 It's a projection screen when I do stuff like this. I just get to see all my shit show up, you know Okay fascinating interview between David Samuels the interviewer and David Garrow the historian authorizing star Biography of Barack Obama David Garrow also wrote an acclaimed biography of Martin Luther King So David Samuels begins with the telling anecdote So talking about Barack Obama and his most significant girlfriend a woman who he invited twice to marry him and Name is Sheila and she's gone on to become a professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager half white half Asian and she's a scholar of Korea so Obama and Sheila together at this point I believe in the 1980s they visit this art Institute in Chicago Where politics were being roiled by a black mayoral aid named Steven Coakley in a series of lectures Organized by Lewis Farrakhan's nation of Islam used Jewish doctors in the Chicago of infecting black babies with AIDS It's part of a genocidal plot against African-Americans Now imagine if this guy had been white You've been widely widely condemned So the episode highlighted a deep rift within the city's power echelons with some prominent black officials Supporting Coakley and others calling for his firing So in Jager's recollection what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of their relationship was Obama's stubborn refusal To condemn black racism. Well black hatred of Jews So she acknowledged that Obama's embrace of a black identity. All right, so for Obama being black was a choice Right, he didn't have to you know identify as black, but he chose that identity And that was already creating some distance between the couple but what Upset her that day was Obama's inability to condemn the comments of this Chicago aid who said that Jewish doctors in Chicago were deliberately infecting black babies with AIDS So she was bothered that Barack Obama would not condemn anti-semitism now As Obama was developing his in-group black identity It doesn't surprise me or particularly a palmy that Obama here would not condemn black anti-semitism because the more You grow in your in-group identity the less likely you are to condemn behavior by your in-group So yeah, Obama did have an evolving black based race based self-consciousness that distanced himself from Jager But it's interesting to read Barack Obama's account of the breakup in his book dreams From my father against the very different account that Jager offers So in Obama's account he was the particularist embracing a personal meaning for the black experience that Jager the universalist refused to grant So in Jager's account the polls of the argument Are reversed it is Obama who minimizes Jewish anxiety about blood libals coming from the black community So his particularism mattered hers did not so Obama defined himself as a realist or a pragmatist But the episode reads like a textbook evasion of moral responsibility So Jager is something far more than a woman scorned by a man who had become president of the United States So Obama asked her twice to marry him. She refused him both times She's achieved her own high level of professional success. He's a professor of east asian studies The scholarship is known for its factual rigor By contrast dreams from my father by Barack Obama is a work of dreamy literary fiction And a very poor attempt to document Obama's early life so The most revealing thing about jager's account of her fight with Obama is that not one reporter in america bothered to interview her Before david garrow found her near the end of Obama's presidency. So I remember when I was living in los angeles After 2004 we had the first elected latino mayor of los angeles Antonio Vila rugosa and the press was very reluctant to report anything damaging about him. So when I found out in june That he'd ceased wearing his wedding ring for about nine months publicly and I posted that on my blog Uh, that was the first time even though many reporters, you know knew that the man's marriage was over That was the first time it was You know published publicly then the la times responded and then it became the number one story in california In 2007 because gavin knew some the mayor of san francisco at the time was having his own marital issues But they didn't want to report something damaging about la's first latino mayor in a century So too the news media weren't particularly interested in publishing anything damaging about barack obama On his way to power or during his time in power So you got all these Celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of obama became enthusiastic members of his circle But just had no interest in the woman who probably knew barack obama the best prior to michelle And uh the the character that obama fashioned in his book dreams Has essentially been defined beyond the reach of normal repertorial scrutiny by america's journalistic elite And david garros biography of obama the only biography of obama that i've read rising star Just filled with corrections of the historical record corrections that obama more or less invented himself So this book rising star Highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated by the media less like a politician more like the idle of some court We go back to mickey carls robert right by the way Related to the presidential election Is uh, so gavin knew some may debate ronda santis Well, they they you know, there was an offer and