42:21didn't select Pete Buttigieg as her vice president was that he's gay. And that would have been...
42:29Really? She says that in the book?
42:30Too much identity in one ticket. That was her... Yes, that she would have gone for Buttigieg.
42:35I've not read it yet, but that is interesting.
42:39How do you mean interesting?
42:41It's just interesting. I'm surprised she said that.
42:43So we are at the close of our conversation, but I have to ask you a crucial question.
42:48You go to Burning Man?
42:50I have been known to go to Burning Man.
42:51Would I enjoy it?
42:53No, you would not.
42:56You sleep on the ground, that sort of thing?
42:58I mean, you could do it in different ways. You could take an RV. You could go to what's
43:01called a plug-and-play camp. I mean, I think it's an amazing thing for anybody to see once.
43:07Yeah.
43:07So you might enjoy it.
43:08Once a philosopher, twice a pervert, as they say.
43:12Applies probably better to there than most places.
43:14No doubt.
43:15So I would hate it.
43:17I mean, you know, you might have depths and multitudes inside of you that I don't know.
43:21But when I see the musicians that you profile, they're not the ones who play there.
43:27No, I hear you. I hear you. Yeah. I don't think they could sleep on the ground either. In fact,
43:31most of them are under the ground.
43:35Ezra Klein, thank you so much.
43:36David, really appreciate it.
43:38Thanks.
43:38All right. That was fun.
43:39That was fun.
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