acceptance. He offered to debate and the santis accepted So in theory newsrooms people suggested november that's not soon enough We need to get in the air this idea that there are alternatives to biden right newson would want to be one right? I agree. I think biden is putting the kibosh on it for the for the very reason We think it's good because it shows there are younger people who are capable of the job And uh and puts biden in a bad light. He wants to squash this He doesn't want to give to santis any error because he wants to run against trump And he doesn't want to give make new some make him look bad So I think newson postponing it is he got a call from the white house probably saying I could postpone this for a few months Uh, so that's terrible, but it's inevitable. I mean biden has such an interest in stopping it My interesting question in the chat. Is it wrong to divorce my disabled husband? wife doesn't want to wipe and clean up and deal with his uh crippled behind Not everyone's capable of dealing with the crippled spouse. Obviously it's the ideal But uh, not everyone's up to it Painful so the more disposable that uh society sees marriage and treats marriage, right? We take use from other people so if it's expected that in sickness and in health we'll stick with our spouse Then people will feel much more pressure to stick with their spouse when it's considered Much more socially acceptable to jettison your spouse if you can do better then that's exactly what people will do Yeah, see here's the thing. I think there's a media hunger for somebody other than biden Well, yeah, but there's a ton of people can't they find some semi-credible people to debate ron desantis desantis wants the airtime Not well, biden. Well, yeah, I mean newsletters are particularly juicy opponent because the contrast between the Really impolite unswaffed as anus and the pretty boy Swaft Gavin Newsom might work to the status advantage. There's the two states that hate each other that are competing Newsom is the logical heir apparent. I mean, it's a perfect debate. I it's hard to substitute somebody better But biden's gonna stop. You know, I we don't have to debate marianne williamson. I mean they're they So another thing that would shed light on the morality of this decision Do you stay or do you leave a crippled husband is what was the quality of your relationship? Like what is it like and how has he treated you as he put a premium on taking care of you and protecting and providing for you or Did he not Drive in those arenas so The big reason that people cheat is often because of something that's going on inside a marriage The big reason that people decide to leave a marriage is because of things that are going on inside the marriage So I think it would depend on the particulars that particular relationship How moral or immoral it would be to leave it So generally speaking when people do something nice for us, we feel morally obligated to in turn do something nice for them But when people consistently mistreat us we feel less and less trepidation about cutting ties with them Uh, there There isn't anybody who's credible enough who biden won't want to stop Well, we should put on our thinking caps and come up with somebody and then you could use your connections Uh tomorrow and to get a message to the santa's about whoever we decide should be the worthy debate opponent I don't a muggle and means trump these days. I don't have I don't have connections, bob I only have the illusion of connections. That's what i'm using the show for to propagate the illusion of connections You know what that's a segue to uh no Hunter biden it turns out it turns out that's joe's that would be joe's alibi, right? He was trying to foster the illusion of connection. No the hunter. Well, there's a bit of alibi for both of them It came out at hunter's business barter testified that they had joe's put on speakerphone 20 times by hunter in front of clients sometimes without Uh, it's not necessarily knowing about it. Uh, he had dinner with clients twice at cafe malano. Just walk in a cafe so How powerful and influential is joe biden and if joe biden isn't The most powerful person in the world right now who is who is the power behind joe biden david samuels writes about this in this tablet magazine article so Who's actually making decisions in a white house staffed top to bottom with core obama loyalists So when obama turned up at the white house staffers in the press crowded around him leaving president biden talking to the drapes Not a metaphor, but a real thing that happened So that obama might enjoy serving as a third term president nor about name running the government from his iPhone as a thought expressed in public by obama himself both before and after He left office. So with all these clues the washington press corps Fresh off the years of broadcasting fantasies about secret communications between trump And the kremlin seemed unable to imagine let alone report on obama's role in government So obama was incredibly detached and lazy as president united states It's hard to believe that he's secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes of the biden administration So near the end of june politico ran along article noting biden's cognitive decline with the quay headline is obama ready to reassert himself As if the ex-president hadn't been living in the middle of washington dc and playing politics since the day he left office So the previous weeks obama had continued his central role As advocate for government censorship of the internet while launching a new campaign against gun ownership claiming it's linked to racism So surely the spectacle of the next president simultaneously leading campaigns against both the first and second amendments Might have led it even a spectacularly incurious old score Washington dc reported a file of story on the nuts and bolts of obama's political operation And on who was going in and out of his mansion The dc press was no longer in the business of maintaining transparency They'd become servants of power. His job was to broadcast whatever myths helped advance the interests of the powerful Well, when trump was president he was power and the press wasn't particularly interested in broadcasting myths to advance his interests obama's campaigns against the first and second amendment haven't gained any traction I don't think they strike anyone as particularly effective. That may be a big reason. They're not attracting more media scrutiny There's another interpretation of obama's post presidency And this is the one I share obama was never the leader of anything neither during the trump years nor now Said he is focused on buying trophy properties Hanging out with billionaires vacationing on private yachts while grifting large checks from marx like spotify and netflix Even as he's now stratospheric levels of personal vanity Demand that every so often you show up president biden for the sin of occupying his chair in the white house So yeah, that strikes me as true obama's a celebrity obsessed would be billionaire Not so much a would-be american castro reshaping american society from his basement Yeah, I don't think rock obama is reshaping american society from his basement Then david semuel says what I could never understand was obama's contempt the idea of american exceptionalism Yeah, well as a good liberal as a good academic someone who graduated from harvard law school American exceptionalism will seem silly So obama insisted on poking american exceptionalists in the eye saying they believed in american exceptionalism just as I suspect The british believe in british exceptionalism and the greeks believe in greek exceptionalism So why would the president of the united states feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special? Well, I suspect that obama's contempt for this way of thinking is pretty much the norm among people with his type of elite education That david semuel's finds this strange is itself strange right the the ball left you go in politics the less Nationalist you go right the further left you go in politics the more you believe in centralized rule by experts who come from places like harvard Where barack obama graduated law school? semuel's writes what made obama's rejection of american exceptionalism seemed particularly weird to me was his attachment to abraham lincoln His cadences and economy of language. He urged his speech writers to emulate Well, obama wanted abraham lincoln's reputation Right, that doesn't mean he wanted all of lincoln's beliefs that went with that Right, they were political operators operating in different americas at different times all right a time a war Is a time of greater nationalism so lincoln was far more of a war president than obama Then david semuel's writes obama's hostility to american exceptionalism seemed linked to his hostility to israel Or american identification with israel. Well, I think that is just a common-sense position america is more linked with israel than is in america's best interests and perhaps even in israel's best interests obama was determined to reach an agreement with iran Well, that makes sense the Most likely cause of a nuclear war in the world During obama's second term was iran So why would you not try to reach an agreement to delay them getting nuclear weapons? Right, I think obama was correctly Seeking out america's best interests reaching some sort of agreement with iran and I believe that barack obama got about the best deal possible with iran I didn't have strong feelings about the iran deal to the extent. I understand it. I think it was in america's best interests So there is no objective reason for america to identify it more with israel than say with new zealand So I think that barack obama put an appropriate level of focus on the iran deal to reduce the chances of some kind of nuclear conflagration in the middle east So david samuels admits I've never seen any evidence that barack obama had the slightest animus towards jews as individuals but from his denial of american exceptionalism his sourness toward israel Well, that that just makes sense giving the Complicated and intense relationship to the two countries that is against america's interest There does seem to be Some kind of awareness by obama the problem posed to his politics by jews Problem posed by jewish group survival and their continuing insistence on jewish historical particularity. I don't see that But obama has a left-wing perspective on life, which does not value Religious states or ethnic states So it makes sense to me that somebody on the left would not be a fan of the modern state of israel which is built on Ethnic and religious identity It doesn't make obama a bad person I think everyone on the left who believes that States should not be built on racial and religious identity again have problems with the jewish state As expected barack obama jews are white Just as almost all jews in america regard jews as white The david samuels writes ghettos were invented for jews. Yeah particular times in particular places Concentration camps too. How can jews be privileged white people if they clearly among histories victims? Well every group Can think of reasons why this group is a victim? So this isn't unique to jews If jews aren't white then perhaps a lot of other white people are also victims and therefore aren't white Maybe black people aren't always or primarily black Maybe the whole progressive race-based ideology is a load of crap Just why the jews remain a problem. I don't think barack obama has a big problem with jews as a group This just doesn't ring true to me right every group Feels itself a victim all strong in-group identity depends in large part upon a sense of victimization or nationalism Nationalisms depend upon a sense of victimization And if you believe your group was victimized and there's those reparations from out-groups not going to be deterred Or put off by the suffering of out-groups Milano, there's a presumption that you're guilty of some sort of crime And uh, I mean, you know, that's Hunter had two dinners that biden showed up at and actually ate a meal and talked to the people They they archer claimed that in all these things they only talked about the weather and various and never talked about business because the purpose was to brand hunter with the biden name And and to show that he could get joe on the phone and to show that he was a biden and to give the clients He was selling the illusion of access to joe They the democratic line is he didn't actually have access to joe. We couldn't actually get joe to do things Right. He wanted the clients to think that. Okay. Think about that for a while Just even at its face the best democratic argument has biden being the accessory to this fraud His son was perpetrating on the accessory the unknowing accessory, right? No, he's not an idiot. He knows when with a barizma. He's he's a special envoy to your crane when then I'm not saying he wasn't knowing but I'm saying The barizma guy at the dinner and hunter is hunter is he's a potential hunter client Biden joe biden knows what's going on. Okay. I'm not saying he doesn't But I thought you began the sentence with something like the best democratic case the best argument democrats can make And I would finish that with is that biden was an unknowing But there's it's a completely impossible that he was unknowing that hunter was selling the illusion of access Uh, that would imply that he's such a moron that he shouldn't even uh, you know shouldn't hold any public Okay, let's go back here to david samuels essay in tablet says I can make the case that obama's public life Was the amoral part beginning with the toleration of genocide in syria. So According to david samuels apparently united states should not have tolerated genocide in syria So united states apparently should not tolerate genocide everywhere So we should just go around intervening militarily in all sorts of places far beyond our ability that would be completely against america's best interests so David samuels operating against america's best interests By militarily intervening in syria is the moral thing to do Then david samuels is also upset with the extra judicial killing of u.s citizens right these are u.s citizens who are Carrying out terrorist attacks against americans while operating overseas. I don't have a problem with killing them extending to wide-scale illegal surveillance and spying And he has now become the spokesperson for gutting the first amendment in favor of government censorship of large tech platforms well barack obama's opinion on Gutting the first amendment in favor of government censorship of large tech platforms It's largely normal for people of his education and social class I don't think there's anything extraordinary about it. I disagree with it But that is the norm When you're a part of the elite right if you're an elite you want to reduce criticism of your status as elite When you are striving to become elite and replace the current elites you want more freedom of speech So that you can climb your way up the greedy greasy pole The defense of obama is that he was never touched by scandal meaning personal scandal And you're like well, I'm sure those people have got gas to death in syria or growing up in american towns with no jobs Feel just great about the fact that he never got a blowjob in the oval office To the extent that they're american towns with no jobs. That's not primarily barack obama's fault And if there are people who got gas to death in syria, I don't see how that's any worse than getting stabbed to death or shot to death And I don't think it's america's job to prevent bad things happening in other countries in the world It's america's job primarily to act in america's best interests of office at all I'm sitting here trying to figure out if it's possible for if it's an illusion for biden to know about it But I guess you could say He the access is an illusion because biden's not going to do anything that hunter suggests But biden knows that hunter is fostering the illusion that he does have any problems Keep in mind a couple points first in ukraine politics Everything depends your status depends on do you have the blessing of the americans because the whole country depends on america The way the irish rebels depend on america so Just having biden's name attached helps for reason even if there's no illusion of access second I think biden's out is that he didn't get any money for okay? I think if he got money for helping perpetrate this fraud on hunter's clients Game over he's guilty of being accessory to a fraud. He should be impeached But it's not as bad as stealing the election, but it's it's worse than watergate and it's bad The second the the second thing is Do we really think it stopped at the illusion of access wasn't there actual access and maybe actual results? There's not a lot of evidence of that the two pieces of evidence that I have are first this old article from dc examiner from i think 27 20 2007 or something when biden was a senator and hunter had some clients that wanted to change the rules for credentialing chemical workers Okay, biden intervened on behalf of hunter's clients Okay, he delivered not the illusion of access the reality of access at the reality of influence successfully pedaled So biden has delivered for a hundred before even in that one example of this at one example How many others were there the second? So uh half-collision in the chat says the Torah commands us to watch our free testosterone This robert right guy when he talks more than 30 seconds I feel my testosterone level starting to drop only the angry assertive june mickey kauss Restores my testosterone levels Tucker Carlson kills my testosterone to that high-pitched laugh and bow tie No wonder the fox shows raw supplements So the guy on the right here is mickey kauss the guy on the left is robert right So I popped my testosterone supplement Last night and as a result. I had all sorts of lustful thoughts which did not aid in the in the quality of my sleep Second thing is we don't have the mayor of Moscow Senate big check to invest with hunter's firms of which they got a cut And she wanted to be off the sanctions list and she was not on the sanctions list now It just was it just a coincidence that she sent this money and she wasn't on the sanctions list or was there some You know access a successful influence badly by hunter. We don't know but it's it's possible It's an avenue to explore. It's all we got at this point, but But whether or not that their access is actually better. I think if Joe got money he's guilty Uh, what what I can say base How collision says look the only testosterone supplements are red meat and push-ups Well, I do plenty of push-ups and pull-ups. I'm starting to Start to press against my shirts, right? My chest is expanding my shirts are getting a little uncomfortably tight So the testosterone supplement that I occasionally take maybe just all in my head. It may just have a placebo effect But uh, thank god for placebo effects. I'm downward the placebo all right back to This uh tablet magazine article. So what exactly does it mean that obama tolerated Genocide in syria. I mean genocides are going on all over the world really is it America's job to stop them when that goes against american best interests Right obama approved the killing of u.s citizens abroad who had turned their backs on america and were organizing terror attacks on americans So I don't have any problem killing them Now david garras says I think a major turning point in barack obama's presidency It was where he and denis mcdonough Walk around the white house grounds and obama changes his mind about syria. So obama had said something stupid about syria saying that if Syrian regime uses chemical weapons on their own people that that'd be a red line that would presumably meaning the u.s Would intervene militarily. So it's one thing to say something stupid. We all say something stupid Obama did the right thing and not following up Saying something stupid by doing something stupid, which would have been far more stupid So obama changed his mind. He walked back his red line comments on syria and that strikes me as wise And uh, then the article talks about barack starts calling his ex-girlfriend shila again after david garros had Uncovered her right. He's calling her again Because obama needs to keep her close because she knows too much of his story how he invented himself And she becomes a wild card if she no longer feels a tie to him David garras says when I started reading barack obama's book in early 2008 dreams from my father And I thought this is a crock. It's not history. It's what make believe who knows what the real story is David samuels says i've got the feeling from people Close to obama that his pose of being a writer is one that he refers in many ways to being a politician So he doesn't want his rightyliness or his fictional abilities to be revealed doesn't want to be challenged. It's my story. I created it. I owned it So barack obama the prime mover perhaps in the transformation of the american society we're living through now according to samuels I didn't see obama as the transformer I see much more as a manate observer a huge narcissist who couldn't care less about anything outside himself Obama struck me as too passive to move much of anything. He is that manate observer and a narcissist I think barack obama in the winter of 2008 realized there was no way that his presidency could live up to expectations And even fanboy journalists acknowledge that it ended up being an underwhelming disappointing presidency It'll be seen as a failed presidency because of the international failures And so according to david garrow the number one legacy The obama presidency is going to be the failure to intervene in syria and the failure to object to russia taking kramir and the donbas in That's ridiculous. My god. I have no trust in david garrow's Judgment if he thinks that these are failures by the obama presidency But uh david samuels got a good point here. He says the best way to understand barack obama Is that he is a literary creation of barack obama the writer Who authored the novel of his own life dreams from my father and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page David samuels says future historians are going to look back at the obama presidency and see it as the moment When this new oligarchy merged with the democratic party used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people The oligarchs and their servants to create a new apparatus of social control How far can they go with it? What are the limits? You see them testing this out every week or so So was barack obama the author of this new machine? Did he create it personally or does it report back to him? I think all three suggestions there are absurd And obviously barack obama is not the author of this new machine. He didn't create it and it doesn't report back to him Now, I think david garrow is absolutely right here And he says barack obama has no interest in building the democratic party as an institution Never had any deep meaningful policy commitments other than the need to feel and seem victorious Obama is just as insecure as trump, but in ways that are not readily perceived And obama is not someone who retains people Even valerie jarrett and david axelrod and he go back to like 2003 So the only person who has a little bit of a through line with barack obama is rob fisher who's david garrow says the brightest person i've met in my life Rob would argue with obama and the second book and obama is trying to get it finished during the campaign the audacity of hope Rob tells him it's a mess and barack obama gets angry. You can't tell you're a senator that his book is a mess So rob would disagree with him in intellectual and academic ways And rob and his wife went to the white house a few times But this was not a usual thing because barack obama does not want to be close with people who are his equals So you see this with a lot of live streamers and gurus. They don't want friends as much as followers Right, none of the people are ostensibly obama's best friends or anywhere close to his equal You see how obama got elected to the harvard law review And to the presidency And look at how he functioned as president of the law review to how he's functioned as u.s president, right? He's not a particularly ideological figure He's got this distant light touch management system There's no investment in what the contents of the harvard law review volume end up being he doesn't write his own Note he's not interested in producing a work of legal scholarship So for barack obama the law review presidency is just like going to harvard. It's a credentialing enterprise It's not a personal investment in policy substance obama would be terrible on the u.s supreme court because he's lazy In the book rising star obama says i'm fundamentally lazy and it's because i'm from hawaii Brack obama once said to this man in chicago the only two things he wants in life are a valet and an airplane Now what was incredibly Weird about the obama presidency and the excitement over him that so many white people thought this would be the cure of the legacy of american racism Well america's racial problems are primarily the result of the particular compositions of races in america and everywhere else in the world With these same compositions have similar problems There was never any chance that president barack obama could solve america's racial problems He did have the ability to make them worse, which he did Right, so we got the rise of black lives matter in 2014 america's racial problems significantly got worse between 2008 and 2016 they particularly got worse between 2013 and 2016 So david samuels is a smart and accomplished writer Everything he publishes is thought provoking But he doesn't seem to be making much of an effort here to substantiate most of his points Doesn't seem particularly interested to know much about what he's pronouncing on his epistemics are lousy He's essentially asking us to accept his points on faith in his previous interview for tablet He essentially promoted jfk juniors world view And then june 11th 2020 he published a story on kevin mcdonald that did not advance the story one inch It was a complete waste that got no resonance no mentions so david samuels refused to consider any of nathan coughness's penetrating essays on kevin mcdonald david samuels apparently hadn't even read the coughness critique apparently hadn't even read kevin mcdonald's culture of critique book And it's just an absurd essay interview He writes rural oregon has many of the same problems as any american inner city Except it is overwhelmingly inhabited by people with white skin Really rural oregon has the same problems as american inner cities, right? He provides no evidence for this assertion. How on earth does rural oregon resemble american inner cities by which metrics? Right, so the place he's talking about medford oregon averages fuel than a motor a year, right? That's hardly inner city levels